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From Leslie Griffiths, Methodist Minister:听听听听听听听

Yesterday was such a grim day with tragedy and mayhem at the heart of our capital city. I was right there though not in sight of the grim events. I was among those locked up in parliament and then funnelled over to Westminster Abbey. We face a new day with great sadness in our hearts and yet, as our Prime Minister has said, determined to get on with life as best we can.

Nothing can offer a better snook to cock at the perpetrators of terror than Red Nose Day. So let鈥檚 get one with it and remind ourselves that tomorrow, the day itself, will be a reminder that it can do us good now and again to abandon our inhibitions and be prepared to look silly. For so much of the time, we live our lives through filters which distort or hide our real selves from the gaze of others. No less a person than one of the country鈥檚 leading stand-up comics suggests that the best way to deal with that might be to throw away those filters, to wear a red nose, and to tell a joke in public. That way, by making ourselves vulnerable, by throwing down our normal defence mechanisms, we might give our real selves a chance to shine.

One of my biblical heroes is Paul, surely a contender to be the Patron Saint of Red Nose Day. I don鈥檛 suppose he ever plonked a red blob on his nose but he did seem ready to wear his heart on his sleeve. He made himself vulnerable all right. Once, in Athens for example, he got himself invited to address the parliament and, among the professors and crack-brained dreamers of that city, he made a pitch for the Christian message only to find himself, literally, laughed out of court. 鈥淒on鈥檛 ring us, we鈥檒l ring you,鈥� they bellowed as, one after the other, they filed out of the assembly room.

Two people remained, one a prostitute and the other a Senator. Paul鈥檚 word had touched their hearts. I鈥檇 be chuffed to death if my weekly offerings made an appeal to a spectrum that wide.

It鈥檚 all about being ourselves and standing up for the values we believe in.

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