Blog on the Learig

  1 January 2026  – New Year On Saturday 29 November, Pope Leo XIV and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Patriarch Bartholomew signed a Joint Declaration. They had met together to celebrate the 1700 th anniversary of the Nicene Creed. The meeting took place amidst the archaeological remains of the Council’s site. ‘The Council of Nicaea held in 325AD was a providential event of unity.’ they said in their Declaration. Acknowledging their differences, they went on to say that, ‘We must also recognize that what binds us together is the faith expressed in the creed of Nicaea.’ Having moved away from declaring that the Westminster Confession of Faith is our subordinate standard, the Kirk has embraced a ‘Book of Confessions’ which not only includes the Confession of Faith but the Nicene Creed bringing us in line with these historic churches. The two leaders are convinced that the commemoration of the Creed and its pivotal role in bringing the two denominations toge...

  31 December 2025 – Hogmanay We live in a Universe which is exceedingly complex. So much of what happens on a daily basis is still a mystery not only to us but to the scientists too. ‘Things Scientists don’t Know Yet’ is a book for children with the subtitle, ‘The Unsolved Mysteries of Science’. It is written by Peter Gallivan. There are no less than thirty-three things which scientists don’t know yet covered in the book. Some of them are very surprising. Scientists don’t know how sunflowers follow the sun or the size of the universe or why humans age or how bicycles stay upright? Or why do we laugh?   Babies laugh when they are very young. We tend to laugh when other people are there. It is a social activity. Perhaps it strengthens the bonds between people. ‘It could be that we laugh simply because it is good for our health.’ says Gallivan. As it says in the Bible, ‘A cheerful heart is good medicine.’ (Proverbs 17;22) Or could time travel become a reality? It is poss...

  30 December 2025 The astronomers third way of thinking is lateral. After presenting their magical gifts, the wise men return home. But Matthew says, ‘Having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.’ They are not fools. They know that they don’t have to follow the same path. There are many ways to get home, many ways to shape a future, many ways to live the life of Christ. They were able to think out of the box and do something surprising. It is a way of thinking which was championed by King Solomon charged to decide the mother of a disputed child. He changed focus from a live child to a dead child. And when faced with the woman taken in adultery, Jesus refocused the argument away from the sin of the woman to the sins which are found in every human heart. And, of course, the whole Christian Gospel is built upon a foundation of lateral thinking – the last shall be first, it is the child who will lead us into God’s Kin...

  29 December 2025 Although we call the foreign visitors from the East ‘wise men’, they are called magoi in Greek. We translate it sometimes as magi. It’s not difficult to see that this gives us the English word magic and magician. These wise men were also considered to be magicians. They journey from the East. They appear and they disappear. They are nameless and leave no trace. They offer the Christchild their worship and give him exotic gifts – gold, frankincense and myrrh. They were gifts offered to kings but what was Mary going to do with them? What did she do with them? They have woven a magical tale which enthrals us every Christmas in the assorted productions of Nativity Plays which often feature the lines, ‘Gold for a kIng. Frankincense for a priest and myrrh for one who is going to die.’ Here   the Easter Gospel is revealed in the celebration of Christmas. The baby laid in the manger grows up to become the Suffering Servant, despised and rejected by men, a man...

  28 December 2025 The wise men study the night sky. They make observations. They consult prophetic books. They establish theorems based on observation. They put their faith in them until another experiment or observation contradicts it. Did these foreign astronomers lose faith in their own scientific enquiry? They had the star to   lead them to the Christchild so why detour to Jerusalem and ask their   fatal question, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?’ If they had more faith in their own scientific thinking, would Herod have been so quick to massacre the innocents? Scientific enquiry doesn’t always result in good outcomes. Think of the atomic bomb? Mistakes are made. They are often hidden from the pages of scientific or mathematical school books. We only read about the end results and ask, ‘How did they get this?’ Experiment is important and we should embrace it   in the Kirk. Make an experiment of a new initiative for a limited per...

  27 December 2025 On Christmas Eve 1925, one hundred years ago, AA Milne published the first of his stories about a ‘bear of little brain’ who lived in the Hundred Acre Wood along with his assorted friends. The original story was called, ‘The Wrong Sort of Bees’ and appeared in the London Evening news. It featured the first of Winnie-the-Pooh’s poems: Isn’t it funny How a bear likes honey? Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! I wonder why he does? The poem begins with a rhetorical question and ends with a scientific one. ‘I wonder why a bear likes honey?’ The poem is preceded by the bear’s scientific enquiry. He hears some buzzing. ‘That buzzing noise means something.’ he says and by a process of deduction, he concludes that   bees   are   making   honey so that he can eat it! He climbs the tree to get the honey. He falls down. He rolls   in the mud to disguise himself as a dark cloud. He gets a blue balloon to   camouflage himself as he’s carried up   ...

  26 December 2025 Joseph is often neglected in our Christmas celebrations. He has two beautiful gifts to share. Firstly, his silence.   Joseph never speaks. Mary speaks to the angel. Mary sings her Magnificat. And when Mary and Joseph discover the lost child in the Temple, it isn’t Joseph who reprimands him. It is Mary. Joseph is there in the Temple, in Egypt, in Nazareth and in Jerusalem. His presence confirms the purposes of God. He does what the angel says and every time he fulfils a prophecy. His presence protects, supports and encourages Mary in her vulnerability. But he doesn’t speak. Does it matter? Look what he did! Secondly, his disappearance. The shepherds notice him but the wise men do not. Simeon sings his song to Mary and Joseph but he only speaks to Mary. ‘Sorrow like a sharp sword will pierce your own heart also.’ Luke reveals Mary’s inner life but says nothing about Joseph’s. Did Joseph treasure all these things in his heart? He treasured Mary and the ...

  25 December 2025 – Christmas Day The Bible and the Koran both tell of Mary, the angel and the birth of Jesus. The two tales diverge. In one, we travel with Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem and the manger and in the other, we travel with Mary into the desert and the miraculous creation of an oasis. The most significant point of divergence is in the way speech is   put into the Christchild’s mouth . ‘Allah has made me blessed wherever I may be.’   Why are these two versions different?   How can we say one is truer than the other, when both tell of the mystery of God?   We struggle to see what God is doing in our world, what he is calling us to do in our lives.   Where is he to be found in our world – a manger, a desert, a baby who is for all the world a blessing? It is a mystery! Woven into the action of the angels and the shepherds, there is the stillness of the night, the stillness of the angels’ absence, Mary’s inner stillness and restraint, treasuri...

  24 December 2025 Christmas is not a happy time for everyone. I was visiting in the hospital and an older woman said to me, ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ It’s a question which has a very straightforward answer, ‘You have done nothing to deserve this.’ Random things happen to us and, to be fair, very few people escape the dark night of the soul. Jesus makes this clear. His friends asked him, ‘Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ They thought that his impediment must have been the result of something he or his parents had done. Jesus makes an interesting reply. ‘Neither this man nor his parents   sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.’   This was a prelude to a healing miracle. Jesus made mud with his saliva and the earth, spread it on the blind man’s eyes and healed him. But not everyone is healed. My friend’s lament, ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ was possibly the result of an inner realisation ...

  23 December 2025 This autumn, far-right protests and rallies, focused on immigration and the housing of migrants in local hotels, have been   weaponising Christianity. ‘Christ is King!’ is chanted. National flags are brandished. Crosses waved in the air. This political group is attempting to associate Christianity with nationalism. In other words, to belong to the nation is to acknowledge your Christian heritage and to value it over against other religions and people. There’s no acknowledgement that a percentage of migrants who make such a scary   journey to get to Britain are themselves Christians and some of them are fleeing from their own homes because as Christians they are being persecuted! There are two dangers. Firstly, the demonisation of migrants is an attempt to divide the nation and to create a ‘them and us’ scenario. Parallels with Nazi Germany are not hard to discern. Our nation is not so impoverished to resort to these unscrupulous strategies. Se...

  22 December 2025 For centuries, the Latin Vulgate was the official   version of the Bible used by the Church in the West. St. Jerome, who was commissioned to translate the Bible into Latin by the Pope in the late fourth century, translated the Greek, ‘Rejoice, highly favoured one’ as ‘Ave gratia plena’, ‘Hail, full of grace’. As a consequence, Mary was considered to be full of grace and having such a plenitude of grace was able to share it through the prayers of the faithful. But notice what has happened here. Instead of being the focus of God’s choice, the one who is highly favoured by God, she becomes the focus of other people and through her misappropriated plenitude of grace is considered worthy of their worship. Mary’s sanctity is not in being filled with grace. It is to be found in her obedience to the Word of God. Despite her perplexity, her fear and the uncertainty of   what lies before her, she says simply, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be...

  21 December 2025 We were in Perth on Thursday evening to hear the Dunedin Consort perform Handel’s ‘Messiah’. Under the direction of John Butt, leading from the harpsichord, they work with minimal resources. The chorus, which contained the four soloists, numbered a dozen. The soprano, Nardus Williams, and the bass, Dingle Yandell, sang effortlessly. Their posture was restrained. Clearly, they saw themselves as instruments, allowing the music to be heard without becoming a distraction to the audience. By contrast, the alto, Lotte Betts-Dean and the tenor, Joshua Elliott, were much more animated, using not only their voices but their bodies to bring out the drama of what was a religious opera staged without costume and set. This was a story full of intense dramatic action and insight revealing events of cosmic significance. The oratorio reaches a climax when the trumpets and the timpani join the consort in the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’. This is sustained throughout the third and ...

  20 December 2025 I have a book called, ‘Refuge’, a place of safety. It features Mary and Joseph and the Christchild. They are making their escape from the wicked King Herod. The book has been written from the point of view of the donkey for 3-7 year olds. I bought it in 2015. Underneath the title, there is a sticker. On it, there is the logo for ‘War Child’. Round the sticker   it says, ‘£5 from the sale of this book will go direct to War Child’. This book has just been reissued to celebrate its tenth anniversary. Although the book is   more expensive and the logo is just the same, it says that ‘£1 from the sale of this book will go direct to War Child’. Today,   there is even greater need. ‘War Child’ is   ensuring a safe future for every child affected by war. Over 3.7 million children in Ukraine are internally displaced. Over 6.3 million children live in other countries as refugees. In Gaza, over 42,000 children are injured, 21,000 have been left ...

  19 December 2025 On Wednesday night, the kirk at Pittenweem was invited to worship with the local Episcopal Church. They had organised an evening service of lessons and carols based on the famous Kings College,   Cambridge nine lessons but with a welcome reduction to six. The service was well-attended with some young people in scout uniform in attendance too and everyone carrying candles. We were sitting near the front and noticed the nativity neatly located at the foot of the Communion Table. There was something odd about it. The figure of Mary was quite different. She looked as if she had wandered off from an olive wood nativity for the other characters were colourfully ceramic. The priest revealed the secret. Last year, the congregation lost its Mary and had borrowed the kirk’s Mary for the night! A fitting ecumenical initiative. I remember the beautiful olive wood nativity which I found in a cupboard in Stenton Church. The figures were all wrapt up in newspaper a...

  18   December 2025 In Charlotte, North Carolina, a pastor and his congregation have displayed a nativity scene in front of their church. The usual cast has been arranged in their traditional places. In addition to the Biblical figures, some life-sized contemporary government officers in black are there too. They have been strategically placed behind the nativity figures creating a menacing presence. They are Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers or ICE Officers. They are here to question or even arrest our Christmas cast. In a video, a man in a van gets out and approaches the nativity. He is respectful of the Biblical characters but he shows no respect for the USA government officers. In fact, he knocks them down to the ground and kicks at least one of them when he is lying flat. It is clear that he is not happy with this mixture of piety and politics. The pastor is unsympathetic. The Christmas scene has been constructed to make people think. But in this case,...

  17 December 2025 We attended a Christmas service in which a poem by UA Fanthorpe was read. It is called, ‘Cat in the Manger’. It begins, ‘In the story, I’m not there.’ And continues to ask the question and insist that a cat was an obvious occupant of any stable. The cat who is the narrator of the poem, blames ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, /who got it wrong, /Who left out the cat’. Certainly there is no mention of a cat in the Infancy Narratives. But, come to that, there is also no mention of a donkey, an ox or a cow! There is a legend about a cat in the manger. It is said that the baby Jesus was crying because he was cold. Mary for all her saintliness couldn’t quieten him. The cat in the stable jumped into the manger and snuggled into the baby giving him warmth and a constant purr which soothed him to sleep. Sounds plausible but, of course, there is no record of such an event in the Gospels as the poet acknowledges. Does it matter? There are two ways of looking at this. ...

  16 December 2025 We were at the Dundee Choral’s production of Mendelssohn’s magnificent oratorio, ‘Elijah’. Whilst it didn’t seem a seasonal production and the audience wasn’t large in numbers, it was inspiring   to hear one of the repertoire’s greatest oratorios. The choir was in good voice – and the soloists too. Dingel Yandell, who sings bass, was Elijah and he sang his part with strength and conviction. There wasn’t a single blemish in his range – consistently good from top to bottom. Of the others, the mezzo-soprano, Beth Taylor, shone not least because she had been invited to stand in for the publicised mezzo who was indisposed. Taylor reminded me of Ferrier and Baker in the timbre of her voice which had enormous colour – the treacherous Jezebel, the pure strains of the angel and the flow of the arias. Mendelssohn’s composition is magnificient and certain scenes in the oratorio are memorable not least the music which accompanies the battle of the gods, the eart...

  15 December 2025 ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence …’ prays the prophet, Isaiah. (Isaiah 64;1)   And the flooded plains and the famine stricken lands would be no more. And peace reign in Ukraine, Gaza, the Sudan …. ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down …’ is our Advent cry for help, our longing for the coming of the Son of God. But will our prayer be answered this Advent? Was it answered last Advent? Was it answered when the lament was first delivered in the days of the prophet? There are two problems with this prayer. Firstly, to whom would God respond? If you were the one who cried, ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down ..’ would God respond to you over against another worshipper with the same prayer? Secondly, would your cause be justified? Would you have right on your side? What sort of God would make immediate response to your prayer? A puppet on a string? Or ...

  14 December 2025 Christmas   is a celebration of our vulnerability. How did God consider such a wise and simple plan? The baby lying in a manger embraces our humanity in all its vulnerability. If you look more closely at this familiar scene, you will notice that the shadow of death envelopes the Christchild. There’s Herod and the sharpness of his wintry vanity and cruelty. There’s Simeon who perceives the grief ahead, ‘Sorrow, like a sharp sword, will break your own heart.’ he says to Mary. Anna, married for only seven years and now eighty-four, is living witness to the resurrection, finding new life in her grief. And there’s Elizabeth. She did not experience death but there was a death within her. She was barren. Her barrenness is the opening symbol of the gospel. Like the wilderness and the dry land, she rejoiced in the birth of a son whose home became the desert. His name was John, the Baptist! ‘The desert shall rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus it shall blosso...

  13 December 2025 In the thirteenth station of the cross, Jesus is removed from the cross and placed in the arms of his mother, Mary. It is traditionally called the Pieta. It has its origins not in the Biblical witness but in the fourteenth century German Church. It is often depicted as a sculpture. There is nothing to establish the truth of this in the Gospels. Mary is certainly a witness to the crucifixion and St. John famously reports that Jesus invited the beloved disciple to treat Mary as his mother and asks Mary to consider John as her son. The Pieta is the fruit of a creative imagination. It is not difficult to see the pattern of the mother cradling her baby in her arms morph into the weeping mother holding her dead son in her arms with thorns in his brow, wounds in hands and side all bloodied and bruised. But who knows whether it was true or not? In his novella, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013, Colm Toibin paints a very honest picture of Mary who will not ...