Author: posttenebrasluxweb

Hebridean Revolution, Anyone?

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It’s a wonderful thing for a repressed, subjugated and delusional Hebridean woman like myself to know that the mainland has got my back. There are tourists who have visited ‘the isles’ (and renamed them), maybe twice, who can confirm that we’re talking nonsense about the ferries. Much like the chair of transport (I refuse to use ‘transportation’ until he’s in charge of actually sending folk to Botany Bay) at the Comhairle, our mainland protectors can confirm that Calmac are actually doing a brilliant job. So, presumably those Uibhistich marching in Glasgow were labouring under some mass shared delusion.

Despite the direct action taken by our formidable deasach cousins, and despite the Annie Macsween MBEs, and Màiri Vs, and Cathy Bhàns, yet another patronising non-islander was decrying our inability to ‘step up’ as Hebridean women. We are, she opined, under the cosh of . . . yes, yes, the church. She had tried to persuade some girl guides to stand for elected office, she said, when ‘on’ Harris ten years ago, but they merely listened quietly.

Probably for the best. I can only imagine what they were thinking.

However, I’m not a polite wee girl guide, so I’m quite prepared to share my thoughts on all of this. In fact, despite being a Hebridean woman and a communicant member of the sinister man-cult that is the Free Church, I’m going to tell you EXACTLY what I think.

I think we have had it up to our submissive eyes with mainlanders who think they know better than we do how these islands should be run. In fact, as a demure Presbyterian, I stamp my sensibly-shod feet in frustration at the fact that we still play their game – everything run from Edinburgh and London, and a handful of us begging to be allowed on quangos that decide every last thing that influences life here in our communities.

We are a super-regulated region, the Highlands and Islands. Our language, our land use, our economy, our transport – but we have to scrabble for a seat at the table. How many Gaelic-speakers are on the board of HIE? Is one Crofting Commissioner from the Western Isles sufficient for the area with the highest concentration of crofts? Why is Bòrd na Gàidhlig’s main office in Inverness, and not Ness? How many islanders on the Calmac board?

Good grief, why don’t we wake up? While we’re defending ourselves for there being no women on the Kirk Session, and being told our ferries aren’t broken, these islands are being remade in an image that has nothing to do with who we are.

Earlier in the week, I broke my own rule and replied to an obnoxious comment on a social media post about camper van drivers feeling unwelcome in the Hebrides. The mainland-based expert in this case was pontificating that ‘islanders think the islands belong to them’.

Not so, sir, we don’t. No islander would ever talk about ‘my/our island’ in the sense of ownership. We belong to whichever island on which we were born, not the other way around. 

With that bond goes a sense of responsibility, of stewardship.

And it is to that we must step up – men AND women – so that our land, our language, our economy are shaped as we would want, we who love and understand this place, and who have to live with the consequences.

Besides taking over the boards, trusts and commissions that take the decisions, islanders and their Highland counterparts, ought to read up on the Crofters’ Party. I think, instead of being a minority voice in mainstream political parties whose HQs are invariably urban, the time is absolutely ripe to create a political party from within the region. It has been done before to great effect.

We are not a problem to be solved, we are a community on the cusp of finding its voice.

Cymbals, symbols . . .

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The coronation service for King Charles III was exactly like a typical Free Church service. Okay, there was a bit more cloth of gold, a few extra nods to pomp and circumstance, and an awful lot more women in evidence, but otherwise it was just like being in any Wee Free emporium throughout the land.

The other way in which it was like the Free Church was the way in which sung praise ran like a golden thread through the entire proceeding. Yes, there was a choir, and what psalm 98 calls ‘jubilant song with music . . . music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn’. It may not be the exact same tradition as ours, but really, what do mere traditions matter if the purpose behind all the clamour is the whole Earth singing to the Lord?

There was the familiar benediction, of course. Our fellows might not wave their hands about quite so much, but the words, the meaning – the intention – is surely the same. It was a service of worship, not of the newly crowned monarch, but his God. Many scoff at the sheer scale and expense of such ceremonies, but it is an unparalleled opportunity to place before the world this timely reminder: God, and he only, is sovereign. Earthly kings may rule, but by his grace alone, and not by anything in themselves, however exalted the family

God is the subject of our worship, whether we are the highest of High Anglican, or plainest of Free Church and all the offshoots thereof. The beautiful sounds that filled Westminster Abbey on Coronation Day testify to that fact. With my personal knowledge of the Lord, I’m inclined to believe that he’s more occupied with the origin of praise than the look of the thing. He’s an inside dealer, pleased – I am given to understand – by the intention of the human heart to glorify him. That being said, he’s almost certainly as pleased with Hubert Parry’s work, or Wesley’s, or Gobha na Hearadh’s as that of King David.

Yes, the psalms are extraordinarily beautiful and wise, speaking into every aspect of the human condition. It is hardly surprising that so many later works, those we consider ‘hymns’, are reworkings of, or meditations on, the work of the shepherd composer.

But David – mercifully – did not have a monopoly on praising God. All his creatures are called on to do likewise. Possessing zero musical aptitude, and almost no creative impulse, I am unlikely ever to write a hymn of praise for him myself. I can (barely) croak those composed by others, however, and depending on the content, and the state of my heart at the time, I can mean every word.

Nonetheless, some people are gifted in that way, and CAN compose beautiful hymns to God. Their words can articulate what the likes of me could never hope to do on our own. They don’t take anything away from the psalms of David; God’s glory, surely, is so great that we will never run out of praise. Indeed, the spiritually mute such as I am search in vain for ways to articulate our love, our gratitude, our imperfect recognition of all he is.

The book of psalms is not big enough. Those who love God want to say so in their own words. They want to sing the psalms, and they want to uplift their voices and their instruments in a myriad of ways to heaven.

When Lewis was blessed with spiritual revival, the people were loathe to part. They met late into the night, and they walked each other home, over and over. There were prayers, of course – ex tempore, not read – and there were readings of scripture. Psalms were sung, but so were hymns, old and new. 

If revival is the outpouring of God’s grace on an undeserving people, then their worship is surely a paean of praise to him, wherever it takes place. And if that praise was good enough on the hillsides, and by the roadsides, why would it not be deemed fit for formal worship?

What, even, is ‘formal  worship’? Please don’t write in – I actually know the answer. Organised, public worship has to follow some kind of form, even an unreasonable harridan like me sees this.

But if the structure is more important than the subject, if the formality trumps the  authenticity, it is not worship. However much we may grow attached to traditions, they are not more important than liberty of spirit; however much we may love the brethren, their preferences do not come before the free and honest worship of God.

Psalm 100 says, ‘Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs’. The psalmist’s vision does not prescribe the songs, but the spirit. Joy, love, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control come from there, not from blindly clinging to traditions that serve only to keep us comfortable.

Remember Him; He Remembers You

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It took the Isle of Lewis a hundred years before it was able to publicly acknowledge the loss of HMY ‘Iolaire’ on the first day of 1919. Things that are true of us individually also tend to be true of communities, so I think I understand a little about the stopper we sometimes place to hold at bay such grief as cannot be borne all at once.

Now that the bottle has been opened, though, we will not stop remembering. The ‘Iolaire’ has been written about, broadcast about and memorialised in a myriad of – as far as I can tell – uniformly tasteful ways. Those doing these things are, after all, a part of the story themselves. They are almost always of this community, and so theirs are the gentlest hands to tend a wound in which they share. 

One of the most notable aspects of the post-centenary period for me has been the freedom to mention the ‘Iolaire’. For a long enough time, it was rarely spoken of, and never at all by those who had survived its wreckage. I was maybe eight or nine years old when my mother told me about it and I experienced a sensation I was to have many times in relation to our own history as islanders: why is this not known? The question was, more properly: why is this  not taught as history?

The answer, of course, is, in the case of the ‘Iolaire’ that Leòdhasaich don’t regard it as history. Yes, it happened 104 years ago and no, there are none alive today who lived through these events. Nonetheless, we bear the marks of it in the shared experience of being islanders.

I like that we loan our minister out each year on the anniversary, to preach words of comfort at the service of remembrance. It gives me a sense of security to know that we islanders are still inclined to look to God for meaning in tragedies that we cannot otherwise understand.

Remembering past griefs is part and parcel of welcoming a new year, of course. For those who experience loss, it is never truly history – just as this community continues to be affected by the ‘Iolaire’, we each carry our private bereavement with us always. And, just as with the ‘Iolaire’, I don’t know how I could do that apart from God. He is in the present with me, comforting and upholding; but that would not be nearly such a blessing if he wasn’t also present in my remembering.

What I mean is that when I look back and recall those I have loved and lost, I don’t see it as pure, meaningless grief. Bereavement is not arbitrarily inflicted by an unfeeling deity, rather, he shares in our sorrows all the way along. So, when I remember my husband, or my father, or my granny, I don’t feel a sense of deprivation – because God is in it all.

Sometimes people do things that hurt us, and we cannot understand why they have behaved as they do. It may well be that even someone you considered a friend might treat you in ways you cannot understand. And, sadly, that can be because they actually meant to hurt you, or they are simply careless of your feelings. With God, however, we can be sure that even those things which rip our hearts open are not inflicted in order to cause pain.

Whoever you are missing this New Year, look back and know that Christ himself sorrowed in your loss, and at the necessity of death itself. But then, look forward, and see him in your future also, leading you ever closer to a reunion with himself, and your loved ones who fell asleep in him.

We freeze Wee Frees who have Christmas trees

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There’s a Scottish  gritter that has been christened ‘Wee Freeze’. Well, I say ‘christened’ but surely everyone knows the Wee Frees don’t go in for that sort of carry-on. We’ve never been much for laughing either. After all, mirth may lead to dancing, and dancing to goodness knows what else. (The reason we don’t know what else is largely because Wee Frees have no imagination, Calvin not having been very keen on them either).

This has obviously led to hilarity about the gritter not going out on Sundays. Of course, if the comedians really knew their Wee Frees, they’d actually be expecting it to appear twice on the Sabbath, and again on a Wednesday night. In fact, if Wee Freeze was a Lewis-based gritter, it would be doubly useful, being more than likely out both ends.

All in all, though, we are regarded as joyless miseries, however frequently we’re out. This perception is compounded at this time of year by our failure as a denomination to officially mark Christmas. It’s not for the reasons you might think, either – we were against it long before the invention of tinsel and crackers. I hate to blame everything on Calvin but, well, he was generally opposed to the church doing anything for which there wasn’t a specific biblical warrant.

As a child, I saw lovely Anglican services on the tv (yet it never exploded into flames) and couldn’t understand why some churches were all about the choirs and candles, while we resolutely averted our eyes in the Free Church. I asked at least once and was told that it was because Christ’s death was the crucial thing, the thing he asked us to commemorate. My childish logic answered this with, ‘but he couldn’t have died if he hadn’t been born first’.

And, you know, I wasn’t wrong. Not only was I not wrong, but in fact I was treading unwittingly on a profound truth. He came into this world in order to die. Christmas sometimes glosses over this, or airbrushes it out, opting instead for a narrative that says this baby’s birth brought the world hope and peace . . . Well, yes, indeed it did – but the fulfilment of those things depended entirely on his willingness to die.

He died, not just in the literal sense either. Christ was entitled to glory and honour; Christ IS glory and honour – but made himself of no reputation for our sake. His humble birth, his humble life, the fact that he really was despised and rejected, homeless and, when the chips were down, friendless, all point to a man who truly sacrificed himself in life and in death. 

I am trying very hard this Advent to find that Christlikeness in myself. It’s sadly lacking, and I know it. Recently, a passive-aggressive letter I received suggested that what I write publicly shows me in a better light than my actual lived conduct. Yes, I know. In fact, I try to acknowledge this in all that I DO write. It is not my intention to portray myself as perfect – who would believe it, and what would it prove if they did? 

Being a Christian is not all about my conduct, though I should keep a check on that, without doubt. It’s about who I trust, who I place my faith in, who I look to for strength when I’m failing, or when strangers write only to tell me how bad I am.

This week, my thoughts for Advent are being broadcast on Radio nan Gàidheal. I have spoken about the waiting that is at the heart of Christmas, yes, but also of the Christian life more generally. We wait, not as the shepherds or the wise men waited all those years ago, but as those who know the Saviour for whom we are keeping vigil. 

He is making his way back to us. We know this because we know him, and he has promised. I take comfort in my waiting that he doesn’t expect to find me ‘a perfect Christian’, but an earnest one, whose whole hope is founded on him.

That, I can promise, I am. And so I say, ‘O come, o come, Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel’.

Crofts, Crofting and Councillors

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If I live long enough to become an old woman, I hope to do so independently. That’s how I live now, and though it wasn’t entirely a matter of choice, I can’t deny that it has its blessings. My home belongs to me and I arrange it the way I want. When I close that door, no matter what horrors lurk outside, nothing much can bother me here.

It’s a house full of memories. I enjoyed almost twelve happy years of marriage here. Indeed, I was proposed to in this house. 

But, if I reach a stage of infirmity where strangers have to care for me, my house will eventually be sold to foot the bill. This home that I have loved, that I would give up willingly to no man, would become the property of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar.

There is nothing particularly outrageous or immoral about this. No local authority is so rich that it can fund limitless care for an ageing population. If outrage and immorality have any place in the debate, they have to appear a little higher up the chain of command. The financial assets of the person in receipt of care inevitably get cashed in to pay expenses incurred.  It’s just the way it is.

Some councillors, however, argue that crofts ought to be exempt from this. They wheel out the expected arguments: protect the heritage of crofting; ensure succession within crofting families; crofting is unique . . .

And it all sounds very worthy. Until you remember the prices that some crofts – bare land or with a dwelling house – have been fetching on the open market. Then you might wonder why the Comhairle should treat crofting like a sacred cow when absolutely no one else does, least of all some crofters themselves. 

Which brings us to one of the great unanswered questions of our age: what IS a crofter? At the moment, it’s defined as anyone holding the tenancy of a piece of land legally recognised as a croft. It doesn’t matter whether that person spends every waking moment tilling the soil and tending livestock, or whether they once visited the place when their granny was alive and got boxed by a ram . . . in the eyes of the law, s/he is a crofter.

So, the law, sir, is an asal. It’s the only conclusion we can come to. The crofter with sheep and hay and turnips gets the same protection as the one planning to sell granny’s acres to a housing developer. 

For, the law doesn’t define crofting, really. It defines ‘croft’ and it defines ‘crofter’, but not the verb. Therefore, we are bound by laws designed to protect a  nineteenth-century subsistence lifestyle that no longer exists. It is  actually an obscene warping of the ideals set out in the 1886 Act that croft land has become – to many, though not all –  nothing more than real estate. 

I understand where the councillors are coming from when they suggest tenancies not be regarded as assets. They cite some vague notion of crofting having a worthiness all of its own. There’s a general agreement that it’s part of our heritage, that we have a duty to protect it, and to stop the Comhairle’s finance department getting its mucky paws on granny’s lot.  

But why, when the minute granny is laid in the dust, her heirs will flog it for the most they can get, and pocket the cash? If I was the Director of Finance, I’d feel pretty darn cheated, I can tell you. 

I don’t think, taking fiduciary responsibility and common sense into account, councillors ought to even try taking the local authority on this particular guilt trip. As surely as Chamberlain looked at ‘national affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drain pipe’, I’m afraid these fellows are doing much the same in trying to make their local council carry the burden for national legislative failure.

In the process of depriving the municipal purse, they will also create a two-tier citizenry. And they still won’t be able to define what crofting is . . . which makes all the words about its importance and the case for protecting it ring a little hollow.

The King and I

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A lot has been written about the way in which our Queen exemplified faith in Jesus Christ. I need hardly add my tuppence-worth to the many, many column inches on that subject. She was the very embodiment of how faith can change a life and make arduous service into a privilege through willing service to the right Master.

What we have not had time to appreciate, however, is the extent to which her death has been an opportunity for extraordinary witness. How often did we hear faith mentioned, and God – there in the national press, on television channels across the world, on Radio 4 and Radio nan Gàidheal? The names of our Lord casually on the lips of people from every walk of life in a way that just would not be possible at any other time. Because he was dear to her, we were free to talk about him.

I saw a cartoon, amongst the myriad produced, where Christ was welcoming the Queen into heaven, and she was casting her crown at his feet. It came back to me at that most moving moment when the regalia of monarchy were removed from atop her coffin for the final time. The earthly crown, along with the orb and sceptre, was placed on the altar of St George’s Chapel in Windsor: human kingship subordinate to the kingship of Christ. And because she died as a woman of faith, the watching world must surely have seen this significance too, whatever their own relationship with the Divine.

Of all the things that the death of a most beloved lady has forced us to confront, one must surely be our own failure to witness.

This is the topic that makes professing Christians shuffle their feet nervously and look for ways to change the subject. The imperative to witness scares us – we protest that we’re no good with words, or w don’t want to lose the respect of family, friends and colleagues by being in their face Bible-bashers. We feel the pressure to ‘say something’, but almost never do, leading to more feelings of inadequacy in our Christian walk.

But I believe we are looking at it all wrong. God gave us his inspired word in the Bible. He has supplied us with ministers, priests, missionaries, evangelists – men and women called to preach. There are countless Christian writers, bloggers, columnists, broadcasters.

Maybe his cause doesn’t need more words.

This, I’m aware, is pretty rich, coming from me. I can be the very definition of ‘do as I say, not as I do’. But I still think the most powerful witness is a life lived in closeness to and dependence upon Christ. Although I write and have sometimes spoken about my faith, I nonetheless believe that the most powerful testimony I show forth  is that he has been more than adequate in the darkest time of my life. If you know me, you don’t need my words: you can see how merciful he has been to me.

I am not an example of kindness or charity or humility or good conduct; but I am a recipient of his grace. Strip away all the words with which I sometimes bombard you, and think on that.

We are talking publicly now about the Queen’s faith because, in the final analysis, even unbelievers know what they saw. She was an ordinary human being, elevated to wisdom and grace by the King she served. 

As we continue to mourn her loss, we don’t recall the detail of her spoken testimony, but rather the life that spoke of her proximity to Christ.

None of us has the profile or reach that Queen Elizabeth II had, but living in faith, and keeping our hand in his, we might do as much for our King.

How can I hand you over?

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Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘Remember’ has a particular resonance for me. It asks that she be remembered after her death, when ‘you can no more hold me by the hand, nor I half turn to go, yet turning, stay’. These lines came back to me when my husband was dying, because they reminded me of a particular weekend when he had to leave home on Sunday instead of Monday, in order to attend some work training. We had been having such a lovely weekend, and both of us were sad that it needed to end that much sooner. I was trying to put a brave face on it, when he suddenly took off his jacket, chucked his bag back into the wardrobe and decided not to go after all till the following morning.

I remembered this so many times as I sat by his bedside in the hospice. And I remembered Rossetti’s sentiment – that death revokes the option to remain. How I wished he could hug me as he had that Sunday, and tell me he was staying.

It came back powerfully to me again this morning in church. 

God restrained his own hand many times against the Israelites, never permitting them quite to suffer the fate they deserved. In the prophecy of Hosea, he asked himself, ‘How can I hand you over, Israel’? Yet, in the preceding verses, we see countless reasons for him to do just that, given the unfaithfulness of those who called him ‘God Most High’. Even though their words were not matched by their deeds, still God resisted giving them over to destruction. Such was his love for his own people that he was not willing that any should perish, and he has repeatedly held us away from death since.

But not his own Son. Jesus was not spared any of our punishment. The guilt was ours, yet the suffering was all on him. 

This is love. It is incomprehensible to our small minds but my word, it should leave a colossal mark on our hearts. God couldn’t bear to punish his sinful, disloyal people for their own dark deeds; but he willingly gave up his Son to that death on the cross, to the stark moment when he cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’? 

We cannot know the mind of God, but it’s incredible to imagine the Father doing to Jesus what he would not do to us. And it is equally astonishing to think of Jesus, walking to Calvary and to death . . . and not turning back from it as any one of us would, given the chance.

Today’s sermon ended with the minister reading some testimony from a Pakistani Christian who – like many of his countrymen – has been disowned by family for converting away from their faith. Yet, he said, the empty home and the silent telephone are not reasons to pity him, because he knows that God has something far better for him, and there is no loneliness in Christ.

I can put my ‘amen’ to that, except in one respect. The awe I feel at this man’s sacrifice, is because it reflects God. Neither God the Father, nor the Son, spared himself in redeeming us. Painful, soul-searing sacrifice was willingly made. Ditto this Christian whose profession made such a moving end to today’s sermon.

Any losses I have sustained were not sacrifices  willingly given. I don’t think I would have had the strength, or the faith. But, there again, God’s infinite love didn’t ask me to give what I could not: in the light of Christian understanding, therefore, even his taking away is kindness itself.

That’s the heart of God.

Long-suffering in the Free Church (it’s not about the pews)

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Going to church can have unintended consequences – unintended by yourself, that is, of course. I went this morning, thinking that after a week on antibiotics for the mother of all dental abscesses, I knew the meaning of long-suffering. Indeed, perhaps I could even be perceived as the living embodiment of it myself. Three sleepless nights, endless pain which didn’t respond to any amount of ibuprofen, salty mouthwashes or stern talkings-to, and yet I had retained my sanity and even some humour. Perhaps, I allowed myself to think, I am a paragon of putting up with adversity.

You know, though, when you’re leaning towards seòladh àrd of any description, there’s always a Calvinist minister, just waiting to take you down. ‘Think you know what it is to be long-suffering’, they mutter as they stab their sermon notes out on ancient typewriters (in my imagination), ‘just wait till you hear what I have to say’.

Now, let me be clear on something. The take-down for myself this morning was in the substance and message of the sermon, not the delivery. I am in no way suggesting that a Free Kirk service is an object lesson in fad-fhulangas, however hard the pews.

This is all the more remarkable because it wasn’t a sermon on long-suffering, but on unity. It was Ephesians 4, and Paul’s call for unity in the church of Christ. Lack of unity grieves the Spirit, and it grieves him because he is a person of the godhead. In a quite beautiful image, the gift of unity was compared to the gift of Eden: just as the garden was given to Adam to tend, unity in the Spirit was gifted to the church for us – all of us – to nurture.  I am tempted into a segue here, but some things don’t need to be repeated, far less hammered home. We are all capable of meditating upon our own role in caring for what we have been given, and growing it to God’s glory.

I can and have picked holes in how we are as a church. Not gratuitously, I hope, but out of a real, prayerful concern that we are not as we should be. In reality, no Christian needs me to point that out – and there has to be some measure of gratitude for the fact that, to paraphrase Newton, we are at least not as we were. Crucially, though, we are not as we will be: we are the Spirit’s work in progress. And, listening to that sermon today, the unintended consequence for me was that I was both reassured and comforted, yet chastened and humbled also.

Christ did all that he did. He lived a life of service, putting everyone else first. A deserving everyone else? An impeccably behaved everyone else? Far from it. He poured himself out for a world that despised him. Even his own followers were not always faithful, taken up with a wrong vision of the Kingdom. James and John even jockeyed for a status of power within a government that was never intended to be built on any such thing. It must have been so disheartening for Jesus, not to have one wise friend, one close confidante to whom he could go for counsel. There was not one he could trust implicitly to do the right thing. 

This was why the answer to ‘whom shall we send’ and ‘who will go for us’ inevitably came back round to Jesus, for there was indeed no man.

Add to all this that he had no place to call home, no door he could close and be alone with his Father when disappointment and disillusion assailed his heart. Yet this same Jesus went willingly to the cross for those inconstant disciples, for a world that bayed to see him crucified and chose a criminal to be his substitute for mercy. Still, he elected himself our substitute for punishment, in the full knowledge that we deserved no reprieve.

And we fall out over the merest thing. Ironically, while waiting for the service to begin today, I overheard a whispered conversation regarding another congregation who are ‘together, but with undercurrents’. We are not long-suffering in the least. I forgive and excuse my own bad behaviour most readily, but I’m not so merciful to others. The slights and insults, the wrongdoings of my brethren are placed under my magnifying glass, while my own shortcomings, well, they’re easily excused.

What an absolute plate I have. Unity is a gift of the Spirit to which all of us who profess union in him must tend. The only way to that, the only way to anything worth the having, is through Christ. I am going back to one of the books I read assiduously as an apprentice secret disciple, ‘The Imitation of Christ’. Surely I should remember these words of Thomas a Kempis: 

‘Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be’.

Christ can, though, for all of us – and he will finish the good work once it is begun.

A House Divided

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There is an amusing scene in the Scottish film, ‘The Bridal Path’, when the naive protagonist goes to withdraw some money from his bank account, and is asked ‘what denomination’? He replies – of course – ‘Church of Scotland’.

In my own part of Scotland, denomination has been all too important, time out of mind. I wonder how many of us feel that we belong to the Church of Scotland, or the Free Church, or the Free Presbyterian Church before we belong to the church of Christ. And I equally wonder how Christ, the head of the one church there is, feels about denomination. 

How have we come, in a town like Stornoway, for example, to have two Free Church congregations, three Churches of Scotland, a Free Presbyterian Church, a Free Church (Continuing), an Associated Presbyterian Church, a Reformed Presbyterian Church, and sundry other congregations?  It would be nice if the answer to that was that no one building could contain all the worshippers. That, after all, is the only acceptable justification to have the saints of God distributed across a multitude of churches.

I know this is an awkward topic, and some people don’t approve of it being aired – but we are bound to review our own conduct in light of God’s presence. And like the adulterous woman at the well, we don’t need to hear any accusing words from Him to be convicted of this sin.

Because that’s what this is. It’s pride. Resentfulness. Self-righteousness. It’s putting ourselves and our traditions first. 

Now, I’m as guilty of this as the next person. I like the plain worship style of the island Free Churches, with no accompaniment to our Psalms-only liturgy. Heck, I even like the pews. But, if the necessity and blessing of online church has taught us anything (as I believe it was meant to), it’s that the building isn’t the church. And if the building isn’t the church, the denomination with all its committees and rules and manmade fol-de-rols sure as fate is not the church either.

Yet, we cling to these divisions as though they might be important or worthy. With no outward embarrassment, with no attempt at unity of even the most superficial kind, we have our own separate rule books, our own General Assemblies, our own identities.

As if the identity conferred by belonging to God is somehow less than that of some combination of the words ‘church’, ‘Presbyterian’, ‘Reformed’ and ‘Free’. We declare ourselves freed in Christ – free indeed – and yet, still, we entrench ourselves, not for Him, but invariably for some ‘principle’ that has us standing on our dignity. And while we bicker amongst ourselves (the children of God, mind you) about how to worship, He not only goes unworshipped, but the banner of His beautiful cause sags into the mud. The unsaved watch, open-mouthed, as those of us who profess Christ act like we have never even heard His name.

You think I exaggerate, perhaps – that I’m being harsh and judgemental?

There are four seats on Comhairle nan Eilean Sitar’s Education Committee, which are allocated to faith representatives. One, by statute, is occupied by the Church of Scotland and two, by custom, by the Roman Catholic and Free Churches as being together representative of the islands’ faith profile. The fourth has in the past been filled by the Free Presbyterian Church, but the Chief Executive of the council this week told members that he’d had representations from another denomination, suggesting that they should provide the fourth representative instead because – and I quote – they have a larger membership. 

Let that sink in: Christians – Reformed Evangelicals between whose confessional positions you could not slide one page of the KJV – trying to best one another for a seat on the Education Committee. 

Thanks to their unlovely one-upmanship, it looks like that seat will be shared with other faith groups, including some that are non-Christian.

That, folks, is an object lesson in what denominations do for the cause. The sad truth is that we show no intention of dwelling together in unity, and actually pour more energy into preserving superficial difference than pursuing the one thing needful: togetherness in the Church of Christ.

What a witness we are for the Saviour; what an example to the unsaved. My advice to the council would be not to let any of us near an Education Committee until we grow up.

Does My Ego Look Big In This?

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Humility isn’t in fashion at the minute. Ditto submission. But like my human parents did in the eighties with some Danger Mouse wellies, and that orange jacket, my Heavenly Father has imposed these unwanted accessories on me, very much against my will. 

‘Cuir ort iad’, the good Lord commands, giving me no say. I can peel them off and chuck them in a corner, but he will simply dust them down again, remind me – as my mother used to – that they’re perfectly serviceable and I will grow into them one day, and stand by while I sulkily don the hated garments. Humility suits me, he seems to think, and it goes SO well with submission. 

And I hate this stupid uniform so much sometimes I could spit. I ask, him why I always need to wear them. He says nothing. And I’m learning what his silence means. It’s his gentle way of saying, ‘look inwards; you know why’.

I do, of course. Submitting to the will of God is a position of strength – but one I’m more likely to assume when he brings me low. While I don’t know why it was necessary this time, I do know it must have been, because God doesn’t arbitrarily wound us. He just doesn’t.

A few months ago, I began praying for guidance. It had been laid on my heart to think about standing for council. But I wasn’t getting a clear answer from God: was I being flattered into it, I asked him; was this my ego telling me I should? He didn’t answer. Although he didn’t say ‘no’, he wasn’t exactly yelling ‘go for it’ either. Someone suggested that perhaps my burden was a sign that this was the right thing to do. So, I changed my prayer. I stopped asking for an answer to whether or not I should do this and begged, instead, that he not let me have victory against his will. When you have looked at life from both sides, as I have, you would never choose to be at odds with your Lord, no matter the prize.

The answer I got on the sixth of May was that my first instincts had been right: this was not the path laid out for me. Yes, I’d have been a good councillor; I know that, even if I couldn’t convince the already content people of Loch a Tuath. I’d have cared about them and fought for them, and never been afraid to speak the truth. But it is not where God wants me.

People have been very kind and sometimes overly solicitous since the election. I am not heartbroken at being passed over in favour of the incumbents. The odds were never much in my favour – and not at all,indeed, now that I know it wasn’t God’s will for me. But I don’t think I have been disobedient, because I now believe he wanted me to stand. Just not to be elected.

‘Why’? you might well ask. ‘Did he wish to humble you’?

Very possibly. But if he did, I needed it. Perhaps I was overdue a reminder that the house will not stand except the Lord builds it. 

Another reason has come to light too, which has nothing whatever to do with me and my ego. So many people have been in touch to say my experience has helped them. Some heard the radio programme about my campaign and responded to what I had to say about widowhood – an audience I could never have hoped to reach had Radio 4 not followed my bid for the Comhairle. Others read my response to electoral defeat and saw submission to God’s will as a possibility for themselves.

I am an odd choice of person to make that point, but that’s what the Lord does, isn’t it: he uses the foolish to confound the wise. In the process of renewing my humble acceptance of his lordship over me, and of requiring that I submit to his will, God has helped others to see the beauty in such a path. He did it as elegantly as you’d expect, using what could have become vehicles for my ego, to broadcast his own name and his own perfect sufficiency to people who needed that message, just as I did.

As I left the count, someone said to me, ‘it would have been good to get another Christian in there’. He didn’t mean it – or, at least, he didn’t mean me. It was the only thing he could think of to say without actually lying or giving offence. Like so many others, that’s what he thinks I have to offer – that I sail under ‘church’ as a flag of convenience, brandishing Jesus like an ‘access all areas’ pass.

Being a Christian councillor, though, is like being an Independent one: your allegiance isn’t what you say, or what others think – but how you act. And maybe God knew that my witness for him would take a back seat if he permitted me this win. I would rather face any amount of other people’ schadenfraude than be guilty of that for a second.

Victory – in him – does not always take the shape we expect or want. Yet, it is victory, nonetheless.