I spent this evening in Stirling with the Dunblane Area Council who had joined together for an Ascension Day Eucharist.  Our Area Councils have sometimes seemed to be casting about and looking for a role – this evening they had a joint choir with all the trimmings.  Seems to me to be just what they should be about.  The sermon was rather closer to the script than is sometimes the case – tho’ the printer on which it was printed was running out of ink.

You would think that, after all these years, I would have worked out how to pace things.  But I haven’t.  I think some of it is that I still haven’t come to terms with the way in which a whole day can go – a meeting in Edinburgh or the conference I went to in Stirling on Monday just wipes out time.

We’re almost at the end with the Diocesan Policy.  Our commitment was delivery by the end of April so we’re writing and rewriting.  I’m keen to get on and begin to put it in place – in terms of what we do and how the diocese is organised, it means some very significant change.  The renovation of the Diocesan Office is finished and the new furniture has arrived.  Tim the Geek spent last night putting in a server – which will be great when I have worked out what that means.  And somewhere along the line, I promised to do Prayer for the Day for the BBC which means six scripts for next Monday… and an article for Inspires for Friday .. and sermons on both Thursday and Friday evenings ..

Could spring have sprung at last? I came out of St Serf’s, Comrie this morning into clear blue sky and warm air. The cold wind seems to have gone. The staff are beginning to bring the Blogstead croquet lawn back into commission. +Bruce and Elaine, like migrating swallows, are due back on Thursday.  And finally … Alexander McCall Smith is on the front page of the Sunday Times Property Section and is apparently holding Poppy.

I’ve been watching the response which has been stirred by the placing of the body of Padre Pio on display.  The protestant in me finds it all a bit difficult.  But it gets better if you step sideways and ponder the power of that kind of spirituality – the stigmata which are or are not and people’s appetite for the holy.  I suppose some of the power is in its directness and touchability – not bound up in inaccessible ideas and words.  I used to love poking around in the recesses of North Italian village churches.  They all had relics with ill-translated and ill-typed explanations of how the statue of the Virgin broke out in an aqueous sweat in 1453 – and here is the very identical handkerchief.

Ireland is probably second only to Italy for this kind of piety – if you are unaware of the Moving Statues of Ballinspittle, you should take a look.

 

My ‘Conspiracy’ comments on Bishop Devine’s lecture ignited a lengthy sequence of comments – including a dialogue with Phil about the church’s treatment of gay people. You may be interested in exploring that because he moved me out of the comfort zone. I thought it had reached a natural end but maybe not …

 

In the final comment of the sequence, Kimberly neatly [and I think correctly] summarises the issue as

‘Phil’s concern that church sometimes denies the full humanity of gay people, and David’s concern that no one argument (either a particular view of scripture, or a particular way of expressing issues of justice and inclusion) trump all others without an attempt at mutual understanding.’

 

When I worked in Northern Ireland, I found myself sharing a church with some people whose views I found difficult, at times not recognizable in gospel terms and – at the extreme end – abhorrent. Some of them, I know, regarded my views as dangerously liberal. I wouldn’t use the word ‘discrimination’ but at times I paid a price for positions I adopted and argued for. I wasn’t seen as altogether ‘safe’.

 

I think that part of what lies behind our difficulties is the nature of the church – at times untidy to the point of incoherence. It is neither debating society nor democracy. Some of it is people who can hold and articulate strongly-held and opposing views – evenly matched intellectual, spiritual and emotional fire-power. But more of it is all of us some of the time and some of us all of the time stumbling about trying – as the first disciples did – to work out what it was all about. There will be incoherence and incompleteness – that is what the Spirit of Truth is for – rather too much standing for the wrong things and missing the chances of becoming what we are meant to be.

 

That doesn’t excuse failure to understand, care, include .. It just means that people haven’t got there yet. It explains why I see my task as trying to help a divided church hold together as it learns to find the way forward in this issue.

Average sort of day today!  Train to Edinburgh for the College of Bishops where we addressed an agenda which probably required two or three days.  Train back to Leuchars for the Institution of David Wilson at St Andrews, St Andrews – a great day for the congregation.  All sorts of excitements lie in wait.

Just like old times in Northern Ireland, one listens to the news to find out .. in this case about the impending strike at Grangemouth oil refinery and the threat that supplies of fuel will be affected for a month.  I find myself pretty cynical about it all.  Can’t see that the strike will achieve much – other than the loss of public sympathy.  Management sound as if they are hyping the effects of it to put pressure on the workers.  And what is the point of government saying, ‘Don’t panic buy’?  If you live in a rural area, you have to move around and the car is all you have.  So now we are in the situation where there is little fuel in the filling stations because it is all in the tanks of cars.

Father Carli may have attended one clergy meeting too many.  But getting out of it by strapping himself to 1000 helium  balloons may have been taking it too far – and cost him his life.

I’m amazed to see that the Scout movement has seen its biggest rise in membership in 20 years.  Even when I was Youth Officer for the Church of Ireland [just think of that!] 25 years ago, it looked as if uniformed youth work was in trouble. Yes indeed – why would people join very traditional organisations with a liking for funny clothes?  Yet with some careful and imaginative development work, a revival is under way – 15000 extra members joined last year.

I’m surprised.  I would have thought it was hopeless – not least because of the difficulty of recruiting volunteer leadership.  So the reversal of decline gives me hope  ..

I watch very little TV.  Which makes the bits that I do see all the more astonishing.  I was climbing out of the garb at the end of a longish day and saw ten minutes of ‘I’d do anything’ in which some apparently sensible and considerably [vocally] talented girls sang for Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber who appeared to be sitting in Las Vegas in a pair of pink pyjamas.  And instead of picking a winner, they seem to be going through an interminable process of humiliating them one at a time, week by week.  Agonising, exploitative, degrading .. just some of the adjectives that come to mind.

Added to my collection of Perthshire sayings today at a splendid congregational lunch:

‘Do have some pheasant.  It’s on the Aaaga.’

You may have noticed that my blog on Holloway Pills stirred some comment – particularly from Noel Heather, recently retired from Royal Holloway.  He says that its founder, Thomas Holloway, was the originator of the Holloway Pills and that the College was therefore built on the proceeds of placebo medicines.

I pondered this as I heaved my various bits of episcopal bling through the security scanner at Edinburgh Airport yesterday.  This stirred some questions from the person behind me in the queue about what had happened to +Richard Holloway.  ‘I read his books and they made me think seriously about Christianity’   Not so placebo after all, methinks.

Bit of a milestone being back in Portadown today for Gemma and Al’s wedding and I was glad to be able to do it.  Gemma lived with our Anna in Belfast for four years so it was sort of family.  Interesting to be back in Seagoe for the first time and to be at home but not at the same time!

Naturally I took time to get various bits of personal maintenance done at the same time.  Another trip to McMahon’s shop to buy a suit – some more ‘easing’ of the trousers was called for.  Got my watch fixed at Campbell the Jeweller behind St Mark’s Church after it stopped as I stepped off the plane in Bangkok.  Had a haircut at Encanto – short on the cutting but long on chat – with my favourite hairdresser Michael who comes from Dundee.  Also answered various detailed questions from local blog readers … including ‘What is the current mileage of the Faithful Passat’  To which the answer is – it will pass 160000 on the way home from the airport.  The oil pressure warning light did come on on Thursday but, since I carry a spare everything in the back, that was easily dealt with.

Blogstead at its best.  I went for a quick cycle yesterday at the end of the afternoon.  Lifting my eyes from the road, I found four deer keeping me company just over the hedge.  They then jumped the fence, crossed the road in front of me and headed off across the fields.  Tonight I drove home from Newport – through the Sidlaw Hills from Dundee – at around 9.30 pm.  Amazing how much light there was in the sky behind the hills.