I was in Mass in the Cathedral on Sunday and it started to make sense. If I was to take this advice and open each day with asking God what He wanted. But what He wants is in the words of the Gospel. God will give us what we want if we give Him what He wants. What does He want? That we recognise the name of His son, Jesus Christ, and that we love one another. Simple, obvious, right, but not easy. Still, at least I know what to ask for…

The readings are from John this week and they compliment that of Sunday.

If we give God what He wants we will receive what John offers us in Tuesday’s reading: “Peace I give to you, peace I bequeath you.” And as in Wednesday’s reading we will receive it as a branch on the vine. I am the true vine.

Tuesday. Peace I bequeath to you, Peace I give you. Wednesday. I am the vine and my father is the vinedresser.

I see all the readings from John this week as interconnected with the vine, so Tuesday leads into Wednesday and into Thursday so the vine connects us to each other and then to his father.

“As the Father has love me, so I have loved you.”

And then into Friday:

“This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.”

And then finally into Saturday: the challenge “if the world hates you, remember that is hated me before you.”

On Friday I walked over two hours from Market Rasen station, over the Wolds, to Stainton le Vale, or Stainton in the Hole as it was known in previous centuries. And then on Saturday I walked back to the station. The sun was blazing, the fields yellow with oilseed rape, huge distances versed in tinges of blue and green. Distant smudges of power station smoke far into the horizon. Drying wet earth beneath the feet. Sheep providing life, cars hurtling back on an occasional road crossed.

Intent on business while tired miles toiled by, the dry flinty road from Walesby leading on into the shade of Willingham Woods, the small one-carriage train coming up its straight line, from the thin line of hills past the new temple of Tesco.