Dunblane Cathedral Magazine March 2009

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Dunblane Cathedral Magazine March 2009

Dunblane Cathedral Magazine February 2009

No. 205 January 2009 http://www. dunblanecathedral. org. ukADDRESS Let’s Take A New Direction THE THOUGHT of a New Year’s Resolution in the middle of Advent leaves me in a cold sweat....   [More]

No.
205 January 2009
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
Let’s Take A New Direction
THE THOUGHT of a New
Year’s Resolution in the
middle of Advent leaves me
in a cold sweat.

IamwritingthisonDecember
12 because everybody is
cranking up for Christmas
and there won’t be time to
get it together for January if
we leave it any later; so the
newsletter deadline has been
moved up by a week and it’s
looming large.

So here I sit, trying to put
myself into that unique
New Year mindset – the
almost palpable deep breath
everyone seems to take come
January 1st (well, by the 2nd
or 3rd at least) - the one that
seems sensibly to say “party
over, let’s get serious, let’s get
organized, and decide where
this year is going to take us.
”
Resolve
It’s almost a mental dusting
down, a spring clean of the
brain come early, but I’m
failing… if I can manage
to keep up my resolve
to remember where I’m
supposedtobeandwhatIsaid
I’d do, then I feel I deserve
to pat myself on the back
and hum a wee festive carol.

But let’s get back (forward)
to January where we all are
now reading this epistle …
because I do have something
FROM THE
ASSOCIATE MINISTER
to say about resolving to do
things differently.

I have a friend who turned
forty last year (I know what
you’re thinking - Sally
couldn’t possibly have
friends that old.
She looks far
too young!) She decided that
the year should be marked in
a way unique to her - one that
would mean something and
that she would never forget.

So she wrote a list of forty
things to do before the end of
her fortieth year, not a bucket
list exactly but a mid-life
it, but weren’t anywhere
near last; she had to do the
babysitting thing alone, but
some demons are best faced
solo.
Forty came and went,
but it went out with a bang,
not a whimper.
(Maybe when
I turn forty, I’ll do something
like that…).

Message
I’m sitting here in the middle
of December thinking myself
into January, and here’s the
message I hope we go away
with: you don’t need to wait
for an excuse to take a deep
breath.
The “brain clean”
can come whenever you want
it to and that kind of selfassessment doesn’t mean the
party’s over, but maybe that
it’s time to crank it up again.

And maybe there are some
things that you’re doing
(or not doing) that need
a bit of consideration,
reconsideration even.
In the
grand scheme of things, life
is a brief, but priceless gift;
strangely, it is one used to
its fullest when it’s shared
or embraced (the ultimate is
both).

We’re into January, so the
wisemen have followed the
star and headed back home
their “different” way.
Take
their lead and go in a new
direction.
Happy New Year.

Sally
The Editorial Team would like to wish all our
readers a happy and peaceful New Year
‘In the grand scheme
of things, life is a brief,
but priceless gift’
challenge.
And the list wasn’t
a whimpy one! Included were
cycling a stage of the Tour De
France, going speed dating,
babysitting (she’d never done
that, so it was a big deal),
and a couple of things she’d
rather not see in print.

Theyearwasonetoremember
and the best part about
it was the way everybody
got involved.
She co-opted
friends to go with her on her
speed-dating night (there are
stories, but I won’t go into
that), she and some other
crazy people cycled one of the
hilly stages of the Tour De
France and not only finished
Our Annual Carers’ Service for 2009 is being held at
10.
30am on Sunday 1 February when, once again, we will
welcome representatives of nearly fifty caring organisations,
and local individual carers, to the Cathedral.
This special
Service gives us all an opportunity to celebrate their caring,
to give thanks for their commitment and to acknowledge
our own duty of caring as a fundamental part of our Faith.

We would welcome information from any member of
the congregation who knows of a caring organisation,
particularly local, about whom we are perhaps unaware,
and who might be invited to this Service.

CARERS’ SERVICE 2009
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No. 204 December 2008 http://www. dunblanecathedral. org. ukADDRESS Waiting, Watching, Wanting FROM THE MINISTER DURING THE BUILDup to Christmas last year, it was reported that the head teacher of a school...   [More]

No.
204 December 2008
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
Waiting, Watching, Wanting
FROM THE MINISTER
DURING THE BUILDup to Christmas last year,
it was reported that the
head teacher of a school
somewhere in England had
banned her pupils from
mentioning Christmas in
school.
The teacher had
decided that there should be
no references to Christmas
until 7 December, in an
attempt to stop the children
from becoming over-excited.

Her decision received a
mixed reaction from parents,
apparently.
Some believed
this was an attempt to squash
children’s natural sense of
expectation and enjoyment.

But others said she was
right to resist the prevailing
tendency for Christmas
preparations to begin earlier
and earlier every year - if not
in schools, then certainly in
the shops.

But the good news for that
teacher and for high-street
retailers everywhere is that
we are now in the season of
Advent: that period of the
Christian year where even in
the Church we are actually
allowed to start getting
excited.
Looking forward
is the order of the season,
and that’s official.
Yet what
is enshrined at the heart
of Advent is, nevertheless,
about waiting, patience, and
attending to what is yet to
come.

Impatience
That kind of sensibility
appears more and more
counter-cultural nowadays.

Our prevailing consumer
ethos does not consider
waiting to be a virtue.
When
the first credit cards came
on to the market the popular
slogan was, “It takes the
waiting out of wanting”
- capturing perfectly the
promise of a piece of plastic
to release us from the misery
of scrimping and saving, and
to offer instant gratification.

Much of our daily lives is
built on not having to wait.

Fast food, speedy broadband,
wider roads, one-click
internet shopping: the gap
between wanting and waiting
has never been smaller.

Constructive Waiting
Contrary to some people’s
views of religion, however,
this is not about preaching
self-denial for the sake of it.

Clearly, some kinds of waiting
are not, and never will be,
healthyorconstructive: those
excruciating ordeals that only
public transport can provide,
when there’s a delay and no
one tells you a thing; or the
terrible waiting for news of
someone who is missing, or
held hostage, or in hospital.

But these are experiences
born of impotence, of
helplessness: a powerlessness
where it’s impossible to do
any more than just .
.
.
wait.

Any chance to affect what
happens to us has in some
way been snatched from our
hands.
We’ve been robbed of
the ability to shape our own
destiny or that of others.

The kind of waiting that can
be kept during Advent is
“Much of our daily lives are built on not having
to wait.
Fast food, speedy broadband, wider
roads, one-click internet shopping: the gap
between wanting and waiting has never
been smaller”
actually very different.
It’s
an active word - it’s really
a time of preparation, a time
of taking stock, of taking
control of the time ahead,
looking forward, planning
and deciding what our
priorities ought to be.
One
Advent hymn advises us to
“watch and pray” - to use the
space between the promise of
something and its fulfilment,
as a constructive period of
discernment and action
when we can actually achieve
something worthwhile.

Hope
The essential ingredient of
that kind of waiting is hope.

Advent is a time for stepping
aside from other pressures to
see how things could be, if
only we had the courage and
the vision to see the world
from another perspective to see a world transformed by
the power of love.
That kind
of reflection enables us to
make the kind of space in our
lives where waiting is not just
about wasting time, or getting
frustrated and impatient, but
a way of measuring ourselves
against the challenges and
opportunities to come.

Without learning how to
wait, how can we possibly
learn to know what it is that
we really want?
Colin G McIntosh
See Page 3
Services
Christmas
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No. 203 November 2008 http://www. dunblanecathedral. org. ukADDRESS Who Tells You Who You Are? FROM THE MINISTER QUESTION: What is the difference between an investment banker and a pigeon? Answer - ‘a pigeon...   [More]

No.
203 November 2008
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
Who Tells You Who You Are?
FROM THE MINISTER
QUESTION: What is
the difference between an
investment banker and a
pigeon? Answer - ‘a pigeon
can still put a deposit on a
BMW’.
Whatisthedefinition
of an optimist? ‘A banker
who irons five shirts at the
weekend’.

So a gallows humour takes
over when things get out of
hand.
Andthoughwemaynot
understand the complexities
of global finance, we do have
a sense that something has
gone seriously wrong.
Mindboggling sums of money
have been wiped off stock
exchanges, banks have been
forcibly merged to stop them
sinking, and others have
been bailed out - effectively
nationalised - not just in
Britain but in the seat of
private enterprise, the USA.

Billions upon billions of
taxpayers’ money have been
spent to prop up a faltering
system.
Who would have
believed it?
Ficitious Wealth
Rowan Williams, the
Archbishop of Canterbury,
made this comment about
why the credit crunch
happened:
“Unimaginable wealth has
been generated by equally
unimaginablelevelsoffiction,
paper transactions with no
concrete outcome beyond the
profits for traders.
”
Ithasbeendescribedas‘casino
capitalism’ - hundreds of
thousands of traders playing
the market on their computer
screens, effectively betting
on small changes in exchange
rates between currencies, on
the fortunes of companies or
packaging debt and selling it
on.
And this happens every
day in the borderless world of
cyberspace.

You Are Mine
While these global events
were taking place, in one
little corner of the world our
first grandchild was born.

We went to see him on the
day of his birth, and holding
him brought a sense of
overwhelming wonder.
That
night I couldn’t sleep, so I got
up and wrote the first sermon
I would ever preach as a
grandfather.
I thought about
names and those famous
words of Isaiah: “Fear not,
for I have redeemed you; I
have called you by name;
you are mine.
” It’s a powerful
statement about the unique
value of every life, known,
named and loved by God.

“You are mine.
” So - who
tells you who you are?
Some people need money to
tell them who they are.
So
they generate extraordinary
wealth, based on fictions and
paper transactions with no
concrete outcome apart from
the profit they produced at
the end.

Some people need power to
tell them who they are.
But
that means they will face
the temptation to use power
irresponsibly, and abuse the
trust placed in them, for the
sake of gain.

Some people need their
possessions to tell them who
they are.
They think that
having more means being
more.
But limitless growth,
limitless spending, limitless
debt has brought the whole
economy to the very brink of
collapse.

Some people just let the
world tell them who they are.

Conformity claims many
people.
They get along by
simply going along.
If they’re
not lemmings, they’re close
to it.

A Good Question
So it’s a good question, isn’t
it? Who tells you who you
are? “I have called you by
name; you are mine.
” What
doesthatmean? Amongother
things, it means you never
have to prove yourself.
Love
is poured out universally,
equally on everybody on
the planet, from the Pope
to the lowest pauper.
And
furthermore, love doesn’t
seek value, it creates it.
It’s
not because we have value
that we are loved; it’s
because we love that we have
value.
Our value is a gift, not
an achievement.
So you don’t
have to prove yourself, ever.

That’s taken care of.

“Some people need money to tell them who they
are.
So they generate extraordinary wealth,
based on fictions and paper transactions”
REMEMBRANCE
SUNDAY SERVICES
On Remembrance Sunday, 9 November, the Morning
Service will begin at the usual time at 10.
30am This will
allow the two minutes’ silence observed at 11.
00am to be
at the very heart of the service.

Continued on page 2, column 3
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No. 196 February 2008 FROM THE MINISTER http://www. dunblanecathedral. org. ukADDRESS The True Wilderness “What is my life? What am I all about? Be able to say, in twenty-five words or less, this is who I am;...   [More]

No.
196 February 2008
FROM THE MINISTER
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
The True Wilderness
“What is my life? What am I all about? Be able
to say, in twenty-five words or less, this is who I
am; this is what I do”
EASTER will be as early
as it gets this year.
I can
never remember the ancient
formula for deciding it, so I
looked it up again.
In 325 the
Council of Nicaea stated that
Easter shall be celebrated
on the first Sunday that
occurs after the full moon
that appears on or after the
spring equinox.
The equinox,
the first day of spring, is
March 21.
Therefore Easter
will always fall on a Sunday
between March 22 and April
25.
A March 23 date, such as
we have this year, is a oncea century event.
It won’t
happen again till 2160.
So
there you have it.

Forty Days
Though the date of Easter
varies, the season of Lent
which precedes it always lasts
for forty days.
So Lent begins
almost unnaturally early this
year on February 6.
The forty
days, of course, is based on
the forty days which Jesus
is said to have spent in the
desert being tempted by the
devil.
That word ‘tempted’,
however, is a bit of a mistranslation, for it really means
‘tested’.
Lent is not about
denying ourselves chocolate,
or that second gin & tonic,
but about finding out what
we’re really made of, who we
are deep down inside us.

One of my heroes when I
was a student was a man
called Harry Williams.
He
wrote several books which
influenced me greatly.
He
was a deeply troubled man,
who wrestled for much of
his life with the fact that
he was gay.
The books he
wrote reflected the pain of
his journey towards selfdiscovery and acceptance.

One of his books was called
‘The True Wilderness’.

a picture of ourselves we
try to make others see.
But
sometimes that image is just
a mask we wear, a disguise
we put on to stop the world
seeing who we really are.

Sometimes it’s a disguise we
wear to hide from ourselves
who we are.

So who are we really? What
are the shadows in us, the
things we won’t face up to,
the devices we use to cover up
or disguise who we are? What
are the props, the comforts we
use to make us feel good about
Harry Williams, who went
through his own personal
desert, said that that
experience of loneliness, and
the struggle to discover who
you really are, is the true
wilderness.
And it belongs to
us all.

Who am I?
Who are we, really? We all
have an image of ourselves,
don’t we? And we all project
an image, a role we act out,
Harry Williams said that
there’s a wilderness inside
us all.
The wilderness is
not something out there.

It’s not about the outward
circumstances of our lives.

Most people’s wilderness
is inside them.
Because the
wilderness experience is
about not knowing who you
are, and therefore feeling
terribly alone - boringly
alone, or despairingly alone,
or terrifyingly alone.
We
try to relieve that loneliness
in all sorts of ways - with
constant chatter, or with
religion, or with gin, or by
keeping ourselves busy.
But
these tactics only work for a
limited time, leaving us after
one short hour or two exactly
where we were before.

ourselves? Without them we
are exposed, like someone
dependent on painkillers
whose prescription has run
out.

Recognising what you use
to fill the emptiness, and
learning how to deal with
it, I think is what Lent is all
about.
Leaving it behind is
like entering the wilderness.

It is hard.
It is awful.
But
it is necessary - necessary
sometimes to encounter the
world without anaesthesia,
in order to find out who
we are.
And that is the true
wilderness.

You Are Dust
Lent begins on Ash
Wednesday, and on that day
some people go to church in
the morning and there they
kneel as the priest marks on
their forehead a cross made
from the ash of the burnt
palm branches from last
year’s Palm Sunday.
And as
the ash is marked on their
forehead the words from
The Sacrament of Holy Communion will be celebrated
during Morning Worship on Sunday 24 February and at
3.
30pm in the afternoon.
A Joint Service of Thanksgiving
will be held in St Blane’s Church at 6.
30pm using
individual cups and unfermented wine.

Holy Communion
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No. 195 January 2008 COLIN’S NEW YEAR REFLECTION http://www. dunblanecathedral. org. ukADDRESS Trumpet Call “We go through the motions of waking, working, eating, relaxing, more conscious of the minutes than...   [More]

No.
195 January 2008
COLIN’S NEW YEAR
REFLECTION
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
Trumpet Call
“We go through the
motions of waking,
working, eating, relaxing, more conscious
of the minutes than
the years.
We feel the
tyranny of the clock
but forget the larger
calendar of a life”
IT’S January, the beginning
of another year.
So here’s a
story about time, related by
Jonathan Sacks, the Chief
Rabbi.
Two elderly Jews
who haven’t seen each other
in fifty years meet, slowly
recognise one another and
embrace.
They go back to the
apartment of one of them to
talk about the days long ago.

Time
The conversation goes on
for hours.
Night falls.
One
asks the other, “Look at your
watch.
What time is it?” “I
don’t have a watch,” says the
second.
“Then look at the
clock.
” “I don’t have a clock.
”
“Then how do you tell the
time?”
“You see that trumpet in the
corner? That’s how I tell the
time.
” “You’re crazy,” says the
first, “How can you tell the
time with a trumpet?” “I’ll
show you.
” He picks up the
trumpet, opens the window
and blows a deafening blast.

Thirty seconds later, an
angry neighbour shouts
out, “It’s two-thirty in the
morning, and you’re playing
the trumpet?” The man turns
to his friend and says, “You
see? That’s how you tell the
time with a trumpet!”
The New Year
And that, says Jonathan Sacks
(tongue in cheek perhaps?)
is why Jewish people have
always blown a ram’s horn to
celebrate their New Year.
It is
God’s wake up call, his way
of asking us, “Do you know
what time it is? This life I
have given you, how have
you used it? For yourself, or
for others? To hurt or to heal?
What have you done with the
year you were given twelve
months ago? What will be
your entry in the Book of
Life?”
clock but forget the larger
calendar of a life.

Fading Dreams
As the years pass, all too often
werenouncethedreamsofour
youth and settle for a routine
which oscillates between
the escape from boredom
called work, and the escape
from work called leisure.

Sometimes it takes a jolt - a
car crash, an illness, a crisis
- to make us ask, Who am I
and why am I here? What am
I doing with my life?
These are the questions
which always hover in the
air at the start of a new year.

Time is the greatest gift we
have, and one of the few gifts
we are given on equal terms.

Whether we are rich or poor,
powerful or powerless, there
are only 24 hours in a day,
and a span of years that is all
too short.

Choices
For each of us there will be a
future we will not see, dreams
that can never be realised,
hopes that will remain
unfulfilled.
Therefore, we
have to make choices, and
the most decisive one will be
how we use our time.

Once asked, the question
almost answers itself.
No one
ever died wishing he or she
had spent more time at the
office or regretting the lack
of the latest mobile phone.

Most of the wants we chase
after are artificially contrived,
and many of the things we
have no time for - family
meals, long walks with our
children, helping strangers,
saying thank you to those we
love - are of the essence of a
life well lived.

Once a year we need that
trumpet-call to remember
time and use it to make a
difference, to truly live and
love.

Colin G McIntosh
The Editorial Team
would like to wish
all our readers a
happy and peaceful
New Year
We go through life for much
of the time half-asleep.
Day
follows day in a daze.
We
go through the motions of
waking, working, eating,
relaxing, more conscious of
the minutes than the years.

We feel the tyranny of the
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No. 197 MARCH 2008 FROM THE ASSOCIATE MINISTER http://www. dunblanecathedral. org. ukADDRESS LIFTED HIGH ON YOUR CROSS THIS morning the leaders of the Beginner Sunday school askedmeifIcouldrecommend some...   [More]

No.
197 MARCH 2008
FROM THE ASSOCIATE MINISTER
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
LIFTED HIGH ON YOUR CROSS
THIS morning the leaders of
the Beginner Sunday school
askedmeifIcouldrecommend
some age-appropriate stories
for Easter.
They are wise folk
and realise that it mightn’t be
as simple as skipping over the
unpleasant business of Holy
Week, going straight from
waving palm branches to
shouting “Christ is Risen!”
Smarter
Children, unfortunately, are
smarter than that and tend
to insert awkward questions
when we skirt round issues.

It is a question that must
have been grappled with a lot
over the years because this
is a hard, dark story – and
parts of it show humankind
at its very worst.
It is a story
that asks a lot of its hearers,
and for the very young, I
believe we owe a great deal of
consideration as to how and
when we help them begin to
unpack this pivotal story.

I didn’t give the teachers
an immediate response, but
will go away and try to find
resources that will really help.

But it made me think again
about the Easter story and
especially about the Cross
(which was obviously the
bugbear for the Beginners).

Why this symbol? It seems
strange that we would choose
this as the pivotal, enduring
image of our faith when to
outsiders it must represent
the saddest moment of our
collective history.
Why do
we lift this up – carve them
into our pulpits and encase
them in stained glass, wear
them in gold around our
necks? Surely, we could
have come up with another
symbol to front our faith, the
stone rolled away – Christ
ascending to God (that’s a
beautiful image), the baby
in the manger, the king on
the donkey… why the cross?
Why would we want this
image always in front of us?
Why do we have this image
as a representation of what
we believe, of what ultimately
saves us? It is a question that
deserves careful revisiting
because we are followers of
the Christ who died on this
cross because He loved us.

So, what does this ancient
symbol have to say now?
What was the man who hung
from it trying to say all those
centuries ago?
Resuscitation or
Resurrection?
I think a great deal of how you
interpret this image depends
on how you interpret another
deeply complex theological
issue – the resurrection.
The
Christian community has, for
a long time, been divided as to
the proper way to understand
Christ’s being raised from the
dead.
Must it be understood
as a literal occurrence – a
historical event, rooted in
time, or can it be seen as
something deeper and more
theological at its core?
This debate has and will
go on, but I’m not sure that
it truly is the crux of the
matter.
Theologian Marcus
Borg once wrote: “Whatever
happened at Easter, it was not
resuscitation.
Easter does not
mean that Jesus resumed his
previouslifeasafiniteperson.

Rather, resurrection means
that he entered another kind
and level of existence, ‘raised
to the right hand of God.
’”
Whatever the resurrection
was and is, it has to live in
and through us.
Christ is
resurrected in the hearts and
minds and spirits and lives of
the ones who understand the
cross; when we understand
that He had something to
give the world that was not
defeated – even by death.

He calls us to resurrection
– not resuscitation of our
old life a little better, but
resurrection to an entirely
new way.
We are called into
death with him – death to
all that holds us down or
keeps us apart, death to our
meaningless life clinging to
that which will crumble and
fall.
We are called to new life
through Jesus Christ who
died forgiving and lives on
with that message still living
– because you are a changed,
new creation through Him.

Why do we lift up the cross?
Surely, we could have come up
with another symbol to front
our faith, like the stone rolled
away, Christ ascending to
God, the baby in the manger,
the king on the donkey …
why the cross? Maybe because
we need this image always in
front of us, maybe because we
need this image to remind us
every day of what we believe,
of what ultimately saves us.

Maybe it is because we are
resurrected and the cross has
no power to hold us.
Maybe
that is the paradox of our
enduring symbol.

Peace,
Sally
Easter Reflections: “Alter-Images”
April 1 and 22 at 7.
30pm
Led by The Reverend Sally Foster-Fulton
This year’s Easter Reflections will focus on the re-awakening of
common images in the Easter story.
We will look with “new eyes” at
these themes and ask them different questions.
This ancient sacred
story always has new things to tell us – if we are ready to listen.

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No. 199 MAY 2008 http://www. dunblanecathedral. org. ukADDRESS HOLY COMMUNION The Sacrament of Holy Communion will be celebrated on Sunday 25 May at services at 10. 30am and 3. 30pm in the Cathedral. A joint...   [More]

No.
199 MAY 2008
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
HOLY COMMUNION
The Sacrament of Holy Communion will be
celebrated on Sunday 25 May at
services at 10.
30am and 3.
30pm in
the Cathedral.
A joint Thanksgiving
Service will be held in St Blane’s
Church at 6.
30pm.
using individual
cups and unfermented wine.

Our voice is one of our
most powerful tools.
using
it has been described as
many things – a gift, an
inalienable right, a weapon.

Throughout history, voices
have cried for freedom
while others insisted on the
“I have a rIght to my own opInIon?”
quite another.
It is so
tempting to react rather
than respond, to decide on
some instinct rather than
take the harder road of
discovery.

We as a church have a lot to
cell research, especially a
new procedure that uses
human and animal cells.

Many jumped in, speaking
of the horrible abuse and
danger this concept opened
the door to.
The images
portrayed in the media
were frightening, and it was
tempting to leap without
looking.

A few facts to balance: in
this procedure, scientists
are adding a human
nucleus to an animal egg
cell in order to study the
early stages of embryonic
development – the reason
for using this method is
to avoid using a human
fertilized egg.
Despite the
belief of protestors, they
are not creating human life,
as the other organelles (i.
e.

the animal mitochondria)
cannot sustain human life.

Finally, the DNA used is
from an already existing
human being, not an embryo
or a fertilized egg.
Opinions
are one thing; uninformed
opinions are quite another.

Unique
I firmly believe that
as Christians, we have
something important and
unique to say to the world;
we hold a perspective that
may be quite different and
intensely relevant in this
complex, ever-changing
world we live in.
I truly pray
that we will not weaken our
voices by refusing to use one
of the other precious gifts
God gave us, our intellect.

Listen, look, learn, love…
then speak with a solid
integrity that comes from
the hard road of discovery.

Peace,
Sally
FROM THE ASSOCIATE MINISTER
As Christians, we have something important and
unique to say to the world
say about issues that impact
our world and the folk we
share it with.
Just looking
around today’s news, there’s
Zimbabwe, Darfur, global
warming, the protestors
who are using the vehicle of
the Olympic flame.

All of these are deeply
complex issues, and they
have the potential to impact
not only how our children
and theirs live, but how
we think about each other,
how we value (or don’t) the
planet and the people we live
with now.
We need to have
an opinion.
We need to use
our voices (gifts, inalienable
rights, weapons) to the very
best of our abilities, and that
means being fully informed
before we wade in.

Research
I’ll risk an example.

recently, there has been a
lot in the news about stem
status quo; some have called
for immediate action while
others begged for calm
consideration; different
voices have claimed victory
in the same confrontations;
and at times, a myriad of
voices have even claimed
Divine support in conflicts,
even violent ones.

Attention
recently, there have been
issues, which have been
grabbing for our attention
and calling us to use our
voices.
The relish with
which some folk have been
willing to wade in has given
me pause for thought, has
caused me to consider
how I use my voice (gift,
inalienable right, weapon) It
has made me consider anew
the power of our opinions
and how we use them.

Opinions are one thing;
uninformed opinions are
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No. 193 November 2007 How to remember war without getting into a fight THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH http://www. dunblanecathedral. org. ukADDRESS REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY SERVICES On Tuesday 6 November, BBC Radio Scotland...   [More]

No.
193 November 2007
How to remember war
without getting into a fight
THOUGHT FOR
THE MONTH
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY SERVICES
On Tuesday 6 November, BBC Radio Scotland will be
pre-recording their Remembrance Sunday Service in the
Cathedral at 7.
00pm.
It is hoped that a good number of the
congregation will attend this service.

On Remembrance Sunday, 11 November, the Morning
Service will begin at 10.
50am so that the two minutes’ silence
can be observed at 11 o’clock.
Following the Service, a short
Service for all the churches in the town will be held at the War
Memorial.
The new memorial bridge across the River Allan
will be dedicated during this service.

My father-in-law was a
wireless operator and rear
gunner in the RAF in WWII.

A gentler, kinder man you
could never meet.
He never
talked about his experiences,
and when the subject of war
came up, he was strangely
silent - but in the last days
of his life, he started to talk
about friends he’d lost.

He was the only one in his
intake group to survive and
his memories cast back to
friends who never came home
and to lives that never were.

The fact that this haunted
him in the last days of his
80+ full, beautiful years left
a lasting impression on me
and changed my perspective
of Remembrance.

Feelings
Remembrance can be a
minefield - think back to
the stirred up feelings and
angry unrest caused by the
introduction of the white
poppy; look at the upset
caused simply by removing
the pins! I think there is
something deeper going on
here, and I wonder what
really spurs this anger on.

I attended a conference a few
years back and one of the
topics was Remembrance
Sunday.
The speaker entitled
hislecture“Howtoremember
war without getting into a
fight.
”
It was amazing how many of
my colleagues had run into
difficulties on this day, and
when I held my first service,
I recall the emotional and
tactical gymnastics we had to
perform in an attempt to be
sensitive to all the differing
opinions and convictions.

This day seems to fall foul of
analltoocommontemptation
to lose perspective, and
I believe it may be just a
symptom of the deeply held,
deeply emotive feelings
conjured up by this act of
remembrance.

Wewoulddowelltoremember
why we remember in the first
place.
We remember so that
We remember so that this might never happen
again so that one day there need be no one
who remembers a time when might has
tried to equal right.

Continued on page 2
thismightneverhappenagain
- so that one day there need
be no one who remembers a
time when might has tried to
equal right.

We do not remember to
glorify war, but to mourn it
and to stand accused.
The
most sincerely convinced
pacifists I’ve encountered
have been veterans.

They are pacifists in the sense
that they firmly believe that
everything must be tried and
tried and tried again before
anyone considers lifting a
fist or a weapon.
They are
pacifists in that they are
firmly convinced that when
we lift those weapons, there
has been a corporate failure
in humanity.

Challenging
I remember reading an
article considering the phrase
“only human” - challenging
our use of it and offering
the challenging idea that we
sell ourselves short by using
that phrase as an explanation
or excuse for inhumane
behaviour.

To be truly human is to
use the intellect and the
compassion and the sense
of self that sees past “now”
and embraces “what might
be” for our children and for
theirs.

Compassion
To be truly human is to see the
common humanity in others;
when we destroy another
human life, we destroy a bit
of ourselves in the process.

I don’t think anyone claims
to have an answer to the
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No. 198 APRIL 2008 FROM THE MINISTER http://www. dunblanecathedral. org. ukADDRESS Life is DifficuLt eXActLY 30 years ago the psychiatrist scott Peck published a book called the Road Less travelled, which stood...   [More]

No.
198 APRIL 2008
FROM THE MINISTER
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
Life is DifficuLt
eXActLY 30 years ago
the psychiatrist scott Peck
published a book called the
Road Less travelled, which
stood on the New York
times bestseller list for an
astonishing ten years.
since
then the book has sold more
than seven million copies
and been translated into at
least 23 languages.

in his book Peck penned one
of the most famous opening
sentences ever when he
wrote, “Life is difficult”.

those three words actually
formed the entire first
paragraph.
Rather than moan
and complain, he advised, we
need to accept this reality.

Personal growth, Peck went
on to write, is most often
a complex, arduous and
lifelong task.

Culture of Success
One reason Peck’s book
was, and still is, so wildly
successful is because that
opening sentence runs
counter to our accepted
cultural wisdom.
Ours is
a culture of success, not
struggle.
Wecelebratewealth,
prowess, power, strength,
bravado and confidence.
We
abhor weakness, failure and
struggle.

so it was with interest that i
read recently the comments
of a medical doctor about
our attitudes today towards
life and health: “Pain is
unacceptable, headaches
are some kind of affront to
human development, strain
is a problem to be solved,
stress is intolerable.
” the
myths of superman and
could it be that it’s our
wounds which are our
defining mark? We all have
them.
You have wounds,
human as you are.
i still
have a mark on my hand
where i stabbed myself with
a pencil in Primary school.

“Ours is a culture of success, not struggle.
We
celebrate wealth, prowess, power, strength,
bravado and confidence.
We abhor weakness,
failure and struggle”.

say that, because Jesus was
raised from the dead at easter,
everything is put right, fixed,
forgotten.
they tell you become a christian and you’ll
find happiness, prosperity,
success.
No you won’t.
Jesus
still carries his wounds.
He
still bears the nailprints in
his hands.
that’s how they
knew it was him who stood in
their midst.
they recognised
him by his wounds.

Wounded Healers
Are we being told, then, that
it’s important to recognise
wounds and respond to them?
Not reject them, or suppress
them, or pretend they’re not
there, but face them, accept
them and try to deal with
them? if so, then that would
involve confronting not only
our personal wounds, but
the world’s wounds as well.

for our world is scarred,
and maybe we’ve been given
wounds in order to help us
recognise other people’s
wounds when we meet them.

Wonderwoman are alive and
well, he suggests, and woe to
the person who experiences
feelings of vulnerability,
discouragement, fear
or depression.
Painful
experiences like these,
according to the cultural
myth, are to be disdained as
unfortunate tragedies rather
than, in Peck’s view, to be
seen as opportunities for
finding greater wisdom and
wholeness.

Wounds
in christian art, in christian
devotion, those who meet
the risen christ after easter
always see the wounds.
in
the gospel stories and in every
painting you will see of the
risen christ, the wounds are
always there.
the wounds
don’t heal.
in fact, it’s only
because of his wounds that
they know who he is.
is that
significant?
it’s bigger now that it used to
be.
Maybe our wounds grow
with us.
As we get older, the
scars show.

Quite often, as a friendship
grows, you find that your
friend starts talking about
some wound they suffered
in the past.
You wonder
why they are telling you
this.
Are they looking for
your sympathy? No.
they
are simply telling you so that
you will know them.
“You’ll
know me now,” they seem to
say.
We are known by our
scars.
that’s how they knew
it was Jesus.

somepeoplethinkthateaster
has overcome all that.
they continued on page 2
Easter Lessons and Carols
A Service of Easter Lessons and Carols
will be held on Sunday evening 20 April
at 6.
30pm in the choir.
This is part
of our celebration of the continuing
Easter season, telling the story of Easter
through music and readings.

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Dunblane Cathedral Magazine September 2008 6 Dunblane Cathedral Magazine September 2008 DATES FOR YOUR DIARY SEPTEMBER/EARLY OCTOBER WHEN WHO WHERE WHAT Back to Church Sunday Sunday 28 September “Because...   [More]

Dunblane Cathedral Magazine September 2008
6
Dunblane Cathedral Magazine September 2008
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
SEPTEMBER/EARLY OCTOBER
WHEN WHO WHERE WHAT
Back to Church Sunday
Sunday 28 September
“Because it’s you, I’ll come”
Back to Church Sunday is about making a personal
invitation to someone in order to welcome them
‘Back to Church’.
The idea began in the Church of
England and is being extended throughout other
denominations and nations.
It is estimated that during
the four years Back to Church Sunday has been
running, 30,000 people have come back to church.

2008’s Back to Church Sunday is being piloted in
Scotland and is being facilitated this time by ACTS.

To learn more about the initiative please contact Rev
Lindsey Sanderson on 01259 222361
or email: lindseysanderson@acts-scotland.
org
ETHICAL PURCHASES
According to Ethical
Consumer’s Ethiscore Reports,
Samsung mobile phones
come bottom of the ethical
table, while HTC and
Blackberry come top, from
a possible maximum score
of 20, Samsung, along with
Alcatel managed a 5.
5,
while HTC scored 11 and
Blackberry 10.
5.
Nokia,
Motorola and iPhone earned
a 7.
5 score each.

OtherreportsincludeTrainers
- where Reebok, Adidas and
Nike linger in the bottom half
of the table of 19.
Toothpaste
finds Crest the worst in a table
of 24, with 0, and gives other
brands such as Macleans,
Colgate and Clinomyn a score
of 5,6 and 10 respectively.

Elsewhere you can see how
ethical the various Fair Trade
coffees actually are, as well as
seeing how well your desktop
pc fares.

To access all these reports
and more and to see how the
ethiscore is compiled see:
http://www.
ethiscore.
org/
reports.
aspx?free=true
SEPTEMBER
Sun 7 8.
00pm Arts Guild Cathedral halls AGM – see page 4
Tues 16 7.
30pm Kirk Session Cathedral hall Meeting
Sat 20 10.
00am Dunblane Scouts Cathedral hall Coffee Morning
Sun 21 1.
00pm RSCM Cathedral hall Training Day
Wed 24 7.
45pm Dunblane Council of Churches Cathedral halls Meeting
Sat 27 Society of Friends of Dunblane Cathedral Cathedral and hall Annual Festival - see page 3
Sun 28 Queen Victoria School Cathedral Centenary Service
EARLY OCTOBER
Sat 4 10.
00am Boys’ Brigade Cathedral hall Coffee Morning
Mon 6 7.
00pm The Guild Cathedral & halls Dedication Service – see page 5
No.
201 SEPTEMBER 2008
http://www.
dunblanecathedral.
org.
ukADDRESS
CHASING THE RABBIT
FROM THE MINISTER
THE olympic games have
closed for another four
years.
Billions of people
around the globe watched
enthralled as athletes
from every nation pushed
themselves to the very limits
.
dnoyebdnaecnarudnefo
Despite the controversial
choice of China as the host
nation, and protests about its
human rights record, there
is an idealism still about the
Olympics.

commitment, but above all
of sacrifice - revealing what
can be achieved by those
who stop at nothing in their
pursuit of excellence.

What Is The Purpose?
It is strange to think that the
Games were being played in
St.
Paul’s day, and he wrote
about them in his letter to
the Corinthians.
“Do you
not know,” he told them,
“that in a race all the runners
compete, but only one
receives the prize? So run
that you may obtain it!” But
then he went on, “I do not
run aimlessly, nor do I box
beating the air.
” He seems to
be urging them to live with
a sense of purpose, just as
runners and boxers compete
.
esoprupfoesnesahtiw
Sport is an example for us all
on how to live.
What is it that
we will strive and compete
for, make sacrifices for and
stretch ourselves to the limits
of endurance? What is the
purpose?
Some teenagers were part
of this summer’s visit to
Likhubula, our partners in
Malawi, and they’ve been
reflecting on it.
One of them
writes: “I used to enjoy
shopping, getting my nails
done, wearing make-up.
I
went shopping a few days ago
and hated it.
” Now there’s
someone thinking about the
purpose of things.

The car manufacturers BMW
have just produced a new
model, the X6.
It’s a huge
car, a “two-ton black cloud of
opulence”.
It will cost you
over £52,000.
One reviewer
asks - what is the point of the
X6,apartfromlettingyoulook
down on others in their quaint
.
noitseuqdoogA?sracelttil
What is the purpose?
A Different Race
wenafogninnigebehT
session is a good time to
ask about the purpose of
things.
Being part of a
church makes us part of a
community that sees other
“We believe that
justice, compassion
and forgiveness are
the gold, silver and
bronze awards to
be prized more than
anything else.
We play
a different game.
”
That idealism began with
the ancient Greeks who saw
the Games as a celebration of
the human body and a way
of honouring the gods.
The
Olympic idea was revived
in 1896 by Baron Pierre
de Coubertin.
He was the
founderofthemodernGames,
and it was he who said, “It’s
not the winning that counts,
it’s the taking part.
”
Eversince,theOlympicshave
been an enthralling narrative
of the heroic.
They are
stories of courage, tenacity,
continued on page 2
HARVEST THANKSGIVING
SUNDAY 21 SEPTEMBER
Our Harvest Festival is being held a week earlier this year
than is normally the case.
The Centenary of the Queen
Victoria School is being marked on the following Sunday
with a special service in the Cathedral in the afternoon, and
we have agreed to bring our Harvest celebrations forward
to accommodate this important occasion for the School.

However, only the date changes and our thanksgiving for the
harvest will follow the pattern of previous years.
Gifts of fruit
and flowers are invited for this celebration.
Please note that
we are not distributing confectionery this year.
The gifts may
be brought to the Cathedral on Saturday 20 September from
9.
00am onwards.
Christian Aid envelopes will be available in
the pews during the Sunday service to enable us to make a gift
to those whose own harvest will not be abundant as ours.

If you can help decorate the Cathedral on the Saturday
morning, you will be made most welcome.
Approximately
150 parcels were distributed within our own parish, so
assistance is required to organise the distribution on Sunday
after the service.
Drivers and other helpers are also
needed to deliver gifts after
1.
30pm.

If you can offer any help,
please note your name
on the sheet at the
Welcome Table
throughout
September.

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