MY WORKING LIFE IN JANUARY

WRITING

Not much writing this month.  I did go through all the proof corrections and suggestions for ‘The Church has a Past – has a it got a Future?’.  I did this in two new cafes, an excellent one at the top of the Design Museum, see above, and the pub ‘Traitors Gate’ near St Olave’s Church at Tower Hill.  The book has now gone to Chris Day for designing the body of the work. 

The front cover is a difficulty.  The administrator at St Mary Abbot’s did put the two photographs together as I had envisaged it – and Linda hated it! Here it is, a combination of Salisbury Cathedral and a Chinese piece of modern art called ‘New Deity’.  See the top of they newsletter.  Comments welcome!  However, I have got back in touch with Dan with another suggestion and a request that he does some blue sky thinking.

No progress with finding someone to write a foreword.  Suggestions  also welcome!

MARKETING

At the start of January I met up with a young man, Kieran, who is taking on board the social media publicity of Music at Hill.  And John Henderson is organising some pay-per-click advertising on Google and Amazon.  I hope it will start soon.

Meanwhile Meta, the umbrella group of Facebook and Instagram, have blocked me! I fall within one of their prohibited categories, i.e. ‘it is associated with individuals with specific religious or spiritual beliefs and practices.’

I am carrying on with LinkedIn which I like because you can have real interchanges with real people.  

NICAEA 

Most of January I spent reading about the Council of Nicaea, which defined God as Trinity – one substance in three persons or vice versa. My hope was to write a paper ‘Was Nicaea a mistake ?’  In particular I wondered if it would look different from an Indian perspective.  I hoped I could be part of a special Creedal conference on Nicaea at the beginning of May.  I went to two public talks on it, and read some learned but accessible books. I also discovered my copy of ‘Trinity and the Religious Experience of man’ by Raimondo Panikkar.  You can buy the book from Amazon but that at a cost of £93!

Panikkar’s book was tough. It took me two hours to read ten pages. Fortunately it was only 80 pages.  But the last ten pages made up a section called Theandrism which I found completely incomprehensible.   It all made me have to think really hard and by the end of the month my poor little brain was quite exhausted!

However, on 29th I discovered that the Creedal Conference was on the same dates as the start of the Kirchentag in Hannover, Germany.  I had already just booked the Kirchentag including train travel and accommodation, so I’m sorry the Creedal conference is not possible.  However, the work I have put in is not a total loss because I will use it to send out two blogs: one in mid-February ‘Was Nicaea a Mistake?’ and one in mid-April on Nicaea as seen through Indian/Hindu eyes. 

CHURCH  

This month I heard two bishops and preached two sermons.  At a Sion College talk, I heard Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, who spoke both eloquently and humbly about the Church needing to continue live day-be-day in a way that was trustworthy.

At the end of the month I heard Bishop Emma of Kensington at the deanery synod.  She said that she had once belonged to a caravan club, which advertised itself as a place for ‘like-minded people’.  She said that is precisely what the Church is not and never should be.  True.

I have started preaching once a month at Holy Trinity Prince Consort Road, opposite Imperial College – an enormous church with a small congregation – just to give the vicar Jeannie a bit of support.  I have also started taking monthly services for an interregnum at St Olave’s, a delightful small mediaeval church near the Tower of London.  There I preached about the wedding of Cana, and mentioned a couple of blogs I had written.  To my delight, several people asked how they could look them up.

PERSONAL

Linda and I spent a lovely weekend in Kent, during which we planted a small hazel tree at the woodland grave of her friend Kristin.  It was to have been on Sunday, but the weather forecast made that impossible.  Instead we did it on Saturday in lovely sunshine, and on Sunday went to  church and had a magnificent Sunday lunch at the Bottle House Inn, Penshurst.

MUSIC

After the Christmas break lunchtime recitals have restarted.  The stand-out one for me  was a recital for piano four-hands by two RCM (Royal College of Music) students.  They played a symphony by Debussy, who died before he could orchestrate the original 4-hand version, Bizet’s Mother Goose suite, which he wrote originally for piano 4-hands, and the great Grosse Fuge for string quartet of which Beethoven himself made a 4-hand version.  An extraordinary concert!

FILM & TV

Two shows we enjoyed on TV in particular:  Dragons Den and a very old detective series New Tricks which is consistently witty with amazing actors.  We also watched Crá, an Irish crime drama set in West Donegal.  Many years ago my friend Dave Webb and I went there on holiday , and certainly did not find it anywhere as miserable as the TV series.

We also saw three excellent films.  ‘La Cérémonie’ (1995), is a shocking film by Chabrol after which we both needed a gin and tonic.  ‘Vermiglio’ is a wonderful Italian film called after a small village in the Italian Alps – an entrancing account of rural poverty and the quiet drama of life in the shadow of war.  And on 31st we saw the latest Mike Leigh film ‘Hard Truths’, typical Mike Leigh, both witty and sad.

WEDNESDAY SAINTS 

The weekly reflection and prayer on a saint of the week continues every Wednesday at 10.00 a.m.  It lasts half an hour, followed by half an hour coffee and chat – on Zoom.  Last month we remembered 

• The Circumcision of Jesus (Luke 2)
• The Epiphany  (Matthew 2)
• Anthony of Egypt. 251-356. The first monk
• Vincent of Saragossa – martyred 304
• Thomas Aquinas d.1274   Devout scholar who combined reason and revelation

If you would like to join us one Wednesday, drop me an email and I will send you the link.