All Saints, Jordanhill

A congregation of the Scottish Episcopal Church in Glasgow, Scotland

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Rev Sydney Maitland

Rev Sydney Maitland

Articles by Rev Sydney Maitland, appearing in our monthly magazine and commenting on life at All Saints and in the world at large.

Commentary: Money is a fine servant but a dreadful master

I have commented before on the way our money is founded on our confidence in the authorities that issue and regulate it, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. Much of our money has no physical existence as it is comprised of accounting entries in a computer rather than notes or coin, and there are people who would…

Commentary: The peace that shapes and moves us

It is called the Kingdom Season, writes Rev Sydney Maitland, when thoughts are directed to the Kingdom of God, and it normally begins with All Saints Day, concluding on the last Saturday before Advent. Christ the King is the focus, and in writing this, we will have almost completed the Kingdom Season before this issue…

Commentary: Beware a sense of grievance

The hymn ‘Love Unknown’ has the line ‘O who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die?’ We have all had those ‘Who am I?’ moments when we questioned almost everything about ourselves. And in some ways these questions are still with us but in a more powerful and…

Commentary: Pray for those with whom we disagree

The calling of the general election definitely caught me on the hop and the thoughts I had hoped to explore now would be out of place. As governments extend themselves into ever more intimate and personal aspects of our lives, so more and more aspects of our lives have become political. Yet Jesus had a…

Commentary: Be ready to be Good Friday People

We are certainly living within a strange time of uncertainty, and this extends from the future of Scotland to that of the UK, Europe and indeed the whole concept of Western culture. It is there in our politics as new movements arise and generate much interest – possibly, more heat than light – and which…

Commentary: Look in Lent towards the joy and glory of God in Jesus

It is interesting to find that while our festival of All Saints rejoices in the gathering of those who have died in the faith, and is a festival of and for the church as a whole, our observation of All Souls is far more personal and reflective as we remember those who were close to…

Commentary: Godless, evil and self-determined lifestyles

When working in the planning office, I was regularly asked what was going to happen to a particular development proposal. I had to answer that I was a planner and not a fortune-teller and that I could not make predictions. I could indicate whether there were particular concerns regarding a proposal, and whether I thought…

Commentary: Jesus comes to us in Himself and for ourselves

I used to think of November as a non-month in which nothing happened except the cold, the damp and the dark. These are the days in which we would think of death – whether in observing All Saints, All Souls or Remembrance-tide. The month would climax at Christ the King and then we would be…

Commentary: We find, to our astonishment, that God has taken the blame

The question goes back at least to the Book of Psalms: “Why do the nations rage? And the people imagine a vain thing?” (Ps 2: 1) and probably a lot further than that as well, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. And there are (at least) two questions – one is about why politics is so violent,…

Commentary: Paris desacré

For most of us, French was the first foreign language we learned and our history lessons were full of our – often robust – relations with the French, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. In our own lives, we have visited France and of course have met French people. In our own church life, we are honoured…

Commentary: What endures to eternity

There is an aspect of our media that definitely likes to play on the dramatic, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. If it is not dramatic then it is not really news. So: crime figures are discussed with far more animation than data on the balance of payments. The disaster, especially if there are pictures, will draw…

Commentary: The power of positive faith

It must be some 40 or 50 years since the “Power of Positive Thinking” was published, writes Rev Sydney Maitland, and since then there has been a veritable flood of books and courses on self-improvement, positive thinking/being/ action and so on. “Spirituality” has become an exercise in self-improvement, and essentially inward-looking. Advertising has developed themes…

Commentary: Media and the truth

I never actually read any of his work, writes Rev Sydney Maitland, but the tenet of one of Marshall McLuhan’s works was summarized in the slogan “The medium is the message”. I believe that in saying this, McLuhan was pointing to the effects of the mass media in informing us. In so doing, they not…

Commentary: A model of equality

“We want a fairer society.” Don’t we all: but what do we mean? A society in which all people are wholly the same? Where male and female roles are fully interchangeable? Maybe, writes Rev Sydney Maitland, but in our hearts we may wonder if this is really credible, even if there are photo-opps and enthusiastic…

Commentary: An end to bitterness

In a few weeks we will have the result of the referendum ~ and we will have to live with the result, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. That is what a democracy is, and perhaps the proof of our democratic credentials will be on how graciously we can receive the result, regardless of whether it is…

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