Latest Thought for the Week

Wednesday is US Independence Day, celebrated with barbecues, (cold) beer, fireworks and Thomas Jefferson’s stirring words about ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’

It’s always a tense experience watching England play football. This year everyone has tried to play down the hype and stress the unity and youth of the team and a realistic optimism. But you can still sense the readiness for national soul searching and despair just beneath the surface should they fail.

Like much of the country, I have been transfixed by the opening stages of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. I was struck by one report in particular last week – an account by a BBC journalist of an impromptu encounter between an unnamed victim of the fire and the inquiry’s chairman, Sir Martin Moore-Bick.

Last week we had the privilege of hearing the legendary folk singer and human rights campaigner Joan Baez at the Royal Albert Hall.

Let me recommend a US public radio program: ‘On Being’. Created by journalist and theologian, Krista Tippett, it offers ‘intelligent conversation about religion, meaning, and moral imagination’.

I hate being told what to do. Even though I am old enough to know better, teenage rebellion rises in me if I’m advised to increase my pension contributions, or drink less coffee – and I am sure I’m not alone.

Han van Meegeren held a grudge. The art establishment had failed to recognise his genius, so he duped the critics by painting the perfect forgery.

This week, in these days between Ascension Day and Pentecost, we are invited to join in the ecumenical worldwide prayer initiative Thy Kingdom Come.

Last weekend I attended a wedding party on Saturday and a memorial service on Sunday. I thought they would be very different occasions but both proved, above all, to be joyful.