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I love baptising babies.

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Last week I baptised George: a fantastic little character with a very stylish cap perched sideways on his head – a reflection of the Italian side of his family, no doubt.

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I never cease to be moved when proud parents hand me their precious little one. And George melted my heart with his innocent gaze straight into my eyes as I held him, spoke his name and splashed water on his head. The charged emotional atmosphere probably owed a lot to the fact that I’d buried his grandmother, Lillian, just a couple of weeks before.

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It’s an awesome thing to cradle a child and wonder what adventure lies ahead for her or him. It is equally awesome at a funeral to look back over 81 years of someone’s life, with the task of trying to sum them up.

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When we indicate the span of a person’s life, we write the date of their birth and the date of their death with a dash in between. It’s just a little line, a hyphen that represents the entirety of a person’s existence on earth – where they grew up, who they spent their life with, what made them laugh…or cry, what they dreamt about, achieved.

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In the end I think that’s all that matters: how we spend our dash. We may climb Everest, write a novel, travel the world, bring up a family. The adventure isn’t in our achievements but in the passion, love and care that we bring to even the most mundane tasks.

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I wonder who George will turn out to be – an explorer, a rock singer, a politician? Maybe a gardener, a car mechanic or just a good dad. As always, I said a Celtic blessing over him that has the line: ‘May you know what it is to love and be loved.’

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I reckon that’s the best way to spend your dash.