As I sit at my desk this morning working my way through a substantial To Do list (making good progress and enjoying ticking things off the list!) there are council workers making speed bumps (which should surely be called slow bumps) outside in the street.  Given the very short stretch of road with 'give way' lines at either end, it's troubling that someone thinks we need speed bumps... and they are nicely located just a few feet from our side entrance, hey ho.

I can't help feeling there is some kind of metaphor there that I ought to be taking note of... the labour of creating things to ensure that others slow down a bit.  I am always struck by the idea that churches slow down for summer (on the grounds that midweek activities take a break) and the contrast that ministers can find themsleves with an increased workload (which was part of the logic last year for taking my sababtical leave during the summer months)

I am enthusiastic and excited about the things planned for this summer which I really hope will prove a good experience for all involved.  But there do need to be some metaphorical speed bumps, I suspect, to prevent me hurtling along without due care and attention.

Thankfully I can't think of a way to work speed bumps into my services, for which everyone will be hugely grateful!!

I was walking back from the Coffee Club today with one of our folk, through the grounds of a set of four hospitals.  It was glorious weather and all around us were people soaking up the sun as they lunched or waited to visit friends and relatives.  As we walked and chatted a young woman caught up with us, commented on the weather then poured out her story to us... having been bereaved twice in as many years she was on her way to visit a relative having inpatient radiotherapy.  Discovering I was a NED seemed to cheer her, she needed some hopeful stories, and this, it seemed, was one.

Usually after Coffee Club I go to church to work but today was headed home to do a Powerpoint straight onto my laptop as this overcomes mis-matches between versions of the software.  Usually I don't end up in conversation with 'random' people but today I did.  Usually it isn't blistering hot in Glasgow either, but today it is.

It was a privilege, however hackneyed the word, to listen to this young woman's story and to wish her and her relative well.  And maybe, just maybe, somewhere in all of that God was adoing of something or other.  Maybe my friend and I were able to bring a little grace or hope to someone in need of both.

This week I am starting to get ready for our summer series of services on a broadly Commonwealth Games theme.  To this end, I purchased a set of bunting that includes the flags of all the assorted nations (and pseudo-nations from a UN nation-state viewpoint), a Commonwealth flag and a Scotland saltire... well actually two saltires because the first was a very pale sky blue.  So far so good, but now I am debating how any or all of this might be 'read' and whether that is or is not helpful in a wider context...

Within our church are folk who are committed to 'Yes Scotland' and others equally committed to 'Better Together' so how will any of them interpret a saltire or, for that matter, a union flag which I have now ordered as a result of my overthinking?  I am really uncomfortable with anything that suggests this congregation takes either view, but at the same time, it seems nuts not to put some bunting and flags as part of the Commonwealth Games welcome.... so I tie myself in intellectual knots.

Is my thinking, I ask myself, skewed by the appropriation of the St George's cross by political extremists to the extent that many English people are embarrassed to use it, well except on the towers of the C of E and the cars of those who go to watch international football?  I'm sure that, in some measure, it is.

Is it because actually I don't really believe in nation states as a primary identity for those who claim to be Christians?  That defining, for sake of argument, Ghanaian Christians over against Zimbabwean Christians is clearly nonsensical and that, theologically anyway, our identity is not defined by where we are born or happen to reside.  I have a suspicion that in some measure it is.

Is it because the whole referendum debate seems to be predicated on setting Holyrood and Westminister as equivalent to Scotland and England, as if Wales, Northern Ireland and other bits of the UK of GB & NI didn't exist? Quite likely.

Is it because I don't want to offend anyone and so risk offending everyone?!  Entirely possible.

So I'd like to have a saltire up as saying 'welcome to Scotland' which, irrespective of 18th September, make total sense in a Commonwealth context.  But I absolutely don't want anyone thinking that a Baptist church is aligning itself with any specific definition of a nation state!  Hence the either/both/neither knots with the saltire and the union flag.

Welcome to my inner world of mental knot-tying... I decided that the saltire will stay... I'm not sure about the union flag... but it doesn't mean that I won't change my mind if it proves problematic or I hear people making assumptions...

In Christ there is neither England nor Scotland, Union or Independence, Holyrood and Westminster...

Now that's a theological mast to which I am happy to nail my colours!

EDIT - I asked my Deacons-by-any-other-name what they thought and we settled on bunting and Commonwealth flag only as the least problematic option!

A couple of weeks back I ordered a set of Commonwealth bunting, a Commonwealth flag and a Saltire ready for our summer services/activites and as a 'welcome' for visitors who might happen our way as a result of some little event taking place down the road.

The various parcels arrived - but the saltire seemed wrong even to my untrained eyes, as it had a sky blue ground rather than the more familiar dark blue.  So I have now ordered another one and hope it's a 'better' colour.  However a bit of research indicates that until 2009, any shade of blue from sky to navy was equally acceptable (and technically I guess still is).  In 2009 the Scottish parliament decided that the correct colour is Pantone 300, or in hexadecimal (according to wikepedia) #0065BD.

Oh, and if your interested, which I'm sure you aren't the ground of the union flag is fractionally darker being Pantone 280!!

Over the last week I have been at three different presentations about the upcoming referendum in Scotland, one of which I thoroughly enjoyed, one of which was fun but ultimately so-so, and one that left me disappointed.  So this post is NOT going to try to convince anyone which way to vote - that would be wrong.  And, unlike the various speakers I'm not going to nail my colours to any mast because, as I have observed, so doing polarises people and debate, ending up missing the key point that all the speakers, whatever their asserted position, have tried, to some degree, to make.

Unlike Northern Ireland, Wales and England, Scotland has been given a unique and important opportunity to imagine a new future for itself; the risk, as at least one speaker pointed out, is that the 'independence or not' focus can end up missing the point.  A better question is 'what kind of Scotland would you like to live in, and how best do you go about that?'  A question that could, and should, be asked whichever way the vote goes.  It's not quite as simple as 'if you had a clean sheet of paper, what kind of constitutional format and poiltical governance would you choose' but it does allow some creative thinking about the 'what' and the 'how'.  Defining Scotland over against any other nation state is unhelpful and unhealthy, instead people need to think beyond their own preferences and prejudices and dare to dream.

A lot of work has been done by the churches and by the Evangelical Alliance to encourage Christians to try to bring their faith into conversation with their politics, and there are faith groups for 'Yes Scotland' and 'Better Together' one of which has tried to recruit me (I'm having none of it). I'm not sure to what extent this impacts local churches, many of which think politics and religion should be kept apart.

Listening to people at grass roots, and ignoring what the media has to say, it seems to me that a lot of people have made up their minds already and are disengaging even before the process begins... that's more worrying to me than the outcome.  If, for sake of argument 55% of 40% people chose Option A and 45% of 40% choose option B, that's a bad outcome... if I have a prayer, then it has to be that it is a good turn out and a high vote one way or t'other.

I haven't finally decided which way to vote - I have a definite leaning at present and no-one has convinced me to do the opposite, but I am open to being convinced... for this to happen it has to move beyond rhetoric and blarney and become creative and credible, whichever 'side' it is - sadly as yet I don't see much sign of it from either.

Someone said to me today that they were bored with it all already - which isn't good with three months still to go...

Not an eloquent post for sure - but I hope that those in Scotland lucky enough to have been given this opportunity will take time to think seriously about it and, where they have faith, prayerfully and carefully decide how to vote on 18th September.