Three epiphanies at Purification

I've mentioned the convent before in these pages, and Best Beloved's association with it, if you have a long memory. Today, as you're doubtless aware, is Candlemas and neither of us were at work, so back we went.

Even though it's an Anglican institution it is way higher than what I'm used to. If I'm the Chilterns, this is at least the Alps. We gathered in the vestibule outside the chapel, each of us clutching a candle. We processed in by candlelight, the nuns chant the Nunc Dimittis with the refrain "A light to lighten the gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel" in a key that would stun a passing bat. Censor, incense, the works.

At one point the officiating priest processed down the aisle with a Bible held over his head in both hands, as if he was about to swat a particularly nasty fly sitting on the lectern. I've always been very leery of anything that seems to treat the Bible as a holy object - it's paper, it's a book, it's about as holy as His Majesty's Starship, though considerably more useful - but I suddenly realised, "wow." In my church you're never more than three feet from a Bible. This habit was a relic of the days when your church's Bible was the nearest one for miles. It wasn't just the word of God, it was your only copy of the word of God. Of course they treated it with a bit more reverence. And that made me realise how blasé I can be. I mean, come on, I've got the full NIV text on my phone. But that doesn't lessen its importance.

So that was one lesson learnt. Another was that if an elderly black-clad nun glides up to you in her power wheelchair, your instinct is to look around for the Daleks. Or maybe that's just me. Or maybe not entirely me. After chatting over coffee to a delightful but extremely vertically challenged nun - if I'd fitted a microphone into my belly button I'd have been able to hear her perfectly - Best Beloved did confess, "that one reminds me of Yoda."

My Protestant instincts finally baulked at the closing number, a hymn of praise aimed direct at Mary, with words that really ought to have been directed at her son. Yet I'm too polite to keep my lips firmly sealed. But, lesson no. 3, I've discovered that on those occasions when you really can't get out of singing a hymn of Marian praise, with a little mental flip it's quite possible to fix in your mind the guy who's really in charge up there, the one that all the multi-winged sepha- chebuf- sebrephachim are singing praises to, and even do a quick on-the-fly reword inside your head. And thus you find your praises all being aimed at the right department.

I've no idea how well any of those lessons will serve me in future life, but I do look forward to finding out.