Sunday, 04 Dec-2011. Second Sunday of Advent ( 'The Anticipation')

In the appointed readings for today in the Lectionary is the story of John the Baptist. He is portrayed as a wee bitty mad usually. He wore animal skins and ate locusts and the sane bits were paving the way for someone after him (Jesus) and baptising Jesus in the River Jordan. I lean towards his 'wee bitty mad side', I must confess. Being a psychoanalyst I look to his parental upbringing yet we know little of his childhood at all. We know that his parents were probably devout Jews: Zacharia and Elizabeth and that Elizabeth was a cousin of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We recall Mary's trip to see her cousin Elizabeth who was also pregnant then with John and how she reacted to Mary's exciting news. I often wonder what Mary said to her cousin? However, I would love to have met the devout hermit John the Baptist for he may have been a 'wee bitty mad' but he baptised folk with the Holy Spirit so he was years ahead of his time and would have been seen then as a renegade in the Synagoge. He was inspired by the Holy Spirit and foretold the coming of Jesus, the Messiah and knew when he met Jesus, who he was. I would have loved to have sat with him on the banks of the River Jordan and chatted to him about his visionary experiences and of his fervent spiritual life. We give little attention to this holy man, yet we can glean so much by association, just the same as with Joseph, step-father of Jesus.

Tuesday 22 Nov-2011: St Cecelia, cAD 230.

Today in the Calendar is the Feast of Sta (St) Cecelia. She was tortured for days and then died, martyred following the fate of others in her family. In her death throes she sang to the Lord, for she had a fine voice. Her body was later exhumed and her hand still had the fingers making the sign for the Holy Trinity. A church was erected near her home in Trastevere in Rome - St Cecelia Travestere, Roma. She is the patron of musicians and church musicians in particular. An American Episcopalian wrote to me today and said that the Anglican choral tradition shows that the angels are really Anglican! Ha ha! I do like that, for without fine music and good singing, Christianity and the Anglican and Episcopalian traditions in music would be lost. We have much to owe to this extraordinary lady Cecelia. May perpetual light shine upon her.

Saturday 19/11/2011: Hilda of Whitby, Abbess, cAD680.

We had a Church Army Sister who became a Novice, who became a nun, who became a Deacon in The Church. She is still a nun of 'Hilda's Place' as we call the Order of the Holy Paraclete at Whitby. Hilda ran a disciplined, male and female monastery at Whitby and it was the venue for the famous Synod of Whitby when the RC sent an overload of delegates to outwit and out vote the more saintly Celtic bishops. So, the Synod adopted the Roman way of calculating Easter and recommended the RC dogma. Many of the Celtic bishops could not accept this and retired to Iona and later to Ireland. The legacy of that early Celtic Church in Scotland lives on, albeit with an emphasis on the inner, spiritual life rather than the politics of the day, in the Scottish Episcopal Church. At least the SEC claim this, but then they were also more influenced by the Orthodox tradition in the early days. The independent nature of the SEC is linked to the early Celtic tradition and is still so today, even though it adopted the Anglican tradition as well. Indeed, it developed the Anglican Communion as we know it today. It steers a middle way between that of the established, national Church of Scotland, and the RC Church. A Canon priest of the SEC chaired the latest Scots Declaration, in the form of the Scottish Constitutional Convention which led to the Scots voting for Devolution and the return of its parliament from London. The present debacle of the government at Holyrood pushing the Churches in Scotland over same-sex marriages has resulted in the SEC saying nothing. It would take a number of years for the General Synod to make any changes, if at all. In England it would be easier for the English Government at Westminster to simply pass a new law there and, as the C of E is the State Church, they would have to obey the law. At least that is the theory. It all hinges on semantics, or what you call a 'marriage'. A Civil Partnership is self explanatory. A Church Blessing is already in place and could be used. A differing use of the word 'marriage' as distinct from 'wedding' may be the answer. Either way, changes will come and the Church worldwide will reflect the change in some way. There will still be some who, like the spiritual Celtic bishops, will "retire to Iona or then to Ireland."

Thursday 16 December 2010.

They say that 'things are not what they were in our day' As I get older I believe that too; always hankering for the 'good old days' when we could lie in a field in the long grass and watch the Spitfires have a shoot out with the ME 109's high in the sky. When the battle was over and planes crashed, we would have a bet where the plane crashed and then rush to see if we were right. Then we would resume our positions in the long grass of the fields of the Wirral to listen to the skylarks high in the sky and again bet as to whom could spot the tiny birds before they too dropped back to the long grass. It all sounds so wonderful, but in reality it wasn't. We had rationing and there was scarce food in the shops. Many items like fresh fruit I did no see until after the war. As children we would have lookouts to spot the arrival of the bread van and rush to be first in the queue to buy our ration of bread. Many old folk could not even get to the queue and if they did they got no bread. Potatoes were in short supply and of course there were no such things as eggs, only re-constituted eggs in a square shape, like a blob of something. Many of our neighbours died in the Blitz when Germany bombed us daily and nightly for a year at the onset of WW2. I would say that morality has changed today, from what it was. It is now normal for couples to live together and not get married and the State approves of this. Homosexuality is at least talked about and 'gay' folk are accepted by and large. There were always 'gay' folk and the Church was a safe haven for them, so long as they used the word celibate and did not mention homosexuality. Now not all celibates are 'gay' and indeed many celibate folk do great service for us by concentrating on prayer and service to the rest of us. We now have many clergy who are openly 'gay' and who live with their partners. Many would say that this in contradiction of Biblical teaching. I don't accept that as being 'gay' is as old as the Bible and to be 'gay' is a private matter for the folk concerned. Who has the right to condemn others for their way of life? I pray that 'gay' folk will eventually not have to make a thing of it all and simply 'be' like the rest of us. However, it is up to us to be more accepting of each other. After all, it is the spiritual life which is the most important, and as I get older and older, I believe that more and more. 'Gay' is a word now taken over by some folk to describe themselves. 'Gay' to me is being happy and carefree. 'Gay' folk generally do not appear happy and carefree and I regret that they have taken over such a word, but then I have no right to the word myself, so why not I suppose. We should perhaps make a 'Bushism' ( i.e., just make up a word') for being happy and carefree. Any thoughts?

Psalm 30 ( Exaltabo te, Domine.)

St Machar, 6th century

It is Remembrance-tide. Yesterday crowds stood still in Glasgow city centre to observe the two minutes' silence at 11.00h on the 11th month. Many young people, notably Rangers' Football Club supporters held aloft banners deploring and condemning the war-mongering remembrances and distancing themselves from remembering those who fell in both world wars and subsequent conflicts. Is this a good sign? Does it mean that the young adults nowadays, for whom we fought, no longer wished to be fought for? Maybe so. At my great age though I still feel we should remember those in past eras who fought to defend us against oppression and so they helped keep us free from invasion and domination. Remembrance Day may well fade into oblivion in time. Today in the Church Calendar we remember Machar, about whom little is known. What information we have is found in the Aberdeen Breviary. The RC Church chose to keep information about him and the other Celtic 'saints' hidden as they were not of course RC. Machar is said to have been a companion of Columba when they arrived at Iona in their wee boat. It is also speculated that Machar may well have been another name for Mungo, patron of Glasgow. He did build a cathedral at Aberdeen, in the bend of the river Don, symbolic of a bishop's cromach (crozier). Indeed, St Machar's 'Cathedral' still stands, albeit it is not a cathedral, per se, but simply a parish church of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

Richard Hooker, priest & theologian, AD 1600

We are in the middle of All Saints' tide / All Souls and Remembrance Sunday will soon be here. Fr Richard Hooker was a pioneering Anglican theologian who came to the attention of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and Queen Elizabeth I for his writings from a Catholic-Anglican standpoint. He married a puritan and later, as sub-dean at Salisbury Cathedral, came into conflict with other puritans. He stuck to his guns and wrote about 'Justification by Faith' and maintained that Christians would be saved by God and controversially he included Roman Catholics. He even said that it could also include others who were not Christian, i.e., by God's grace alone are we saved. The inclusion of RCs at that time caused a lot of trouble in Protestant England, which seems incredible nowadays. Richard Hooker, along with Cranmer and others, are seen as Fathers of Anglicanism as we know it today, following the Anglican Rule and maintaining a direct link with the Apostolic, Catholic Church, whilst at the same time remaining reformed from the RCs.

All Saints' Day

This painting by Fra Angelico is from the 5th century, depicting all the saints in heaven. I have always been somewhat confused about saints, They appear to be man-made mainly by the RC Church and the candidates have to go through a prolonged process towards Beatification and then sainthood. Then apparently, RCs can pray to them! Being in the reformed Catholic tradition that s a most strange and anti biblical viewpoint. Also, is it correct that only people the Vatican deems to be saints can be saints?
The hymn 'Forr All the Saints...' reminds me of the hordes of people I know who are saints, yet they are not recognised by hierarchies or even Churches. At my age I attend a lot of funerals and am often quite amazed at the history of someone whom I thought I had known well for years, and then learn what wonderful things they have done. The packed to overflowing church also tells us a lot about how well respected and adored the deceased was and is. I rather like the Episcopal and Anglican tradition of remembering local people as 'saints' in the Calendar.