Plenary, 29 Mar 2000
Meeting date: Wednesday, March 29, 2000
Official Report
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Time for Reflection
We welcome Reverend Dr Kevin Franz, the general secretary of Action of Churches Together in Scotland, to lead our time for reflection today.
Reverend Dr Kevin Franz (Action of Churches Together in Scotland):
Travelling through the Scottish Borders in the company of a young German friend helped me see the country afresh. There was so much to take delight in: the landscape of Ettrick and Yarrow valleys, the shape of the hills, the life of the little industrial towns and ancient burghs. In all that, what seemed to him most remarkable was something I had hardly noticed: the old stone bridges that cross the rivers. "This is something," he said, "which our history has not been kind to. Bridges are the casualties in conflict and, in a country that has known much conflict, bridges have had to be rebuilt many times over."
Some time later, travelling to eastern Germany for the first time, I saw that to be true. At a place on the River Elbe, the former border between east and west, an old destroyed bridge could be seen, the arches marching to the water's edge, then abruptly cut off. A new bridge was in the making, but was still tantalisingly incomplete, the spans from east and west not yet meeting. In the meantime, the only way across was by an old battered ferry, with the motto over the wheelhouse, "Gott mit uns"—God with us.
Bridge or ferry—both stand for the possibility of connectedness, the bringing together of two shores, the linking of separated communities or peoples, the way of welcome to the stranger.
It is that same connectedness which underpins the story of Jacob's dream:
"Jacob set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place he spent the night there for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones to be found there he made it his pillow and lay down where he was. He dreamt: a ladder was there, standing on the ground with its top reaching to heaven, and there were angels of God going up it and coming down".
The story of Jacob's pillow has a particular resonance for Scots. Here it stands for the possibility of connection, the free movement between earth and heaven, the connectedness between things and between people. It marks an end to boundaries, to division and separation. It affirms the hope of building a community within our land that is welcoming to the stranger and which is open to the other and to the different; a hope that requires the energies not only of the Parliament but of the whole people.
The character of that hope is expressed in the words of Robert Crawford's poem, "Scotland":
"to be miniaturised is not small-minded.
To love you needs more details than the Book of Kells—
your harbours, your photography, your democratic intellect
Still boundless, chip of a nation".
May God make us restless at all that confines and cramps our sense of common belonging, may God grant us skill and patience in building bridges and harbours of hope, and may God grant us generosity in welcoming and receiving from the stranger.
Amen.