blethers

Here is the sixth in a series of posts introducing some of the websites and blogs I enjoy and appreciate.

 

Christine McIntosh is a parishioner at Holy Trinity (Scottish) Episcopal Church, Dunoon, in the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles. She describes herself as a “Former English teacher on the loose,” and her posts reflect a pleasing combination of perspicacity and good humor. blethers isn’t “foolish nonsense” at all; it’s a wise and poetic look at Christianity, the Anglican Communion, and life.

A sample of her writing from her June 6th post titled A new shepherd!

“The party went on long enough for several of us to have missed Doctor Who, but the sun shone and it really did seem as if being a Christian was a feasible option after all.

“I cannot, however, end on this uncharacteristically Pollyanna note. Mention of Doctor Who brings me back to the church car-park, where a Tardis had materialised in the shape of a Portaloo perched perilously on the edge of the steep drop down to Kilbride Road. Despite our misgivings, no-one reversed into it, and no-one was catapulted inside it to instant ignominy among the rhododendrons. It served its purpose, and by the time we returned this morning it had vanished.

“Just like the Tardis, really.”

Ten generations ago, ca. 1659, my forebear John McGhie was born in the Galloway district of southwest Scotland. A staunch Presbyterian and Covenanter, he refused to acknowledge James II of England as head of the Church of Scotland. He was arrested, imprisoned in Dunnottar Castle, and banished to the New Jersey Plantations in December 1685. Now, of course, he enjoys reading blethers as much as his Episcopal priest descendant.