"Preach the Gospel. If necessary, use words"

The quote above is normally attributed to St Francis. Certainly that attribution is strongly disputed.

And I've always wondered whether that's an excuse for a form of "keep your nose clean" Christianity. It's probably true, in most circumstances, that if you keep your trap shut and just do good, then you won't get people throwing stones at you. It's the opening your mouth part of the preaching the Gospel that more often than not gets people in trouble. But it has inspired me, to a degree. Because if you are to preach the Gospel but not use words, then what is your best course of action?

Without using words

Obvious, really. We are all called to be Mimes.

We've started an emergency training course for our Mimes. I'm not saying that it's easy, getting them to preach the Gospel, but we're working hard at it. So far they can do "St Paul walking against the wind" and "St James finding his way around a transparent box". Unfortunately they seem to be the only routines mimes ever do. But on the bright side, that means that "St John the Divine finding his way around a transparent box" and "St Jude walking across the wind" are fairly easy extensions of the techniques. I'm hoping, if we keep working at it, that "St Peter sinking into the Sea of Galilee" will eventually be a real winner.

Of course, the trouble with the Gospel according to mimes is that the communication opportunities are limited. After all, what can you do with just sad faces and finding your way around a transparent box? Still, I've just finished translating the Gospel to the Romans into Mime, which means I've rendered it into a number of facial expressions. I reproduce it below, in emoticon format, as I don't have a mime to hand:

>:o    >:(    :-*    :'(    :o)