Article originally published in the October 2020 issue of the magazine of St John’s, Devizes.
I started my first day as a curate with a swim. It hadn’t been planned in advance. Waking early on a bright and cloudless midsummer morning, I decided to cycle along the canal to Bishops Cannings. Despite noting with concern how narrow the towpath became as it passed the Marina, I felt invigorated by the deep orange sunshine on my face and cool air in my lungs. Due to be commissioned as a Licensed Lay Worker that afternoon, a milestone on a very long journey to ordained ministry, I felt gloriously and intensely alive.
The next thing I knew, my bike had somehow made a ninety degree turn and toppled down the bank of the canal, plunging vertically like the Titanic, and catapulting me through the air like a rodeo rider being thrown. I felt mud in my hands as I scraped the bottom. I couldn’t manage to heave my old boneshaker back up the bank, so I trudged home on foot, soaked and stinking of carp. Worse still, my mobile phone died – it was my only internet connection as my broadband wasn’t connected yet, and I needed to be able to get on Zoom to be licensed. What an inauspicious start to a momentous day!
I said some lairy things to God as I showered. On that day of all days, couldn’t He have protected me from such ignominy? Yet I later began to wonder if He hadn’t arranged that strange swerve to my own benefit. Let me explain.