Reminiscence inspired by an old note book.

On the way back from Edinburgh on the train yesterday I started flicking through the old notebook that I had taken with me to note down any great words of inspiration that I heard in the presentation. I hadn't written much yesterday but the book was full of notes dating back several years.

Being a neat, pocket sized, notebook it had travelled with me to conferences and meetings all over the place.

The page that caught my eye was from a workshop/ seminar led by my old friend Peter Graves, in the summer of 2007 in the convent conference centre on the Frauenchimsee island on the Chimsee lake in Bavaria. (What a hardship to have to go to a location like that for a one week conference!)

Peters seminar had the title “When the going gets tough” and the page that caught my eye had the following quotation on it.

“To be effective ministers we need the head of a scholar, the heart of a child, the hide of a rhinoceros and a soft underbelly.”

Peter talked about each of these needs and pointed to the importance of keeping the balance between them all.

His presentation had many other memorable quotations:
“people are impossible – love them anyway”
“small minds kill big ideas”
“Never love God's work more than God”
“embrace your brokenness”
"tough times don't last, tough people do"
"The difference between a victim and a survivor - a victim always has someone to blame for their circumstances whereas a survivor always says they will see a way through and will win"

I must spend some more time looking through that old book and see what other wisdom is contained therein.

“Sepulchre” A book review

It is a big thick book.

I got to page 428 out of 739 and felt I have had enough. I don't want to waste however many hours of my life it will take to read the other half.

The book is “Sepulchre” by Kate Mosse and I liked her first book “Labyrinth”. I feel let down and disappointed as I do not like failing or leaving things unfinished. The time slip genre worked for Labyrinth but here she is trying to repeat the formula and it fails: the link is too tenuous.

The first 400 pages introduced a complex situation, introduced complex characters with secrets and there were all sorts of suggestions as to where the plot could have gone. But by page 429 I know there is an evil baddie and why he is out to get them. If you understand the contrived plot then you can easily work out that it can only move in certain directions. The characters are thin and clichéd. Is the plot about Debussy, the Tarot or about Meredith's past as none of the three story-lines is convincing? It is just a case of waiting to see if the psychopath gets them or they get him? Will Meredith and Hal get together and find meaning in life through each other? The author has failed to build up enough tension to make me want to bother to find out the answer to these questions.

I think I will just have to go and get another book.

Remembering Brother Roger five years after his assassination

Brother Roger 16.8.2010


No words can ever
express the depths of pain
that struck
five years ago
this very day

an elderly man
who meant so much
to so many
and showed such practical love
talking always from his heart
with that husky
instantly recognisable voice
was suddenly
robbed of life
by someone he was
trying to help

As he rests in peace
his legacy
living
lives on
as the Christ he served
still calls

and we
entering deeply the mystery
of the silence
he inhabited so effortlessly
find we are
called
to carry the torch
that dropped from
his dying hands