June2020

Pastoral letter
June 2020
Dear Friends
I need a barber! And a dentist! (Those who follow peeblesold.online will have
noticed that I have lost a crown.) And a chiropodist, and someone who can
operate on my mobile phone). Such are the ongoing frustrations of the
coronavirus. On the positive side. I’ve used hardly any petrol, and I haven’t
been to an ATM in ages.
Of course, these things are utterly trivial compared to the heartbreak,
suffering and loss that COVID-19 has wreaked on our lives. I was pondering
this morning. I was born and brought up in Dumfries, a busy traditional
Scottish county and market town. The UK death toll from the virus has now
exceeded the population of Dumfries. A whole town wiped out and more.
Some of the deaths have affected us even more closely and deeply. And when
we take into account the many who have been ill and recovered, the majority
of us will know folk who have had to fight the virus.
Add to all that the worries about jobs, unemployment, schools, the economy
generally it is a heavy burden our society is having to deal with. What surprises
most is the speed with which our ways of life have been comprehensively
changed. We all wonder, I think, will the old ways return? Perhaps not all of
them will. Perhaps some of them should not.
Which of us wholeheartedly embraces change? Very few. It’s part of the
human condition to be wary of disturbance around us. And yet our survival as
specks on the panorama of the universe depends on gradual restoration and
transformation. Our Scriptural record shows it. Jeremiah stood at the Temple
gate and said: “Look for the ancient paths”! Restoration! The same prophet
also warned the people not to think that by chanting “This is the temple of the
Lord…the temple of the Lord….the temple of the Lord” that they would be
saved. Transformation!
That’s where we are. Perhaps where we have always been. Finlay Macdonald,
elsewhere in the magazine, will be saying something about the current
thinking of the Church of Scotland - which had begun a process of deep selfexamination
when Covid-19 came along.
Here in the Old Parish and in Eddleston we are following the rules carefully.
We do not want to put anyone in any kind of danger. So many things in our
corporate life have been put on hold. In worship terms, we produce a new set