Sunday, 19 November 2006

The nature of forgiveness

I rose early and left at 8:30 to meet my daughter Nancy in Shoeburyness, Essex. During the drive, I listened to an item on Radio 4 about the Holocaust Education Trust, who have just secured additional funding to take UK schoolchildren to visit concentration camp sites in central and eastern Europe. Several visiting children were interviewed about their experiences: one girl from north London recording that it had transfromed her life.

It bought to mind a passage in The War and Uncle Walter in which he wrote that while (as a good Christian) he could forgive the Nazis for what they had done to him, he could not forgive what they had done to others, as this would have been an abdication of his Christian responsibility.

Birthday outing

Nancy was excited about her birthday and we had a wonderful and exhausting day at the Science Museum in London. I am pleased that my children Bobby (18) and nancy (now 10) both know the London museums as well as I did at their age.

Bobby travelled up from Brighton to join us for a meal and he presented Nancy with a picture he had made for her. She filled up with pride and admiration for her older brother. It was very touching.

Nancy was also very appreciative of the all her other gifts: laptop computer, Disney Witch dolls, cuddly hamsters, trinkets and books.

I arrived home at about 10:00 in the evening, and spent a quiet hour with Jackie: she knitting and me reading through the Connexions Quality Assurance Framework. Lovely.