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?

Aldsworth

After so much sunshine recently, it was a disappointment to have to walk in wet conditions this morning. Six of us set off at a brisk - for us - pace from the Sherborne Arms, describing a circle with a circumference of about the same number of miles. On a fine day, the views might be worth it, but in the drizzle, and with mud underfoot (why don't all farmers restore the footpaths across their land?), it was not one of our happier outings.

Less than a week ago, a friend had been telling us about a couple we both knew who had recently moved to Cirencester, a town of some 20,000 inhabitants. And it transpires that two of our regular walkers live in that same estate and have already met them.

Because of the weather, my camera stayed covered up during the walk: I took the photograph of Aldsworth church, visible for a mile or more when driving from Northleach, back in July.

Honoured

Great news from our friend Sarah Thorley! She's been awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours, for her services to inter-faith dialogue: she came to Cheltenham to speak about her experience last year - as I noted.

Talking the walk

In existence for almost a decade, Oasis International Foundation works to promote mutual knowledge and understanding between Christians and Muslims. Earlier this week, its Roman Catholic founder urged us all to recognise that our epoch is one of a "physical mixing of various - secular and religious - world views... The fruit is that in dialogue we deepen our own faith, but also live well with our neighbours: they too come closer to God." Christians (and by implications Muslims), he said, need to live their faith in every dimension of human existence - not just "calmly sip their tea".

Sarah Thorley's talk to Cheltenham Inter Faith last evening was not about tea-drinking, but about the walks between places of worship she has been organising in South London over the past many years. What she said resonated a little with the theme of my recent Tablet article, but discussing that later, Sarah was reluctant to appropriate the word "pilgrimage" to what she runs; and "penitence" was not on her agenda either. Indeed, she seemed to encourage people of no faith to join in, which seemed to me perverse.

The talk itself was put across with infectious enthusiasm, and matches well a daily meditation I have just read, from the Henri Nouwen Society:

Growing into the Truth We Speak

Can we only speak when we are fully living what we are saying?  If all our words had to cover all our actions, we would be doomed to permanent silence!  Sometimes we are called to proclaim God's love even when we are not yet fully able to live it.  Does that mean we are hypocrites?  Only when our own words no longer call us to conversion.  Nobody completely lives up to his or her own ideals and visions.  But by proclaiming our ideals and visions with great conviction and great humility, we may gradually grow into the truth we speak.  As long as we know that our lives always will speak louder than our words, we can trust that our words will remain humble.

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.