“What did you do at the Lambeth Conference, Daddy?”

“I queued, son, I queued.”

The Conference is large. Over eight hundred bishops are gathered together plus a similar number of spouses and a small army of Stewards and volunteers, invariably helpful and smiling. Even so, there are only a limited number of entrances and exits to any event, be it breakfast or a journey by fleets of coaches to Canterbury Cathedral.

It’s over meals and on those serendipitous encounters that new friendships begin to take shape. Talking to a bishop from a particularly remote part of the world I discovered that he knew one of our diocesan clergy very well indeed.

Time for Bible study. John’s gospel, chapter 1: the Prologue: ”In the beginning was the Word…”,and seven bishops from across the world began tentatively to share their insights. The power of geography to shape interpretation of texts never fails to surprise. “Jerusalem”, said one, ”is a Western city.” We compared notes about what it meant for God to “pitch his tent” amongst his people. “Tents” in the West brings to mind soggy summer camp-sites, foggy with midges. “Tents”, in less temperate climes may mean gazing up in silent gratitude for the over-arching roof of stars.

Then we go to the Cathedral, where we are addressed by the Archbishop, as we move in to a more meditative mode. And there is time, lots of it, to walk slowly around that great building.

I find myself next to a semi-circular apse in the north transept, a chapel dedicated to St Martin of Tours, now the resting place of the bones of Lanfranc, William the Conqueror’s friend and archbishop. Lanfranc it was who introduced the Rood Cross to England: a great transverse beam of wood stretching north- south across the entrance the chancel and on it the figure of Christ Crucified, and, if I remember correctly, some angels. I may be wrong.

Next to Lanfranc lie the relics of Ediva, the wife of King Edward and daughter-in-law of King Alfred the Great. She was a great supporter of Dunstan, a man born in a Somerset village called Baltonsborough, and in sight of Glastonbury Tor. Dunstan, in the tenth century, set out to bring some order to monastic life in England.

It’s always there, the desire to shape, re-form the church; all those arguments about being in, but not of, the world. It seems to me that in the Incarnation, God in Jesus Christ took upon himself the carbon atoms of which all things are made and thereby committed himself entirely to the world. It follows that those distinctions which re-formers so love may be a little more subtle than we think. Be that as it may, Dunstan had a huge influence upon the Church in his generation and is rightly honoured by all of us.

In the Cathedral we said the Lord’s Prayer together, each in our language. The sussuration of sound echoed around the nave and, like incense, floated heavenwards.

We wait on God to see how, out of all these languages, geographies and histories, he may shape a church which learns to be gentle with itself and gentle with those, of all points of view, who wait to see whether this is a tent which has room in it for them.