Towering Over

Perhaps I shouldn't joke about it, but when I was an Anglican curate there was a very tall, very holy Anglo Catholic priest in Eastbourne named Father Derek. Eastbourne, as the English readers will know, is a retirement area, and Father Derek was much loved by the old ladies in their cloth coats and dowdy hats with their coffee mornings and jumble sales.



We were processing out after Mass once and there was Father Derek all decked out in biretta and lacy cotta and cope- nearly seven feet tall-- a gentle giant of a man, and I'm standing at the back watching him process out smiling to all his old dears who loved his so, and his curate leans over to me and says, "There's Derek, towering o'er the wrecks of time."