Give Me Your Hand, My Friend

It was Patrick, the former Methodist minister at the joint Methodist-United Reformed church down the road, who concluded the Churches Together United Service his church was hosting one year with the hymn 'What Shall Our Greeting Be', and ambushed us, his clergy colleagues from other churches, by grabbing the hands he could reach and insisting we should do the same. Had he been a silly young fellow and not a doughty elderly one who should have retired several years before, I would have found it maddening and not splendidly nuts, which is the attitude I did in fact have. Today we were hosting the same event which included communion for the first time since 2019. Paula and husband Peter brought along the bread - boxes of little cubes of sliced white, not what we usually use - and some grotty de-alcoholised wine. I thought as a gesture in the direction of unity, Patrick's successor Alan should preside at communion, and as I hadn't warned any of my other clerical compatriots it was only his hand I grasped during the singing of that hymn at the end. We just about got away with it all, and there were nearly 200 people in church, far more than I thought there would be.

'That', said Alan afterwards, 'was so nerve-racking. I haven't been as anxious as that since seminary.' This surprised me. Once I'd got all the elements in place and everyone turned up, I was pretty unconcerned about the whole occasion. I suppose once you accept that communion isn't going to take place in the way you expect - that it will be in the form of little cubes of bread and wine whose best recommendation was that it didn't actually make you grimace, and that Paula will take the leftovers and give them to the ducks - you're not that worried about the rest. How strange to find myself the more relaxed party.