Change & Decay In All Around I See

Sunday 1 March 2009, 6:50PM

My clever wife

Left to right: Holy Trinity Melrose; the pulpit; Kate.

Last year my wife Kate was asked by the rector at our church, Holy Trinity Melrose, to deliver a sermon.

She was delighted to accept, but was aware that it would come at a busy time, in the middle of her second term at university. She didn’t realise how busy things would be, and the timing for the sermon couldn’t be worse, sandwiched between four essays, various assignments and one or two other (major) things going on beyond college.

But she found time to write it, and presented a fine sermon this morning: thoughtful, eloquent and well-delivered. I mean absolutely no disrepect to the excellent clergy at Holy Trinity, and across the Scottish Episcopal Church, when I say it really was a breath of fresh air to see a young person behind a pulpit at an Episcopalian church, delivering a sermon of such insight. Nobody’s to blame, but the Episcopal clergy demographic in Scotland is seriously skewed to the over 50s. As any reader of her blog will know, Kate is a deep and subtle thinker, and I’m so glad that she was able to share some of her wisdom with the congregation.

I’m very proud of her, and just wish I had brought along a camera to get a few discreet pics of her in the pulpit. Instead, the little montage above gives you the constituent parts of the picture: the Holy Trinity congregation, the view from the pulpit, and Kate.