One of my skills is to be able to read upside down. I acquired when I was a teacher and there wasn’t enough room between the desks. It has often served me in good stead, and has sometimes allowed me to read (unsuspected?) what people had written about me.

One of Father Dominic’s skills – now he is no longer here it may be said – is to be able to pick up one particular conversation in a room full of chattering voices. This can be very useful at parties. It proved to be my downfall when I was talking about him in a crowded room and thought I could not be detected! But it also explains to me why he undertook that now famous journey to Antarctica (incidentally he still reads our Newsletter by electronic means, so I am not talking behind his back).

The reason is that king penguins at the South Pole have been discovered to be able to do the same. Apparently they can understand each other at a distance of 60 feet in the midst of a whole host of other adult penguins and screeching young demanding their food. Sometimes this meant the penguins were ‘by-passing’, so to speak, up to 20 other ‘conversations’, if we may use that term, to connect with the one which concerned them. It also meant that the penguins did not end up depositing the hard-won food into the eager beaks of the wrong children. No doubt Father Dominic practised this skill while standing on the ice. "Hey, you, bird …. I mean you, not you other 55 standing there ….!"

This seems a very theological thing for the penguins to be able to do; it is also very theological for Father Dominic, but that may be taken for granted. For one of the essential skills of the Christian life is to be able to pick up the one voice that matters among a whole host of other siren calls which may sound genuine, and may sound brighter, but are not the one we are concerned with.