Plenary, 23 Nov 2005
Meeting date: Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Official Report
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Time for Reflection
The first item of business is time for reflection. Our leader today is Father Joe Boland, parish priest of St Matthew's in Kilmarnock.
Father Joe Boland (Parish Priest of St Matthew's, Kilmarnock):
There is an incident in the Old Testament that immediately came to mind when I was invited to lead time for reflection today. Solomon has just become king, on the death of his father, David. One night, not long afterwards, he has a dream. Dreams often reveal our anxieties or arise out of our deepest longings, and Solomon's is no exception. In the dream, God asks Solomon, "What would you like me to give you?" and Solomon replies by telling God how inadequate he feels. He is young, unskilled and inexperienced in leadership, and surrounded by a people who expect so much of him.
Far be it from me to suggest that you are inadequate or unskilled in leadership—perish the thought—but in parliamentary terms you are young, only six years old, and so, like Solomon, inexperienced in leadership. Who could doubt that, like him, you are surrounded by a people who, six years ago, had such high expectations of you? Given the parallel between Solomon and yourselves, it may be useful to hear what he asks for in the dream: "Give your servant a heart to understand how to govern your people," he says, "and how to discern between good and evil, for how otherwise could anyone rule this people?"
What Solomon asked for was the gift of discernment of spirits. In this context, the spirits are the things that move and motivate us. Some are healthy, constructive and life-giving; others are unhealthy and destructive and can never lead to anything good. As Jesus himself says in the most basic of all rules for discernment, "A rotten tree cannot produce good fruit." So the key is to distinguish between the different spirits as they move us, to separate them one from another and, most crucially of all, to make all our decisions on the basis of those that are healthy and lead to life, having no truck with those that are destructive and that can only be a source of trouble for ourselves and others.
Parliaments exist, of course, to make decisions, and the decisions that you make have long-term implications for the people of Scotland. So it is vital that, to use the language of discernment, your decisions emerge from the movement of good, not bad, spirits—and you can be sure that both are at work in this place. Among the bad spirits that will be hard at work here are the spirits of personal ambition, narrow self-interest, greed, jealousy, envy and—most corrupting of all—hunger for power. If you make your decisions influenced by those things, then, as surely as night follows day, your decisions will be bad ones. Only if they are made under the influence of what we call the good spirit can your decisions ever be good for the people of Scotland. Allow yourselves to be moved at all times by the spirit of humility, generosity and service of others. Then your decisions will be good ones.