Going to church - and the beauty of music

Trevor brought me three CDs yesterday, all of Vivaldi, the Italian priest whom unkind critics accused of writing the same concerto 350 times over!

No one who knows and loves the Four Seasons would agree, and here we have two discs of first recordings. Amazing. And all different, naturally.

I'm listening to to one of them now, and planning to be taken to Choral Evensong in Wells Cathedral at 3 pm this afternoon. It's a bit of a rush to get to our Street morning service now, and I haven't yet got the courage to come to the evening service that has meant such a lot to me over the years. So I hope to join those who in recent years have found a spiritual home in a great cathedral.

The more prayerful and careful preparation that has been put into a time of worship, the more likely the people who take part are to experience the presence and power of God. The story is told of Taylor Smith, later Bishop Taylor Smith, Chaplain General to HM Forces in the First World War. As a young ordinand or curate he was sent to a church, thinking he was to preach. He put hours of prayer and preparation into the sermon, and was very disappointed to find that all he was expected to do was read a lesson. Afterwards, whether immediately or much later, someone told him that they had come to a living faith through the reading of that lesson. Q.E.D.