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You might be surprised that I have a fear of heights, given how high up I am in most pulpits. This does not prevent me from the challenge of climbing when I know the view will be good. This happened earlier this year when I climbed to the top of Sir Norman Foster’s recreation of the Reichstag in Berlin, looking down upon the Brandenburg Gate, upon the Tiergarten, overseeing the old border between West and East and close to the extremely effective and poignant Holocaust Memorial.

The German MPs wanted the building to be restored more or less to its 1933 appearance before it was burned down rather conveniently from Hitler’s point of view. Foster had other ideas; but the creative compromise is the magnificient glass dome which has had the unintended consequence that visitors have the opportunity to look down upon the legislators. This can now be interpreted as being about bringing the business of politics into the light and suggesting an open and transparent democracy, with the elected representatives under the gaze of the electorate - wouldn’t that be interesting here, too!

We have heard a reading describing Solomon’s building of the first Temple in Jerusalem. Some will have judged that he overplayed his hand. After all, his father, David, had offered to God a house and God had refused. But for a few generations the geopolitics of the Ancient Near East enabled the flourishing of a united Isreal as an independent kingdom, free of pre-occupied Egypt and Assyria. It was a time of wealth and all that comes with it in beauty of form and object. Surely, all of this was only possible because of the One who is the source of all flourishing, God himself. So, the mysterious and holy name of God needed a house, and the best that could be furnished.

As we know, sadly, houses and temples, however evocative and holy, have to be inhabited by people whose lives reflect that glory. The Reichstag did not protect Germany from the Enabling Act which did away with democracy in 1933 nor could it hold off total war. Arguably the most civilised country in Europe, the land of Schiller and Goethe, the land of Bach [the fifth gospel, after all] and Schubert could not defend itself against the raw hatred commemorated in the Holocaust Memorial and which cost at least six million Jews their lives.

Like some of you, I love going church crawling on holiday. This has taken me to extraordinary places. Last evening some of us were called - among other things - The Big Six at Bulford Cubs. This conjures for me the array of candles on the high altar of a fashionable anglo-catholic church in London where it is all smells, bells and holy yells. My favourite places in this country are plain country churches like Milston, where the strongest perfume is the combination of polish and summer flowers. Milston was the childhood home of Joseph Addison (1672-1719), whose father was the rector. This famous essayist, scholar, co-founder of The Spectator and politician was inspired by this place to find time for hymn-writing, too: his paraphrase of Psalm Twenty-Three is still in modern hymnbooks. But it is churches like these which inspired many people without the eloquence of an Addison, not least all the people memorialised here. a little boy accompanied his father to Evensong and asked Dad what the plaque on the wall signified. “Those are the people who died in the services, Son.” The boy looked at his watch and said, “Was that the morning or the evening services?”

Whatever sacred architecture and the spaces it encloses does for our spirit and the quality of our praise, it cannot save us. Vaulting like that above us is for the meeting of Christ with his people with room for the hosannas both of angels and mortals. Prophets like Jeremiah told the people of Israel that the Temple would not save them, and sure enough  it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586BC. It was his successsor among the Exiles, Ezekiel, who told them that what saves us is that God takes from us our heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh. We Christians know that that human and divine heart beating in the midst of our communities is Jesus himself - hence our badges and prayer cards declaring ‘Heartbeat’.

I was last a cub in 1964 until I was evicted for preferring Champion the Wonder Horse and Long John Silver on the television. As I have mentioned elsewhere, some of us have just been incorporated into the Bulford St Leonard Cub Pack as the All Gas and Gaiters Six. It was great fun and we did inhabit a different human space as a joyful team, not taking ourselves too seriously and much more interested in the efforts of the boys than our own.

This and other ventures have provided wonderful motifs of our Heartbeat Week, learning together to celebrate afresh in church and barn, in workingmen’s clubs and in school how to be living stones as St Peter describes us, a holy nation and royal priesthood. As a devout Christian lady, Her Majesty the Queen would be the first to agree that there were lost of royal people at Larkhill today as well as her gracious self - not least those who have suffered a lot to be peacekeepers on our behalf and all those people whose Christianity is blue-blooded but up to the elbows in suds or worse.

At one of the schools which we visited, a nine-year-old girl asked me how long I had been a bishop, how much I was paid and was I worth it. Well, of course not. But St Peter tells us that we were not a people and now we are; we did not know mercy but now we do. In this parish you have said it with flowers to every household. Everyone is welcome to the party. Jesus is here at the heart of us. 

On the last weekend of the Heartbeat week of pilgrims in mission events, the team were invited to attend the annual pets and praise service in Netheravon.  We had action songs [which by now were fully choreographed] and the only refreshments served were bowls of water!  I had been asked to give a short address, and this is what I think I said:

It is so good to see so many in church this morning.  I was quite nervous about turning up today and just finding a church full of pets and no humans!  Thank you, that every pet this morning has brought along at least one human.  And what a variety of humans we have!  Long coated, short coated, balding, bald, wet nosed, dry nosed, long, tall, and short, round.  This truly is a celebration of the diversity of the human race. All shapes, all sizes, all different, and yet all created and every single one loved by the one true God.

I need to remind all you pets, that a human is not just for Christmas, but for life, and I’d like to spend this short time exploring why it is so important to recognise our role as animals, birds and reptiles, in keeping our humans happy, healthy and fulfilled - which is what God wants for them all.

It can be really tough being a human, and we know don’t we, that when our humans come home from a hard day at work, or when they’ve fallen out of friendship with another human, or they are just feeling vulnerable, lonely, or isolated - it is us animals that can remind them they are loved so much by God, and we can show that by simply curling up on their laps, or looking really pleased to see them, or even licking out their ears with our tongues [you know that humans so love having their ears licked out by a wet and smelly tongue - try it and see the result!], but above all letting them stroke us and pat us, and giving us titbits to make themselves feel so much better.

And the Heartbeat team have noticed so much this week as we’ve been out and about in your communities, that there are vibrant and caring communities throughout the Avon Valley, Durrington and Tidworth and Ludgershall.  It has been so good to see groups of animals going for their daily walks and meeting each other, and finding too, that if you take a human with you, the humans will stop and talk and engage with each other. That is so important to the health, not only of the human, but for the whole community.  So I want to encourage each animal here this morning to make sure you take your human out for at least one outing each day, and make sure that your human has plenty of contact with other humans too.  They need to gather and socialise with other humans, they need to share and care and recognise the importance of community; they won’t sniff each other’s bottoms like we do - but don’t worry, they may shake hands, or even press mouths together, but above all, make sure they talk to each other.

So, we are here to celebrate the wonderful fact that God has created all of us to share and show love to each other, and you animals have so much to contribute to the well-being of those humans who we have chosen to look after.  Never forget how important it is to make sure we care for our humans and may we remind them that our God has so much love for us, that he sent his only son, Jesus, to live amongst us, to show us how to love God, to care for one another and to die for us, so that we might have eternal life, and that life in free abundance.  Amen.

The entry in the Register of Services read: Attendance - 15 dogs, two rabbits, one chicken, one tortoise, and three fights. [c.50 humans]

This evening we had the first Area celebration of the ministry of Local Pastoral Assistants  in St John’s Devizes. Everyone seemed to find it an encouraging and challenging occasion. Here is the text of my sermon:
When I was a schoolmaster the sixth formers in my house had a competition to see how many times they could fit ‘sir’ into one sentence. The prize went to the young man who called me ‘sir’ nineteen times in a sentence which still made sense. By turns, then, I want to say – with Alan and John – thank you, thank you, thank you. Please assume that I have said it at least another sixteen times. We are here to celebrate the ministry of all commissioned LPAs and - embodied by them with their parish priests – the anonymous pastoral care offered by so many more people who are never publicly commissioned. I am so delighted that so many of you have come – with a number of your incumbents – to be assured that your ministry is highly valued by your bishops and by the Diocese as a whole. You are at the heart of a great network of volunteer pastors across the county of Wiltshire. Indeed, you probably constitute one of the largest single groups of volunteers in the area. Lots of other people besides ourselves care about others in a particular regard. What I rejoice in is the variety of ways in which you as LPAs draw close to people in sickness and in health, in joy and sadness. In so many ways, you are the eyes and ears for the clergy and other ministers within your benefice
I applaud all those who serve others and the common good out of a sense of humanitarian solidarity. In your case, however, the motivation is of course humanitarian, but motivated by your faith in Jesus Christ. You are not just eyes and ears: you are God’s touch and God’s voice in many homes and lives. Some of you will have read my article in the June Sarum Link drawing attention to national Carers’ Week. The care of the vulnerable and of their carers is very close to my heart. As we read Isaiah’s description of the Suffering Servant we can do no other than to reflect on the nature and purpose of our suffering Saviour, the fulfilment of all the hopes of Israel. What we see is not any hermetically protected robot of a god; but the broken and wounded servant to takes upon himself all of our burdens – of sin and grief and pain and alienation. There’s blood and sweat and tears and the cry of desolation from the cross. Mark makes particularly plain in his gospel that you can only understand who Jesus is once we travelled with him as his disciple through to his Passion, standing at the foot of the cross.
This is what makes us truly believe in the origin of all his healings and his forgiving of sins. He cannot be from Beelzebul or be a charlatan. We can trust that he is the true servant who lays down his life for his friends. Some of us took part in an Area conference back in April about serving our communities better and we had a talk from the Chair of an organisation called Faithworks. The most important thing he said was that our service as communities of church and as individuals has to be shaped by John 13 – and by implication Philippians 2 – that is, we are the people who wash feet, who model ourselves on a Saviour who laid aside his glory to be the servant of all.
C S Lewis remarked about a do-gooder that “she lived for others, and you could tell who the others were by the hunted look on their faces.” The caring you do is not about acquiring power over people or bossing them about. It has the character of the care of the suffering Saviour. Waiting on people is costly. It is costly of time and energy. It is costly of attachment when someone you have got close to dies. It is costly of frustration when you have to let people choose for themselves, even when you observe their self-destructive behaviour. It is costly to sit and wait with someone who is dying because it takes courage to abide through your own helplessness. It is costly when another person’s experience brings up ghosts from your own past which you have to deal with without living out your life by distorting the context of the other. It is costly because it is about giving yourself away, even being forgetful of your own agenda and needs.
This giving away of self is so important if we are to model Christ to people. Living in obedience to the gospel and travelling light is not easy; yet we understand that this is our character. We have been doing lost of work in the Diocese about centring our understanding of mission in the Five Marks of Mission developed over the last fifteen years within the Anglican Communion. To remind you, the traditional order of them is to tell, teach, tend, transform and treasure. Our experience is teaching us that the correct order begins with tend. Only if people first trust us because they see that we care about them before we evangelise them might we have any success in presenting the good news to them. Remember what St Francis told his brothers went they went on missionary journeys: “Preach the good news and use words only if you must.”
This is the paradox which is so eloquently set out by St Paul at the beginning of his First Letter to the Corinthians. This ministry into which we are called is not what we and the world have been expecting. It is so much foolishness. People assume that there is always an angle, always a catch. Last week on the Ramsbury Heartbeat Pilgrimage some of us went door-to-door in one of the villages delivering flowers to every house. Some people wanted to pay us, others to ask where they had to sign up for something. They were so taken aback when we repeated that the flowers were pure gift and that they were invited to a party. Surprising numbers came to the celebration. And this all takes time and energy and imagination to get alongside people. We also had a tremendous thanksgiving for baptism with families who had celebrated baptism in the past five years and are still living locally. The relevant LPAs wrote to all the families with whom they had had contact and followed up the letter with a home visit. The effect was startling: the barn in which we gathered was filled to generous overflowing, overflowing with couples and their children with hardly any church connection and certainly no previous affiliation or belonging. The quality of the welcome which was extended to these families made them very relaxed and receptive, even to the extent of joining in the action songs with their children. This was such a fine piece of good practice which I had to share with you.
I know that you bring lost of godly wisdom to what you do. It is very good when that wisdom can be deepened by further training and by mutual support and the sharing of experience. Group supervision is very important, not so that we can gossip about a particular person’s problems but so that any of us can test out the quality of our decisions and practice. It is so important that we have somewhere and someone to go to when we suspect that we are out of our depth. There is no shame in admitting this. Indeed, it is a mark of pastoral maturity when we recognise it swiftly. I have a lot to do with people with acute mental illnesses. You may come across some of these; but you definitely meet regularly people who are living with chronic depression and other maladies which are not only persistent but disabling. Just because someone is ill, however, does not mean to say that they can be manipulative and bad tempered. We need to attend the boundaries which stop us being sucked down into a bottomless pit of need when we should be referring people for clinical support.
We devised this opportunity so that you could not only meet me and have a reunion with the archdeacons but so that you could worship with and meet one another and share stories and good practice. As we meet together, let us celebrate our diversity and different gifts. Some of you fit in lots of trips to shops and the chemist. Others of you spend more time praying for the people whom you meet and reflecting and writing about what could be a whole new way of behaving. A celebrated preacher was asked whether he preferred Martha because of her reputation in the county for doing everything, or Mary, her sister, who was committed to a retired life of contemplation. He said that he loved them both, Martha before dinner and Mary after.
We can never be too conscious of the fact that God will lead us into surprising new vistas in our ministries. The Thanksgiving at the beginning of our service was led by two LPAs who have both found themselves as leaders within two of the three fresh expressions of church in our Ramsbury Area. For some people being commissioned as an LPA is part of a vocational journey which leads people to licensed ministry, lay and ordained. That is wonderful; but I am most interested in the calling of the LPA to celebrate this pastoral ministry for as long as God spares people to offer it. We all live with bewildering levels of change in our lives. What makes it possible for us even when the going is tough is that we are assured that we are not alone. There is a powerful poem by Stevie Smith, herself not the easiest of people, called Not Waving But Drowning:

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning
Poor chap, he always loved larking
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

It is people like you, assuring people that they are not too far out, not beyond God’s love, which is absolutely vital. This is best symbolised by the ministry that many of you exercise in taking Communion from the public celebration of the whole community to the sick and housebound, breaking the bread and breaking open the Word with them. Many of these people are now those whose ministry is to receive care rather than to be on the active end of delivery. Some of them need persuading that they can be at all useful anymore as disciples of Christ. I have recently reminded in-door members of the Mothers’ Union in a letter that they have a vital ministry of intercession. When they are lying awake with aching bones is much the same time as desperate people are considering suicide. Jesus earnest request of his disciples to watch and pray in Gethsemane applies to all of us, regardless of age or physical fitness.
Prayer and love are at the heart of all that our ministry means. We know that God gives us great gifts through our ministry, giving us inspiring Christians to visit, challenging situations to face and the grace to grow at all times, with the constant call that with our parish priest we carry many people on our hearts to God in prayer and thanksgiving. I am a fan of the early Carry On Films, like Carry On Sergeant. This does not mean that I am expectiing LPAs to come to attention when the Vicar appears – or the other way around. What I do mean most earnestly is that you should carry on loving. Amen.

There are many unsung moments of the Heartbeat Pilgrimage which are the wonderful encounters between people, some deeper conversations between old friends, new conversations between new friends and fresh opportunities to serve one another with food and smiles. The Netheravon Workingmen’s Club saw the Bishop and Archdeacons and other members of the Team serving a family breakfast to all comers. At the same breakfast, Phyllis - a Yorkshire lass of 89 in the Avon Valley - presented the veil used at both her baptism and confirmation to me which was a precious moment. These moments were replicated all through the week. There was no chance of losing weight however fast we were moving because of the excellent meals provided by so many. Best of all, each morning the Team met with others for prayer in each of the churches in turn. Our theme was particularly to pray for God’s continuing blessing upon the Pilgrimage and for various kinds of prisoner - prisoners of conscience, of course, but also those imprsioned by their own fear and by the hatred of others. This praying undergirded all that we did, keeping in perspective that our strngth for all this activity came from the Lord as a wonderful gift to us.

Mark Zammit preached for our Heartbeat Service at Durrington

The bible has many images and stories of journeys. We could site, for example, the epic journey of Abraham and Sarah from Ur in present-day Iraq – the centre of ancient civilization – to what was to become the promised land of Israel. Later, the Israelites escape from slavery in Egypt, trekking for many years through “the wilderness of Sinai” on their return to a promised homeland. And in the New Testament, Paul makes his way across the Mediterranean world, spreading the good news of the gospel and proclaiming, in the profound words of our second reading today, “that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

It sometimes must seem as if the people of the Bible cannot sit still. They are always on the road. But these are not tourists or sightseers on holiday. There is purpose behind each journey recounted in scripture.

Jesus is also on a journey in our gospel account today. He travels “about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom.” There is a note of urgency in his travels, for he knows the anxieties and helplessness of the people. “The harvest is plentiful,” he observes poignantly, “but the labourers are few.” And without the harvest to feed them, the people will starve. Jesus commissions his newly minted apostles to enter the harvest and to journey to the people with his message of the kingdom. His instructions to the apostles, direct and insistent, begin with one word: “Go.” No ifs, ands, or buts. Just go. And, “as you go, proclaim the good news.”

To these “lost sheep,” the apostles are to proclaim that “the kingdom of heaven has come near.” To those who are infirm or anxious, they bring the healing and hope of the kingdom. And to those without means, they are to “give without payment.”

So, he sends them out, but with no equipment. 

“No gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff.”

They were really to be dependent on others for all their needs to keep their bodies going.  However, they were given advice as to how they were to act, and as to what they were to do on their travels. 

This week a number of modern-day disciples have been travelling around this area, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom by listening to the needs and concerns of those who live here. Schools have been visited, meals have been shared, tents have been erected, animals have been preached to, sponges have been thrown and fools have been made.

It’s been an education, to say the least.

Now if we take the instructions of Jesus and lay them, like a template, over the life of the average parish, what do we find?  Perhaps the only point of contact between what Jesus told his twelve followers and what the average church worker does with most of his or her waking hours, is that we wander around like lost sheep.  What would be the application of Jesus’ words if they were applied to the church of today?  It could be argued that our gospel today, our lifestyle, threatens no one; no one arrests us for doing our job or for our faith; no one betrays us to the authorities for being a Christian, unless of course certain newspapers count as authorities.

The shock of facing up to these questions is the characteristic shock of the gospel.  Life is supposed to be different.  The gospel is not just the thing which comes between the second hymn and the sermon snooze - it is the pattern of the life of Jesus which we, if we choose to follow him, need to grasp because our lives depend on it.

As St. Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans: “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”

That is quite a thing, to refer to people as being “ungodly”.  It can be thought of as quite scathing, even as an insult.  But it can also be used with real care and compassion, identifying for ourselves a particular area of ministry which still needs to be explored.

Matthew has Jesus seeing the people around him as “sheep without a shepherd”.  And of course it’s the Middle Eastern shepherd to which he is referring, not the Salisbury Plain variety. 

I have this theory that, as bishops are regarded as shepherds of the diocesan flock, the parish clergy are the sheep dogs who nip the heels of the sheep to keep them on the right track.  Having our heels nipped may be irritating and may even hurt a little, but it could save us from plunging over a cliff.

But enough of that.  There is still work to be done.

Life is supposed to be different.

Time and again God wallops us with the unexpected. The message here is that when the great rolling wave of God’s love comes at you, don’t try to fight it: launch out and let it knock you off your feet.  That’s what Paul is talking about in Romans.  God’s action begins with love and ends with celebration, taking in suffering on the way: actually a good Trinitarian theme for this time of the year, echoing the memory of the three visitors who came to Abraham and received his hospitality.

So where do we go from here?  Numerous instructions and examples for us to follow.  Various paths to take - some clearly marked and others yet to be discovered.  The sheep are still out there to be found, and they are indeed in need of a shepherd.  It is our task and ministry to seek those sheep wherever they may have strayed and to bring them into the fold with us, remembering also that we need to be continually guided and challenged ourselves so that our pasture for grazing does not become a barren wilderness.

Be bold, not reliant on the shelter of this or any other building but on the providence of Jesus Christ, the good shepherd who knows and loves all his sheep.  Take nothing for the journey, but provide for those whom you meet along the way.  And yes, it is difficult to do both of these things as both concepts appear to be at odds.  But that is what we are all called to do.

We have a share in this kingdom, as God’s people by adoption. If the crowds of Jesus’ day were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” as our Lord describes them, the people of our world are hardly less anxious and fearful. Two thousand years may have come and gone, but the human heart has not changed all that much. Many in our communities are still fractured by mistrust and suspicion. Violence and war tear us apart. Diversity and distinctions among peoples and individuals do not bring joy and wonder at the greatness of God’s work among and within us but become instead stumbling blocks to understanding and harmony. But in the midst of human misfortune and pain, the kingdom has still “come near” to each of us.

The harvest of which our Lord speaks is full and ready to be gathered in. Then as now, it is not so much a harvest of grain and grape as it is of spiritual nourishment and the sustenance found in the nearness of God. The labourers are still few. But “go, and proclaim,” commands our Lord nevertheless. “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” No small task, but then we need not travel far to find those in need of the good news of the kingdom. They are as near to us as is the kingdom itself. In fact, they are the kingdom.

To conclude, I would like to read you a short piece from a work entitled “The Diary of a Russian Priest.” By Alexander Elchaninov.

“Our continual mistake is that we do not concentrate upon the present day, the actual hour, of our life; we live in the past or in the future; we are continually expecting the coming of some special moment when our life will unfold itself in its full significance.  And we do not notice that life is flowing like water through our fingers, sifting like precious grain from a loosely fastened bag.

Constantly, each day, each hour, God is sending us people, circumstances, tasks, which should mark the beginning of our renewal; yet we pay them no attention, and thus continually we resist God’s will for us.  (But) if we accept every hour of our life as the hour of God’s will for us, as the decisive, most important, unique hour of our life - what sources of joy, love, strength, as yet hidden from us, would spring from the depths of our soul!

Let us then be serious in our attitude towards each person we meet in our life, towards every opportunity of performing a good deed; be sure that you will then fulfil God’s will for you in these very circumstances, on that very day, in that very hour.” Amen.

The pupils at Zouch Primary School in Tidworth had clearly done their homework ahead of Bishop Stephen’s visit during the Heartbeat Week.  The questions were lined up and answers eagerly awaited.  The Archdeacon of Wilts stepped in to act as question master and ensure fair play! 

Did you always want to a Bishop - it was a real surprise to be asked

what do you enjoy about being a Bishop - meeting people

what is the worst thing about being a Bishop - the heavy clothes in hot weather

did you ever get in trouble at school - being too gobby !

what is your favourite part of Salisbury Cathedral - the Prisoners of Conscience Window

and then the killer question  -

the Archbishop of York has done it; so would you - the Bishop of Ramsbury claimed a fear of heights as a good reason for not doing a parachute jump

but the straw poll at Zouch School conducted by the Archdeacon of Wilts was unanimous ….!

Have your say - vote in our poll on the right of this page

Another encounter of the Heartbeat Pilgrimage has been the introduction of a new Six to the pack at Bulford. We were the All Gas and Gaiters Six, based on the 1960’s TV comedy about the bishop and his team. With Rachel allegedly as our responsible adult, we turned up in shorts and a variety of headgear to do exactly what the cubs had planned. I was the sixer in charge, Alan was the Captain Mainwaring look-alike. Colin Fox was the Rastafarian schoolboy, Nicolas Leigh-Hunt was the Aussie (complete with dangling corks), Mark Zammit was the perfect cub who remembered the cub promise word for word and John was the large elf.

We put up a ridge tent in record time in competition with three other cub sixes. Once it was up, it was a tight squeeze to fit us all in and we were all glad that this was an exercise and not a real bivouac! We then had to dismantle the tent and fit it neatly back into its bag. This involved getting rid of trapped air in the tent as it was folded, which meant that someone had to roll down the length of the tent as it lay on the ground. Fortunately, Rachel was not quick enough to get a photograph. We did get a result, as they say. All Gas and Gaiters scored 8.5 and the nearest six scored 8. We got the sympathy vote of Akela, I am sure.

It was so good to support this quite large pack operating in the centre of the area and contributing to the life of the church. They are transferring their parade to this Sunday and at Durrington. They were evident helping at the Bulford Fete on Saturday. Indeed, I used their seaside cut-out figure to hide behind at the Fete, of which more anon.

The scout masters and helpers were great people, immensely welcoming and funny, with great reservoirs of curiosity and caring. It was a privilege to spend time in their company and to witness their commitment to the children in their care. It was also good for the children to see adults prepared to make fools of themselves for the sake of the gospel and as a way of making real contact with the younger end of the age bracket.

Someone suggested to me that I might lose weight during the Heartbest Pilgrimage because of all the activity. Some chance! As Christians know, meals and mission are closely intertwined. The ministry of food sarted on Monday when members of the Team had lunch with Elizabeth in Figheldean where Archdeacon Alan and Steve Morgan availed themselves of the scales after a splendid repast. The Vicar and Bishop declined and moved on to tea with the Over Sixties’ Club at which Years 1 and 2 from Figheldean Primary were singing. It was a lovely occasion at which the generations mixed with ease and joy, at which parents in combat fatigues received not only the prayer card but also a Heartbeat beermat and many good conversations took place.

The ministry of food continued in the evening with a Progressive Dinner around many homes in the village, which began in church and ended at the home of John and Chrysogon Bamber, where I spoke briefly about the gift of the giving and receiving of hospitality which was at the heart of Jesus’ ministry.

Once a year the Mansers open their beautiful gardens at Chisenbury Priory to the public. They were very generous in allowing us to hold an open air service in the garden at the close of the event and to host all-comers for drinks afterwards. The weather was glorious, the setting idyllic and the singing angelic. Then they had to listen to me speaking. I spoke principally about how the Biblical record of our salvation is so intimately associated with gardens in which God himself was intimately present: the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Garden where the tomb was located in Jerusalem where Mary Magdalene mistook the Risen Christ for the gardener and the Garden of the New Jerusalem where all tears shall be wiped away.

The sub-text of what was a very ecumenical occasion at which many Roman Catholics were present. I alluded to my catholic roots in Ireland and there was an intrigued queue of people after the service wanting to quiz me about my particular allegiance. We had good conversations and a lot of laughter.

It was also a good event planning occasion. John Manser has no fewer than three donkeys - and owns a donkey cart - and so we are negotiating how we might journey aroud the Avon Valley on Palm Sunday in a couple of years time.

After the first Sunday morning of the Heartbeat Pilgrimage, there followed a generous lunch for the Team and others at the Foxes’ vicarage. You may soon see the photos which capture my short snooze stretched out in the garden near the chickens. This reculer pour avancer was preparation for our reaching out to families who have experienced baptism in the last five years and who are still living in the area. The LPAs wrote to all the families first and then visited them all to seal the invitation. This worked brilliantly. We met in a barn at Fittleton and the combination of invitation, venue and the choir of Netheravon Primary School generated so many families that we could not all fit into the barn. I re-enacted a baptism with the aid of a china doll in a baptism robe and the assistance of a number children. There was an Exorcist moment if you know the film when the doll’s head span around 360 degrees; but we moved swiftly on and made Colin Fox join in action songs to his evident delight. I was thrilled by how well adults and children responded to the whole event and to the Heartbeat theme. Not only were parents and grandparents joining in action songs unself-consciously but not so likely people then and throughout the week happily sporting their Heartbeat badges and carrying away their Heartbeat prayer card visibly in their top pocket. The event was obviously also the kind of occasion which gave people permission to ask questions. We were not setting out to do a head count of people changed by the week, but Sunday afternoon enabled adults to ask to be baptised and confirmed.