Plenary, 09 Mar 2005
Meeting date: Wednesday, March 9, 2005
Official Report
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Time for Reflection
Good afternoon. The first item of business today is time for reflection, which is led by Canon Susan Wiffin, mission and ministry officer of Aberdeen diocese.
The Rev Canon Susan Wiffin (United Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney, Scottish Episcopal Church):
Good afternoon and thank you for the invitation to be with you today.
We moved home just before Christmas and are living now in Aberdeen. Over the past three months or so, I have had a number of conversations that have gone along the following lines.
"Oh you live in Aberdeen. How long have you been here?" "Just a few weeks," I reply. "We came over from Fochabers in Moray." "So Morayshire is where you come from, then?" "Well, no," I say. "Actually, I am from the Borders—the central Borders, about an hour south of Edinburgh—and I lived there most of my life until moving to the north-east about four years ago." And on it goes.
Perhaps you have been part of similar conversations. Where we are from, where we belong and where we find our sense of identity are, I believe, important to most, if not all, people. It is not that I do not want to put my roots down in the north-east and so claim a sense of belonging there, but neither do I want to lose sight of where I have come from. They are both part of who I am now—part of my uniqueness.
The Christian faith affirms in the deepest sense that each and every individual is unique and precious in the sight of God. We find evidence of that throughout the scriptures and most particularly in the gospel stories of Jesus's encounters with a whole range of people—stories that show him engaging with and responding to people as individuals, each with their own particular needs and desires. In Jesus, we are reminded that our uniqueness matters and that there is no compromise to that uniqueness, so regardless of background, gender or any of the other categories that we might wish to apply, we also find that each one of us has a place of belonging in God's kingdom.
I hope and pray that it is this kind of Scotland that you, in partnership with many others, are working to create: a place where, no matter where we have come from—the fact that your website can be accessed in no fewer than 15 languages is evidence of your recognition of this wonderful diversity—we can declare, "I am me and this land of Scotland is where I find my place of belonging."
May God's blessing be on your work today and every day.