TV, Tradition, and Hard Work...

...more or less sums up my relationship with EWTN, the Catholic television network. Spent all of Wednesday in Balham, where Fr Stephen Langridge at Holy Ghost Church allowed a TV crew to invade the parish while we filmed a series of six interviews for CATHOLIC LIVES...these included Nicole Parker of the London Fertility Care Centre, Josephine Robinson of the Association of Catholic Women, Fr Alexander Sherbrook of St Patrick's Soho Square, Kristina Cooper of GOOD NEWS magazine, and more...on Saturday I fly to Birmingham, Alabama to make a whole new series about Traditions Marking the Feasts and Seasons of the Year (I don't quite know why I've put that in capitals but it somehow conveys the flavour of the thing...)

Wednesday's work was fun but, golly, it was exhausting, and at the day's end, when the little crew, after sorting things out and packing up and dealing with everything, met in the quiet church for Mass - said by a visiting priest from the Brothers of St John, who had come from Holland to watch our work as he works with a similar TV project in Amsterdam) - it was so good just to be there with the rhythm of the words and the bright glow of candles. I have only ever been in that church when it is teeming with families and chanted music on a Sunday morning, and having just a small group gathered (in exhaustion!) before the altar on a weekday evening with the darkening windows and the glitter of a lifted Chalice was a suddenly powerful experience.

Up early this morning to get to a committee meeting of Aid to the Church in Need. Afterwards, to a bookshop to treat myself to a new, looooong, interesting book for the flight to the USA on Sat. I do have some work to do on the flight, but there will be several hours in the air and I feel I can give myself up to the pleasure of deliciously uninterrupted reading. (I am actually planning to take some sewing to do as well - cross-stitch sampler which needs finishing and is rather fun to do - but have been warned that needles are sometimes confiscated as being potential terrorist weapons...anyone know anything about this?).