What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Guest Post: Why I am an Episcopalian – Christine McIntosh

    In this Guest Post, Christine McIntosh reflects on why she is an Episcopalian. Chris lives in Dunoon, doon the watter from Glasgow and blogs at www.blethers.blogspot.com

    “Oh, so you’ve said goodbye to reason, then?” Maybe I had. At the age of 27 I had just informed my father that I was going to be confirmed in the Cathedral of The Isles – not, I add, because I thought my parents might want to be there, but to explain why I would not be celebrating my 28th birthday on the actual day. Nominally Presbyterian, but not having had any truck with church since the age of 10, I had encountered the beauty, the mystery and the music of the Piskie church on Cumbrae, where I had met the old Dean, George James Cosmo Douglas, while singing Evensong for a week with our quartet. When he died at the age of 84, we sang the Kontakion for the departed over his coffin – and that was it. I was clobbered. That’s what it felt like – an explosion of certainty, followed by consternation. Suddenly it was all true, this stuff I’d been singing and chanting, and I didn’t know what to do next. The only person I could discuss it with was dead. I was lost before I’d begun. (I ended up being prepared for confirmation by Iain MacKenzie, the Rector of Holy Trinity, Dunoon, and the rest is history – why else would I have moved there from Glasgow?)

    Now, all that reflects the emotional state of someone who has just lost a friend for the first time – for friends are different from family. I was at my first funeral, ever. I was singing wonderful music in a state of emptiness, in a numinous place. I reckon God took a chance while the barricades were down. But the manner of my conversion gives the clue to why I’m a Pisky rather than anything else. In that early experience, back in the late 60s and early 70s, I found the mysterious element that still makes belief possible – the silence that allows the other to take over, the refusal to pin things down and thereby diminish them. That is why, for all the joy of an exuberant Cursillo service or the happiness children can bring to a church, I still need time to be silent, space to avoid distraction.

    Music, then, and liturgy with all its poetic possibilities, and room for questioning and unknowing, and open-ness to change – these keep me the Piskie I became in 1973. And as my entire Piskie life has been lived in the Diocese of Argyll and The Isles, I’ll add one more thing. In Argyll, there is always a sense of life lived on the edge – the edge of Scotland, the edge of Europe, but also the edge of a precarious journey, a ridgewalk through faith with the winds of God blowing round my head. There is no room for complacency in the church I know and love. And that suits me just fine.

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6 responses to “Hillhead By Election”

  1. Zebadee Avatar
    Zebadee

    It would seem that the Lib Dems are a ‘busted flush’ with no plan to make any meaningful comeback which is very sad. The SNP were in a similar position in the 1980s but did have a plan which has been successful. Is there not a case for the revival of The Liberal Party? There is certainly a need for such a political party for the whole of the UK not just Hillhead. The Liberal Party could possibly unite the whole of the UK and not just Scotland.

    Reply
    1. kelvin Avatar
      kelvin

      Well, the Liberal Party has never gone away – it still exists and has some councillors. No doubt they feel that their time might still come.

      I’ve a feeling that there probably needs to be a clear attempt to do something new though. A New Liberal Party could be formed by a significant breakaway of disaffected liberal democrats but would probably need some significant hitters in order to get going. Given that part of the problem is some very unimpressive leadership in the parliamentary party, it makes it hard to see that happening.

      Reply
  2. Zebadee Avatar
    Zebadee

    Yes I know that the Liberal party still exists and understand that they have little or nothing to do with the Lib Dems. They too have no big names or ‘big hitters’ which is a pity. As you yourself will know out there in the real world there is a need for a centre party not right or left. I suspect that there is a large number of thinking people who would at least listen to a political message from the ‘centre’ and they are worried and concerned at the polarisation of the right and the perceived ineptitude of the left in todays political parties.

    Reply
  3. Caron Avatar
    Caron

    Kelvin, a few weeks ago, we had a by-election win in Inverness. The evidence suggests that the Liberal Democrats have not become toxic, but where we work, knocking on lots of doors, having strong campaign messages and get our vote out, we get good results.

    We had a first class candidate in Hillhead, but I agree that we need to look at how we get our message across.

    I’m not for the Murdo method of abolishing the party just to set up a new one. We have good, liberal ideas, with good, liberal values, and an energetic leader who is so genuine, so likeable and very good at explaining what they are. Yes, we have a mountain to climb, but we have our ropes and crampons ready and we’re already ahead of where we were a few months ago.

    Reply
    1. kelvin Avatar
      kelvin

      Yes, I know Caron – I agree with a lot of what you have said. However, the big question is whether the party can get people out there working again.

      The win in Inverness was good though it was a pretty narrow thing. Still a win is a win in anyone’s book.

      However, whether the party can get doors knocked on etc now is the big question. I know I’m not the only person who has offered a lot to the party in the past who is questioning where the liberal tradition lies.

      I know Willie Rennie is likeable and I do believe he stands for lots of good policy ideas that I believe in, but he’s not even making a good job of running his own office at the moment. And his team are not responding online to criticism of him very well either.

      I’d love to feel I wanted to support the party – I believe in liberal values, understand liberal values and can articulate liberal values along with the best of them. However, so much of what good people worked for has been squandered so quickly that I just find it too difficult. (By the way, I say that as one of the 307, so I’m still hanging in there in the polling booth).

      And the problem is not primarily that the electorate feels betrayed by the Lib Dem brand. That is serious but summountable. The problem is that the activists feel betrayed. That is much, much more serious.

      307 votes out of 23243 on leafy home ground and placed fifth is terrible whatever way one looks at it.

      The Greens were trumpeting their result on twitter so much I thought they must have won, but they only had 120 or so more votes which doesn’t strike me as a particularly exciting ship to jump to, even if one were looking to leap. I’m not really interested in a party which thinks that getting 435 votes out of an electorate of 23243 is anything to crow about.

      Reply
  4. James Avatar
    James

    Hi Kelvin, I agree about the democratic disengagement – properly alarming. But the Lib Dems as they currently exist aren’t a Liberal party of the sort I think you want. They’re fundamentalist economic liberals, Orange Bookers determined to remove the social safety net. It’s not liberal as I understand it to make education the province of the rich, to cut benefits for the disabled to appease the Jeremy Clarksons of this world, to hike up regressive taxes like VAT, etcetc.

    The really small-l liberal party in Hillhead did a lot better than the Lib Dems. The Greens.

    Reply

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