Meet Our Celebrants
Since I was a wee yin I’ve felt inspired by the saying, 'we're all Jock Tamson's bairns'.
Its origins lie with the Reverend John Thomson {Jock Tamson} circa 1800’s who called the congregation his bairns!
Even as a storyteller I never quite saw myself as someone who would regularly be standing up in front of a congregation, least of all officiating at funerals and being authorised to marry folk!
However, once aware of Celebrate People I felt drawn to the ethos in this community and working with them has proved to be all I hoped for.
When I was a punk in the late 70s there was a band with an infamous frontman called Rev Volting.
The Glasgow punk scene knew him as the guy who scaled the face of the Strathclyde University building to climb through an open window after the students had banned punks from the gig!
I was asked to officiate at his funeral at the Glasgow Crematorium and it was a strangely wonderful occasion.
As we listened to the swell and crescendo of the Cocteau Twins - Pearly Dewdrops' Drops - I looked down on lots of faces from my misspent youth keen to pay their respects to the Rev.
The Rev left us with his last words, which I was proud to deliver to a cheer from the congregation: “Mon the people and Eff the Tories! ”
I was in the congregation when I met the Reverend Christopher Rowe of Colston Milton Parish Church.
He was officiating at a ceremony of a family friend.
I was impressed and comforted by his Christian sermon and so pleased for the family.
As a Celebrant I have not thrown the baby Jesus out with the bath water.
As Depeche Mode would say, I have my own personal Jesus.
This helps me to be the kind of celebrant that I want to be.
We are all tied together in mysterious ways that we don’t necessarily understand but through being a celebrant my sense of being one of Jock’s Bairns has only strengthened.
Whenever I have the privilege of honouring and authorising the solemn and sincere vows of a marriage between two folk, it seems as if we, the congregation, also join to share our humanity.
My favourite bit of Reverend Chris’s sermon was when he said that although he was terribly fond of the “little book”, (The Bible), it was the big book he was passionate about.
The big book being all of us!