Posts from — April 2005

It’s a while since I wrote here. I have been so busy and then I felt down - just couldn’t be bothered to write anything. But so much has happened since early April.

Dinesh Singh, a good friend of mine and a research physicist at the University of Regina in Canada, visited on 7 April. It was an opportunity to continue our long-running conversation about science and religion. Like me, Dinesh is a Baha’i. Unlike me he is a scientist and he has given some serious and interesting thought to the subject.

Hari and Avril turned up while Dinesh was here. I introduced them (both astrophysics postgrads) to Dinesh and they were able to pick his brains about physics and work in physics.

Erica and I attended the last of a series of four organ recitals at the Royal Festival Hall on 4 April. In fact, this was the organ’s last outing before being dismantled and refurbished when the RFH itself is refurbished. This was actually a rather fine recital by Simon Preston. The hall was full and Preston was warmly applauded.

Our other musical outing was to the ClassicFM concert in the Royal Albert Hall on 21st April - the first day of the Baha’i festival of Ridvan. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra played, amongst other things, the final movement of Saint-Saens’ organ concerto and Elgar’s cello concerto. The RAH organ is in good voice now that it has been refurbished, but it is so loud that it drowned out the orchestra - as happened the last time we heard this concerto at the Proms last year (with Dame Gillian Wear). Julian Lloyd-Weber was the soloist in the Elgar - truly one of my favourite pieces of music.

We met up with old friends Eric and Tricia Hanson on 20 April. Eric and Tricia, whom we met many years ago at Bosch Baha’i School in California when Erica and I were teaching a course there, are now working at the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa. They were over here for a few days and we had a wonderful evening together, catching up. The friendship is such that we could have talked on and on through the night.

Having looked at a whole range of journaling and note-taking apps, I am now trying MacJournal.
Thursday, 28 April 2005 20:52 PM
OK, I bought it.

I wrote the following to friends & colleagues on 4 April 2005:

Dear all

I have just returned from Westminster Cathedral, where I represented the National Assembly at the Solemn Vespers of the Dead for Pope John Paul II.

The service was conducted by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. In attendance were HRH The Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles, the Prime Minister and Mrs Blair, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary and the Speaker of the House of Commons, in addition to other members of the government and leading members of the opposition parties.

There were dignitaries from other Churches (including the Archbishop of Canterbury) and from non-Christian faiths, by invitation of the Bishops’ Conference for England and Wales. The ecumenical and interfaith guests were asked to process into the Cathedral from the Sacristy. I found myself in the front row, sandwiched between Rabbi Tony Bayield and Mr Om Prakash Sharma, President of the National Council of Hindu Temples.

A dignified service, a good bit of it in Latin, with beautiful music, plus candles, clouds of incense and a great deal of bowing.

Love
–Barney