Simon Says ...

It was a great pleasure to spend tea-time of my day off yesterday at a service of blessing for a new school building. There were awards - Head Teachers gold certificates for the staff closely involved and for the contractors. I am the proud bearer of a Values in Practice pencil, given to Governors who had been involved in the project for putting our values into practice. Bristol City Council are to be congratulated for being the first (and probably now the only) authority to get all their secondary schools through the Building Schools for the Future programme. I have to say that whatever political capital is being made about BSF, my experience of it has been very positive. We have a fantastic new building, on budget and on time, despite some real difficulties with the site. Skanska , the contractor are to be also to be thanked for making the building process as easy as possible. This is, of course, not the end. The school move into the new building over half-term, and then the ...

Today was Open Doors Day - a day when normally closed buildings across Bristol are opened to the public. We qualify by opening parts of the church that are not normally accessible, like the roof and the bell tower. We also make displays of our vestments and silver and so on. Oh, and we serve tea ... It was a great day, with a lot of hard work put in by all concerned. I had to go out at lunch time to dedicate a cross in the churchyard of St John's, Bedminster. St John's was destroyed in the war, and was then absorbed into my parish. There had been a church on the site since before the Domesday Book, and it was the Mother Church of St Mary Redcliffe. So we owe it our ecclesial life, so to speak. So it was with gratitude that I went to dedicate the cross, and to pray in the site of ancient prayers. All in all a good day.

Piano art has come to Bristol. All over the city there are pianos simply left and waiting to be used. I've come across two in the past couple of days, and both have been played constantly (and very well). An improvised concert across the city! The artist behind this, Luke Jerram , is based in Bristol, but has only put pianos around Bristol after he's done this in Brazil, Thailand and all over the world. Art for the people! Now to upload my photos onto the website ...

This evening will see Bristol ’s first ‘state of the city’ debate . Every part of the Council’s discussion can be followed online via webcast . It’s a new experience for Bristol , and one to which all Bristolians have been invited to contribute. Tonight’s debate owes much to the American President’s ‘State of the Union Address’. But there is an important difference in that Bristol has a debate, including many voices, not all of whom agree, whereas the United States has an address, given by one man, presenting one point of view. The Bible is full of cities. The first city it records was founded by Cain, who was more famous for being the first murderer in the Bible. But the last city it mentions is the New Jerusalem, the city of God . This is the place where everything is good and all has been put right, all hopes are fulfilled and pain and sorrow are no more. We, of course, live between those two cities. There is still death and crime in our city, there are ways in ...