Blog on the Learig

  1 April 2026 This is not an April Fool. But if you walk into the main library in Oslo (and, by the way, there are twenty-three libraries in the capital) you will discover no less than 1,100 chairs for people to read their books. Everyone is full! Can you imagine that in Scotland? Our reforming forebears were keen on reading. They not only wanted the Bible to be translated into English but they wanted everyone and children, in particular, to be able to read so that they could absorb the good news of Christ, his ministry, his passion and resurrection. They were successful although it took time to establish schools in every parish. And when the Kirk handed over its schools to the government in the late Victorian era, they handed over an inheritance which has blossomed save in one essential, the gospel which has been squeezed out of our schools ever since. The Norwegian government made a big mistake. In 2016, every child who started school was given an i-pad without any paren...

  31 March 2026 Darton, Longman and Todd has just published a book to coincide with the enthronement of Archbishop Sarah Mullaly. She is the first female Archbishop of Canterbury and so her enthronement marks an important historical milestone for women, for the Church and for the world. The book begins with a brief biography of the Archbishop and is followed by ‘ten urgent challenges for the Church of England’. They have been written by ‘ten leading Anglican writers’. The list doesn’t sparkle for it is not surprising. Here are a few of the titles, ‘The Separation of Church and Hate – Spirituality and the Church of England’, ‘Sitting Outside Encountering Christ – The Church of England, LGBTQIA Inclusion and Same-Sex Marriage’, ‘Falling Among Thieves: Understanding and Responding to Church-related Abuse’ etc. At the very end of the book, there is an ‘Afterward’ written by Rowan Williams, a previous holder of this office. ‘If an archbishop has the freedom to listen and share g...

  30 March 2026 Somethings have to be done once – breaking the four minute mile, climbing Everest, travelling to the moon. Once these things have been done, the way is open for others to follow. But the one who does it first has to have the courage to tackle what was regarded as impossible. On 25 January, Alex Honnold, an American rock-climber, attempted to climb the Taipei 101 building in Taipei, Taiwan. He was being filmed by Netflix and presumably was given a handsome fee for carrying our this extraordinary feat. The result was a documentary entitled, ‘Skyscraper Live’.   What was most astonishing about this climb up a skyscraper of metal and glass was Honnold’s determination to complete the feat without any assistance whatsoever. The only prop which he carried with him was a little bag of white powder, chalk maybe, which he carried on his waist and continually placed his right hand into it to remove the moisture created by the climb. He had no rope, no safety harne...

  29 March 2026 An elder expressed concern about the increase in ‘Giving to Grow’ payments. The increase was noticeable. ‘I think other congregations are facing the same situation of increased payments.’ I replied. ‘But that doesn’t make it good.’ he concluded. I said no more. But I did remember life in my first charge. In those days, we made a ‘Mission and Service’ payment to benefit central funds and the work of various departments – Education, Social Responsibility, Overseas Council etc. Like ‘Mission to Grow’, the sums increased year by year. It was my youthful perception that it was a source of pride that the congregation’s allocation increased for it meant something significant was happening – the congregation was increasing its weekly contribution to the offering plate. More significantly, Kirk Sessions and Congregational Boards were encouraged to add more to their annual payments. One of the most regular contributors was the Guild. In Forth:St. Paul’s this amounted ...

  28 March 2026 – From My Diary 1996 Parish visiting is still dominated by the massacre at Dunblane. A son thought the tragedy speeded up his father’s demise. An old woman had difficulty sleeping. A child told me about soft toys in his classroom which came from across the globe.   They were invited to choose one, cuddle it and think about   those affected by the tragedy. I visited an older woman returned from hospital. ‘I will have more peace dead.’ she said. Another gave me £100 for the refurbishment of the organ. ‘Do you remember the hundred pounds which you gave me from the kirk fund when I needed it?’ she asked. I didn’t. ‘Well, I dinnae want to dee without payin’ it back. I’ve been saving up.’ An old man in hospital told me, ‘I’m the happiest I have ever been.’ It was surprising because of his failing health. ‘Why are you so happy?’ I asked. He replied with a rare simplicity, ‘Christ, my Saviour!’ He wrote hymns for personal devotion. Thirty people sat down a...

  27 March 2026 ‘ O God, from my youth you have taught me and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and grey hairs, O God, so not forsake me until I proclaim your might to all the generations to come.’ I read these words from Psalm 71 at a recent funeral. The deceased was 101 years old – and when I last saw her she looked thirty years younger than her age. She loved to dance. I am sure that helped but she also loved to worship God. And did so from her youth. There is something very noble about someone who has quietly dedicated their life to God in simple things like regular attendance at her local parish church for she witnesses to   a faithfulness which has nourished her inner life   from youth to old age. There must be something very satisfying about reaching old age and grey hairs and sharing a faith which spans a century and more. For even in old age, the Psalmist has a ministry to proclaim God’s might to all the generations to com...

  26 March 2026 Sophie Winkleman and David James have written a short article entitled, ‘Paper Chase’ with the subtitle, ‘Textbooks will always beat screens.’ Online learning certainly seems to be more immediately attractive with its vast range of resources and media. The authors share two studies with the reader. ‘Research has shown that students learning online spend as much as 39 minutes out of every hour off task.’ They don’t give us an equivalence for textbook students. But wasting two-thirds of your study time is a lot of time. The second relates to an experiment with 3,000 pupils who were involved in the PISA tests in maths, science and reading. Over three months, half did all their work on paper and half did all their work on computer.   What happened? ‘At the end, the paper-based group scored 20 points higher than the one working on screens – the equivalent of half a year’s extra schooling.’ Somehow, the tactile nature   of the book is attractive. It offe...

  25 March 2026 Jesus espouses the way of the peace-maker. The cross is all about self-giving love and non-violent resistance. In this, he embodies a truth of profound significance. Evil is overcome by good. In our daily lives, we are always suspicious of people who resort to force in order to make their point or win their argument. If they embodied the truth would this be necessary? The truth is its own defence. So where are you on this spectrum? Are you a pacifist? Or do you think that there is such a thing as a just war? Perhaps it is the lesser of two or more evils? Pacifists don’t think that those who justify war take the example of Jesus seriously enough. Those who justify war don’t think the pacifists take sin seriously enough. What do you think? How is this tension resolved. In his splendid book, ‘Ancient Wisdom, Modern World’, the Dalai Lama makes the point that ‘genuine, lasting world peace will only be possible as a result of each of us making an effort interna...

  24 March 2026 I have just received a newsletter from a charge in another Presbytery which is vacant but does not have the right to call a minister. Inside, there was some detail about their inability to pay for a locum after April. This is because of the General Assembly's decision to withdraw the Vacancy Allowance in these circumstances. As a result of this, the services which should have had a celebration of the Sacrament had been changed to services in which the Sacrament was not celebrated because the charge had no access to a minister.  This concerned me for three reasons. Firstly, in withdrawing the Vacancy Allowance, did the General Assembly make financial provision to pay for a minister to celebrate the Sacrament in these situations? Secondly, accessibility to the Sacrament should not be dependent on a congregation's ability to pay. Why should wealthy congregations receive such means of grace and others be denied it? Thirdly, in the Scots Confession (1...

  23 March 2026 ‘Where is wisdom to be found?’ asks Job. ‘Where can we learn to understand?’ The first point to make is that knowledge does not necessarily bring with it the wisdom to know what to do with it. We may live on the edge of unprecedented scientific and technological discovery but do we know how to use it wisely? Even the greatest minds make mistakes – as Albert Einstein discovered. Just before he died, he admitted that he had made a great mistake ‘when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made.’ His scientific knowledge anticipated the atomic bomb in 1939 and, of course, six years later the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Many have discussed the wisdom of this. Einstein’s regret is compelling and we rest our case with Job, ‘Wisdom is not to be found among men; no one knows its true value.’ ‘God alone knows the way, knows the place where wisdom is found.’ For the poet says, ‘ To be wise, you must have reverence for God.’ ...

  22 March 2026 In the Orthodox Calendar of Saints, ‘Our Holy Father John and Companions’ are remembered on 20 March. They were monks in the ancient  monastery of St. Sava in the Judean desert. It was attacked, pillaged and laid waste  on several occasions by Arabs. During the eighth century when Constantine and his mother, Irene, jointly ruled the Byzantine Empire, the Arabs attacked again. On this occasion, the monks decided not to flee from their monastery but remained steadfast within its bounds. ‘We have fled from the world into this wilderness for the sake of our love for Christ, and it would be shameful if we fled from the wilderness out of fear of men.’ they argued. ‘If we are slain here, we will be slain because of our love for Christ, for whose sake we came here to live.’ Unlike the Arabs, they were unarmed. They waited for their hostile arrival. The Arabs slew some of the monks with arrows. Some were sealed off in the cave of St. Sava. A fire was lit at...

  21 March 2026 – Thomas Cranmer Thomas Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Henry VIII   but was martyred during the reign of Bloody Mary Tudor on 21 March 1556. We saw where he was tried in Great St. Mary’s in Oxford. Prior to the reign of this Catholic Queen, he had been instrumental in shaping the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. He is well remembered for the beautiful collects which he devised and which have been dutifully repeated down through the centuries much to the pleasure of many worshippers who have by use and wont memorised these texts and thereby nurtured their spiritual life. ‘God, which hast prepared to them that love thee such good things as pass all man’s understanding; Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we loving thee in all things, may obtain thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Christ, our Lord.’ In the preface to the Prayer Book, there are words of guidance concerning the worship of the Church...

  20 March 2026 – From My Diary 1996 The massacre at Dunblane permeated our world. ‘Every pastoral visit begins or ends at Dunblane.’ I wrote on 21 March 1996. ‘Everything else seems trivial by comparison. The only people who weren’t talking about it today were suffering from dementia.’ There were several meetings at the local Primary School where parents wanted to hold a vigil. Some didn’t favour the format. Some didn’t like candles. Others wanted an opportunity to give thanks for what we had. The parents who had taken the initiative wanted a non-religious ceremony. I met with two ministers from   different denominations. They were consulting each other about a joint future. ‘The idea of expanding this ecumenical fraternal was agreed.’ I wrote. ‘In light of the Dunblane tragedy and the powerful presence of the united church, it would seem imperative to get to know each other better.’ This was one of the most important things which I learned from the massacre at Dunbla...

  19 March 2026 On Tuesday  night, the Scottish Parliament voted against the ‘Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill’ by   69 to 57 votes. The margin was substantially higher than commentators predicted. It was the third time such a bill had been defeated in sixteen years. Liam McArthur, the Scottish Liberal Democrat, who sponsored the Bill responded defiantly, ‘This issue isn’t going away … the public overwhelmingly want to see a change in the law, so this is coming back.’ Perhaps even in the next Parliamentary session? One of the most powerful interventions came from a disabled,   Independent MSP, Jeremy Balfour. ‘We cannot legislate for the feeling of being a burden. We cannot legislate for the throwaway comments that make me and others feel that our lives are worth less.’ One of the outcomes of the debate has been the realisation   that the provision of palliative care across Scotland is patchy and this needs to improve. Visiting ho...

  18 March 2026 ‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ is a Russian documentary which won an Oscar on Sunday night. It was filmed by Pasha Talankin in a Primary School in Karabash. It’s a poor mining town near the Rural Mountains. Pasha was employed to record and organise school events. At the start of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government instructed schools to hold regular patriotic displays and provided curriculum papers written by the State to justify the invasion. These bulletins were read out to classes by the teachers. The schools were obliged to upload footage of these displays to demonstrate compliance. This allowed Pasha to record what was going on in the school without anyone being suspicious about what he was actually doing. The filming took place over two years. ‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ is about how you lose your country.’ said Pasha at the Oscar celebrations. ‘And what we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless, small, little ac...

  17 March 2026 Are you an extrovert or an introvert? The one looks out, the other looks in. Which personality type makes the better minister? One might think the extrovert because he engages with people readily but does his tendency to be the life and soul of the party put him in the centre at the expense of Jesus? What about the introvert? It is important to nourish an inner life, to be reflective, to enable others to take the lead and to shine. But how well does the introvert engage with the group? Shyness may inhibit the one who inherits a leadership role. There is a third personality type, the otrovert. They neither look out nor in  but   in the other direction. They are good in one-to-one situations. They are empathetic. Their natural detachment enables them to see what needs to be done. They are decisive. They feel more alone in groups but  have a distinct sense of their inner life. In his book ‘The Gift of Not Belonging’, Dr. Rami Kaminski explor...

  16 March 2026 Although it is still a surprise, it is often the case that some good comes out of the worst tragedies. The massacre of sixteen five year olds and their Primary 1 schoolteacher at Dunblane Primary thirty years ago led to two very significant changes to Scottish culture. The first was the regulation of those who were involved in working   with children and young people. It took time for these regulations to be accepted by those who were already involved in this work. Some had been working for decades and couldn’t understand why this was necessary. Needless to say, Safeguarding   has now become integrated   into our culture and has been extended to cover people working with vulnerable adults and, indeed, everyone within the orbit of the church. Our care and concern for one another is supported and inspired by this significant cultural shift. The second was the legislation which was passed by the UK Government to ban handguns. Thomas Hamilton had ...

  15 March 2026 One of the world’s most spiritual composers is the Estonian, Arvo Part. During his early career, he pursued an avant garde style. This led to a seven year absence from composition. When he returned, it was with a different style which he described as tintinnabulist. The word ‘tintinnabulum’ is Latin for bell. It characterised a music which was minimalist and meditative. It is most famously heard in his work, ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’, literally, ‘Mirror in the Mirror’. In this type of music, there are two voices. ‘One is the vulnerable, human voice that is straying and sometimes pained, the other is the stable, divine or angelic voice that consoles.’ writes Peter Bouteneff. The two are never far from each other and he describes this as ‘bright sadness’. On Friday night, there was an extraordinary concert in St. Salvator’s Chapel of Arvo Part’s St. John Passion, sung in the Latin from the Vulgate. The soloists were taken by the Gesualdo Six singing in the chancel ...

14 March 2026 Christians may identify themselves by the affirmation of the briefest confessional statement, ‘Jesus is Lord!’ But the more important way of identifying a Christian is through the fruits of the Spirit. There are nine altogether – joy, love, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It is conceivable that someone could make the verbal confession, ‘Jesus is Lord!’ but not evidence the fruits of the Spirit in their daily lives. In that case, we would say that they did not have integrity. They said one thing but did something which contradicted what they said. The last on the list is self-control. In a recent study, researchers    concluded that, ‘The individuals with poor self-control were ageing more quickly than their peers.’    And they went on to suggest that ‘impaired emotional regulation is a common risk factor for many conditions, including depression, anxiety and disordered eating.’ Some people do not believe...

  13  March 2026 – From My Diary 1996 The parish of Logie bounds on Dunblane Cathedral. Thirty years ago today, the news was dominated by the wicked actions of a man called Thomas Hamilton from Stirling  who walked into Dunblane Primary School and shot sixteen five year old children  and their Primary 1 teacher in cold blood. Mary-Catherine brought the news back to Logie  Manse. She was studying at Stirling University and her class had been discharged after  news of this heinous crime was reported. I contacted the Presbytery Clerk and offered help. He was trying to get to Dunblane himself to get some first hand information. Maybe because this tragedy had unfolded in a Primary School, I was drawn to visit Riverside Primary where I was School Chaplain. I sat with the teachers in the staff room listening to the news. A member of staff from Dunblane had already gone home. The head teacher was angry at the lack of security in the school. Everyone was s...

  12 March 2026 In ‘Common Order’ authorised by the General Assembly in 1994, there are five liturgies for the celebration of the Sacrament. In the   introduction to the book, we learn that the second Order ‘reflects the Celtic tradition’. Of the five orders for morning worship, the fourth ‘contains material from the    Celtic tradition’. In his history of worship in the Church of Scotland, Bryan Spinks records that Peter Thomson in his critique of ‘Common Order’ ‘believed that since the Celtic tradition is only a small part of the whole, the Celtic material stood out somewhat awkwardly.’ The Iona Community has been instrumental in popularising what has become known as Celtic Christianity. George MacLeod was the romantic exemplar. But Professor Donald Meek in ‘The Quest for Celtic Christianity’ considers it ‘one of the great illusions of our time’. Criticising the elasticity of this   phenomenon and its dependence on Alexander Carmichael’s ‘Carmina Gadel...