An Episcopal Election

in Auld Reekie

A new Bishop for the Diocese of Edinburgh is in the making and will be elected and consecrated.

You can bank on it.

Get into your time machine and dial up a date two years hence and there will be a bishop in post down at Grosvenor Crescent on the telephone ironing out some knotty problem in measured tones.

That bishop may well be one of the three candidates announced a while back on the Diocesan web page.

It's a small list. Three names is the very minimum the Preparation Committee can present to an electoral synod. Some lists of only three names might not seem particularly small in that they contain candidates who appeal to broad constituencies and across party lines.

Such candidates could conceivably produce odd and interesting alliances of electors, interesting debates on the floor of synod and conspiratorial conversations over a pint at lunch at the Haymarket Pub.

Other lists don't seem quite as large.

With all the forward preparation, and with no allowances in the Canon for candidates nominated from the floor, it's always been a bit of a stretch to describe the Scottish process as anything other than "a process of appointment with some discussion in the final phase".

It's a problem which a quirky list holding a number of possibilities would palliate.

No group of electors likes to feel pushed around.

We have not been lucky with episcopal elections in Scotland, of late. There seems to be a bug in the system. It's not so much a problem of what happens when the list hits the floor of Synod. It's what happens in the lead up - behind closed doors - with a process which we are not supposed to know anything about.

The relevant Canon - Canon 4 which governs the election of Bishops - imposes a great deal of discretion (even secrecy) upon the Preparation Committee as to the way the list of candidates is arrived at.

Anyone may nominate. There's not even a provision to preclude somebody nominating more than one candidate. We have no idea how many candidates were nominated but there are no natural limits in place to keep the list from being long and very interesting.

It falls to the Preparation Committee to go through the list, solicit written responses to a questionnaire, interview and come up with a shortlist of between three and five "electable" candidates to place before the lay and clerical electors of the Diocese.

A candidate may be nominated and then decide not to go ahead and write the necessary (and voluminous) responses to a series of questions posed by the Committee. A nominated candidate may further discuss the move with his or her family and be told "not on your life, buddy"!

For their part, the Preparation Committee may not like the written responses of the candidate and decide not to interview. The interview may take place and, as a result, a particular candidacy may be placed to the side.

At some point the Scottish House of Bishops will exercise its canonical right to exclude names from the list. How many of the candidates, in our case, were deemed "suitable" by the Scottish House of Bishops is another one of the unknowns. Perhaps all the candidates passed muster. Or maybe the list was pruned back tightly by the Scottish House of Bishops and only a few names remained.

The process as outlined in our Canon 4 provides for confidentiality throughout the process.

That's a damned good idea - in itself. There is a risk to clergy allowing their names to stand for election to a diocese. The people of St Swithins, East Badger, might feel that their local clergyperson had let them down, somehow, by allowing his or her name stand in an episcopal election in far off Edinburgh with its cobblestones, it's University and its upscale shops.

Equally, those clergy who don't even make it through the first cut wouldn't want their colleagues, professional rivals or congregations to know that decades of apparently successful ministry hadn't even warranted an interview in what, in the Anglican world, might seem a rather small diocese.

These, then, are risks. And so anyone looking at the resulting shortlist and asking the question:

"Holy cow, what happened there!"

must rely on that self-same rumour mill which ordinarily generates such headlines as:

The Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney Ate My Hamster!

and

Faith and Order Board Finds Holy Grail - Escapes with Elvis in UFO!

for the persistent rumour is that there were, in fact, very few nominations for the post.

If true, this is hard news to digest. Why would there be so few nominations?

Most of the congregations in our Diocese record some growth (albeit modest) each year and a couple of congregations are growing quickly. Clergy of very different theological stripes maintain close friendships with each other and this even across lines which would ordinarily divide other Dioceses and Provinces. A quick glance at The Edge, our Diocesan magazine and a scan of the last dozen or so Bishops Announcements will reveal a healthy level of activity undertaken by both young and old on our patch. Our program of lay education - Adventures in Faith - certainly has no flies on it. Edinburgh is a charming city and the outlying towns have their own unique attributes. There's a university with a School of Divinity. The air and the water are clean. The Rector of Balerno and the Rector of Penicuik, between them, control access to a dozen or so reservoirs in the Pentland Hills containing plenty of Brown Trout and any Bishop applying for access will get a special rate.

Lots of opportunity for hill walking.

And so the idea of there not being a healthy bolus of creative and interesting clergy interested in being cultivated as a potential future Bishop of Edinburgh has us all checking our collective underarm for untoward odours.

Is there something wrong with us that we're not aware of?

Or maybe it's the fault of ordinary members like your humble servant here. It was up to us, after all, to think, discern and research and then to telephone, cajole and nominate. Perhaps we are the problem then - lazy sods that we are - and, if this is the case, we have let each other down badly and I look forward to being told so from the Chair at the first of our two meetings of the Electoral Synod tomorrow.

Our Canon 4 - dealing with the election of Bishops - is a strange beast.

That veto exercised, for example, by the Scottish House of Bishops. The assumption is that the Bishops, through their contacts and by way of discreet conversation, will come to know things which the Preparation Committee will not: that Father X had a tendency to drop his trousers and scream out "Armageddon" at the end of Compline services when he was at college. The Diocese of Edinburgh needs to be protected from such proclivities which might still be lurking under the surface. Mother Y, for her part, still has people around who remember the famous Restraining Order which one of her churchwardens took out against her in the 80's. There was that story about her and the spraycan of yellow paint and it's not the place of the electors - clerical or lay - to know why or even that the names of these two individuals were quietly withdrawn from the list by the bishops.

Nobody wants to know the details.

(Ed. That's not completely true. My friend Earle wants to know the details and whether there are any black-and-white photos which might be available for download. )

Most of us are all happy enough to have somebody in Episcopal orders exercising this prevenient caution on our behalf.

Herein lies the problem: There's nothing in the Canon which specifically states that when the House of Bishops pulls someone's name from the list it is because they have identified a tangible threat to the Peace, Order and Good Government of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Such a degree of control over the reservoir of men and women who may be considered by an electoral synod for Episcopal ministry in the Diocese of Edinburgh - if it is based on subtle estimations by the present House of Bishops of who does, or does not, have "Scottish Bishop" written all over them

- if not frankly unacceptable is, at least, something which must be discussed. If it was discussed in days of yore it should be discussed again.

One trusts that the political life of the Church isn't just ordinary politics. One might go so far as to hope that it has, built into it, an openness to elements which are both gracious and even unexpected.

We, on the Synod floor, are willing to be surprised, notwithstanding some ambivalent feelings about our process for identifying and raising up bishops for the Scottish Episcopal Church. We remain hopeful that a suitable candidate will emerge.

Tomorrow we will listen to presentations from the candidates presented to us.

Next Saturday, in our respective Houses, we vote. Remember us.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.




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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.


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Thank You For Asking!

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.

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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.

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

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

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Location:Edinburgh