The bad and the good...
First the bad: my car was in the shop for a day and a half as German mechanic Erwin did needed repairs and the yearly required inspections, which meant at times waiting and waiting for crowded buses. The good: praying the office on the train, better than the Rosary in the car. A good book for the job: a sturdy, well-worn 1962 Short Breviary from the Benedictines in Collegeville, Minnesota (an All Saints’ Sister of the Poor had it before my priest gave it to me). If this area had decent, affordable public transport I’d use it to commute to and from the small-town newspaper office and get Canon Douglas’s Monastic Diurnal (with Coverdale’s psalms, beautifully made and the right size for travel), used by everybody from my priest to Fr Chris Tessone to Bishop Tim Cravens to Treat. Now that’s a good kind of ecumenism.

A mystery solved
After eight months so far at Runnemede I took a bicycle ride around town yesterday evening right before the beginning of the hour to find out which church is ringing it, which I can hear from home. I was right: it’s the Gothic one pictured, the Presbyterian church just a few blocks to the north.