Tuesday Oct 24th
Today is my dear Jamie's birthday and we've just had a pleasant supper and he has cards from friends and family ranged along the mantle-piece.
I spent yesterday - after a cheerful lateish breakfast with nephew and niece and hugs and farewells and "See you next at Christmas!" - in Hull. I do like train journeys when one has an agreeable book and when one starts with very good coffee at the station. And this time I had also brought some useful work: spent part of the time transcribing addresses and tel. numbers from our family address book to my new small pocket notebook which is a task I had been meaning to do for ages. Changed trains at Doncaster and a slow local train chugged to Hull (Americans......er....Hull is in Yorkshire!)
Father William Massie met me at the station - he organises the Hull Faith Forum, which runs regular talks on all sorts of aspects of the Catholic Faith. It was packed! I spoke on "Celebrating feasts and seasons" and it was all great fun and a most enjoyable evening. (If you want to buy my Book of Feasts and Seasons, hurry at once to Gracewing Books and order it!). Afterwards a cheerful time of talk and laughter in a pleasant pub with some of the young people - including the young chairman of my talk and his wife, who are expecting their first baby, and we had a good deal of fun thinking of English names that might be suitable for the child....general feeling that Ethelbert or Wynfrith might be a bit much, but some felt Aelred was a possibility, or what about Caedmon?
Overnight at Hull, and Mass celebrated by Fr William in Corpus Christi church, preceded by the Office and followed by the Rosary....quite good numbers attending, with a number of young people and children as it is half-term.....the train journey home took me past the Humber estuary, with a glorious view, the sunshine turning the water into beaten silver.....England is still green and lush, the fields look summery rather than Autumnal, but here at home tonight it there is a slight chill for the first time, and Jamie has pulled on a warm jersey to enjoy a DVD. while I write this.
7 comments:
Joanna, Thank you mentioning the need for prayer cover for the Pope on his trip to Turkey next mo. None of the other blogs have mentioned it much except PRF of course. I love that site & yours!
Sorry to nitpick, Joanna, but Fish City happens to be in Humberside, not Yorkshire.
Happy Birthday to Mr. B!
:)
Mr. Petek will be interested to learn that the artificial creation 'Humberside' has not existed for ten years now. Besides which Hull was still in Yorkshire when it was also in Humberside. Humberside was merely a governmental unit which administrated parts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.
The Local Government Act 1972 did not abolish nor did it replace the traditional counties (with their traditional names and traditional boundaries), it merely created another set of administrative units, some of which were known as counties and others districts.
Thus Hull was and is in the East Riding of Yorkshire though it is not part of the unitary authority (another reform) which is also known as the East Riding of Yorkshire, since the city was made a unitary authority in its own right.
The confusion over what is in which county is widespread. To add to this confusion, there are a third set of county boundaries invented by the government, known as 'ceremonial counties', which each have a Lord Lieutenant.
It's all quite silly, if you ask me. They never should have changed them, but having changed them, they feel the need to keep on changing them. That's modernization for you!
But more to the point, hooray for Jamie's birthday! Prayers and best wishes for many more to come.
Just found and ordered a copy of Feasts and Seasons from Amazon, US.
Wish you could cycle to my town and sign it. :>
Lily
happy feast of the 40 martyrs!
Hello Joanna,
I am from Virginia USA and am acquainted with Trish, (whom I believe is related to you )and have spent some enjoyable time with Mark and her in Mudeford.
I and my colleagues work with the Catholic Distance University (based in Hamilton, VA). http://www.cdu.edu
We have helped them establish a virtual campus for a masters degree in Theology as well for offering a number of monthly seminars for continuing education for adults on a variety of Catholic topics. They are able to reach students around the world through their online learning community. I thought you might like to see what they have been doing to enhance spiritual development in the Catholic faith.
Here is some detail about CDU that comes from their website.
The Catholic Distance University was established in 1983 to respond to the need for life-long spiritual formation and a deeper knowledge of Church Teaching. CDU's mission calls for transmitting faithfully and systematically the teachings of Sacred Scripture, the living Tradition of the Church and the authentic Magisterium, as well as the spiritual heritage of the Fathers, Doctors and Saints.
I would be interested in finding out more about your work and sharing more about our work with CDU if you would like more information.
Tina Bishop
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