an Introduction to Anne and murdoch mackenzie

Anne Capey and Murdoch MacKenzie were born and baptised in 1938. They met in 1951 in Prenton Congregational Church in Birkenhead, were received into full church membership by confession of faith in 1952 and were married in the same church in 1964. 

Anne studied medicine in Liverpool and Edinburgh specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology and in tropical medicine. Murdoch studied Geography in Oxford, Divinity in Edinburgh and Marxism in Paris, became a member of the Iona Community in 1965 and was ordained in the Church of South India in St George’s Cathedral Madras in 1967. In 1966 they travelled to India by boat via the Suez Canal and in 1978 they left India and travelled overland, mainly on buses, from Madras to Edinburgh.

Their homes have been in Glasgow, Liverpool, Birkenhead, Stafford, Edinburgh, Callander, Paris, Bangalore, Madras, Glenrothes, Runcorn, Birmingham, Milton Keynes and more recently in retirement in Connel, Argyll. They have two daughters, a son and two grandchildren.

In August 2013 they moved from Argyll and returned to Edinburgh to be nearer their family members, and to the university in which Anne studied Tropical Medicine and Murdoch studied Divinity at New College (seen in the photograph above).

Of their many favourite poems the following seems the most suitable in this setting.

      The Call

      From our low seat beside the fire
      Where we have dozed and dreamed and watched the glow
      Or raked the ashes, stopping so
      We scarcely saw the sun or rain
      Above, or looked much higher
      Than this same quiet red or burned-out fire.
      Tonight we heard a call,
      A rattle on the window pane,
      A voice on the sharp air,
      And felt a breath stirring our hair,
      A flame within us: Something swift and tall
      Swept in and out and that was all.
      Was it a bright or a dark angel? Who can know?
      It left no mark upon the snow,
      But suddenly it snapped the chain
      Unbarred, flung wide the door
      Which will not shut again;
      And so we cannot sit here any more.
      We must arise and go:
      The world is cold without
      And dark and hedged about
      With mystery and enmity and doubt,
      But we must go
      Though yet we do not know
      Who called, or what marks we shall leave upon the snow.

      Charlotte Mew (1869-1928)

Jesus said: ‘The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is of everyone who is born of the Spirit.’

Murdoch and Anne MacKenzie
August 2012

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