Mothering Sunday

A return to days of cloud and rain threatening to get worse as the week goes on. When I drove to Saint German's to celebrate Mass for the last time before Fr Jarel the new priest in charge, is licensed a week next Saturday crowds were gathering in the city centre ignoring the lights and swarming over the road to visit the Castle, before this afternoon's international rugby Wales versus France rugby match. No police officers to be seen anywhere. 

We were forty in church, including two mothers with small children, also Hosain an Iranian asylum enquiring about getting baptized, seemingly unaware, from what I understood, that doing this before being granted residency would do his case no good, now the light of suspicion by tribunal judges is cast on anyone doing this, as several serious criminal offenders were found to have been baptized and then granted residency. I explained that baptism preparation would take many months if not years depending on how much a candidate needed to learn. I discussed this with Basma after speaking to Hosain. She said she knew of other asylum seekers who sought baptism with no intention of genuinely converting to Christ.

By the time I reached home for lunch today it was two o'clock. I was grateful that Clare had cooked and kept a meal for me, especially as she was poorly with a cold and unable to go to church this morning. I've had the same symptoms, but milder, and am recovering so far more quickly. After eating, I went out and walked for and hour and a half in Thompsons Park and Llandaff Fields, calling in at the Co-op for some bananas and honey en route.

We are supper together, then Clare went to bed. I spent the evening preparing next week's edition of Sway and making the slide video for my Passiontide Morning Prayer honouring the memory of Thomas Cranmer, one of the great innovative artists of the Word in creating the English Book of Common Prayer, and burned at the stake, for refusing to comply with King Henry's decision to take the Church of England out of communion with Rome. It's surprising he hasn't been declared a martyr for Christian unity. I also wrote and recorded more talks for Basma. I got quite a lot done in just a few hours.