Airfares vary greatly from day to day so I have a day in hand. Having done the tourist things in Salt Lake City, it’s probably a bit unkind to say that I’m glad that I don’t have two days in hand. But this is the world centre of the Morman Church and that means that it is an extraordinary place for genealogical records.
If you wander in, volunteers step forward to help and in no time at all you are busy putting your family tree together. It’s extraordinary – half an hour got me back to my grandfather’s great-grandparents.
I couldn’t resist a friendly question about the theology which lies behind all this – and that led to what seemed to me to be a slightly dubious conversation about those who have passed beyond the veil. But if they are to be measured by friendliness and helpfulness, these people are exceptional.
And since we are on ancestors – sign of age maybe on my birthday to be thinking about family trees and the like. My paternal grandfather, Canon David Hare Chillingworth, has been on my bookshelf for a while so I thought he deserved an outing on the net. A gentle, gentle priest. Not sure what he would have thought of me.
An interesting picture, which reminded me of the high dog-collars worn previously. My grandfather collapsed more than once when preaching from the pulpit in St Paul’s Cathedral, Dunedin [unavoidable as bishop] but not when in other pulpits. Eventually his doctor realized his carotid body was a bit sensitive, and that when he was in the high St Paul’s pulpit he had to look down to relate to the congregation, so that the high collar dug into his neck, pressed on the carotid body, and thus slowed down his heart rate dramatically. A lower collar solved the problem.
Please give our love and best wishes to Katharine and Ian, and to David Rice if you meet up with him in the House of Bishops.
Thanks Tony. I hope you are both well. I seem to have got most of my energy back now – I’m at the General Convention of TEC in Salt Lake City at present.