Contents
- Scottish Parliament Wednesday 4 February 2004 (Afternoon)
- Time for Reflection
- Business Motion
- Rosepark Care Home
- Housing
- Energy Bill
- Business Motion
- Parliamentary Bureau Motion
- Decision Time
- Wet Age-related Macular Degeneration
Time for Reflection
Good afternoon. Our first item of business is time for reflection, for which our leader is the Right Rev Professor Iain Torrance, who is the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
The Right Rev Professor Iain Torrance (Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland):
All the older churches face a decline in membership and an apparent loss of voice, influence and prestige. I am three quarters through a year of practical exploration of the boundary between being a member and being an outsider. Why, I ask, does the category have to be so either/or? Rather than for ever being obliged to be either pro or con a simplified dictum or test of approved behaviour, why may we not envisage our dilemmas as presenting something that is more like a spectrum?With a few notable exceptions, there is still a deeply inscribed mindset of being verbal rather than visual in the inherited Scottish Christian tradition, yet by opting to be adversarial rather than visual, we insulate ourselves from much of the distinctive richness of contemporary Scottish secular culture in novels and art, and thereby deny ourselves deeper insight and more distant vision.
My concern is about the retention of a hard boundary between being a member and being an outsider. Scots have always been travellers, and Scotland has no town of any size that does not boast a museum that is stocked with objects that were collected by Scottish sailors, soldiers, missionaries, traders and doctors. For generations, no Scottish schoolchild could avoid a school-sponsored visit to such a museum. Habitual sight of the unfamiliar accustomed all of us to being tolerant to strangeness.
Is it not worth while to reaffirm that hospitality of spirit? In the Bible, the book of Deuteronomy binds together as closely as possible love for God and love for the one who does not belong to Israel. Can we glimpse the astonishing truth that, before this God, the way in which we treat outsiders may be the single most important factor in the quality of our core community of insiders?
Shortly before his death in 1997, Michael Vasey, the Durham theologian, gave me this prayer:
"Blessed are you, Holy One, friend of humanity,
scourge of injustice, creator of peace:
all that is hidden proclaims your glory.
Your wisdom offers insight to the foolish,
delight to the meek and counsel to rulers.
You give knowledge through the discourse of the wise,
the integrity of the righteous, and the trust of the childlike.
From you comes that pure and peaceable wisdom
which is gentle, open to reason,
full of mercy, fruitful for good.
Blessed are you, Sovereign God, source of all wisdom.
Blessed be God for ever."