HRh Prince of Wales

Speaking at the launch of The Tent 4 May 2006

I was so touched to be asked by the Bishop originally to come and open, or re-open, this church which suffered such a terrible disaster, so for me to be able to come back again on this occasion to witness the new uses to which this rather remarkable place is being put is enormously heartening. And to see the love and dedication and the devotion which has gone into constructing this splendid Tent is again enormously rewarding, particularly, if I may say so, since my School of Traditional Arts has been involved in various ways, and that gives me enormous pride and pleasure. In fact is I’m going on after this to my School to see The Exhibition of The Icons which is taking place there. I am also proud of the role that has been played by Keith Critchlow, Jon Allen, Keith Barley and Helen Whittaker, and all that these people have contributed in their extraordinary understanding about the way in which we try to create harmony, and of course, the fact that we are sitting in a circle is the most fundamental and sacred space of all, as the Chief Rabbi and Bishop Richard said at the beginning.

It is my belief that these symbols do matter, and it seems to me that in many ways we are losing our understanding of the symbolic nature of faith by taking it sometimes too literally, and there is a real danger that literalism can lead to ever greater extremism and fundamentalism, which is of course a feature which I hope can be looked at in the context of what St Ethelburga’s is trying to do. When you think about it and look back, all the way through history people have argued furiously about their understanding of the nature of the divine. We only have to look again at that marvellous proverb which talks about the blind man feeling the elephant - it’s such a wonderful way of looking at the problem of the way we look at things. But also, despite all the disagreements in the world in the past, the world we live in now is so much more complicated in the sense that we now have instant communication, we have a media which surrounds us in every sphere of our existence (whether we can work the remote control system or not), and it seems to me that the greatest difficulty with all this is the stereotyping which exists and becomes even more crucial because of the role of the media. It is so easy to condemn and put people into one particular pigeonhole and to misunderstand to a degree but to do so , I think, is also much more dangerous than it used to be.

Therefore, I do hope that as St Ethelburga’s future discussions and conversations grow, they will be able to include representatives of media from the different faith traditions in these conversations, because it seems to me of absolutely vital importance. The other issue I feel rather strongly about, as a result of reading what Simon Keyes has been doing in conversations about ‘sharing the space’, is the issue of proselytising, which I feel again is something that can so easily upset people. To me it all comes back to good manners and a little bit of consideration. We are all trying to explain the nature of mystery, and in a sense it is almost impossible, so we need to do much more to understand each others groping to understand the mysterious and not try to overdo our desire to know everything, and then we might perhaps reduce the level of conflict, violence and misunderstanding. This is again why I hope it might be possible, during conversations here, for missionary organisations to be included as part of the discussion, which again I think is of great importance. I won’t go on any further, except to wish everyone well who is involved in this marvellous task being undertaken at St Ethelburga’s, and above all to thank those who have been generous enough to make all this possible.