A Polite Reminder.
The wise old bishop sipped gently on his tumbler and listened attentively to my tale of woe.
I was foolishly berating myself for being incompetent, forgetful and unthinking. “I am slow of speech and dull of mind.” I bewailed. In fact, I was quite good at this pretence of false modesty. Analysed astutely it was nothing more than a fishing trip for that sparkling breed of fish we call compliments. The bigger the better of course.
It was a long time ago in quite a different place. I was a different person then. Nowadays I know my shortcomings and I just smirk at them which is a much healthier attitude than the self-flagellation I used to persist with. A foolish waste of energy and time. Bah Humbug!
What I thought was my clinching, closing and triumphant finale was … “Come on My Lord, you must have copious counts of clerics at your disposal who could do this gig a whole lot better than me. Couldn’t you give the job to them?”
The bishop smirked, as Bishops are want to do, especially when they have an articulate and witty answer up the long sleeve of their cassock. He gave me a polite reminder.
“Two things David. Yes, there are any number of clergy who I could call on and maybe they would do things differently. But they don’t need to do this job. You do. For your own development and your own maturity, you need to do this, especially because you don’t want to.
Secondly, (and this is the bit where he looked me straight in the eye) there are other clergy, lots of them… but there is only one David Oulton”.
For your homework, you might try replacing my name with yours and reading that last sentence out loud to yourself.