‘What made you become a priest?’
As with almost all open-ended questions, this one gets asked with a ready-made answer already firmly in the mind of the interrogator. I’ve been asked it many times by many people. In pubs (once, memorably, before a man sicked seven or eight pints’ worth of Foster’s all over himself), at dinners (I am 90 per cent sure I was invited to at least one dinner party to distract from the hosting couple’s impending break-up), by people in the street, by members of my congregation. I’ve been asked more times than I can count. Over the years I’ve realized that it’s really several different questions, and expects several different answers, depending on where the questioner puts their emphasis.
‘What made you become a priest?’ That’s the tone adopted by a kindly stranger at a house party or drinks event when they learn what I do. It’s almost always a precursor to a prolonged sharing of their, often hostile, attitude to religion while I try desperately to catch eyes with someone who might swoop in and change the subject. They almost always carry the vague, lager-fuelled hope that they – the brother of the girlfriend of someone I knew at university – might finally turn me from the error of my ways. Oh, to have such faith!
‘What made you become a priest?’ This is asked by one of two types of people. First, a disappointed bottomless bruncher, who hoped that being young(ish) and male and in a pub frequented by hen dos meant I might otherwise have been fair game (of course, the aftermath of a bottomless brunch is perhaps not the right time to explain that the Church of England takes a more relaxed approach to clerical celibacy than Rome). Or, sadly more realistically, and certainly far more often, by my mother: in response to some word of manifestly unchristian venom shot at a sibling or an example of ungodly personal cleanliness.
‘What made you become a priest?’ A knottier, more difficult question, asked by wise vicars of many years’ standing, or by my fraught conscience of a sleepless night, and one I struggle to answer. ‘Becoming’ hardly suggests something that happens overnight. Does anyone ever really grow into a role like mine? Can anyone truly become the priest they should be, least of all someone who first becomes so in their mid-twenties? At what point does one truly become a priest? Am I there yet? How can someone who can’t even remember Euro ’96 or can still recall a playground grudge over Pokémon cards (I’m looking at you, Charlie) speak of life and death, love and beauty, Heaven and God? How can anyone speak convincingly of the Divine to a world that seems quite as far from it as this one?
Fear not, however, dear reader. This is not some existentialist treatise. Coward that I am, I normally defuse each and every one of these questions with humour. Taking a deep breath, I pretend to consider the question long and hard. I might allow my eyes to flit ever so briefly upwards as if I were a prophet of old seeking to invoke Divine wisdom, before uttering, ‘Well, I heard that black was slimming!’
The questioner will smirk and nod, their question expertly evaded. Occasionally, if they’re feeling generous, I might even elicit a chuckle. It’s a great get-out-of-jail-free response. We can move on to simpler things – houseplant maintenance, a friend’s latest dating mishaps, the meaning of life – and it has the advantage of being true: clerical wear really is slimming. Although not, perhaps, for the reasons you might expect. But we’ll get to that later. In the meantime, welcome to a year in the life of a young, unlikely, unexpected, and frankly unprepared priest.