THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - 15th January 2007

The Rt Rev James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool

This week Gordon Brown will launch a new £2 coin to mark the 300th Anniversary of the Act of Union between England and Scotland. It’ll bear the inscription: “United into one kingdom”. At the weekend the Chancellor was warning that this union between the two countries was now under threat.

I have to confess a personal interest in the Act of Union. My mother was a Scot, even once a member of the Wee Frees, and here I am now a member of England’s established church. To add to the mix, my father was Welsh which, according to the law of resultant forces, probably accounts for how I ended up in Liverpool!

But before I proceed here’s a compliment from me who’s half Scottish and half Welsh – I’ve always found the English to be a tolerant people.

They’ve taken no great exception to being governed by Scottish Ministers, to being entertained by the Irish and to having the news brought to them by the Welsh!

But stresses and strains are beginning to show stronger nationalist parties across the border, the fact that government spending per head of the population is higher in both Scotland and Wales and the West Lothian issue about whether the Celtic MP’s should be able to vote on English matters are all beginning to stir the political pot.

This question about the union is happening at the same time as Europe expands and our own borders become more permeable.

So I ask myself: am I Scottish, Welsh or English! Or am I British? Or European? What’s my identity? That’s the question.

A few years ago we had a wonderful family holiday on the banks of Loch Duich, opposite Eilean Donan Castle. Early each morning while the rest of the house slept I would walk down to the shore of the loch to say my prayers. I’ve seldom felt so at one with a landscape. There in the dark quietness where waters bathe the mountains I asked God why I should feel so at home in this place. Each day I prayed until a thought emerged through the morning mist. THIS was the land of my mother. It was IN me. In my genes. Even in my love of its weather. It was in my memory through all those childhood holidays spent on the West Coast. My soul was in that soil. It was like a revelation to me.

I’ll not detain you with my conclusions about where I belong. I simply want to register this thought that, when it comes to national identity, we’re ill-served if we think these things can be solved by politics and economics alone. Identity’s also a spiritual question.

It shouldn’t surprise the descendants of Adam whose name, according to the Bible, means “the one hewn from the earth” that where you belong is also about the SOIL in which your SOUL has grown its roots.