And then the credits went up, and I was talking to my friend, and among the hundreds and hundreds of names that went up the screen while my eyes were elsewhere was this:
Do you see it? Shall I zoom in?
And a little closer? Yes?
So, probably the second one.
But the point is, I saw that from across a room on a screen I wasn't even watching, among so many other names. I think I'm in love with my own observational skills, and I didn't see that coming.
Anyway, hello Ian Fellows. Great name. Good compositing (whatever that is).
It's not just visual. I can hear my own name (or job title) used in a room even when I'm having a completely other conversation. So can you - except it's probably your name that you pick up on, not mine. I'm not quite that narcissistic. Yet.
And indeed I have a magnificent colleague who can hear her own name from - I think - a distance of about a mile. We perk up and try to find out what's being said, or whether we're needed, or if my name is being taken in vain (I'm the vicar, I get blamed for everything. I probably killed Kennedy and made that hole in the ozone layer myself, I tell you).
So it's amazing how our brains flag up what's pertinent to us among a barrage of multi-sensory stuff going into our eyes and ears and elsewhere. Our amazing brains process and discard so, so much, and then my name is on a screen in the same room and I'm all over it.
Which reminds me of a story.
A native American is taken to the big city by someone in big business. The sounds and sights that assail him are overwhelming. Cars, neon lights, the chatter of crowds… and then he stops suddenly, distracted, and leads his friend across to a small green patch on a street corner. Kneeling down, he roots in the grass and emerges with a grasshopper sitting on his hand.
It's just not (a) cricket
Says his friend in big business: "How did you know that was there?"
"I heard it," said the native American.
"From all the way over there?" asks the businessman. "Impossible."
To this dismissal, the native American responds by asking for a coin, and on being give a nickel, he tosses it in the air. It lands on the sidewalk with a faint ching, spins a second or two and settles.
"Look," says the native American. And when the businessman does, he sees that whole dozens of people have stopped their walking and are looking at the pair of them where the coin has fallen and made a tiny sound.
"Where your treasure is," observes the native American, "there also will your ears be."
A coin toss, yesterday.
And what I want is to be attuned not to grasshoppers or money, but God's heartbeat. I say that because I'm not that good at it. I'm sure I miss lots of times when God is prompting me, or else I dismiss the idea as ridiculous (or inconvenient). The times when I think I hear him - or feel some degree of empathy with his heart and agenda in a situation - and follow through, the results tend to be worthwhile and entertaining and sometimes even blog-worthy. I have a friend - Miriam - who follows through with these sets of things and has the most bizarre adventures which can only have been set up by God. She has the mild advantage of not having a television and living in a caravan off the Oxford ring road. But.
I tender you as example the disciple Philip in the early chapters of Acts, who is open to the voice of God and finds himself on a magnificent adventure running beside a chariot containing an African eunuch, explaining to him the prophet Isaiah and ending the day baptising him in a river. But only because he heard. Only because he was listening.
Thank God he was reading Isaiah 52-3 and not some snatch of Song of Songs...
I'll stay aware of my own name. I'll try to avoid the lure of money. I'll dare to do the slightly mad detours that God calls me to take, because that way lies adventure, and staying out past my bedtime, and new experiences, and the reminder that God is still alive and having fun in our world. Bring on the African eunuchs!
