Stress Transmissions

We are surrounded, claims Hebrews, in an attempt to spur its readers on to greater faith, by a great cloud of witnesses.  I myself have never quite understood whether that means:

(a) Lots of angels and martyrs are watching you so be brilliant!

or

(b) Lots of the living are watching you, so what an opportunity to be brilliant and shine like stars as you hold out the word of God in a whole new generation… so be brilliant!

Since the upshot (Be brilliant!) is the same, I doubt it matters.  Today, I'm opting for (b) and will back it up with a tale of three Joshuas.  Or rather, three stories of one Joshua each, connected by this curious "cloud of witnesses" idea.  Names, as so often, have been changed.

Joshua 1 is my godson.  He's a little genius, and no amount of ill health or disability has been allowed to stifle his massive abilities in writing and adding and smiling and laughing.  He composes his written work by painstakingly selecting letters from a board by gazing at them and trusting that his flawed and fallible friends will get the right letters to spell out what he has to say, which is always but always worth hearing.

I visited in August and again in November and again in December, whereupon his mum asked me, "Have you been talking around Joshua?"

Apparently I had.  Apparently I'd used the word EPIPHANIC in his presence (look it up) in August, and sometime in December he'd used the word himself in a composition, getting the spelling nearly right (which only proved he'd not seen it anywhere but heard it and was spelling it phonetically) and the context almost exactly right as well.  To be fair, who knows whether I'd not been using it loosely in the first place?

Someone's always listening to you...

That a 9 year old should remember a word, spoken once, unheard and unspoken before or since, for four months and then drop it into a composition… well… it leaves me wondering what else I might have said.  Oh, and preparing other words to drop in.

You see, there's always someone listening, someone to pick up on tiny things we say, even - especially with vicars who are paid so that we can preach - throwaway one-liners.  That's the first Joshua in my crowd.

Joshua 2 is a little older and was in the realm between sleepy and wakey-wakey when the church sound system started coming through on his amp in his bedroom.  He listened in - in his pyjamas - to the end of the service: all that "thank you for feeding us" stuff and "go in peace" and "in the name of Christ."  You know.

You see, there's always someone listening, whether you're Gordon Brown or the vicar.  You may be projecting in all sorts of directions on all sorts of frequencies - body language, tone of voice - and not know.  If I can infiltrate Joshua's amp, I could be on every taxicab intercom in the north Manchester region.

You'll never guess who I had on my intercom this Sunday morning...

What a crowd of witnesses.  How it grows.

Joshua 3 had a huge crush on me.  Poor soul.  Great taste though!  Your clueless host, however, didn't realise until years later.  And naturally it wasn't my impressive six-pack or tree-trunk-like upper arms that had him mad about the boy.  It was - he says - kindness and a smile.

Heck.  I was transmitting on frequencies I didn't really think I had.  

Textbook lovelorn.  Sorry mate.

(He's over it now, but he realised that no man could ever match up to me and he joined an enclosed order of monks and will never be seen again.  Not all of that is true.  Guess which bits I made up.)

I transmit, and largely, it seems, to people called Joshua.  It was another Joshua in the Lakes who wanted to talk about faith and declared he wanted to ask me about Jesus, since I was clearly the least Christian leader in the house.  That was my scepticism at cut-and-dried faith shining through in an otherwise scarily sorted ethos of faith.  I'll keep that guttering fire burning.

So.  I transmit.  I'll try to see what I'm sending out, how I'm seen, what this unseen crowd of witnesses are seeing of me.  Hopefully it'll all be good.

What are you transmitting?  Light of the world or misery of the month?

And you transmit.  I know Christians who transmit so much kindness and acceptance and welcome.

And I know Christians who transmit judgment and disapproval and prejudice.  We gays (and lesbians and trans folk and minorities and people with secret pasts and frankly everybody) audition you to find who's ready to love.  You are transmitting on all sorts of levels, and the unseen cloud of witnesses is discerning who you are.  Trustworthy or not?  Arms open or folded?  Face lit up like a Christmas tree or looking a lot like a smacked arse?

So hey.  Transmit well.  Because by your fruits, people really will know you.

Be careful… but be brilliant!

Elaine Paige's Laughter

Happy New Year!  My apologies that the Christmas blogs ended earlier than expected - there was a job interview and I was offered a new post so I didn't manage a New Post here… and then it was actual Christmas…

Anyways.  What do vicars do after church?  

Well.  We put Elaine Paige on Radio 2 for a few minutes, then remember that (i) I hate show tunes and (ii) she has the world's second most annoying laugh.  So we turn her off.

In the nicest possible way, stop laughing!

This last Sunday, I went hospital visiting, and as I sprinted up the steps to H ward, I discovered that someone had spilled half a mug of tea (or possibly the whole of a small cup of tea) on the middle landing.

Unfortunately I discovered this by skidding on the spillage.  There were no witnesses, so take my word for it that my recovery was worthy of Torvill and/or Dean.  Torvill mostly, I think.  But having Bolero-ed to a safe stop, I had to think of other, less nimble and agile users of H ward steps, whose tea-skidding misadventures would end with broken hips and torn ligaments, so as I made it onto the corridor I also found two nurses and reported the tea.

Elaine Paige is back, this time with scissor kick and jazz hands...

With a smile.  They weren't the tea-spilling culprits, so hey.  

"Is there much of it?" they asked.

Yes, about half a cup, I said.  Or maybe a whole cup, if the cup were very small, like one of those posh china ones.

"Sugar?" asked the nurse.

Hmmmmmm.  No, I said, it didn't feel especially granular underfoot.

These are some of the best conversations.  I only just managed to stop myself having a mishap, I volunteered.

"How did it look?" asked the nurse, so I demonstrated my Bolero and facial expression.  Mild expletive omitted.

"Do that again," she requested, so I did.

Sorry.

How brilliant was that?  Three professional people having fun in the pursuit of preventing further accidents to the less lithe.  The spill was quickly wiped up. 

Dramatic reconstruction. 

The nurses held the door for me, but I was going the other way.  "I could have been in one of these beds," I said.  "I'm a bit tired, so if there's an empty one I may yet have a lie down."

"I'd join you," said one of the nurses.  I don't know whether it was flirtatious or just acknowledging how long these angels had been on their feet, but it was a good point of humour as we parted.

Not like this at all.

That's what vicars do after church.  We flirt with nurses.  My friend Chris says I flirt with everyone, but (i) that's just friendliness and (ii) I certainly don't flirt with anybody I might actually fancy.  That would be too much like common sense.

I love that class of people, the ones you can talk to a little and be reminded you're human.  Where connections can be made.  Nurses and charity shop staff and vicars - we have dog collars to invite people of various mental hues to talk to us, and to explain why we sometimes smile and say hello to complete strangers (and so that when schoolchildren run up to us in the street and shout hello, it's easier to explain to their parents how their child knows a single man in his middle years.

Who've you connected with recently?  And does the world know that you're open for business?  Today's gospel reading was the baptism of Jesus, when heaven opened and God spoke, saying "this is my Son, with whom I am well-pleased."  The sermon was about words of encouragement.  And I wondered whether we all knew just how brilliant it is when a person of grace talks to you.  It really can be like heaven opening.  Without the dove, but certainly with our words - sometimes burblings about tea, sometimes profound musings on prayer, but always worth connecting with.

Heaven opens.  Stuff happens.  Be part of it.