Kingdoms May Come, Kingdoms May Go...

...Whatever the end may be/ But Old Father Thames keeps rolling along/ Down to the mighty sea. (Those are lines of verse on a bookmark my mother bought when she visited London 30 years or so ago -- and I've remembered them!).

I’ve been in London the last couple of days. I’ve come down with a small cold (as not infrequently happens after flying) so spent the first day resting, really – walks in Hyde Park, reading, etc. Today I walked from the Farm Street Jesuit Community (after a near miss, got a room at this in-demand spot for guests) in the Mayfair neighborhood to the Tate (Millbank); I’ll go to the opposite side of the Thames tomorrow for the Tate modern, which museum I love. On Wednesday I'll repeat something I did during my first visit to London in 2001: visit Christopher-Wren designed churches. Wednesday evening I'm out to dinner with colleague and friend Fr. Tom Batsis, O. Carm. We've promised forever to go out to dinner -- and it happens in London.

The parish Church here, commonly referred to as the Farm Street Church (but dedicated to the Immaculate Conception – clear evidence of the ultramontanism of the 19th century Jesuits), is known for its liturgies. And the feast of Pentecost was no exception. I was struck by the difference between two Sundays, the earlier in Dodoma and more recently in London. But I am equally struck by the similarities. You can go most anywhere in the world, I suspect, and have difficulty understanding most of the language of the liturgy – except for two words that seem pretty universal: alleluia, an expression of praise, and amen, “thus may it be.” Not bad to have those two words in common, eh?

I received today a calendar from Sossy. The reality of this is hitting me – it’s a big project, but with all the support that has been pledged to me, I’m sure I’ll manage and equally sure the school will do well (that should be plural: schools! – don’t forget the high school, Peter Claver, is just the first institution of the Our Lady Queen of Peace Educational Centre, which will also include a teachers college and a post-secondary vocations school).

The evening before I left Dar, I was talking to Damas, who was back in Dar for some business after returning home to western Tanzania for a week. He had been involved in opening St. Ignatius Primary School in Dodoma. As he recounted this, I asked him why he wasn’t the one to work on OLQP – he has obvious expertise. He had a very sensible response: because he is doing something else and further if he were to do it that would mean I wouldn’t be. I protested, mentioning that he knows how to handle all the governmental bureaucracy involved, and he responded that he learned that as a result of opening a school and soon I would be learning, too. Mind you, it’s not that I have cold feet about this – not at all – it’s just hard for me to imagine how it is that I got caught in the crosshairs of providence.