Over the weekend, The Bible in Translation CD website was completed.

The intercessions for the Sunday morning service at Holy Trinity Church:

Almighty God. We bless thee for thy law. For we know it to be good, sure, sin revealing, life giving, converting the soul. It is thy wisdom, and a signpost to the grace and truth in Christ. To that better way. We bless thee, too, for thy Holy Spirit. He disposes life, where thy law brought only death; he both convicts and convinces; brings the curse before the cure; the chastening before the pardon; he breaks our hearts, only to comfort them; and guides us not only to the truth but also in it. 

Law and spirit; the holiness of God and the mercy of God. We pray that this double principle may bind thy church: its clergy and laity, its worship and work, preaching and polity, and constitution and character. Make us, together, a people who exude a tangible and responsive joy and hope as grow in our understanding of the riches of thy commandments and grace, and as we draw strength from him whose everlasting arms tenderly undergird our lives. ‘Lord, in thy mercy. Hear our prayer’.

At a time when our country’s political parties are mired in factionalism, in-fighting, and the cult of personalities, groping towards an uncertain future while reinventing themselves on the hoof, we beseech thee: grant our leaders peculiar clear-sightedness and convictions marinade with compassion, and our state, stability. Give politicians the integrity to do the right thing rather than the popular thing, to take the difficult rather than the easy path, where necessary, and to choose the way of self-sacrifice rather than of self-service, always. God bless the Queen. May her uprightness, stamina, and godly fear be to her family and people a salutary and winsome example of an unwavering leadership informed by eternal verities. ‘Lord, in thy mercy. Hear our prayer’.

We sense the world’s turbulence: intractable disputes; financial precariousness, remorseless suffering; the loss of lives, lands, identity and community; the failure of governments and nations to secure peace and restoration; unresolvable inequality; and unpunished persecutions of Christians and others. We could recite a litany of worries and woes. Intervene, Lord God. Do what we conspicuously cannot; may ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth’. We remember Allepo and the hurricane-strewn people of Haiti. Grant them the aid they need, and aid workers safety in their operations. ‘Lord, in thy mercy. Hear our prayer’.

Within the small picture of our own lives too, some of us walk in darkness; cope fitfully with chronic illness, irredeemable loss and insatiable grief, confusion and heartache in our families; and live lives on the toppling edge of our ability to provide for ourselves and others. Loving God, make a difference. Turn situations around. Repair the bruised and broken reed. In silence, we name our needs, and those of those known to us, before thee. Lord, comfort the widow, the fatherless, the childless, the grieving parent, the poor, the foreigner in the land, and the outcast. And, help us to do our duty towards them in the spirit of true religion. ‘Lord, in thy mercy. Hear our prayer’.

We remember those who have died in the faith and for the faith. May their virtues increasingly be ours. May we, like them, prove thee to be just, faithful, and true to the end and beyond.

8.30 am: To begin: marshal the week. In times of busyness and complexity, one must take the initiative and bring to order all that’s controllable, while anticipating a response to what is not. This involves either saying ‘no’ to some requests or else deferring other things. 9.30 am: Having set up the week’s teaching (as far as it’s possible so to do), I wrote up notes related to the broader context of research for my Image and Inscription conference paper. The journey took me on a circuitous journey from Cecil B DeMille’s two films of The Ten Commandments (1923 and 1956), passed Elmer Bernstein’s score for the latter, onto Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto (1818) and Arnold Schoenberg’s monumental 12-tone oratorio Moses und Aron (1932), and ending with El Greco’s Mount Sinai (1570–2):

Scene from Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923)

El Greco, Mount Sinai (1570–2), (courtesy of the Historical Museum of Crete, Iraklion)

Afternoon. I worked while distracted by a punishing focal headache caused by blocked sinuses, caused by a head cold, caught from the Freshers’ last week. In this diary, over the past year or more, I’ve articulated my reflections during the process of composing ‘Image and Inscription’. For part of the afternoon, I sifted through its pages in order to extract useable sections. In a condensed form, some of these will contribute to the paper’s substance. Mid afternoon, I began assembling images, and adjusting the format of the PowerPoint. Text and images should grow together: they are a parallel discussion, in my view. Late afternoon, I returned to making notes towards the text.

6.30 pm: Practise Session 1. 7.30 pm: An MA art history dissertation to second mark.