Category: communication

canon 36

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I am spending quite a lot of time right now trying to help people understand canon 36:  the canon by which two or more congregations can formally come together as a Joint Incumbency or a Linked Charge.

Because there are three congregations, every question is getting asked over and over again.

So, I am beginning a wiki.   FAQs on Canon 36.

Would you please join in?

I’m not very clever with wikis and have started it off in Google docs.  That means that if you are willing to join in I have to invite you, so — please tell me in the comments, and pass word on to anyone you know who has been involved in this process or is willing to admit to caring about canon law.

Alternately, you can suggest a better way for me to do this.

So far, I have only listed questions (it’s 10.40 pm on Palm Sunday, after all), but will add to it over the course of the next few weeks.   My hope is that we can put together a draft for the committee on canons to revise and correct that can then be added to the Provincial Web Site.   This is just an idea at this point, and I haven’t asked anyone, so don’t mistake this as official.

I do not love starting up online projects, you know, but it seems someone has to.

a rare morning in Dunoon

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It is not yet 2 pm, but whatever else comes of today, it has been a good day’s work.

Primary School assembly this morning.  I hadn’t a clue as to what I wanted to say, so yielded to confusion and brought a lot of pictures that relate to my faith and invited questions.  It was fun.  We covered (in one way or another) the origins of Christianity; Jesus and Judaism;  apophasis;  Christology; the nature of ritual; the radical transcendence of God; Pneumatology; the nature of fear, risk and faith;  and a theology of friendship.  Oh, and ‘where does God live?’.  After that,  I filled in for a boy who was absent as they practiced The White Cockade for the dance show next week, and then spent a few minutes watching a cormorant dry his wings before driving home.

A quick trip to the shops ensured I will have sufficient food for the weekend, and then I was blessed with one of those conversations that priests live for, but are far too rare outside of chaplaincy.   There was the added joy of it being someone roughly my own age, who has ironically appeared in my life here just as I am leaving.

The shape of my call was never just to the newly-retired, nor even (just) to strategic development, and certainly not to property management.  Those things have their place, but some of what I can offer is to a generation I have seen little of here, and it feels so good and right to have a chance to engage with that again.

Time, now, for a cup of tea and a bit more bird watching before getting on with the  Lay Training curriculum and sorting out style sheets, service books and web pages.

who do you know?

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Hermione’s Heaven is working well enough that we are going to try to make a go of it.  But if it is to succeed, it needs a much wider membership base.

So, this is to stir up business.

Do you know anyone who is growing in faith and may be looking for ideas about how to engage more deeply?

Do you know any ‘perpetual students’ who love a challenge, and who find small bits of stimulus fruitful?

Do you know anyone who is isolated in their faith and may like a space for conversation with other curious Christians?

Do you know people who might like to share resources and have access to a resource base for ‘things to try’ with small groups, congregations, liturgies?

If you can answer yes to any of those things, would you please ask them to join Hermione’s Heaven?

The group is by invitation only (to maintain a safe space), so you have two options:

1. you can join by telling me you’d like to in the comments; then you can invite as many people as you’d like.

2.  you can encourage them to email me or leave a comment so that I can send them an invitation directly..

Hermione’s Heaven is a ning group that offers a weekly ‘challenge’ and regular space for conversation.  There is no time commitment for members.  Drop is as often or as seldom as you like.  But please join!

If you have a blog of your own, and would be willing to link to this, that would be helpful too.

more information here and here.

elsewhere

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My web time has been used up elsewhere today, but this is to let all you Hermione’s out there know that this week’s challenge is up.

The web is a strange and glorious thing.  For many of us, the experience of watching the Inauguration was changed by the ability to watch and ‘chat’ in facebook at the same time.  There was something wonderful about being able to watch, knowing that all your friends were watching too.  The result seems to be that Facebook is growing by leaps and bounds — in my world at least.  People I’ve not spoken to for decades have sent me friend requests.   Suddenly, I’m seeing photos of people I have never seen as adults, and remembering the taste of a chocolate cake I haven’t had for 20 years.  I had forgotten how much more diverse my world was before moving to Britain.  One gets used to ‘sameness’ and forgets.   I am glad that my world has suddenly expanded (again) to include friends with dreadlocks, liberal baptists, those who engineer the dreams of Disney, and concert pianists.   Did I really know I was giving all that up when I set out for St Andrews?

(still, there have been other things to make up for it; not least God and decent cups of tea.)