Latest Thought for the Week

I saw the making of a saint in Rome on 14 October, the Canonisation of Oscar Romero.

I recently visited my parents in Cornwall. On their remote farm usually nothing at all can be heard at night.

I have been privileged to work for the BBC for 33 years. It has been a privilege because the BBC is arguably the most creative organisation in Britain.

Wendell Berry is one of the wise old men (except that he’s been saying wise things for decades). He’s a Kentucky farmer, environmental activist, writer and poet. I recommend him to you.

Autumn always feels like a significant transition for me. I have been programmed by all those years of starting a new school year and the feeling has always stayed with me even though it’s a long time since my formal education ended.

A few years ago, Anna Gregorowski and I chatted on the portico with the visiting preacher, an African bishop. Had he enjoyed his stay, we asked, and was he ready to go home?

“In my country, God’s house is always open!” This was said, accompanied by tears, by a woman wanting to come into church to pray, just as the verger was trying to lock the gates of St Martin’s portico. Not many churches stay open ’24/7′ in this country. I’m glad to say our verger was sympathetic to the woman’s request.

When I first moved to London, it was as a student. London’s Universities and study centres, swarming with experts from all four corners of the earth, women and men endlessly pursuing all the disciplines you can think of – this was all very attractive to me.

On the edge of our St Martin’s community stands a statue of a heroine of the First World War. Recently I read a biography of Edith Cavell.