Blog free April

Nearly.

A very busy few weeks up here in the Wild West of Argyll.

The biggest thing to drop out of it all? The need for space for reflective practice. Stopping to think, trying to apply models and paradigms to what is going on, trying to prayerfully work out a way forward from this practice.

All feels rather essential.

Theological training is useful in trying to get us doing this. I rarely write it down. But it so, so badly needs to be done as part of clerical life as reflective practitioners.

I now find myself increasingly cast in roles where we have to crack on and get things done. How do we know they are the right thing to do? We don't. But we can try and minimise the risk that they are wrongs things to do if they are rooted in scripture and prayer, and a conscious, intentional process of experience, analysis, reflection then action.

Theological reflection, the reflective cycle, whatever you want to call it. It is essential in Christian ministry. Absolutely essential.

Holy Week stramash!

Palm Sunday yesterday, and the whirl that is Holy Week beckons again.  It never feels the same, and this one, as ever, has a different flavour.

A few days, maybe a couple of weeks, after Easter, we will leave the church building in Dunoon to allow contractors to carry out a massive conservation project (thanks largely to the Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic Scotland, and much fundraising effort).  Maybe four months out will take some planning, management and looking after everybody!  And in the background the pieces are falling into place to recruit and appoint a new priest as my immediate diocesan neighbour to the north: something that I am intimately involved in my capacity as the dean (still newly installed in those shiny wooden seats in the cathedrals). Add to which a whole host of medium to short term issues with worship teams, rotas, fabric repairs on the island, financial planning, stewardship campaigns, a provincial board: there is a real danger that Holy Week might be swamped in the busyness of it all.

So let's slow down, stop, and see what's what.

Dean Marion (a different sort of dean) in Acts and Omissions last week had a different scale of this, but I felt a distinct mutuality with her plight.  But a Facebook status update this morning from a friend in Gloucester helped:

"Lord, when all seems out of control, help me neither to lash out nor to cave in, but help me to look up to the One who seizes chaos and marvellously creates new life from it. Amen."

I clicked "like" to that one.

A blessed Holy Week to all!

Blogging over the years...

I took that rare look back at my old blog posts, over the past three years since I started blogging again, three years of Dancing with Midges.

I can't help but feel that my earlier posts seemed more interesting than my recent ones. Maybe it is because I am feel very busy now, so less time to reflect on what is happening. Maybe it's because now dimly remembered things I was doing three years ago (that outward bound training day in the Forest of Dean!) seem a bit like someone else's memories, someone else's stories.

My resolve having looked back? More theological reflection on the events unfolding around me, in this very public model of virtual journaling. Maybe a bit more often, too, although that remains a resolve from the beginning.

And do I see God in the words of the blog? In the things that have happened, the people I have met, the things that are unfolding around me, touched upon every week or so. Yes, God is there, along side me, along side us as we continue the dance...

Once upon a time...

1001 Arabian nights, survived by a fearful wife telling a fascinating and never-ending stream of fantastic stories to stave off the seemingly inevitable assassination that had befallen all her predecessors. This is the stuff of middle eastern legend, with the wiley Scheherazade keeping the wrathful king on tenterhooks, and the interwoven folk tales wrapped in this happily-ending frame form part of almost every culture's stock of tales.

Tomorrow I will have got through 1001 nights in Cowal and Bute, as a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church.  I discovered quite by accident that today is my 1000th day since I was licensed here.

Is there an inevitable fate that awaits the unwary in taking on a ministry such as this?

I fear that the fate that awaits is to become stale, no longer feeling a fire and excitement at what a Christian community is called to do.  Maybe that can be by the repetition of the annual cycle, or the blurring of years into each other.  Maybe paralysis because of fear of upsetting whatever applecart may be presented to be upset.  Maybe it all goes sour when a chosen direction splits or distorts the congregation's view of the community.  Maybe.

I am glad to report (and any readers in my charges will be glad to hear (at least I hope they will be glad to hear!)) that this fate seems nowhere near as the 1000 day mark rolls by.  The excitement at what is going on and what there is to do is just a great now as three years ago, when we were negotiating the details of my arrival in the charge.  The cycle of the years has a gentle variation and change that seems to make it richer, not stale.  And alongside our third-time-now pattern of the year, the gently changing people of the churches, the new vestry members, the newly appeared ideas and opportunities, all add to make things feels stable yet stimulating.  I hope and pray that the churches feel the same. I also hope and pray that we have some of this to share with those around us in our diocese and elsewhere.

The tale is never ending, the cliffhanger ending employed by Scheherazade just as applicable to exploration of the gospel and the form of community that we are being made into by that gospel.  And the cliffhangers will not come to an end.  The happy ending is always there, even when the walk is through the wilderness (which it sometimes must be).

And the 1001st night? What special ending for that? Well, I will be compering the third publess church quiz night (bring your own bottle, even in Lent) on Bute, in a rather gaudy waistcoat and with as good a line of wisecracks and oneliners that I can muster. Sister Scheherazade and I, working the audience to keep them engaged, interested and aware of our community: all for the gospel!

Lenten array

We have violet frontals etc. for Lent in both Dunoon and Rothesay churches. With smaller churches, these are it for both Advent and Lent. This is absolutely fine, quite right.

But I do love the sparseness of Lenten Array, the unbleached linen look of the plain, drab lack of colour. It can be glorified up - Durham cathedral's new frontals with gold crown of thorns et al http://durhambroderers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/dedication-of-lenten-array.html are beautiful but could rather lack a plain, rough, sackcloth look. That is what Lent feels like, to me at any rate.

This year the altar in Dunoon is bare for Lent - this gives a slight problem in that it is ornately carved, hidden below slightly old and faded frontals. To go from bare to white and gold on Easter Day (still far away) can risk feeling like a step in a subdued direction. But more how that's being solved this year later.

The empty, harsh, slightly unforgiving nature of Lent occupies the churches for the next 40 liturgical days. The themes of wilderness, repentance, sinfulness and forgiveness (and more) will be picked out.

The ash that was imposed on some foreheads a few days ago has been washed off. The foreheads that failed to get it because of driving snow and wind have had it washed off by that weather before we ever even got there. Quite Lenten in itself, a snowy, stormy start to the season, the sparse Ash Wednesday service sparser still by failing to take place on Bute and only just scraping in there in Cowal.

So Lent begins. A long, hard journey. But one that is good to spend in good company.

Where's the invasion?

January is coming and going with blurry speed.

Some of my colleagues in the Church of Scotland asked the above question when I said that we were installing canons on the Isle of Cumbrae in the Clyde this weekend.

The Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, Cumbrae, was packed for the occasion.  Given it is the smallest cathedral in the UK (maybe even wider) this is not TOO hard, but a wonderful occasion nonetheless. Goforchris caught the moment the bishop popped me into the dean's stall from her choir stall across the chancel. (photo from her Flickr photostream)

My colleague Nicki McNelly, Provost of Oban Cathedral, was also installed as a canon.  Bishop Kevin did the deeds, Bishop Idris, lately Primus and of Glasgow and Galloway preached. Here are Nicki and I (photo thanks to Provost Kelvin Holdsworth), smiling away:

Question: do things like this matter? A cathedral chapter, robing canons in copes, processing in and out of the place.  Does it make any difference?

Of course it does.  Many of the congregations of Cowal and Bute came for the day, and spent time in fellowship with each other, members & friends of the cathedral and other visitors.  Our diocese is small, our charges are relatively few.  It would be all too easy to feel sorry for ourselves and feel that we were without a future.

But on a day like Saturday Argyll and The Isles is as much a diocese as any English, American, Nigerian or any other part of an Anglican Province.  We install canons in our cathedrals and grasp the need for mission, purpose and direction.  We have a cathedral chapter and a wider college of clergy that spends time together, that worships, prays and works together.  We look for the signs of God's work in our context and try draw others into that relationship of love and grace.

Self confidence in a church is not to do with money, or numbers, or political power or any of these things.  It is living in a tradition that feeds, with a history that roots us, and a desire to proclaim the gospel again and again, as long as we have breath.

So put those copes on, light those candles, and let's get stuck in!

Commuting...

The is a great deal of driving in ministry in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Not motorway stuff like I used to gobble up in my former occupations, going round and round the M25 to try and achieve escape velocity. The commuting up here is a mix of single track and double (not dual) carriageway roads. They twist and turn, and offer a few elusive places to overtake that slow car or truck. The wind blows trees over them, the snow lies across the middle of them. Water pools from overflowing burns and splashes up as you pass through them. It's actually rather good fun to drive on such varied and interesting roads. And, of course, you can stop and look out of the windows as you go. Sometimes it catches your breath, sometimes you just smile. And every once in a while you have to stop (safely) and take a photograph. This does not do justice to the smoothness of the water or the richness of the sunset over the Lenach and down to Bute. But you have to try and catch a sense of the God-given beauty that surrounds these places!