Amazing in our Cathedral this morning.  People ‘n flowers ‘n music ‘n children ‘ stuff.  Sermon like this

Spring has come.  So our little community here at Blogstead emerged blinking into the sunlight and we re-introduced ourselves to one another after the long, dark days of winter.  I had done a wise virgins by having the mower and the strimmer serviced during February.  So no problems there.  More difficult was my decision to dig a vegetable plot hard by Continuous Aeration Plant No 1 [septic tank to you and me].  Let’s just say it was heavy going.  It remains nameless at present – although the Donald Soper Organic Vegetable garden does trip off the tongue.  And then there was the planting of the rhododenron.  Of course it’s red.  What made you think that a rhododendron might be white?

Alison had decided to unplug the mouse-scarer in the kitchen – so we found that Poppy had been on safari again behind the settee.

Then, as clergy have done through the ages, we’ll roll the stone away tomorrow morning – and then roll it up as quickly as possible and have a week off.  And very welcome it will be. Blogstead na Mara here we come – and time to discover what happened when the Celtic Tiger got knackered.

Always a special moment.  I know we are all into shared ministry – but this seems to be one of those peculiarly ‘clergy’ moments.  So we sat in a circle in our lovely cathedral and revisited vocation.  I always think it is the most wonderful thing.  Clergy as a group are the oddest bunch – extraordinarily diverse in every way.  We are at times mad, fed up, visionary, crotchety, workaholic, bone idle, tired.  We pay a price for ministry and our families pay a bigger price.  And yet.  As I anointed the hands and was anointed myself, I pondered the extraordinary spirit-filled potential of all this.

I had prepared myself with lots of exciting biddings and stuff written into my Order of Service.  So why did I find that I had arrived with only the outside cover.  This was the Homily

In much the same area, I enjoyed a piece from the Alban Institute which turned up in my Inbox today.  I particularly liked this sentence: ‘ In our years of ministry together, the people of St Timothy’s and I had grown from needing to understand worship in order to participate in it to needing to participate in worship in order to understand it.’  That seems to me to express some of the mystery of mission and congregation-building in our times.

Continuing the US theme, I had my first Skype coaching session today with Bishop Philip of the Gulf Coast who is going to haul me through the ‘Living our Vows’ Programme of the College for Bishops in The Episcopal Church.

I attended a ‘stakeholders’ meeting on Spiritual Care in the NHS recently.  As I confided to my Facebook page,  it whetted my appetite for a ‘fence-sitters’ gathering – should anyone feel like organising one other than those which we already attend regularly ex officio.

During all the time that I was Rector of Seagoe, I was also Church of Ireland Chaplain in Craigavon Area Hospital – just over the back hedge.  It was a very rich experience – but for much of the time I felt that marginalisation was not far away.  So I was glad to see a Stakeholders Gathering on Spiritual Care attended by a very wide range of people.

And yet.  At the time and since, I have gradually been turning around in my mind the understanding of spiritual care around which people were gathering.  Ultimately it seemed to me to be ‘helping people to face and respond to major life questions raised by illness’  In spiritual terms, it seemed to me to be content-free [or at least non-specific].  One ponders what it means when there are humanists as part of a chaplaincy team.

And then I heard people begin to differentiate between spiritual care and religious care.  Now it would obviously be wrong for the churches to seek to have a monopoly of spiritual care.  But then to identify religious care as it it was something different seems to bring us back to ….. marginalisation again.  Plus ca change and all that.

Canon Shirley Lobley had been ill for some time – but her death came as a shock.  She served as a member of the Collaborative Ministry Team in our congregation in St John’s, Alloa.  She was prayerful and thoughtful, strong in leadership and generous in sharing ministry.  She encouraged the congregation to look ever outwards – the development of the Community House was just one of the initiatives in which she shared.  I think that lots of people relied on her strength and her wisdom – I used to take my place in the queue.  This is what I said at her funeral.

It’s a big loss for the congregation and the diocese – but more for her husband, David and the family.  They will be in the prayers of all of us.

Regular readers will notice that there has been nothing to read this last few days.  It’s not often that I get seriously overloaded, but this week has had a bit of that and more besides.

We did interviews for our Casting the Net Development Officer posts.  It was as interesting as you could wish for – as you would expect when you move outside the comfort zone.  Fascinating people and good interviews.

We also did two evenings of ‘Thinking through Lent’ – in Perth and St Andrews [where a post-grad qualification in theology is a qualification for residency]  This time it was about how we come to have faith – I failed to manage a date for my conversion.

As if that wasn’t enough, some difficult stuff got sorted out in the background.  And we have 200 yards of slightly odiferous fishing nets outside the back door of the office.  But what are we going to do with them?

One of those interesting events which comes around occasionally.  Dunkeld has been celebrating the 200th Anniversary of Thomas Telford’s magnificent bridge over the Tay.  There has been a whole weekend of activities – including a parade by the Atholl Highlanders, the only private army in Britain.  This commemorates the fact that the bridge was paid for by the Duke of Atholl.

Anyway, they asked me to preach at the Thanksgiving Service in the Cathedral – which is, of course, used by the Church of Scotland as their Parish Church.  But they kindly let me in for the evening and this is what I said.

Interesting the way things sometimes tie up.  I found myself earlier in the week listening to an analysis of the number of [particularly younger] clergy who are attracted by sector ministries, chaplaincies and the like.  I can see the attraction – some boundaries around the working hours, clearer management structures, maybe better pay.  Beyond that is what is attractive for members of a minority church – ministry which connects with the whole population.

And then yesterday I was at a Stakeholders Conference [dreadful word] about spiritual care in the NHS – of which more another day.  But there it was again – the tug of chaplaincy, freedom from the need to raise your own stipend and keep the roof on – and all that – the purity of working with people without all the clutter.

One thing it does make me more certain about.  I’ve always wanted to do some work in helping clergy and vestries to have a clearer understanding of one another.  It’s about roles and expectations, about management and accountability – what the relationship is and what it is not.  We’re designing something at the moment.  We can’t and shouldn’t attempt to turn congregational ministry into something as superficially tidy as secular employment – but we could iron out some of the difficulties.

Springtime at Blogstead.  The huge prairie across the garden fence has had very farmer-type things done to it so that it is all neat and tidy – fertiliser spread and, I suspect, seed sown.  All accomplished in one day by a series of enormous tractors.  And apart from some spraying from time to time, that seems to be it until harvest.  Strange business farming.  No wonder the countryside seems empty most of the time.

Well my excursion to Edinburgh by Megabus worked well.  It took 75 minutes from home to Charlotte Square by driving to the Kinross Park and Ride and picking up the Megabus there.  I think it would be hard to beat that.  Pity I didn’t want to go to Charlotte Square.  The return was rather less successful because of standing traffic at the Forth Bridge – I reckon it was about 100 minutes and that’s not bad.  It was 50 miles return in the car and £7.28 return for the bus.  Sort of splitting the difference on the carbon footprint.  I’ll try it again on Friday for the College of Bishops Meeting.

Always find Mothering Sunday strange.  In the parish it was an immense event – heaving with children and flowers.  I would never just say ‘folk religion’ – but most of the classic statements about its meaning never seem to get anywhere near it.

Today was different – because the story of Jade Goody’s life and death gave it shape and purpose.  To be personal about it, she represents for me all the awkward people who have roared and shouted at me, all the difficult and non-compliant people .. in whom strangely and unaccountably I have seen the grace of God at work.  I wonder if what she became was as surprising to her as it was to us.

What is fascinating is the way in which her passions – misdirected towards Shilpa Shetty in the Big Brother House – were directed towards her husband and her children.  And somehow she came to terms with the idea that what the church was offering her could in shape and express what was most precious to her.

May she rest in peace.