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From the Reverend Richard Coles:Ìý
Want four seats and table to yourself on a train? Put on a dog collar and there’s a good chance you’ll be undisturbed. Why? I think people’s first reaction is to avoid you lest they get involved in an embarrassing conversation. Or, worse, get asked if they’ve been washed in the blood of the Lamb. I have never asked someone that question, and can’t imagine ever doing so; and I’m more than happy to be get an hour to myself, to read the paper, tweet whimsically about Wimbledon, look out of the window, or fall asleep, which I could do for England.Ìý
I was on my way to Oxford a while ago to give a talk and woke up at Bicester to find myself sprawled over two seats, my papers strewn around me, and with a thread of dribble slowly pooling on my paunch. Nobody wanted to sit next to me then, either. Except the ones who do, magnetically attracted rather than repelled, the ones with a glint in the eye, who ask you hard questions about transubstantiation, the Second Defenestration of Prague, and - hardest of all - ‘what’s the difference between a Vicarage and a Rectory?’ And then there are the ones that remind you that yours is the best job in the world. That’s not just a pious exclamation - there was a report recently that showed clergy have the highest score for job satisfaction of anyone (which you would never guess if you heard a group of us moaning about the Archdeacon’s Quinquennial).Ìý
The ones you bump into, or sit next to on the bus, or meet out walking the dog, who tell you extraordinary things, like the little old lady who was approached by a polar bear when her Zodiac got stuck somewhere in the North West Passage and saw it off by singing Onward Christian Soldiers at the top of her voice; by the nurse in wartime London who lodged with a family with twin boys in Bethnal Green, Ronnie and Reggie, which took such good care of her she never had to queue at the butchers or the grocers. By the stories of hardship endured, losses reversed, impossible choices made and unmade; by the people the world rarely notices, whose stories reveal the boundlessness of grace, and the comedy and tragedy of living, and the sweetness and savour of life.