Govan and Linthouse Parish Church Magazine March 2011
Govan and Linthouse Parish Church Magazine March 2011 G and l Mag Mar 11 Sidelines In Hunan province in China, there is a range of mountains, the Tinamen Mountains. To get there you have to go on the ‘Highway to Heaven’ which is a snaking road, coiling itself up the mountain and rising from 200- 1300 feet from base to summit. If you go by bus or car, you have to stop for the last hundred metres or so, and get out and climb 999 steps, the heavenly ladder. If you survive that, and get to the top, there is a modern Buddhist temple, and an eroded cave entrance, where all that is left is this massive, natural arch in the rock. It is so large, that they have occasionally had air displays where the planes fly through the arch and above the heads of the daily visitors. This arch, the locals believe, is the gateway to heaven. Apparently (I have never been) the views at the top are breathtaking, and people feel that they have a heaven’s-eye view on the rest of the world. Wouldn’t it be good if we could have a heaven’s-eye view on our parish, our efforts, the glaring gaps for which we are responsible, the people we hardly notice, the way in which our church world impacts upon the non-church world - if it does at all. What would it look like? Would there be a view of those things we do well? Could we see where we have been negligent or careless? What would be the heaven’s-eye view of our church in its parish context? Our Presbytery, indeed the whole church, is going through another organisational convulsion.
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