Lambeth, Thursday July 24th - Thomas a Kempis

This is via Brook's posting courtesy...more on indaba groups when I get back to Canterbury.

I'm on the bus now coming back from the "London Day" on the itinerary. It included a march from Whitehall to Lambeth for the Millennium Development Goals and then a rally there. I skipped the march. I've found you have to budget your energy and, frankly, the MDGs will still be the MDGs after that long walk. So I took a late bus to Lambeth and waited for the marchers.While waiting for them I reviewed the Lambeth Archives historical display and lingered over the Elizabeth I and George III entries because she was the mother of us all and he was a son of a bitch. The latter is a reference used by Thomas Jefferson when George turned his back on the first American delegation to England after the Revolutionary War.

Elizabeth's personal prayer book was colorful and dog-eared. The margins were full of biblical cartoons and she seemed to favor the morning prayer which roused her "body as well as soul." It was comforting to see such candid devotion in the founder of the Anglican Church...and a little surprising. I had always thought of Elizabeth as the strategic thinker and not as an intercessor. King George it seemed took special enjoyment in the selection of bishops from other colonies having certificates of institution engraved with a detailed portrait of himself.

After the marchers arrived we gathered in the Lambeth courtyard and heard a stirring (the only way to describe it) call to action from Prime Minister Gordon Brown. This Scot and son of a Presbyterian minister put it to us directly: we had it before us "to eliminate poverty by 2012." Whew. The target date was September 25th when the United Nations can take action. The Anglican Observer followed him on the dais and enthusiastically said of his presentation, "I didn't know whether to dance or ordain you!"

What followed were two anti-climaxes. I had expected a box lunch and instead we sat down to catered lunch under a large tent. Lambeth has a thing about tents it seems. I sat with an irreverent English bishop who kept wondering about "the tab the Archbishop had to pick up", a very amenable bishop from the Congo who only spoke French and Swahili, and three female Japanese translators. It was hot.

The final anti-climax was due to the numbing and so gracious afternoon with the Queen (of England). It was nice and the food was good but I kept looking at my watch wondering how long all this good taste would take. I need an upgrade in the royalty- awe department, I guess.

More soon, thanks and love to Brook. +gep