Thought for the Day

Fields of barley are now being cut - with combine harvesters out in the fields late into the evening. The wet summer created sodden fields but, with the tops of the Beech trees starting to change colour, we suddenly have reasonable weather.

Climbing the crest of the hill towards Perth, recently, I noticed all the white fields in the distance. Lots of people have taken a calculated risk and planted barley. They may find their crop fed into distilleries and breweries for top dollar or…. happy farm animals may end up chowing-down on top grade barley sold at bargain prices because there's too much of it around.

Good skills and livelihoods are at risk.

We're moving into Autumn now, with yellows and ochre tones in the ascendant. Plant life is mature – heavy headed, rich and filled with promise. Other generations regarded this time as the crowning glory of the year – not merely the harbinger of winter.

For Episcopal clergy in the Diocese of Edinburgh, November brings our annual Conference in Pitlochry - the forest there in stunning Autumn array. Many of us are in our 50's. We were trained by clergy who were around at the end of the 2nd World War who were themselves trained by the generation that saw the men going off to the 1st.

Quite a chain of experience.

We arrive with our little suitcases and mixed success in our congregations – some "gathering in" growing numbers on Sunday mornings – some in churches where growth has been a challenge. Our skills aren't always valued or understood in the way we might hope –the retelling of Sacred Stories and the proclaiming of hope based on events which took place long ago. Prayer beside hospital beds, school assemblies, timely conversations in village precincts.

What would our forebears have to say?

They'd probably take issue with how we do things.

But they would remind us, at the same time that, like the farmer, we are not completely in charge of how things work out.

We ply our trade in hope and faith and not in complete certainty.

Thought for the Day

One of my parishioners showed up for Mass yesterday in his brand new Morris Minor. Brand new, that is, to him. A funny little car - he’s obviously quite taken with it.

His two children seated in the back as they turned into Chapel Brae had what could best be described as a ‘quizzical’ expression on their faces – proud to be riding in Dad’s new car but worried their school chums might catch a glimpse of them.

This next few weeks marks the 40th anniversary of the break-up of the Beatles – Paul McCartney making plans for the future but John Lennon wanting out. George Harrison salvaging some of his own songs for his first solo album – one of them with a chorus line cribbed from the Buddha - “All things must pass – all things must pass away”

There are certain songs, smells and places – stemming from the experience of particular decades - when I’m surrounded by them, for an instant, I am 21 years old again. Young, slim and quick-tongued, although a bit stupid and shallow. I remember the first bit but not the second.

Nostalgia has its highest moment in an appreciation of what is good and what, in its age, was needed to hit the nail on the head – the utility of the thing, the integrity of the idea and its ability to carry people along with it.

Once Eddie had parked his Morris Minor in the lane perhaps with a large stone under its back tyre to keep it from rolling down the hill we gathered together, members of a village church, young and old, optimists and cynics, for the baptism of a baby girl wearing an old family christening dress.

The traffic rumbled down the A702 and the windows in the church rattled.

If you’d been with us, yesterday, you’d have heard ancient words and prayers lifting up a life which was young and newly formed. We recited traditional promises and invoked the Spirit of God over the water – believing, as we do - that on such old foundations God brings forth the new and the unexpected.

Thought for the Day

Children are trudging down the lane this week in new school trousers - with back-to-school faces on - at five minutes after eight. Churches are planning to restart Sunday School this weekend, get their choirs back on a practise schedule and publicise their Fall programmes.

You don’t always get a second chance at these things.

You start with a bang or you start with a whimper.

This year we are hoping to break some eggs, stir the pot and open the doors to the possibility of grace, wonder and progress. It’s going to be different this year.

A youngish deacon in the Scottish Episcopal Church is being ordained a priest this Saturday here in Edinburgh.

There he is – another generation waiting for the bell – starting out with great hopes and ambitions. This time it’ll be different

Now listen up: I don’t care if you push that same button for the tenth time. I don’t care. You’re doing what you need to do. In our case, at Church, when there are a hundred on a Sunday or fifty or even when it’s just two or three of us gathered in the Lord’s name - He promised to be in the midst of us even then.

And I don’t care if it’s the tenth time you’ve tried to get a conversation going with your husband or wife about a problem you’ve been avoiding – or whether you’ve already tried to reorient your life out of its negative spiral a dozen times without much success or that you’ve been to detox twice and lapsed twice. It doesn’t matter. The fact that you’re willing to do it again is evidence that the spark of life is still in you – and the possibility of success is no farther away

It’s part of the nature of life, when you look at it through a microscope. Even more so the nature of faith in people such as we are, listening to our radios this morning - we move – we get up again when we’re supposed to stay down.

It’s what we do. It’s who we are. We start again.

Thought for the Day

It’s ‘up for grabs’ whether we are 'on the road to recovery' or not. The Chancellor thinks we’re on the right path but news of Scottish job losses makes us wonder whether this rising tide will lift all boats – or not.

Clearly there is some debate.

One of the questions asked by individuals who have suffered a loss - the loss of a job, or a relationship or even the loss through death of a friend or a spouse is 'when will I get better? ' And the only really truthful answer is 'quite possibly never' - if you mean ‘when can I turn the clock back to where it was before’........


.......read the whole thing HERE.

Good Audio Alert

Bishop Alan makes reference to a repeat broadcast of a Radio 4 programme on the word Hallelujah. It's available for the next six days HERE. I don't think BBC iPlayer is accessible outside of the UK and I can't immediately see a way of downloading it as a podcast (correct me if I'm wrong). Even for a fan, I found it spent a little too long talking with and about Leonard Cohen but it ends with a very pretty piece of music at the end composed by Jocelyn Pook who is the programme's presenter as well.

The second bit - tho' not exactly seasonal (it's an Advent reflection) appears on the Clifton Diocese website (RC). It represents only one of the audio presentations which have won numerous awards - in this case the Sony Radio Award.

I was a participant in the Churches Media Conference down in Derbyshire just prior to our General Synod in Scotland and had occasion to attend one of the Fringe Workshops led by the podcasts creator, Mary Colwell. The audio is available HERE.

The Scottish Bishops at the opening Eucharist of this year's General Synod

Thought for the Day

The only time I was called a baboon was when I was 14 years old and carrying on loudly with a group of friends in the street. Evidently we disturbed somebody who opened her window and yelled the insult from the safety of an upstairs room.

Baboons get bad press. They are loud. They have shocking blue backsides. But, according to a news report yesterday, baboons who live in such raucous societies live longer and have healthier offspring than those who pass their years in relative isolation. Their community life – though loud and fractious – does them no harm.......

.........Read the whole thing HERE.