What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Sermon preached for St Mungo – 13 January 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…)

33 responses to “Companions?”

  1. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    No, Kimberley – he ISN’T a Primate. He is merely first among equals and has no powers as a primate or metropolitan.

    Reply
  2. Kimberly Avatar
    Kimberly

    So what would you use as the collective noun for Archbishops, Presiding Bishops, Primi (Primuses??), etc?

    I have always heard ‘primates’ as a simple short hand and have not assumed that it tells us anything about the form of governance in any particular province.

    Reply
  3. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Ah! But it does! +Idris is Primus (inter pares), but he’s no more a Primate than you or I. This is a delightful distinguishing feature of our Scottish Church. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were various suggestions and attempts to restore some kind of Metropolitan Bishop, but they came to nothing.

    As for a collective noun, I don’t know. I prefer not to think about such meetings!

    Reply

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