What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon for Michaelmas

01/10/2013

Once upon a time, in a land not far away, there was a seminary where lucky young men and lucky young women came to train for the priesthood and open their lives to all that God was hoping for them.

It was a place that I knew but did not study in myself but a place that some of you may well have known and visited in its day.

Now this seminary was, like St Mary’s a bit of an international place. It was somewhere that people from all over the world would drop into for a couple of months of Sunday. It was like a liturgical finishing school for the world. It was good in those days (and still is a good thing I fear) for you to have had a bit of time in a British seminary if you were studying for the Anglican priesthood from furth of these shores and wanted to climb the slippery slope of clerical advancement.

And thus the seminary in question used to admit external students from time to time.

And one of these students arrived in this place. He came from a part of Anglicanism where Portuguese was the dominant language and though he had studied English, it was a hard work at first for him to communicate.

Well, he arrived and was shown to his room and the first time he met the student body was the next morning for breakfast.

As he stirred his porridge and gave thanks for his good fortune, he looked up at the other students and said, “Last night. Last night the Virgin Mary came to me (more…)

angels, archangels, Glasgow, Kelvingrove

11 responses to “The Pink List”

Ryan

23/10/2011

Ooh, you’re in some illustrious company – there are worse places to be than beneath John Barrowman!

Congratulations 🙂

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1. kelvin
  
  23/10/2011
  
  He and I are almost the same age, Ryan. It is why we look so alike.
  
  Reply
  1. Ryan
    
    23/10/2011
    
    Made more impressive by the fact that the praepostorial look is presumably, unlike Mr Barrowman’s, all-natural 😉
    
    Reply
    1. kelvin
      
      23/10/2011
      
      Mostly natural.
      
      Reply
Rosemary Hannah

23/10/2011

Yes, I’d quite like to be under … sorry, got lost in thought there. Well done, Kelvin, and yes, more church people, please. As long as they spell your name right, that is all that maters ….

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Revd Ross Kennedy

23/10/2011

I don’t think the paper got it wrong at all. St Mary’s is Glasgow’s Cathedral (that is if we ignore the chapel by the Clyde). The C of S place was a cathedral but not any more – it hasn’t had a cathedra for hundreds of years and so is merely a parish church now (nothing wrong with that). The C of E has done away with provosts (they were the head of the cathedrals which also functioned as parish churches). The boss priest in all the
C of E cathedrals is now called the Dean. And so it should be in SEC because the title ‘provost’ is the designation accorded to the head of toon cooncils.
Yes I know we have deans in the SEC dioceses but they could be retitled as archdeacons which is what (I think) is their function.

As to the pink list…how times have changed….. years ago it would have been called the black list! (sorry!)

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1. kelvin
  
  23/10/2011
  
  Times have indeed changed, Ross. Something which is to be celebrated.
  
  I’ve no desire to be a Dean. Deans in Scotland do something quite different to what I do, and Provost described me nicely. The title of Dean is also used in secular life now too, in education, as is the term Rector.
  
  There are four cathedrals in Glasgow. St Mungo’s, St Luke’s, St Andrew’s and St Mary’s, each no doubt dearly loved by their people.
  
  Reply
Ryan

24/10/2011

Archdeacon is a great title tho, suggesting to the layperson that it involves deacons raising one eyebrow and making drily witty comments.

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chris

24/10/2011

I’d’a thunk you might have been a ‘national treasure’ by now…maybe next year. 🙂

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1. kelvin
  
  24/10/2011
  
  I’m a National Treasure round about this blog. That’ll do for now.
  
  Reply
Uncle Al

25/10/2011

I seem to recall that at Coates Hall back in the very early 1970s the student charged with providing services at the Mission Church in Dean Village was known [tongue very firmly in cheek] as the Archdeacon of the Water of Leith. A resounding title but no gaiters came with it.

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