18 June 2025 In his ‘Diaries of a Dying Man’, William Soutar writes about a worthy minister at Redgorton called the Revd. Dauvit Grahame. Apparently, he was too fond of his dram. Inevitably, he was called to account before the Kirk Session. Right at the start of the meeting, the minister rose to his feet and said, ‘Gentlemen, a preliminary word, please. I am well aware why you have summoned me here this evening but allow me to ask two questions before we proceed. ‘First, has any man among you assisted me home when I have been the worse of liquour? And second, is there any man among you whom I have not assisted home when he was the worse for liquour?’ Since the answer to both questions was, ‘No!’’, the minister turned about and, as Soutar wrote, ‘no doubt left for the inn at Pitcairngreen’. I like the author’s sense of humour. And the minister’s. Kirk Session meetings can be very serious affairs. A sense of humour allows us to be transported into a broader landscape with a...
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17 June 2025 I had a dream. I suppose that’s not unusual but I don’t usually remember my dreams nor even attempt to recover them. This was a short dream or so it seemed to me. I was busy speaking with a group of people. I looked up and was surprised to see my father. He was standing still. He was smartly dressed in suit and tie and he was smiling gently. My immediate reaction was to run towards him. As I was running, I thought that he should have been running towards me just like the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. But he stood still, smiling. Thinking about it in the morning, I realised that he would not have ran towards me. His emotions would not have led him to express himself in this way. But I also realised that he couldn’t have run even if he had wanted to because of the divide between heaven and earth. I never reached him in my dream. I was puzzled that the dream took place within the context of the famous parable. Was I the prodigal son ru...
16 June 2025 Yesterday, I had a Sunday off from preaching. We decided to worship in a small church belonging to a different denomination. There must have been about forty worshippers – predominantly older people but there were some babes in arms and a few young children with their parents. The minister preached about the Holy Trinity and, in particular, the 1700 th anniversary of the First General Council of the Church at Nicaea making frequent reference to Arianism and the divine nature of Jesus. He talked about contemporary problems working against religious faith. He highlighted three – individualism, cynicism and societal fragmentation. None of these is conducive to building up a harmonious community. Focusing on ourselves, being cynical about the effectiveness of institutions and the fragmentation of communities into protest, identity and political groups work against unity. Three things within the worshipping community stood out. Firstly, there was a very powerful ...
15 June 2025 St. Cyril of Jerusalem was born in 315 AD. This was two years after the Emperor Constantine passed the Edict of Milan ensuring tolerance for Christians and other religious people throughout the Empire and ten years before the famous Council of Nicaea. The first General Council of the Church wrestled with a heresy called Arianism which denied the divinity of Jesus. Those who followed Arius considered Jesus to be the Son of God in the sense that he was created by God but was not co-equal with God. Cyril became the Bishop of Jerusalem in 351 AD and throughout his ministry, he had difficulty with those who continued to support the views of Arius. In fact, he was exiled from his diocese on several occasions by the supporters of Arianism. But he didn’t deviate from the doctrine propounded at Nicaea when he was a mere ten year old. He is famously remembered for his sermons on baptism. On reading his ‘Lectures on the Christian Sacraments’, I was immedia...
14 June 2025 It was unexpected – a ‘Ring of Bright Water’ moment. For almost six years, I have been walking along the same portion of the Kinnessburn and have never seen … Well what did I see? At first it looked like an eel. There are eels in this water but the eel turned out to be a tail. It was an otter. No one else was around to watch the otter’s spectacular acrobatics in the water. His back was so supple. His body twisted and turned in harmony with the flow of the water. Clearly, the otter was searching for food. At one point, he entered a pipe but reversed out pretty quickly! What struck me about the otter was that on four or five occasions, he made eye contact with me or so it seemed. He looked up from the water as he looked around and caught hold of my eye. He appeared to be saying, ‘Who are you?’ or perhaps, ‘Are you coming out to play?’ Was this my imagination or is there a possibility that human beings may make connections with animals in the wild? In the book o...
13 June 2025 We have been astonished by Paul’s Himalayan Musk. It was originally planted beside the cherry tree but over the years has climbed higher and higher as befits its Himalayan name. It is now cascading down through the cherry branches like the hanging baskets of Babylon. It is not only the colour of the tiny roses which astounds. Of themselves, they are a marvel for they range through red, pink and white in assorted gradations according to the time of their birth and their passing. But the wonder of the musk is its fragrance. It seems to me to be stronger when the rose is first in bloom but you can bury your face in the fading splendour and imagine you are in heaven. It is the smell of old rose. A number of the English roses in the garden smell similiarly. As it happens, the bird feeders are hanging on the cherry tree – some heart shaped sunflower seeds and some fat balls. They have attracted a family of sparrows whose acrobatics at the feeders ...
12 June 2025 I discovered a book, written in the nineteenth century, about a Scottish liturgical initiative. It was described as a first edition and rare. It was a scholarly work which has not been replicated in more recent decades. I decided to buy it. The acknowledgment of my purchase came with a welcome piece of correspondence. The bookseller recognised my address and deduced that I was a minister. She had known of two other ministers by the same name. She had lived in Scotland for some time before moving south. She described one of these ministers as ‘very kind and friendly even though I was not in the Church of Scotland and didn’t know him very well’. I was greatly heartened by her distinctive memory. In my reply, I wrote back, ‘It is always good to hear about the parish element of a minister's work. It always extends beyond the immediate congregation if a minister is fulfilling his vocation.’ Her comment confirms two important things about...
11 June 2025 On 6 June, I wrote about the case of Dorothy Readhead who died as a consequence of medical malpractice. The operation went wrong when medics tried to achieve their goal through a blockage in one of her legs. Despite knowing about the blockage they persisted with what reviewers called a ‘have a go’ mentality. There are three concerning moral issues. Firstly, the truth was deliberately concealed. The actual cause of death was not included on Mrs. Readhead’s death certificate. The ninth commandment has to do with concealing the truth. ‘You shalt not bear false witness against your neighbour.’ It was broken. Secondly, at the critical moment when progress was impeded, there was the opportunity to acknowledge the mistake. Instead, the sanctity of Mrs. Readhead’s life was sacrificed on the team’s fear of being humiliated. She, like the rest of us, was made in the image of God. Thirdly, the operating team and, in fact, the Hospital Trust denied there had been ...
10 June 2025 The writer to the Hebrews says, ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ The fruit of our faith is hope and the ability to live our lives in a hopeful way. After all, As St. Paul assures us, nothing can separate us from the love of God. For the last fifty years, we have been wrestling with an evident lack of faith within our nation and culture. It has had profound implications for the Kirk – its membership, its finance, its credibility, its vision, its future. But not its hope. In a remarkable speech, the late Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, talked about ‘creative minorities’. The idea came from Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict. He was reflecting on the loss of faith throughout Europe and reframed Christian communities as ‘creative minorities’. ‘Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority and help Europeans to reclaim what is best in its heritage and to therefore pl...
9 June 2025 The Nicene Creed is a sign of unity. The most remarkable thing about the Nicene Creed is that it is believed and recited by all the major Christian denominations in the world - the Reformed Churches, the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. For a single summary of the Christian faith to be accepted by so many different denominations is a very fine ecumenical initiative. Together with our baptism which marks our membership of the Church, this statement of faith secures our allegiance to the doctrines of the Christian Faith. Until this year, the Church of Scotland had as its subordinate standard ‘The Westminster Confession of Faith’. Ministers and elders had to declare their belief in the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith and thereafter sign the prescribed Formula: ‘I believe the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith contained in the Confession of Faith of this Church.’ At this year’s General Assembly, the Ki...
8 June 2025 In a world in which truth is sacrificed on the altar of personal advantage or political gain and the search for a deeper understanding of what is true is frustrated by many more immediate alternatives, the Nicene Creed provides us with an accessible map through which to navigate our life. It reveals our solidarity. The Nicene Creed begins with the words, ‘We believe …’ It is a corporate activity. Through its existence, the Creed gathers together not only Christians here in Scotland but throughout the world and, indeed, all Christians over the past seventeen hundred years! When we stand to confess our faith in God, the Creator, Jesus, the Saviour and the Holy Spirit as Lord and giver of life, we do not stand alone! We stand with the Emperor Constantine and the bishops at Nicaea in 325. We stand with John Knox and the Scottish Reformers in 1560. And we stand with the Kirk today. In these brief but profound words, we map out what we believe to be true. And...
7 June 2025 In 306 AD, Constantine’s dad died. He was one of four emperors in the Roman Empire. He had responsibility for the West and, in particular, Britannia. He died in York and Constantine was proclaimed emperor. This statue of Constantine, which is located on the South side of York Minster, celebrates this. On the bottom of the statue, there is an inscription which reads, ‘By this sign conquer.’ It refers to the battle of the Milvian Bridge in Rome where Constantine was fighting to become the sole emperor. A cross of light appeared in the sky bearing the legend. He won the battle in 312 AD. The following night, Constantine had a dream in which Christ appeared with the same heavenly sign and told him to make an army standard in the form of the chi-rho, the first two letters of Christ in Greek. Constantine began to favour Christianity. In 313, he passed the Edict of Milan which declared tolerance for Christians and other religious bodies. Christians ha...
6 June 2025 I was concerned to hear a BBC report concerning the treatment of eleven patients at the Castle Hill Hospital, near Hull. They were all being treated for heart complaints and all died unexpectedly. The mortality rate in the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implant (TAVI) unit was three times higher than the national average. In 2020, Dorothea Readhead went in for an operation to replace a damaged valve in her heart. The eighty-seven year old was suffering from breathlessness. She was described as ‘an active member of her local church and a keen gardener’. With a blockage in her right leg, the left leg was to be used for the procedure. The TAVI team made a mistake and used the right leg. When they got into difficulties, they paused to consider their options but decided to continue without acknowledging that this was elective rather than emergency surgery. They attempted to penetrate the blockage three times. They tore a major artery. Dorothy Readhead lost six l...
5 June 2025 It has always surprised me that from the football and rugby pitches of Scotland, people have wanted to view our national identity through a song which takes us right back to Bannockburn and the sorrows, cruelties and barbarity of medieval warfare. It’s a world characterised by man’s inhumanity to man – prisoners dragged through the streets so that people could throw urine and excrement at them, cut of their testicles and pull out their bowels before beheading them. And where women were put into cages and hung from castle walls not for a winter or two but for many, exposed to the elements and on constant view to public humiliation, condemnation and vilification! Look to the rock from which you were hewn, suggests the prophet Isaiah. Is this the rock from which we were hewn? Isn’t this another case for viewing history together – the English and the Scots making sense of what has happened not separately nor sentimentally but honestly? And if we did this ...
4 June 2025 ‘It is said that the most blessed monk John was once gently petting a partridge, when suddenly he spotted a philosopher of one persuasion or another coming toward him in full hunting gear. The philosopher was amazed that a man who was so well known and highly regarded was stooping to such a childish and low-class form of amusement. He said, ‘Aren’t you the John who is so eminent and famous that even I was lured by an overwhelming desire to get to know you? Why are you busying yourself with such worthless amusements?’ The blessed John replied, ‘What are you holding in your hand?’ ‘A bow,’ the philosopher said. ‘Okay, and why don’t you walk around everywhere with it drawn all the time?’ ‘That’s not how it works,’ the philosopher said. ‘If the bow were always bent, the stiff strength it has when it’s relaxed would get too elastic and give out. And when it came time to aim a flurry of arrows at a wild animal, the loss of stiffness caused by excessive a...
3 June 2025 Nebuchadnezzar had taken the people of Judah into exile. Jeremiah, who is still in Jerusalem, writes a letter to ‘the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the people’. They have lost freedom, homeland and Temple. He counsels them in their despair. ‘Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters: multiply there and do not decrease.’ His consolation is surprising. He encourages them to continue to live and to resist the temptation to give up. Building homes, cultivating gardens, getting married and having children are the very things which bring hope. The birth of a child affirms life and is always hopeful. In our world today, young people are not having as many children as in previous generations. Scotland needs immigrants to shore up its workforce...
2 June 2025 In the most recent issue of the New Statesman, Gordon Brown, son of the manse and former Prime Minister, was invited to be a guest editor. He chose to use this opportunity to talk about ‘Our Child Poverty Crisis’. He revealed some scandalous statistics. Child poverty is on the rise. 1. Nearly one million children try to sleep at night with no bed of their own. · 2. More than 2 .7 million are in families that can’t afford to replace broken electrical goods such as a fridge or a washing machine or are without adequate toiletries, soap or toothpaste. Th 3. Three million children are regularly forced to do without meals through lack of money to buy food. Brown makes the point that it costs more not to invest in children than to invest in them. He suggests solutions like levying sums of money from the hugely profitable online gambling industry and, of course, highly profitable banks. This was supporte...