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

Give us car stickers or give us death!

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

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

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

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

Or even these

last one - I promise

---drumroll---

Back in the saddle!

It's almost palpable.

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

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

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

Before that was our wedding.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

Unplugging for a while!

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

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

Hasta la proxima vez!

Maybe it's some sort of doggie reincarnation

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

We all need heroes

Although perhaps not the black-rubber-suited type. Our heroes could well be folks who do some of the things that we do, but who do them better and have done so consistently for a very long time. The old Archdeacon who I served under as a theological student back in Montreal for about five years was one such hero. I hear his voice frequently and believe that, were he still alive, he would again be looking down his long red nose and shaking his head at me about some of the same issues we struggled with twenty-some-odd years ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On my way to Mass at West Linton this morning. The view of the town taken from the Moor Road. The lambs are all pretty well out now - most have numbers painted in red dye on their sides. I told one visitor last year that the numbers represented the optimal oven temperature for lamb done medium rare.

There is no West Linton newspaper. There's the Peebleshire - a regional paper - which will give you the local bumpff a week or so late. You'll find a News Agent in the village, however, and it's in the shop itself where you will hear everything: Who's divorcing whom, who has died, who has had twins. Who's been shagging about? Probably not. You might hear that up at the Gordon Arms if you eavesdropped on the sotto voce conversation going on beside you.

Most of the phone calls I get announcing that somebody has died or fallen sick begin with the words 'I was in the News Agent this morning and......'

My fiancee lives in West Linton. We've engaged a 'man with a van' for Friday afternoon to begin the slow process of moving her worldly belongings and those of her son up to the Rectory in Penicuik. Penicuik is not a village - it's a town - which has it's up sides and it's down sides.

In West Linton you don't need to lock your doors or your cars. If you do lock your door it's because the dog knows how to push down the handle. If you forget to lock the door and the dog bolts during the day the neighbour will send her children over to bring the dog home, the children already know where you keep the key and they'll fish it out from under the mat, put the dog in the house, lock up and replace the key. You'll find out about all of this a week later when somebody mentions it to somebody else in the News Agent.

Frogspawn in copious quantities!

Oh, sorry - you were having lunch....

Notwithstanding the weather, the Scottish variety of the European Common Frog have managed to exhibit all the appropriate spring-like behaviour. Hamish and Morag the Scottish frogs have been at it and there are now huge gollops of frogspawn in every available puddle and pond. These little black dots will all be swimming around as tadpoles in a few weeks.

Caireen was joking with me a few months back about how it could snow on our wedding day. At the time it seemed an unreasonable concern.

Well sir, this is Penicuik right now - two weeks to the day before our wedding.

It will warm up. It will warm up!

Awake, O Sleeper!

A picture taken in the church yard at St Mungo's Penicuik. The words below are from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday (ca. fourth century).

Something strange is happening. There is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the king is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh, and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parents, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives, Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. [...]

I am your God, who for your sake, have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants, I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. [...]

For your sake I, your God, became your son. I, the Lord, took the form of a slave. I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back, see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you. Rise. Let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. [...]

The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers, swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

Quite a decent day, really!

Service in West Linton this morning and only a few things to do in the office afterwards. I meandered home to Penicuik on the Moor Road and took this shot of the Pentland Hills in the distance. Marriage prep tonight with a couple from St James.

My own marriage prep this weekend! The shoe will be on the other foot!


After having bitterly complained about the very existence of my wife-to-be's terrier/collie/rat admixture I must grudgingly admit that he's coming along. He doesn't chase chickens for a start. Since he's been spending more time with Clio he's decided that he enjoys the company and will try being (relatively) good for a change.

Why we have the internet

So that a couple of Vietnamese lads with baggy T-shirts and badly wanting a comb can give a boost to an upcoming Sunday sermon on the Road to Emmaus.

Diem Xua (Old Charm) by Trinh Cong Son

I remember this cover of Time magazine from the summer of 1971 and I remember the article! As I read the opening lines this morning I found myself completing the sentences. I was thirteen years old at the time. I can remember the hammock I was lying on at my grandfather's cottage in Ontario and being woken at night by loons on the lake - feeling strangely troubled - and turning the light on to re-read the article.

That October there were two 'Jesus people' staying at the Catholic Charities Hostel for Men on the corner of Robson and Cambie in Vancouver where I stayed after absconding from home for a week or ten days. I trailed along with them to a prayer meeting at some sort of 'Upper Room' in Vancouver. These two had decided to 'live light' like the 70 or like the deacons in the Acts of the Apostles. It was a strange time - the beginning of rather a lot of things for me.

In the words of Dr Shadrach Meshach Lockridge
Thanks to Scott Gunn for this

Full Circle

The last decent camera I had was given to me by my mother in about 1972 (or so). I can't remember whether there was a connection between how badly I was doing in Junior High School and the gift of an only-slightly-used Pentax SP1000. Perhaps it was hoped that I'd develop an interest in something other than cutting classes. The camera served me well during my three years at Hippie Alternative School in the Yukon Territory. Chums with much posher cameras saw their shutters freezing up at extreme low temperature. Anyway - light meter batteries for the aforementioned Pentax now need to be ordered from specialists. The mirror flips up and stays up for some reason with slower shutter speeds and, besides, it's not digital.

Mrs Rabbit and I will be heading off to Cuba for a honeymoon in just a few weeks and so it seemed a good idea to browse around Ebay and see what was available in the only-slightly-used Pentax range and so here it is. The instruction manual is 220 pages long. I've pushed every button - 50% of the time I've pushed the wrong button. I've recorded some great photos in the wrong format. Technology is not my strong suit.

I feel a bit like the Peter Sellers character in the video below.

Quick, the sun's out!

A nice day in Penicuik. We haven't had overly many of these and one takes advantage of the very moment the sun is out because it won't be out in an hour or so.

The leaves haven't even emerged yet. The leaves are all out down south. Edinburgh even has leaves and blossoms. Penicuik is just a little higher up. We've had what seems like a very long and dreary winter. I get the feeling that there's a magnificent Spring just waiting to jump out at us.

Fr Nick Knisely's long quote from an essay by Anne Hunt made me think: I've never actually preached a sermon on Christ's descent into Hell (or "descent among the dead" as the cleaned up version would have it) in all the years of my ministry. I must rectify that before Pentecost.

Amongst all the media caricatures of clergy which are a constant source of irritation and resentment there are a few which are an awful lot of fun. Fr Dougall and Fr Ted get lost in the lingerie section. Fr Jack ends up in the toy department.

No question that we remember things better when we sing them

Amazing coincidences

On Monday as we were driving back from our long walk in the country the step-dog passed wind rather nastily in the back of the car. The step-son-to-be could not let this go without comment accompanied by waving arms and all the requisite facial expressions. I took the opportunity to tell him the story from the 1001 Nights called How Abu Hasan Brake Wind. Wanting to be a good step-father and knowing, as I do, the degree to which small boys thrive on stories which make references to farting I supposed it would be a good bonding exercise.

It was an elderly clergyman in the Diocese of Montreal doing a locum at the church where I was the honourary assistant who told me the story perhaps six or seven years ago as we were sitting around the office waiting for the faithful to gather for Mass. I haven't thought of the story since. Until Monday I'd never found myself in the situation of needing such a story.

So after having told the story at about 3:30 in the afternoon on Monday and after having delivered my fiancee and her son back to their house in West Linton I poured myself a cup of coffee and listened to the downloaded episode (March 22) of News from Lake Wobegon which ended up being an updated version of How Abu Hasan Brake Wind.

Strange, non?

Mr Happy Goes to Church

From our friends at ASBO Jesus

No it's not exactly my new religion.

But it has proved a bit of a distraction during an otherwise rather busy week. It is of course my brand spanking new

which my beloved gave me for my birthday last week. I'm only now figuring out how to use the damned thing. I've subscribed to a couple of podcasts - News from Lake Wobegon, Thought for the Day on BBC 3 and the CBC nightly news programme - the World at Six.

I've got about half of my disk collection on it so far - need to go back into Itunes and join up the various movements of the classical music so that they don't get shuffled like singles.

One really interesting snippet from this week's Spectator was the interview with Dom Hugh Gilbert conducted by Mary Wakefield. In light of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor's eventual retirement the rumour mill is speculating that Fr Gilbert will be his successor. Hugh Gilbert OSM is the Abbot of Pluscarden here in Scotland and Mary Wakefield rightly asks the question:

Why a monk? Why even consider giving England's soul to a man who's spent 33 years buried in northern Scotland?

The answer, according to the Wakefield's reading of the pulse of 'Vatican gossip' is that the Pope:

...is concerned about our capsizing country and wants England to have a devout, inspired leader - one as far removed the tired clique of England's urbane and power-hungry liberal bishops as possible

and in Dom Hugh Gilbert they've apparently found their man.

It's a good interview. The journalist admitted to some discomfort - she started with the fact that the Abbot was known as a 'holy' man and wondered aloud on several occasions what that might actually mean. Some of the questions posed to the Abbot are fairly basic: what exactly do monks do? What is the raison d'etre of 30 robed men gliding around in isolated surroundings. What does prayer do?

The best part of the interview is provided directly by the subject in the form of the short email which Mary received once she'd returned to her office and starting banging away on her old typewriter:

Dear Mary.

You may well have decided that I was not worth 'profiling', which I would quite understand. If not, am I allowed a little follow-up?

I like the idea that beauty and holiness are the apologia for Christianity. The beauty of Christianity needs to shine out more; this is where the celebration of the liturgy becomes central. And the goodness of Christianity, i.e. the holiness of self-giving love (the witness of charity) and of prayer, needs to be sustained and developed. And this too, certainly: that the one thing Christianity has to offer is Easter. Simply: Christ is risen!

Sincerely
Fr Hugh

Easter Monday walk along the old Roman road near Carlops with the wife-to-be and the soon to be stepson. We endured about five different types of weather in the course of an hour an a half including a few snow squalls. Cold pasta and hot coffee at the halfway point.

Giles Fraser in the Church Times

I'm not over fond of many of the things which Giles Fraser writes. I really liked this.

Getting things together

We've had a good Holy Week. It was a bit of a round robin amongst the local churches - 3 Church of Scotland congregations and the Roman Catholic Church. We generally had pretty good crowds and the clergy all got a chance to preach a sermon to members of other flocks. Tonight we're hauling our home-made Paschal candle up the street and lighting a fire in the parking lot of the neighbouring Church of Scotland as we add Holy Saturday to the ecumenical list. Our choir is uncertain. As for the presbies affected, they have a locum minister who has come out of retirement to take care of them during their interregnum. He's rolling his eyes a bit. I'm not sure he was expecting this but he's decided to 'go with the flow'.

Tomorrow we gather in the local graveyard at 5:25 a.m. with lit candles, say a few prayers and then make our way up to the hill behind St James with at least a mandolin and probably a guitar to watch the sun rise at 5:55. Thence to St James' hall for bacon and eggs and then back for Mass at 11:00. I'll miss it all when it's over.

What you see

on the road to Carlops

in Holy Week

The earth is black and freshly turned
The sharp and comestible smell is
walnuts and lemon or maybe
fresh leaves crushed between the fingers.

A blade reverses the settled order.

Winter thatch is sundered and uprooted.
Something vital flows from the furrows.

The tractor follows its even course along the ground
with nothing to negotiate.

A cloud of screaming gulls follows for good or ill

at a safe distance.

Palm Crosses

It took us a while to remember what we were doing.

The diagram we had saved from last year and printed out proved to be of little use.

On the other hand, the story about the bunny going twice around the tree and the other bunny going round the back, up and down into the rabbit hole was more to the point and provided much better results.

MCMLVIII - a very very long time ago

There - it's just gone midnight. Today (friday) is my 50th birthday. It's just starting to hit me. I'm 50 today. 50 is extremely old. Life is pretty well half over!

I do occasionally wake up in the morning and ask myself whether I'm really as old as all that. I shake my head for a moment and wonder is there's been a mistake. I know where the years have gone - I was there when they went, but it seemed like it was just yesterday that I was turning 30 (and feeling old then)

Other people born in 1958

Andie MacDowell
Holly Hunter
Jamie Lee Curtis
Kate Bush (yeah, okay - she's old!)
Madonna
Michelle Pfeiffer
Sharon Stone
Tim Burton
Viggo Mortensen

Looking at it this way, of course, 50 is not that old. These folks aren't old. These people are more or less just like me - plus botox and regular time in the gym, singing lessons, agents to get them gigs and - therapy.

I guess turning 50 is better than the alternative.

Now I'll head off. It's past my bedtime.

This morning's Thought for the Day on BBC Scotland. A couple of spoonerisms - 'Oath of Loyalty' became 'Loath of Oyalty' but hey, it's early in the morning. The hedgehogs were just going to bed.

The whole idea of young people taking an Oath of Loyalty is not even the flavour of the month - it's the flavour of the second half of this week.

From the morning's papers: Simon Jenkins writing in the Guardian and Daniel Hannan in the Torygraph on more or less the same subject. This will all have gone away by the end of the week and will be replaced by yet another silly quick fix cooked up by a Focus Group.

A Greek tailor bumps into

his client in the Agora

First man: Euripides?

Second man: Yes, Eumenides?

Tavener's Requiem available on BBC 3

The premiere of Sir John Tavener's Requiem is available on the Radio 3 site only for another day or two. The programme begins with selections from Rachmaninov's Vespers and finishes with Tavener's work.

Tavener is, apparently, seriously ill at the moment and was unable to attend on the evening the piece was recorded. The orchestra was set up in the form of a crucifix with the cello soloist at the very centre of the cross. The last ten minutes of the Requiem will stay with me for a long time.

Steve Tilley over at Mustard Seed Shavings has been stripping away lot of excess language as part of his Lenten observance and posting mostly in haiku form. This has led to such spine-chilling little nuggets as

Visit Christ Church
Sort out the Alpha course food
Not many takers

I guess a lot of haiku experts have passed by his website. Some have clearly made comments, provoking the following outburst:

"Look you bunch of pedants. Brummies make two syllables where one is written. Japanese make the punctuation count as a syllable. Haiku is more an intention than a form. It is just oh I can't be bothered the rest is a quote from a web-site explaining stuff like this:"

Crack on Steve! Square your shoulders. They're all Philistines! They will not be numbered among the Just.

NB. The outburst could have been written thus:

Frankly, can't be arsed.

Further explanation here

Lighten up, won't you?

Commonwealth Day 2008

Today is Commonwealth Day. The day you give thanks for, among other things, Canadians.

You'll know who we are. We're the ones lining up at the Garlicky Little Foreign People with Dodgy Passports queue at Immigration while the Finns and Lithuanians breeze through with EU passports.

A tradition designed to compensate for all those years of ignoring and overlooking us is the giving of quite splendid gifts to Commonwealth citizens on the second Monday in March. Best wishes to Canadians and other Commonwealth citizens can be left here in the comments box. Monetary gifts or gifts in bottles with consonant-heavy Scottish names printed on them can be sent via the post.

An article in the Telegraph bemoaning recent attempts to restrict Commonwealth immigration can be found here.

Teach your children to cherish their nearest Canadian vicar (and not to bang their hard church shoes on the pew during his children's talk) by going to the Young Commonwealth site.

Lying in bed covered in bandages with tubes hanging out of you? The Commonwealth Nursing Federation has some ideas for celebrating Commonwealth Day.

My 'Commonwealth moment' came about ten years ago standing under the Menin Gate in Ieper (Ypres) Belgium. A bugler from the Ypres Fire Department plays the Last Post every night at 8:00 pm. School children from around the world visit the site. Not infrequently one of them is asked to read the usual fragment of McCrae's poem - "they shall not grow old.....". This particular evening it was a little girl visiting from New Zealand with her family who took her job very seriously - solemn little Kiwi dipthongs echoing throughout the chamber. Her dad was visibly chuffed and clearly proud of her.

On the wall were the large number of names (among others from around the Empire) of members of my regiment - the Canadian Grenadier Guards - who were killed in battle and whose bodies were never recovered and identified.

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.

-- - - - - - -

Joe Walker (Diocese of Edmonton in Canada) has published his sermon notes for next Sunday. Worth a read!

Frequently wrong but never in doubt

Glad to see that there's somebody out there who's as grumpy and opinionated as I am. Well done, Fr Heron!

De Mille is De Man



via Scott Gunn via Bishop Alan

An article from the Daily Mail. I'm sure it's as true as anything else the Daily Mail publishes.

Following the never-ending theme here in the UK that you can't be too careful it appears that lamp-posts in parts of London are now to be padded.

Readings for the 5th Sunday in Lent

I'll be doing the Family Service in one of my churches this Sunday which is a slightly truncated affair. Wishing I had a little more sermon-time for readings such as these.

Mare Winningham 'Valley of the Dry Bones'



The old standard by The Delta Rhythm Boys



The Raising of Lazarus from
The Greatest Story Every Told

Little Dark Poet

Before it's too late.....

I am heading out over the next couple of days to visit a very ancient lady who spent her life as Penicuik's Registrar. Somebody meticulous - as you might imagine - a member of our little 8:00 service at St James.

Penicuik no longer has a town hall where births and deaths can be registered, certain debts settled and payments made. You drive through our town and you are struck by the fact that our Centre has collapsed. Businesses are boarded up. The appropriate role for us in life now is to be a good bedroom community for Edinburgh. Left behind on all sorts of levels are the locals. Banks close and Cheque Cashing outlets and betting shops open in their stead. Never say we don't provide for the local people!

The closing of the Town Hall and the withdrawal of local services was all going on at about the time I arrived here from Canada and I was only dimly aware of the controversy. I had a couple of the battle-weary in my congregation. Yes, it is a shame, I said. You'll have to go to Dalkeith to do these things. I didn't think too much about it at the time. The town hall was reborn under different coverings as a resource-to-the-community-but-not-a-town hall. Not the same thing. There was a committee struck to oversee it. They spent as much time fighting with each other as they did managing the resource.

Simon Jenkins' article in the Guardian last week was about the nationalization of social responsibility and the weakness of our social contracts at the local level. A few highlights:

The nearest any British community has to local government these days is the police force. Local leadership is a 999 call. Whether it is a rape epidemic, an unruly school, trouble with immigrants, a released paedophile or bingeing teenagers, the community appears before the world as a police officer. There may be walk-on parts for a firefighter, a priest and, bringing up the rear, a national MP. But the figure of reassurance and authority in any British town nowadays is in uniform (which is why Muslims turn to their mullahs).

he continues:

Go to any community abroad, whether in America or France or Germany or the Netherlands, and that figure will be a locally elected official, normally a mayor.

and then the clincher:

In France there is an elected official for every 120 people, which is why French micro-democracy is alive and kicking. In Germany the ratio is 1:250; in Britain it is 1:2,600. In France the smallest unit of discretionary local government (raising some money and running some services) is the commune, with an average population of 1,500. In Germany that size is 5,000 people. In Britain the average district population is 120,000, and even that body can pass the blame for any service deficiency to central government.

Misery Literature

And while we're on the subject of larger-than-life caricatures: What about those nuns! The Magdalene Laundries closed down in Ireland in 1996 for any number of good reasons. Everybody ought to be glad to see the back of the whole enterprise. The 2002 film The Magdalene Sisters is pretty grim viewing by anybody's estimate.

Not everybody on the bandwagon, though, appears to be quite who they say they are. A subsequent 2005 book by Kathy O'Beirne entitled "Kathy's Story: A Childhood Hell Inside the Magdalene Laundries" (or "Don't Ever Tell", as it was marketed in the UK) has recently been decried as a work of fiction.

O'Beirne told of being tortured by her labourer father, experimented upon in a psychiatric hospital, and raped by no fewer than four priests and a policeman. Then there was her spell in a Magdalene laundry, one of Ireland's notorious Church-run homes for "fallen women", where, aged 14, she gave birth to a daughter.

Problem is that the story doesn't add up - the daughter doesn't exist - the sisters of the Magdalen Laundries were apparently very good at one thing at least - keeping records - and no records of Kathy O'Beirne can be found. Nobody at the laundries in those years can remember her.

Fiction is good. Misery fiction clearly occupies a place in the psyche of those who purchased one of the 400,000 copies of "Kathy's Story" which flew off the shelves. Their troubled lives seemed more manageable perhaps when compared to the life being described.

Or maybe it is just pornography under another guise.

The problem lies with the fact that real people are being implicated in these events.

...what makes the O'Beirne saga so troubling.....is that it fuels Ireland's obsession with clerical sex abuse, and the abuse-claim industry. O'Beirne herself accused Fr Fergal O'Connor, founder of the homeless hostel Sherrard House, of raping her in the 1970s. The investigation took a year, during which the 77-year-old University College Dublin professor was prevented from visiting his own workplace. Yet Fr O'Connor was virtually crippled by arthritis when the alleged crimes took place, unable even to shake hands because of the pain, according to a friend. The priest was exonerated two days before his death.

Charity workers and members of religious orders working in the 19th and early 20th century probably would have the right to demand that stories about their misdeeds be subject to a modicum of scrutiny. They are people, after all, and not merely monsters.