SUNDAY 10th July – Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
We go to Mass in Market Rasen.
We hear the passage from Luke 10:25-37 on the Good Samaritan. A new insight, the priest that passed by on the other side may have been banned by his priestly profession from handling blood. Just goes to show how fatuous rules are.
MONDAY 11th July – St Benedict
It is set to be a quiet day.
I speak to Our Lady of Victories’ school in Committee Room 10 but as I go to the tearoom I am told Andrea Leadsom is standing down. I walk over to her HQ to try and stop her but it is too late. There are masses of press and TV outside the house. It is all shades of previous leadership campaigners: IDS, John Redwood etc. Sad that the members are to be given no choice.
Earlier at Mass I am pleased to see it is St Benedict’s feast day. It gives me new inspiration for my book.
It is strange to hear a potted revision of his life at Mass when you already know so much about it. At a difficult time in politics it has been a help picking up an excellent guide to the Rule, simply and well explained.
TUESDAY 12th July
We go to the Russian Embassy for lunch. This is a quieter occasion than last time. They seem perplexed by the Brexit vote and without a clear line on where to take it from here.
Ps 119
“Train me Lord to observe your law”
WEDNESDAY 13th July – St Henry
It is David Cameron’s last PMQs. I have a Welsh question which is not reached. Later I speak in the Iraq debate. I can think of nothing better to do than repeat my speech of 2002 and its warnings even down to possible rifts between Sunni and Shia.
Today’s reading from Isiah:
“The Lord of Hosts says this:
Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger, the club brandished by me in my fury! I sent him against a godless nation; I gave him commission against a people that provokes me”.
In the evening Theresa May starts to appoint her Government. Some immediate good choices: Liam Fox, David Davis and Boris Johnson.
THURSDAY 14th July
We were supposed to have a summer lunch with Chancellor George Osborne. Now it is ex-Chancellor George Osborne. I don’t wait for ministerial appointment. I take the train to Lincolnshire and walk over the Wolds home via the Ramblers Church.
In the evening I go to a lovely service of induction for the new Vicar of Middle Rasen. I had not realised the Church of England service was so formal.
Isiah 26:7-9
“The path of the upright man is straight
You smooth the way of the upright
Following the path of your judgements”.
FRIDAY 15th July – St Bonaventure
A surgery in Market Rasen.
The Psalm for today, The Canticle of Hezekiah:
“You have held back my life O Lord, from the pit of doom”.
I am reading the Dalai Lama on the ‘Art of Happiness’.
Happiness does not come from wanting more or from position. It comes from the state of one’s own mind, and being content with what we have: in deliberately schooling oneself to be happy with things as they are.
SATURDAY 16th July – Our Lady of Mount Carmel
We have an afternoon event at Stainton on Stow. Ben is here at the cottage and we start to clear out one tiny little outhouse crammed with cottage junk that we don’t need. Our main problem is an excess of junk: old clothes, books, pieces of correspondence from 40 years ago and an inability to throw things away. Really one should keep nothing but it is a link with the past, an affirmation that one’s life has not been wasted.
“On that day they will make a satire of you, sing a dirge and say ‘we are stripped of everything’”.
Micah 2:1-5