Post-investiture

Luckily, we happened to be coming to London anyway today, so could be part of the celebratory lunch party after our friend Sarah received her MBE at Buckingham Palace - well-earned by many years at the inter-faith coalface in South London and elsewhere.

Pope Francis' Strasbourg speech yesterday rang simultaneously a warning to and an endorsement of the EU - the latter being something Sarah's Islamic friend and I passionately agreed upon. Unfortunately she had moved round the table by the time I found myself in a radically different conversation on the same subject with my other neighbour, a UKIP sympathiser.

Having been brought up short by this, I was again by something in the Times, a paper I normally never see. Columnist Janice Turner - in her Notebook - writes about a friend with a home that makes Janice want to change her entire house. How does she achieve this? Why, by abandoning "dim eco-friendly bulbs". "Sod the planet," the friend says, and Janice follows suit. Haven't they heard of LED?

Joy into action

During my walking on the Jakobsweg, I read Pope Francis' Evangelii Gaudium. I found it inspirational. The joy of the gospel, it begins, fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus.

It's a long document - more like a book actually: but don't let that put you off reading it. Because it's informally written and well-translated - and full of good stuff. One passage I particularly liked was this: An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better that we found it. We love this magnificent planet on which God has put us, and we love the human family which dwells here, with all its tragedies and struggles, its hopes and aspirations, its strengths and weaknesses. The earth is our common home and all of us are brothers and sisters.

I was reminded of this when Mary Colwell came to Cheltenham last night, to speak at one of our regular, if infrequent, Christian Ecology Link meetings. Her title was "Surprised by Joy, Impatient for Change". We heard more about the first part than the second, but no matter. For one evening at least it was possible to be an environmentalist and not a killjoy.

What is joy? Mary began by asking, besides being one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Not the same as happiness! Do animals experience joy? Hard to say, but perhaps it's through nature alone that we can be truly surprised by joy. Sylvia Earle talks of discovering it when "dancing" deep in the oceans with an octopus: Mary herself, sitting on a Cornish beach, en-joyed a seal popping up amid the breaking waves. For her, it brought to mind the thought voiced by former slave, George Washington Carver: God speaks to us every hour about nature if we'll only tune in.

But John Muir was the figure who dominated the talk: even among the environment-minded, he is little spoken of. Born in Scotland in 1838, one of seven children of staunchly Presbyterian parents, he moved with the family to the United States, where they set up a frontier farm. Seeing the destruction brought to the wilderness by the advance Westwards, he became its advocate, his campaigns bearing fruit within the National Parks system.

Everywhere John Muir looked, he saw God, and joy in nature motivated him to wonder - and to act, in order to protect forests, rivers and birds. He died in 1914, the same year as Martha, the very last of the passenger pigeons whose fate he so much lamented.

For Muir as for us, joy isn't a passive emotion: it arouses a sense of injustice, and makes you want to do something: most people are on the world, Muir wrote: not in it... touching, but separate... I must get out into the mountains to learn the news. A prophetic voice.

In his "Surprised by Joy", C.S. Lewis says, Joy is never in our power, and pleasure often is; so if, in the face of adversity, we suffer a defeat, then we can never lose faith in humanity - just pick ourselves up for the next battle.

On Your... Eminence!

"Marx" is not a name to associate immediately with a Prince of the Catholic Church, yet Cardinal Reinhard Marx it is seen here with Catherine Pepinster, editor of The Tablet: he was talking in Oxford this evening.

The Archbishop of Munich, one of Pope Francis' "C8", and a heavy hitter in every sense, was giving the 2014 Newman Lecture, his theme “A Certain Idea of Europe”: I was glad to have been there. Not just for the substance, but for the reassurance of seeing that there's at least one very human presence besides Pope Francis in the top echelons of the Church - someone with an internationalist outlook, able to communicate 99% effectively in a foreign language (if not more than one), sporting not a vestige of scarlet but what looked like designer stubble, and referencing - his only mention of an American - Philip Roth, for goodness' sake.

Europe, the Cardinal said, was in pole position to dominate the year's headlines, not just being in the news, but making the news. The commemoration of the centenary of the beginning of World War 1 was as important as the elections to the European Parliament this May. "All the soldiers who fought in the terrible civil war of Europe were baptised and had learned the 10 Commandments. This history is not over, but very present... Europe is still in the making."

Peace and security are two sides of the same coin, he stressed, paying tribute to the EEC/EU for providing us with a secure peace for longer than his own lifetime.

I buy the Cardinal's idea that only the Church can bring the Gospel to society, and what indeed is the future of mankind without the Gospel? As he stressed, he isn't a politician, but I'm glad there are such as he intent to "inspire the European project with the voice of the Gospel" (another Marx-ism), and to urge all of us in the rich West to learn a culture of restraint.

Barnwood

A car-less friend needed a chauffeur this morning, to take him to give a talk at Barnwood. I had been booked for this weeks ago, and in turn booked - as I thought it - the car. But just as I was ready to set off, I saw it disappearing out of the drive. So, for the rest of the time till lunch I was rather ill-temperedly playing catch-up.

The hiatus did enable me take a look at the church in Barnwood, much Victorianised, but quite handsomely set in an enormous churchyard, with some fine trees. Pope Francis has just put out his first big document, Evangelii Gaudium: "The Church," he says in it, "is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open. One concrete sign of such openness is that our church doors should always be open, so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door."

St Lawrence's was firmly locked.

Walk the talk - faith into action

This was the title of a stimulating presentation by Mary Colwell today, at a morning gathering of the Clifton Diocese Justice and Peace Commission in Bristol. The aim was to highlight projects from all corners of the Diocese, but sadly only a handful of those "corners" were represented. Mary's keynote address deserved a larger audience: I'm going to try to get her to repeat it in Cheltenham early in the New Year.

Others too spoke with conviction, including Catherine (photographed here) on the IF Campaign. And I was impressed by Dr. Séverine Deneulin of Bath University, whose presence brought down the average age.

On the first break out, I found myself talking earnestly to my contemporary Peter Downey, whom I'd last seen 57 years ago at All Hallows.

Last night on Any Questions, Jonathon Porritt delighted me with an encomium for Pope Francis. I sent him congratulations. "Even as I was thinking about that," he replied, "I was wondering whether you would be listening! Makes up for all those cynical comments over so many years - and I have been seriously impressed by the way he's completely reinterpreting what leadership looks like for the church."

Ampleforth

"Vatican II - 50 years on" is the title of the retreat I've been attending here at my old school. In the main room of The Grange, 20 people - average age, 70 - gather in a circle around Fr. Dominic Milroy. Eight of us were either at school with him, or taught by him.

Effectively, the four discourses have been part reminiscence, part meditation: he speaks without notes, an artist dabbing colour on his picture, using the image of a mosaic culture, shifting in an open-ended way.

Quoting Hans Urs von Balthasar ("The Word disappeared into human history"), Dominic felt the Council was teaching us to find how to talk about our belief so that the world could understand it. Our challenge: to draw people to the Church, as the joyful presence of a living community of faith, anxious to give the good news. In this context, Pope Francis was as a Spring day after a long Winter.

The main railway line from Paris to Bordeaux runs almost through the grounds of the Abbaye de Saint-Martin at Ligugé, Dominic told us; and of his vision of the church's spire soaring vertically, intersected by the horizontal of a TGV rushing South from Poitiers. It was if the building, rooted in the earth of La Belle France, was lifted by the Eucharistic celebration within it, up to God. While the train, carrying the weight of this world, rushed its passengers on their way through life towards death. The joint between the vertical and the horizontal cannot be trusted to a nail hammered on: each limb must concede part of its strength in order to make a true bond - love, marriage, the Church and the world.

My photograph was taken walking down to Lauds from The Grange. Crows - not yet vultures - circle round the tower of the Abbey Church, but how long will Ampleforth survive in its present state? Change has come about under Abbot Cuthbert. Is it the deckchairs just being shuffled? Such a plant is titanic for what will, in a decade, be so very few monks, all their energies needed for maintenance leaving none for mission.

feast/fast

Yesterday our parish, St Gregory's celebrated its patron's feast day - with a feast! And in three days' time, at the Pope's instigation, we shall be fasting (and praying) - for peace in Syria and worldwide.

The Devil

Talk of the Devil has been a recurrent theme for Pope Francis in his first 100 days. I see him - the Devil, that is, not the Pope - mainly as my personal tempter, but also aligned with evil in the world as a whole. So, when I awoke early this morning from a vivid dream ending in me being kidnapped, I could somehow see the Devil at work.

The day improved after this rather rough start: we deserved no less, as it was our wedding anniversary, and we had our old friend Sarah Thorley staying for her talk this evening to Cheltenham Inter Faith. Four of us and two dogs walked up Leckhampton Hill on a warmish morning, noting the tree clearance that's been carried out recently at the foot of the Devil's Chimney.

Bookless in Cheltenham

The author of "God doesn't do waste!", Dave Bookless, was at St Matthew's today, asking "Churches and the environment: are they on the same planet?" "We Christians need to heed and answer the criticism that we separate human beings from the rest of nature," he urged. "Our grandchildren will want to know Why didn't they act?" And care for the poor goes along with, as Pope Francis has been ceaselessly stressing, care for the planet.

Every church congregation, Dave is convinced, should be first measuring its energy consumption, and then seeking to reduce it. To ignore this challenge is "to borrow from other species and from future generations."

A man of conviction, an excellent communicator - someone who walks the talk.

Frankly Green

Great to hear the Pope's inaugural Mass sermon today, delivered under the shadow of this great dome! (I photographed it when we were last in Rome, in May 2001.) Here's an extract:

"Let us protect Christ in our lives, so that we can protect others, so that we can protect creation! The vocation of being a “protector”, however, is not just something involving us Christians alone; it also has a prior dimension which is simply human, involving everyone. It means protecting all creation, the beauty of the created world, as the Book of Genesis tells us and as Saint Francis of Assisi showed us. It means respecting each of God’s creatures and respecting the environment in which we live. ...

Be protectors of God’s gifts! Whenever human beings fail to live up to this responsibility, whenever we fail to care for creation and for our brothers and sisters, the way is opened to destruction and hearts are hardened. Tragically, in every period of history there are “Herods” who plot death, wreak havoc, and mar the countenance of men and women. Please, I would like to ask all those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life, and all men and women of goodwill: let us be “protectors” of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment. Let us not allow omens of destruction and death to accompany the advance of this world! …

Saint Paul speaks of Abraham, who, “hoping against hope, believed” (Rom 4:18). Hoping against hope! Today too, amid so much darkness, we need to see the light of hope and to be men and women who bring hope to others. To protect creation, to protect every man and every woman, to look upon them with tenderness and love, is to open up a horizon of hope; it is to let a shaft of light break through the heavy clouds; it is to bring the warmth of hope! …

To protect the whole of creation, to protect each person, especially the poorest, to protect ourselves: this is a service that the Bishop of Rome is called to carry out, yet one to which all of us are called, so that the star of hope will shine brightly. Let us protect with love all that God has given us!"

Bishop Frank

Your Holiness,

Congratulations on your election as Pope, and I hope your new job won't turn out to be a poisoned chalice - either self-administered, or slipped to you by some corrupt member of your household (the fate which was surmised to have befallen your predecessor but two).

Although I am addressing this to "Your Holiness" - in traditional mode - I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't prefer a less lofty title, judging by the way you introduced yourself from the balcony last evening. "Brothers and sisters, good evening." What a delightful beginning!

Sam Jones had a long piece in last Saturday's Guardian about cardinals who made up the electoral college. "Then there are those who find fame for other reasons," he wrote. "Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Jesuit intellectual and Archbishop of Buenos Aires who travels round town by bus and told his compatriots not to waste their money on plane tickets to Rome to see him become a cardinal, but to give it instead to the poor..." My heart leapt to read this: someone who walked the talk!

And then what a great name to choose! I photographed a "St Francis" stained glass window when visiting St Alphege's Church in Solihull last month: here is a detail. You can see the saint's stigmata - reminding us of the cross Christians have to bear - and the wolf (the Curia?) alongside the rabbit (us in our pews) and the robin (Reliant? - the new Popemobile?).

I groaned when the news came of Joseph Ratzinger's election: last night, though, I was fighting back tears of joy. You are an answer to many prayers!