THE woman sitting at the table in the electronic croft is both happy and relieved.

She has been through a very demanding year which has challenged and stretched her, and she will surrender these responsibilities on Saturday morning with mixed feelings. Much of the pioneering job she has done over the past 12 months she will miss, even though it will be good to catch up on a bit of rest and relaxation.

Dr Alison Elliot, who is here in Orkney with her husband, Jo, is a ground-breaker. The first female Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and the first elder to hold the job in 400 years has handled matters of church and state with aplomb. Possibly her greatest triumph is that at the end of her year of office, so many people have been asking themselves what all the fuss was about in the first place.

Fuss there certainly was.

While the Kirk admitted women to the eldership and to the ministry more than 30 years ago, the top Proddie job in Scotland remained a male preserve. Oh, the excuses were made. It takes time for change to happen. There isn't a woman experienced enough to do the job. The task of chairing the General Assembly is too daunting for a woman. The Kirk isn't ready for a woman moderator, and certainly not a non-minister. And so on and so on and so on.

These weary, whiskery, patronising, ridiculous excuses were finally blown away on May 15, 2004, when a female elder walked calmly down the aisle of the General Assembly and sat in John Knox's chair.

The whirring sound that could be heard was that of plain Mr Knox birling in his grave.

And, miracle of miracles, this mere woman somehow managed to chair the week-long discussions of the fathers and mothers without the aid of continuous walkie-talkie advice, drugs, counselling or paramedics.

The stained-glass ceiling was well and truly shattered, and, strange to say, no-one has ended up on a life-support machine with bits of glass sticking out of them, not even those rabid old clerics who would have agreed with Samuel Johnson: "Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well: but you are surprised to find it done at all."

There were certainly people watching for errors. Dr Elliot failed to oblige them. She dealt with trick questions from microphone-wielders with a gracious smile. She even managed to bodyswerve the suicidal photo opportunities. (A few years ago, when Cowdenbeath was labelled the worst senior football team in Britain, having failed to win at home for 18 months, I was asked by the manager to give a pep talk to the lads. That shows how truly desperate things were. A Sun photographer materialised out of the shadows and asked me if I would kneel at the centre spot, wearing a dog collar, with my hands clasped in prayer. Er, no thanks.

When I retorted that I didn't have a dog collar, the ungodly man whipped one out of his pocket. My bristling antennae told me to depart at speed, at which point, the snapper cried: "I'll give you pounds-50!" (Did he think the electronic crofter could be bought as cheaply as that? ) Such photos are the ecclesiastical equivalent of cruciate ligament injuries for footballers.

Career-threatening. Dr Elliot's predecessor, Professor Iain Torrance, one of the brightest men in all Britain, naively allowed himself to be photographed in a graveyard. You can imagine the captions.

Alison Elliot was never going to be anybody's token woman.

The former convener of the Kirk's Church and Nation Committee had nothing to prove to anyone, and she felt no need to put on a special performance in order to draw attention to herself as the first woman Mod. Her public interventions have been thoughtful and measured.

She has shown steel when she had to. In India just after the tsunami, she insisted, to the displeasure of some, that her itinerary be changed to allow her to talk to survivors and those involved in care for the injured and bereaved. Her live broadcasts from the "front line" were stunning.

The fact that all of the offices of the Kirk are now unequivocally open to men and women is both important and unimportant. Symbolism is significant, and Christianity's Pentecostal equality of women and men - which was subverted in the course of a troubling history - has to be embodied and visible; theory is not enough.

Alison Elliot's quietly effective rendering of her high-profile leadership role also implicitly asks questions of other churches which operate through unchallengeable male cabals.

Matters of leadership and organisation are second-order questions, though. The more pressing issues facing the churches have to do with reimagining and living out their core message in unfamiliar and rapidly changing landscapes. Nevertheless, the beleaguered Kirk, as it seeks to grapple with these very issues, must be grateful to Alison Elliot for so matter-of-factly consigning one persistent problem to history's bin.