Through a glass darkly – 176

Journalling: then and now

‘The unexamined life is not a life worth living.’ Is a quote usually attributed to Socrates. I was clearing out my three in-trays and I came across a jumbo-format ring-bound exercise book labelled Journal. At the first M.Th residency at ICC, Glasgow, in 2006, Peter Neilson told our M.Th cohort that spiritual journalling was an integral part of the Personal Development Development Track. In the opening entry, dated May 12th, 2006, writing with a fountain pen in black ink, I noted my reservations: “Is it that real men don’t journal ? That journalling is the spiritual equivalent of eating quiche ?” In a more positive frame, I set down my prayer objectives: to discern the future location of our Sunday church worship [we were embarking on the process that took us from rue de Créqui to the chapel at Gerland]; to think about enlarging the Lyon ministry team; and to reflect on how best to integrate the MTh. work, Mission and Ministry in an Urban World, with our church life in Lyon.

MTh cohort, ICC Glasgow, 2006

It didn’t last. [The journalling I mean. Not our time in Lyon, which continued through to 2013.] An early entry was inspired by a remark of Eugene Peterson; that we are called to the important and sacred work of a Pastor, but we all too often behave like check-out clerks in a religious emporium. I was talking to a church member, Dave, who didn’t feel that he  could match a seeming call to ministry in God’s church with the various demands made on an ordained Clergyman in the Church of England. But I was honest enough to admit, at least to the pages of my nascent journal, that I couldn’t use the faults of church structures as an excuse for my own shortcomings.

Looking at these early entries, I am struck by how busy I was. And how quickly time passed. Entries in May-June 2006 record a first MTh. residency in Glasgow; Passion Week and Easter celebrations; an ICS Family Conference with Bishop Pat Harris; a Stade Français v. Toulouse semi-final at the Stade de Gerland; visiting Jem and Anna in Plymouth, and deputation preaching for ICS in Taunton; and an unexpected tour in Italy, at the invitation of Robert Calvert, with stays in Trento, Florence, and Rome. We were guests of the Focolari, a Catholic renewal movement. It included an introduction to Chiara Lubich, their charismatic [and authoritarian] founder. I was struck by the warm hospitality of our Focolari hosts. And by my mid-life realisation that the celebrated Roman Catholic Council of Trent took place not in the English midlands, but in Trento in Northern Italy ! [Looking at the journal I now realise that one of my fellow travellers was Angus Morrison, then Church of Scotland Minister at Stornaway, and currently the excellent locum minister at Newington Trinity.] The Italy trip ended on a down note when my wallet was stolen in Rome on the last afternoon of the trip. I came back to Lyon to World Cup football [Zidane’s head butt and red card] and a heatwave in Lyon. From which we were delighted to escape to do a summer campsite chaplaincy at Benodet in Brittany.

Trento, Italy

Good intentions of regular journalling did not last. After a long empty space I was writing again in April 2008, when Easter celebrations and a day at Lord’s [which included a century by Alistair Cook]  were followed by a ten-day study trip to Nairobi. I was well out of my comfort zone, grateful to be travelling with other members of the MTh. cohort, and grateful for an effective mosquito net. Preaching in a tiny Pentecostal church in Kibera, on John’s vision of the resurrection appearance of the risen Lord in Revelation 1, with simultaneous translation into Kiswahili broadcast from a speaker on the roof, was a whole new experience ! I think the sermon probably sounded better in translation !

Patmos Evangelical Church, Kibera, Nairobi, 2007

And then another long gap … And the journal resumes in August 2013 when we retired from Lyon. Sitting in this house in Edinburgh I had mixed feelings. The mechanics of leaving Lyon were familiar enough; a night in the Novotel in Mechelen and a night on the Ijmuiden-Newcaste ferry. and the removals firm were excellent. But sitting in Edinburgh surrounded by cardboard boxes was a bit unnerving. I wondered how I would adjust without the familiar daily and weekly routine of service preparation, church meetings, pastoral visits, and e-mails. And my journal tells me that I had quite serious financial concerns about retirement. Would we have sufficient funds on a monthly basis ? Or would we be in a debtors’ prison by Christmas ?  A dozen years later, although I believe that the state pension in the UK is substantially smaller than in many European countries, the financial worries turned out to be quite unfounded. On a more positive note we were grateful to be property owners in retirement. We were back in a city where Susie grew up and where we have a variety of friends. And the last journal entry records the prospect of six months in Brussels, helping out at Holy Trinity. In the event it turned into eighteen months, bringing new friends in a new congregation and a new country, all of which was a bridge into full retirement. And which led in turn to locum work in Strasbourg, Chantilly, Paris, Amsterdam, Ankara, Kyiv, and Grenoble.

Other people’s diaries

Other people’s diaries are more interesting. I have greatly enjoyed re-reading three volumes of the diaries of Chris Mullin, onetime campaigning journalist, and Labour MP for Sunderland South from 1987 to 2010. These are the most readable political diaries since Alan Clark. [Whose diaries are immensely entertaining, but which exhibit great conceit and an admiration for Adolf Hitler which is alarming and doesn’t seem to be entirely a joke.] 

Chris Mullin

[Sir] Chris Mullin, who was instrumental in securing the release of the wrongly convicted Birmingham Six,  had been characterised as ‘Loony MP backs Bomb Gangs’ by the right-wing tabloid press, and was initially a Bennite. Alongside Peter Hain, and Stuart Holland, and Jeremy Corbin. But he became disillusioned with the Labour Left. He is an acute observer of the halcyon days of New Labour, and a not uncritical admirer of Tony Blair, whom he calls ‘The Man’. During his years in parliament, he held some minor jobs, at Environment, and the Foreign Office, and at DiFID, but was more influential as Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee. His family holidayed more than once in the Scottish Borders, and I’m sorry not to have bumped into him walking round Hen Poo on Duns Castle Estate in the 1990s. Mullin has a nice line in self deprecation and a dry wit. One of his attractive features is his ability to enjoy good friendships with people who are not his natural allies, such as John Major and Nicholas Soames. Another is his evident pride in his two daughters. He stood down from the Commons in 2010. Not like Tony Benn ‘in order to devote more time to politics’. But to spend more time creating a garden in his Northumberland home. I see that he was knighted by King Charles in the honours list last week. And I look forward to reading the fourth volume of his diaries which is sitting unopened on the shelves. 

Duns Castle Estate

Envoi

The promised heatwave hasn’t yet arrived in Edinburgh. The temperature is stuck at around 17º. We have some rain forecast for the next couple of weeks. The garden is appropriately green and I was pleased to cut the grass yesterday. The World Cup now dominates our television schedules. Scotland had an extra bank holiday this week to celebrate their thrashing Haiti 1-0 a few days ago. As an exercise in nostalgia I watched all 90 minutes of the 1966 World Cup Final last week. England didn’t look any better than they did then. And it is very strange to see England playing in red shirts when I clearly recall seeing the game in shades of grey on a black and white television. I showed my age by staying up to watch 10 minutes of Brazil’s first game, remembering how glamorous they were in the 1970s. Sadly its not like that today. But Morocco looked good. 

Brazil, World Cup, 1970

June 2026