Garden retreat and Hittite findings

After an uneventful day yesterday, today was one of the two Chaplaincy 'Days Of Prayer' held each year at the home of Lay Reader Linda and her husband Peter. They have a pleasant house set on a wooded hillside about a kilometre from the sea, with lovely terraced gardens and a swimming pool, with several areas of shade where it's possible for people to sit outside quietly on their own to reflect.

There were ten of us present. We were led in prayer and reflection by Caroline, the other Lay reader in a well prepared offering on a theme of 'Open Hands'. There was an opportunity for solitude in the garden in between the first session and lunch on the terrace of the house. Our second session of prayer praise and reflection led into a Eucharist which I let. It's the first the first time in three years I've led a 'house' Eucharist with everyone gathered round a coffee table. The last time was at Manel's in Geneva.

We finished with tea, then I drove back to the office to Skype Clare, did some shopping and then headed for home. It was dark and again I took a wrong turning, then another to recover my route, and ended up on the Toll motorway heading towards Marbella. I drove 15km to Calahonda before I could turn back, and had to pay €2.80 to exit on to the N340 coast road. I wouldn't have minded the drive in daylight simply to survey the landscape, but in the dark, it was half an hour's extra endurance. On return, I prepared to cook a meal, then realised I had no onions, so I had to go out again downhill to the nearest convenience store and stock up before getting properly started. So, it was gone nine before I supped.

Still, it was a peaceful pleasant warm blue sky day and I didn't mind too much. On the telly afterwards there was an archaeological documentary about Hittite civilisation, its extraordinary construction achievements and subsequent disappearance of the its culture from the history of the near East, save for its library of 30,000 cuneiform tablets. Once deciphered these gave a considerable account of Hittite society and its achievement but without giving any clue to its rapid decline and descent into obscurity. The latest theory is that in-fighting between members of a tightly bound ruling elite led to the breakup of their extensive empire, and abandonment of Hattusa their capital city in the Anatolian mountains from which they ruled with an iron grip, until brought down by the enemy within. 

Something I obviously didn't take in or recall from when I studied ancient near eastern religion and culture in St Michael's, was that Hittites were of Indo-European linguistic and cultural origins, not semitic. Decoding the language was still a work in progress in my youth, and had been going on only for fifty years. Now there's both a dictionary and a grammar, of this oldest Indo-European language from way back in 1500BC. Amazing, the progress made int the twentieth century.