To a fascinating Newman conference...

...at Thornycroft Hall, with speakers  examining aspects of  St JHN's  message on education.  Paul Shrimpton spoke extremely  well on  the Idea of a University which he noted was published in 1873 and written some twenty years earlier, but remains "a defining text to this day". He emphasised that Newman saw university education not as the acquisition of knowledge but the cultivation of the mind", and that a university is a secular institution "yet partaking of a religious character".  Roy Peachey, a teacher at The Cedars School   spoke about Dorothy L. Sayers ' Lost Tools of Learning in which she showed how the Medieval trivium - grammar, dialectic, rhetoric - could and should be rediscovered today. He mentioned the "pedagogy of place" which echoes Newman's  emphasis on the genius loci  which hands on "a tradition, a bond of union, an ethical atmosphere". And Mrs Lynch \Kelly of St Martin's Academy  Stoke Goulding spoke about how to do it all: the school aims to teach  pupils "the best that has been thought and said" and that they are loved by their teachers and by God...

It was a wonderful weekend, as I stayed with old friends nearby...delicious meals,  long and lively conversations, the warm welcome of an old farmhouse.  Torrential rain flooded parts of some roads so we made our way out to Thornycroft on a roundabout route. The next day we walked muddy lanes in sparkling sunshine, water gurgling in streams alongside.  Sunday Mass at St Wulstan's church , Wolstanton, with a superb choir...