The boys go to Wembley...

They came in hope ... (after Grandpa queued for 7 hours to get the tickets...)

They saw the match...


They conquered Bristol City 1:0... (from left to right... The husband, no1 son and no 2 uncle rejoice...)

This was the day that was...

I haven’t blogged about the General Assembly yet... so here goes!

It was my first time at a General Assembly and I suppose my attending for just one day wasn’t really long enough to form an opinion... well not a well informed one anyway!

However, I am fortunate that my probation supervisor is a former Moderator of the General Assembly. He and his wife met me at the front steps and arranged for me to sit with them in the ‘Mod’s Gallery’. They gave me lots of background information about who was/is who and what was/is what... without them I would have been totally at sea!!

So from my day (which was Monday 19 May) as a novice observer, the highlights were:

The communion service...

I defy anyone not to have been moved by the wonderful singing of “Ye Gates”. It was just amazing to hear all the strong male voices. In the average parish church the men are generally outnumbered by the women and don’t tend to sing out with confidence, so their ‘line’ is usually almost inaudible... not so at the General Assembly.

I am not one for big formal communion services... and as a sweeping generalisation (in my very limited experience of the CoS) they can be quite joyless affairs. But this one was something else altogether... flawlessly executed, and with common cups... It was moving in its magnificence, the drawing together of this diverse community of people into the one body sealed in the body and blood of Christ.

The Report of the Special Commission on Structure and Change...

This took up most of the day (apart from a break for lunch, and an Order of the Day at 2pm when retiring ministers/staff members and newly ordained ministers/new staff members were introduced to the Moderator) relegating Ministries Council to an evening (post tea time) slot... This was bit disappointing for me as I had hoped to hear some of this report, but I had to head for home instead...

The Special Commission was interesting though and drew much debate from the floor. .. There were motions and counter motions and amendments... points of order and votes, including two which were too close to call so had to be done electronically.

The main issues were to do with presbytery reform, allocation income and how it is collected from local congregations, and the very 'sacred cow' of territorial ministry...

Despite many interventions from the floor of the Assembly, all the suggestions of the Special Commission were progressed to the next stage (largely unaltered)... with the potential to change the way the church is structured and financed ... the aim being to empower the local church and to reduce its reliance on the central agencies... I have a feeling we have been here before, but maybe this time... I am ever the optimist!

Socialising...

Finally, this being a “three-point” reflection (I have learned something in all these years of training for ministry!!) there was the social aspect. It was great to catch up with people that I hadn’t seen for ages, particularly friends from University who are now ordained.

After the Special Commission had finished reporting, we headed for the pub and sat for a while in the Edinburgh sunshine chatting about life and ministry...then on to a cafe for tea and cake! Those of us who weren’t commissioners decided that enough was enough at this point and headed for home, while the weary commissioners representing the Ministries Council and those flushed with "my first Assembly" enthusiasm trudged back into the heat of the Assembly Hall for a long evening debating tenure and emerging ministries, among other things...

All in all I enjoyed my day thoroughly (I know, I really don’t get out enough) and it was good to see the workings of the Assembly at first hand... I eventually reached home about 2130...14.5 hours after I had left... I’m not used to working quite such a long day you understand!!

Sacred things? A rant for Sunday...

A quotation often attributed to British author G. K. Chesterton says "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing - they'll believe in anything." So other things become "sacred."

It is very obvious to me (living in the West in the 21st century) that we hold this life (our three score years and ten or even twenty... and preferably thirty) as sacred above all else.

On the surface that seems reasonable, we should cherish life, we should protect it... it is a wonderful gift. But this life has become everything... As faith in God diminishes our desire to cling on to this life (at all costs) increases... because we no longer have anything to hope for beyond this earthly realm.

This life is all there is...so we want it to be risk free...we want to live a long healthy fulfilling life... we do not want to die before 'our time' (if we do then someone must be to blame).

We want to be happy, no matter how selfish it makes us... We want to postpone the aging process...to be one of the beautiful people for as long as possible... and we are prepared to pay for the privilege.

The evidence of this communal narcissism is all around us... just browse the channels on TV... 100s of makeover shows, diet doctors, clothes programmes, 'reality' shows... Open any magazine for men or women and you will be told what to eat and drink, what you should be wearing, how you should be dating ... what kinds of surgery you can have to achieve your desired looks.

Our newspapers devote more column inches to the looks, exploits and social lives of “celebrities” ...and how we can emulate them (or not)... than to actual news! The 'sacred' in the 21st century is the cult of celebrity... everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame no matter who gets hurt or trampled in the process. We build people up one day and we knock them down the next. How did we become this shallow?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against happiness or taking care of yourself... but we spend too much time and money worrying about ‘the body’ at the expense of ‘the soul’. We don’t have much time in this world, so why waste it on things which don’t really matter... which don’t make a difference, not in the bigger picture.

We have become small people, living in a small world... we don’t really see or care about the bigger picture. Perhaps it’s just too scary or overwhelming to contemplate the big things, the eternal things... now that we have turned our backs on God.

Yet we struggle to make sense of this life without God... so we have reduced it to meaningless existence filled with sound and fury and clutter to block out the awkward silence left by the absence of the sacred ...

Listening for the silence...

But the silence in the mind
is when we live best, within
listening distance of the silence
we call God. This is the deep
calling to deep of the psalm-
writer, the bottomless ocean
we launch the armada of
our thoughts on, never arriving.

It is a presence, then,
whose margins are our margins;
that calls us out over our
own fathoms. What to do
but draw a little nearer to
such ubiquity by remaining still?

Back to RS Thomas… I haven’t posted any of his poems for a while, but I came across this one posted on another blog .

The imagery in this poem is wonderful … I love the paradox…being in listening distance of silence, and the echoes of Psalm 42: 7

"Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me". (NIV)

which I have blogged about before.

The depths of the mystery of God, calling silently to the eternity set within the depths of humanity (Ecclesiastes 3: 11) demanding a response.

The depths of God call us out of our comfort zones, beyond the parameters we thought we had set for ourselves… We travel with God, we move mountains, cross oceans… and we do all this by remaining still... by acknowledging that in this life we will barely break the surface of the deep...

Could be…

I came across this story by Robert Fulghum earlier and thought I would post it…

There is something about it that I really like… the idea of possibilities. So much of living depends on possibilities… of being aware of them, and being prepared to believe in them and to act upon them…

Life is much poorer if we only deal in certainties, particularly in matters of faith…
……………………………………………………………………………………

There is in Seattle a repository of the city’s past called the Museum of History and Industry… a small institution… more often visited by school children on field trips than tourists on vacation. It is also a standard stop on nursing home bus tours…

A senior’s outing was underway as I arrived. Accompanied by attendants, the elderly and disabled - some in their wheelchairs - some using walkers or canes - were moving slowly up the entrance ramp ahead of me. One of their group, a skinny, spry old man still independently mobile, walked well ahead of his peers and into the museum with focused purpose.

Inside the museum, I carefully worked my way through the exhibits and on up the stairs into a second floor gallery. One wall was covered with a photo-mural: The Pioneer Square area of downtown Seattle in 1908. Brick buildings, street cars, horse-drawn vehicles, early automobiles, and pedestrians in the attire of the time. Because of the enlargement process, the soft-edged grey-and-black-and- white image seemed more dream-like than photographic - the faded essence of a moment in time long past.

The only other person in the room was that old man I had seen going into the museum ahead of his group. He was standing close to the photo-mural, closely examining one corner of it. Sensing my presence, he turned to me, and motioned for me to join him.

“Come look” , he said, “My mother and father lived in Pioneer Square when I was born. Next Sunday I will be one hundred years old. I was there in 1908. Look here. See the man and the woman pushing the little boy in the carriage?”

I looked. The couple were indeed there. Holding hands. Pushing a pram. And there was a baby in the carriage. A boy? Well . . . hard to tell.

“My father dressed just like that young man. I’ve seen other pictures. And my mother dressed just like that young woman. Seen the pictures. That baby there is me. Right there. One hundred years ago. What do you think?”

“Could be,” I said.

The old man bent over, and, eyes inches away, he stared hard at the image. Standing back, he looked at the baby again, and turned to me.

“Could be - is good enough,” he said.

And smiling, he walked spryly away, back down the stairs to join his group.

“Happy birthday,” I thought. “May the possibilities be with you always.”

And then I, too, walked spryly away, down the stairs, and on out into the warm spring sunlight of a late afternoon in May 2008, repeating the mantra for the day:

“Could be - is good enough.”

May the possibilities be with me. Always.

(Photo: Flight into Fog by Jonny Baker )

Blurred vision...

I have been thinking lately about friendship… about the journey towards knowing and being known.

This is all part of my current introspective navel gazing state of mind (see blog posts passim) and because I have been revisiting my journey into ministry and (inevitably) some of the relationships (one in particular, that I have blogged about many times) which were lost along the way…

Pilgrim muses from time to time on how, as individuals, we exist partly in light and partly in shadow… I like this image as it describes very well the reality of human relationships… We reveal part of ourselves to others, to a greater or lesser extent depending upon the intimacy of the relationship, but no matter how intimate we are with another person, part of who we are will always remain in shadow, hidden from sight... a bit blurry to say the least!!

Human beings are solitary creatures, we were made this way… But we were also made for intimacy with God and with one another… one of the great paradoxes of the human condition!!

In good relationships masks will gradually be stripped away as we reveal more and more of ourselves to the other person… So what do we talk about with our friends? Just the trivia? Or do we venture beyond trivia sometimes… to the big questions, the genuine feelings, the sharing of hopes and dreams, hurts and disappointments?

That said… I have learned not to rush into friendship… to let friendship be slow burning… In my experience the friendships that have taken time to get beyond the superficial have turned out to be the most precious of all. Good relationships are worth working towards… they are worth the wait. The journey into the truth about ourselves must happen gradually… and the truth must be shared carefully.

I have also learned that the more I know God, the more I know and understand about myself … because my life is hidden in God… He alone knows everything there is to know about me, yet he loves me still… This is the ultimate in security, there is someone who knows me, much better than I know myself … in him there is acceptance, forgiveness, healing ... His perfect love drives out all fear…

Friends = Vision

Not surprisingly I have been thinking about Ministry…about life beyond probation. This is actually a good thing as, up until about a week ago, I had been burying my head in the sand, partly because I have already decided that for family reasons I will not move very far for my first charge… And so I had been telling myself that I shouldn’t think too much about ordination (and beyond) as it will hinge (in the short term anyway) on what is vacant within commuting distance of the secondary school where my three children go.

Fortunately though I have friends who are wiser than me… and who have pointed out some of the flaws in my approach…

One friend in particular (also a probationer) has challenged me to take some time out for reflection, to make sure that I am clear about what I have to offer, about my gifts and skills… my strengths and weaknesses…

We had coffee together last week (sitting in the Glasgow sunshine) and we talked about our thoughts and feelings at this point in time...and about our respective futures… our hopes and fears.. our disappointments… and the decisions we have to make in the days and weeks to come.

We also shared a little of our respective 'dreams' of how we would like to minister… if we could choose our ideal ‘charge’...

This conversation was very valuable for me as now I am thinking much more clearly about the future… There is a long way still to go, but I have something I didn’t have before… I have the beginnings of my vision for ministry.

But I am a realist, probably too much of a realist (as I drift over into regular cynicism) yet I believe that it is right to aim high … to have vision… because “where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18) .. vanishing into the black hole of creeping secularisation…

So watch this space… you never know, some real thoughts may emerge in the weeks to come, amid the usual waffle… Stranger things have happened!!

(Photo: “Ascent” taken in Edinburgh by Jonny Baker )

Seize the day...

I am a bit hesitant to post a sermon before I have actually preached it... but I will make an exception for this one as it is a sermon for Christian Aid Week, and I finished it this afternoon.

I will preach it on Sunday... I couldn't preach it last Sunday as my placement church was taking part in a joint service with other churches in Kilmarnock to celebrate Pentecost...

But as I am leading the services and preaching on two consecutive weeks, I can play fast and loose with the Church Year, and so I have postponed Trinity Sunday for a week... Oooooo the power!!

Anyway, enough of my megalomania... here's the sermon. If you hate it, please don't tell me as I haven't got time to write another service...

................................................................................................................................................................

Christian Aid believe in ‘Life before death’ … that’s their strap line, and so every year during Christian Aid week they set out to challenge us afresh… as individuals and as a church… to give our time, our money and our voice to Christian Aid.

And what we give to Christian Aid will make a difference... We will help in the fight against poverty, suffering and injustice. We will change lives for the better in many different parts of the world.

Christian Aid Week is important… it’s a time when we are challenged…when we are called to action…it’s kairos time…

Let me explain that just a little bit – kairos is one of two words found in the Greek language for time. The other is kronos. We are much more familiar with kronos – kronos is ordered time – time marked by the ticking of the clock. But kairos is something very different. Kairos is not humanly ordered time. Kairos is God’s time… a moment of grace and opportunity, a favourable time in which God issues a challenge to decisive action!

The best known Bible verses for this kind of time are found in Ecclesiastes 3 – you know the ones

“There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest…a time to be quiet and a time to speak up”…and so on

We still talk about this sort of kairos time today, for example, when we talk about being in the right place at the right time. And we have probably all contemplated the ‘right time’… the right time to get married, to have children, to seek a new job or to move to a new house or even a new country…

We still ponder that age old question – does time make the man or woman… or does the man or woman make the time? And we think about some of the great and diverse people who lived at the right place at the right time in history – people like William Wilberforce, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King… we will all have our own heroes from history.

People who make their mark on time… who live fulfilled lives in time… these people live in kairos time. Some how they know, they sense that it is the right season, the opportune moment and they seize the day, they make their mark on history.

It was a kairos moment for the disciples in our Gospel reading when Jesus gave them their great commission… to go to all people every, to share the good news and to make disciples.

And in our Old Testament reading we heard part of the story of Esther - a woman who made such a mark on Jewish history, that she is one of only two women to have a book named after her (the other is Ruth).

Esther’s story tells of an orphaned Jewish girl who in a few short years became a queen of amazing courage. Esther was just one person but she held the lives of thousands of innocent men, women and children in her hands. Due to a dreadful injustice her people were living under the sentence of death. What could she do…one woman with the whole power of the state machine ranged against her!

But Esther had the perfect opportunity to make a difference. She had access to the king – her husband – the person with the ultimate power. Her people were about to be brutally slaughtered and Esther held the key to their salvation. Her time to speak out had come. Her kairos moment had arrived.

"Perhaps", Mordecai says to Esther, "perhaps you were brought into a royal position for such a time as this?"

For Esther it was a moment of awesome responsibility and weighty moral pressure. What should she do? She alone could save her people from a terrible fate. But it meant putting her own life on the line first – for to enter into the presence of the king without his personal invitation meant death… unless the king was in the mood to spare you! When we read the rest of the story we discover that Esther was indeed spared and that she went on to right all the wrongs being done to her people.

I think there are some very interesting parallels between Esther’s situation and our own as people living in the affluent West in 2008. Like Esther we are faced with great injustices which cause untold human suffering and unnecessary death. Organisations like Christian Aid help to remind us that the global injustice of poverty takes a heavy toll every minute of every day.

Christian Aid works tirelessly for the poor, the hungry and the marginalised all year round. But once a year during Christian Aid Week they challenge us about our responsibilities and we are made to think about our unique opportunities… the opportunities we have in our time to change the world.

Firstly… and most obviously… we can give of our money, but that’s not all we can do.

We also live in a democracy, yet we often take this privilege for granted, or perhaps we have become cynical? (It’s hard not to when the media feed us a regular diet of bad news stories about our political masters!) Or worse than cynical… maybe we have got complacent? Yet living in a democracy gives us countless opportunities to make our voices heard… And we should use these opportunities.

We can put pen to paper, we can fill in the Christian Aid post cards. We can write to, or even email our MP or MSP.

And, if we want to, we can march… Remember the Make Poverty History March during the G8 Summit in Gleneagles a few years back? Perhaps you were in Edinburgh that day? Yes we can march and we can demonstrate freely in many different ways on behalf of those who have no voice. [These last weeks we have been reminded of the silent suffering of the Burmese people, they don’t have the political freedoms we enjoy… and at the moment they are dying in their thousands…needlessly…]

But the most important thing we can do is to pray. We all have the power of prayer. Whoever we are, however young or old, each of us has the ear of a king… But not just any king – we have the ear of the king above all kings. We are the children of God, so like Esther we have a royal position. We are children of the king of kings and the lord of lords.

Esther entered into the presence of her king in fear and trembling. But we are able to enter directly into the presence of our God without fear. We can draw close to him. We can bring all our requests to him with confidence. We can bring to him the injustices which need to be tackled; we can bring to him the rules of world trade and the chains of debt which strangle the poorest countries.

We can bring him the people who live in poverty, and all those who suffer following natural disasters like the Burmese hurricane and the Chinese earthquake… We can bring them all before our God, trusting that he knows each one by name.

Yes like Esther…we are in a royal position for such a time as this. And like Esther we can make a difference against all the odds. We can make a difference if we use our freedoms and our material privileges … and if we use them in prayerful partnership with God.

Listen to these thought provoking words from Archbishop Desmond Tutu… He says

“One of the most wonderful things is how God depends on all of us. This is actually mind boggling. We have a God who is all powerful and yet he waits on human creatures to be his partners and collaborators. Each one of us has a contribution; each and every one of us can make a difference”.

Archbishop Tutu captures a sense of how our ordinary lives can be extraordinary in the larger picture. We become extraordinary people through our partnership with God. Esther was an orphan, an insignificant Jewish alien living in a pagan land. But in a few short years she became a queen… and she saved her people.

Jesus’ first disciples were a rag bag assortment of ordinary people, but he still sent them out to preach the Good News in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And after Pentecost, they knew for sure that their Lord was with them always… Ordinary people whose lives became extraordinary… because their lives were given over to God.

Esther’s story… the story of the disciples after Pentecost… should challenge us out of our complacency. They should challenge us to speak out boldly for life, to demonstrate our faith by word and action…to use our gifts and our democratic freedoms for such a time as this…

We can never rest on our laurels. There is always work to be done in the church… in our parish… and in our world. And Archbishop Tutu’s words remind us that it is work that will not happen without us. Our gifts and our skills, our prayers and our voices are much needed in this place and time.

We are salt for the earth… We are light for the world. We sow the seeds of the Word of God. We share the love of Jesus in a world which is hurting… a world crying out for Good News.

This is our time…This is our moment of destiny and we must seize it… We must seize the day! If we don’t then our church will simply dwindle away…

The world needs what we have… So we must speak of Christ… a Christ in whom there is no north or south, no east or west. And we have experienced the truth of this recently haven’t we? We saw it clearly as we spent time with our brothers and sisters from Mchengautuba.

Our partnership is more than just a centenary project; it’s an ongoing process of sharing and spreading the love of God across the world... through a shared vision of what can be achieved when people work in partnership with God, and with their brothers and sisters in Christ. Together we will speak more powerfully of Christ as we seek to live as he would have us live, and to love as he would love.

For the heart of God beats with concern for all those who live on the margins of society. So we must stand along side the poor and the dispossessed, not just during Christian Aid week, but all year round.

We are called to participate in the passion of Christ for all people. We are called to love one another, as Christ first loved us.

We are called to share the Good News… We have the words of eternal life, of life before death… and of life beyond the grave…

Our time has come …our kairos moment has arrived… So we must not stay silent… We must speak out now, our voices must be heard. We must seize the day!

We are the disciples of Jesus Christ in this generation and we have been called by God to work with him… for such a time as this…Amen.

Rangers was not the only game in town...

Yes forget Rangers in Manchester! In my house the fans (both real and stuffed) were glued to Hull City v Watford (second leg)... And could that be the hand of God creeping in from the left?

The Husband's footie addictions (namely England and Hull City) are fairly minority interest in the West Coast of Scotland... so he has boosted England supporter numbers by investing in two Bull Dogs and a Teddie... they also support Hull City, as and when required, without audible complaint (and they are very cheap to feed).

Wembley... here they come!! (If Grandpa can get tickets...)