‘Fond memories of St Monans’
Good morning,
Yesterday was 20 years to the day since Maya and I moved to Fife. We arrived around midnight having travelled all day from Laytown, Co Meath, in the Republic of Ireland. In our car, our faithful Ford Escort, were a handful of things to survive the night, and three cats, slightly traumatised by the number of roundabouts in Ireland south and north, and Scotland from west to east. Phoebe spent the next day under the duvet.
We had come to the manse in St Monans, just 12 miles from St Andrews in the East Neuk of Fife. Just over a week later, I was ordained as a minister in the Church of Scotland and inducted into the charge of Largoward linked with St Monans as their minister. I still remember that extraordinary evening service as the ministers and elders of the Presbytery gathered round me, and put their hands on me, while the medieval plainsong melody Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire reverberated around the 14th Century church in St Monans. It’s akin to Compline in St Leonard’s Chapel, that sense of being in continuity with the church throughout its history, yet very much within the contemporary world.
On my first Sunday as minister, a friend “preached me in”. This custom seems to be happening less frequently, but I still remember Charlie Robertson’s sermon. He had researched my predecessors in St Monans and Largoward in the record of ministers in the Church of Scotland, known as the Fasti. Of those he mentioned, one was described as “a not unapt specimen.” It seemed a characterization worth aiming for.
The ten years I spent in that pastoral charge were hugely fulfilling. I learned the basic tasks of ministry – leading worship, relating scripture to our lives, passing on the faith to new generations, caring for people in sickness and in health, and accompanying them in the most significant thresholds of their lives, including marriage, baptism of children, and death. We did some different things too – especially a number of seasons of medieval mystery plays, featuring parishioners many of whom had never acted before. And we changed the day of our children’s work in St Monans, renaming it Sunday School on a Wednesday. Thinking of that name was perhaps my finest moment as minister there!
All the recent commemorations of 9/11 have brought this back to mind. I had been packing up our house all that day and it was only at the train station around 5 pm, when I was heading into Dublin for a farewell dinner with a close friend, that the station-master told me of the attacks. Seven days later, we drove to Scotland. My twenty years as an ordained minister have coincided with the twenty years since that event. People said straightaway it would change the world. And I think it did – lives in Afghanistan, Iraq and across the Arab world have been deeply affected by the events and international responses. And we have learned to live with greater security measures when travelling.
But in some ways the changes the world has seen since 2001 have depended less on 9/11 than on climate change and other environmental factors around water, soils and weather. And how these will continue to change the world will characterise my forthcoming years of ministry, and all our lives.
Anyway, it’s been a wonderful way to spend twenty years. I’ve sent a second email with pictures of the two churches in which I served. And here’s a picture of some of the people who have made it worthwhile, the St Monans congregation at my final service there:
Here are images of those churches in St Monans and Largoward, where I served for the first ten years of ordained ministry.
St Monans Church, known affectionately as the Auld Kirk.
Largoward Church
Yours,
Donald.
Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Chaplain