The debate continues. The interfaith group is continuing. I have resigned from the Guild of St John Southworth. I can no longer stand for long periods. No provision was made for us. I used to move a chair but sitting to greet people is not ideal. My children"s guides were a great success but have all gone. It is a shame that they were not sold to raise funds. The shop is now only open at weekends. I think the request to wear formal shoes was unacceptable. To do a good job comfort is essential. Trainers and sandals are acceptable in my view. There was also confusion about what guides were to do. Some insisted on literally taking people round the building! The average visitor comes for one minute. A welcome and a smile are enough.
Saturday 13 August 2022
Mary
Prayers of the faithful this evening.. "May our deceased relatives rest in peace with Mary and her Son". Point 1. Jesus Rose from the dead.
Point 2. On the Feast of the Assumption we say that Mary is sleeping and then in heaven. She is most definitely not at rest.
The Bible is clear that we shall be continually praising God in heaven. Why then do we pray "rest in peace" but also say "I am sure he/she is in heaven"? We speak of a glimpse of heaven. A good example is the climactic moment in Gerontius or a glorious sunset. Pure beauty should fill our churches. Poor art and tacky songs will not do!
Kevin rightly points out that Jesus should always come before Mary.
It was good to have Canon Jim Pannett celebrating! St Dominic Waddon not that close to home and we have not met the parish priest.
Thursday 16 July 2020
Friday 12 June 2020
Reading
The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. ....Want to play? Copy this into your post. Look at the list and put an "👍" after those you have read.
This will be an interesting one:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x👍
2 The Lord of the Rings -JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x👍xxx
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x👍
6 The Bible x👍
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x👍
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x👍
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x👍
11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x👍
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare x👍
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x👍xx
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x👍xx
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulkner
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x👍
19 The Time Traveler's Wife-Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x👍
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x👍
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens x👍
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy x👍x
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 👍
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky x👍
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x👍x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x👍
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x👍
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x👍
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x👍
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen x👍
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x👍
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x👍
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 👍
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - x👍
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x👍
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins x👍
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 👍
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy x👍
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x👍
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 👍x
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons x👍
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x👍
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth x👍x
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x👍
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x👍
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x👍
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy x👍
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding x👍
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x👍x
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x👍
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 👍
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson x👍
75 Ulysses - James Joyce x👍
76 The Inferno - Dante x👍x
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome x👍
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray x👍
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x👍
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro x👍
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x👍
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x👍x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid BLYTON
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x👍x
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x👍
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x👍
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute x👍
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x👍
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare👍 x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x👍
100 Gaudy Night - Dorothy Sayers
My generation read Noddy, Famous Five, Secret Seven, Biggles, Rider Haggard, Colonel Fawcett, Pattern of islands, Jock of the Bushveld, They seek a country, Cry the beloved country.Why isn't Nelson Mandela on this list? Many of these now seen as colonialist and racist.
Saturday 30 May 2020
Chorus chairmen
I found some Philharmonia year books from the 70s. Interesting the comments from Chorus chairmen which put a certain spin on what really happened!
Sunday 24 May 2020
Happiest and saddest
Hopefully it is obvious that I have had a very happy life! Out of so many great days our wedding day has to be the happiest closely followed by other weddings especially Louise and Tom and Dennis and Ann Marie. The births of the children especially Bruce. Our 3 grandsons and I recall many happy days playing with them and especially steam train rides! Reunions - arriving in Hobart and Ann and Paul's wedding, Sydney, Mark and Sarah's wedding. Music has been such a joy. So many wonderful Chorus concerts especially Fidelio in Orange, Giulini concerts. Playing the organ so many times and the sense of achievement when all went well. Singing "If with all your hearts" and "We'll gather lilacs" and the concerts both here and in Australia. Holidays and travel - Iguazu falls, Okavango and seeing the leopard and her cub, the Sea of Galilee, Lindisfarne, Victoria Falls, Alaska, the lists just goes on and on! Great ceremonies especially ordinations of so many. And perhaps more importantly the quiet communion and the silence. The amazing experiences of Mt Sinai and the church of the Holy sepulchre. Catenians have given much pleasure especially the provincial weekend on the Isle of Wight and getting motions passed at Liverpool conference. Sad that Norwood circle closed but life goes on. It looks like Dulwich circle will also close.
Saddest day must be Mum and Dad's funeral, the funeral of Liz's Dad, saying goodbye is hard. The day I left Johannesburg, the departures from Hobart and Sydney. Leaving Addiscombe was very sad. The end of Heythrop. Some funerals have been sad. The loss of a friend like David Barrett is hard.
I have often been moved to tears especially by opera e.g. Madam Butterfly and films e,g, The Alamo and theatre e,g, Othello at the Globe. This is a good thing - tears help a lot.
Some of the happy occasions have been bitter sweet.
I suppose it is when God seems closest and Love takes over. Love is expressed in a hug or a smile. a whole world can be there in a single moment. Julian of Norwich speaks of the whole world in a hazelnut. Always be thankful.
This time of lockdown is so strange. All the usual things have gone to be replaced by a programme of services on the screen and operas on screen. I have cleared out so much paper from the past - so many organ recitals and services. I have kept programmes from exciting events like the Olympics and Paralympics in London but I have to ask "Why keep this and not that?". Perhaps it is to do with memory. Some things I have found I cannot recall at all, others remain vivid.
What am I missing? Hugs from the family, conversations, singing together, playing the organ, above all Eucharist. I confess the second part of Mass seems remote at the moment. St John's holds a special place in my heart. Who knows how long we will be at home ? It could be months before it is safe to return to "normal". Our great National institutions like the Royal Opera House, Royal Academy and the Globe are under threat. The many art galleries I have visited have given me so much pleasure. And zoos and wild life parks are always happy places for me especially Whipsnade and Taronga. Monasteries I really like are Belmont and Worth. York Minster has to be the "gates of heaven". Westminster cathedral always gives a thrill! We will be back!
Saddest day must be Mum and Dad's funeral, the funeral of Liz's Dad, saying goodbye is hard. The day I left Johannesburg, the departures from Hobart and Sydney. Leaving Addiscombe was very sad. The end of Heythrop. Some funerals have been sad. The loss of a friend like David Barrett is hard.
I have often been moved to tears especially by opera e.g. Madam Butterfly and films e,g, The Alamo and theatre e,g, Othello at the Globe. This is a good thing - tears help a lot.
Some of the happy occasions have been bitter sweet.
I suppose it is when God seems closest and Love takes over. Love is expressed in a hug or a smile. a whole world can be there in a single moment. Julian of Norwich speaks of the whole world in a hazelnut. Always be thankful.
This time of lockdown is so strange. All the usual things have gone to be replaced by a programme of services on the screen and operas on screen. I have cleared out so much paper from the past - so many organ recitals and services. I have kept programmes from exciting events like the Olympics and Paralympics in London but I have to ask "Why keep this and not that?". Perhaps it is to do with memory. Some things I have found I cannot recall at all, others remain vivid.
What am I missing? Hugs from the family, conversations, singing together, playing the organ, above all Eucharist. I confess the second part of Mass seems remote at the moment. St John's holds a special place in my heart. Who knows how long we will be at home ? It could be months before it is safe to return to "normal". Our great National institutions like the Royal Opera House, Royal Academy and the Globe are under threat. The many art galleries I have visited have given me so much pleasure. And zoos and wild life parks are always happy places for me especially Whipsnade and Taronga. Monasteries I really like are Belmont and Worth. York Minster has to be the "gates of heaven". Westminster cathedral always gives a thrill! We will be back!
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