• Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!

    There have been quite a lot of new hits on the blog over the last few days, not least because of the Rudolphus post, which is currently receiving comments about the quality of the Latin. The comments are in Latin too.

    Seeing all these new hits come in, I decided it was time to update the About page on this blog. It now says a little more about what I do than the two line one that was there before which just had my job title and links to twitter and facebook.

    If you are reading this as a new blog subscriber a particular shout out to you. Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome! Thank you for signing up to receive updates by email. I hope you enjoy reading all this. Do join in the comments. This is a lively community which I learn from and which often makes me laugh.

    This is what I’ve said on the new About page. (Many thanks, as usual to Gordon Smith who took most of the photographs).


     

    head and shouldersHi, I’m Kelvin Holdsworth. Welcome to my blog. I’ve been writing here since August 2003. I’m the Provost of St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow – a busy church with a progressive ethos in the inner West End of the city. Glasgow is a place that I love and have a strong connections with both through my family and my childhood – I went to school just a few miles outside of the city.
    After school, which I finished back in Yorkshire where I was born, I studied Mathematics and Computing at Manchester Polytechnic before going on to study theology at the University of St Andrews and the University of Edinburgh.

    elevating hostI enjoy my work – celebrating the Eucharist as I’m doing here, preaching and leading a busy, interestsing congregation which is gathered from all over the world. This blog is an extension of my preaching ministry sometimes – I tend to post my sermons here for all to see and I enjoy the debates that sometimes arise in the comments.
    Some of the themes of my ministry have been cathedral ministry (I worked in St Ninian’s Cathedral in Perth for my curacy), working with students (I’ve twice been involved in University Chaplaincy) and finding ways to make the liturgy of the church exciting and fun. I’m unashamed of having learned more about liturgy from the theatre than from the church. Human rights are important to me – I believe that everyone was made in the image and likeness of God and the consequence of that is an imperative to work for justice.
    pink list logoThe Independent of Sunday was kind enough to include me in their Pink List – their annual celebration of movers and shakers in the UK who come from the LGBT communities. I’m one of the more outspoken members of clergy who happen to be gay and I write quite a lot about that on the blog. For me, equality is indivisible – I think that people should be treated alike whether or not they happen to be gay or happen to be straight and that has led me to be one of the campaigners to Equal Marriage in Scotland. I look forward to the day when I’ll be able to marry such couples in church.
    with angelsAs well as finding me in church, you will find me in other places too. Social media seems to have been invented for me and I’m active on both facebook and twitter.
    When I’m not in church or online, I’m happiest in the theatre. Holidays quite often include a trip to London to catch up with what’s on there. A fascination with opera has led me into opera reviewing and my reviews of what’s happening on the opera stage in Scotland are regularly published by Opera Britannia.
    If you are wondering what a thurible is, well it is the thing that you use to swing incense around with in a church.

    If you want to keep up with the things that I write on this blog, you can subscribe using the box below. If you do, you’ll never miss a post.

    Enter your email address:Delivered by FeedBurner

6 responses to “On the election tomorrow”

  1. Tim Avatar

    Ooh, Compass looks fun.

    For amusement, it says I’m: Green; LD; SNP; Labour; Tory.

    It’s got one of those right but I’d probably rejig the others a bit ๐Ÿ˜‰

  2. Neil Oliver Avatar
    Neil Oliver

    I got a very similar result to Tim and to be honest it reflects my vote quite closely.

  3. Tim Avatar

    The Compass attributes equal weight to all its questions, hence getting completely the wrong answer for me.
    There is precisely no chance I would ever vote Green while they persist in being in favour of “alternative medicine” and so unthinkingly anti-motorist with no positive transport suggestions to make.

    The only one it got sorta right is to put Tory last – and even that’s neglecting the fact that, if I were the penultimate humanoid on the planet and blue the only box to mark, I’d rather spoil the paper than vote for them. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  4. chris Avatar

    Thanks for link – got me just about right, which is good as I voted a fortnight ago!

  5. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    Lib Dems have an Orange Book?! That might of interest to stereotypical fans of the Glorious Glasgow Rangers who can’t support the SNP (non Unionist), Labour (obvious reasons), Tories (too posh) and find themselves unsure of who to vote for with only hours left to decide ๐Ÿ˜‰

  6. Gianmaria Framarin Avatar
    Gianmaria Framarin

    Please, lad, quit this continuous and totally wrong identification of Rangers fans as being anti-Labour or even right-winged… you’re talking about that hell of a minority we have at Ibrox who still go on chanting stupid stuff…
    Ibrox is FULL of leftists, Labour Party voters, even SNP, which seems to be the common trend. I hardly ever spoken to a Tory Rangers fan…
    Glasgow’s a red city, always has been for decades, Rangers are a majority in the city, how come they all be “stereotypical tories”???

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • Please don't take him just because you can

    Got back in late last night after the first meeting of the St Mary’s LGBT group. Well, it was the first meeting for a while to be truthful. Similar meetings have been going on in St M’s for years. I was learning last night that there used to be a gay clergy group which met…

  • What do clergy do?

    Here are some of the things that I am or have been doing this week: Two weddings Attending the formal opening of the new BBC building Being around St Mary’s for Doors Open Day LGBT Discussion Group (starts tonight at 8 pm in the Synod Hall) Trip to Aberdeen for Bob Gillies’s consecration as new…

  • Doors Open

    Before and after a wedding that I was taking at Glasgow University Chapel, I dropped in to St Mary’s to say hello to some of the people who were there for the Doors Open event. All across the city today and tomorrow lots of buildings are open to visitors and we are one of them.…

  • In a moment …

    How many times does wonder stop you in your tracks? How often do you find yourself stopping speaking in the middle of a sentence and gazing at something? It happened to me today. Someone showed me two pictures on a computer monitor. Perfect circles ablaze with colour and life. It was a pair of photos…