5 April

This is Ulm Cathedral. Still the world’s tallest church I think. It took 500 years to build. I think there’s an important lesson there, we’ve lived in a selfish age where life and what’s important is increasingly defined within an individual’s lifespan. The idea of starting a project that might take generations to build would be unusual for us today. It’s another way we’ve forgotten how institutions are the real centre of human life. Institutions carry humans from one generation to the next, without them life has to be re-made with every generation. There are wise theologians who say we’ve misunderstood immortality as individuals living forever, in body or spirit. What lives forever is humankind itself, through its institutions.