Friday, May 20, 2016

Brompton Oratory...

...has played such a big part in my life, and it was rather moving, earlier this week,  to be giving a talk there on a summer evening...in the room where a few years back  J. and I held the celebrations for our Silver Wedding, and where I have attended so many other events...

The talk was part of the current series of Evenings of Faith, which are being held at various London locations  (next is at Notting Hill Gate. Info here...)

Way, way back...before most readers of this Blog were born...before things like the Internet and mobile phones and baseball caps and texting-while-you-eat...loooong ago.... I had a dear little room, all Laura Ashley and pretty,  just off Sloane Square, and was working in Parliament, and  rushing around by bicycle, having a most wonderful time....and  on Sundays I'd be at the 11 am Mass at the Oratory, and I was on the Oratory Parish Council, and a Governor of the London Oratory School. In due course the choir from the School came to sing at our wedding...and a picture of them with us stands in our study as I write this....the local newspaper ran a story under the headline "and the choir came too"...

And it was also at the Oratory, in those days and for a long while afterwards,  that the Board of Aid to the Church in Need used to meet, all of us round the big table in one of the Parlours...and so in a sense it was from there that some of the great adventures in Auntie's life began...going to Poland at the heiught of martial law...

And now here we were, with a new generation,  a good crowd, tackling the theme of "The Sacraments - Sunshine for the soul", with the evening light coming through the big windows, and with wine and conviviality and much talk....


1 comment:

Wayne S. said...

Sounds lovely and I know it means a lot to you. A life lived in Christ can sometimes bring us such a deep and quiet joy.