A late start to the day which began after breakfast to listening to Archbishop Rowan delivering the second in this year's Reith Lectures in a series entitles 'The Four Freedoms', of which freedom of religion is one. It was a masterpiece in covering a complex subject for a secular pluralist audience. Amazingly, it was also a magisterial account of Christian apologetics for the contemporary world, which to my mind helped to explain a few of the decisions both political and ecclesiastical, which he took while he was still in office, always aiming against the odds to keep everyone in dialogue, even those lapsing into schism, opposing the mainstream liberal agenda.
The philosophy seems to me to be that no religious conviction or practice should be suppressed, but all should be subject to challenge and scrutiny, so that all sides can start to learn what impact their views and actions have on others. Above all, then the call is 'be reconciled', driven by the question Jesus often posed. What are you afraid of? - and - Why are you afraid? Spot on!
Then I went to St Catherine's to celebrate the Eucharist with eight others and chat afterwards for an hour over coffee before going to collect this week's veggie bag. I was home before Clare and cooked lunch for us, somewhat later than usual. Afterwards, I scanned all the safeguarding identity verification documents required for my Euro diocese PTO and emailed a .pdf file of the documents to HQ. Due diligence done hopefully. I'll hear about my clearance for PTO in a few days I was informed.
After lunch I did the Co-op shopping trip, and then had to go out again to collect a couple of items from Beanfreaks which were ordered but omitted from purchases Clare collected from the shop. The rising full moon was just over the horizon under a clear evening sky as I walked home, and the temperature went down from five to one degree, so we needed central heating while we both sat in the lounge and read. This morning I found another Patricia Cornwell novel from the church second had bookshelf and brought it home to read. It makes a change from binge watching series on catch-up telly.
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