*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...

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...

Coming up for air...

Quite a lively last couple of weeks - Holy Week and Easter, of course, which is rather an intense time, especially the first year in new churches. Mary was getting to the end of her duties as a team leader in the census - lots of miles, forms, admin. And our new business venture, a small self-catering flat, had (has, as I write) our first guests come to stay.

All very intense, and an interesting counter-balance with each one drawing attention away from the others. I'm never one to completely disappear below the surface during Holy Week (too many years in the real, uncaring world to let myself be quite so self-indulgent, maybe?), but it was an interesting experience to multi-task so strongly.

Reflections of a single parent...

Mary has been abroad for a week now, with her mother. Today is the first anniversay of the death of John, her father, and it is very appropriate that she is with her mother in Jerusalem, where he died 12 months ago. It is hard to be far away when they are obviously in pain, but this is part of their process of coping with the uncopable.

Meanwhile, back in blighty, the Swifts are living as a single parent family. Mary did it enough times when I used to globe-trot for a living, but it's less usual for me. The rules all change: less stringent requirements on fruit and veg consumption, more flexibility on bedtimes (well, it is the October break), much higher likelihood that things will be forgotten about and have to be fixed later. The PE kit made it on the days it had to, but that's more to do with the children remembering it themselves. But it is hard, carrying the burden of the children & all their lives and activities (and relationships, parties, new wants) without someone to share it.

And the same period has had the first funeral to come in since I came to Scotland, as well as personal crisis for a new friend, not a church goer. Oh - and an old work colleague with a terminal diagnosis looking for a future funeral. Oh - and all the usual business of church, services, planning, (minor) conflict, anxieties.

I have had much discussion with single clergy friends about the pressures of life and ministry and having a partner. That partner can be a safety relief valve, a person who can share the strain. That's maybe a better way of being. But the downside is the pressure that sharing a relationship or a family with ministry brings. A single priest can be a committed (or as detached) as they wish to be - it's just about them, without school parent evenings or parallel careers.

We are called, all of us, to be what God would have us be. And we are called as we are: single, partnered, with or without family, psychologically wired as we are and become. The authentic ministry that we live and do is defined, in part, by this context. And when it all gets too much, and we break - is that when we fail to be authentic, we try and live up to too many other people's expectations?

Oh - and on the subject of sorting all this stuff out did I mention Frankie's new rabbit?

All roads lead to...

I must confess that the above image has been slightly Photoshopped for effect - it is 7 miles if you turn left and 8 if you turn right, but the gist of a signpost with no apparent distinguishing function was too hard to resist. Well, Bute is an island, and Kilchattan Bay is pretty much the bottom bit.

A good day today of getting to know people, scattered over a rather wide area of the Scottish countryside. Lives are filled wtih joy and pain, good experiences and bad experiences. We all look very hard for the signs of where we are supposed to go, what we are supposed to do. I would never be able to be Calvinist enough to accept that all is set, all the signposts point to our pre-determined Rothesay and the only question is how many miles and when we'll get there. But there is a little bit of me that feels that most signposts DO point to Rothesay, and as we make our freewilled choice to belong, believe and generally accept a life that God wishes for us, we have to make a pretty bad fist of it to accidentally take the road to Kilchattan Bay (which is the finger of the signpost that is pointing out of the picture - and which will now be dropped as a metaphor before the good residents of Kilchattan Bay decide that symbolism of damnation/etc./etc. is not appropriate for their beautiful village).

I went left, and was rewarded with amazing views of Arran, as well as reaching my chosen destination (which was, indeed, Rothesay).

Twa corbies? No, only one, but a significant one!

It can be quite unsettling, as one gets to know a new community and the awkward corners emerge. Not church related (although a fellow follower of the way here in Dunoon blogged about it as my first inkling of the issue)

The 'Jim Crow' rock on the shore at Kirn, just north of Dunoon, seems to be both a harmless and well known attraction (as 96% of local people apparently said in an online poll at the local paper) and a sinister call to a bygone age of racism and segregation, the 'Jim Crow' laws of racial segregation in the USA. 'This Fragile Tent's blog post on the subject gives plenty of context and background, and I don't think I have a lot to add to his insightful piece, but I can add a newcomer's perspective. When I drove past the rock on Thursday (four days after someone had greyed out the offensive racist paint), this is the sight one can now see.


As reported in the Dunoon Observer and Argyllshire Standard, the caricature (if that is what it is) has reappeared, just as it was before. The sense of local pride in a landmark, which is all that I had assumed it was until the blog and press coverage this week, has restored the image, over the KLF inspired grey.

How should a Christian respond? If it is rooted in the US history, it feels not too different to historical scars one can find everywhere. Black Boy Hill in Bristol, a city built on slaves, tobacco and such, is an example. Robertson's jam logos are another. But the rock has been like that since the early 1900s, long before US sailors, with their own history and context, were present in the Holy Loch (and we are now long after they've gone). There is another rock, a few miles down the A77 coast road on the other side of the water, down past Ayr, that has 'Jesus Died for You' painted on it, and has for several decades. That gets painted out and repainted on a fairly regular basis. One person's offensive statement...

It is part of the narrative of this place - and a slightly confusing one. I continue to explore the many narratives, inside and outside of the church buildings.

Impressions...

Impressions galore.

An indolent seal lolling on a rock on the beach at Innellan, gawping lazily at folk stopping to take his picture. Some more circumspect colleagues on rocks a little further offshore, silhouettes rather than photogenic tourist traps.

Deer sniffing around the trailers and bins. Toads sneaking into the porch while Jenny has her late-night hobble around the grounds before she settles to bed. A particularly puffed-up toad that I scooped up in a shoe and returned to the rain outside. I don't think two toads constitutes a plague, so the Mosaic plague-log for our time in Dunoon remains at midges (biting gnats, I would suggest) and rain (not quite full biblical grade hail, but not a bad substitute). The Kyles at Colintraive have yet to run red with blood, even if the northerly-ish wind on Sunday threatened the safe transit of Dunoon travellers to Rothesay!

More people to get to know! Lots of cups of tea and bits of cake. Lots of walks around Bishop's Glen to try and wear off the cups of tea and bits of cake.

A rather empty echo where a 'central diocese' would usually be, down south at any rate. It's summertime, we are in a vacancy and I have a feeling we're not in Kansas, Toto! Still, much time to get to know the people further afield.

Good impressions.

Good Friday thoughts...

Such a mixture of things at this point in Holy Week.

Lots of trying to pull things together, trying to work out if the services and activities are working for other people, if the visiting archdeacon and bishop will be happy with their visits, whether the congregations will be happy with their visits, what people will turn up that we haven't seen before, running off the service sheets, the children suddenly being on holiday, the funeral suddenly coming in over the Easter weekend, the other funeral going a little high maintenance.

In the middle of it all - a still, small space to reflect on the cross, on the death of the God-made-man. On the willing sacrifice - 'hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered' - an echo from the Maunday Thursday eucharist in Gloucester cathedral. Is it hard to find time to be a follower when leading a church? Not really - that feels too precious a place to take, a place that makes it all about 'me', not all about 'us'.

To keep Holy Week holy? I've enjoyed one or two blogposts about the difficulty of 'doing Holy Week' when all about us don't care that anything is different. The empty space of forlorn church buildings after the Maunday Thursday stripping, the sparse, minor key starkness of Good Friday worship. The deadness of Holy Saturday (or Easter Eve, or the Saturday of Holy Week - whatever urge you feel to call it!). That stays with me from childhood - Roman Catholic crocodiles through Dunblane, to and from the church, dusty streets, God being dead, for that little while.

It is Holy - even though I felt a little qualm at putting up the slightly cheesy banner (both text and yellow colour) after the Good Friday congregation had departed in silence - the banner inviting people to church on Easter Day - come and hunt your Easter Eggs! It is all muddled - life goes on. But surely it went on below the empty, bloodstained crosses? The disciples were empty and bereft - but not Jerusalem. The process goes around and around, every year, every two thousand years.