Plenary, 29 Oct 2008
Meeting date: Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Official Report
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Time for Reflection
Good afternoon and welcome back. As always, the first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is the Rev Iain MacDonald from Westray and Papa Westray in Orkney.
The Rev Iain MacDonald (Westray and Papa Westray, Orkney):
For over 15 years, I have enjoyed living and working on one of Orkney's northernmost isles. Westray is a community that is built on trust. Doors are left unlocked and car keys remain in the ignition. You leave your bike somewhere and it is there for you the next morning. People look after each other, particularly in times of adversity—for example, during illness, bereavement or family crisis. They rally round and shore each other up in all sorts of practical ways. It is not utopian, but there is a very strong sense of interdependence and community that undergirds everything. It is about community. A real community is defined by how it looks after its most needy.
In the past year or so, I have also enjoyed the great privilege of visiting two other very contrasting communities. The Faroe Islands have long been a favourite place for me. Let me state now that if this Parliament ever decides to establish the post of cultural ambassador to the Faroese, I would appreciate advance notice because you will have my CV by return of post.
The Faroe Islands are a stunningly beautiful place that is culturally rich and materially affluent, too. If Scotland is, indeed, the best small country in the world, the Faroe Islands are surely the best even smaller country. However, even there the poorest are looked after, with the sea's harvest being distributed equitably throughout the community. A real community is defined by how it looks after its most needy.
The other place that I visited is close to the hearts of many folk here. Malawi, which is one of the poorest countries in the world, is crippled further by the HIV pandemic. Tea pickers earn about 30p on a good day. In the more remote communities, services and facilities that you and I take for granted are non-existent. In the urban squalor, everything is about existence rather than life in any meaningful sense. It is iniquitously relentless poverty.
Despite that, I again witnessed countless examples of people who have virtually nothing giving sacrificially to those who have literally nothing, caring for the poorest, including the excluded, healing the broken and restoring the discarded. A real community is defined by how it looks after its most needy.
When Jesus said, "Whatever you do to the very least amongst you, you do also to me," he was not presenting us with some cryptic parable. He was simply identifying himself with the poorest, most marginalised and rejected members of society, and saying that they are the priority.
If we are truly a Scottish community today, however we define that, we, too, will find ourselves defined by how we look after the most needy. That is a challenge not just to policy makers or churches, but to the whole Scottish community. A real community is defined by how it looks after its most needy.
May God bless you all as you build community for Scotland. Amen.
Thank you for the opportunity to share those thoughts.