The nonrecognition of Jesus by the Disciples can seem unusual, difficult to understand. Context is of course important to any recognition – if you’re in what is thought to be the ‘wrong’ place or in the ‘wrong’ clothes, it might be easier to be uncertain who you are. When I lived in London, this was telling – it’s a big place and you might catch a glimpse of someone and not be sure who it was, and if you are to be confused anywhere, a busy capital city with millions of people walking around...

There used to be a blog called ‘Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things’, I was a great fan. It showed the leader of North Korea being taken to see things, and he would look at them with a degree of interest, depending on the Thing he was presented with. Sometimes, one of his (rather obvious) body doubles would take his place, and their look of sheer incomprehension of what they were being shown could be telling, a little like when a mechanic shows me what is wrong with my car, I simply don’t know what...

We can see some beautiful things in the course of our lives. I think particularly of a field in Alsace on a blazing hot day, with the heat making the corn shimmer, or sailing into Stralsund harbour and seeing a townscape largely untouched for centuries or walking into Kykkos monastery for the first time and taking in the sheer opulence. Last summer I climbed to the top of the central cathedral in Berlin and was rewarded with a stunning view of the city. This urge to climb or sail seems to...