Advent beginnings...

Today was our third Advent Sunday in Cowal and Bute - they seem to be passing with alarming rapidity!

The split of charges struck me strongly today.  Both Dunoon and Rothesay had their worship, one a sung eucharist, the other mattins (or morning prayer, not sure which was chosen).  One I led the worshippers, celebrated the eucharist, preached, shared fellowship and the pains and joys of the congegation.  The other was led by another member of the worship team, some miles away over the sea.  I have no idea who came, or what they sang, or what it felt like.  I know the gist of the sermon (I e-mailed some copy) but otherwise, it was unknown.

A helpful email came, saying that things had been OK. But otherwise, one half of my ministry has started a new year without me knowing much about it.

It is hard, to try and split yourself between communities, and to try as hard as possible to be fully present in whichever one one is in.  The careful use of language, titles, addresses and phone numbers seems important.  I greatly value the forbearance that both charges have to my absences, increasingly so now that I have wider responsibilities.  They imply that they don't notice. I think that's good.  But it is hard, when you would dearly love to fully belong to each community.

I wonder if the theological reflection from this is something about the nature of God incarnate (for which we now have our Advent wait.)  God, fully present and focused on every community and every individual in those communities.  Yet an infinite God with the scope to be present in every community, with every person. God can do it, with perfection.

But mere humans, even those trying their best, must muddle through as best as possible.

Tomorrow awaits, the second day of Advent, and a journey to try and be present with five communities elsewhere in our diocese, to help them with their future.

God be with us all.

*shouts* "Timbe-e-e-e-e-er!"

The forestry up above the reservoir near where we live is being harvested.  I guess it must be 25 or 30 years since the trees were planted, by the size of the trunks, so this very slow-growing cash crop has taken a generation to be ready to be felled.  I was walking the dog there the other day when I saw one of the logging machines (not quite what's in the photo above) and just stopped and watched.  The machine has an amazing head on its arm, which cuts the tree where it stands.  The jaws hold the trunk while it's stripped of bark and branches and cut into 10-ish foot long sections.  All in a few seconds, leaving a post-apocalyptic wasteland on the hillside.  The operation and the machine has a menacing, primeval sensation to it.  It was mesmerising and slightly scary  to watch this machine at work, picking 18 inch diameter trees as if they were blades of grass and processing them into cut logs in a few well-designed hydraulic strokes. It would have taken individual men, even with chainsaws, days to do what this machine can do in a just a few hours, driven by a man using his fingertips to drive the hydraulic devices.  

Reflecting on this, as I tore myself away to finish Molly's walk, humanity is unique in the way that we, with technology, control our environment.  This first hit me many years ago when I was becoming a ship designer, and I learned that the design of a vessel is dominated by the waves that hit it.  The waves, millions of them, will destroy the ship, eventually, as the steel cracks like an enormous paperclip.  The trick is to correctly design the life of the steel and scrap the ship before this happens - humanity wins by designing the technology correctly.  The same feels true of the logging machine: the trees grow and are harvested impressively by the somewhat menacing machine - humanity wins!  Trees and other plants will grow up in the harvested wasteland, but humans, by controlling the environment, have taken over this environment.

I guess there's a post about ABUSE of the environment here, but today I'm more interested in human creativity and determination.  No other species controls the environment to the extent that humanity does.  As a person of faith, looking at the divinity in this, humanity has been given this creativity and ability to adapt and control and go beyond natural limitations. We live in hostile parts of the world, and even in space. Is this the human echo of the divine creativity that Genesis attempts to describe?  Created in God's own image: is God the ultimate environmental engineer, devising schemes and systems that allow life to flourish and grow? Devising the life itself (and the Higgs-Boson particle that lets it all exist...)?  A post on intelligent design doesn't really interest me: proof of God is not something I seek.

But a sense of awe at a God who has equipped humanity with creativity, drive and the ability to harness, control and exist in the universe.  That sounds like something worth exploring...

Two years of the dance...

It's just been the second anniversary of starting ministry in Bute and Cowal.  Two years of the business of being a priest in a church community, trying to make sense of it all.

Things have changed for me, in leaving a curacy, and leaving the Church of England.  Things that really seemed to matter are held more lightly.  Things that didn't seem so interesting before are now critically important.  Boringly, I can't really say which are which, not in an open blog post at any rate!

And who knows where the next two years of the dance will take my family, my churches and I?  I suspect and intend that we will still be in Cowal and Bute, trying to make sense of it all.  But what will have changed, evolved this time?

The unexpected sherry and cake after the eucharist on Sunday on Bute was a lovely surprise.  There are still plenty of those in this life, I am delighted to report.  And God: God is there in all sorts of ways.  One has to remember to keep on looking, all the same...

Grouted...

The tiles in the sanctuary at Holy Trinity.  Why post a picture of them?

I spotted a conversation on the SEC Facebook-o-sphere about what colour carpets should be used in a sanctuary.  In one as damp as ours - transparent and non-existent is the only sensible option. I feel I'm too new to the SEC to launch in to jolly debates about gold/purple/blue (I have blue on Bute). But we have these tiles, slightly tired-looking as they are.

The lack of carpet means cold feet in the winter-time, even through soles of ones shoes.  It also means clicking and clacking as the servers walk about.  It means a ringing, sharp acoustic in this end of the church.
But that means that the voice of the priest, facing the east wall (our stone altar is rather firmly fixed there) is picked up and carried back to the congregation.  I believe I am easier to hear facing the wall than turning and speaking directly - the resonance of the tiles, the wall, the window, the head slightly angled (as I was trained) to ensure reflection of sound - it all seems to work. The fabric and space that we use for worship can resonate and send messages out beyond even the walls, into our communities!  That's being missionaries in the 21st century!

And the tiles themselves: what changes they have seen since the 1840s when they were put in place.  Changes to the church, and to the world outside!  Apparently the humble tiles also matter: I was telephoned not long after arrival, by an academic of the encaustic tile society (or something like that) to ensure that our significant Victorian encaustic tiles were still there.  Which they are.

So maybe it's worth posting a picture of some tiles every once in a while!

Lenten sand

Where is Lent going, speeding past, like dry sand through the clenched hand. Lots of life looks and feels like that - it runs away before you have the chance to grab it, and feel its grains and make sense of it all.

Approaching two years (at great speed) in my current place - and the sensations flit past. The good: people, worship, smiles, prayers, encounters, growth (even, if one dare say it in such a sensitive place as church). The not-so-good: anxieties about keeping it all together, trying to share it about, trying to keep oneself together.

Where is God in all this? In the sand, as it runs through our fingers? In the funny-sparkly-light that one charge took to Oban? In the teacup and candle the other took? In the folk who are joining in with the enterprise that is developing and growing here? Maybe even in the church...

I believe the answer is: All of the above, and in all sorts of other places too.

But, a bit like a discussion with a fellow British-Legionnaire today on his becoming numb and oblivious to the beautiful highland/island scenery: I have to make sure I remember to keep on looking out...

Walk on the wild side...

The fog rolled across the Clyde and wrapped itself around Cowal today: from a bright blue morning in Toward to a gorgeously foggy & sunny afternoon in Bishop's Glen. I was squeezing in a quick walk of the dog, grabbed my (very ancient) iPod for company as I walked and off I went.

The range of music on the iPod was rather random (both what it contains and how I chose to play it) - and I was buzzing with the business of the day: change of headteacher at Toward school, what to do with the cadets at my padre's hour later, the massive and complex list of actions to be shared out for our building restoration project. Buzz, buzz, buzz. It all goes on...

As the view above swept into sight, the iPod randomly chose 'At the foot of the cross...'

Where all can be laid down, and where it all makes sense.

Amen.

A moment of space

As I watch the winter sun bathing the houses across the Balgie Burn, visible this time of year through the naked lime trees, I feel the need to reflect. There is an inevitability of busyness, for me, about the business of ordained ministry. Things to do, people who need to be visited, tasks to be done about services, buildings and so forth. The large tonne bag of salt (not used so far this mild winter) winks reproachfully at me from the empty grit bins, the 'Building the Vision' folder hovering on the desk...

But I (as an activist) need to step back and reflect. I need to stop and pray. I need to make sure that I'm rooted in something more than a task list.

Last night, I was rushing off to do a house blessing (Eastern European annual custom, it turns out, which I think is a lovely thing to do again and again) and the car radio was only offering pretty awful or boring fare. I prodded the 'change source' button and a worship CD came on - Mary's commuting to Bute a lot now and must have popped it in for the radio black spots near Loch Striven.

It was a gentle, minor key, modern worship set. And it gently slowed me down, made me remember what this is supposed to be about.

But it's so important to have those reminders, those invitations to slow a little and smile, thank God for the buzz of it all, and reflect.

...and then crack on with it all, at full speed as ever!

This Christmas...

...will be my second one as the Episcopalian priest in Bute and Cowal (or Cowal and Bute depending on your perspective). It has been a full year - packed with more than I thought one could pack in.

The slight disappointment that there are no ferries to Bute on Christmas Day remains with me: I am unable to share the feast with my church-folk on the island. They now have a tradition of a carols and readings service on that day, which I am sure will be a wonderful time of worship. But I would like to be spending it with them. It was good to share the Christmas quiz with members and friends last week. It will be good to share worship with them tomorrow (St Thomas, tweaked by a day).

Christmas in Dunoon is falling into what seems to be usual pattern, but with some rather significant differences. We will be using a new thurible at midnight mass, and sadly the donor will not be able to swing it himself due to family commitments. But a new thurible will be a pleasure to use, as our prayers rise like incense... And the church in Dunoon is different to last Christmas.


There is the most enormous Christmas tree in the church - getting on for twenty feet high!

The east end windows have started to be treated to prevent damp damage. The chancel arch has been stripped of peeling paint and only leaks water when it's very rainy outside. The tower is still soggy, but we getting a better understanding of why. And all these fabric things are not weighing down the REAL church in Dunoon: the enthusiastic and positive people who make up the lively worshipping community at Holy Trinity.

Oh - and we got a lottery and Historic Scotland grant for nearly £250,000 to fix all that lot. That should help...

Skeletal trees

Winter has stripped the leaves from the lime trees that surround the house, up on this hill, above the West Bay.

We can see other houses, and the sea (a bit better) - it all feels a bit less green-wrapped - it can almost feel a little claustrophobic in summertime, especially when the wind through the lime trees dominates the senses.

Winter stripping away the leaves, the cushioning barrier. Advent (thinking about John the Baptist last week) stripping away an old way of being.

The metaphor of our spiritual life and the seasonal shifts, here in an alien (to our Lord) northern Europe.

Works for me.

The boats go dry...

The seasons here in Argyll are marked by many things. The rains gets warmer or colder, and even eventually goes white and falls as snow. The leaves appear as buds, and grow (obliterating the sea views) and whistle with the wind. Then they go brown and fall (this year twice, with storms!) and have to be blown from the drive. The holidaymakers arrive in larger and lesser numbers. Caledonain MacBrayne change their timetables - the last ferry from Bute is suddenly an hour sooner.

But one seasonal barometer that I am rather drawn to is the sailing boats. They are in the water for the good weather, the spring and summer, but they come out every year for the autumn and winter. I believe yacht insurance requires this - but the sense of making a boat safe ashore before the autumn gales arrive and start tearing out moorings is a very practical aspect of seasonal life. I'm not a yachtsman at all - I am no expert on such things. My canal boat stays in the water for several years at a time. But she's made of thick steel, pitch coated, on inland water away from storms.

As the moorings in Port Bannatyne empty, you know that winter is finally on its way. Warmer clothes are needed, the heating needs a service, salt needs to be stockpiled. But the boats are just dry, not gone. Their owners will do all the jobs that the winter holds - fixing, painting, varnishing, preparing. Because come the spring the sea will beckon again.

There are many seasonal heartbeats - but the boats coming out is one of the best!

Plug pulling

What happens at the hydro station when someone pulls the plug on Loch Tarsan!

One year on...

Blink - and two weeks has passed!

How does it feel to be at the actual anniversary of starting my ministry here?

I almost didn't notice that it had come, even having spotted it further away in May.

Ministry busyness, some extraordinary happenings, some awful things and wonderful people, and wonderful things too!

That's been the last year, too, now that I reflect upon it!

Spring!

It has been quite a distraction over the past few weeks, all the busyness, tweeting, buying a flat - all rather a lot. And while it was happening - spring arrived! The rhododendron in front of the rectory in Dunoon has burst into magenta bloom (briefly confused by some snow and ice) but now a spectacular display of vibrant colour (even matching the Lenten violet of the vestments). The little bunches of daffodils have emerged from the turf and and started to show their heads. The birdsong is so rich that you can almost feel it as you step outside the house. A few yards away, the church is even starting to dry out a little after the winter - the long weeks and months of chasing leaks and pushing contractors and trying to get things stable seem easier as it gets lighter and brighter. The late spring project? To start and sort the peeling paintwork inside the chancel - in a way that will last and make fabric sense. We have a plan, we have funding, we will (hopefully) soon have the necessary permissions. Over the Kyles, there is a similar sense of spring. The visitors have started to appear, and there is a shiny new board to greet them and tell them that we are here. Quotes are flowing in to solve the various problems around the buildings, people are in good spirits! I suppose the only thing to be done is to change the picture on this blog from a snowy one to a spring-like one!

Synod 2011 for Argyll & The Isles

Just returned from my first diocesan synod in Argyll and The Isles. My impressions?

As a new arrival in the diocese, I tried to approach with no strong expectations one way or another. The new bishop, only a few weeks into his episcopate, was always going to bring a fascinating twist to the sense of the synod, but as for the rest of us?

A pre-Synod day on building a vision was hard work, but creatively done. Did we hear any new hopes or fears? Probably not too many - the challenges we face as a widely distributed church in the 21st century are well known. The opportunities that ministry offers in a breath-takingly beautiful place, a thin place, a rooted place are wide and varied.

+Kevin managed to remember to constitute synod at the eucharist that evening, and the dining and dancing flowed on smoothly from there.

The business of synod was brisk - finance, the progression of canonical change, diocesan review of provincial initiatives. The financial story was improving very greatly (although, as at the local level, still a way to go!). Canonical change seemed largely uneventful and largely not relevant to this diocese: no licenced posts held by over seventy-year olds. The provincial gender audit was of interest: more women than men worship, a universal truth it seems. More men than women lead - a statistic that I believe time will even for the clerical side of the balance: less than 20 years of female priests, several hundred (in the modern era) of male!

A good debate on the rural report: there is tangible and relevant hope for ministry in the rural swathes of Scotland. But how to embrace this opportunity? We had plenty of tales of successful initiatives and positive encounters.

Elections, reports, all the usual business of a synod. But all done in good spirits and with a positive, optimistic sense.

The post-synod day - a clergy day - was very interesting too. The clergy do not have the answers on where the diocese will go, but are the ordained 'specialists' in some areas (oh, the debates one can have on that title!). The conclusions from this morning? There are opportunities for mission and growth, and we all need trained and formed to seize these opportunities. And we all need trained and formed to grow a vision that will lead us there.

Tired but feeling positive, we departed for our far flung yet beautiful corners of the world!

Twas Christmas eve...

The preparations are nearly there, just a few final tweaks and we should be ready to ease from December the 24th to December the 25th.

It has been interesting to reflect upon thinking about two churches and three congregations at this time. It can be all to easy to focus upon the church building that I see outside the windows every day, the one that is only 100 yards away.

The church that is nearly 30 miles away by road and sea has also been preparing, putting up trees, decorating the pew-ends, adjusting the (non-eucharistic) service for Christmas morning. I will be with them at St Paul's on Boxing/St Stephen's Day, once the Calmac ferries start up again after the Christmas break.

The church community that is 25 miles away by road are doing their own individual thing - next year will be a time of extra events and developed services, pastoral visiting and future planning. The snow had largely cut them off for quite a while. St Martin's will be in my prayers this Christmas.

But the church building next door? Servers (all four of them for midnight) are rehearsed, thurible technique brushed up, lighting sequence and subtleties thought about, gospel acclamations dug out and practised, hot beverage production offered and accepted. Decorations, the real tree, the crib, the stands - all have been beautifully arranged, and preserved in the deep freeze that is Holy Trinity. The frontals have been changed (which may change itself next year).

It's nearly ready to go.

Now something is still to be done. What is it again? I'm sure there is something...

Oh yes - a sermon might be appropriate!

...a warm welcome?

A snowy day in Cowal and Bute - the photograph was taken the Sunday before last (thanks Liz!) but nicely sums up the weather that has (finally) come to bite us in our little maritime mini-climate.

The children made it to school - just - and I dodged the speeding/skidding 4x4s that were being driven as if it were a dry summer's day. There is something about being wrapped in a couple of tons of car that makes people feel nice and safe. Nice and slowly, gentle braking and I got home. The drive was impossible - the car wouldn't even park at the foot of the hill - it just slid down with handbrake on from stationary.

A heavy afternoon clearing and treating it all, then a run for more salt for the morning, to keep it clear after the promised -9 degrees overnight. Plans are in disarray: a trip to Edinburgh later this week cancelled, time in Rothesay over the next two days in jeopardy, meetings having to be shifted and shuffled about.

But under all the snow, the church is still there - just as the pisky pubsign is still there. Congregation friends are looking out for each other, contact is being maintained with the frail ones, those short of food being supplied. Worship may be disrupted, but the body of Christ is still functioning well, in many tiny acts of kindness and concern.

Two perspectives

The evening of the day before the First Sunday of Advent is an 'official' title for this evening. Advent is almost upon us... How is the world preparing?

Above is (part) of the decoration on MV Saturn, the Calmac ferry that plies between Dunoon and Gourock whilst MV Jupiter, the summer boat, has its annual maintenance period.

There are two perspectives on this tableau.

1) One could be negative - it's only the 27th of November, not even into Advent. The infant Jesus and the wise men are already there (getting a bit particular now). The hoover, ramp and cleaning signs are an interesting complement to the nativity.

2) One could be positive - this is a visual retelling of the Christmas story in a secular, public place. It has been squeezed in where it could be all too easy to have nothing. It has been placed in a busy, living, untidy context where all is not neat and sterile and aesthetically pleasing. Someone has cared enough to do it.

How can we be anything but positive? The God-child has appeared in a modern stable - a place where respectable church-goers might tut a little, and people would not expect anything profound to occur. The God-child has appeared where and when not expected. The God-child has appeared where people can see him, respond to him, wonder about him.

I dread to think how many free child crossings between Dunoon and Gourock that Jesus will have had by the time Epiphany comes.

Practical progress...

Scaffolding has appeared in the tower at Holy Trinity Dunoon, the first stage of the process to replace the rotten steel beams that hold up the bell chamber and to allow safe access and repair to gutters, damp and internals.

It will be a big job, and the work on the beams has been over a year in coming, whilst the damp etc. has always been there.

It is exciting that things will start to move, and we are grateful for the grants, donations and fantastic fundraising that has allowed us to proceed. We still have a long way to go, but every journey starts with a first step (if that isn't too much of a cliché).

Oh - did I mention that the new sign at the bottom of the drive in Dunoon has appeared too? It's just a refresh of the old one, with the midweek service times, website and phone number added and a contemporary rather than gothic font. Not a big deal, but another forward step in church profile terms. The new sign for St Paul's in Rothesay is in the pipeline, along with some heating developments. It feels good to be progressing in these practical areas!

Scottish Spirituality

This week we celebrated St Margaret of Scotland's day (a home communion on the day, eucharist on Bute the day after, eucharist in Dunoon the day after that - rural dispersed ministry!)




This particular saint's day has set me thinking about the nature of Scottish spirituality, as opposed to British, celtic, western or other forms of spirituality. Trying to define spirituality per se is a risky business, as it becomes very, very hard to define boundaries between spiritual, cultural, contextual (if that is different to cultural), traditional etc. etc.


But it is an interesting subject, for an Anglican priest, trained in England, brought up in Scotland and now returned home to an episcopal church, pejoratively referred to as 'The English Church' by many. And it IS an 'English' church*, compared to the Church of Scotland or the Irish-rooted catholic church. The history of the episcopal church is wrapped together with English government and church politics. Our liturgy is recognisably Anglican, while peculiarly Scottish.


Where to go with all this? I have spotted some work by Ian Bradley at St Andrew's (I await a book or two via Amazon) and some activity in the Scottish Baptist College, which looks a wee bit like nationalistic spirituality rather than Scottish, but that's from a cursory glance. There are yards of books on celtic spirituality, Iona and so forth. Future posts about what all that stuff looks like. I also note with great interest the primus of my own denomination blogging about an interest in the Scottish Episcopal spirituality that preceded the English dominated Oxford movement (well, really Cambridge Camden Society driven) revival in Scotland. The Oxford movement was really about authority in the English/Irish state churches, Cambridge drove the liturgical changes that are associated with the revival. I digress.


But what about ordinary, everyday, SNP-government lead, supermarket-shopping, soap-opera-watching Scottish spirituality? The nation that produced Hume must have some defining sense of the spiritual. Following Hume's empirical lead, I can share my own observations from my short time back north of the border. St Margaret is a useful aide memoire.


She was eminently practical, working for the well-being of the subjects of her nation, establishing education, charitable support, even a ferry to let people get to the capital city, Dunfermline. She is regarded as a philanthropist in a time when royal power was absolute and often self-serving. But she was also prayerful and pious, founding churches and monasteries. She reformed the church of her time. She exemplified a balance of the practical and the pious, a balance of maintaining tradition and reforming for the good of all.


That seems a good starting point for a contemporary Scottish spirituality. It must be practically rooted, because as a nation we stand for little or no nonsense (with the possible exception of the design of the Scottish Parliament). Words without actions will not impress a Scot or an incomer hardy enough to settle here. We are also inclined to change that which needs changing - hence why Scots led most of the technological and philosophical innovations that created the modern world (challenge that!). But we are also a people who can connect to God in a profound and deep way, finding divinity in the beauty of the landscape, the wonder of natural life, the excitement of the arts, the sacramental encounter of God in everyday things. Like bread and wine.


I'll leave it there - and I'm sure people of other ethnic/national roots might argue that the above applies to their own characteristics. To be honest, the real search here may be to discern what it is to be Scottish in the first place.

*I am ever conscious of the very large proportion of folk from south of the border that form part of our congregations, as well as the 18th century settlements with the English establishment that allowed this Scottish protestant church to be free. As well as the English driven worship innovation in the 19th century. And so on. Added 23 Nov 2010.

That's what freeing ports are for...

The weather is getting more exciting now that the autumn equinox is past and winter is approaching. Calmac ferries were off for most of yesterday, but the Western Ferries kept going through the south-westerlies.

The ferries go backwards (from the cars' perspective) while they head into the waves, then spin around half-way across the Clyde to go with the waves up to Hunters' Quay and in.

It was even rather exciting getting on and off the ferry. It was a very high tide, with the waves rolling across the front in Dunoon, and the boats and pontoons on and off the ferry were shifting a great deal as you drove on and off. Front wheels ashore and aft wheels aboard was very interesting for the moment it happened. It makes it all seem much less routine than usual! Between that and a black-icy commute to Bute earlier this week, this part of Scotland has some excitement to normal living that one doesn't get down south or in the big city.

And the freeing ports (the little holes in the gunwhales and strakes on the ferries) nicely let the Clyde back out of the ship to where it belongs. Glad to see they still work.