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Good Morning The weather is about to break, but, like many people I’ve enjoyed the recent sunshine, and so I was pleased to have access to the beach on the hottest day of July since records began courtesy of the fact that the annual Conference of the British Methodist Church was meeting in Southport last week. But, even being on a very different beach from that in Tunisia, it was impossible not to call to mind the horrors that happened there and think about those left behind injured, grieving and fearful. I made two trips to the beach during the week, the first was to see a labyrinth that members of the Conference had dug into the sand. As I leant over the pier with other passers-by, we watched person after person take off their shoes and enter the home-made ritual space. As they walked, bare-foot, heads down, slowly following the single path to the centre, so we who were watching gradually fell silent, jokes and questions ebbing into the slowed down, reflective pace of those walking. The other trip I made was a few miles down the coast to see Antony Gormley’s sculpture, Another Place. In 1997 he placed 100 full sized casts of himself over 3 miles of flat sand; they have weathered differently, some covered in barnacles, some still pristine, but they all face out to sea, silently scanning the horizon as the racing tide engulfs them and then retreats again. Both of these beach experiences took me to Tunisia, but also to ‘another place’ – a deeper place where fear can be confronted and mortality named and goodness affirmed, and I hope that the memorials proposed by the Prime Minister this weekend, for those killed in terrorist attacks, will provide such a place for those left behind and those traumatized. Ever since the 1780s whenever Methodist people have gathered in Conference we have begun with Charles Wesley’s hymn, which starts, ‘And are we yet alive and see each other’s face?’ and the poignant answer is always, ‘No, not all of us’. And the hymn goes on to ask, ‘What troubles have we seen, what conflicts have we past, fightings without and fears within since we assembled last?’ Together, through this hymn, we recall what is most unbearable in our lives, and we remember those we have loved, so that our fears and griefs might be drawn into the well-worn ritual space that the hymn offers and there connect with what we believe is at the centre of all things… the love of God that is stronger than fear and death and even hell. It can be very hard when grief or fear is raging to find any still space or any reason to hope but these ancient rites and the renewed demand for public memorials witness to the fact that we still need corporate rituals and spaces that can take us from the beaches of our fears to ‘another place’ and back again, to stand firm for what is good even in the face of the tide.