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

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!

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?

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?”

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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!

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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."