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I'm going to have an operation o­n my mouth today. Yeuch. I will continue to appear to blog over the next few days, but some of the entries will have been written and posted in advance. Yesterday was a bumper day – the largest number of people reading this so far. The website served up about 90…

I'm impressed with the o­n-line petition that has been set up o­n www.inclusivechurch.net, in response to the events in the Church of England this summer. I've signed it and would recommend that anyone who wants an open and inclusive church does so. The fundamentalist parts of the church seem to want to dictate who is…

I've just bought a television. I've lived for about 5 years without o­ne, but have decided that the time had come to try having it in the house again. I'm going to be off work this week following a minor operation I'm having o­n my mouth o­n Tuesday. The TV is supposed to help. I wonder…

I visited two different priests of the Scottish Episcopal Church yesterday in their homes and each had the most extraordinary thurible hanging in their houses. [A thurible is what you use to waft incense around a church]. It turned out that each had been the thurible of the Catholic Apostolic Church, that glorious denomination dedicated to…

Tilly (the Cat) has hairball trouble. Well, I have trouble with it, she doesn't seem to care. We have been given Hairball Mixture which comes in a tube. The packaging suggests that you offer it to the cat o­n a spoon. Well, madam enjoyed that little charade. The alternative suggested is that you rub the…

I've started to prepare the Christmas services. Every year prior to this o­ne, I have been caught out and ended up getting everything sorted out far too late. This year it will be different. I have a hunch that the choir are going to want to sing the Shepherd's Pipe Carol at Midnight Mass and…

I'm racing to get through From the Holy Mountain before the book club meets tonight. I last read it when I was going off to Egypt in 1997, just before I was ordained deacon and I had forgotten how rich a read it was.Part of yesterday was spent doing open heart surgery to a computer to…

I've been listening to the most amazing Armenian Chant on the web – beautiful, measured, holy. What a long way we are in the UK from the liturgical form which we need. Chant has never, ever been more popular and yet all that most people get fed in church in Scotland is the Victorian Dirge…

Jim Wallace MSP – the Enterprise Minister is coming to Stirling University next month. He is coming at the invitation of the Stirling University Liberal Democrat students, but allcomers are invited to the meeting. The date is 25 September 2003 at 1930 – room to be announced nearer the time.