A timely anniversary

This morning I had the challenge of getting to St Dyfrig and Samson's for a nine o'clock Mass, and then going on to a ten thirty Mass at St Paul's. Thankfully, driving I'm finding is now getting more comfortable, at least for local trips and that's a positive outcome from the op, ten days ago. I really had to think of my feet, as I'd prepared a sermon on St Michael and All Angels, but the Parish was celebrating Harvest Festival, with the readings for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, so I had to ditch my text and ad lib elements of all three together.

The were twenty at St Dyfrig and St Samson, three dozen adults and twenty children at St Paul's, including a robed choir of five young women, who sang well. For the time being services are taking place in a room big enough for eighty worshippers, screened off at one end of a refurbished hall next to the church building. The screen can be opened to extend the space for a funeral congregation, and in this Parish, I I discovered standing in for the Vicar in times past, that can mean several hundred mourners attending.

The church is closed, pending a major conversion project which will see the vast nave turned into apartments with the choir and sanctuary area re-worked into a new chapel, accommodating a hundred plus, with a vestry and Parish office on two levels. Meanwhile, the congregation fits comfortably into the reserved space and this helps to generate a relaxed atmosphere for worship. The number of young couples with children in Sunday school is a tribute to the Messy Church initiative, and the hard work of those who make it happen as a first point of contact. Much the same as in St Catherine's.

Clare and Ann went to St John's City Parish Church this morning, and from there walked to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama for lunch. Having returned home for lunch, I took the bus into town and joined them there for a matinee performance of a new play called 'Kamil and Francis' which recounts and reflects on the meeting of St Francis of Assisi and Sultan Malik al Kamil nephew of Saladin and ruler of Cairo during the fifth Crusade, eight centuries ago this year. It's a story I remember reading about in my student years in Bristol, when we got to know Brother Christian an Anglican Franciscan who came up from Hilfield Friary to the city for dental treatment, and stayed with us. Clare's father was named Francis, so it was natural to take an interest in the spirituality and lifestyle of the Franciscan movement.

This story tells of an interfaith encounter and peacemaking initiative which St Francis made unsupported, apart from a companion Friar. Unarmed, and totally vulnerable before an adversary of Christendom. His wasn't the only effort made at dialogue between religions in the Middle Ages, but others are less well known. We hear little of the fact that imperial Muslim rulers employed learned Jewish and Christian advisors and officials, whom they knew were trustworthy, such was the confidence in their hold on power.

It's far less certain that Muslim intellectuals were similarly employed when Christian rule gained the upper hand, although Christian scholars certainly took advantage of the work done across the Muslim empire, to acquire and translate ancient Greek literature, philosophy and drama. Without that immense information harvesting project, there would have been no Renaissance or Enlightenment, no Western culture as we know it today. The violence of contemporary Islamism has obscured this fact, as its qu'ranic fundamentalist approach denies much of the value the great work Muslim scholars did in restoring Classical knowledge and critical thought to the world.

The play as a highly speculative account of that landmark meeting, the content of which nothing is known. The fact that it happened at all, between these two particular men, when it did, is remarkable and inspires imagination about the current need for dialogue between adversaries, both religious and political. It ended with a conversation between its four actors, its author D.J. Britton and an audience, which included several Egyptian Muslims as well as some active Christians, and a majority of uncommitted but curious people. It was a fascinating way to spend an afternoon indoors, even though the sun shone brightly in between showers.