1 post tagged “english hospitality”
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The week before the opening of the Lambeth Conference was given over to a “hospitality initiative” during which bishops attending the Conference were hosted in various dioceses. I was a guest of the Diocese of Oxford and its bishop, John Pritchard, who is an old friend and who has visited here in our diocese. (John’s father was a priest of the Church of England and some years ago brought his family to Greenville to live for a year, while John was a teenager. John remembers his time in Greenville fondly.) While I was in Oxford, my local host was the Risborough Parish and its Vicar James Tompkins, and I was the guest of Frank and Jill Iredale (and Rufus the cat) in their lovely and comfortable home. They were gracious hosts indeed.
I arrived at Heathrow Airport on the morning of July 12, some 48 hours later than scheduled due to weather-related delays. I was greeted at the airport by the Iredales and off we sped to the town of Oxford in hopes that we might arrive in time for the opening service in Christ Church Cathedral which stands in the midst of Christ Church College. We arrived too late for the service, but happily in time for the lunch following.
As I was walking up the steps to the dining hall where the luncheon was being held, I had the strange feeling that I had been on those steps before, and when I walked into the dining hall, I was sure I had been there before. It was a strange sense of déjà vu, especially since I had never been to Oxford before. When I mentioned this sense of déjà vu to my hosts, they laughed and told me that the steps were probably familiar because they are the steps the young Harry Potter walked up (in the first movie) and into the college dining hall, which for the movie became the dining hall of Hogwarts. After that, the fact that the college had been established by King Henry VIII over 500 years ago and visited by Elizabeth I paled into insignificance. Lunch was a warm welcome to the seven bishops visiting from the United States, the Phillipines, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Later, the Iredales took me on a wonderful walking tour of Oxford and its various colleges.
On Sunday, I preached twice in Risborough - once in the morning at St. Dunstan’s and again at Evensong at St. Mary’s. After a delicious lunch at the Iredales with several parishioners, Tony Kerwood (a parishioner) treated and several others to a ride on a train pulled by a steam engine with a very proper English Tea served (salmon sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches and scones slathered with double cream and strawberry jam). I don’t know which was better, the train ride or the tea!
On Monday, I went with my clergy host to the school attached to his church and had a good time meeting the students and teachers. Afterwards, we went to a lunch for the clergy of the Deanery and had a fascinating conversation with a priest from Pakistan who had to flee his country and seek asylum in England due to religious persecution. We talked a bit about the recent decision of the Church of England to ordain women as bishops and the controversy that followed. I reassured them that we in The Episcopal Church had been in much the same place some thirty years ago and that the presence of women as deacons, priests and bishops (and now as our Presiding Bishop) has been a rich and wonderful blessing.
Tuesday morning, July 15, John Vince (another parishioner) took me to Ewelme (pronounced "you-elm"). There I saw St Mary's church, built in 1437 by Alice, Duchess of Suffolk, who was the granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer. Attached to the church is an almshouse, a 15th century version of a home for old folk, and attached to that is a school - also founded in 1437 – which has 84 students in grades K-6. After some 571 years, parish, almshouse and school are all still going strong.
On the morning of July 16, all the bishops visiting in the Diocese of Oxford gathered at a church and boarded buses for the two-hour journey to Canterbury.
