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…)

4 responses to “Prayers at a time of tragedy”

  1. Linda Watson Avatar
    Linda Watson

    It’s hard to imagine that only a few hours ago I was in your beautiful church in that wonderful city that sometimes I think of as mine. My heart and my prayers go out to all the families of the bereaved and injured tonight.
    “Rest eternal Lord, grant unto them and may light perpetual shine upon them”

    Reply
  2. Diane Avatar
    Diane

    Amen. And yet again the people of Glasgow showed themsleves at their warm-hearted best, with unsolicited offers of practical help.

    Reply
  3. The Revd Tom Green Avatar
    The Revd Tom Green

    Thank you for this prayer Kelvin.
    Here in Australia the week before last, a guy dressed as a Muslim (and was in fact one) held a lot of people hostage in a very posh but well-patronised cafe in the business/law precinct the city of Sydney. He had a lot of irrational demands. It was a very well-planned and he held up the people and the city in terror for 12+ hours. He was actually a bully and unhinged mentally. In the end the police broke in and in the ensuing gun battle 2 people were killed by the gunmman then the gunman himself.
    We lie quietly here in Australia with relatively little racial violence (but lots of domestic violence -the gunman had heaps of charges)
    We understand this incident does not equate with what happened in your city
    or to the schhool-children in Pakistan but it stunned us.

    So I thank you for your skill to put this simple prayer together.
    Tom

    Reply
    1. Kelvin Avatar
      Kelvin

      Thanks Tom – we were all watching and praying along with those in Sydney last week. These events are world events. Paradoxically they bring us together.

      Reply

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