By the time you get this letter the Gallowgate Festival will have begun and I hope that it proves as successful as it has been in previous years. As I constantly say…this is one of our most important windows onto the Community, where we offer hospitality, and invite others to join us. It is important to invite people into this place and to experience what we have to offer. I am delighted that the newly elected Councillor for George Street and the Harbour, Leon Marwick, is going to open the event, and that there is a strong musical representation from the Ukrainian exiles living in Aberdeen and also from our own native contingent.
It was good to have had Fr William Ogburn, the Rector of St Paul’s Brooklyn, New York, with us the other Sunday. You can read his address to us elsewhere in the magazine. He was on Sabbatical in Edinburgh and had been encouraged by Bishop Dorsey to visit us.
The presence of the Church in Aberdeen City Centre is sadly much diminished, There are even fewer Church of Scotland churches open for worship in and around the Town Centre. In fact the majority of places open for worship are predominately Episcopalian or Roman Catholic. There are very few clergy living in the City Centre and that is lamentable. As I have said before, the fact that the Mither Kirk, St Nicholas, remains barred, bolted and empty is a sad comment on the state of the Church in the City Centre. This is not a good message for the Christian Church to be sending out to the citizens.
This country of ours is losing its soul, and unless as a nation, we rediscover the spiritual dimension in our communal and national life, then to me the future looks bleak.
That’s why the presence of St Margaret’s in the Gallowgate is so important especially for generations yet to come. It is all a question about hope for the future.
We possess something really good in this place.
I received a lot of old photographs of this community over the last 35 odd years the other day….the stories that could be told of the things of the past! People and personalities. Photographs of former Gallowgate Festivals and the characters involved…gone are the days! A huge Sunday School for a start!
In this congregation, in Vestry Meetings at the moment, we are investigating what is the essence of St Margaret’s and how we hold and cherish the fabulous tradition of our religion and of this community, and yet try and make it speak to our contemporary situation. Also, having an eye to the future, and as to where we are going. If you have any personal thoughts on this, then speak to a member of the Vestry, and your opinion will be taken to the meetings.
The Gospel passage for Last Sunday, Trinity VIII, is the same as chosen for St Margaret of Scotland. St Margaret ‘the pearl.’ (Margarita/Pearl) and these words recorded by St Matthew have a particular resonance for this community.
What is the treasure that we possess in this place? What is the pearl that we are privileged to own?
I am going to give to you a poem that I have used before. I make no apology because it is an excellent piece of writing by RS Thomas, who was a priest, and whose lived with his wife and family in a poor living in the Church in Wales. The Bright Field…
“I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.”
‘The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant … who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.’
As I said on Trinity VIII from the pulpit…Sixty years ago this city along with York were regarded as the two cleanest cities in Britain. In addition here, there were those fantastic roses everywhere, especially the length of Anderson Drive. There is no civic pride left in this place…the town is a mess… you just have to look at that carpark outside and the litter that is generated by the general public who just don’t care. Dropping litter randomly is an outward visible sign of an inward disgrace… the cult of meism. Again, totally disregarding signs that say ‘no fires in forest areas,’ then selfishly lighting fires, leading to conflagrations breaking out, like that in the Cairngorms, is a crime against the natural world. The prevailing fascination and obsession in our contemporary world is… what I want …I get…that’s all that matters. Meism. What a sad state of affairs!
We are people of the Word…the Word read and preached…we are people of the Sacraments, what a gift to be given. Word and Sacrament is diametrically opposed to the cult of meism. Père Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit, who was a padre in the First World War, has always fascinated me from undergraduate days.
For Fr. Teilhard the world was a sacrament in Christ. We are people of the Sacrament. The Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood is all that we ever need to possess. He, Christ, freely gave of Himself to found the Community of His love…the Church…the supreme axis is Christ and the Church. The Christ Omega, as is displayed in the Holy Name east window: this is the grace of graces….the very end: the adorable. In the Sacrament of the altar we hear the words of Christ…This is my Body…This is my Blood…Do this in remembrance of me…He gave of himself to create community. There is no room for meism in this. This is what we have to offer as a living sacramental community, by its very nature we are bidden to share with the world. Curiously, in the Greek Church, the reserved sacrament, which is kept in the tabernacle on the High Altar, is called ‘margarita’ the ‘pearl.’
‘The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant … who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.’
Keep chavin’ awa.’
