‘When we talk about the Mysteries of the Church’, I told the congregation on Sunday, ‘we usually mean baptism or holy communion. But there are more local mysteries too. We have recently solved some, such as where the electricity meter is (in the cupboard at the back of the church – I was looking for an old-fashioned spinny-roundy one when in fact it’s digital), or who puts out the bins on Wednesdays (it’s Chloe the bookkeeper). But the other day I noticed that next to the electrics cupboard is a jar of pickled onions. I have no idea where it has come from. If it belongs to you, or if you want it, your name is on it, and do remove it’.

Nobody has decided they want the jar of pickled onions yet. Its continued presence causes me to reflect on something not entirely banal, which is the issue of how laypeople interact with the church building they use and inhabit. To do something that they are helping with or organising, people will happily take matters into their own hands: they will seize the initiative. They will move heavy wooden chairs from the church space where they normally sit into the hall so a particular person can sit on those rather than a plastic one. They will shift the dial on the thermostat if it is cold. They will open the hall windows if it is hot. They will almost invariably forget, or not think it necessary, to restore affairs to the status quo ante, to move back the chair, to reset the thermostat, or to close the window, because the circumstance that engages their commitment, the particular event, is past, and they’re on to the next thing. In contrast, something that is not their direct concern can be screened out. A jar of pickled onions can be indefinitely left next to a cupboard, or a cafetiere full of four-day-old coffee left on the kitchen worktop can be deftly manoeuvred around rather than tipped down the sink (‘Oh that was here when we arrived’). The wonderful example I always quote, even after 14 years, is Mr and Mrs Bowdry, now both long gone to their eternal reward, putting their faulty service booklets back on the pile at an 8am mass in 2011 to confuse the next person to pick them up. I suppose people do this out of self-defence, to conserve their resources for the next important challenge they will actually need them for. I suppose I do, too.