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Good morning. This evening in College I’ll be delighted to join a meal with students celebrating the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rabbit. According to its origin story, the animals of the Chinese zodiac were selected through a race organised by the Jade Emperor. This has been at the heart of Chinese festivals and self-understanding. As someone born in the year of the Rabbit, I’m pleased to hear that I should be clever, compassionate and generous, although that probably better fits with my negative Rabbit trait of being vain! Images of animals have also been part of my own self-understanding in the Christian tradition. In my childhood, the lion and the lamb featured strongly. In fact, they dominated the front of the church I attended, in a rather surprising way and they stimulated my imagination far more than any of the dull sermons I endured. They were at the centre of a huge banner of the Morrison Busty Lodge of the National Union of Mineworkers, hung behind the pulpit, to recognise the close links between this Methodist church and the origins of the trades union movement. Above the simple phrase ‘the reign of peace’ was a picture of the lion, with a child riding on its back, laying down with the lamb. The image comes from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah where it speaks of the future hope of a coming Messiah and a new age. It was adopted by Christians who saw this age of reconciliation, peace and justice inaugurated by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In this union banner, the image is of a transformed relationship where the lion and the lamb - in spite of their differences – can live peaceably together and yet still be themselves. To adapt a quote originally from Woody Allen, ‘I've always liked that someday the lamb will lay by the lion.... but it won't get much sleep.’ Such a possibility was embodied in this part of the Durham coalfield where pit bosses and miners – with all their differences and disagreements – nevertheless sat together in recognition of the common humanity they found in the worship of Jesus. In a week of further industrial disputes with all their political and economic complexities, I am reminded of the importance of seeing that while those I disagree with may have different outlook and objectives they should not be demonised. And in a complex world of different cultures, I need to recognise the other as gift rather than as threat.