Dance

Mediterranean

It's that time of year when, in the company of uncomfortably large numbers of fellow-Britons we are off to the Mediterranean.

This picture, from last year in Rome, seems suitably symbolic.

For a start, it was taken in such ridiculous heat that I can remember telling my spouse-photographer to hurry or I would have to move!

Secondly it is of part of a very ancient statue that bespeaks the empire that once straddled the Mediterranean and affected the globe. A little toe the size of my head says it all really.

Thirdly, standing amid history is exactly why my daughter is not and would not want to be with us. This is a very adult vacation. Not adult in the way of the binge-drinking hoards of fellow-countrymen and women who populate various Mediterranean bar strips. Adult in the number of miles walked. For while we will have no hangovers, the repaired little toe on the statue looks, for all the world, like our little toes will look when we've finished hot-footing around another Mediterranean city this week.

Lastly, although I am no lover of the heat, I like the Mediterranean for at least this; that every time I see that sea it brings to mind any number of stories from the Bible whose dramas were played out around its shores and sometimes upon its waves. In fact the P Q R on the plinth stands for 'The People of Rome' and as I'm halfway through preaching Paul's letter to the People of Rome it all seems very appropriate indeed!

Home

Tonight at Church I quoted an amazing hymn which I have never heard sung live but which resonates with the way some of us will get to heaven.

Safe home, safe home in port!

Rent cordage, shattered deck,

Torn sails, provisions short,

And only not a wreck;

But oh! the joy upon the shore

To tell our voyage perils o’er!

The prize, the prize secure!

The athlete nearly fell;

Bare all he could endure,

And bare not always well;

But he may smile at troubles gone

Who sets the victor-garland on.

No more the foe can harm;

No more of leaguered camp,

And cry of night alarm,

And need of ready lamp;

And yet how nearly he had failed

How nearly had that foe prevailed!

The exile is at home!

O nights and days of tears,

O longings not to roam,

O sins and doubts and fears;

What matters now grief’s darkest day?

The King has wiped those tears away

I was astonished to find it even has a contemporary version on youtube! It is hard to imagine a longer journey for a hymn than from Joseph of the Studium to Monks Coffee House Music Venue in Abilene, but here we go . . .