Raspberry Rabbit

2012-01-21T13:18:00.008Z

Whisky is the Fountain of Youth

My old seminary chum Bruce, in Montreal, is turning 59 in the next day or two. Feeling his age he asked if I could recommend a good single malt to drown his sorrows in. Now, just because you move to Scotland you don't immediately turn into a Scottish version of Yoda able to say "Och Aye...." and make binding recommendations about whisky. However, my response to Bruce may prove useful to a wider community and so I here publish it for all and sundry:

Poor Bruce. I suppose the only thing worse than turning 59 is the alternative.

I find that a 12 year old Highland Park confers an increment of youthfulness with each glass taken. After glass one you realise how your many years have equipped you with the sort of sophisticated palette that a younger man could only dream about. After glass two you turn to your lady wife and are struck by her mature graces and your good fortune in having her. It will be no consolation to the good woman, however, that after glass six you've turned into a disgusting old Bacchus and are making time in the corner with a twenty-five year old exchange student from Guatemala. After glass eight you curl your lip and say "It's not fair". After glass ten you wet yourself and need to be changed. After glass twelve all the women present make clucking noises and say "Oh look, he's asleep".

12 year old Highland Park, Bruce. Damned fine whisky.

2012-01-16T10:45:00.001Z

Anyone growing tired of the Authorized Version of Burns' Address to a Haggis and looking for the Good News Version of same is welcome to borrow mine (giving credit where credit is due).

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

2012-01-16T08:46:00.006Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Monday, January 16, 2012

Disaster plans.

Our hearts go out to all who have been lost. The story of the Costa Concordia is still to be written as emergency crews search for survivors in the overturned cruise ship off the West coast of Italy. Questions are emerging about the adequacy of the ship's preparedness for a disaster and the timeliness of the initial response to the grounding.

If you dig through the layers of many ancient cities you will encounter what are known as destruction layers - typified by the presence of blackened or broken masonry indicating that a city was periodically put to the torch or subjected to natural catastrophe and its inhabitants beset by tragic circumstances. It is a given that disasters will take place. They are a part of the history of human communities.

As you look at the rubble and the blackened bricks you wonder what the people were thinking and what they did to alleviate their own distress and that of others. Human stories from ancient disasters are hard to come by but we do have modern analogies.

In such tragic circumstances two sets of stories frequently emerge: In one set of stories those in responsibility abandon their post. In so doing they abandon those they are meant to be caring for. In another set of stories some germ of human worth dominates. Places in lifeboats are given to others - the weak and the infirm are thrown over the shoulders of the able-bodied and carried to safety. Plans are worked out on the backs of envelopes by torchlight and everybody shoulders the task they've been given and performs it admirably.

Do you have a disaster plan?

What will you take with you?

How will you preserve the life around you and, in so doing, your own humanity?

In our disaster plans we must give thought, not only to our passports, our wallets and our credit cards but also to our nobility, our responsibility, and our love of strangers.

2011-12-22T13:00:00.004Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
December 22nd, 2011

At our service of Nine Lessons and Carols the other night we had our university students back in the congregation and in the choir. Back for a while, they look forward to restoring the familiar - to having their laundry done, to having a meal with the people they know.

We know who sits where and who carves the turkey. We appreciate Christmas carols we can sing without looking at the words. Once we've had a glass of mulled wine - or two - we might even provoke a little amusement, in familiar surroundings, by chancing the bass line or the descant.

There are folk who aren't at the table - family members and friends we've not gotten on with since the "event" of 1979 or 1982. Or maybe we've just drifted. We are unsettled by this state of affairs.

But we might ask, defensively, "why should we always be the first one to pick up the phone?"

The traditions of Christmas meals and celebrations with limited groups of our dearest and closest have more to do with the residue of North West European village life than they do with the Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke, where you'll find a surprising amount about the outsider, the alien, the stranger - those who've been thrust to the margins - being invited by God into the heart of the story: The strangeness of the foreign wise men - even the angels in the dead of night visiting shepherds - who are in no way integral t the story - for no good reason other than to announce that God has given a gift to those who are far off welcoming them in.

If the gift is for us it is for the outsider as well and for the person we find it hard to speak with. The nagging feeling about the unwritten letter and the unaccomplished healing phone call has its origins right at the heart of the Christmas story. It is a timely reminder that, as the Scottish Liturgy puts it,

"...when we were still far off (God) met us in (his) Son and brought us home..."

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An audio link is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:18.20 - halfway along the audio bar.

2011-12-01T18:27:00.006Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
December 1st, 2011

Many of our parents here in Penicuik and West Linton shuffled their schedules yesterday to accommodate children who were not in school because of the strikes. Some folks had to go in to work anyway, while others were on reduced duties. Many didn't go in at all. Still others braved the blustery weather to take their places on picket lines.

Well-informed and good-hearted people might disagree on some of the issues surrounding
this strike action. It seems clear, though, is that there's no reason to suppose that life simply is the way it is with nothing more to be said on the matter.

We've had a good solid dose these last few years of being told that things are the way they must be and that there's nothing else really to be said or done. It's the way the economy is, it's what the climate of finance nowadays dictates. From men in yellow jackets reminding us what the rules are or computers generating lists of what we owe the bank one would be forgiven for thinking that we were nothing but leaves blown about in the breeze.

Our society depends greatly on what is called, in French, a "rapport des forces" - a balance between strong individuals or groups which is held in tension but which nonetheless produces stability. That rapport can fall apart. Unhappy conflict can develop when one side attempting to exercise total victory over the other.

Most of the time, however, and what has developed over the generations - is a painfully won agreement about the nature and stability of our work, This is based, in part, on the belief that everything is negotiable. Life is more fluid than we think. One of the canticles - taken from the opening chapters of Luke's Gospel - describes the work of God as "putting down the mighty from their seat and exalting the humble".

Ordinary working people have a voice - and a role in deciding how they want to work and live.

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an audio link is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:23.38 - halfway along the audio bar.

2011-11-24T20:42:00.003Z

More than just noise

My friend Iain asked me, when this picture surfaced on Facebook, "Why are you smiling? Are you deaf?"

No - I'm beginning to find it quite tolerable.

The relationship between music and what a set of bagpipes does is sometimes a bit tenuous. Even though I can pick out most of the canonical tunes I'm not sure I think of bagpipes as musical instruments.

Today was graduation day for people like me at the University of Edinburgh. I've been poking away at an MTh by Research for a couple of years now and I received my degree. It wasn't particularly cold and there was a fair bit of wind and some light drizzle. There were white ties and academic processions. There was much happiness.

A perfect day for bagpipes, in other words - uniquely able to transmit the spirit of a place an an occasion and much appreciated by me - even up close.

So much more than mere noise.

2011-11-17T08:21:00.007Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Thursday, November 17th

A massive yellow stone – the Sun Drop Diamond – sold at auction in Geneva the other day for a princely sum in excess of 12 million dollars. No one knows whether the anonymous buyer intends to set the stone as a piece of jewellery or whether he’ll be slipping it into a safety deposit box as a hedge against fluctuating currencies.

It’s just a diamond, though, and diamonds are made of carbon. Perfectly ordinary carbon subjected to the natural processes of intense pressure and heat over time but able to generate much attention.

The value of things is what we attribute to them – how much attention we pay to them. Something which is valuable this year may not be valuable next year. Things which we threw away as worthless fifty years ago now command a high price on Ebay.

My wife, and my children are mostly made of carbon.

As is the new person at my church in Penicuik who I don't really know yet. She's a face I have now seen twice. I said to myself, after she escaped at the end of the service and didn't come to coffee, that I'm going to have to nab her next time before she leaves - to introduce myself – to welcome her to St James’. To say that we’re glad she’s here.

Within communities people emerge – with their talents and their stories – and take their place. Through us – or perhaps even in spite of us - they begin to discern God’s attention which speaks of their innate value - their worthiness.

Jesus is perpetually telling us in the Gospels to look out for the Pearl of Great Price buried in an ordinary field, or the insignificant mustard seed which becomes the greatest shrub of the garden or the sick, the lonely, the needy and the prisoner.

"When you care for them", says Jesus, "you care for me" and therefore – he says - you need to pay attention.

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A link to audio can be found HERE. TFTD begins at 1:23.44 - halfway along the audio bar.

2011-10-19T07:03:00.002Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

The face has changed. A thinner and paler Gilad Shalit was hustled out of a van yesterday morning after five years of captivity. The well-known picture of the younger and heartier boy is now clearly out of date.

One exchanged for a great many: A fair deal or not? Were questions of justice and security weighed against the safety of an individual?

These negotiations will be debated in the weeks to come.

What does the individual amount to anyway in the grand scheme of things?

Important decisions are often made about crowds. While we are individuals, we are also numbers of interest to statisticians. We are members of communities in political disputes over land and resources, requiring medical services or schools or housing or sewers. The big picture is always bigger than you are. Where are you, though, in that big picture?

As individuals we get lost in crowds.

We get lost unless there’s somebody to pay attention. It’s attention which ensures the needs of individuals – and memory. To our husbands and wives and our families, we are individual souls. They remember us when others forget us.

One of the earliest pieces of Christian iconography was that of the shepherd with a single sheep on his back. You can see it inscribed in the catacombs in Rome as you can see it in modern stained glass. It wasn’t a Christian invention but it rang a bell with the early church because of Jesus’ parable about the good shepherd who will leave the 99 sheep in order to search out the one who is lost.

It is the personal and relational aspects of friendship and our participation in communities which we yearn for – linked to the belief that at the heart of the universe is a voice directed to us – as individuals - to whom somebody says:

"I know you. I've known you for years. Though others may forget - I will not forget you.”

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Audio is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:24.00 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2011-09-20T07:06:00.007Z

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Tuesday, September 20, 2011

A teenager walks out of the deep forest straddling Germany and the Czech Republic where he claims to have been living rough with his father and with no other human contact for years. The father dies in a fall in the woods. The boy follows a compass heading north and shows up in the city of Berlin seeking help.

He is English speaking and claims to have little memory of his life before he entered the woods as a small child.

Mystery and intrigue: Is the story even true? Some lost souls, washing up on shore or found wandering in the heart of a great city - know very well who they are. The memory loss conveniently covers a darker past.

So even when the police express their opinion that this boy is telling the truth, there remain suspicions.

In the Christian tradition, solitude is an exercise. We are not abandoned to it. We enter into it freely. We leave human community and conversation for a time and a season. We retreat with our thoughts – like so many characters from the Old and New Testaments did - to a lonely place and, there, sort things out in the silence and in the presence of that part of God’s creation which does not speak our human language.

The idea that children could be raised apart from people belongs to a Romantic age. Mowgli or Tarzan represent the “noble savage” - at one with nature and “free”- a more authentic state than we enjoy. In that fantasy – even children raised by apes or wolves retain that which is best about humanity.

But we know that children raised in such circumstances suffer enormous deficits. The lack of interraction makes them unable to communicate. Thought, itself, is language - and language is spoken between people.

When our loneliness makes itself known to us we will usually follow the compass needle until it brings us back into the grasp and conversation of others.

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An audio link is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:24.24 - halfway along the audio bar.

2011-08-29T09:23:00.004Z

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Monday, August 29th, 2011

The Eastern Seaboard of the United States battened down the hatches in the face of Hurricane Irene. Shop fronts were boarded up. The New York Subway system closed down. Until last night no one knew exactly what would transpire. For some there was a carnival atmosphere. Others, especially those responsible for the preservation of life, limb and infrastructure, had faces set in grim determination. A lot was at stake.

Recent history has seen examples of both the best and worst in human nature which have come out of natural disasters.

Storms can bring out the worst in human apathy, violence and greed. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina still causes tremendous soul-searching amongst Americans.

Similar events can have radically different results - they can produce a sense of solidarity and community.

Storms, earthquakes and other disasters remind us that we are small and limited creatures - that the risks to us are real here in our smallness. It's what most humans have had to live through for most of their history. Only recently have we been able to look though windows (or television screens) at the outside world.

When you're caught up in something big you have a choice of paths. One way of looking at others is that they are competitors and enemies. They occupy space you need to occupy. They eat the food you might want to eat.

There's another path, though. No matter how much you think humans are merely greedy organisms it's a path that is taken often. Jesus said "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul". In a crisis we may find ourselves surprisingly able to exercise good citizenship and abundant charity. There is something greater and more important than keeping our buildings intact and our own selves safe.

You end up hoping two things for those caught up in storms: first of all that the sandbags hold and the buildings aren't washed away - but also that the human spirit rises to the challenges and shows itself once more to be a beautiful and graceful thing.

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An audio link is HERE for a limited time. TFTD begins at 1:23.30 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2011-08-20T11:42:00.004Z

Pause for Thought
The Zoe Ball Show
BBC Radio 2
Saturday, August 20th, 2011

There's a scene in David Lean's movie Dr Zhivago that I have had to suffer all my life.

At one point in the film the hero struggles through a war-torn Siberian landscape until he reaches his childhood home - abandoned and encased in snow and ice. There he is reunited with his lover. They fire up the stove in one room and make it habitable. In the midst of all this chaos - the Russian Civil War and the depths of winter - they have a brief interlude of peace.

Zhivago finds the desk he wrote on as a child. He opens the drawer and discovers there, laid out in order, a sheaf of white paper, a pen and a bottle of ink.

He writes a poem.

My mother always talked about "Zhivago's Drawer". She would describe its order, its simplicity and its adequacy. She would then open the door to my bedroom which looked like any teenaged boy's bedroom and not at all like Zhivago's Drawer.

She would make reference to my school bag with its crumpled homework assignments and mouldering apple cores. Again, not Zhivago's Drawer.

And over the years I have muttered about "Zhivago's Bloody Drawer" countless times as I see what a mess my Income Tax return looks or the list of tasks which I have meant to get around to but haven't.

As a younger priest I would arrange to spend four or five days at the Trappist monastery north of Montreal, after Easter and after Christmas - not everybody's idea of a riotous good time - but I was attracted to the simplicity there. The balance and order of two lines of monks gliding in to worship in the wee hours of the morning, the Salve Regina sung at the end of the day with a single candle at the feet of a statue of Our Lady.

Please, God, before I die,
give me that small place of order and harmony
at the centre of my soul.

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*nb. "bloody" edited to "wretched" in the actual broadcast.

2011-08-14T11:43:00.001Z

Pause for Thought
The Richard Allinson Show
BBC Radio 2
Sunday, August 14th, 2011

I don't have time for side streets. People I know swear by them.

Why are you going this way? It'll take forever. Take this side street, then left at the post box past the yellow dog and over the bridge.

Right.

I'm going to end up in the middle of a field dotted with cow pats - lost and late. Give me the direct route any day. Simple and straight. If it takes a few minutes longer I can budget for that.

Edinburgh is crammed with tourists right now. They wear impossible colours and silly hats and walk slowly down the High Street. Many of them are wearing shorts. Some of them have knobbly knees.

They speak an amazing collection of languages - I can only guess at a few of them. I have time, you see, to guess because I always seem to be stuck behind a long queue of tourists ambling down the high street. They are on holiday. I am not.

They spend an awful lot of time taking pictures of the small closes - the quaint little alleyways - which open out on to the High Street. I've walked past plenty of these in the last eight years. I don't know where they lead. I've never walked in to one because I've generally had other things to do - like walking straight down the street from A to B.

Everything I know about history tells me that it's not made up of straight lines. Nor are the lives of the older people I love. Nor the lives of the saints or the people in the Old and New Testaments. There are always these side streets which open up because of disasters or misfortunes or even opportunities.

Angels and burning bushes seem to figure prominently in the Bible stories.

And I look forward, frankly, to clearing my slate well enough that I can follow a few of these side streets. Not just on holidays but in the midst of busy life when I feel the nudge.

And the next time I see a tourist in a ridiculous hat walk in to one of Edinburgh's little alleyways. I just may follow him in to see where it leads.

2011-08-13T12:43:00.007Z

Geneva in early August

I can think of a half dozen lovely vistas which I have seen - in Canada and around the world. I have to add this one - the Geneva waterfront with the "jet d'eau" and Mont Blanc in the distance. We spent a week there with an old seminary pal of mine (now the Rector of Geneva) and his lady wife.

Orson Wells was not entirely wrong about the Swiss - they are tidy and orderly and life is a bit dull at times. They are fastidious recyclers and the busses/trams/trains/harbour-boats are all on an honour system. People "tut" at you when you cross the street at an unauthorized time and place.

But it's a lovely town.

It's too expensive to buy much of course. Every currency has fallen against the Swiss Franc. You see tourist families from nations with falling currencies negotiating with their children about limiting their sweets at waterfront stalls for reasons which have more to do with family finance than with sound dental health or good dietary habits.

The smugness about the Swiss Franc being the most stable currency in the world is wearing off with the realization that nobody can afford to buy their stuff any more and there are all sorts of folks being laid off in Switzerland.

Everything is advertised as being on sale. Still, I'm glad we went. It was a lovely trip to a beautiful place.

Beans on toast now for the next few months.

2011-08-08T18:01:00.003Z

Pause for Thought
The Richard Allinson Show
BBC Radio 2
Sunday, August 7th, 2011

Words don't often fail us in our household. We are a fairly verbal lot in my family. We have lots to say.

Unless we visit a country where we don't speak the language. Then we have to use hand signals and point to places on the map.

I usually end up in Church on a Sunday. If it's a Communion service I can usually figure out what's going on. Sometimes the hymn tunes are familiar but I don't dare join in

I was a priest in a place called Chibougamau in Northern Quebec in the 1980's It was a mixed up sort of place and you really needed English, French and the native language, Cree, to get by as a clergyman and I only spoke two of them. The English and the French weren't a problem but Cree was hard to learn. Even after a few years I never managed more than a few words and phrases.

My first visit there was to an old lady named Alice who lived in a plywood shack on the edge of town and walked with two sticks and couldn't get about much. She was cooking a duck in a pot when I arrived. She pointed a chair out to me and motioned for me to sit. She carved the duck in two pieces and gave me half on a plate.

The door was open.

I knew that the word miyotchisigaw meant "nice day" and that any sentence could be turned into a question by adding the word "na" at the end. My church warden had taught me that - thought it might be useful.

I looked at the open door. "Miyotchisigaw na?" Isn't it a nice day?

She looked outside.

It was overcast. The wind was cold and blowing hard. There was still ice on the lake.

Enhe, she said, Miyotchisigaw.

Alice went on at length later to her daughter about her visit with the new priest and how she thought he would work out better than the last one had.

You see - if it were only the right words that mattered you could send those on a post card.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

2011-08-08T16:00:00.002Z

Pause for Thought
The Zoe Ball Show
BBC Radio 2
Saturday, August 6th, 2011

The person who reads the gas and electricity meter at the Rectory where I live near Edinburgh knows when I've sat down for my lunch or lain down for a wee nap or am in the middle of a difficult phone call. The doorbell rings, the dogs start barking - chaos reigns. We miss him most of the time and get a card stuffed through the mail slot to fill in and send back. My wife's dog usually chews that up. The ones that are still legible I oftentimes neglect to fill in.

And so I get a visit. Always at the wrong time. The doorbell. The dogs. Chaos.

And what would they tell me if they got their information? That the winter has been long and I owe them more than I think in heating costs. That I've been leaving too many lights on and I owe them money for electricity. It's a bill after all - one which accumulates and which I'd rather forget about.

And so I get a visit.

There's not much in life that gets avoided. Less than we think. Not much we can conceal which somebody won't eventually require of us - loudly. We take a certain amount of pleasure in watching the high and mighty dragged before committees to answer questions. It's about time, we think, about time that the truth was told.

Not only is it a component of most religious traditions that we owe Somebody a reckoning, it's the experience we have of being observers of the ups and downs of other people's lives - that their performance at work is eventually found out - their lack of dedication to their spouse - their nickel and dime dishonesty when it comes to expenses - their lack of engagement in the lives of their children. It does come out eventually - and sometimes too late.

The time to turn things around is now. With the dog eared slip of paper asking us to make a regular accounting, with timely conversations with people we may have offended. With requests for grace and forgiveness.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thank You For Asking!

2011-07-25T12:42:00.001Z

We went for a five day holiday to the highly wooded part of Scotland near Pitlochry, Dunkeld and Killiekrankie. One of the Scottish Dioceses owns a cottage which can be rented by SEC clergy at a reasonable rate. The fireplace smokes a bit but the digs were just the ticket.

We drove to the edge of Rannoch Moor and then picked up a train to Mallaig, just opposite the Isle of Skye. This is the view from the viaduct as the train passes Glenfinnan. Loch Shiel is in the background. It was the one really stunning vista of the week. I thought I'd share it with you.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

2011-07-12T07:16:00.002Z

Thought For the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

Speaking once of hypocrisy, Jesus said

"Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known....whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light ...what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed upon the housetops"

This cuts several ways. It's been both the stock-in-trade of the News of the World over the years. It's now the reason for its demise.

Revelations of journalistic misdeeds and the misdeeds of those who fed the journalists information will no doubt continue as will the growing feelings of public outrage. We can expect the inevitable official over-reaction - the sound of the other official shoe hitting the boards - even though it was the work of journalists in a lightly-policed environment which brought these things to our attention. People in power who could have done something....didn't.

We find ourselves caught in this cycle of wrongdoing and reaction because we do not agree on much and we don't make use of what we do agree on - at least not when it comes to making money. We're missing our skeleton. We are floppy people who "ooze about" because ideas of honesty, restraint and fair play, at least in business dealings, are considered by some to be quaint notions.

They're still default positions in most friendships, marriages and voluntary associations but when we go to work - a transformation can occur. The bottom line takes pride of place.

What do they say in the movies when they pull the trigger, or betray a confidence or perform a "double cross"?

"Nothing personal, mate, it's only business."

In the midst of any crisis of public confidence whether in banking, in politics or journalism we might just marvel at the self-deceit of the principal actors who believe in the power of darkness to conceal their secrets.

Or we might be prompted to take a vow ourselves and join our public and private lives into one frank and visible person.

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Audio link available HERE for a limited time. TFTD beings at 1:18:27 - halfway along the audio bar.

2011-07-04T21:17:00.003Z

A Summer Day on the High Street in Edinburgh

The High Street in Edinburgh was packed this afternoon with tourists. I took a break from my desk and walked for about three blocks and heard English precisely once. We've had an abysmal Spring with enormous quantities of rain and cold weather but that seems to have relented now. Most of us spent at least a full day this weekend cutting grass which had grown long and had been chronically too wet to cut. No more - the good times are here.

While I happened to hit a large foreign-language crowd this afternoon, there are plenty of North Americans who come here in the summer. The Americans and Canadians who come over here trying to reacquaint themselves with their Scottish roots are not always treated kindly. Let me rephrase that: they *are* treated kindly in situ but there is always a certain amount of muttering and rolling of eyes afterwards - as if they're only ersatz Scots, after all, who have no business pretending that they don't really come from Edmonton or Gary, Indiana.

I fail to understand the lack of pride on the part of Scots - that people from around the world have crossed oceans in order to identify with this place and to locate some aspect of their character in the streets and closes of Edinburgh and the hills outside. For some of these folks, in their cotton trousers and pastel golf shirts, a trip to Scotland is the culmination of many years' anticipation and a crowning part of their retirement. They say foolish things about tartans in High Street shops and tell at least ten people a day that their "grandmothers were Scotch", that they've always "felt Scottish" but surely the desire itself to come here and the iconic status that the place has had which helped to define people in the midst of a melting pot like the U.S.A or a mosaic like Canada ought to be worth something.

It ought to be respected more. Not every country can claim such abiding loyalty across generations.

The General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church

2011-06-09T08:35:00.001Z

The quiet before the storm. In order to get a comfortable wee corner in Palmerston Place before the rush and excitement which the meeting of the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church one needs to get here early. The Primus having just explained to the "freshers" that Synod can get passionate, John Stuart runs through the agenda in a businesslike and dispassionate manner

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Edinburgh

2011-05-23T08:17:00.005Z

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Monday, May 23rd, 2011

Catastrophe looms. An overlooked character unlocks the secret but no one will listen. And so the worst happens, just as he said. A few folk make it through without being annihilated and existence is strangely renewed as a new day dawns. "Ah" you say, "Harold Camping and his predictions about the Rapture and the return of Christ".

Well, yes, but also the plot of every disaster movie I've seen in the last twenty years.

Lets start with the obvious. We are still here.

But we were still here, as well, when we left the movie theatre after seeing comets hit the earth or the deep-freeze grip the Globe or an enormous shark consume a bathing beauty off the New Jersey shore.

It was such good entertainment.

To some extent, this has been as well. I am as guilty as the next man of having taken it all a little lightly. Spare a thought for those for whom it was deathly serious.

William Miller predicted such a triumphal return of Christ in the 1840's. What followed was known as The Great Disappointment. Marriages had not been entered into. As the date approached, crops had not even been planted.

The Bible is not the sort of book that easily admits of arithmetical calculation. The threats and promises therein cannot simply be lifted out of an ancient book and applied with sticky tape to contemporary situations. You're welcome to try. Nobody's going to promise not to have a laugh when you do.

The distressing thing about Christian catastrophism is the degree to which its disciples withdraw from the the world. Christ engaged that world with love. He didn't merely leave it to its fate. In the words, more or less, of another 1st century rabbi - Yochanan ben Zakkai:

"If you are planting a sapling and someone comes along to tell you that the Messiah has arrived, first go and plant the tree which depends on you for its life. Then brush the dirt off your hands - go and welcome the messiah".

2011-05-02T07:08:00.005Z

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Monday, May 2nd, 2011

A few days have passed. Other events are looming large. The Royal Wedding with its solemn processions and daft hats now qualifies as memory.

I got a note on my computer about a minute in from the beginning of the ceremony on Friday - one of our future brides at St James’, Penicuik asking whether she, too, could have trees in Church for her wedding.

I said I thought we could work something out.

What other requests will working clergy now have to field stemming from this very public wedding?

One thing I can say. I’ll emphasize how her marriage, too, belongs to the community and not just to her and her future husband. Every marriage is public property and has the potential of adding strength to the society to which the couple belongs. Their promises form part of the collection of promises which, together, form the basis of that society.

They stand in a community of family and friends. Somebody signs as a witness that their vows have been undertaken publically.

Grandparents wheeled into church. They will not only feel the thrill of seeing somebody they knew as a baby finally tying the knot; they will also be assured that the wheel of life has taken a turn forward. They're now off the hook. Younger people are now entering into a solemn covenant – who will, together, grow wise through years of challenge and resolution - whose home will become a safe place for children and their table a refuge for those who need a listening ear. These two people will lend their strength to those around them.

The world’s media won’t be present. But a portion of the world – present and future - depends on those words spoken between them being true. True at the time they are spoken - as rings are exchanged and hands joined and a priest’s stole wraps those hands together - and true decades after the service is over.

The couple being married belongs to the world.

The strength of their union makes the world stronger.
-----

An audio link here is HERE for a limited time. TFTD begins at 1:19.26 - halfway along the audio bar.

2011-04-30T16:14:00.004Z

Further divertissements with daft hats HERE

Much fun was had watching the Royal Wedding yesterday at the Rectory in Penicuik. I went and got some sticky buns. Mrs Rabbit and I had coffee. The step-rabbit had hot chocolate.

About a minute and a half into the ceremony I see a computer note from a future bride here at St James asking whether it might not be possible to have trees in Church for her wedding next year.

I said I thought we could work something out.

But I can't wear a pointy hat because I'm not a bishop and I can't speak with the sonorous tones of Rowan Williams or Richard Chartres because I'm neither of these people.

We had a marvelous time - thought the service went off without a hitch - glorious copes and ecclesiastical finery, great music, a decent sermon by the Bishop of London - a young couple very much at ease.

We have nothing but proprietary raspberries for all the sour republicans at home and abroad muttering about the propriety of the whole exercise.

It was not only proper it was magnificent!

2011-04-17T16:30:00.003Z

Palm Sunday Procession in West Linton

Two village churches in the Scottish Borders - St Mungo's Scottish Episcopal Church and St Andrew's Church of Scotland, along with the churches in Carlops and Newlands put their collective heads together and came up with a dandy all-age village Palm Sunday procession with police escort, branches and Moses the donkey who neither kicked nor bit at any time during the morning although he did divest himself of a large quantity of manure in the forecourt of St Andrew's Church provoking a cheer from the crowd.

Three of the participating churches have a service at 10:00 while St Andrew's generally get together at 11:00. This morning the three churches with the earlier service met at their usual time but truncated their services so that we could all gather on the green behind the medical practice at 10:45 in order to pipe the folks from St Andrew's to their door for a service which started 15 minutes late. People came to their windows and brought their children out to see the parade. Hymn sheets were handed out in abundance to onlookers. There were a few stations along the way where hymns were sung with some accompanying brass to keep folks together on the beat and on the note.

Those not proceeding to the service at St Andrew's wandered up to the undercroft at St Mungo's for a Bacon Butty and a cup of tea. It was a good time had by all and the planning representatives from all four churches are to be congratulated.

2011-04-16T08:30:00.000Z

Palm Crosses

It's coming up to that time of year again. This Saturday morning at 10:00 we're gathering in the Hall with the children and anyone else who feels 'young at heart' to make the Palm Crosses for Sunday. There are several ways of making them and everybody swears by their own method. Each year we gather and the first thing we have to do is remember how we did them last year. Some of the methods involve a single piece of palm. We don't do it that way - we use two.

We use two because, erm, of the two natures of Christ - the divine and the human.

We use two pieces of palm because *thinking.....* of the two Gospel Sacraments - Baptism and Holy Communion.

No? Okay, we use two because that's how we were taught us a few years back and we're Anglicans and when we find something that works we stick with it like tar to an old boot.

So, in anticipation of Saturday's get-together to make palm crosses, I post here the a pictorial guide on the web which illustrated the way we do it. I post it simply as an aide-memoire for myself so I don't look like an utter pillock on Saturday morning.

2011-04-04T07:19:00.006Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Monday, April 4th, 2011

The reading from the Gospel which most Christian churches read yesterday was the story of the man, born blind, who had his sight restored by Jesus at the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem. The disciples wanted first to discuss the situation from a comfortable distance - to understand whether blindness comes about as the consequence of somebody’s sin – this man’s - maybe his parents'.

But Jesus will have none of it. God reveals his power in a situation which simply is the way it is. And he wades right in.

I’m not alone in wondering “why” - there has been so much chaos and dis-ease breaking out all round the globe in the last month. The crust of the earth adjusts itself in the Far East and countless lives are changed forever . The grip of a few reliable strongmen starts to weaken in North Africa and the Middle East and, for different reasons but with similar effect, the dead are counted and communities are displaced.

Much needs to be understood, and done to prevent further suffering. But there's a limit. Sometimes such things simply happen – they are merely wounds in the earth.

As we speak, the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem is being excavated. And there’s a special quality to this corner of an ancient olive grove - it happened here and nowhere else. Aid and comfort was brought to this particular blind beggar

There is too much for any of us to understand. There is too much for any of us to deal with entirely – everywhere. We too find ourselves here and nowhere else dealing with actual situations and with real people – in communities and families – through charities and foundations in which we take a particular interest.

Things will continue to fall on people – the weight of buildings or the weight of political change.

No matter how small the community being served or how localized the disaster, today – we have an opportunity - here or there - somewhere. To wade in.
-----

An audio link is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:17.29 - halfway along the audio bar.

2011-03-23T13:29:00.005Z

You know nothing about Lemmings!

Following a conversation with a young person about activities which "everybody does", I stopped myself from uttering the old canard about people jumping off bridges. I didn't even mention the Lemmings - those little rodents living in the north of Canada and along the same latitudes throughout Europe and Asia with a reputation for tossing themselves off cliffs in large numbers at the behest of some inner compulsion.

In fact it's all tosh. They don't throw themselves off cliffs. They migrate for food across vast distances where they are easy prey for owls and foxes. Most of them end up being dinner not suicide. A few of them fail to make it across rivers.

But no cliffs. They're smarter than that.

In order to create the myth of the suicidal lemming for their film "The White Wilderness" the Walt Disney people, in 1958 needed to transport large numbers of intelligent and self-preserving lemmings from the Canadian north to a suitable cliff down south from which they were tossed off with a turntable contraption for the benefit of the camera.

Without the commercial interests behind the enterprise, the poor creatures would be up on the tundra enjoying the Midnight Sun and munching on some sedge.

Lemmings know better. So should you!

2011-03-21T17:56:00.005Z

Daydreams

When the studies are more in hand and Holy Week and Easter are "accomplished" I do want to take a day trip the the 15th Century Church at Fowlis Easter near Dundee and Guthrie Parish Church, a little farther on, to see some of the medieval paintings there which survived the Reformation (and only just). My pal Stephen has just come back from a jaunt to Fowlis Easter and includes a few of the photographs he took. Here you see the soul of the Bad Thief to one side of Jesus at the crucifixion yielding up his soul to a demon.

Mention is made in one article to paintings at Fowlis Easter being discussed at the Synod of Fife on May 6th, 1612

'Item, it is statute and ordained that the paintrie quhilk is upon the pulpitt
and ruid-laft, being monumentes of idolatrie, sal be obliterate be laying it over
with grein colour. The minister with diligens to see the same exped.'

The same article notes that the paintings were rediscovered 'at some point after 1746' languishing beneath a coat of whitewash. I am unclear whether they are now situated exactly where they once were or whether these fragments have been moved elsewhere within the body of the Church.

The article also makes reference to fragments of a judgement scene in the "Guthrie Aisle":

"...'Doom', a subject popular in medieval times,
but now surviving in Scotland only at Guthrie"

So - those of us who are not residents of Guthrie, overshadowed by a residual sense of doom, might we consider a jaunt up north and a few "monumentes of idolatrie" some Saturday after Easter?

2011-03-11T13:19:00.004Z

Lent

A young curate gets married prior to Easter. At the end of the wedding reception he and his wife retire to their hotel to begin a short honeymoon. The curate climbs in to bed with his wife, gives her a peck on the cheek, rolls over and goes to sleep.

His bride, nonplussed, says “What’s all this, then? It’s our wedding night!”

“I know that”, replies the curate, “but it’s Lent!”

His wife loses it and begins to cry. “That’s terrible. That’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard. So who did you lend it to and for how long?”

2011-03-10T09:16:00.002Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Thursday, March 10th, 2011

We all know people who spend an inordinate amount of time fretting about whether they’re any good. It’s almost a caricature of religious types that they walk around whacking themselves on the head with a length of board proclaiming that they’re no good.

It might be low self esteem. It might all be a show of some sort – something “put on”. It makes them almost as difficult to sit next to at a dinner party as the ones who’ve never considered that they weren’t God’s gift to the world.

In this season of second thoughts about our lives and futures – i.e. the season of Lent – we certainly don't need our egos puffed up but neither do we need to be knocked down a peg or two on principle simply because it’s the right season to do so.

We need a sober and realistic analysis of who we are.

Part of that is recognizing our weakness – which is not a matter of beating ourselves up but recognizing that there are certain things we are going to have to do in community, or in conjunction with other people – people we love or perhaps even people we don’t particularly get on with but who have the skills and the abilities we don’t.

It might also mean that we have to look beyond ourselves in order to find strength and inspiration, courage or forgiveness. It’s not for nothing that many Lenten programmes have a chapter called “beginning to pray”.

Another part of it is recognizing that our time is limited. This earthly life has finite edges – it’s like a canvas of a definite size and area and that’s all we have on which to paint our colours.

So time is not to be wasted. Opportunities are to be seized.

And if any of this makes you feel bad – then this is the time do something about it!
---

Audio available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:22.37 - halfway along the audio bar.

2011-03-09T07:39:00.000Z

Isaiah 40:3-9
"Prepare ye the way"
Michael Wise (1648-1687)

Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low:
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough places shall be made plain.
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together.
And the voice said, Cry.
What shall I cry?
All flesh is grass,
and the goodliness thereof is as the flower that is in the field:
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth:
but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
O Zion, that bringest good tidings,
get thee up into the mountains;
O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings,
lift up thy voice with strength;
and say unto Judah, Behold thy God!

2011-03-06T15:51:00.001Z

2011-02-28T11:30:00.006Z

ADDRESS TO THE DIOCESAN SYNOD
26 February 2011
The Rt Rev. Brian Smith
Bishop of Edinburgh

First, some good news and some bad news. The good news for you all is that this is likely to be the last Synod address you will hear from me. The bad news is that as I am still in office for another six months, you will no doubt be hearing from me in other contexts. This is not a valedictory address.

However, it being the last address I shall give to Synod, it prompted me to look back over one or two of the Synod addresses I have given in the past to see whether there are themes I would want to highlight yet again. I do not recommend this as an activity. Looking back on earlier addresses that I have given, is, as I have said, not an enlightening task. It makes one realise that in any addresses one might give (be they sermons or other speeches) the repetition of anecdotes is a necessity, but the regurgitation of old sermons in their entirety is a mistake.

It was apparent to me that on a number of occasions a significant theme has come to the fore – that of conflict. I am therefore very glad that the Standing Committee felt that handling this issue explicitly at this Synod would be something worth doing.

In the past I have highlighted issues of conflict often with reference to works of literature. I recall touching on Dickens’s ‘Tale of Two Cities’ and the conflict between the two perspectives of it being “the best of times” and it being “the worst of times”. I touched on it with reference to Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’ – “All happy families are the same. Unhappy families are unhappy each in their own way”. I recall touching on it with reference to the novels of Neil Gunn, the Scottish writer from Dunbeath in Caithness who looked at the differing aspirations which shaped his life as a boy growing up in his fishing village. From Gunn’s book ‘Highland River’ I took as the text “Ken mumbled and grumbled and kept his eyes shut.” [I hasten to remind you that at that point in the narrative he was not attending the local Diocesan Synod, he was fishing.]

I think it was inevitable that conflict should feature a lot in my addresses. The Anglican Communion itself over the period of my time in Edinburgh has itself been seeking to handle conflict in its own particular way. The Anglican Covenant, mooted in 2004 has attracted attention in many of the forums of the Church. Also, it is inevitable that things that are constantly being brought to the attention of a Bishop involve conflict. Perhaps more than many others in a Diocese the bishop is aware of tensions arising on a significant number of fronts.

All this takes me back, if I may be pardoned an element of nostalgia, to my days as a child brought up and worshipping in the Scottish Episcopal Church. We regularly attended Morning Prayer in the Cathedral, on Sundays, but I would disappear before the sermon, off to Sunday School in the Chapter House with the late Canon Getty. The last of the versicals and responses in Morning Prayer in the 1929 Prayer Book is of course

“Oh God make clean our hearts within us”

to which the answer is given:

“And take not thy Holy Spirit from us”.

These are the last words (apart from Amen) said by worshippers together at Morning Prayer -“take not thy Holy Spirit from us”.

You will have heard me talk before, if I have been referring to the mission of the Church mentioning a friend who went for a job many years ago and was interviewed by the late (then) Sir Arnold Weinstock. I remember him telling me that on interview Weinstock asked him what makes a successful company. My friend began to reply “Sound financial policies, good personnel relationships, good strategy and vision for the future etc etc”.

Weinstock stopped him and said “No, it is having something to sell that the public want to buy”. It is a salutary picture to have in mind when we are reflecting on what makes a good Church. Are our finances in good order? Are our personnel and pastoral relationships right? Have we got our vision correct? These are all vitally important questions, and ones we neglect at our peril. However, we are forced always to ask ourselves the question: Is there something about our life together which we can offer to the world? Is there something about the way we are as members of the Scottish Episcopal Church which has a certain magnetic attraction that wants to draw people in?

Again, you have heard me say before that as a Church we need to offer teaching, particularly about God. The interaction in society of differing religious and spiritual perspectives provides a place where the Church is called to be most fully active. We need to be offering an understanding of God and the world which makes sense for those who hear us talk about it.

We also need to be a Church which encourages within its life good relationships among members – support for friendships and families. Also to encourage an ability in study and discussion to gain a perspective on the complex moral and ethical issues being faced in the world today, and in whatever way we can to begin to address these.

But more important than either of those (very important as they undoubtedly are) I have found myself saying that what is most important in the life of a Church is that it has a right spirit dwelling within it. To aim to be an orthopneumatic Church is almost more important than aiming to be an orthodox or an orthopractic Church.

When I have been speaking on prayer, you have sometimes heard me reflect on Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.

You will know the story of the poem. The mariner sets out on the sea and kills an albatross. The albatross is hung round his neck as a great symbol of the guilt he must feel for doing that deed. And as the ship travels on, one by one his crewmen die until he is the only person left on the boat. The ship becomes becalmed and the mariner is there, looking at the bodies of his fellow crewmen on the decks and the strange slimy creatures that crawl on the sea.

He muses,

“So many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie;
A thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

I looked upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away;
I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.

I looked to heaven and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.”

The ancient mariner looks upon the dead men. He looks with contempt upon the creatures that seem to have life. He feels resentment at the injustice of it all and he cannot pray. His throat is as dry as dust.

But then a little later in the poem there is an undefined change that takes place. The moon comes up and he begins to look at the created world in a new way,

“Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared
This elfish light
Fell off in holy flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship,
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

Happy, happy living things! No tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gusht from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me
And I blessed them unaware.

The selfsame moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The albatross fell off and sank
Like lead into the sea.”

A transformation takes place in his life. He is surprised to find the deep resentment and contempt, that shaped him earlier, is gone. He sees the creatures in a new light (in the poem it is the light of the moon). He sees them as the beautiful creatures they are, made by God.

Feeling gratitude for the created world, he finds that he can pray. The spring of love has gushed from his heart towards the world God created, and he knows again that relationship with God that comes through prayer. He knows forgiveness, for the burden of sin, represented by the albatross, falls from his neck and drops “like lead into the sea”.

The Mariner is liberated for prayer when he ceases to have contempt for the creatures with which he shares God’s world.

Very often in our world today attitudes of cynicism and contempt can dominate, and such attitudes are not only destructive for personal relationships one to another, but are also destructive of relationships with God. If a Church is to be a place that encourages the worship of God, it must be a place in which a spirit that works against those tendencies is active. It is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching which asks how a person may love God who is not seen, if there is no love directed to fellow human beings who are seen.

As I have often said, much of the conflict that arises, particularly conflict within the Church is not conflict between a good and a bad person, but a conflict between two good persons, who have become animated by different values, values that in the deep system and metaphysics of the world themselves actually clash one with another. To see this, and to see that there are clashes that we cannot avoid, but must live with, is to me a significant mark of Christian maturity.

As individuals we are shaped by the conflicts that we strive to contain, and the Church too in its life is shaped by the conflicts that animate it in its life. The presence of conflict is not a sign of failure. [It can be the sign of a new way of being dawning.] How that conflict is viewed and handled can be a sign of failure. One of the most insidious features of much Church life, and we finds this in all parts of it in the whole Anglican Communion and elsewhere, is when we become animated by the spirit that will say in the words of the Pharisee in parable, “Lord I thank you that I am not as other men are”.

It is my belief that such a creative spirit does at our best, animate our life together. However, it is also my belief that such a spirit can easily fade. The bulwarks against such fading constantly need to be defended. These bulwarks lie in our life of worship, our study of scripture, and our general sharing in conversation together. At the heart of this is the prayer in Morning Prayer “Take not thy Holy Spirit from us”.

The task of the Church is to nourish and nurture that spirit, also to notice where it is active outside the church, and to let its natural magnetism animate our mission. It is perhaps fruitful as we begin a Synod in which we are considering conflict to remember that well known quotation by James Nayler often cited by Members of the Society of Friends.

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. ……. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thoughts to any other.
If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love……. In God alone it can rejoice.

And so may the prayer: “Take not thy Holy Spirit from us” shape our participation in this Synod.

+Brian
26th February 2011

2011-02-20T22:01:00.002Z

Beavers aren't all bad

They are much maligned by property owners and those who maintain roads and train tracks near water. But our National Animal gets a little good press from time to time and it's something to celebrate.

2011-02-18T07:46:00.005Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Friday, February 18th, 2011

The old adage in Montreal is that a pothole is large enough to warrant fixing when you can put a chicken in it.

London, apparently, has a “pothole gardener” – who runs around potting up potholes with pansies and Johnny Jump-Ups to highlight the need for council workers to get that municipal chicken climbing down into potholes more regularly to see just how big they've become.

Best bets are that the pothole gardener is a cyclist who has ruined at least one wheel rim in a pothole and wants everybody to know that it’s not okay.

Scotland is facing a two billion pound bill for repair of potholes – all at a go - because we’ve not taken the chicken out on more regular rounds.

All sorts of things decay and degrade. I can think of at least two of Jesus’ sayings designed to relay a sense of urgency to those who’ve let their relationships with their neighbours decay and who are bringing their gift to the altar as if everything was fine. Or who are taking the reckoning they must make some day with their Creator too lightly - who haven’t trimmed their lamps so they’ll have light when the darkness comes.

Decay and degradation need to be checked out in a timely manner – decay in a marriage, decay in a congregation, decay in a workplace – even personal decay in terms of our own human connections or our spiritual progress. When did we stop communicating frankly with our families or our spouses? When did we stop talking to God in the way we used to do? Do we imagine that rectifying this is something that we can do at some later and undefined time?

Bad news, given early enough, is never really that bad.

The chicken test, applied in a timely manner, indicates a needed repair rather than a major catastrophe.

---------------
An audio link appears HERE for a limited time. TFTD begins at 1:21.17 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2011-02-15T10:20:00.000Z

Y'all may have celebrated him yesterday

but we've still got him here today

Or at least bits of him.

While St Valentine's skull is in a pretty glass casket in Rome (not my photo, btw) , the other bits are in a reliquary at the Church of Blessed Duns Scotus in the Gorbals district of Glasgow. The story has it that the entire reliquary was stored in a large cardboard box in the back of the vestments cupboard for rather a long time.

Not a very dignified sojourn for the long bones of somebody who just might possibly be one of the three contenders for the historical Saint Valentine.

St Valentine is not only the patron saint of husbands running around Marks & Spencers on their way home from each 14th of February....

The patronage of Saint Valentine also extends to epilepsy (from which he is believed to have suffered), bee-keepers, plague, greetings, travellers and young people. His representations include: birds, roses, a bishop with a crippled or epileptic child at his feet; a bishop with a rooster nearby; a bishop refusing to adore an idol; a bishop being beheaded; a priest bearing a sword; a priest holding a sun; and a priest bestowing sight upon a blind girl.

The Canadian connection (without which no blog post is worth putting on the internet) would be the town of St-Valentin, Quebec, population 478. The town's post-office has a heart-shaped postmark used to cancel stamps on letters sent from the town. Each February they receive letters from around the world to process and send out.

2011-02-10T15:44:00.002Z

Traffic Jam on the Appian Way

I thought I was back on the Moor Road between Penicuik and West Linton again.

The bus taking me to the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian on the old Appian Way had been crawling along for five minutes. When we got to the corner we found out why.

2011-02-08T14:55:00.004Z

Looking over Lago Albano this morning at about six-thirty a.m. towards Castel Gandolfo perched on the edge of this volcanic lake. The city of Rome is beyond the ridge obscured by the mist. The bird song was awesome.

2011-02-01T10:44:00.011Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
February 1st, 2011

I am not Colin Firth.

Hopes that my congregation might start calling me Father Darcy have all been dashed. I remain to them unremarkable and not very glamourous. People in my congregation have, though, been crowing about the recent film "The King's Speech". While there is enthusiasm about the script and the story - much of it has to do with the leading man.

Every generation has its heart-throbs. Often they've been stars of the big screen. The facts about the lives these people lead - either as rogues or as timid and ordinary folks - are unimportant to many of us. There is, I gather, a Mrs Firth who wakes up next to Mr Firth every morning and who knows the real story.

For his admirers this matters little.

Actors get rather a poor rating in the New Testament. The word "hypocrite" which Jesus uses to describe his religious opponents comes from the world of the theatre and means, essentially, an actor - somebody inauthentic who doesn't believe the words he's saying and using.

The fact remains that there are, today, real men and women around the world who stand in the breach, who do battle against injustice, who champion good ideas, who do what they say they'll do and who make sacrifices for others. We tend to be cynical about real life heroes. There's a market out there for books and articles claiming to tell "the real story" behind our heroes and to knock the stuffing out of any person or institution which presumes to stand too tall.

At least some of it is jealousy. We're uncomfortable with our own lack of heroism.

In "The Kings Speech" it takes a failed actor to make a stammering King able to speak to a nation.

In a world filled with troubled families, failing political will, divided communities and crushing indifference, might not the stories of real life heroes do something to straighten our backs and increase our resolve?

--------
An audio link is available HERE for a limited time. TFTD begins at 1:23.20 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2011-01-27T22:27:00.018Z

Address to a Haggis:
The Good News Version

How like a smiley-face you are!
Pre-eminent among all forms of prepared meat
(though chiefly made of guts),
you are worthy of a decent thanksgiving -
one of considerable length, too.

Almost too large for the plate, you resemble
a large backside, or a hill seen from a distance.
The small metal clip holding you together may prove useful
and should be salvaged at the end of the meal.
The cooking process has forced amber liquid through your skin
Yum!

Wiping the residue of previous work from his knife
he makes a swift cut down your middle -
opening you like a trench in the ground.
Everyone is happy with the wafting odour.
This is clearly a well-cooked Haggis!

Table manners are soon forgotten. With spoon in hand
each elbows ahead of the others. To hell with them!
Now, bloated and in pain, they loll about the table.
The head of the household, ready to fart,
intones a well-known thanksgiving psalm from the hymnal
to mask the noise.

Purveyors of Continental cuisine
look down on local country food like ours
but their oily stews and fancy concoctions
would make a sow-pig
pucker up her face and puke!

Look at those poor buggers
forced to eat crap like that!
They’re as week as weeds
with spindly legs and little fists
ill-suited to wading through a battle field

The rural Scot who eats haggis regularly
has a heavy footfall and a strong hand.
He is good with a knife
and well capable of dismembering and beheading
his opponents.

Oh you residual pagan gods and forest spirits
who control the fates of ordinary people.
True Scots want no watery soup
in little wooden dishes.
If you want us to be truly grateful
cook us up a haggis!

Address to a Haggis:
The Authorized Version

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hudies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o' need,
While thro' your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An' cut ye up wi' ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reeking, rich!

Then horn for horn, they stretch an' strive:
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
'Bethankit!' hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi perfect scunner,
Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Tho' bluidy flood or field to dash,
O how unfit.

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll make it whistle;
An' legs, an' arms, an' heads will sned
Like taps o' thrissle.

Ye pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o' fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware,
That jaups in luggies;
But if ye wish her gratfu' prayer,
Gie her a Haggis!

2011-01-23T20:17:00.008Z

Sunday Night Divertissement:

The Album Cover Game (modified)

1. You come up with a name for your band by either using your blog title or going to Wikipedia and hitting "random article" and using the title of whatever article comes up first as the name of your band. I just tried it and it came up with "Black-tailed Dasyure" which has a sultry, jazzy feeling about it but is really a marsupial of some sort.

2. The title of your album is the last four or five words of whatever comes up when you go to quotationspage.com and hit "random quotes".

3. For the artwork go to Flickr and find "explore the last seven days". Your album artwork is the 3rd picture which comes up. That and nothing else. Expand the photo to its maximum size and you should be able to download it.

4. Have fun with a photo editor. I just used Paint.NET which is free and easy to use.

My dad's blog is called Elderly Eclectic Gentleman. I'm going to hazard a guess that my dad's got quite a lot on this next couple of weeks so here goes, Dad.

Thanks to That Hideous Man for the suggestion

2011-01-21T21:51:00.011Z

Great Chieftain o' the puddin race....

As we move into Burns Night Supper territory, the Globe and Mail has a little introduction to the ins and outs of Haggis in its contemporary Scottish manifestations - fairly posh haggis, mind - lady haggis - haggis for the smart set. Not galumping manly great mountains of the steaming stuff like they usually have over here!

Mrs Rabbit and I are off to a Burns Night Supper a week tomorrow. I will never be asked to do the address to the Haggis since my accent's not right. It wouldn't do. The one or two times an "aye" has escaped my lips instead of a "yes" everybody's looked at me as if I were a total poser. Apparently I'm not allowed to fit in.

Nor this year will I be imbibing to my customary degree since I have a service and an AGM after church the next morning. I will be remaining sober enough to drive home. My behaviour at the supper will be exemplary and unBurnslike.

Until this year there'd been a ban on authentic haggis being sold or imported into the United States since 1971. That's done with now and Americans can enjoy genuine honest-to-goodness offal shovelled off the slaughterhouse floor instead of the tidier product they've been making do with (unless they knew a Canadian who could smuggle the good stuff over the border).

Enjoy!

2011-01-12T08:07:00.010Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
January 12th, 2011

There’s a story in the Book of Acts, where Saul of Tarsus was on his way to Damascus with warrants in his saddlebag against the members of the small Christian community there - a group of people he had targeted before and come to know well in Jerusalem. Along the way he got knocked off his donkey. He had a vision. He saw the light, as they say. The great persecutor of the church ended up becoming Saint Paul – the Apostle to the Gentiles.

Queer how things work out, isn’t it: When people snap – when they change sides? Consider the case of PC Mark Kennedy, the undercover police officer said to have “gone native” while infiltrating one of the more radical Climate Change groups over a number of years.

Personal contact brings with it no end of risks. J. Edgar Hoover never liked to send agents in undercover for any length of time in case they ended up becoming tainted. For “tainted”, read “involved”, “compromised” or even “convinced” – no longer useful, anyway, as a weapon against their opponents.

But as embarrassing as this must be for the police who appear to have lost a case against members of the group because their man wobbled in post, and as distressing as it may be for the Climate Change group to find that one of their number was informing against them all these years, it is nonetheless heartening to know that, in relationships between people over a protracted period of time, we can still be transformed and changed through contact.

I would have a hard time living in a world where people remained so resolute they could not be moved and changed by the power of relationship.

Such apparent weakness may be the key to any number of dreadful situations around the world where people and communities stare across no man’s land at people they’ve been trained or even raised to despise.

------
an audio link is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:23.27 - halfway along the audio bar

2011-01-09T08:51:00.003Z

The Baptism of our Lord

This is a small collection of video-clips of a single episode in the Jesus story shown in different ways on big or little screens which I had assembled for some parish project which never happened (or at least hasn't happened yet).

Nonetheless - it's timely - at least today.

2010-12-19T07:08:00.017Z

Ghosts of Christmas Past
The "Chibougabus"

In the 1987 I accepted the post as the Incumbent of Christ Church Chibougamau in the Diocese of Moosonee. It was my first parish.

My new bishop, Caleb Lawrence, gave me a couple of pieces of advice: First of all, he said, you'll need a decent vehicle. You've got a total of 266 kilometres a Sunday to drive in all sorts of weather in order to lead services in two communities (Chibougamau and Waswanipi River in northern Quebec). Secondly, you need to learn to play an instrument because, in addition, you'll be responsible for a number of small outlying native settlements in the region - collections of plywood shacks dotted about here and there - and there'll be no other music there.

So I quickly learned a dozen chords on the mandolin (Caleb's other suggestion had been the accordon!) since one of my chums in the congregation in Victoria, where I was curate, was willing, not only to teach me the mandolin, but to let me help him lead music at the beginning of the service at St Philip's during the few months that remained before I left for the north. I built up a tidy repertoire of simple hymns and choruses.

The Chibougabus was a 1984 Toyota Landcruiser with a long wheelbase. It had interior heaters back and front, four-wheel-drive (obviously) and could fire itself through a deep snow-drift on a lonely road like a tank.

The problem was starting it in intense cold - minus fifty (celsius) in Chibougamau on one morning in 1988 - because diesel, even the winterized diesel available in Canada, tends to thicken up in the cold. It was necessary to plug the Chibougabus into the mains overnight at three points: The vehicle had a standark block heater to warm the engine block. It had an oil-pan heater to keep the engine oil from turning into tar and it had a battery heater which warmed the two batteries. All being well and the electric load not being high enough to blow the fuse on the outdoor electric socket, you could start your vehicle in the morning without too much noise and banging about.

One of the tricks to start a cranky vehicle in the cold is to open the hood, shoot a little ether from a spray can into the air filter, run around to the drivers side and turn the key. This helped on many a morning.

Safety equipment - tons of the stuff: I carried a pair of snow shoes, a length of rope, a shovel, an axe and two arctic sleeping bags with extra blankets. I also carried about a dozen bricks and a box of 8 hour emergency candles.

One of the tricks of pilots who were ferrying bombers over Greenland during the Second World War was to carry bricks and candles with them in case they had to ditch in some frozen waste along the way. You can build a little oven made of bricks with a few air spaces between them and light a candle inside it. The candle warms the bricks. If you manage to isolate yourself in some tiny part of the plane (or in some part of the Chibougabus with your artic sleeping bag around you and blankets blocking off the rest of the vehicle), you can keep your section liveably warm almost indefinitely.

I was set.

Our regional Dean at the time, the Rector of Val d'Or was, shall we say, a character. He was from south Florida and was a bit crusty. At some point during my last winter in Chibougamau, Sam came over for a visit. He knocked on the door. I let him in and put the coffee on. We sat at the table.

Sam says to me in his raspy voice,

"Rob, I've just looked in the back of your truck and what do I see there? I see ropes. I see a can of ether. I see an axe.

It is no mystery to me that you never get a date."

2010-12-17T12:01:00.010Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Friday, December 17th

I went to a Nativity Play this week at our local Primary School in Penicuik. The annual school or church Nativity wouldn’t be possible without tea towels and cut up curtains and square paste-on beards made of construction paper.

And don’t forget the angels. When extra children show up in church who haven’t been given a part, they can always be draped in a disused choir gown and have a crown of tinsel placed on their heads. Voila – an instant angel- sent up to the front holding on to an older cousin’s hand apprehensively.

Much of the story involves human beings listening to angels - ordinary human beings caught up in trying circumstances or just minding their own business out in the pastureland but then tumbled into some sort of shape and woven into a story by a voice which comes from up in the sky or wells up from within in a dream.

It’s wrapped up with idea of inspiration, revelation and vocation: three words which have their roots in a religious tradition but which now are used in a wider sense- inspiring political speeches, revelations in a gossip column, the vocation we might have for a particular job or livelihood.

But it is the original, ghostly, version of these words which draw us to the story and give it its power. These Nativities are not only intended to enrich the small participants but the grownup watchers as well - we who have seen too much, or compromised too much of our potential or forgotten to look beyond our duties and our obligations.

What the children are telling us, through this story, is that we can change our ways. And, in the midst of our ordinary human lives and communities, such dreams and revelations, such promises of novelty and rebirth, still have currency in the human heart.
------

An audio link is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:25.13 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2010-12-12T21:12:00.004Z

Will this wind...?

Here we go.

We haven't had as specific a date for the Rapture and the end of the world for a rather a long time. This time we have both. According to Harold Camping and Family Radio, it's May 21st, 2011 for the Rapture (where the blessed are removed bodily into heaven) and the beginning of the Day of Judgement (presumably for the rest of us).

It's October 21st for the end of the world. I think. That's it. All cheques cashed before then.

The campaign has generated a certain number of billboards and a bit of mirth in the U.S. Though I suppose the riposte would be that they laughed at Noah as well.

My wife's biggest concern is that our boy's bedroom is tidy on the day. His room is generally in such a state that you'd be uncertain as to whether he'd been raptured or whether he was just lost in some untidy corner playing with his Gameboy.

If you'd like to do the math yourself it's all HERE and it's about as convoluted as you might expect.

2010-12-12T18:45:00.005Z

Another take on John the Baptist

In the early 1960's, schoolteacher Peig Cunningham brought a tape recorder into a Dublin classroom and asked the wee kiddies to tell her stories from the Bible in their own words. These recordings were rediscovered much later and some clever clogs has added some animation along with some dramatic topping and tailing - none of which detracts from the effect of the individual child telling her story.

There are, as well, a few bits and pieces from this morning's Gospel reading done better than I could have possibly preached them.

2010-12-11T10:54:00.016Z

The BBC mini-series The Nativity will be shown on the following dates in the UK.

Monday the 20th
Tuesday the 21st
Wednesday the 22nd
Thursday the 23rd

all at 7 pm and on BBC 1. Each episode is half an hour.

Reviews and comments can be found HERE, HERE and HERE. An earlier post on the miniseries from this blog can be found HERE which contains an audio link to an interview with the writer, Tony Jordan.

It will be starring, among others, Montreal actress Tatiana Maslany (whose home town, I am now brusquely reminded, is Regina, Saskatchewan) in the role of the BVM along with a host of well-known TV personalities from the UK.

Peter Graystone, from the Church Army, who saw the complete series at a press preview in October, describes it as

"...funny (very), believable (totally),
sexy (yes!)".

Which give rise to the following unhelpful excursis:

I believe Peter Graystone may well have hit on something.

I'm thinking that some T-shirts with the Church Army crest and the words "Sexy (Yes!)" written underneath it would do the world of good for an organisation like the Church Army, which has much to its credit but which has a woefully inadequate level of marketing and visibility.

But I digress.....

2010-12-09T08:59:00.006Z

Penicuik Abroad

It could have been the history of our town and the legacy of paper-making. It could have been the town's Scottish Episcopal Church, with its Kempe windows, its capable choir, its forward-looking congregation and a Rector with compelling brown eyes.

It could have been the tight knot of well-run charity shops in the Precinct and the plans for renewing the Town Centre.

It could have been Jean's Place and the fact that they serve the best egg-on-a-roll to be found anywhere between Loanhead and Eddleston.

But no - Penicuik made the Melbourne edition of the Herald Sun because it was bloody cold here last week.

One of our organists here at St James has been in Australia on holiday, visiting his children. He opened the local newspaper to see the picture of a man picking his way through the ice and snow on the Peebles road back in Penicuik.

Mike now has to pack up, kiss the kookaburras goodbye and return.

He may need to shovel his walk when he gets back.

2010-12-07T11:49:00.016Z

Perhaps not as
fanciful as first thought...

St. Nicholas' remains were removed from his burial place at Myra and reinterred at Bari, in Italy in 1087 AD. There are conflicting stories of how this came to be.

In one story, the mortal remains of the Saint were rescued by heroic "sailors" fearing the tomb at Myra would be desecrated by Alp Arslan and the Seljuk Turks following their victory over the Byzantine forces in the Battle of Manzikert.

In another, it was "pirates" from Bari who took advantage of the confused political situation, beat the monks and stole from them what amounted to highly portable goods designed for later resale in the west. In either case - rescue or theft - the bones came back to Bari and a basilica was built over them.

In the 1950's the crypt where they were interred required considerable repairs. The bones were removed for a short period of time during the work and Luigi Martino, a professor of anatomy at the University of Bari, was asked to catalogue the remains and to take a series of detailed photographs and measurements of the skull.

One of his successors at the University in more recent years handed the photographs and measurements to an anthropologist at Manchester University who, using the latest forensic technology, reconstructed the face in the same way that she would have done for the police searching out the identity of a person following the discovery of physical remains.

Such close scientific work is presumably necessary because, as we all know, the eye of faith is a fanciful thing.

And yet the results (above) bear a remarkable resemblence to one of the 11th Century depictions of St Nicholas.

One which they'd had on the wall all along.

2010-12-06T15:12:00.004Z

Winter Part Deux

We've had a nice couple of days but today the snow kicked in again.

I'm in town today, at my desk at New College, trying to revise and it's by no means certain that I'll find a bus going back to Penicuik which is worse than this. Mrs Rabbit took a bus back from work in the very early afternoon and the driver was saying this would be the last.

I might be banging on the bishop's door tonight asking him where he keeps the whisky.

David Hume was looking a little put out at being barefoot and clad only in a toga. His friend Adam Smith down the way looked no happier and was hoping that the "Invisible Hand" might somehow sweep a little snow off his brow.

2010-12-06T11:01:00.005Z

Happy St Nicholas of Myra Day!

This picture, hanging in the Russian State Museum in St Petersburg, represents but one of the many interventions St Nicholas of Myra made in the lives of people at a point of dire necessity.

He was, shall we say, more of an activist than a contemplative.

Good St Nicholas of Myra link HERE.

2010-12-04T08:27:00.004Z

Pause for Thought

BBC Radio 2
Saturday, December 4th, 2010

When a trench was dug through the ancient hill fort at Megiddo in Israel at the beginning of the twentieth century it revealed 26 individual layers of settlement separated by what were called “destruction layers”. New cities were built on old ruins. From the top you can look out over the Jezreel Valley and imagine the armies massing out there. You can imagine the fear which must have gripped the defenders - at least 26 times.

I could go through a family photo album with somebody of my father’s generation and he would point to pictures which represented moments in his family history when it appeared that the end was nigh. Hopes and plans had been dashed. Efforts had come to naught. He might have felt, at various moments, as if he lived in the shadow of impending doom. When you’re in the midst of it, it feels like the end of the world. You can’t visualize what life afterwards will look like.

If you walk down through the steep tunnel into the heart of the hill fort at Tel Megiddo you see a remarkable thing. You walk by a spring of water, captured and enclosed thousands of years ago by the hill fort – a free flowing spring - the original reason why Neolithic people first chose this little hill to live on.

More often than not you’ll see a small frog perched there by the edge of the water. In such dry and inhospitable surroundings baked by the sun and blown by the wind it’s the last thing you’d expect. But they’ve been there all along.

There’ll be a healthy dose of “end of the world language” in the Scripture readings in Church throughout the Advent season. It helps, though, to flip ahead a few pages and remind yourself that there are both books and history which follow. The germ of something good survives and resurfaces later. Life, with its testament to God’s abiding presence through history, hope and promise survives and endures.

Solomon and Ahab, have come and gone. So have Pharoah Thutmose III and the Canaanite Confederacy, the Ottoman Turks and General Allenby.

The frogs have seen them all off
----

An audio link is available for a limited time HERE. PFT begins at 0:21.41 - a little ways along the audio bar.

2010-12-03T14:24:00.007Z

The Bishop will arrive!

Our Bishop is paying us a visit at St Mungo's and St James on Sunday morning. Two baptisms of children "of riper years" and a confirmation (our Stewart) will take place on Sunday at St Mungo's, West Linton at 10:00 a.m. There's an opportunity to meet Brian and Lissa over a bacon butty at 9:15. At St James', Penicuik there will be four confirmations (three teenagers and an adult) and one Reaffirmation of Faith by an adult. I'm anticipating that our 11:00 service will begin ten to fifteen minutes late. A stand-up buffet will follow in the Church Hall.

The preparation has been done, the service has been rehearsed with the young people. They know what they're to do and say.

I hear rumblings of food being prepared in copious quantities.

Problem is the snow.

The bishop's trip to a neighbouring congregation was cancelled last week due to the inclement weather.

This is not to be the case here.

We have two landrovers on call - one to transport the Bishop and his wife Lissa from Edinburgh and another to transport an organist and her husband from Peniicuik to West Linton.

Our numbers may be a little depleted - I hope not too depleted. 18 people trudged up the hill through the snow in boots and hats for choir practise last night looking like Newfoundland fishermen. It can be done. It will be done! We are a doughty lot here outside the Edinburgh Bypass.

Where others succumb we will thrive! We will get our bishop here by hook or by crook.

2010-11-30T08:34:00.008Z

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Mixed in with undiplomatic comments - by diplomats - may be some top-level secrets amongst the 250,000 diplomatic cables shared by the online source Wikileaks.

The volume of the material means that it will take weeks for commentators, journalists - and even some experts - to know what of the material is just embarrassing or whether dangerous and destabilizing information is now in the public domain.

We’re told that 2.5 million people – employees of the U.S. government – already had access to the secure source where these documents originate. That circle of people, who could be trusted to keep shtum however, didn’t include you and me. It didn’t include the major newspapers.

In every company, or extended family, or voluntary organization there is the truth which is known but is never spoken about. You would be considered naïve or even destructive were you to pipe up at the dinner table or board table and say what was already in the back of everybody’s mind. Someone, though, might be glad that the truth had finally been articulated even if it caused a major ruckus.

Jesus spoke rather a lot of truth about the powerful – like Herod, the High Priest and Pontius Pilate. He also spoke about the weakness of his own followers. His comments made of Jesus the sort of person who spoke the truth outside the inner circle and one who could not reasonably be expected to keep silence about what a lot of people already knew.

We've all got secrets. And they’re not necessarily shameful ones that ought to be known. Some of them are quite useful secrets. We know things – people tell us things – which we keep to ourselves - because the damage done would be worse if the thing were told.

But the balance between discretion and openness is something which must be periodically tested.

To see what happens when the thing is known as, shortly, it may well be in this case.
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An audio link is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:21.44 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2010-11-29T15:53:00.011Z

It's a snow day in Penicuik!

We'd had some snow prior to Sunday's service which dampened our crowd somewhat for the First Sunday in Advent and the Annual General Meeting. But the roads were gritted and the sky relatively clear.

So when the young people at Sunday evening's Confirmation class announced that school was being closed the next day I looked out the window and saw at least two stars and figured they were "at it".

I texted the head teacher and got the reply that, in fact, this was the case. No school today.

And yes, we had a large dump of snow during the night. Now I hear that there's no school tomorrow either.

I've moved my car down to the more-usually-gritted road in the centre of town since I have to be in Edinburgh for 7:00 in the morning. If it's terrible I might catch a lift with the doctor down the road who has an early clinic in town and has a vehicle with four wheel drive and snow tires.

Mrs Rabbit has taken a "carer's day" today and tomorrow. Normally quite duty-bound she's the one who's usually at her post when other people have "carer's days" or days off for this and that. What with today's dump of snow there's really nothing for it but to put the music on, wrap presents and make Christmas cookies.

The dogs are fine with the snow.

The ducks, on the other hand, have very short legs, and really don't appreciate having to wade through the deep snow snow in order to get to the water bucket which has replaced the usual ample wading pool where they preen and make themselves ready for the day.

By the end of each year's snow season they are positively depressed

The Step-Rabblet has been over shovelling an elderly neighbour's drive today and has been up on the hill with his chums sliding.

All appears well.

St Eulalia is the patron saint of snow. A young convert to Christianity she was tortured and executed during one of the persecutions of Christians under the Emperor Diocletian in the early days of the Church.

Cast out into the street following her execution, snow fell upon her to hide her nakedness and to reveal the spotless nature of her sainthood.

It doesn't sound to me like she's the sort of saint who can be appealed to for her intercessions to restore children to their much needed education and spouses to gainful employment though.

It sounds like the snow was a good thing.

2010-11-28T07:10:00.002Z

Pause for Thought

BBC Radio 2
Sunday, November 28th, 2010

Some people change their minds a lot. Some people never change their minds.

Some people who never change their minds have a rugged set of opinions that they’ve come by honestly and which have stood the test of time. Good on them for not changing their minds.

Others – well, we’re still searching for our road in life and a few false starts and redefinitions are bound to come our way. Good on us for not being so stuck in our ways that we can’t change our minds.

A couple of years ago I had the occasion to walk along what is probably the very beach on the Sea of Galilee where Jesus called his disciples. The story has it that they were in their fishing boat with their old dad and were about their business – repairing nets and sorting lead weights - when Jesus spoke with them. They left their work and went with him.

The art of putting things in convincing words is called rhetoric. Years ago people knew the rules. It was important who the speaker was. It was important that the speaker knew who his audience was. But what he said was important too – the germ of the message. Without the last of these three it’s possibly only manipulation.

In one of the first black-and-white silent movies to treat the Gospel stories, Jesus approaches fishermen who are casting their nets into the lake. He raises his hands in the air and you see his lips move. The fishermen immediately drop their nets and put their arms out – walking out of the lake toward Jesus more like zombies in Night of the Living Dead than people who have heard something convincing enough to make them change their course in life.

I don’t think it worked like that. I think that he said something to them there on the lake shore which made sense.

If there is no word out there capable of motivating us – no idea that could conceivably seize us then all we’ve got to hand is what we’ve always had.

That, it seems, would be a lonely state of affairs

in a world where we are not alone.
------

An audio link is available HERE for a limited time.
PFT begins at 1:15.42

2010-11-27T07:00:00.004Z

Pause for Thought

The Zoe Ball Show
BBC Radio 2
Saturday, November 27th, 2010

Where I come from in Quebec, you drive through the Laurentian Mountains just north of Montreal and you know you’re about to hit a town because you can see the spire or steeple of the church. You see it long before you see the white metal roofs of the village houses nestled in the hills.

Church steeples and spires don’t only represent competition between towns (or religious denominations) for pre-eminence with respect to height. They are visible symbols both of hope and defiance.

They’re the great “up yours” to the idea that this is all we are – labourers in the employ of the local landlord, humble creatures who live out their lives shackled to drudgery before they die.

Like an enormous dinner party, like a bottle of really good red wine, like a concert at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh, like some art hanging against the back wall of the Church behind the altar there are probably more economical ways of cooking food, or quicker ways of fermenting grapes or less arduous ways of making a statement with paint on canvas.

But they don’t do the same thing.

If you go to hear Handel’s Messiah this Christmas you’ll notice that when the choir starts belting out the Hallelujah Chorus the audience stands up –the semi-employed, the newly abandoned, the underappreciated, those condemned to being ordinary – they stand up. And a finger – the finger in this case of the composer or the artist – points up and beyond.

The human being is noble. The human being is the object of God’s love. People who are stuck in one place can look within themselves or beyond themselves and find a place for their foot to take another step.

A church spire or steeple may only be wood or iron or bricks or stone but it points in the right direction.
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An audio link is available for a limited time HERE. PFT begins 0:21.23 - just a little way along the audio bar.

2010-11-26T12:23:00.010Z

Pass the Popcorn!

Notwithstanding the fact that theists and atheists alike might be lining up to say...

"Hold on a minute, this individual doesn't speak for me because... (insert whichever ad hominem comment applies best)"

...the fact that two people well used to jousting from a podium - Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens - are going to be squaring up on opposite sides of the following statement:

Be it resolved: Religion is a force for good in the world....

may make this something worth watching. Tickets at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto are now, apparently, sold out. I see a link to a live and archived feed (at $4.99 CAD a pop) but nothing immediately evident which will allow me to watch it afterwards for free.

I guess it's Tony's speaking fees which are keeping this behind the wall.

I might have to be satisfied with the summary or the blow-by-blow. If anyone finds a good pirated post-facto link, let me know.

An article from the Globe and Mail includes pre-debate interviews with both men and a few other snippets.

This side of the pond sees an article in today's Independent outlining what the two arguments might be.

2010-11-25T11:19:00.002Z

Communion on the Moon

Something I missed along the way and did not know.

Buzz Aldrin, the second astronaut to set foot on the moon:

"I unstowed the elements in their flight packets. I put them and the scripture reading on the little table in front of the abort guidance-system computer. Then I called Houston: 'Houston, this is Eagle ... I would like to request a few moments' silence. I would like to invite each person listening in to contemplate for a few moments the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his own individual way.'

For me, this meant taking communion. In the blackout I opened the little plastic packages which contained bread and wine. I poured wine into the chalice my parish had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever to be poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were consecrated elements."

2010-11-22T16:21:00.010Z

Object Lessons from Men in Tall Hats

While Prince William was announcing his engagement to a young woman he's known for some nine years and then flying off to rescue people with chest pains from the mountainsides in his helicopter (part of his day job), the blogging Area Bishop of Willesden was venting his spleen on Facebook about the royal wedding, what it would cost, how the marriage wouldn't last, and what philanderers the Royals were at the best of times anyway.

People who are fond of Pete Broadbent, the offending bishop, have been tilting at windmills for the last day or so about how even Bishops have a right to their opinions, how the Daily Mail had misquoted him or pointing out (quite rightly) that the Daily Mail was no friend of the Royals at the best of times and were guilty therefore of significant hypocrisy in chiding the bishop for his comments on his personal Facebook page.

Well sir, today the Episcopal Gentleman apologised on the Bishop of London's website. People who are fond of Pete Broadbent were quick to point out the nobility of this apology but I suspect that his boss, the Bishop of London, had pulled his mitre down over his head and threatened to put a crozier where the sun don't shine unless such an apology was forthcoming.

Several notes to self about inside thoughts and outside thoughts have been generated. Nothing better than a good object lesson from one's betters.

2010-11-02T15:19:00.005Z

Nonsense

There's really no sense to it.

Things come your way in bunches because reality tends to randomness.

Which means that, every once in a while, there'll be a six or eight month period where shit happens in technicolour, in spades, in stereo, in extremis, with a starter, a side order and on horseback.

2010-10-27T21:46:00.009Z

Saved by the Clown

I spent one part of my misspent adolescence hitchhiking around the interior of British Columbia. I’d arrive in small towns which had, all of them, identical features: A gas station, a hotel with pub and restaurant, somebody named Al and, on the very edge of town, a Rodeo grounds. I was never there on the right weekend and so the Rodeo grounds were always deserted - empty corrals made out of split rails, a weathered sign announcing the date when the Rodeo would be held or when it had taken place and a list of the events: the calf-roping, the bronco rides and the cattle wrestling. They key attraction of course, was the riding of bulls. These bulls were bred to be mean – the proper jargon is ‘ornery’ and, to look at them, they don’t even look much like ordinary cattle - nothing like the other placid ruminants munching grass in the fields. At rodeo time they’re kept in special reinforced barns - not to be trusted but all the boys climb up onto the rails to get a better look at them.

So just to go over the rules: There are a hundred points given for the perfect ride – the rider needs to stay on the bull for eight seconds and impress the judges. If the ride is uneventful and boring the judges will award fewer points. The most points are given when the bull gives a particularly violent performance but where the rider manages to stay on nonetheless.

When the rider is thrown to the ground it is up to the rodeo clown to wave his hands and coax the bull back into his pen - the rodeo clown – the little bugger in the corner with his cowboy hat and red rubber nose and short trousers on over his red combination long underwear. He waves a towel and attracts the bull’s attention away from the fallen rider. He has the most dangerous job in the rodeo. He manages to stave off disaster. He protects both the rider and the spectator and lures the bull back into the pen.

Since Caireen and I returned from our holidays in the summer there has been “no end of trouble in Dodge City”. In our congregations, and amongst family, friends, associates and “encountered strangers”, we have witnessed the struggle of a great many people trying to stay on the bull. Life’s events come in bunches and we’ve seen a bunch of them. It does wear a bit. You find yourself saying “what next?” Tragedy and upset is always a backdrop to the human condition.

The biblical record is filled, though, with a certain amount of comedy which – try as I might – I cannot define in any other way than it being the subtle hint of something which upsets the downward slide in a graceful and almost “cheeky” manner. The drowning man is swallowed by a fish and deposited on the shore; the Book of the Law is found in the ruins of the temple and, initially, mistaken for rubbish. A very old man and his very old wife have a child in spite of their great age. A baby is born in a small and unimportant town and his birth is heralded by angels. The tax collector becomes a disciple. The Saviour goes to eat at Zaccheus’ house. The oppressor of the church is knocked off his horse, converted and becomes the Apostle to the Gentiles.

It all comes in from the side, this grace and possibility, with its red nose and impossible garb waving its towel in the midst of kicking hooves and slashing horns. The believer will look for subtle things which herald the beginning of life when it looks like all is lost.

There’s something “comedic” about the Gospel. These visions, stories, promises and legends appear, at first glance, to bear little relation to the big bulls at the centre of the ring - whatever is happening in our marriages, our health problems or those of people we love, our businesses or our conflicts with family. The subtle beginnings come in from the side. Strange and off-beat thought they may be, they form the beginning of the only thing which will keep us safe. The believer can not only learn to notice these strange beginnings. He will even come to expect them.

The rough and tumble cowboy will, eventually, give in and let himself be saved by the clown.

2010-10-27T07:39:00.006Z

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Dementia is a huge challenge facing Britain today. A number of stories appeared in the press this last fortnight about organizations coming together to support those suffering from the disorder and about changes in the types of treatment being offered in clinical settings and in the community. The intention is to transform the lives people with this condition lead.

It’s not that far away from any of us.

The reality of such an illness is that those close to us may lose some of the character we’ve grown up with and learned to love. If we are afflicted, that we’ll slowly begin to lose our grasp of things going on around us. Somebody will have to shift heaven and earth, or at least their own set of priorities, to keep in meaningful contact. And - thinking always of cost as we do these days - somebody will need to pay for our care.

However....

My religious tradition, as an example, understands the worth of human beings on the basis that they are loved, and that they are objects for God’s concern – all of them, well or unwell. It’s not a contest won by those who athletically retain their faculties until the end - the last ones on the block with their wits. What we end up knowing matters less than who we are known to be, by those who love us. And we are known by God even when we cease to know ourselves.

My tradition also understands that the moral fabric of societies and of individuals can be measured by the care they provide to the "least capable" of their brethren.

Fact is, we will need to be taken by the arm at various points of our life. And – it’s true - the world will go on without us.

It is challenge for individuals early in their diagnosis to accept change – a universal change - which in his or her case has come too soon. It’s a challenge, too, to the larger society to provide excellent and compassionate care - to do something more than honour the bottom line.

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An audio link is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:23.59 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2010-10-22T06:57:00.012Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Friday, October 22nd, 2010

My wife and I went to see a comedy at the African film festival here in Edinburgh last night. The film in question was not in our mother tongue.

The subtitles helped.

The creative work of communities unlike our own reveals something to us about the hearts of people in the world. They become bigger. So do we.

Ordinary, it’s the News which excerpts for us the lives of people far away. We’re made aware of wars, coups d’etat and conflicts without gleaning much detail about the people in question. Rich cultures are boiled down to a few relevant bits of alarming news.

Rather than growing, these people shrink away.

We find ourselves, like the Pharisee in one of Jesus’ parables in this Sunday’s Gospel reading, being thankful that we are not like other people – war torn and desperately poor.

Our religious traditions don’t always help us see what is outside the bounds of our own persuasion. Religious traditions have, in their worst moments, actively denied the humanity we share with people who are different from us.

We are now more adept at recognizing such active denial. The more passive denial of a common humanity is a little harder to ferret out. The news from abroad is translated into what is relevant for us: the wars, the face-to-face talks, the currency disputes, immigration: these are what someone out there believes we must know in order to be "up to scratch" on current affairs.

But the people remain anonymous.

It takes some work and seizing of opportunities. We can choose and encourage, encounters - based on genuine curiosity, on friendship and the appreciation of another’s culture, language and creativity: film, literature, travel and personal connections.

These require an act of translation – not through the little letters at the bottom of the screen – but in discovering that the tragic and the comic moments of our lives follow a common path.

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An audio link is available HERE for a limited time. TFTD begins at 1:21.38 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2010-10-08T07:14:00.005Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Friday, October 8th, 2010

My daughter Hannah announced her engagement yesterday. This immediately provoked a whole series of emails and comments from friends in Montreal who said – no, this can’t be – only last week she was “little”.

Hannah and I live in different parts of the world. I had met her previous two boyfriends but not this latest fellow.

It feels odd that somebody who you used to dress for school and make a packed lunch for - is now proposing to make a life with somebody you’ve never met. But it sometimes escapes your attention: the world goes on without you - you’re not indispensible. There are horizons you will never trudge over yourself. Power will continue to pass from one government to another. The value of property will continue to rise and fall. What we regard as essential today is re-evaluated by others. As Kurt Vonnegut used to say “…so it goes”.

So I promise not to moan about my age or the passage of time but I will remind myself that every time I’ve said the Lord’s Prayer and used the words “thy Kingdom come”, I’ve made reference to a power in the Universe which brings into being things that I cannot imagine – around me, without me - even in spite of me. I’d always thought of myself as a friend to that process.

When we were young we wanted to be in the centre of things and to pull everything towards us. There must come a time, though, when we learn to follow and become satisfied to see things take their own shape.

Some of us clutch on to things and people too tightly and for too long.

Every time my daughter toddled off to the school bus in Montreal there were risks. I needed to tell myself, at the time, that at the heart of the world she was walking into, with all its grandeur and its dangers – there was a God of Love who sustained and inspired the creatures He had made – with or without my help.

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Audio is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:19.56 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2010-10-07T20:54:00.006Z

Off to Salzburg for a few days!

Owing to a few holiday points graciously handed over by the in-laws and a couple of relatively low-cost plane tickets found online, my lady wife and I are going to Salzburg (in fact, just outside Salzburg) for a few days. We fly to Munich on Saturday and pick up a hire-car to drive from there.

In case you didn't know, Salzburg is where the Sound of Music was filmed. We're going to try and go on the Sound of Music tour. I intend to eat a little schnitzel (we will see if veggie schnitzel exists for Caireen).

My wife says she draws the line at lederhosen. I am not allowed anything with seven fly zippers!

2010-09-12T16:39:00.003Z

Too Cheeky to Work in Zimbabwe!

The fusion band Freshlyground, formed in South Africa but made up of members from SA, Mozambique and Zimbabwe have had their Zimbabwean work permits cancelled following this Spitting Image style spoof on Robert Mugabe.

Given recent history, I'd have said that they got off lightly.

They cast a fairly wide net, mind. Better moments are the background cameos: Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela (now retired) play dominos in the background while South African President Jacob Zuma seduces a group of women at a table elsewhere in the pub.

2010-08-24T09:48:00.005Z

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Tuesday, August 24th

The Australians have had an election a bit like our last UK election. With results too close to call, a handful of independents now find themselves with an awful lot of power. Add to this the claim in the news yesterday that the SNP and Scottish Labour – also neck and neck in opinion polls - are having quiet talks about a coalition next time around.

Minority governments and coalitions are given a generally negative slant in the British media. Wouldn’t it be better to have had a clear opinion one way or another – to be able to say that the people had spoken?

Haven’t they? They have, of course. The populace is simply of more than one opinion. And while it may drive the purist in either party nuts, that divided opinion is the raw material of the next election.

Given all that faces any western democracy today in terms of finance, civil society, security and commerce it’s not surprising that there is more than one opinion floating around and that countries will be governed from time to time by a series of unlikely and initially unwilling partnerships.

The Christian tradition has had its share of lessons in the demise of certainty. Consensus was clearer, once, about our role in the larger society. We were even more certain about our own history and about the documents which accounted for Christianity’s emergence. We may try to recreate the circumstances wherein everything was clear but life is different now for many of us.

Working clergy will be ministering in their towns and villages cheek to jowl with people who are different from them – who have a different conception of God - even no conception of God.

We take it for granted, now, that faith works alongside doubt. Certainty is tempered by the experience of difference around us and forced by that experience to be more inclusive of the whole of reality.

What it produces as a result is more and not less.

Risked and hammered by what we thought it was not, it ends up being much more than we started with.

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An audio link is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:22.11 - halfway along the audio bar.

2010-08-19T07:12:00.006Z

Holiday Recap: Image One

I'm sitting alone by a creek in the Shuswap region of British Columbia. I'm fond of the people I’ve been walking with – great folks - but I haven't spent any time yet sitting alone beside a stream. I’ve been daydreaming about that and it’s one of the reasons I’m on holiday.

It hits me like a sudden thirst.

I beg off from the group with a promise to meet them later on the trail after I've stolen some time alone.

Somebody has nailed a coffee pot to a cedar tree with an enormous spike.

Who carries a ten-inch spike with them on a jaunt in the woods? Or a hammer, for that matter? It profits the human spirit very little to try and deduce or imagine what was in mind of the man or woman who hammered this great spike into the tree and tied on the coffee pot.

I'm not fond of puzzles.

It's just one of those things.

If it was meant to look ridiculous, then the author of this little grafitto has failed because the act produces much surplus meaning and I cannot help but be thankful.

I see it along the following lines:

The observer is gladdened by this small river of clear cold water rushing down the valley and takes from it a tremendous sense of Here and Now. The creek is the centre piece. Everything about it is movement. It tumbles over rocks and swirls in eddies. It animates the place.

This creek.

Here and Now.

And therein is the problem. The water is rushing quickly downstream - towards the Adams River, Shuswap Lake and, ultimately, the sea.

The words Here and Now and the pointing word This are never completely appropriate when dealing with a river. In the life of a rushing stream here soon becomes there, now becomes then and this becomes that.

Maybe when I was younger I would have enjoyed an unalloyed experience of joy at the rush and flux of things constantly changing.

Bring on yet another new thing!

It’s different in my early fifties. I find that change brings with it the possibility of loss. I wish some things would slow down. I have a harder time keeping up. Children’s lives go on with or without you. Some cardinal events in their lives will take place beyond the bend in the river – on the other side of anywhere you are. You start to dwell on the past. Water under the bridge becomes the phrase one uses to describe events and experiences which are now irretrievably lost and past.

Hence the coffee pot:

Somebody clearly wanted to take a stand.

In order to say something about Here and Now we need a container – something we can dip it into the stream. Finally we can say “let me tell you a story about this, sing you a song about what it’s like right now, show you what I have here.

While we may be part of something moving and changing, we’re lost in it until we find a way of stopping and being contained and dwelling, not on the whole river and the land that it nourishes, but on the single instance – the Here and Now which This small bit of the whole affords us – this pot of water taken from the stream.

My prayers are a container. They gather together a small series of concerns even though there are many other things we could pray about.

Next Sunday’s sermon will be a container. There’s more I’ll want to say but will limit myself to these words of Jesus in light of this community’s life in time and space.

We are, after all, only creatures – limited to a time upon the earth and we must take advantage of the moments of quiet reflection which are offered to us beside the running water and in the midst of all the haste and change.

This may not be what some geezer had in mind when he nailed the coffee pot to the cedar tree beside the stream.

Maybe he thought he was being funny.

Maybe the full import of his actions was not yet clear to him.

2010-08-11T07:08:00.006Z

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
August 11th, 2010

In the news the other day, we were told that civilian deaths in Afghanistan have risen by 31% over the last year.

That’s 31% of what, exactly - of a big number or a little number?

Even with the numbers, how would we go about adding up the lost potential, the sorrow and the shock? How would we express the breaking of relationships, the weight of such tragedies on families? We can’t.

We’re really only talking here about numbers.

We all get added up. Our lives are periodically of interest to statisticians. We are merely data to somebody out there: How long we live, what we earn or how we spend - how fast we drive past a speed camera. A life converted to a number – a blip – a bit of data.

While it’s somebody’s grim task to measure the quantities, the results don’t tell me much about life and its quality.

You know who you’ve lost, over time. You are aware of the space they inhabited and the character they once added to the conversation and the place they occupied at the table. You remember their stories and can almost hear their voice telling them. You honour them with your memory.

If you’re listening to this, this morning, you’re alive. Your life deserves to be seen and observed with the same honour as life in community with all life on the earth. Life, bursting out of the pot and leaning into the light, mingling creatively with the lives of others. Valuable life, with time and opportunities which must not be frittered away and wasted.

Today, our lives are within the embrace of both Grace and human energy. The possibilities are endless. Lives can be willingly risked – even given for others.

I am nobody’s bit of data.

I am not here merely to be counted. I can do more than that. I can be counted upon.

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An audio link is available HERE for a limited time. TFTD begins at 1:23.22 - or about halfway along the audio bar.

2010-08-02T22:14:00.006Z

Distances

Somebody more modern than me purported not to know what a hundred yards was. I said that it was a hundred metres minus three hundred inches.

Nah! Three hundred inches? What's that?

Look, I said - most men in the UK stand a few inches shy of six feet or seventy-two inches. Take four men like that and lay them end to end. Add a midget.

Subtract that measure from your known measure of a hundred metres and you've got a hundred yards.

I hope it helped.

2010-07-18T03:49:00.005Z

A Sermon
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 10:38-42

When my daughter was about to be born we cast about for a name.

There were family names and names from literature. Seems to me we even bought a book of “baby names”.

You join up a potential Christian name with a last name to see what sounds right and one of the names which sounded right with the surname Warren was the name Martha.

At supper with my parents one evening I floated the name Martha Warren.

What did they think?

My father objected. It was a name, he thought, which brought with it the association that she would perpetually be doing the dishes, or hoovering or cleaning up while others read or wrote or studied. He hoped his grand-daughter wouldn’t be someone like that. And the negative associations with the name Martha come from this story – of two sisters named Mary and Martha – one who sat with the male disciples at the feet of Jesus and who listened and learned – the other who kept to her kitchen and cooked and cleaned – until finally one evening she took off her apron and threw it to the floor and came storming into the front room where she said:

“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me!”

I know someone who is proud of the fact that she is a Martha. She refers to herself as a Martha. She mentions occasions where she and the other Marthas at her church get together to do what needs to be done. There are jobs around her church which need doing and she is a person of practical bent who can look at a task and imagine a strategy for doing it. When projects are proposed somebody inevitably asks “so how are we going to get this done” and people turn to her to ask her opinion because she’s the sort of person who will know not only how to initiate a task but how to bring it to fruition. What she starts she finishes. She’s that sort of person.

Now, she believes herself to be a facilitator of any number of other ministries in her congregation, a sort of pivot in her church, if you like, around which the various other ministries and activities turn. If she wasn’t at her post then they would not be able to do what they feel called to do.

And of course – she’s not a Martha, then, is she?

Being a Martha in the context of this morning’s reading has nothing to do with being practical or even task-oriented. Martha is not presented here as a practical facilitator of other people’s ministries and activities. What earns her the mild reproach from Jesus is the fact of her jealousy towards her sister – her desire to tear her sister Mary away from what Mary feels called to do – her need to make other people in her own image, her insecurity, her anger and her need to control. Far from being the sort of person who will help someone else achieve and realize her vocation her chief desire seems to be to drag her sister back. And Jesus will have none of it.

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

We may imagine, of course, a background to this story which the Gospel writers have no desire to tell us about in any detail but which we have seen acted-out in relationships between people we’ve known – relationships which develop and solidify over time: that of siblings or friends, men and women associated with each other over many years and decades, who grow so close that change or transformation becomes difficult or impossible.

What happens when, in an established marriage or relationship, one of the partners develops an interest? What happens to best friends when one of them falls in love? What happens when a hard drinking or addicted spouse decides the take the cure – gets stronger – no longer needs to be bailed out or gotten out of trouble or constantly supported? What happens when one member of any “deadly duo” decides all of a sudden to undertake some higher education or decides that he wants to go back to Church?

Brothers and sisters, husbands, wives and partners, best friends: we begin to depend, sometimes quite unhealthily, on things not changing and on people remaining for us the people they’ve always been. When they change we don’t understand. We feel abandoned – we invoke the times we were ‘there’ for them – with constancy and evenness. And this is how they repay us? Abandoning us? Moving on?

This story does not end in tragedy. Martha and Mary, along with their brother Lazarus, remain associated with Jesus throughout his ministry. Within the larger circle of the followers of Jesus they will remain key players and their home in Bethany will be a base for ministry. Martha, however, does not get her wish in this particular case and the relationship which develops from this point on will forever contain the fact of Mary’s liberty to be a disciple.

There is a word here for close friends and for those partnered and covenanted in love together – that love must contain liberty and that much of what is called love, if it is not jostled and renewed, can imprison the very people we claim to love. In such a situation we may misunderstand the other person’s claim of liberty as a challenge to us, as loss and lovelessness.

Some of God’s people are, at their very core, practical and earthy people – able to discern the physical need of the moment and make use of what is at hand to make that the possible real – earthy and “hands on” sorts of people. Our food nourishes others, our talent with physical resources provides for the needs of others – clothes them, provisions them and sets them about their tasks.

The name they give us when we’re born, however, doesn’t matter overmuch. We grow and develop as we do – because of what is in us and in response to the world we mingle with. There are always surprises, always a wrench or two thrown into our well-practised habits and solid relationships.

We have a point of faith beyond ourselves – beyond even our well practised and dependable alliances.

In the long term, love will endure change.

2010-07-10T13:43:00.001Z

A Sermon

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 10:25-37

You’ve heard it said that “familiarity breeds contempt”. Sometimes we know something – a story or a saying - that we’d actually prefer not to hear it again. The story we’re told by parents and grandparents that seems to be a truism – we roll our eyes when we hear it yet again, one more time. I suppose that the term “good Samaritan” provokes a bit of a yawn. So-and-so is a good Samaritan – meaning that he serves on all sorts of committees – a good Samaritan – a do-gooder – someone who might not be a lot of fun in a conversation at a houseparty. Someone like that would end up making everybody feel guilty.

And yes – it’s a story that suffers from overuse – but like many of the parables which Jesus told he is, in fact, answering a question in such a way as to change minds and to change people’s perceptions. To tell us something we didn’t already know and in a dramatic fashion. It’s a shame, then, that the story suffers so from over-use.

A lawyer – or a teacher of the law – depending on your translation asks him a question. There’s something in the tone of voice of the lawyer who addressed Jesus that gets the readers back up from the get-go. Luke tells us that the question was asked to “test Jesus” but we’d have known that from the question itself. The questioner is a lawyer, after all. It’s Jesus who appears to be in the witness booth. The lawyer asks what is necessary to inherit eternal life – a very general question. Jesus asks him what is written in the law and the lawyer comes back with the two great commandments – love of God and love of neighbour. A general answer to a general question but Jesus plays along and tells him that - yes - he has it. Do these two things and you will live. Ah, says the lawyer, thinking that Jesus is guilty of imprecision – “and who exactly is my neighbour”?

There we are – the world is filled with different people. Some are friends and some are not. Tall and short, familiar and unfamiliar, rich and poor. All of them have some sort of status based on their relgion and nationality, whether they pay taxes or don’t, whether they go to church or don’t. They’re thin or fat, black or white, pleasant or unpleasant. Neighbour is a huge category – who, amongst all these people in the world is “my neighbour”.

Because we all have enemies – we may have national enemies who live in the next country over and who have invaded us in living memory. We have people who are guilty of notable crimes and about whom the tabloid newspapers scream popular indignation in three inch high headlines. We have within our borders troublesome sub-communities who live in slums on the edge of town and who are accused of being a vector for crime and disease. And these are just the targets of community lovelessness. As individuals we can name off lists of people who have offended against us and who have never said sorry. There are, it seems, people who are not only difficult to love but who we would be forgiven for not loving.

This is the problem with sweeping laws and pronouncements. Love your neighbour. But who do we have permission “not to love”. To whom does the second part of the two Great Commandments “not” apply? How does this apply in the real world where we must practise discernment – we who have a finite pool of resources and who might end up squandering them on loving the wrong people. This seems to be the import of the question on the lawyer’s part. He is hoping that Jesus will prove himself hopelessly naïve or, even better, that he will name some popular and hated character as the proper object of a faithful Israelite’s love and will bring upon himself scorn and infamy.

Jesus answers this with a story:

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead".

Ah, a victim, the lawyer thinks It will be important to know who this victim is. The victim, however, is just referred to as a man. The setup is not what the lawyer would have hoped. This is the one who must be loved – the neighbour. But is this anonymous person a neighbour? He is someone of my clan, my religion? Is he the person covered by the definition of “neighbour” in the Great Two Commandments? Is he a Roman or a tax collector or a thief or a traitor – a criminal or a foreigner?

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is a lonely downhill road which leads through sun-baked wilderness. I have driven it and cannot imagine walking through such a lonely place. The cliffs are peppered with caves. It is a place where men can hide and for centuries have done so. Being waylaid by bandits, beaten, robbed and left for dead is one of those things that can happen to any traveller. Neutral maloccurrence – something that could happen to anybody. It must have been frustrating that the victim of the story – the presumed object of neighbour love has not yet been named and is the victim of quite ordinary violence. We are still in the realm of the anonymous until Jesus goes on with the story.

As the anonymous man lies there helpless and bleeding - a man whose tribe and lineage doesn’t seem worthy of description – there is shuffle of footsteps down the trail and somebody enters the story. This time there is a name given or at least a title. This is a priest from Jerusalem walking down the long seventeen mile hill to Jericho. Without seeming to give it a second thought – the priest changes sides of the road and passes by. A Levite – one of those who assisted the priests with the sacrifices in the temple also shuffles down the path. He too switches sides and gives the injured man a wide berth. It is noteworthy that both the priest and the Levite cross to the other side. Within their communities they are the designated religious leaders. They are people who are held in awe and esteem and who presume to mediate between human beings and their creator. And it’s these men who choose not to see the suffering that is before them. They don’t want to see it. It’s not to be included in their snapshot of the Jericho road. They choose not to engage with the anonymous victim.

Finally a Samaritan – a national enemy – someone from the other side of the tracks – somebody that everyone could reasonably despise, even in polite company comes by and ministers to the man, binding his wounds, placing him on his donkey, provisioning him with a bed at an inn and paying for his keep.

The lawyer’s question is answered but not in the way the lawyer had hoped. He would have hoped that amongst all the needy people in the world some distinction could be made between those who “qualify” and those who do not so that the loving Israelite would be able to judge between those who are worthy of love and those who are not. If Jesus had told a parable about an injured Samaritan then he and the Lawyer could have disputed at great length about whether a Jew was obligated to help a Samaritan but Jesus has an entirely different instrument. It doesn’t measure the worthiness of the object of love. Jesus won’t even name and identify the victim in this story who remains anonymous throughout. The instrument Jesus uses in his story is one which measures the willingness of the subject to be loving and not the object who remains mute and unidentified. Jesus story makes a distinction between those who will love the victim and those who will not.

Because that, ultimately is the choice we need to make. In any time of disaster, in every struggle we have with another human being, in every case of family strife, in every case of blatant discrimination in our schools or workplaces, The meter on the wall is not measuring how loveable the object of love is – whether he or she fits the category of neighbour or, more properly, falls into the category of “neighbour” but how loving the person at the other end of the equation is – how loving the giver of love, care is – how willing he or she is to be and to become “neighbour”.

We can do nothing to choose or change the status of the person who needs help. We inherit situations that are beyond our control. We cannot control which side of a border a needy person falls, or how they speak or who their ancestors were.

What is in our control is not who they are but who we will become to them.

2010-07-08T06:58:00.003Z

Let the Good Times Roll!

Holidays begin today. Down to London Gatwick this aft, thence to Vancouver tomorrow morning.

2010-07-06T10:15:00.004Z

It's never been possible...

...to begin one's holidays completely fresh with nothing hanging over one's head. There is always some burden of the heart or the schedule which gets in the way. At least that's the way it works with me. I'm working flat out to get the second of these - that which falls within my control - out of the way, completely and utterly.

As for the first, well...that's life.

My lady wife and I are going out to British Columbia and the end of the week with our young one and meeting up with our slightly older one at the other end. We'll spend some time with the truly old'uns on the other side and will spend a little over a week with them on Saltspring Island. I shall try to behave myself in the presence of my mother's magnificent cooked breakfasts and get up early enough to get some good pictures of the beach.

We're then heading off to the Sorrento Centre (between Kamloops and Salmon Arm - you know where I mean!) in British Columbia for the week of the 18th-24th. Caireen is going to be doing a creative journaling course there. The young man is going to be doing some drama and I'm going to be hiking around the Shuswap country during the day. We've time together as a family in the afternoon. Think Progressive Anglican Butlins with Mass in an outdoor chapel rather than the usual clown shows (although some of the chasubles one sees from time to time might qualify for the latter).

We then top things off with a drive through the Rocky Mountains before flying back to Glasgow from Calgary on the 28th.

So for the next day or two and the remaining tasks - Ora Pro Nobis!

2010-07-03T11:13:00.002Z

A Sermon
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
2 Kings 5:1-14

Naaman the Syrian general had a problem – one which was an embarrassment all around.

On the one hand he had proved to be very good value to his monarch who appreciated his services.

In ordinary circumstances, he'd have been both feared and envied by those below him on the pecking order. He would have reasonably expected to be seen at the King’s right hand and to have been in the inner circles of the court were it not for a devastating skin disease which caused people to keep their distance. Naaman the Syrian general, it seems, was affected by leprosy – a disease with a terrible social stigma attached to it – and people consequently gave him a very wide berth.

What was his king to do? An intractable problem presents itself and one must imagine the dilemma facing the king. He depends on the skill of men like Naaman – aggressive and opportunistic – able to command loyalty among the troops, able to analyse an enemy’s weakness, able to pick the right moment to pull back and the right moment to strike forward.

Valuable man, Naaman, but the King can’t shake his hand. He can’t have him over for supper. Or have him sit in the royal box at the victory parade. An intractable problem – one that doesn’t admit of any ordinary solutions or strategies - so intractable, in fact, that when a little slave girl in the in the entourage of Naaman's wife says that back home in her own country there’s this prophet who performs miracles and heals the sick, he tells the King who gives it both a first and a second thought. He has no choice. He listens to the little girl. His decision to act seems more forced than faith – more the result of desperation that it is a faithful step into an uncertain future – but whatever it is, it takes place.

And what does he do? He writes a letter to the King of Israel – which is the little girl’s home country - and he tells him that he’s sending him a this leprous general to be cured.

And that’s when the second intractable problem emerges. This time not for the Aramean King but for the Israelite King who reads the letter he’s received several time to glean its meaning. What does this mean that the king of a not always friendly neighbouring country is sending his favourite general – a man with an incurable condition – to the neighbouring country to be cured. This doesn’t seem like a request, it smells like a trap - this is an unfulfillable condition and an unmeetable demand issued by one country to its neighbour.

The Israelite king cries out to his ministers: “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”

What to do, then? Dig the moats deeper and reinforce the walls! Call up the reserves. Send out the spies. Get the beacon fires ready on all the hilltops so that they can be lit at a moment’s notice to let the army know when the enemy has crossed the frontier. All the automatic processes kick in which countries rely on to protect themselves from threats but at the heart of the nation, in the king’s court, there is anxiety and despair. The king tears his clothes with fear and rage.

You’d hardly notice the little messenger ushered in to corner of the room - a messenger from the prophet Elisha. Why, prophet asks, are there work companies on all the high places adding parapets to the earthworks? Why are there men in armour drilling in formation in the village square? Why are there diplomatic notes being sent to and fro across the borders. And your majesty “…why have you torn your clothes? Let (this Syrian general) come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel”

The king is surrounded by experts – experts in the defense of vital infrastructure, generals in command of troops, diplomats skilled in intrigue. And now the prophet, through the agency of this nameless messenger shifting his weight from one foot to the other and looking aimlessly around at the sweets on the table and the tapestries as he waits for an answer – is counselling a response which seems both faithful and hopelessly naïve. Meet the threat – treat it, instead, as challenge. Let Israel be a source of healing for the nations as it has claimed itself, since Abraham, to be. Simply say “yes” rather than drawing the shutters and calling forth the troops.

There is no record of the conversation which ensued, no “blow by blow” of the king’s decision to follow the prophet’s advice and to embrace and affirm the challenge that is presented to him and to the nation. How he comes to deal with this intractable problem we’re are not told but the very next scene opens with the chariot and the retinue of Naaman the Syrian General clattering up to Elisha’s front door and poor leprous Naaman climbing out and waiting there. And waiting until finally one of the servants appears with instructions to walk over to the river and wash himself.

And now we have a third important man facing a situation standing at a crossroads facing an intractable problem. This time it’s simple human and national pride which stands in the way. He is consumed by anger. A commander of thousands he has left his own country, his servants and underlings not only to be ordered around by a foreign prophet but, in fact, to be handed a few cursory instructions by a foreign prophet’s servant. The instructions sound like a recipe: “Go wash in the Jordan and you will be clean”.

Is he not an important general? Has he not left the greatest country in the world? Has he not just walked past the greatest rivers? Could he not, at least, have been greeted formally and had a solemn prayer? Could not the great prophet of Israel have done something with a little magic to it, could he not have waved his hand about and invoked the deity? He seems ready to turn around and leave until his own servants take of the risk of bringing him to his senses: had the prophet given him a difficult task to perform he would have done it without question – a monster slay or a difficult pilgrimage to accomplish. Why not, then, do something simple. Why throw away such an opportunity in a fit of pique? He goes to the river and washes. He emerges completely restored and makes a confession of faith in Israel’s God.

The voices in this story which provide the sense of the narrative come in from the side, obliquely. They are voices which can, potentially, be ignored. Powerful men are deliberating in the midst of crises and yet it is the voice of a child which provides opportunity, the voice of a prophet which brings the powerful back to first principles and the voice of an underling speaking “out of turn” beside us which speaks to us of common sense that our pride and anger will not allow us to see.

Subtle voices which we will ignore at our peril.

It may be that we need to run out of clear and easy answers before we will rely on them. Perhaps we need to be facing the wall before voices we would never listen to in a million years suddenly start ringing out loud and clear.

2010-06-30T17:38:00.012Z

Testing the hypothesis -
a recipe
Luke 10:1-20

You've heard the parables about what the Kingdom of God is like, or even better, like unto. All those images of treasures in fields and pearls of great price swirl around in your head. You'd be forgiven for wanting, eventually, to see this 'fleshed out' in the course of ordinary life and discourse.

Where can this phantom thing, variously described as being within you or around you or among you, actually going to take shape?

Forget "like unto". Nobody talks like that anymore.

Well sir, we'd like to give you the opportunity to see it whipped up in front of your very own eyes. Keep it simple, enjoy the company and have fun.

Serves 69 (plus the cook). Benefits many more.

A) Ingredients

Virtually nothing. A call or commission to go forth would be advised. The message that the Kingdom of God has drawn near where the name of Christ is proclaimed is probably essential and should be pinned where clearly visible near your work surface.. This is one of the few recipes with no further ingredients beyond a willingness to stir the pot and an enthusiasm to see the results. Other versions which include such things as sandals, purse and bag are to be avoided at all costs and will make the results cloudy and resemble something bought off the shelf.

B) Method

Assemble your group and then go in in various directions. Disperse widely. Big cities are not necessarily the best option. Everyone goes there. As you mix vigorously you will be surprised at how things come together. Don't be surprised if not all parts of the resulting batter show the same welcome response. Quality of parts rather than uniformity of response is the order of the day.

As your results increase, don't waste time overmuch on the parts of the batter which haven't turned out.

These things happen.

Separate your product. Rejoice in what is good. Dispose of what isn't in a suitable container.

Some likelihood exists of serpents or scorpions crawling onto the work surface. Don't worry. It's nothing that a good whack with a wooden spoon won't solve. Take some authority.

2010-06-28T06:35:00.006Z

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Monday, June 28th, 2010

I went to the funeral last Wednesday of a better man than me.

Now, I don’t rate myself with a number on a scale and then note other peoples’ scores when attending or officiating at their funerals. Sometimes, though, you hear an account of a person’s life and attributes – ringing true to the much or the little you knew them yourself - which makes you wonder how you’ll ever muddle through. You’d certainly never manage that!

It’s not a question of time and relative age, Sure, my generation is only now beginning to feel its aches and pains and is not ready to move on - not by a long shot – but the foundation for what this man had built in his family and ministry and within his own soul was founded at a much younger age than I am now. Those opportunities, even in early middle-age, are now lost to me.

Yes – I attended the funeral of a better man than me.

Jesus said ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’. We are judged, though – justly or unjustly – by others. Sometimes it’s merely enough to stand in the shadow of people who made better use of their gifts than we have. In the light of better lives than ours we feel the sting of our inadequacy.

Now there are, in fact, millions of better people than me. Ask my wife.

Because the better man can never be me, all I can do is to utter a word of thankfulness for the lives of others lived well and look again at the time and the space that are allotted to me.

Some conversations will never take place unless I initiate them. Forgiveness and reconciliation may not happen until this half-good human picks up the telephone. Strangers will not be welcomed in my neighbourhood or church until this bog-standard individual musters up the courage to step outside his small circle and engage with them

It’s not a competition.

In the best of worlds, beautiful lives would provoke our hunger to make more of what we wake up with every morning.

Audio is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:19.56 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2010-06-23T16:32:00.004Z

Apparently not a spoof in the Onion

"Dressing for G20 protests is tricky. Look too corporate and you might be paintbombed. Dress like a militant protester, you run the risk of being tear gassed."

The Toronto star has a page on "fashion choices" for those going along to protest at the G20 in Toronto. Does one wear black? Do you bring a facecovering "just in case"? With respect to the peaceful protests being planned this Saturday by the Canadian Labour Congress, their spokesman Jeff Atkinson

"...mused on advice for the protester looking to steer clear of police and militant attention.
“Plaid?” he offered. “I hate to think of people at home in their closet missing the protest because they can’t make a fashion decision.”

2010-06-22T14:22:00.012Z

"The Nativity"

An Interview with Tony Jordan
at the Churches Media Conference 2010

It's midsummer - when Christian concern naturally settles around the Nativity of our Lord.

Or so it did, for a while anyway, at this year's Churches Media Conference held at the Hayes Conference Centre near Alfreton in Derbyshire. An interview took place there with the writer of an upcoming four-part series on the Nativity. The series will be presented, helpfully, in a more traditional time-slot this December.

Tony Jordan has had an interesting career - moving from running a market stall in London's East End to writing 250 episodes of East Enders and co-creating Life on Mars - just to name a few of this remarkable gentleman's credentials. The Nativity will run this Christmas with a mix of well known and lesser known actors in the cast.

The interview with Tony Jordan was sufficiently good that it demanded some coverage. There is a link provided at the temporary website of the Churches Media Net to a longer version of this interview (an hour and thirty minutes long), complete with housekeeping matters about seats being available at the front and a pre-interview with the interviewer himself.

What's more, it can only be listened to online.

Which means that those of you with domestic committments will end up getting your heads nipped for sitting glued to the computer with the family around or for coming to bed at an ungodly hour.

I know it's a matter of opinion but I found many of the questions asked at the end fairly pious and a bit trite. The heart of the interview - about the way in which a writer like Jordan comes up with characters for the television shows he writes and how he ended up inheriting the project of the Nativity- was of sufficient grace and moment that it simply "called out" to be topped and tailed and set out in a format which somebody could download and listen to on their way to work.

In a conference which purported to have the Christian presence on and use of New Media as one of its major themes, it would seem that the first lesson is this: if you have a good piece of audio stuffed in some virtual corner the bloggers will want it for their mates to hear.

They could ask.
I'm sure the real Christians among them would ask.

The rest of us will simply steal it - cheeky buggers that we are - top it and tail it and make it something which faithful readers of Raspberry Rabbit (all eleven of them - including Evelyn with the articial leg and the shocking pink lippy - Hi, Evelyn!) - can download onto their Ipods and listen to at their leisure.

There were other bits: Elaine Storkey versus Andrew Copson, the Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association? I didn't pinch that. Andrew Copson was twice the evangelist Elaine was. The BHA could have used that audio in one of their recruiting drives. Does Elaine Storkey really believe that Christians invented democracy?

Spinning the Pope - Catholicism in the Spotlight? Charming fellow, that Opus Dei guy, but I kept expecting the albino monk to come swinging in on a rope at any moment with a knife between his teeth. Too much of the Army of God for my taste.

No - Tony Jordan was the star - by a mile!

The interview was conducted by Michael Wakelin the former head of Relgion and Ethics Broadcasting at the BBC.

Note: The entire interview above is worth listening. Jordan talks about the process of developing a character and his time writing for East Enders and, later, developing the character of DCI Gene Hunt in Life on Mars. The material dealing specifically with The Nativity begins at 19:37 on the Soundcloud bar.

Enjoy!

This is the fourth Churches Media Conference that I’ve attended.

I've been married a little over two years now. My wife looks over the conference schedule and can't see the allure. She imagines that there must be many beautiful young women at the conference, so at our house we simply refer to the conference as "Hot Totty" as in "will my sisters' birthday BBQ in June conflict with Hot Totty this year?"

I try to reassure her that, while the women at Hot Totty are eminently toothsome, they probably have better things to do with their time than interface on any level with complex and aging Scottish Episcopal clergymen whose affections lie elsewhere.

As for the ones who dont, well, they can chase me but they can't catch me.

2010-06-22T07:28:00.009Z

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

We hate to wait. We try to figure out what’s coming down the road. We guess. We make stuff up. There’s a lot of that going on with the budget about to be read out today. Speculation is rife. Opponents are already lining up with things they think they know or believe they’ve figured out.

We’ve been prepared for it, even here in Scotland. The chancellor has told us that this is the ‘unavoidable budget’ – the one where we will pay the price for what’s gone on in the past in order to make what is to come workable and liveable. People in the here and now, however, are the ones who will need to do their part and pay the price.

But you and I know this won’t be the end of the story. We’ll wonder why we’ve been targeted by certain taxes or have to pay the price of cutbacks in our sector. “What makes us special”, we’ll ask. Not everybody will have been won over by this time tomorrow.

A coalition government producing a budget must take enormous risks. These are two very different animals welded together – a Tiger-Lion, if you like, or a Beaver-Duck. We're not privy to all the late night telephone calls between convinced Liberals or convinced Conservatives warning that the pure principles of their Party are being put at risk.

Whether or not you believe we’re living in the sort of age which requires an “emergency budget”, we are all familiar – or will be – with those moments when emergency measures are required in our relationships – when bottoms fall out of things, when the rock rolls down the hill and, all of a sudden, the love we take for granted between ourselves and our spouses, or the religious faith which we ‘ascribe to’ but have never absolutely needed become extremely valuable. Our priorities will change in an instant and our creativity “kick in” when the bad news is known, but we’re pointed back to things we had neglected.

Things we didn’t value at the time.

Audio available for a limited time HERE.
TFTD begins at 1:23.13 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2010-06-16T12:49:00.004Z

After Dinner Speech
at the SEC General Synod

I missed the General Synod Dinner this year and while the conflicting engagement was both important and enjoyable it would have been good to hear Robin Angus' after dinner speech.

The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church in America was in attendance.

There are some in-jokes which non-Piskies might not get but there is plenty to amuse even outsiders. Dr Patricia Peattie, who is referred to on a number of occasions in the speech, is the outgoing Convenor of the Provincial Standing Committee. She is a retired nurse (and professor of nursing) of the old model who, we must imagine, could have reduced the prickliest of old-fashioned male Consultants to blobs of jelly back in the day. She is a highly organized and intentional lady and David Palmer, her successor, has very big shoes indeed to fill.

Ruth Innes has a copy of Robin's after-dinner speech on her blog and it can be seen HERE. Enjoy.

I will forgive him for mentioning pretty well every Scottish Episcopal blogger except me. Then again, we haven't been introduced.

2010-06-11T18:40:00.006Z

The Presiding Bishop of TEC
at the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church

The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schiori was invited to speak to the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church this afternoon. She was sitting in the pews during the final presentation of the Inter-Church Relations Committee and a presentation by a delegate at the Edinburgh 2010 Mission Conference. At long last she took the podium and spoked about elements of our shared history, the importance of the Baptismal Covenant in the Episcopal Church and in those churches in whose prayer books it appears in some form and the future shape of our shared ministry in the world.

There will be a video version of this appearing on the Scottish Episcopal Church website and Kelvin's blog. In the mean time, you have an audio version of what was said during Bishop Katharine's talk to us this afternoon. Enjoy!

Update: The Convenor of the Information and Communication Board, Kelvin Holdsworth, had the opportunity to interview the PB at General Synod. That interview can be found HERE.

2010-06-10T14:17:00.006Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Good morning,

If somebody referred to you as an"inhibited person" you might not be particularly pleased..
True - some of our inhibitions hamper us. They make it difficult for us to be honest with each other or to relate intimately with friends and lovers. They keep us off the dance floor. They keep us from applying for jobs or from raising our voice in support of a cause.

But some of our inhibitions make it possible to disagree without killing each other. We'd be stuffed without a few inhibitions. Extended family gatherings would turn into battle grounds. A loss of inhibitions can even have fatal consequences. A Scottish police chief is concerned about the role alcohol has played in 14 murders committed around the country in the last few months. He worries that drink-fueled violence will escalate during the World Cup which begins tomorrow. A bottle of cheap vodka, after all, goes for about seven pounds fifty. Trouble is only a transaction away.

We see the way in which young people – particularly young men – get dragged into risky or violent behaviour in the midst of drunken peers. One suspects that with a little more self esteem the individual would be strong enough to stand apart from the crowd.

There’s an old saying - “in vino veritas” – which suggests that the truth comes out with a drink or two. A family gathering or a group of close friends can become unglued or fractious because somebody has done or said something untoward under the influence of a few drinks. Again, you suspect that there’s a price being paid for a lack of honesty in the midst of normal sober conversations. The turmoil was there in the soul to start with – darkness, jealousy and frustration. A cork comes out with a few drinks, that’s for sure - but the contents were under pressure anyway. A little more honesty between family and friends in ordinary sober life would not have gone wanting.

We pay a price for not tackling our dragons in the daylight.

Audio available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:23.15 - a little more than halfway along the audio bar.

2010-06-10T12:43:00.008Z

General Synod Session One Audio Recap

For the last few years I've been asked to put together a little audio recap of the events of General Synod at the end of each session. This has been filtered into the Scottish Episcopal Church website and has, I gather, been a source of joy and information for unnamed persons who like to keep an eye on what's going on. This year it would appear that the SEC website has crashed at the beginning of General Synod so it's being placed here. For my part I've always found the audio recaps a little dry. As you can see from the pictures (above and below) the Bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church look nothing like a cold war era Politburo.

So my little three minute recap and its similarity to reports on tractor production on the evening news of various Soviet satellite countries in the mid-sixties provides the only similarity.

2010-06-10T11:04:00.000Z

An interview with Jim McRae

Commander Jim McRae, the Development Director of the Mission to Seafarers Scotland has set up a display at General Synod. I interviewed him about the work of the Mission in Scotland and what clergy and lay delegates might do to get on board this very important and active industrial chaplaincy in Scotland.

2010-06-10T09:57:00.004Z

The Opening Eucharist and
The Primus' Charge

The Opening Eucharist took place in Palmerston Place and was presided over by the Primus, David Chillingworth. The offering was taken (earmarked for the Sisters of St Margaret in Haiti) and the gifts presented at the altar by a group of Synod freshers.

The Primus’ Charge, positioned as a sermon within the Eucharist, underlined the place of the Church between its understandable craving for security and certainty and the challenges of stepping beyond what we know best into the place where God calls his people. The body of the charge outlined the shape of the discussions which will take place during our meetings and ended with a note of hope about the prospects (backed up by evidence of energy and commitment within the Province) for Mission in a Church which is small but which is “rich towards God”.

The Primus' Charge to the General Synod can be found HERE.

2010-06-10T07:50:00.007Z

General Synod
The Scottish Episcopal Church
Begins Today

The Primus kicks off by speaking to the Freshers' Group - delegates attending for the very first time.

We are expecting a number of fraternal delegates. Some well-known and some less-so.

Audio feed from the floor of Synod with picture (picture updated every thirty seconds) is available HERE. Have fun. I intend to.

2010-06-06T19:15:00.004Z

Voices in the Cloud

Off for a few days to the Churches Media Conference in deepest Derbyshire. Very grateful to the Edinburgh and District Churches Council for Local Broadcasting who have sent me along on this three day conference for the last couple of years.

It's an interesting programme and some excellent contributors. I always come back with ideas. I don't always put them into practice though. Gotta work on that.

And then there's General Synod which begins the day after I return. So a busy week all in all.

2010-06-02T21:17:00.007Z

I am now British (as well)

No longer will I be known merely as "that Canadian fellow". I am now a British citizen (as well).

The ceremony was, shall we say, a little "low key". No portrait of Her Majesty adorned the wall, nor was there a Union Jack anywhere in evidence in the room. It had all the taste of a 1960s-era Soviet wedding but, nonetheless, at the end of the service I was a citizen of the United Kingdom - having taken all the necessary oaths.

My family and the in-laws came to cheer me on.

2010-06-01T07:33:00.007Z

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

You should have been with me and the dogs early yesterday morning on top of one of the local hills outside Penicuik.

Scotland was at its best – the gorse in full flower and sufficient rabbits on the hillside to keep the dogs’ interest up.

Back at my desk afterwards, I caught up with the news. It was filled with horrifying details of murder investigations in Scotland and England and the encounter between the Israeli Defense Force and the flotilla heading for Gaza.

Bring on a sense of hopelessness about human violence.
Cue the sound of sabres rattling around the world.

I picked up the habit of reading the newspaper regularly from my father, along with his suspicion that the news does not reflect the good things which happen to individuals on a daily basis. It is a distillation of the most dramatic and frequently the most terrible events which have occurred. As communications occur more rapidly we can follow events pretty much as they unfold – complete with pictures taken on the very front lines. Which tells us something and which doesn’t.

Sunday was Trinity Sunday. One of the themes which recurs on this particular Sunday is the fitness of the world as a place for God to work. The world bears his creative imprint. God has acted redemptively within it and he continues to abide with us. A place with tremendous possibilities. Many of us live in communities and in relationships which are fruitful and nourishing. We are often struck by how noble and honest the men and women around us can be. In spite of what we are assailed with – terrible dark stories and depths of human evil and failing – that remains the truth about the world we live in.

The news may report true facts about a number of events. But it leaves most of us out. It doesn’t always tell the world’s story and it doesn’t reflect its potential.

Much of what is good in our communities and our relationships,
like Rob’s morning in the Pentland Hills,
will never make the news.

audio is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:18.02 - about halfway along the audio bar.

2010-05-29T15:14:00.010Z

Penicuik Church Float

We've talked off an on for years about the local churches having a float in the annual "Penicuik on Parade". It's the usual affair with cotton candy, cadets marching in perfect step and pipe bands. We tried something last year but it was only so successful. This year, the bull was taken by the horns and one of the local ministers found a stiltwalker, a tractor and a trailer. There were a million last minute glitches but a small group of ministers and parishioners managed to hand out balloons and literature along the whole course of the parade. It looks like we'll be doing this again next year.

The Rev'd Ian Cathcart on why the churches in Penicuik might have a float with David and Goliath at "Penicuik on Parade". Please excuse the lack of a wind screen for the microphone. A note to self has been issued

All present and accounted for: Four local clergy, a Philistine on stilts and a wee boy in cardboard armour.

2010-05-17T07:35:00.005Z

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Monday, May 16th, 2010

My parents are over from Canada. They head off this morning on a bus tour of the highlands and islands for five days. They are part of that great crowd of North American visitors who will try to connect with their roots this summer. You’ll see them on the high street. You might roll your eyes when they announce to the young lady behind the counter in the shop that their ‘grandmothers were Scotch’

Visitors are a strange lot, aren’t they?

You see them coming off the ferry in places like Iona as you’d see them walking along the cobbled streets of Jerusalem. At St James and St Mungo’s we get our share of visitors throughout the year. They file into Church at an Easter Vigil or a Christmas Carol service or pop up in the back pews on an ordinary Sunday morning. Pilgrims and visitors – looking for something old and worthy or something novel and even transcendent.

The raw material for this experience is our countryside – our history – our Sunday morning service. They want to be a part of us for a while. They’re the only ones in church who actually read the pew leaflet. In town you’ll see them standing on the street corner reading through the tourist guide. By the time they finish their visit they can tell us things about our city that we didn’t even know.

Grant them this, at least: Strangers, pilgrims and visitors are here on purpose. They don’t find themselves here because they’re in transit or because they were born here.

They’re sometimes a lot more alert than we are. Their eyes drink in more of the beauty and the magic than ours do. Have we grown so used to the landscape – physical or spiritual - that we find ourselves amazed to see people so nourished by it?

And so there’s a gift to be given here – not from us but to us – a prompt, if you like, to rediscover some of the beauty and the sense of what we have forgotten or overlooked.

The audio is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:22.06, about halfway along the audio bar.

2010-05-11T10:38:00.006Z

nb. This month's "Rector's Letter" in our church magazine was, in fact, a revision of an ordination sermon I preached ten years ago. All the then-candidates are, as far as I know, still in ministry so the original sermon didn't do overmuch damage to their morale.

I try not to revise old material. In my youth I rolled my eyes at the fifty-somethingish clergy who fished through old stuff and updated it for their current needs and now, it seems, I have become what I once mocked.

Rector's Letter, May 2010

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon
son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “You know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
Again Jesus said, “Simon, son of John, do you truly love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”
The third time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time “Do you love me?”
He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. I tell you the truth, when you were younger
you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old
you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead
you where you do not want to go”
Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.
Then he said to him, “Follow me!”
Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them
(This is the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and
had said “Lord, who is going to betray you?”)
When Peter saw him he asked, “Lord what about him?”
Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return,
what is that to you? You must follow me.”

Peter turns around and sees John walking after them
a few paces behind
humming one of his new hymns

What about him? Peter asks. Does he have to feed the sheep as well? Does he have to follow too? Does he also have to die in service?

There is a child’s question here -a question about Justice. Am I the only one who has to do this? What about him, what about her?

There is an adult’s fear of loneliness as well. Will I have company?

And the answer – the grown up answer is – yes and no

Yes, you are the only one who has to do ‘this’ and no, you will not always have company while you’re doing it.

But maybe I need to backtrack: Most of my early essays were filled with the words ‘this’ or ‘these’ circled by the professor because it was no longer clear from the context what ‘this’ of ‘these’ referred to.

Jesus asks Peter – Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? These ‘what’? More than ‘this’ life, represented by the tokens of a fisherman’s livelihood scattered around on the beach – these nets, these spools of braided line, these floats?

Or – do you love me more than these other disciples love me? You, Peter, pre-eminent among my followers, do you love me more than these others do?

The question arising between a man and a woman, - a parent and a child could be playful or maybe it probes at some perceived weakness:

Do you love me (of course you do)
Do you love me (I want to hear you say it)
Do you love me (I suspect that you do not)
Do you love me (I wonder if you know what that means)

I’ll roll the dice and will hold that:

1. When Jesus asked Peter if he loved him more than these that he was referring to the other disciples gathered with them on the beach.

2. He asks the question three times because Peter has denied him three times and

3. That when he asked Peter whether or not he loved him he was wondering if Peter knew what that meant.

Because it is not clear that we always know what love means.

The general moves to the particular:

The general - whether it is love (in general), ministry (in general) or the life of human beings (in general) - is something that can be talked about but never experienced.

We will never meet humans in general. We will meet Stan and Doris and Tabitha and Rex.

Nor will we live in a neighbourhood which is typically working class or typically old money but, rather, live and minister in a particular place with its particular population and its particular history. God (in general) is the god of the philosophers - the idea of god, the possibility of God,

We know very little about God in general

The glory of the Incarnation is that God wrapped himself up in the particular life of Jesus of Nazareth and achieves His highest moment not in the solitary being of a point of light but tied up with the smells and sounds of the Middle East, the dust of the road, the quiet of the Garden, guests at a wedding, the crowded roads of Jerusalem at Passover.

The local church is asked to interpret the fact of the resurrection. The request will be similar in most cases. What does the fact of God’s love mean here? What does it mean for me - in this moment in my life and in the life of my family?

What does Christ say about this?
What does the Bible say about this?
Where is God in all of this?

In all this grief – in all this change?
In this weakness of mine?
With respect to this son of mine, this illness of mine, this loss that I have incurred?

Will you translate the generalities of the Bible, the generalities of the Mass, the generalities that my child is taught in Church school into something which can give me life?

Does this beautiful field of wheat, blond, expansive and everlasting, ever become a loaf of bread?

And then ministry of the congregation, like love, will become knowable and known:

We have the choice of extending our personalities and our energy and our time into the lives and fortunes of other human beings and we decide to do so rather than simply falling into line

We do so not because we are impelled by some Ghostly force (that would not be a gift on our behalf but rather an empty reflex) but because we choose to - we want to - we feel we must.

There is a price to be paid for wrapping ourselves in the life and the environment of another person. Acts of love take their toll on our person, on our time, on our innocence and on our sleep.

But we are not called to suffer for suffering’s sake but for Christ’s sake.

We should be up for a little adventure - the demolishing of a few horizons We’d like to see things go ‘boom’. We should cultivate a healthy and godly curiosity about what people are like on the inside, and entertain the fancy that maybe – just maybe – the parish or the ministry we are a part of might just turn a corner and bring the whole Church with it and that we might have had some small part to play in that transformation.

And why not?

God knows that we’ve waited long enough for something more than this: that we should simply preserve ourselves at all costs – our buildings and our congregation as it stands.

We’ve been there – we’ve done that. We are ready for something more. We might be ready to participate in what God is about in the world - at the risk of seeming foolish, or credulous and at the risk of falling flat on our faces.

John likens it, in the larger story about fishing. We have cast our nets the better portion of the night and have gained only questionable purchase on anything remotely resembling a school of fish.

So why not now – with us – with out particularities of history and personality?

That we would cast our nets for the five hundredth time this time at a different angle and at the behest of a voice which we hear within ourselves and that something would, in fact, pull back – that to our surprise our net would actually grab on to something and we would find ourselves hauling in a miraculous catch of fish?

2010-05-02T21:40:00.003Z

After a brisk climb and a more leisurely descent down the other side we all arrived at Dryburgh Abbey safe and sound although with a few sore ankles and tricky knees. The Bishop of Edinburgh led his flock on a small pilgrimage along the first wee bit of St Cuthbert's Way - the section joining Melrose Abbey and Dryburgh Abbey.

The weather held - just. An especially good time was had by the four dogs.

Our small collection of parishioners from St James the Less and St Mungo's - all of whom made it to their destinations. It was the first time, in recent memory, that the Diocese has put on a jaunt like this. Folk seemed interested in doing it agaiin.

2010-04-30T18:57:00.007Z

Abbey to Abbey

Tomorrow morning a group of us are going for a walk with our bishop.

We send the bishop our statistics each year, we reserve a special chair for him in our churches, we are polite to him at Synod.

We don't go walking in the hills with him nearly enough.

All that changes tomorrow. We'll be gathering at the Market Cross in Melrose, visiting Melrose Abbey and then heading out over the Eildon Hills "in the footsteps of St Cuthbert" to Dryburgh Abbey. All this has necessitated complex plans to leave cars in two places so that we don't have to walk back the same way we came.

Packed lunches are in order.

2010-04-28T21:33:00.007Z

Tonight's Game

One of the betting sites is listing the odds of any of the following teams winning the Stanley Cup:

The Boston Bruins 18/1
The Chicago Blackhawks 4/1
The Detroit Redwings 11/2
The Montreal Canadiens 35/1
The Philadelphia Flyers 16/1
The Pittsburgh Penguins 4/1
The San Jose Sharks 5/1
The Vancouver Canucks 6/1
The Washington Capitals 7/2

My team is clearly at the back of the pack but they're still in there and if Halak's goaltending keeps up with the momentum and we win tonight's game against the favoured Capitals, a few of these figures might change. The Canadiens were down in the series 3-1 at one point but have inched their way up and have forced a 7th game. It ain't over until the fat lady sings.

So we wait and see. I'm staying up late and watching it online.

update: We did win. A defensive game which worked well against this set of opponents but may not against Pittsburgh. Still - a good fast game!

2010-04-28T07:17:00.010Z

Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends

One of our West-Country types here at St James', Penicuik was telling me that the same record company which manages Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse is just after signing a group of Cornish fishermen to a major record deal.

The Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends were singing in a pub when a record executive on holiday stopped in for a pint. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Amazon site has a video which doesn't appear elsewhere in a format easily nicked for a blog page. It'll set your foot to tapping.

We have our requisite number of Cornishmen at both St James and St Mungo's. I grew up in Canada and the only West Country accents we ever heard issued from the lips of pirates in movies. Stereotypes are hard to cast off. The old stories about Cornish villagers luring ships onto the rocks with torches are nothing but dreadful slander.West Country folk are, in fact, lovely people.

I am still hesitant to let ours help with the parking for major events at church, just in case one of them should revert to type and, waving a flashlight, tell one of our visitors to back straight into the wall at high speed, with other Cornishmen swooping over the wall and making off with the spare petrol tin, the jump leads and the dog gate.

Like I said, lovely people, but that sorta stuff is not part of our Mission Statement......

2010-04-17T12:33:00.010Z

You said if we paid them no mind,
they'll stop bothering us!

A website in Britain called Neighbours from Hell in Britain is offering to help "hardworking normal citizens" develop a strategy for dealing with terrible neighbours who wreak chaos for those living in close proximity to them.

Positively Managing Negative Neighbours. Are you suffering or suffered in the past with a nuisance neighbour, noisy neighbour, harrassment, bullying, boundary problems, anti-social behaviour or any form of unwanted neighbour attention or interference? Neighbours From Hell in Britain (NFHiB) can help you to resolve neighbour problems or any issues with neighbours within many different situations, there's no need to be or feel alone.

So is there anything they can do, then, with the good folks in Iceland who, since 2008 and the banking crisis, have made their little nation painfully well-known to the rest of us.

Having neglected their family debts and chequebooks in 2008 they've now clearly forgotten to perform regular volcano maintenance and they've got one heck of a spewing example of such neglect right in their back garden (which they named Eyjafjallajoekull - in order to irritate the Welsh who thought they could only come up with unpronounceable names using few vowels) which is spewing ash and delaying travel for the rest of us.

An ASBO. That's what's needed. It may be too late for mediation by a good hearted local charity.