As my acquaintance Victoria Coren Mitchell said, "Gee, that's a nut-scratcher."
Almost immediately three lovely people from the church I attend - Clare and Brenda and Lorraine - declared that it must be a clerical collar. The white stretch of multiple-use plastic that clergy wear around their neck to signify service and open-ness to duty, joy and conversation. One of these:
Lorraine and Brenda and Clare, you are unfortunately... wrong. You have fallen into my heffalump trap. The QI klaxons are sounding in your ears. I must admit I misled you a little. Would you like to see the bigger picture?
Ok. Photographed in Manchester Piccadilly Station one Sunday when I was on a blind date, here it is:
The prize goes to Nicholas Campbell for correctly identifying the base of a coffee cup. And not just just any coffee cup. This is a Marks and Spencers coffee cup. It's clerical because, you know, "More tea, vicar?"
Nice work, Nick. I'll buy you a coffee (offer expires next Sunday). Brenda and Clare and Lorraine, thank you so much for playing. If we weren't on lockdown you could call round and tell me what a naughty rotter I am. Thank you so much, though, for putting yourself out there. You rock. Easter eggs all round!
Point being: it's difficult when you don't know the whole story. It's tough when you can't see the bigger picture.
That's true with people too. Last Thursday I found myself in Baguley Tesco (other stores are available, and other stores may actually have a phone signal) at the weekly NHS applause. Tesco have stuck helpful arrows on the floors to indicate a one-way system (although they should have learned from their car park that Tesco customers are not brilliant at arrows. Or parking. Or the Highway Code. Or not parking in disabled bays without a blue badge. Or the parent and child spaces. Anyway, I digress). Basically, it's like Ikea now. You have to visit everywhere to get anywhere and if you miss something then the loop back to find it is... well... loopy. I only got Branston's pickle on the third attempt.
I was pottering down the soft drinks aisle in search of orange juice for smoothies when 8pm presented itself and the clapping began. It was a little thin, but hey. And while I was clapping, a little fellow of indeterminate age (about 78, I thought, with a tough paper round) came ambling towards me... not clapping... and walking against the prescribed direction of travel! With a flagrant disregard of social distancing looming, and as an Englishman of the first water (ie I can't complain in restaurants), I kept on clapping and gave him the passive-aggressive Paddington Bear hard stare so beloved of this country. And he kept coming. It was like a one-man septuagenarian zombie apocalypse in slow motion.
My inner Basil Fawlty/David Mitchell hammered at my brain with a brilliantly cutting monologue that made it no further than my head (and about a dozen people I've regaled with the story, getting bigger every time). "Hello? HELLO? I'm sorry, have you heard of social distancing? Two metres? There's a virus... it's been on the news. Maybe you've heard of it? And maybe you've seen these arrows on the floor? I mean, did they not have arrows when you were a boy? There's one on the Bayeux tapestry and that's from 1066 so I'm sure you must have seen one at some point. Anyway, which end of this arrow do you not understand? The blunt end or the pointy end?"
Me, left to my own devices.
Instead of which, of course, I waited until the end of the applause and then backed up so he could amble or shamble past and risk infecting himself or somebody else. Like I say, a bit English.
But really, I've been in situations where you take people to task and they come back with some piece of information that I didn't have, and that bigger picture suddenly makes me ashamed of having spoken up, and I want the floor to open up and swallow me (in the direction of the arrow, obviously). So in Tesco I wondered whether he was partially sighted and couldn't see the arrows, or as pressured by the newfound difficulties of shopping as I feel, and declined to say anything. He lurched on, actually lurched, in a way that made me think he was probably a war veteran fallen on harder times and some piece of shrapnel was lodged inside him from a battle where he'd saved countless lives and so he should be allowed to disregard arrows and keep-off-the-grass signs and jump the queue at the post office.
But yeah, in the absence of a bigger picture, I had a go at being charitable. Because, in the words of a famous motto that somebody somewhere said:
The bigger picture helps. As a vicar I sometimes get the terrible responsibility of taking someone to task, and the question I always ask myself (and should maybe ask them) is: "Why are you being so gosh-darned difficult? Is there something I should know?" After all, when I'm being awkward as all hell it's usually because I'm tired and feeling misunderstood and undervalued and some good deed has not gone unpunished. Or gone awry.
You can think of a dozen, a hundred, a thousand things in anyone's backstory (or morning so far) that throw light on why they're behaving as they are, being difficult or demanding, demeaning or diminishing you, defiant or destructive. They've been pooped on already today and they're unconsciously intent on pooping on the next person they see. Illness or pain has taken away the insulation of the day. They've been let down and aren't letting anyone else have another go.
What battle are you fighting?
What battles are the people who drive you up the wall fighting?
What battle is Mr Tesco-Customer fighting? A soft answer to other people's bloody-minded difficulty doesn't just turn away wrath, it also opens up the chance to unpack things, and address the real troubles. This man's real trouble wasn't that he was walking the wrong way. There was more to it, and on a less fraught and more spacious occasion I might have engaged him in jocular conversation of the non-Mitchellian kind.
Jesus performs a wonderful little miracle in Mark 8:22-26 (read it!), healing a man of great visual impairment. Pointedly, Jesus seems to take two attempts at it. After his first pass, the formerly blind man claims that he can see people but they look like trees walking.
Trees, walking. Yesterday.
Jesus makes a second pass and this time the man can see clearly now (the trees have gone! He can see all obstacles in his way!). But of course, Jesus being Jesus, he didn't need two attempts. He's making a point to his disciples, who are having trouble seeing him clearly and what kind of Saviour and Messiah he is. In particular Simon Peter has been making that half-right-half-wrong declaration where he spots that Jesus is the Messiah but then tries to stop him going to the cross. Jesus is making the point that there is always further to go to see the bigger picture, and he both rejoices that Peter has seen so much but also tells him off for seeing so little.
I'm Peter. I see some things but I'm completely blindsided by others. I can have moments of insight (provided by the Spirit!) but also lengthy adventures in missing the point. And I know that people have sometimes been harsh with me because they haven't stopped to wonder why I was being an asshat in a certain way on a certain day.
Man (and woman) traditionally passes on misery to man (and woman). It deepens like a coastal shelf. But instead of getting out as quickly as we can, we can try to understand other people's bigger pictures - not in a nosey way for our own knowledge but in a gentle way for greater understanding and kindness. I need to keep going back to Jesus and asking him to help me see a bit more clearly, so that when I do finally take people side for a quiet word, it's a helpful one, not just about stopping them doing something wrong but all about getting to the root of it. That way lies redemption rather than resentment, empathy instead of enmity.
If you get the chance, watch the brilliant film A Monster Calls. It actually has a walking talking tree in it! It's all about a boy who isn't ready for the bigger picture and who receives three visits from the Monster telling him three stories that he doesn't properly understand because he doesn't have all the backstories. He keeps on jumping to conclusions until the moment he's ready to see the bigger picture, listen to the backstories... and that's when his healing begins.
A Monster Calls: possibly the best film in the world.
Lockdown gives many of us more chance to think about each other. To wonder how other people in our family or congregation or whatever are doing. What battles people fight and how they're exacerbated under lockdown - trying to be a "good" parent, struggling with one variety of autism or another in a world of broken routines, victims of domestic abuse, mental health troubles that are heightened by all this stress and uncertainty, guilt at not having to work while other people are putting in extra extra hours...
And if you can spot your battles, maybe talk to someone - friend, family, Jesus - about them so they make more sense. The biggest bigger picture I need to understand is my own: what's pulling my strings, what's jerking my chain, what rattles my cage, what pushes my buttons.
That way, I may come out of lockdown kinder not just to anarchist anticlockwise shoppers, but also to myself. And kindness is what will see us through these days.
Loving Lord Jesus, be kind to me and help me be kind to the people I love, the people I find it hardest to love, and to myself.
Amen?
No comments:
Post a Comment