MONDAY

Mass in the Cathedral. It is the story of the centurion who will not put Jesus to any trouble. Such certainty is unsettling.

“I am a man under authority myself.”

“I say to one man go, and he goes.”

TUESDAY

I was walking in the hills above Walesby and looked back over the valley. Of course the view is magnificent.

You look down the line of the side of the wolds, the hills gently sloping into the great plain stretching away to the Lincoln edge, twenty miles away.

But what was remarkable about this day was that there was not a breath of wind. The trees were not moving. Looking down on this scene was like looking down on one of those large model train sets. Little brown homes and toy-like trees, so still as if they were made of plastic. No one was moving in this utterly still tableau. It was a scene redolent of the instant of time.

WEDNESDAY

“We played the pipes for you. And you wouldn’t dance. We sang dirges, and you wouldn’t cry.” (Luke 7:31)

What does this mean exactly and how does it inspire the well-known modern hymn? Or rather what do its words mean?

THURSDAY

To an Away Day in Oxfordshire. Lots of colleagues telling us how we’re printing surveys and putting up billboards advertising themselves.

I remember as a young MP doing the same and then we helped someone without telling anyone and an old man in the village, he noticed what you did. Before we just thought you were just a pushy chap, now maybe we see there’s more to you. So now I just do my duty, help people when they ask for help.

FRIDAY

A long train journey to Edinburgh. I don’t mind the cramped feeling; it’s the constant talking. Why do we not have more desire for silence?

“Turn your ear to me: hear my words.” Ps 16

SATURDAY

The wedding was by the side of a loch in the Trossachs. A slight early autumn joy, the heather still the same colour, no wind, the water on the loch as still as glass, the hills capped by white mist.