Am terribly saddened to hear news just in from the Bishop of California that two of the icons of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco have been destroyed.

One was of John Donne and this one was of Mary Magdalene.

I saw her every day when I spend three weeks living at Grace Cathedral last year. She always seemed to me to be particulary striking, serene and somehow unsettling. She was a bearer of the divine, in other words.

There are images which some people cannot bear. This proved to be one one such.

Mary Magdalene and John Donne – pray with us for a world free from violence, free from attack, free from fears within and fears without.

Amen.