Cleaning

The house has been cleaned ready for the visitors this afternoon. Vacuum cleaner, cleaning agents, dusters have all been applied. Energy has been expended- a slight warmth in the body noticed. 

Now let's qualify that; the house has been cleaned in the parts the visitors are likely to go. The usual preparations, I imagine, in most houses when visitors are expected. Dusty corners remain. Unpolished surfaces too. 

If I take this as a metaphor for what Lent is about, this half-preparation will not do, although again it's about as far as most of us get. The 'turn away from sin, and turn to Christ' will leave us with unexamined habits, favourite attitudes still harboured and loved. 

We do our best, with limited insight into what makes us tick, what makes us who we are. Few can produce the 'hundredfold' harvest in the parable of the sower, but there is no berating  from Jesus' lips of the ones who produce thirty, sixty fold. The direction of travel is Godward, and I'm sure God will honour that. 

    

The pain

 The new training programme at the gym, set up at my request, has landed me in pain for three days. I want to walk the newly-designated St, James' Way in the summer, from Reading to Southampton, but in view of my great age and decrepit body, will probably attempt it in two halves, separated by 6 weeks or so. The present pain level makes me wonder if I will do it at all......

The training regime is designed so that my legs particularly will zoom up hill and down dale with no ill effects- the pain now is so that there will be little pain then. When I walked the camino thirteen years ago, it was the muscles in my thighs that caused me pain- the same ones as now. Memo to self; I must build up the strength and stamina on this training programme at a slower rate; bull in a china shop has proved unworkable in terms of pain and discomfort. 

All this came to mind before I fell asleep earlier this week, pondering 'How do I make a good Lent when already I try to be alert to God every day?' The unused leg muscles reminded me forcefully that there are some resources which have not been exercised for some time. From there it was an easy jump- a metaphorical one, dear reader- to identify some Lenten reading. 

Not all pain is bad- discuss.   

The good

 I love that wry optimism which sees rain as 'liquid sunshine'. We've needed it as 'February fill-dyke' has extended into early March. Well, the water authority will be pleased, even if the rest of us have to keep on smiling, and with wry optimism remind ourselves it's really liquid sunshine. I can say that here where there have been few floods, but maybe it doesn't hold elsewhere.

However, there's something good and pure about letting the wryness go, and as it were, standing in the truth of rain being another form of sunshine. Many in this cynical and world-weary age would call it foolishness, naivete, cracked, but from a faith viewpoint, maybe it asserts powerfully that the sun only shines, as God only loves. There are clouds, but the sun keeps on shining, even if we don't see it. That all that comes to us can be turned to good, for those who would see it as such. 

There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

sang Leonard Cohen, in 'Anthem'. Do we see the crack, or welcome the light? 

comfort zones

 I don't know who coined the phrase 'comfort zone', but it's a brilliant way to encapsulate the routine, the safe- all the things, the people I'm -yes- comfortable with. I don't have to try hard here, I can work from default positions, I'm in control, there's little here which has about it 'here be dragons', as on those unmapped areas of early maps. 

Little which is dragon-infested, but not necessarily all.  Trouble is, comfort zones can be small, and paradoxically they can be uncomfortable. I may be safe, but I may hate myself for the default position it leaves me in. Comfort zones can become smaller, more restrictive. I've seen that in some people. 

By contrast, the faith invites us to a landscape with the widest of hinterlands. 'Explore' it says. Or to use another metaphor, God puts us in front of a huge crammed-full cupboard, throws open the doors, and says 'Go in, take what is necessary, and then, take some more, beyond the necessary, and keep coming back.' It's an endless landscape, inviting us to push on, leave the stockade, the comfort zone far behind. 

New worlds lie ahead. Explorers wanted for expedition. Experienced guide comes as standard.  

Bureaucracy

 In a crowded week, a task which has caused frustration;- helping a friend recently arrived here to get a covid booster. He has a certificate showing two vaccinations back home, abroad. Should be a simple task then to find a vaccination centre for the booster, which will set his mind at rest. Let's look at the info on the laptop..... and enter some info. Name? Date of birth? Name of doctor? Oh, it says you're not registered there. Let's try another way...ring the medical centre where you know you've registered, and speak to a receptionist to find the exact name you registered, 'I'm sorry sir, under data protection I can't tell you that information. Best ring 119 and speak to the national centre..' 119 duly rung; press a thousand keys before speaking to someone in the flesh, who says you need to google 'Tell the NHS about your vaccination', and enter the information there. This will register your foreign covid jabs, if the vaccine complied with UK standards, and then we can move forward......;

A jibbering wreck emerges from this mountain of bureaucracy. Yes, I understand the need of it, but negotiating it is another matter. Before you can do this, you need to do that, And before you do that you need to do the other. Ad infinitum. 

In the kingdom of grace and wisdom, I know of no forms to fill in. Need, expressed to the king, brings forth the grace and wisdom for the tasks of faith, however tangled or simple they present.  

  

The earworm

 This week it's been those opening word of Psalm 42; 'Like as the hart seeketh after the water brooks, so longs my soul after thee, O God...  ' chanted by a cathedral choir. Like all earworms, it's insistent, coming back at unlooked for times when my brain or soul or heart is not otherwise engaged. 

Yes, it exposes a truth, that at heart I am a seeker after God. An amateur, admittedly, who gives up all too easily, who keeps trying new paths,- if it were projected on a screen, it would look like an irregular wave with troughs and peaks, and probably large sections flatlining.

But it also brings to mind that age-old truth about God's quenching only causes us to thirst the more after him. Another way of putting it ; that other age-old truth, our choices capture us. They set us on a path, and this one, seeking God, inches us nearer. Perhaps micro-millimetres us nearer, in my case. With cul-de sacs, turn-backs, rest periods on the way.

Still, it says a lot about God as the persistent lover of my soul, that the thirst for him reappears. Like an earworm, that constantly needs expression, action, intention, surrender.     

The world in miniature

 It's something of a stereotype that Anglican clerics and trains go hand in hand. Think Rev Awdry, think 'The Titfield Thunderbolt', think Eric Treacy, Bishop of Wakefield.  And to some extent, I fit that Anglican/train stereotype, Not enthusiastically, not to the exclusion of other things, but nostalgically, wistfully. Since retirement, the model railway, or at least, its baseboard, has lain in the garage; there's simply not room to set it up in the house. But I've been thinking of a very much slimmed down version, something that would be at ease in the house, and plans are afoot to construct it. 

What I admire as I look at layouts in magazines, or see them on video, is their perfection, their detail. It's a perfectly controlled world, where it's always, say, 1959, always steam era, always summer. I jest. Grimy industrial scenes have their devotees, and also exhibit perfect detail. With many of these layouts, it's hard to tell that it's a model. It might be the real thing, captured on film all those years ago. 

And it's all perfectly controlled. All moves, slows-downs, accelerations, rests, stops; all at the behest of the controller, fat or otherwise. There is no freedom to do anything but respond to the electrical impulses, the will of the controller. How different from the home life of our own dear families!

For all its perfection, it is lifeless. I prefer the freedom, the wide and sustaining freedom to serve God as I would choose. Messy, sometimes chaotic, nevertheless I have real freedom in the grace of God, and I value that.