A cold collation ...

The weather wasn't promising. Snow yesterday and a cold night - a typical recipe for a stressful cold coming to church in the morning, with the added complication of visitors driving over from Rothesay and the Bishop and Mrs Bishop making the journey from Oban. Verily a recipe for an anticlimax, if not a disaster. But the county gritters had seen to the roads and our heroic Priest-in-charge-now-our-Rector had cleared the drive so that even the most timid could get to church for the service that would collate Andrew as our Rector. (This was a new word for me, in this context: given the weather and the temperature inside the building I could only think of a cold collation that might be served if one turned up late at Downton Abbey - but I wander).

It was joyful to hear +Kevin tell us that we were a sign of the promise that we could be the instruments of our own change, that we had achieved what had seemed impossible and were a shining example, etc, etc ... and as I sat there I did think back to the days of doom and gloom and no money and doors that would shut forever after seven years, though mostly I thought that if we'd been less fortunate in getting this curate who used to design battleships then we might well have sunk without a trace. (That seems a suitable collocation of ideas, as opposed to a collation ...)

And there was another joyful thing. Yesterday - and on Friday, when the leak first escaped that the Episcopal Church in the USA was to be rapped on the knuckles for its acceptance of same-sex marriage, when the less well-informed press were announcing that they'd been kicked out for being naughty - yesterday I wasn't looking forward to today, much - didn't feel happy in my Anglican shoes, as it were. But then I arrived in the church, already pretty full of our own flock and the intrepid Rothesay people with whom we share our Rector - and found that all around I could see people were wearing badges. Not little, discreet lapel pins, but big, bright protest-style badges, courtesy of Kelvin, like the one I was wearing, like the one I'd given to Mr B to pin on his scarf (leather jackets and pins don't go well together). Badges like the ones in the photo. And I felt at one with the world - or at least the world in our part of it.

Because that's the point. There is no way a community can rejoice and congratulate itself and share fellowship if it is silently complicit in an injustice to not only many of its members but also countless other human beings who only want equality and justice. But I'd say enough of us are in this together to make rejoicing a possibility. 

It was a good day in this part of the diocese. A good day.

The first candle ...

Goodness, that was great! As I said in my last post, I love Advent - and it began today in fine style up the hill at Holy T. From the lighting of the first purple candle in the Advent Wreath - and if you look closely you will see that the new candles arrived in the nick of time - to the exuberant singing of "Lo, he comes with clouds descending", we were on an emotional rollercoaster, urged on by Kevin Our Bishop on his second visit to us.

Urged to pitch our tents facing the rising sun, intrigued by the vision of the newly-re-licensed Lay Team as tent-pitchers extraordinaires, delighted by +Kevin's vision of him throwing back his youthful locks in order to see and by his donning of a wonderful pink and purple "preaching scarf" (you can see it adorning his crozier in the sadly fuzzy pic taken in mid-sing at the end of the service) - by the time we staggered to the back of the church for coffee and buns we felt we'd been on a journey already.

Just as it should be, in fact - even if we have another four weeks to go.

Taking off in Argyll and The Isles

This slightly hazy photo (courtesy of Al) is all I have to remind me of Diocesan Synod - that and the rather dog-eared copy of the Synod papers, with all the doodles and remarks that aid concentration when we're talking about money. If you look closely, you will see an angel, and in the far left a bishop - our new Bishop Kevin making his post-prandial speech at the Synod Dinner. The accordion between angel and bishop is not part of the speech, which consisted, hilariously, of the safety briefing before a flight. The angel is a member of the cabin crew, and by this stage in the proceedings is wearing the chastity girdle and the golden wings - for when the engines fail. There is a lighted halo at her feet. Her opposite number - for it is too big a plane for one angel - is on the other side of the stage.

Reader, I was that angel. Seems I may be up for a new post: Bishop's Fool. It has a suitably Learian twist, I feel - Shakespeare, not Edward. It was all good clean fun and I ended up dancing, unwisely, in rubber-soled shoes: I don't usually stay for ra jigging.

Synod itself was wonderfully optimistic. Having arrived at a properly God-centred vision of our future, we were already well on our way to behaving as one always feels a church should be. The one cloud on the horizon as far as I was concerned, the one bit of contrary weather on the flight, was the revelation that we still carried some dinosaurs on board - the kind that have never realised how strange it feels these days for a church of which two thirds of the punters are women to use a creed with the words "who for us men and for our salvation". I felt moved to speech at that point, and they backed off into the swamp, but I have a feeling they may well resurface before we're finished.

But I niggle. No-one spoke for too long, and everyone seemed to depart in peace. The weather was kind and I managed to get to the deli for my lemon-infused olive oil and one or two other good things. We've taken off in a new direction and are travelling hopefully. Happy landings!

'Tis done ... we have a Bishop!

Don't they look jolly? The chaps in the gold hats are the current bishops of the SEC; the others are either retired or from overseas - but the one in the centre, the one with the biggest smile, is Bishop Kevin, the new bishop of Argyll and The Isles. I managed to get this, among a clutch of snatched-and-blurred pics, by leaping in an unladylike fashion onto a pew in the cathedral as they finished the photo-call; you can just see the official photographer in the bottom left.

But enough of the technical stuff. On a day when the wind threatened to lift the roof and the rain battered down on the alarmingly glass roof of the choir, an unfeasibly large number packed the cathedral to see Bishop Kevin consecrated and Bishop Mark give up the burden of looking after us - it's been a long haul, and he's been brilliant. There was a considerable invasion of Edinburgh folk, obviously loathe to let +Kevin go, and a selection of luminaries from other parts of the province, all interested by the Argyll weather and the possibility that gaiters might be worn (they weren't). Kilts there were, however, and some tartan trews, and tweed - not to mention the odd fleecy jumper.

The Right Reverend David Conner, Dean of Windsor, preached a sermon that drew heavily on Philip Larkin's poem Church Going. Written 60 years ago, it gives a picture of the poet - and Larkin himself took part in a TV film that showed him, bicycle and all - visiting a church, going in only when he is "sure there's nothing going on". Larkin, said the Dean, was like the Greeks in the Gospel of the day who wanted "to see Jesus". Although Larkin said he was "bored, uninformed", he nevertheless often found himself "tending to this cross of ground" because of what it held, what it had held over the ages, and this was a commonly-found attitude of the majority of people nowadays, who still have this hunger without really knowing what it is they seek. Bishop Kevin's role was to be a leader in mission, relentless in his prayerful quest to show the love of Christ in the world so that those who seek find not barriers and impenetrable theology but rather the answer to the need they might not fully understand, the "hunger ... to be more serious".

"Reach out, my friend," he said in conclusion, "reach out, but dig deep."

The digging will soon begin, but for this weekend, it seemed, the celebrations were paramount. And after a service lasting over two hours, the hungry horde scuttled along the road like so many Mary Poppinses under their billowing brollies and descended on the purvey in the Argyll Gathering halls. When we left, five hours after arriving, the rain was still falling steadily. We surfed home through the gathering gloom, crashing through the potholes that seemed to have multiplied since the morning. At least we didn't crash the car. Summer consecrations must be more dangerous - we drove into a ditch after the last one.