What's in Kelvin's Head

I’ve added AKMA’s sermon from yesterday to the preaching page. You can also see it over on his blog where the text is available too.

Whilst I was listening to the sermon, images from a novel started to leap around in my brain. It took me a moment or two to think which one it was but eventually I pinned it down. It was Jame’s Baldwin’s brilliant novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain which I’ve not read in years. Time to pull it off the shelf again. The bit I was thinking of was  the bit where the young protagonist finds himself hitting the floor on a Sunday, struck by an overwhelming sense of the holy. I think Baldwin describes something highly complex in that section – compromised surrender, I think it is. Utterly brilliant, anyway. One for church book groups everywhere.

Did I tell you about the Church History Social last Saturday evening? I don’t think I did.

What’s that you say – you don’t understand what a Church History Social is. Well, let me tell you,  it was the most entertaining way to spend a Saturday evening and a roaring success. The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were laid out for our entertainment by Roger Edwards who has been doing a good deal of research in this area. In between times, we ate a seventeenth century repast of wine and nibbles and Frikki and Christine Walker entertained us to some music associated with the congregation, including a lovely Schubert Lied which was a setting of words by one of my predecessors.

It has been said before that Episcopacy collapsed in Glasgow, but Roger is in the business of showing that far from collapsing, there were hundreds of Episcopalians in this town after the Glorious Revolution.

So it was that we heard about someone being made a bishop in secret to protect him from the mob, an early example of cross-dressing in the congregation as one of the clergy captured at Sherriffmiur swapped clothes with his wife to escape from Stirling castle, times of persecution when  only a few piskies could meet together, a church where the priest had taken an oath of allegiance to the Hanovarians but the congregation hadn’t, the origins of Old St Paul’s claim to be Jacobite and of course the congregation’s successful supply to Bonnie Prince Charlie of a paramour.

Roger’s method was ingenious. He told the story and at key moments, called out members of the audience to come and stand to represent characters in the tale. Everyone called out had an emblem to wear – priest’s bands for the clergy, a frilly pinny for a servant maid, even frillier jabots for the chaps and a lovely purple sash held with a shiny clasp for Bonnie Prince Charlie himself.

Guess who got to be Bonnie Prince C?

My thanks to everyone who voted for this blog in the ScotBlogs awards. Apparently, I came in the top 10 in the readers nominations. (Where in the top 10, I don’t know). However, the competition was constructed around readers votes and the votes of a panel. It seems a bit like the Episcopal election – you have to come out on top in two different houses to get anywhere. So, lots of readers voted for me but apparently none of the panelists did. I did come away with an highly honourable mention on the Readers’ Choice page.

Thanks to all who voted, and thanks to Duncan Steven who organised it. I’m gateful as ever to all those who read, those who take up conversation across other blogs and above all to those who comment and make the whole business of keeping this blog so interesting. I’ve not been doing this for quite as long as AKMA (I started in 2003, he was at it more than a year before I was). Its still something I enjoy and it is you my dear readers and interlocutors who make it all worth while.

Hey, can you help spread the word that Inspires Online has launched? Its the new newsletter from the Scottish Episcopal Church.

The first edition was distributed by e-mail earlier today. If you want to receive a copy, then you need to sign up at http://www.inspires.org.uk/subscribe

If you’ve subscribed already and don’t seem to have a copy, check your spam filters.

Can you pass that news on to anyone whom you think would like to know?

Many thanks

What a great time I had this morning in Young Church. One of the things that we’ve been working to change, in devising a new programme for younger members in St Mary’s, is to build in some more contact with clergy. Today was the first clergy day in Young Church and I was the designated person to go through.

After gathering in the Synod Hall, we made our way to a special, secret place where almost no-one gets to go – the Sacristy.

Once we were there, there was loads to look at and talk about. We found shiny things, green things, red things, smelly things, bronze things and silver things. We discovered the tassles on the best white vestments and found out that they represented angel’s wings. We found the special holy oil that the bishop had blessed last year on Maundy Thursday so that everyone who was baptised could have the sign of the cross made on their heads. And we tried it out too. It was sticky!

We found some old palm crosses and talked about grandparents who had given them as gifts at Easter time. We found a lovely silver crucifix and talked about who was on it (and noticed that his arms made the same shape as the coloured bands (called orphreys) on the priest’s big poncho called the chasuble. Then we came across a tiny chalice for taking communion to people at home and we passed it around.

Someone had kindly left the thurible where we could get hold of it, so we discovered that it is very heavy and that most of the time its very hot. We found out how to lock it closed and we looked at the incense grains that go in it and discovered that they live in something called a boat, because it looks like a boat. We then spotted some angels lurking about, which was quite exciting.

Then we heard that the people in church were starting the prayers, so we sat round and had a bit of quiet time and talked about what we wanted to give thanks to God for today. (Beds and food!) Then after a quick prayer saying thank you to God for beds and food and everything around us, it was time to line up and go into Old Church to share the peace.

Phew!

If you were able to ask a church agony aunt/uncle a question, what would it be?

What’s that? Did I see one of our bishops in the Daily Record today?

Indeed I did, and kudos to Bishop Bob Gillies for leading the debate against caffeinated alchoholic drinks.

I wonder if you would kindly go over to the ScotBlog Awards and cast your vote in my direction.

Blessings abound if you do.

Seems like we’ve just lost a battle, but we’re winning the war.

So sad to see the Archbishop of York standing up in the House of Lords to fight for the church’s right to discriminate against those who work for it. Extraordinary to see the Bishop of Winchester say that he “should be very surprised indeed if the noble Lord [Ali] had any evidence of any clergy being put at any kind of risk at all simply on the grounds of their orientation, in the sense that the churches use the word, as opposed to their conduct in matters sexual…” (Hansard 25 Jan 2010 : Column 1198).

Its hard to understand that, isn’t it? The obvious public example is Jeffrey John, and that was pointed out to him, but you don’t have to go far in the church to find gay people who believe that they are discriminated against on the ground of their sexual orientation.

What was the Bishop of Winchester up to in making that claim? Did he believe what he was saying at the time? Because we are people of goodwill and generosity, we have to believe that he did. So what was in his head?

Today is the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul. The old joke is of course that its something worth praying for.

However, I like to keep it. It reminds me that the most murderous and violent opponent of the early Jesus movement did do a complete turn around on the road to Damascus.

Still happens today.

Look: