Blog on the Learig

  29 August 2026 In ‘The Architecture of Hope’, Charles Jencks illustrates the different plans for the assorted Maggie’s Centres which have been specially built around the country. They were inspired by his wife, Maggie, who suffered from a terminal cancer. The architectural plans have interesting names – pinwheel, pinwheel spiral, central spiral, central doughnut, centric blob, spiral arms. All of these have a sense of circular movement about them. The pinwheel turns, the spiral spins, the doughnut has a circle at its centre. Maggie Jencks wanted to create ‘a friendly convivial atmosphere with food and drink offered as you come in the door.’ It is a philosophy which they called ‘kitchenism’. Unlike the hospital or the clinic, this was more like a home than a medical centre although lots of information is available there. At the heart of the Maggie’s Centre is the kitchen table and a cup of tea. It is a homely environment where people can gather together around the table an...

  28 August 2026 We couldn’t imagine how Francis could kiss the leper and yet, when he did, he discovered that he was embracing the risen Christ! This was the catalyst for his conversion. If he hadn’t had the courage, the world may have been deprived of its most popular and inspirational saint. Nor could we follow in the footsteps of that Victorian priest, Father Damien, who volunteered to work among the lepers isolated in a sin bin on the island of Molokai. But we were moved when he out his feet into a basin of boiling water and didn’t feel a thing! Damien became a leper too! In the 1930s, Stanley Browne was a doctor in the Belgian Congo. The village chiefs denied the existence of advanced leprous cases by   banishing them. Browne found them in the bush crawling out of huts with deformed limbs and ravaged faces. The image haunted him for life and inspired his international fight against leprosy. Each of these incidents were preceded by another of eternal significance....

  27 August 2026 ‘Embrace’ describes itself as ‘The Christian development charity tackling poverty and injustice in the Middle East’. Their catalogue of Christmas cards and carol sheets came in this week. In addition, there was an update on what has been happening in the charity. One of their stories relates to a church in Rahbeh in Northern Lebanon. Members travelled three hours to attend a small ‘Sustainable Agriculture Training Course’ run by Thimar which is working in partnership with Embrace. The members of the church wanted to start up a farming project to bring employment and support to low-income families in their community. With support from Thimar, a mixed farm of crops and a dairy herd was established with nine cows. The milk was sold to fund the farm. As time passed, the church realised that it would be more profitable to turn the milk into cheese. In addition, it would provide more employment. They began producing cheese in the church hall but soon required big...

  26 August 2026 We have made astonishing provision for our members   ‘that when the Kirk doth convene and sing, they may be the more able with common hearts and voyces to praise God’.   There have been two editions of the Church Hymnary and at least five supplements. It is our crowning glory. Whereas CH3 was framed by the liturgy, CH4 preferred the creed. Whereas CH3 was criticised for not incorporating hymns from ‘Songs from the   Seventies’ and ‘Hymns for a Day’, CH4 had built its compilation on the back of ‘Songs of God’s People’ and more especially, ‘Common Ground’. The latter introduced us to folk music and songs from other parts of the world. The compilers of the fifth supplement, ‘God Welcomes All’ selected 200 songs from 10,000.   A third are Scottish and mostly 21 st century with dementia,   laughter, Blue Christmas and God at the margins in the Topical Index. Whereas the Roman Catholics were intimately involved with ‘Common Ground’, the...

  25 August 2026 Looking through the past forty years of reports to the General Assembly, I was interested to observe the demise of what we used to call ‘Pubic Worship and Aids to Devotion’. In 1984 it became the ‘Panel on Worship’.   In 2006, it was combined with Doctrine and was subsumed into ‘Mission and Discipleship Council’. In 2012, neither the term ‘Doctrine’ nor ‘Worship‘ appeared in the Assembly Reports. They were now hidden in what was called ‘Faith Expressions’. Whereas the Assembly was quick to notice the downgrading of Doctrine and restored its visibility in time for same-sex relationships,   this didn’t happen with Worship. Subsequently, it disappeared into the Faith Nurture Forum under ‘Resourcing Worship’ and then into ‘Faith Action Programme Leadership Team’. In 2026, for the first time in four decades, there is to be a Task Group set up   ‘to explore liturgical renewal and develop new liturgical resources for the Church’. A     wor...

  24 August 2026 In Colossians 3;12-17, St. Paul imagines the church to be like a circle in which gifts are distributed to everyone and everyone has a responsibility to contribute to the harmony within the church. ‘Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.’ says St. Paul. These clothes are not dependent on income nor ideology nor religion. But they are freely available to anyone and everyone. But that’s not all. ‘Be tolerant and forgiving.’ How else will we create a space where people are going to trust one another? There has to be give and take, patience and understanding, a forgiving and forgetting to create balance. And. almost as a little afterthought, St. Paul concludes, ‘Add love.’ It’s like the final ingredient which the baker has almost forgotten to add to make her cake rise, give it bounce, bring it to life! Without it, things would fall apart because this ingredient ‘binds all things together in perfect unity’. This binding ...