Family Business

Been all rather "familial" this weekend.  We were off to see the mother in law to deliver birthday pressies, then popped in to see my cousin and his family where we arranged to meet up fish and chips next week.  Today it was Church with chocolate cake so they could share in the "Wedding experience" (it was the same sponge recipe by the same chef but with a different icing due to herself being pressed for time) and  a trip to the art gallery to mooch over Picasso's.  Next days off will be spent in a slumped heap snoring methinks!

Reading and murder

One of the joys of commuting is that you get more time to read.  Recently I've filled the time with some detective stories.  Anthony Horowitz's "The House of Silk" (a new Sherlock Holmes novel) is quite good.  Of course, the literary style isn't quite Conan Doyle but it is pretty faithful to the ethos and the spirit of the originals.  And I've also been flipping through a little freebie from the points on my Waterstone's card which has proved to be rather good.  James Runcie's "Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death".  A clerical detective is a rare thing these days and great fun for those of us who enjoy the clerical world.  Shades of the Anglican Father Brown are there but I am slightly aware of the fact that he is obviously modelled in part on the author's father the late Archbishop Robert Runcie (Military Cross with the Scots Guards, Cambridge setting etc).  Nonetheless, if you enjoy Marple on a Sunday evening, this will be well to your taste.

Pulpits!

 

Recently, I've been doing a bit of preaching.  On the Saturday in Assumption tide I popped up at the Stow Pilgrimage and wittered on about the BVM to a small gathering in Stow Parish Church which, although Presbyterian, rejoices in the dedication "St Mary of Wedale".  I do find C of S architectural ordering a pest liturgically speaking, as everything focuses on the pulpit and the altar is almost an afterthought.  My next outing is on Saturday when I am due to preach at the annual Festival of the Scottish Guild of Servers in St Peter's Lutton Place in Edinburgh, where the pulpit is rather splendid but made of marble and very chilly on the preachers hands if you lean on it for effect or emphasis.  This I learnt many moons ago when doing a student placement there from Theological College (the scence of my only ever encounter with Choral mattins with the Athanasian Creed recited on Trinity Sunday!!!).  Then it's a normal Sunday sermon in Spikey Mike's the day after.

I enjoy preaching and always have. I also often enjoy hearing stimulating sermons.  But sometimes it is an effort to find something elevating or even interesting to say.  I despise bland platitudes from the pulpit but sometimes that's what you get. Even from me (mea culpa!).   Earnest and heartfelt, but basically lightweight.  It often doesn't nourish me. Equally, too learned a discourse makes me recall the great sermon critique I encountered when a rookie curate in Glasgow: "And whit did that hae tae dae wi' the price o' Spam in Govan, Son?"  Now I sympathise with the preacher who has to perform every week to the same gathering of familiar faces, but I also know from experience it's easier to pitch your stuff at a group you know.  Guest preaching is actually trickier.  So prayer for us preacher now and at thour of our dearth!

Embra Festival

Time off in August as ever means hitting a wee bit of the Festival.  So far we've seen Jo Caulfield (good), a comic play on Politics by the title of "Coalition" (expect to see Phil Jupitus & Co in the West End in the near future at £30 a ticket rather than for just over a Tenner!), a one man show about George Formby (good fun) and "Allo, Allo" (joy for us oldies).  I do enjoy wandering the streets of Embra and spotting wandering celebs - spotted a Proclaimer near the Meadows this year, sat in Cafe nero at the next table to Simon Callow a year or two back.  Festival time is actually a time of year I enjoy a lot.

Motes and Beams

The new RC Archbishop of Weegiedom, Dr Tagliatelle, has managed to get himself in much hot water prior to his enthronement.  First, the Grub Street hacks of the West dug out a video of him at a Conference in the august setting  of CS Lewis's old Oxford college where he suggests (albeit with enough hedges to make you think he was a Sussex farmer) that a fairly recently departed Labour MP who was a former RC priest and openly gay had somehow had his lifespan shortened by his lifestyle. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/archbishop-condemned-for-remarks-about-gay-mp.18248404  The fact that the gallstones and pancreatitis that actually carried off the said MP are not normally cited as a "gay plague" may lead one to suspect the said prelate is talking through an orifice not normally linked to the vocal chords.  Then they ran a stinker on a former colleague of his - indeed his former deputy and successor at the Pontifical Scots College in Rome, who had been disciplined for getting drunk and making a pass at another bloke. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/how-the-catholic-church-whitewashed-priests-homosexual-advances.18276120

This litany of foot-in-mouth may suggest that the it's the liberal "meeja" out to get the Church.  Or it may suggest that the media is targeting public institutional hypocrisy in the RC Church in Scotland.  either way, it's a startlingly inept performance from someone who has be the Scottish RC "Media Bishop" for the past 6 years.  I have much sympathy for the rebuked cleric whose lapse of judgement fuelled by alcohol has been put in to the public domain well after he doubtless hoped it was water under the bridge.  If he took the pastoral counselling offered and worked on his issues with drink and sexuality successfully, then my sympathies are all the stronger.  Occasionally one does think that the Bishops of all the Churches might reflect rather more on Matthew 7:3 before opening their traps.