What is in Kelvin's Head?

Five Years Ago

03/08/2013

I was reminded yesterday that it is five years since St Mary’s hosted its first Civil Partnership Blessing. So, congratulations to Colin and Robbie pictured above.

Theirs was not the first such ceremony that I officiated at but it was the first in the building and the fifth anniversary of that is worth marking with a big alleluia.

It is perhaps worth recording the process by which we decided to proceed with this ceremony. I had been approached some time before to discuss whether or not I would conduct such a ceremony. As I’d done one already, that was easy to answer – I agreed that I would do it. The question was whether St Mary’s was ready to host such a celebration.

This is what I remember happening.

It seemed to me that it was important to work out whether the Vestry were on board with this. It is the Vestry who share the responsibility of what happens in a Scottish Episcopal Church with the Rector. (I’m the Rector as well as being the Provost). Usually, I’ll just ask a Vestry what they think. Often we work towards consensus, sometimes we agree to vote about something if we need to make a decision with which some people disagree. In this case I went a bit further – in this case I outlined the question at a Vestry meeting and then asked them all to write to me to tell me whether they thought we should proceed. This allowed people to take some time and think about it. In the event, the Vestry members all wrote to me saying that they believed that St Mary’s should go ahead. I was thus able to say to Robbie and Colin that we would be delighted to welcome them and their families and friends to celebrate their special day.

“Ah, but what about the bishop?!!!” I hear you splutter.

Well, I told the bishop at the time telling him what I had been asked to do. He asked me what the Vestry thought and I produced the sheaf of letters from the Vestry spelling out what they thought and I told him that I was going to take the service. His response was “Very well then. I think you should do it.”

It is worth also saying that when I reported to him that I was first going to take such a ceremony, his response was, “Well then, I’ll give you my permission to do it then.”

“But Father, I didn’t ask your permission, I’m going to do it anyway” I said, to which his response was, “Well, you are getting my permission and you are getting it in writing – it is important that you have it”. (I still have the email).

And thus, these things began and I’ve been happy to advertise that we do them since. Then it seemed remarkable. Now it seems special but in the same was that every wedding day is special. In the last five years there has been maybe one ceremony a year either in St Mary’s or elsewhere. (The first one I conducted was at the chapel of the University of Glasgow).

In a few week’s time, I’ll be doing another one and this time there is something different. The innovation this time is that the couple can be pretty sure that by registering their civil partnership (which I’ll be blessing) they will end up being actually married as the new laws coming to Scotland should mean that they can convert their relationship to the status of a marriage by simply filling in a form in due course.

The move towards marriage equality is a long drawn out journey of little steps. I’m proud to have shared that journey with those brave enoug to pledge their love to one another in public.

Alleluia!

civil partnership blessing, equal marriage, Glasgow, LGBT

7 responses to “Reclaiming the web”

Paul Hutchinson

14/10/2015

Thank you for making me think in a different direction just before pausing for lunch. I have never had a blog, so came quite late to Internet social discourse, and have engaged more since joining one major network in 2010 and another in early 2014 – normally using those networks rather than a comment box such as this. Not all of us are natural creators of substantial original content, but like to be thoughtful in brief exchange, and so both those major networks, though cursed with many difficulties, serve those brief exchanges quite well. I do agree that the endless recycling of links (on both of them) can be wearying, and I do wish that some old friends would be a little more self-critical. But the price of any kind of social discourse is that one is vulnerable to the otherness of the other.
I feel I ought to be writing a more substantial comment here, but hope that this is enough. The time is not always there to offer deeper reflection: but sometimes a blogger needs to hear at least a small splash from the stone thrown down the well!

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1. Kelvin
  
  14/10/2015
  
  Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m aware that not everyone is a content creator, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of discovering different communities online and keeping the comments more or less in one place helps with that.
  
  The glory days of 50 or more comments on a post are probably over. I suspect I mourn the sense of community being created even more than I miss the interesting reflections of others. Retweets and shares are always welcome – but they are the means of amplification. Becoming loud isn’t the same as becoming wise, nor the same as becoming connected.
  
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Seph

14/10/2015

It’s a damnable shame—and mostly the fault of Facebook. Twitter at least has an etiquette of sorts, wherein it is considered impolite not to respond to the original tweet, which is usually made by the blogger in question.

Facebook, in short, is the scourge of the Internet. I have often been in groups which have decided to do all of their organizing on Facebook, despite my protests that I’m not on Facebook and don’t want to be, and really an e-mail list would be just as easy, and would they like me to set one up. This inevitably leads to my marginalization within the group, as no-one bothers to keep me abreast of the discussions to which I am not party.

Can you tell I’m upset about this?

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Daniel Lamont

14/10/2015

I am only an occasional user of Facebook but I know what you mean, Kelvin. And indeed, I never read the comments ‘below the line’ on newspapers like ‘The Guardian’. You offer some useful advice. I read yours and one or two other blogs on a regular basis but don’t always comment. However, I can see that the author of a blog would like some feedback. I would be sad not to have the blogs that I do read because they do give me a sense of what people are thinking and an odd sense of community.

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Father Ron Smith

14/10/2015

My own contribution to the blogopshere is, I’m afraid, Father Kelvin, limited to comments I make on other people’s blogs (such as ‘Thinking Anglicans’ and ‘Anglican Down Under’ – a local NZ forum; plus my own blog ‘kiwianglo’, where i pluck articles that interest me personally from the web and provide my own commentary. This still interests me, personally, and provides my few readers with information they might not otherwise be bothered to glean for themselves. Like you, I am no longer an avid Facebook fan.

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David Campbell

16/10/2015

Hi Kelvin – thoughtful as ever – and yours is invariably the first blog I turn to each day. That you bring pressing issues to a wider audience and to people who know, or used to know, the church you serve is a great thing. I’m still blogging relatively strongly, but it’s certainly a different blogging experience when work is set in a very different context and especially community from previously, writing these days mainly for myself about things that interest me, although not quite at the address you have in your Blog Roll. http://www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.com is where it’s “all” happening.

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1. Kelvin
  
  16/10/2015
  
  Thanks David – nice to hear from you. I’ve amended the link.
  
  I don’t think many people use blogrolls to find blogs these days but whenever I remove it my mother complains…
  
  Reply