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Not for the first time, I find myself thwarted in an attempt to do an assembly at the local primary school. This time, they gave me the wrong time, so I turned up an hour after the assembly had happened. In the past I have turned up only to be told that on one occassion…

Last night’s episode of Six Feet Under did end with a surprising thud. What I could not really come to terms with was the Quakers in the Quaker Meeting sitting in pews in rows. Are there really Quakers who don’t face one another in meeting? Their singing of Holly Near’s song “Singing for our Lives”…

One of the things that we are being asked as Christian people more and more, is to tell people how to live. We used to be the ones who were there to tell people how to come close to God, and many of us still want to do that. The trouble is, people think that…

Here is the result of a quiz which is doing the rounds at the moment. The odd thing is that I've actually been to the tomb of St Athanasius in Cairo. More details in wikipedia here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius (The tomb itself was rather smelly). You are Athanasius! You are willing to fight alosing battle, just to make sure that the truthis…

Perhaps the most impressive thing that I've seen this week was someone set fire to a mushroom stroganoff  (which had been doused in brandy) whilst conducting a rather complicated theological debate with me which began at the General Synod earlier in June.The question is over whether baptism is a pre-requisite of admission to communion. The…

“I've just had o­ne of your digital organs delivered to the church I work in.””Oh yes.””And it has come locked””What, is there no key?””No, there is no key.””Ah, I think that we taped the key to the inside of the organ lid.””The organ lid that is locked?””Yes, that will be the o­ne.”

To the Cathedral in Perth last night for the ordination of the Rev Giles Dove. It was a splendid affair too. A good preacher and an organist [John Kitchen] who was playing to the gallery helped a lot. For some reason I ended up sitting in a gloomy corner in the north aisle, which for…

Whatever one might think about America and it leadership at the moment, it is hard not to feel for those people displaced because of the hurricanes. We have a visit every couple of years in Bridge of Allan from a pipe band from St Thomas Episcopal School in Houston, Texas. Inevitably today, I find myself…

For some reason, two Edinburgh companies become muddled in my head. I struggle to distinguish the excellent architects Simpson and Brown from the posh dress shop Droopy and Brown. I hope to goodness that the right company is being commissioned to redesign the organ case and frame. We could be facing something altogether too frilly…