The Gorse is is full flower right now. We took a longish walk on the Estate following the services on Sunday. The young rabbits are running about to the great delight of two dogs who didn't manage (this time) to catch one although it wasn't for want of trying. Clio sometimes manages to catch one if it turns the wrong way. She got two last year. She makes a surprisingly clean job of it and I have a neighbour who ends up putting them under a crust with some herbs and lots of black pepper. Clio gets the scraps. Most of the time, however, they've got their noses in the grass and their backsides sticking out while the rabbit runs behind them and finds a different route home.

In their wisdom the powers-that-be down at Grosvenor Crescent have decided that the Scottish Episcopal Church needs car stickers. Most of the cars driving around these parts have some sort of sticker on them.

Give us car stickers or give us death!

When I first moved to Penicuik I figured that there was a very popular Scottish Liberal Democrat named Arnold Clark running for election. Turns out that this is only the car retailer after all and people seem willing to advertise their car salesman without demanding a discount which seems very un-Scottish.

Anyway - we in the SEC now have a bumper sticker and it's more or less what appears at the top of the page. I couldn't find an online copy of the original anywhere so I threw this together as a reasonable facsimile.

It's not a sterling demonstration of Evangelical mojo. No strong language here, that's for sure. Still, it's all true. If you show up we will, in fact, welcome you, your children, your weekly envelope, your helpfulness in helping to paint the church and, in a moment of weakness or stupidity, your willingness to serve as a lay representative to Diocesan Synod.

Is it the best we can do? How about this?

Or even these

last one - I promise

---drumroll---

Back in the saddle!

It's almost palpable.

The silence, I mean. It's almost palpable.

Caireen and I are just back from two weeks' honemoon in Cuba.

Before that we'd taken her 11 year old son and my 22 year old daughter to Eurodisney for a couple of days.

Before that was our wedding.

The days prior to the wedding were spent welcoming family members from the four corners of the world.

Before that was the whole process of moving Caireen and Stewart from their house in West Linton into the Rectory at Penicuik - boxes, skips and endless trips ferrying things back and forth.

Easter was in there too and Holy Week and the tail end of Lent!

I don't think there have been many spare moments in the last six weeks.

Until this morning. Caireen hopped on a bus and went to work. I took Stewart to school and then went to get the holiday photos put on a CD. I came home and then I plugged in the kettle and sat down.

Silence! The first multi-hour lonely silence (and I think I'm not exaggerating) in 6 weeks! There are plenty of calls to make and plans to hatch and meetings to organize for the next few days but a few hours of lonely quiet have been frankly marvellous!

An amazing collection of Canadians, Scots and Israelis. Not all those wearing kilts are Israelis. But all the Israeli men are wearing kilts.


Cuba was fab! It's strange coming back from a failed Communist state to one run by failed Communists!

We spent a few days in Havana in the old part of town hauling our luggage up four flights of stairs to a tremendous balcony with a great view. We'd arranged to rent a not terribly healthy Skoda for seven days, drove down to the Bay of Pigs (Playa Giron) for a couple of days and then pretty well the half the length of the island to a beach north of Holguin. We drove north of Holguin and about three hours along the worst road I've ever seen until we came to a little fishing village. We were trying to make it to a beach recommended by my sister. In this case, however, the engine light was on on the the rented Skoda so we stayed here and collected sea shells.


There are a zillion pics which aren't edited yet. Here's one.

Unplugging for a while!

I'm getting married on Saturday! Family arrives tomorrow from Canada and Israel in three waves. There are a zillion things to do and blogging figures fairly low on the list. Blogging at this juncture would probably be grounds for divorce. We are to be married on Saturday at 2 pm here in Penicuik.

Off to Euro-Disney Sunday with the two children for a two-day trip and thence to Cuba later in the week with the Missus for a couple of weeks. Back in the saddle mid-May. Will post a few holiday pics, maybe a wedding pic or two but little from me until then.

Hasta la proxima vez!

Maybe it's some sort of doggie reincarnation

I find the resemblance amazing between my wife-to-be's collie cross and Laika the stray dog the Soviets shot into space on a one-way mission in 1957. Even down to the chewed right ear. This will remain a private reflection. Patch is finding the transition to life at the Rectory a little unsettling as it is.

We all need heroes

Although perhaps not the black-rubber-suited type with cat's ears and tremendous breasts (ed. - that's no hero that's my secretary, Marlene!). Our heroes could well be folks who do some of the things that we do, but who do them better and have done so consistently for a very long time. The old Archdeacon who I served under as a theological student back in Montreal for about five years was one such hero. I hear his voice frequently and believe that, were he still alive, he would again be looking down his long red nose and shaking his head at me about some of the same issues we struggled with twenty-some-odd years ago.

I've had the opportunity to do a few Thought(s) for the Day on Radio Scotland over the last several months. I'm certainly not used to having a producer - especially one who lets me know when she thinks what I'm proposing to say doesn't quite pass muster because it's too 'newsy' or 'not newsy enough', not in line with the BBC 'style' or simply unclear and a bit dribbling. Members of my congregation could probably be located who'd testify that I might profit from a producer back home in the congregation. Perhaps they're secretly hoping that my impending marriage will produce such a result in the long term.

Thought for the Day on Radio Scotland makes use of a two minute format. These two minute talks are not prepared far in advance - they're worked out the day before, based on what's been on the front page of the Scotsman (Edinburgh) or the Herald (Glasgow) or elsewhere. You get a phone call from the studio in Glasgow just before noon. You chat a bit. You hammer something off and email it along. Then after 20 minutes there's another phone call and a few more emails back and forth - so far generally about four drafts seems to be the average. It takes the better part of an afternoon of my time to come up with something serviceable every four or five weeks.

What is being sought is a faith perspective on the daily news- what the news means when spoken about by somebody with a religious vocation.

I will admit to a certain initial discomfort with the idea of providing a 'faith perspective'. I don't provide just 'any' faith perspective. It seemed a pretty generalizing thing - like somebody pulling a coat off a hook and saying 'wear this - it should fit you' - where the 'you' in the sentence could be an Episcopalian, a Roman Catholic, a Muslim, a Jew or a Sikh. I am not so post-evangelical as to think that one can be all things to all people. I wondered whether what was being asked for was the sort of gentle vicar-spew you sometimes hear in the media.

What clinched it for me was the parallel I drew in my mind between Thought for the Day and work I'd done in hospitals, schools, port chaplaincies or homeless shelters. It was some of the best and most interesting work I ever did. It was done, though, by hospital standards or under the watchful eye of a head teacher, in partnership with shipping agents or social agencies. A fair number of us are used to working by our own rules and on our own turf within the confines of our congregation. Even if that turf shrinks to a small patch of ground and a handful of souls we feel no tremendous discomfort. Life carries on after a fashion and above all we can preach the Word in the way we feel called to preach it. We don't often get challenged and we don't always make very good guests in somebody else's pulpit. We don't always stand up to the scrutiny of the marketplace.

A radio station is somebody else's turf - it's a civic platform. You're being heard in a car by a commuter. It's his car. That's his turf. He has a button in front of him that can turn you off. It's not so much that one has an obligation to 'tone things down' or to be 'winsome' instead of 'direct' but that one has been given a tremendous 'opportunity' - one which is worth the effort of changing one's style and approach.

Once treated as opportunity and not as obligation - the fun really begins.

Lots of people listen to Thought for the Day on Radio Scotland. It's a 'good gig'. Even more listen to Thought for the Day on Radio 4, however. It's broadcast throughout Britain. They're generally made up of three-minute meditations. That extra minute allows for quite a bit. Among the regular contributers to Radio 4's Thought for the Day is one who I consider a bit of a hero. Her name is Angela Tilby and she's the Vicar of St Bene't's Church in Cambridge. She has managed to combine the gentleness of a guest with some really quite chewy and provocative talks. Her style is one worth keeping in the back of my head.

A list of her Thought(s) for the Day can be found HERE. You can read them or listen to them.

Dmitri and Vassily in a Paris bookstore

Dmitri is browsing through the books in the Russian bookstore in Paris where he bumps into his friend Vassily who is sporting a painful looking black eye.

"Vassily, vot iss? Why iss now become your eye all bleck"?

"Vot iss? Oh....got bleck eye in choorch"

"Vassily how iss? How you get bleck eye in choorch?"

"Vos sittink there in the choorch. Everytheenk iss hokay! Meenister he say 'now stend to seenk wit me now please the hym-na'. We stending now to please seenk wit him the hym-na and iss enormous fett lady stendink in front of me. I see that dress iss all creased and peenched in creck of ess so I helpfooll reach out and pool dress free from creck. She toorn and ponch me in the eye which now you see iss bleck"

After a cup of coffee at a neighbouring cafe and much friendly commiseration the two part company. A week later they meet again in the Russian bookstore and Dmitri notices that Vassily is the proud owner of two black eyes.

"Vot! Now again two eyes iss bleck! Again you get in choorch 'nother bleck eye?"

"I went to choorch with my friend Yuri. We are seettink in choorch. Everytheenk iss hokay! Meenister say 'please stend with me now seenk the hym-na' so we stend opp. Iss same beeg fett woman stendink to the front. Dress again iss peenched and caught between two heffs beckside. My friend Yuri he reach forward and pools out dress but I say 'no Yuri, no' and I reach forward and poot beck in"