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…)

3 responses to “Thurible Spotting”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Re: Thurible Spotting
    Just a small correction – Big Aggie came from Glasgow's Catholic Apostolic Church, not Edinburgh.  But who has the Edinburgh o­ne?

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  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Re: Thurible Spotting
    Thanks for the correction Ruth – I have no idea who has the Edinburgh o­ne. Wouldn't it be wonderful to get them all together for a service? Is the Glasgow CA church building still extant? I don't even know where it was.
    There is a rather odd offshoot of the CA Church called the New Apostolic Church which exists in Scotland in Dunfermline, but they do not seem to have taken o­n the powerful aesthetic of the Catholic Apostolic church. It is wonderful that the two thuribles from Glasgow and Dundee are different – no mass production in those days.

    Reply
  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Re: Thurible Spotting
    The Catholic Apostolic Church in Glasgow was in McAslan St in Townhead. The building was apparently designed by AWN Pugin but was demolished in 1970. There’s a photograph of the interior in The City that Disappeared by Frank Worsdall

    Reply

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