where is the wise man, where is the scholar

I am not sure about the wise man but it is the case that Timelord was a scholar at Churchill College Cambridge between 1971 and 1973.

All this came flooding back this last week as I went to meet people at the University as part of a team from the law firm where I am a partner.

We had a look at the West Cambridge campus which is a little further out of Cambridge on the Madingley Road and near the Cavendish Labs. Tony Hewish discovered pulsars there and I remember thinking how ordinary he looked as I watched him some days walking to a room across the court from mine.

Francis Crick was also a fellow at the College. He was part of the team which made the breakthrough discoveries about DNA. Crick resigned in protest when the College accepted a gift to build a Chapel.

The College was founded as the nation's memorial to Winston Churchill and focused on science and engineering. It was originally built without a Chapel unlike any other Cambridge College. The Chapel is now found at the extreme end of the playing fields: as far from the main entrance as it is possible to go.

There is something hugely challenging here. Paul tells us how God has made foolish the wisdom of this world because the wisdom of the world does not lead to knowledge of him. Yet Paul did not suggest Christians opt out of debate or somehow accept that the Christian fundamental of a revealed religion through scripture is irrational. That was hardly his style.

Those of us who take the Bible seriously do not have to accept the label of flat earthers even though some of our number may sometimes behave that way (does the cap fit the moose hunting governor of Alaska methinks).

So I respected Francis Crick for his stand. His inspiration to me is not to run away from the difficult questions; to admit when I don't understand everything the Bible says and above all to commit to engage in the battle of ideas.

Retreat is not an option.

The Mayor of Grassington....

.....a story more James Herriott than Thomas Hardy that came to an end on 2 November when Uncle Wilf died at the ripe old age of 97.

97 chapters is a long book and more than 40 had been written and told before my first memories of him. At that time he owned the grocer's shop in the main street in Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales and soon afterwards he bought the next door premises (see picture) to expand his emporium.

Wilf also seemed to have a somewhat old fashioned view of the role of women. His Tuesdays and Wednesdays were a delightful trip to the further part of the Dale to take and deliver grocery orders and pass the time of day with farmers, campers and customers : whilst his wife and the other shop helper kept the shop going during its opening hours.

1966 and England won the world cup and I watched the match at his house. He had sold the shop by then and moved to Skipton. Bertha his wife was my mother's sister and they both came to see me before I went off to Cambridge in 1970. But sadly I was out at the time and tragically Bertha collapsed and died at our flat in Stacksteads in Lancashire.

Wilf always had a soft spot for Teapot. I remember him decorating the kitchen in the house we rented when we were first married. So very Wilf. It was all done in a flash as if he had paint brushes in both hands.

Wilf married again and is the only man I know who managed 2 silver weddings. Ada was quite different to Bertha but she was soon part of the family. Matt and Alan were always remembered at Christmas and they both had great affection for him.

When they moved to the almshouses at Linton he set up a workshop of which Heath Robinson would have been proud. It was a place of wonder especially for Curly Al. He made bird tables for charity and his band saw was a seriously scary piece of machinery.

Ada had an electric scooter because she could not walk very well. But it was Wilf who used it more then she. They moved back to Grassington and Ada dies in 2006. Wilf continued to drive the scooter even though his eyesight began to fail and not just around the village.

Teapot and I went to his funeral this last Wednesday. There may not be any more chapters to be written but I am sure we will keep going back to read the ones we have. And we will be thankful for them.

Out of Africa

The sweeping, almost haunting, score for the film Out of Africa is one of my favourites.

It somehow seems to capture the splendour and enormity of East Africa and at the same time its pain.

The open wound which is Darfur and the nightmare which seems to be never ending in Zimbabwe flit across the nightly news from time to time. They are part of the score but we hardly hear the notes as events in other places play out in the foreground and make the most noise.

Yet this last week the sounds out of Africa have been loud again as we have heard the reawakening of the ghastly conflict in the Congo and Rwanda. The enmity to the death, it seems, of the Hutu and the Tutsi which has flared up over the decades. With first one then the other wreaking vengeance in a gruesome tit for tat. And at the heart of it this time the so called evangelical Christian General Laurent Nkunda bringing terror to the area around Gome.

So when I came to our church last Sunday and saw Chris Lyndon holding the newly printed collection of the translation of Genesis, Jonah, Luke and 1 Timothy into the language of the Koti people I was much moved. 12 years and more of commitment and at the end the opening of a new door for a people who had never before had the benefit of a part of the Bible in their own language.

It reminded me of the work of REACH in Rwanda to bring relief and healing to refugees and the support and commitment to it of friends here like Martin and Lou. It brought back other memories of friends from Africa. There was Vincent and Paul from South Africa: here at the time of Apartheid; black baptist ministers in our house with side splitting laughter watching Mr Bean. Jesse and Peter Mhlope and Tandiwe who stayed with us one Christmas and whose photo is still in our back room downstairs. Jesse with her cooking of a special delicacy for Peter. A concoction that would have made a tripe eater blanche. Tandiwe spending an afternoon at the school across the road. Who will ever forget them.

And earlier this week a new President of the United States with his part of his roots in Kenya.

May be out of Africa after all there can still be hope.

It's the time....

......says the frontsheet of this week's Economist and I am happy to take up the theme.

It's the time for Barack Obama as Americans vote for their next President with polling concluding on Tuesday. Americans will hopefully forgive Timelord expressing his opinion on what at the end of the day is a matter for them. After all they have a vote and I do not.

Regular readers of this blog will remember that I came out for Mr Obama, as the saying goes, in December last year. And nothing since has made me change my mind.

He does not wear a vest underneath his shirt with a huge letter S emblazoned on it. He cannot climb walls and walk on ceilings like Spiderman. He has made his mistakes. He is not a magician.

Yet he has the rare quality of being able to inspire in an age of ever increasing cynicism about public life. He had the courage to speak out about the madness of the invasion of Iraq from the beginning and is criticised by his opponents for wanting to share the wealth of his country which to their eyes amounts to the unpardonable sin of socialism.

And for all it is fashionable in many quarters to sneer about America it is remarkable that a black man of mixed parentage should be at the threshold of the White House. Something perhaps even beyond the dreams of Martin Luther King.