The Best Lines From The Church Times

N.B. The Church Times is a weekly Anglican paper published every Friday in London. It's exactly what you want it to be.

"On Sunday, a teenage girl came to our parish eucharist with her mother, and barked like a wild dog throughout. It was very alarming. I gave her a little time, and some prayer. Then I gave her a holding cross...I asked whether they had any occult or disturbing pictures or books. They had already cleared the pictures, but showed me some books, and asked me to take them away. One was the Encyclopaedia of Serial Killers. A few years later, I saw the girl again. Unrecognisable, she was fine."

"His first poetry collection ignited no critical reaction. Neither did a second volume published six years later. Probably just as well, Mr Gresham says."

RURAL DANESIDE CHURCHES

"AS ARCHBISHOP, he came to enjoy long train journeys."

"Simon Buckley once operated puppets for Spitting Image, and made a name with his own TV character, Nobby, a talking sheep. Now, his charges play a slightly different role.

'My careers master flicked through his big book of jobs, and said: Puppeteer isn't in here; so it will have to be priest.'"

"'It's the same crowd that gets saved every blessed time. You'd wonder how they ever found time to get lost.' Young Norman would have liked to have 'once or twice...gone forward,' and 'signed a little ticket saying we had accepted Jesus as our Saviour, rather as if we were applying for membership of the public library,' but knew such assent would lead to his mother accusing him of 'showing her up in public.' 'It only makes people start wondering what you've been up to,' she would say, 'if you go traipsing out there.'"

USE YOUR STRATEGIC SKILLS TO SHARE GOD'S LOVE ACROSS SUFFOLK

"Time to get real with Christmas cards"

"Are 220sq miles of National Park enough space? We're a benefice of two parishes and six churches next to the beautiful New Forest!"

"The Church has lost sight of the power of the puppet, Fr Buckley says."

"Anecdote suggested that college entrance was lubricated by confirmation."

"On the other hand, a group of transsexuals meets regularly for evensong."

"What is the point of Narnia?"

"It is good to find some British libraries included in the collection, even if one of them is Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art Library of 1909, which was destroyed by fire earlier this year. Such a fate will, it is to be hoped, never befall the Sir Duncan Rice Library in Aberdeen (Schmit, Hammer & Lassen, 2012), the Library of Birmingham (Mecanoo, 2013), or Colin St John Wilson's new building for the British Library, completed in 1999."

"I said to myself: 'Is this getting published just because of the curiosity value of an Archbishop writing poetry?'"

"St Cuthbert's is being given the award for the 'Best Re-use of a Building'...This may be a historic listed building, but our faith is a faith for today."

"Grandma Cornthwaite had already briefed him about the disadvantages of being saved."

[Image via]