The scene is a very busy bookshop. A bepigtailed elderwoman protagonist approaches the information desk. She pauses for a moment and then asks…
“Excuse me, Religion is…?”
Her bearded interlocutor pauses for a moment and then replies….
“Religion is in the gold room, just up the stairs.”
He pauses once again, and then asks, “Or were you looking for a more esoteric answer?”
I am struggling with nine – I mean, Lord Carey, being unhelpful, oh no, beyond imagination …. 😉
In what way is 9. a ‘prediction’. Next it’ll be ‘mystic sage thurible predicts continued arising of the sun’. Also tricky to imagine that there’s much more dirty washing in O’Brien’s washing basket unless he also has a wife and three children. 6, interesting. 7, I am merely a passing English person who has to read Scottish government press releases for work, but on this basis I can’t for the life of me think why you wouldn’t want to separate yourselves from England – just about everything is better – whether it’s some interest and care for soil fertility and the land, an enlightened approach to the arts or a First Minister actually prepared to turn up at a Food Bank. If it wasn’t a bit chilly up there, Id be taking Gaelic lessons now.
9 – might just have had a touch of sarcasm about it.
4 – there *is* more dirty linen to be washed
6 – surprised other people haven’t seen how clever Pilling was
7 – I don’t think so. We neither speak Gaelic here nor want separation. It might be suggested that reading SNP press releases might not actually be the most balanced way to grasp what is happening in Scotland. #bettertogether
4 – crumbs, and probably ‘oh dear’
6 – When the Faith and Order commission’s last gutless report on marriage came out, we still weren’t short of people (Giles Fraser among others) who thought there was all a secret coded message in their somewhere that was altogether more positive. Pilling seems to me like another not-very-brave dog’s breakfast where you can see pretty much anything you like, if you squint. That doesn’t mean to say that nothing positive will come of it, in the sense that whatever he’d written, the C of E is going to be overtaken by events – and the sheer statistics of the whole of their youth turning against them. And the Evangelicals are quietly fracturing down exactly the same generational fault line too. But I’m not seeing the artful contrivance in Pilling that you clearly are….
7. Here, my tongue was a bit in my cheek too. But I do read UK government press releases too, and honestly, if I was immigrating, I’d totally head for Scotland.
7 – I think that Scotland is the best part of the UK to be in.
7. I too think that Scotland is the best part of the UK to be in, and I am pleased that various things are devolved. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It seems (to me!) that Carey is now filling the same place that David Jenkins took when Carey was ABC and is sought out by journalists at Christmas/Easter wanting something to write about.
Well, if they just ring me, I’ll be happen to take the burden out of his hands…
[7] Yes Yes Yes– in my all too humble opinion Scotland is the best part of the UK live in. This opinion has not changed over many many years.
7. I want to throw the baby out, but having once sung in a Gaelic choir (phonetic renderings of words) have no desire – nay, no need, even in Argyll – to learn Gaelic. Just saying.
I agree Pilling is not meant for us but it is a mechanism that allows for the smallest change possible. If that change doesn’t happen, none will, if it does then eventually the change will perforce continue. It’s a kind of fulcrum around which change will/can happen.
A colleague in the diocese has died. He was a young priest. I knew him as someone who was generous and kind. He was a year older than me and died very suddenly on Friday. Another funeral I suppose.
As we gather to read the word this morning, there is one thing that is inescapable ? it is all about sheep. Sheep and shepherds everywhere.
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