revcycling

– Good morning!

– Don’t see what’s good about it – look at the weather today.

– I know, it’s been awful for ages, hasn’t it?

Countless conversations like this are based on a false premise: when we wish someone a good morning, that is exactly what we are doing. We are telling someone that we hope that they have a good morning. It is a greeting but not a statement. It is a wish for the hearer that the sun may come out not tomorrow, but today. Or despite the terrible weather we could all still have a good morning.

Sadly wishing people a good morning is going the same way as wishing people good day (how many times have you heard that recently?) I guess it’s part personality and part upbringing that leads me to wish people a good morning. I was largely brought up in a large village and we didn’t have a car so I would see a lot of people and my mother would greet them with a good morning.

It’s a small thing, of course, but it is part of what builds community, the countless threads of human contact that make living somewhere a delight and a pleasure. I hope that you will be encouraged to speak to people you see in the village, whether they are going about their business or walking the dog.

If you don’t wish me a good morning back – suit yourself. I still hope that you have one.

“Because I say so” is the despairing last answer of every parent to the repeated question “why?”

Why? Is a question with a progression that can never be properly answered. “Why does the sun shine?” could be given a scientific answer to do with nuclear fusion and light rays and maybe the eye’s ability to perceive it but is that really an answer to why? Behind it there is always another why? And behind all the why’s there is the ultimate question “why is there something and not nothing?”

Why do people drop rubbish? Lately quite a lot of people have been wondering why local beauty spots have to be ruined by people leaving litter. Sadly, it seems that as each level of lockdown is lifted people flood the great outdoors leaving behind them piles of rubbish.

Why? Some people blame the lack of the old fashioned parkie; others blame the parents.

Perhaps we should look at it the other way round: why not? They are going home. Why should they carry something back or even put it in a bin? The chance of a fine or punishment is tiny. The consequences for them of leaving litter are small if they are not planning to return anytime soon. So why not? Appeals to think of the common good or the environment or future generations fall on the deaf ears of those who believe that we should eat, drink and litter because tomorrow we die.

Maundy Thursday is called Maundy from the Latin mandatum: the new commandment that Jesus gives his disciples to love one another. Mandatum means “given”. In other words we love one another because that is what Jesus commands us to do. We love the poor not because the poor are good but because God is good. And we love each other because Jesus tells us to.

And those who heard the voice of Jesus know that it is the same voice that gave the commandments to Moses and the same voice that said let there be light and created everything out of nothing. All these are “givens”.

As I get older the more I appreciate the gift of life which has been given to me: and I also consider that life is perhaps simpler than I used to think.

All that we have been given by God is a gift for us to treasure and use wisely: above all the gift of his son, Jesus Christ who died that we might share in his Risen life. Why? Because God loves the world.

Warning: while reading this article do not think about the white bear.

One of the joys that some people have rediscovered during lockdown is free-time. That has to be a good thing but there is also an old saying that the devil makes work for idle hands. By being restricted from a lot of activities, most people would say that our mental health has generally declined.

In Luke 11:24-8 Jesus tells of a man who suffered from an unclean spirit. The spirit leaves him and then wanders round in the desert until it decides return to find the man like a refurbished house: in fact, it’s so nice he decides to invite all his demon friends around (the forces of evil are no respecters of lockdown regulations) and the man finds himself in a worse position that before.

We may not use the language of unclean spirits, possession or even evil but there is a human psychological truth here: what we tell ourselves at all cost to avoid, we can’t help but return to. In 1987 David Wengner identified this as “ironic process theory”; trying to deliberately suppress certain thoughts makes them more likely to surface. For example – you may well have been wondering about that warning not to think about the white bear. Which means you have thought of the white bear. And you have lost the Game too. Because when you think about the Game and certainly when you talk about the Game you have lost the Game. Simple? There are actually three rules to the Game (from http://losethegame.com/)

Everyone knows that trying to change the way we behave or think is difficult. It might be that you are simply afflicted with negative thoughts about yourself and others. Instead of trying to tell yourself not to do that, try to think affirming or positive thoughts Instead of trying to just give up bad habits or addictions; replace them with a good habit.

Half way through Lent might seem an odd time to pass on a tip on how to resist temptation. But you can make a new start at breaking old habits any time and not just at Lent and New Year

Mark is in a hurry to tell his story: his is the shortest of what we call the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). We call them that because they can be viewed alongside each other – John’s Gospel stands slightly apart.

Mark’s Gospel, unlike Matthew and Luke begins not with Jesus’s birth but with His baptism; it’s original ending seems different from the other Gospels. Have we lost the beginning and the end somewhere?

Mark’s Gospel these days is considered by most scholars to be the first written Gospel: but there are problems with this theory which is called the Synoptic problem. Whatever the scholars may say, here we have an exciting (the word “immediately” is used repeatedly) story of Jesus the Messiah. But His disciples take some time to understand this, from their first calling by the Sea of Galilee to Peter’s moment of understanding at Caesarea Philippi. The journey takes them from the lowest point on the Earth’s surface by the Sea of Galilee to the heights of Caesarea Philippi: but then the question becomes – what kind of Messiah is Jesus?

20 August, 573 was a date of great celebration for the people and church of Tour in France. A great celebration, that is, for everyone except one man. His name was Gregory, he was thirty four years old and the reason that he wasn’t celebrating was the same reason that everyone else was: he had just been consecrated Bishop of Tours, much against his wishes, after the representatives of the people overtook him at the court of King Sigebert of Austrasia and pressed him to take the post. Partly it was his genuine Christian humility (one of the traits which recommended him to the people of Tours) but partly I suspect because being a bishop in those days was a hazardous matter.

Tours lay on borderlands. Gregory lived with one foot in the dying world of the Roman Empire and the other in the new culture of early medieval Europe. He also lived on the border between the Frankish culture of the Merovingians to the north and the Roman culture of the south of Gaul. He had to navigate the difficult and often violent politics of his time. And Gregory of Tours also faced the other danger of his time: bubonic plague.

Gregory drew his strength from his firm faith in Christ and in the communion of saints. He was particularly devoted to Martin of Tours, a predecessor of his to whose prayers he credited his recovery from a serious illness (possibly the plague)

In times of danger, fear and change I believe, we, like Gregory, can draw strength and courage from the lives of those who have gone before us with the sign of faith

“Right, I’ve had a request from some friends.

Al, I mean Boris, that’s what YOU call him, of course, well he’s been having a tough week. And there are just so many old pictures of him looking tired (probably hung over actually) that his friends can dig up to generate sympathy. Besides which, “leave him alone, he’s doing the best he can” is what you shout at your kid’s footie match, not really a good look for our Prime Minister, is it?

So we need some dirt on Keir Starmer. And proper stuff, not the sort of thing that we have to delete from Twitter after a few hours.

Come on now – Harry, Ian, what have you got for us? You’ve been sat on his doorstep, trawling through his rubbish for months: I want something as big as the Telegraph’s “bonking prof” story last weekend.

He owns some land?

I was hoping for, I don’t know, extramarital affair, corruption something a bit bigger but go on, what’s this land worth? Where is it? Does he grow drugs on it?

He keeps a donkey on it?

But the land IS worth ten million pounds? Great, we have a story. Go with “Man of the People” Sir Keir Starmer is secretly a millionaire line. I know millionaires aren’t on your “Who we are hating this week” list but it’s the best we’ve got.

Now get off Zoom, and give me 500 words on tomorrow’s lead – Do YOU know a cowardly teacher? Photos of real teachers’ gardens show what they’ve REALLY been doing over the last months! Free white feather in today’s Daily Mail.”

 ^“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8 New Living Translation) So the writer of the First Epistle of Peter warns his readers. There has been considerable merriment on social media that our government in England is now telling us to stay alert to an invisible virus. Do we hide behind a bush if we see it coming? Nobody as far as I am aware has noticed that the Prime Minister told us to stay alert against a “devilish” virus. Has he or anyone in this government been reading their Bibles?

For Christians the injunction to stay alert has two related meanings; to be waiting and watchful for the Second Coming of Christ in his glory and to resist the “glamour of evil” as a previous generation of Catholics were asked. This warning is embedded in the baptism liturgy as the candidate is asked “Do you renounce the world the flesh and the devil?” and also points us back to the story of the ten bridesmaids awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom in Matthew 25 as well as Jesus’ other warning to his followers to stay awake and watch and wait.

The problem is that evil comes in many forms, not easily recognised and definitely not conveniently and obviously labelled. Stay alert and resist evil has had a chequered history over the Christian millenia. I’m currently re-reading the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco with its graphic descriptions of the work of the early Inquisition. It would be hard to argue that no evil has ever been done by Christians. If Christians around the world have found it difficult to discern evil for two millenia it is not perhaps suprising that many in England are now confused by what staying alert may mean for us during the next weeks.

Homer Simpson is told that he has one day to live: Doctor Hibbert tells him that he will go through five stages:

denial “I’m not dying”,

anger “Why you little..!”,

fear “What’s after fear, what’s after fear?”

bargaining “I could make it worth your while”

and acceptance “well we all gotta go sometime”.

These are the classic “stages” of grief identified by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her classic 1969 book On Death and Dying. The book is actually about her observations of the terminally ill patients she was dealing with but the 5 stages became rapidly attached to work on those who had suffered bereavement. Dr Kübler-Ross later regretted the language of “stages” as it implied that everyone would go through all the stages in the same order – though obviously not quite so fast as Homer (“Mr Simpson your progress astounds me”). (You can watch the whole clip here)

In fact a bereavement can lead to many mixed emotions even years after the original loss: before one of the first funerals I ever took over twenty years ago a lady described her emotions as being like a rollercoaster: up one minute and down the next. I remembered this as I saw a diagram that showed the stages of grief as being what looks like an unfun rollercoaster.

Do you think some of the feelings that we are having during this lockdown are actually a form of bereavement? We’ve lost some of our freedoms, perhaps our job, our income, the simple pleasures we might have enjoyed, like going to a concert or a football match. All of those things are gone for the moment and may never be the same again. So perhaps we are all grieving and that grief comes out in denial “well I’m young and fit, it won’t be a problem even if I do get it”, anger “it’s all the fault of the government (ours or the Chinese)”  or bargaining “I wish I had their job”.

That final stage is acceptance: but acceptance doesn’t just mean shrugging our shoulders and saying “we all gotta go sometime”. It means being aware that we might be angry with other people because of our loss and maybe taking a moment to consider how we speak to people or post on social media. It means recognising that although some people may be suffering a great deal more, including the loss of loved ones, we are all going through a time of loss. We will continue to experience all those negative feelings but if we can identify where they come from hopefully we can be part of a healing process for ourselves and others.