Blog

  • Bad day for bloggers

    Today is, rarely, a bad day for bloggers. Today is the day that Google Reader is being switched off by those people at Google. What it means is that the primary way that some people read blogs is not going to be available to them. Clever-dick readers will already have switched to another server. (I’m…

  • Sermon for RSCM Music Sunday

    Here’s what I said on Sunday evening for the Royal School of Church Music – Music Sunday Massed Choirs Evensong Video available here. Just a few thoughts before our prayers – a few thoughts about what we are doing here tonight. I had it in mind to preach such simple things tonight. I was going…

  • Sermon – Pigs Might Fly

    Here’s the sermon that I preached on Sunday morning. (The video is also available on the Cathedral website). Because of the peculiarities of the clergy rota and the fact that we’ve had one or two special things going on like baptisms and hosting visiting preachers, it feels like a long time since I’ve been in…

  • The Forum: Frikki Walker

    Last Sunday the speaker at our Forum meeting was Frikki Walker, St Mary’s Director of Music. His forum was a tour de force and kept the audience entranced as he educated, opined and inspired us. Together we talked about favourite music, the composer he would most like to be locked into a church with, what…

  • It’s Time

    Just watch this video – there’s people and places that you may well recognise. I’m very pleased to be one of the faces in the video above, which has been produced by the Equality Network to galvanise the last months of the campaign for equal marriage in Scotland. Political leaders, celebrities, thinkers and so-called ordinary…

  • Exodus or Exodon’t

    There was a possibly extraordinary shift in the ecclesiastical tectonic plates overnight. Exodus International is going out of business and its leader has apologised for the harm it has done. Exodus International was one of the leading groups which claimed that it was possible to re-orientate gay people – ie turn them straight. It is,…

  • Guides and God

    So, am I all up in arms about Girl Guides dropping their promise to love [their] God[s]? No, I don’t think so. I suspect God can take it. This is what the Girl Guides used to promise: I Promise that I will do my best; To love my God, To serve my Queen and my…

  • Watching the House of Lords

    The internet is a wonderful thing and means you can watch all kinds of things you would never have been able to see in the past. Yesterday, I found myself watching the House of Lords discuss whether or not I was fully human. At least, that’s what it felt like to me. I’m a great…

  • Baptising

    There are few more joyful things to do in this world than a baptism service. Yesterday I got to baptise someone called Theodore, which of course means Gift of God. He rather enjoyed proceedings and I’ve seldom held a child more keen to jump right into the font. People sometimes comment on how much babies…

  • 10 Unanswered Questions about Same-Sex Marriage

    Last week, at the General Synod in Edinburgh, it was announced that the Scottish Episcopal Church is to undergo a process of discussing what were referered to as “same-sex issues”. I’ve written about this before, and no doubt will do so again. For today though, here are some of the questions that are running around…