“Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger.”

                                                                                                The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

This is the final sentence of the book ‘The Life of Pi’ by Yann Martel. It’s the story of a young Indian boy (Pi Patel) whose father, the owner of a zoo, makes the decision to move with his family to Canada. Unfortunately while on the journey they are shipwrecked and Pi finds himself adrift in the middle of the ocean in a small lifeboat with only a large Bengal tiger (the somewhat improbably named Richard Parker!) for company. After many adventures and an indeterminate period of time Pi and Richard Parker arrive in Mexico where they are taken into custody and questions are raised about Pi’s account of himself and his experiences.

This is only a very vague précis of an interesting book (I recommend it to you!) and there’s much I could say about it in this message. From reading the final line it might be possible to deduce some of what the story is about. At any rate, one might gather that ‘Mr. Patel’ had been shipwrecked and coped at sea for a long time despite the presence of a tiger. However, in order to discover the whole story it would be necessary to read the book from cover to cover many times. Even then I suspect most of us would miss bits!

The saying ‘Never judge a book by its cover’ is as applicable to people as it is to works of fiction. Our media-focused age makes it almost inevitable that every day we will read stories in the news papers or online, or see images on the television, about people or places we know very little about. The challenge not to rapidly draw conclusions based solely on the snippets of information we’ve heard or seen is very real.

Perhaps to a lesser extent we may find the same challenge in our relationships with those who we see everyday.

Reading one line – even the last line – of a novel may give us a taster of what the story is about; but it’s only by sitting down, preferably with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, and taking the time to really engage with the whole book that we can hope to get a full picture. So it is with our relationships with one another and those we meet from day to day. Just a brief glance at the gospels is enough to tell us how much Jesus valued open, honest sharing with those he came into contact with. Conversation without judgment. Love without strings.

May we all take the time to sit and listen to one another and so deepen our relationships with each other and with the God who knows the whole story.

Every blessing,

Laura