Had you asked me at 5am this morning as the alarm went off, I suspect I wouldn’t have been quite so sanguine, but sitting here in my sunny attic at 6:30pm, looking back on a mountain of a day overcome, I have to say I do have a truly interesting life.

I remember very little of the first 2 1/2 hours, as they principally involved getting up, walking to the station and immediately falling asleep again. (It is every commuter’s intention to make the business of getting up as insignificant as possible, so that the sleep on the train feels like merely the continuation of being in bed!)

So the real getting up was the slog up the slope from the platform at Waterloo East, with every fibre of my being crying ‘Costa! Costa!’ Costa duly delivered… tea and an almond croissant. (Why is it that Starbucks manage to do nice almond croissants, while Costa’s have almond paste akin to chemical warfare?) I sat outside the cafe, musing on how rarely I ever get to just sit on my own in a caf, ‘watching’ the world go by.

As it turns out, I sat there slightly too long, and promptly missed the train (blame the unhelpful commuting crowds and the beleaguered guide dog).

I did finally make it out to Sunbury-on-Thames though, where I was due to teach 20 young people on The Salvation Army’s ‘Essential’ programme all about encouragement. I only had an hour and a half in the end, but fortunately the recipe is simple:
1. We all need 2 types of encouragement: the ‘well done’ (to be told the things we’ve achieved, and where we’ve done well), and the ‘Well Been’ (to be told what we have brought… what in our character and identity has blessed and helped others). The distinction is important, since you can’t live off ‘well dones’, only ‘well beens’. ‘Well dones’ are good for temporary encouragement, but what I did well 5 years ago doesn’t sustain me much today. ‘Well beens’, however, help to confirm and strengthen our sense of self-worth, and can nourish us for years.
2. We need to hear both those things from 3 different quarters: From God – as his opinion counts more than anyone else’s; from others – as we are made to operate in community relationship; and from ourselves – if we cannot repeat those encouragements to ourselves with real conviction, we will never truly believe them.

The group having been set to task, I headed back to Waterloo for a groundhog day visit to Costa to pick up some sustaining luncheon, and climbed aboard the (slowish) train to Canterbury.

The afternoon was spent amid the jolly hubbub of the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops, being held at the University of Kent. I had been asked to do a seminar on intercession as part of the ‘Spouses Conference’. (One of my beloved fellow house-dwellers queried whether the plural of spouses should be spice, and I rather like that idea!)

So I sat in a room with bishops’ wives from Australia, Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, talking about how we pray, and what intercession really means. I have no idea how I got the gig, but what an amazing privilege! Apart from exploring the three ‘rings’ of intercession (none of which have anything to do with Tolkein I hasten to add), I learned that one lady is a farmer in Australia, breeds rabbits, keeps champion ferretts and has the only herd of working donkeys in her whole region. I asked what the donkeys did, and she said they help her with evangelism!!!!!! (Time did not allow me to ask for further enlightenment!)

My beloved serf often comments that our lives in the world of prayer resemble those watersnakes you used to get in the 1980s (before they realised they constituted a potential tyfoid risk!)… unpredictable and difficult to get a handle on sometimes! Well this proved true yet again. The Congolese lady didn’t speak very much English, so I ended up giving the seminar simultaneously in English and French! (Many have wondered – sometimes aloud – what the point of me doing a language degree was, if I then intended to submerge myself in the world of church and prayer. Well there you have it!)

One of my friends is stewarding at the conference, so after the fascinating seminar, she showed me around and took me for a tasty hot chocolate. I was in truly celebratory mode after so many hours of hard work!

So much is commented and speculated about Lambeth in the church at the moment, and so I had my spiritual antenna well and truly primed to the general atmosphere and to any hints of bishoply scraps. There were none of the latter, I’m afraid (if you were hoping for some sensationalist news), and the atmosphere was actually very hope-filled. The ladies in my seminar thanked us Canterburians for praying for them, and asked us not to stop just yet(!), but I thought the whole thing got put rather sharply into perspective when the Congolese lady said could I ask my friends to pray for her country because there have been decades of war, there is terrible poverty, women are routinely raped and there isn’t enough food. I know the doctrinal issues are important, but for some people they really must pale into insignificance compared to what they see around them on a day-to-day basis.

It felt right and truly powerful to say that those of us from other parts of the world would pray for Congo in a new way after meeting her. If Lambeth does nothing except bring the worldwide Anglican Church together so that leaders can stand shoulder to shoulder with their brothers and sisters from struggling, lonely situations and pray for them, then it’s got to be worthwhile hasn’t it?