What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon preached for St Mungo – 13 January 2013

14/01/2013

I have to confess that for most of my life I did not give St Mungo much of passing thought. I certainly encountered him when I was in primary school up the road in that I remember a wonderful Primary 5 teacher in Bearsden making us do a project on the great urban conurbation that we were living so close by. The topic was Glasgow and thus we all had to draw our own version of the city crest – the bird, the tree, the bell and the fish – each representative of miracles in the lives of our patron saint.

After that I didn’t think of him again until a couple of years ago. During the time after Bishop Idris had retired and before Bishop Gregor started, there was a period of time when there was no bishop around to go to civic events. These ended up being divvied up between the Dean and the Provost and perhaps the Synod Clerk, to ensure that the Episcopal Church was represented at events which needed a bigwig.

I don’t know what I expected when I entered the ordained ministry of the church. I certainly didn’t expect to be a stand-in part-time bigwig going to events like that.

However, it can be fun – so long as you learn to smile and nod a lot you go far (more…)

6 responses to “Liturgy Online & the Papal Mass”

stew

17/09/2010

I found the Bellahouston event very moving and there seemed to be a lot of fervour – did you watch it?

I’m not sure of the relevance of comparing the ‘fervours’ but maybe I missed your point.

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kelvin

17/09/2010

Hi Stew – glad to hear that you enjoyed the Bellahouston event. I did watch it, online.

I was simply drawing attention to the difference between the two papal visits, which no doubt tell us as much about changes in the UK as in the UK Roman Catholic Church since that first visit.

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David | Dahâ€¢veed

17/09/2010

JP2 seemed delighted by the roaring response.

I noticed that your Queen had a rather sour puss in all the photos that I have seen of her welcome to her fellow Head of State. Was that to be interpreted as any form of commentary from the Supreme Governess of the Church of England or is she soured upon all the world of late. Perhaps she needs more prunes in her diet.

And El Papa looks like he has just been released from his padded room with those crazy, staring eyes and windblown hair.

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Peter

17/09/2010

A reaction to two of the elements of your post, Kelvin

First, the questions you raise about online liturgy are very similar to the questions I struggled with when I was working in higher education. It’s taken 40 years of trying and we still don’t have a fully satisfactory way of teaching equally to local and remote audiences. Some of the best work is being done in your own city – I could give you some names.

“a Problem Like Argyll” – depends on where you stand (I hope the locked church was not in Argyll!). If you had been able to join me over the past 3 weeks with faithful congregations (mostly tiny) witnessing in Iona, Ensay and Eoropaidh – as they have done centuries – you too might see it as humbling and encouraging experience. See Bishop Mark’s blog http://www.moray.anglican.org/index.php/bishop/ for a flavour. No hope of seeing them online because two don’t even have electricity, let alone broadband!

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1. kelvin
  
  17/09/2010
  
  Thanks Peter
  
  No – last Sunday’s experience was not in Argyll, but somewhere with similar geographic challenges.
  
  The existance of small vibrant congregations is great. If they didn’t exist there would be no Problem, so its a good Problem to have in some ways! I don’t doubt the existence of the church there. (I’ve had excellent experiences of the church in Argyll and The Isles and, it has to be said, one or two trickier experiences of the church over there on other travels).
  
  Reply
Liturgy Online – again | What's in Kelvin's Head

18/10/2010

[…] I want to return to a question that I began to raise a couple of weeks ago regarding liturgy online. […]

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