Quick answers

Let me tell you a story. (I know good writing for the web doesn't advocate storytelling - or words like advocate - but this is a good one.)

James and I rode the train home together yesterday. So I'm still reading The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne (see it on Amazon). After reading all about how following Jesus means living with the outcasts and loving when it hurts, I was thinking about how I couldn't ignore the truth of this.

As James and I got off the train and headed out the gate, I was explaining how I felt, saying: "If that's what I believe - and it is - then what am I going to do about it?" At that precise moment, as we were walking, we looked up to see a homeless man who said, "Hello!". We smiled and 'hello'ed back as we continued walking.

So not such a rhetorical question after all.

Butterfly tendencies II

When I was in a sixth-form English lesson with the teacher that I most respected, we were discussing what we were going to go as to a fancy dress party that evening. When asked what I was going dressed as, I replied that I would be going as a butterfly. She immediately burst out laughing; a deep, knowing laugh that was interspersed with giggles and which carried on shaking her shoulder-pads for a good minute. I sat there bemused.

It was the same laugh she used when we were reading Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia and we had come across an innuendo that was lost on us at first but that I was encouraged to find through the direction of her laugh. What was the hidden meaning here? Why was it so funny that I would be going as a butterfly? Was the wire, canvas and paint I had still to assemble into a pair of giant wings and antennae in some way a symbol of who I was? Do I have butterfly tendencies?