I woke up slowly and got up after the eight o'clock news as the 'Sunday Worship' programme started. It was compiled in a studio without a congregation rather than live, commemorating the 60th anniversary of three famous people who died on this day. Christian apologist and author C S Lewis, the philosopher and writer Aldous Huxley, and President John F Kennedy. I vividly recall hearing about his assassination as I was sitting in my Uni hall of residence room writing up the day's notes, when a fellow student knocked on the door and blurted out the terrible news before I could open it. The preacher was Archbishop Rowan. It was good to hear him reflecting on the significant contributions to human thought made by three different great lives.
I drove to St German's to celebrate the Eucharist with a congregation of thirty five. Afterwards I had a good conversation with our Iraqi asylum seeker. He's keen to learn more about Christian teaching, and grow her understanding of what she'd learned from surreptitiously attending Syrian Orthodox church services back home. From what this experience and what Islam says about Jesus, she has many questions. Preparing her for baptism is going to be an interesting cross cultural journey.
It was gone half past one by the time I reached home. Traffic flowed freely getting across the city centre, but when I got to the junction nearest home, traffic was at a standstill. It took four changes of traffic lights before I could turn right and right again. I wonder if there's some problem with programming the sequence of the lights to produce such a random bout of congestion?
Yet again my dinner was being kept warm on the stove. Clare had eaten early as she was due to go to an afternoon study group meeting in Bristol. After lunch I went for a walk in the park. Before going out, I checked my weather app and it said there'd be a light shower in three quarter of an hour. Before I reached the end of the street, rain started and went on for about ten minutes. It was quite windy and not easy to control my umbrella, then stopped and didn't return for the rest of the day. After rain overnight the Taff water level was over the top of the Blackweir fish ladder again.
I got home before sunset, as I had a lift offered to St Peter's to officiate at Evensong and Benediction. Kate collected Jane and I, and brought us back after the service just in time for 'The Archers' and supper. I made a start on preparing liturgical readings to distribute tomorrow, and more additions to Sway emailed to me. I new serial started on BBC 1 at nine called 'Boat Story', set on the North East coast of England. I suppose it would be described as quirky bleak and 'darkly comic'. It was very 'sweary' and unnecessarily violent with a disjointed story-line, presented in episodes like an early silent movie with commentary on content thrown in. All rather off-putting. I'll be interested to read any reviews of this appearing this week.
Finally the Israeli military has shown video of what is said to be an entrance shaft to underground tunnels beneath Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, in the middle of the remains of a building razed to the ground by bombing, also a CCTV video clip of a couple of hostages being taken in haste along allegedly hospital corridors. It's been a long time coming. Premature babies have now been evacuated and are receiving emergency treatment on their way to Egypt. Hostage release negotiations brokered by the Qataris are said to be nearing completion. But are we nearly there yet? As our kids used to say on long journeys.
Maybe when this has happened, water and power supplies will be restored, and more aid convoys allowed through, largely thanks to international pressure. It's hard to see how Palestinians will recover and rebuild after such colossal damage to their recognised territory and population. And hard to see how Israel will overcome damage to its reputation after reacting with such inhumane brutality that it's open accused of collective punishment, and other war crimes, by workers in UN agencies. Sadly collective memory around such crises fades fast, once international attention is distracted elsewhere, as is evident in other war devastated countries,
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