At 11pm on April 25th, 2003 Aaron Ralston parked his truck at the Horseshoe Canyon Trailhead in Utah, climbed into his sleeping bag and drifted serenely to sleep. The next day would change his life profoundly and shockingly for all time. He woke the next morning, oblivious to the magnitude of this day, wolfed down a high energy breakfast, and mounted his bike. 15 miles later, he locked it to an isolated tree in the wilderness, and strode purposefully to his destiny with terror - Bluejohn Canyon. It was 2:45 before he began his descent into the chasm, and within a half hour disaster struck. I say ‘struck’, but ‘rolled’ would be better. Aron was negotiating a 10-foot drop between two ledges when an 800-pound boulder shifted above him, and rolled onto his right hand, crushing it against the sandstone wall.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” At school I feared that question. I tried to put off answering it for as long as I could. In fact, the only reason I went to college was because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, and it bought me three more years of not having to tackle that question. The reason it scared me was that I was the third child of three, and so my thoughts and wishes were not really very important. I was used to just tagging along with whatever my sister and brother wanted to do; their voices were the ones my parents heard. And I was fine with that because I learned that even though I didn’t have a say in what I was going to do on Saturday, or where I was going on vacation, or what movie I was going to see at the cinema, or even what I was having for dinner, everything always turned out happily, and I enjoyed whatever was decided. My career path became clear when I was 21 and an undergraduate, but I didn’t really decide even then. No, God had taken the place of my parents and siblings, and he chose what I was going to do when I grew up.

Now before I really get into this sermon, I’d like all of you to repeat a few words after me. Here we go: “aaaaarrrggghh”, “shiver me timbers”, “I’ll make ye walk the plank”. Well done. You’re now fully prepared for a major event on the global calendar. Wednesday of this week is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. It’s true - the 19th of September. For the simple reason that it’s fun to call someone a scurvy rat. This important festival was started in 1995 by people with far too much time on their hands named John Baur and Mark Summers, and in the last 23 years it has gained momentum like a Spanish galleon in full sail. According to the Web site talklikeapirate.com, it has become so popular that they have issued a set of guidelines for how to celebrate the day in the workplace. For example, you need to wear red and black, and don’t be afraid to accessorize with an eye patch or a parrot.

His name is Arthur Bühl, and if you ever see him loitering near your house, be worried. You see, Arthur Buhl has a set of skills that make him a potential nightmare to the rest of us. So advanced are these skills that Arthur Buhl often goes by the name “the Arthurmeister” and even less modestly, Master of the Universe. For much of the year Arthur hauls his 6’5” German frame intimidatingly around the globe menacing all who stand in his way of glory, confronting every challenge hurled his way. Arthur is a champion in a sport that I had never even heard of until I started thinking about this sermon. It’s called Locksport, or lock picking, and it is exactly what you’d think it is. The sport of lock-picking was apparently invented by Louis 16th towards the end of the 18th century. Pretty ironic, really, when you consider that he had so much money that his wife advised people who had no bread to eat cake instead. All his lock picking skills couldn’t stop him being parted from his head at the guillotine.

There are many things I’m grateful for about living and working in Westfield. One of them is that our parish is across the street from the police station. Not because it affords us extra security but because it allows me to say that there is grace opposite law. It also means that I’m handy to vouch for a member of the parish who may have spent the night in a police cell and needs me to attest to their good character. Which I was called on to do earlier this summer.

To listen to some health gurus you’d think that bread would kill you. It’s high in carbs and can spike blood sugar levels, it contains “anti-nutrients”, which sounds terrifying. I’d never even heard of an anti-nutrient – but now I have I’m not sure I will ever sleep again. I’m having visions of mean-looking ingredients, lurking in the dark corners of your sandwich waiting for innocent nutrients to pass, and when they do, jumping out from behind a slice of tomato, beating them unconscious, and drowning them in mayonnaise. Apparently, even in its non-processed form bread may raise bad cholesterol by a whopping 60%. And so there is now a thriving industry devoted to the catchy little slogan “The more you eat bread, the sooner you’re dead.”

The city was Brussels, the occasion was a meeting of European Union bureaucrats, and the focus of humiliation was me. It was 1990, and I was a career civil servant in the UK government’s social security department. Every couple of months my boss traveled to grand meetings in Brussels, where along with officials from all the other nations of the European Union, she would discuss rather dull regulations governing social security for migrant workers. I knew virtually nothing about this, but someone had to sit behind her, in a sharp suit looking like they were a vital part of UK delegation, and that month it was me. My job was to look knowledgeable, and represent Her Majesty’s Government with grace and dignity.

According to Elton John, and this may be the only time you hear me quoting Elton in a sermon, “Sorry seems to be the hardest word.” But statistically speaking, he probably is not the best person to write that song lyric, because according to research I read last week in preparation for this sermon, the British (Elton’s people) use the word ‘sorry’ more than any other people on earth. Apparently, if you bump into a Brit in the supermarket the chances are they will blurt out ‘sorry’, even if it’s you who caused the collision. In fact, in an academic study of 1,000 Brits the average said ‘sorry’ for something eight times a day, and one in eight used the word twenty times a day. Sorry about that.

I have some wonderful news to share with you. I’m so excited, I can hardly control myself. It’s an email. Now, you know those emails that just go straight into your spam folder and you don’t even see them. Well, it was not one of those. No, no. It was from the none other than the FBI. At first, I thought it was to do with my naturalization test which I took last Wednesday – and passed, woo hoo! But it was even better than that.

Three friends are looking back over their long and eventful lives, and reflecting on how they would like to be remembered at their funerals. One of them says, "I want my priest to say, 'Here lies a woman who was a good wife, a loving mother, and a loyal friend.'" The next one says, “I want the pastor to say, 'This man was a skilled worker, a respected professional, and an accomplished leader.'” And the third friend says, “Well, at my funeral I want the preacher to say, 'Look! She’s moving!'”