Deeper, underground

I was getting things ready in my new classroom yesterday, painting a blackboard on the wall (like you do in an old Victorian schoolroom) and as I moved some stuff out of the way of the drips, I picked up a children's history book I'd not seen before. It wasn't particulary good, not a patch on the Ladybird histories of my childrhood, but I flicked through it anyway.

Back at home for teatime, Kate and the children had been to the library. They got books on Parkour, a Doctor Seuss, and a book about Harriet Tubman. It had a bronze statue of her on the front.

Kate said, sort of anticipating my bemused look, "Yeh, I don't know who she is." Not exactly bemused, but strangely warmed, I replied: "Actually, I'd never heard of her... before today. But she was in this history book at school, and she helped free slaves on the Underground Railroad." Felt a nudge from God to find out a bit more about her. She was known as the Moses of her people (which resonated with this morning's bible study notes on Luke, Tom Wright making the connection with Jesus' new kind of Exodus.)

Slavery, freedom, safe houses, the everyday heroic...

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