Journey begins in bloggers meeting

People who don't know about blogging still - after all these years - sneer at the idea. I'd rather meet people and have real conversations, they say. What they don't understand, of course, is how much more real your conversations can be with someone whose blog you follow - making it possible to meet someone you've met for only five minutes on one previous occasion and know where they are in life, what interests them, whether or not they might enjoy a bacon roll on Largs seafront ... You get my drift.

And so it was, dear, persistent reader, that Mr B and I had lunch with a certain weel-kent blogger known as Mad Priest, along with Mrs MP and two well-behaved collie dogs, at a pavement table outside Nardini at the Moorings, handy for the Cumbrae ferry - of which more anon. I am happy to report that we blethered non-stop for over an hour and a half, ranging through various ecclesiastical topics (liturgy, for example) to the merely gossipy (you can guess that bit, especially if you're a Pisky). We were heading on to Ayr for a party, and the MPs were - on my recommendation - taking the ferry to Cumbrae.

It's always a risky business, commending something you hold dear to someone else. This holds for poetry - oh, the risk of exposing your favourites to a new class of students - for music, and certainly for special places. People who know me know how special the Cathedral of The Isles has been to me for the past 43 years; now I was sending two people there without me, in the hope that they too would find it special. So it was with immense delight that I read Jonathan's blog post this morning. Quite apart from the relief, there is the interest of a new slant on a familiar place, the lovely photos taken by someone else of features I have grown to love, the affirmation that here indeed is a special, holy place.

And I even learned something new. About Elton John. Go and read it for yourself.

Bloggers and bluebells

Indiana Jones moment
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Bloggers and Bluebells. A sort of bucolic TeachMeet? Well, in a way I suppose it was. It was all Kimberly's fault. Let's invite Scottish Episcopal bloggers to Dunoon and take them to see the bluebells. I suspect the bluebells might have been an excuse for an alliteration, but they also gave us a starting point for a walk, and a picnic.

Of course, nothing goes entirely to plan. Who could have foreseen that Maximilian ( a dog) would decide to go back to the car, so that Rosemary and Kimberly had to go with him? Who would realise that Kelvin was fallible and would end up heading for Strachur? And why was this the first cloudy, damp day in two weeks so that the midges would attend our jaunt? However, undaunted by such setbacks, a good proportion of the SEC's finest viewed the bluebells in Kilmun Arboretum and ascended the Indiana Jonesworthy upper reaches of Puck's Glen (pictured).

It was great, as always, to put faces and voices to the names familiar from blog posts and comments. Many of us had been contributors to an Advent blog and a Lent blog in the past year, in such a way that we had learned more about each other than many people do in years of actual contact. And of course there was the repeated amusement of someone you feel you don't really know telling you they know all about what you've been doing recently or what you think about Christian Aid collecting - a right conversation-killer, you'd think, but no. Conversation flowed, except when the breath failed.

And at the end, a eucharist. Today was, apparently, St Catan's day; the site I've linked to is much less informative than was Rosemary's address but is the best I can find right now. However, it was also the first time I've ever felt so strongly the community connections made by blogging, as we came together in the wonderful exchange that is the eucharist and was the name of the blog where many of us comment. The church needs to embrace this form of communication far more ardently than it does at present, when too many of its senior figures shy away from the medium and seem to fear the openness and immediacy it brings.

But today we were blessed - by each other's company, by the bluebells, by sharing a picnic together and by our shared communion. Great idea, Kimberly - where to next?