As of today, the Bible Society‘s Reel Issues site gets a makeover. No longer a subscription service, but free, and with three different ways of discussing contemporary film in the light of faith. Some of the new approaches are suitable for youth groups. Well worth investigating.
The Easter Number One?
When I was a young Christian, I wanted contemporary Christian music covered on Radio 1. When they covered the Greenbelt Festival, I was delighted. I wanted them to play Christian music, but I was embarrassed at the infamous attempt by Christians to get the band Heartbeat into the charts with their song ‘Tears From Heaven’. It was when well-known evangelical-charismatic preachers started saying it was the right thing to do that it was obvious something was wrong. It wasn’t their area of expertise, and one of the campaigners, Colin Urquhart, had one of his offspring in the band. I still wanted Christian music on ‘secular’ radio, but never understood just how much the BBC had to chase the coat tails of the commercial stations. Nor did I understand the irony of getting what was or should have been a counter-cultural message to have a mainline hearing.
Skip to my mid-thirties. I’m in my first appointment as a minister in the town of Hertford. A bunch of us are running youth worship events in the town, in church halls, a disused shop and eventually in the local night club, Zero. We call our event ‘One@Zero’. Some of our number have been going down to Littlehampton in Sussex to witness a youth worship event called ‘Cutting Edge’, led by what was called the Cutting Edge Band. That band morphed into Delirious? The teenagers at our event and we leaders followed them with interest and enthusiasm. When they started releasing singles in order to get into the charts, we all went and bought them. In fact, Hertford’s local independent record/CD shop, Tracks, used to supply a weekly Top 10 sales chart to the local newspaper. So we piled in there to buy them in the week of release. When ‘Deeper’
was released and made number 20 nationally, it was number one in the Hertford chart.
As they released more singles, we bought them. They had a few more to make the lower end of the Top 20, roughly comparable with other cult bands of the time. Nevertheless, the influential Chris Evans infamously refused to book them for his hit TV show TFI Friday, and Radio 1 still shunned them – something Q Magazine covered sympathetically at the time. It got to the point that the band called one of their albums ‘Audio Lessonover‘, an anagram of ‘Radio One Loves Us’. The singles eventually stopped, and they concentrated on their huge influence on the contemporary worship movement with evangelical-charismatic Christianity and beyond. I guess Christians shouldn’t have been surprised the band didn’t become the hoped-for darlings of the Smash Hits crowd. But you live and learn.
Or do you? As Steve Turner says in his poem ‘History Lesson‘:
History repeats itself.
Has to.
No-one listens.
Because it’s happening again. Only in a different way, powered by social media. The principles of Clay Shirky‘s ‘Here Comes Everybody‘ are being applied by Christians. Facebook groups have sprung up, not orchestrated by Delirious? (who recently split up, anyway), but by fans. The first one I saw was called ‘Anyone up for getting a No. 1 for Delirious?‘ The founder, Steve Jeffery, describes his motives this way:
So some dude managed to get Rage Against The Machine to No.1 for Christmas. Is anyone out there up for doing the same thing for Delirious? If you are then join this group. You need to download the track between the 29th Mar & 3rd April, the track will be History Maker, will all need to buy it from iTunes (or other download outlet) in the same week.
Please only join if you are actually going to commit to spend 75p on iTunes to make this happen. Spread the word and join now! I think it would be a great gift from us fans back to the band if we can make this happen!
You can see the social media connections. This is a people movement, like those who couldn’t face another saccharine X-Factor winner having the Christmas number one, and who successfully gave Simon Cowell a bloody nose by supporting a Rage Against The Machine track.
The second group – with, at present, more followers – is called ‘Christian music topping the UK charts!‘ This too is motivated by the people power of social media, as they make clear:
Although this initiative has not derived from the band I have been in touch with their record company (Furious Records) and they are more than happy for this initiative to take place and are excited to see how it unfolds!
Those two campaigns are specific, and apparently time-limited to getting people downloading the track ‘History Maker’
during Holy Week, so that Delirious? get the number one slot on Easter Day (which may not be commercially significant in the music industry, but obviously is for Christians).
To these must now be added a (so far tiny) group with a longer aim, ‘Christian chart music for a year‘, who say
Christian music seems to be lacking from todays chart – yet there is some cracking stuff out there. We intend to try and push for at least one christian artist in the UK Top 40 every week for the next year. We’re not bothered about number one’s.
We want to inspire debate. To have DJ’s questioning why they are playing christian music. For people to talk to each other about their beliefs. To see churches swell with people who are curious. To say that we have a voice and that we are being marginalised. This could be an icebreaker to openly talk about your faith with someone else.
Approximately 5000 people buying the same track in a week will secure us a top 40 hit. Please help to spread the message of Jesus.
What can I do?
1. Press the “Become a Fan” button up top there.
2. Tell all of your Christian friends. (Click “Suggest to friends” to the left)
3. Post your ideas and suggestions in the forum (click the “Discussions” tab)
4. Support the single of the week
These are interesting reasons. Despite my background in remembering past failed campaigns, I don’t want to say anything cynical, especially since some of these campaigns are attracting young Christians and I don’t want to be negative in a way that damages their faith, or alternatively so puts their backs up they become obstinate. Instead, I would invite discussion around a number of themes.
Firstly, how are we going to engage in the proposed debate? It is a laudable approach, though – better the conversational approach in an Internet campaign, I think. Therefore the debate needs to be peaceable, not confrontational.
Secondly, let’s tease out the concern about Christians having a voice and the fear of being marginalised. That is an ongoing worry for many Christians, and is being heightened by the looming General Election in the UK. Will we be listened to? We have a right to be heard as members of a democracy. What we don’t have is any right to special status. Indeed, Jesus warned that only a few would take the ‘narrow way’, and the biblical images of exiles, of strangers in a strange land, are uncomfortable ones that we may have to embrace (without that in any way meaning that we should be silent). If the campaign becomes one about Christian rights, I think we can be sure there is a real sense in which we will not gain a hearing, because we will alienate people – just the opposite of what is desired.
Thirdly, if this is to be an icebreaker, let’s make sure our conversation is ‘seasoned with salt’.
Fourthly, let’s think about what constitutes good Christian witness. It won’t simply be Christian music in the charts – and especially at a time when the charts are less and less important. It will be about the kind of people we are. We still – even more – need to earn the right to be heard. We all need to be ‘history makers’ by our loving involvement in the world, so that people care about what we say and sing about.
Disneyland
I promised a post about our trip last week to Disneyland Paris. In order to be a man of my word, here it is. Three different rambles follow below.
Money
Any increase in British visitors will be matched by a reported increase in the number of mortgage applications. Make no mistake, it is every bit as expensive as you are warned it will be. More so, actually. It makes motorway service stations look like charity shops. How much should a lunch-time cheeseburger, fries and bottle of water cost you? Did I hear someone suggest ten of our finest British pounds? Why, you would be right, sir.
And the other costs are equally appalling, be it food, drink, ice cream, gifts or small necessities. The place is capitalism red in tooth and claw. With a captive audience (like the motorway service stations), they pick a number out and charge it. This is not a complete rant against capitalism, but marks what unrestrained sin can do. Not that laws can make people good, but if there is no competition present to rein things in, sometimes there need to be other constraints. Of course, there won’t be any restrictions on the Mickey Mouse Empire while it rakes in so many Euros for France. And yes, this is small fry compared with far more pressing needs in the world. It’s just one example of what happens when greed runs rampant. No jokes about bankers, please.
Behaviour
I also found the behaviour of the French interesting. Like any culture, the dominant characteristics were both good and bad. The hôtel staff couldn’t have been more obliging. On the other hand, many of the punters flouted the smoking bans and shoved anyone out of the way, children included, to get on a bus. I know it’s said that queuing is a peculiarly British thing, but to me it enshrines a value about fairness and equality. I know too you could make similar credit and debit remarks about we Brits, and that none of these statements should be taken as blanket criticisms, as if one could stereotype everyone. However, it remains curious to me that certain positive and negative traits exhibit themselves within a culture. Maybe Pam BG could shed some Girardian light on this?
Story
In one park there is a statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse holding hands. Beneath it is a plaque with some words from Michael D Eisner, who was Chief Executive of Disney when the Paris operation was opened in 1992. Eisner says that the company wanted to set up a park in Europe, because it was European folk tales that had originally inspired Walt. It was therefore a ‘coming home’ of sorts.
That is at least to some extent true – think Pinocchio or Peter Pan, for example. I’m not sure how they justified their expansion to Japan, mind you!
However, one thing you inevitably can’t escape in Disneyland is the notion of story and narrative. In the Frontierland section, you realise how Disney used to tell a story of the Wild West that wasn’t sensitive to Native Americans. But it’s OK, because then they discovered Pocahontas. On the ride called ‘It’s A Small, Small World’, you travel on a boat past models of children from all around the world in their different costumes and cultures, all singing the song after which the ride is named. It becomes a narrative: everywhere, around the world, however different we are, we are really all the same underneath. (To which the Christian wants to answer both ‘yes’ and ‘no’, I think.)
It reminded me of the importance of story. So many live by a big story, be it the ones told by capitalism, communism, Islam or Christianity. Others – fearing the postmodern suspicion that these stories are power-plays to include the privileged and exclude others – choose instead to populate their lives with little segments from here and there. But the privilege of the Christian witness or preacher is to help locate people in the story of God – the story of God’s redeeming, sacrificial love, which because it is sacrificial is not a power-play. God finds each one of us and places us in his dramatic, epic story of love. We then become facilitators, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to do the same. What a privilege.
Pastoral Letter To The Methodist People
Following the recent controversy over the address by the President and Vice-President of Conference to the Church of England’s General Synod (covered here on this blog and in numerous other places), a pastoral letter has today been issued to the Methodist people by the President, Vice-President and Secretary of Conference to clarify the position. I am pasting it below. It will be in the Methodist Recorder this Thursday, and copies will be read out or given to congregations this Sunday. Comments, as usual, are welcome.
A Pastoral Letter to the Methodist People from the President and Vice-President of the Conference and the General Secretary
(following the address of the President and Vice-President to the General Synod of the Church of England on 11th February 2010)
And are we yet alive? Our answer, despite some recent press speculation to the contrary, is a resounding “Yes!”. We have seen the evidence in various ways through our complementary roles. As President and Vice-President we have represented the care, oversight, authority and support of the Conference as we have visited local churches and situations in different parts of the connexion. We have seen the Methodist people being faithful and the Spirit at work in them and through them. We mentioned some examples in our address to the General Synod. As General Secretary, Martyn is responsible for leading the development of the mission of the Methodist Church. He too has seen evidence of energy being released amongst us.
We are all convinced that God is not finished with the people called Methodist yet. We began as a discipleship movement within the wider church, a society of people seeking holiness and engaging in worship and mission. In Wesley’s time and through succeeding generations we have continually adapted to circumstances to fulfil that calling as effectively as possible. It is still Our Calling today. And mission has never been more needed than it is now. We live in a world ravaged by war and poverty, and torn apart by questions of how we care for the natural environment and the morality of financial systems. We live in a world where people need to hear the word of God in a language they can understand, where they need to see the love of God through people like us and experience it as good news for themselves. We live in a world where not enough people are being attracted and formed into disciples of Jesus Christ, responding to the promptings of the Spirit.
Responding to situations like this, allowing God to transform us so that we can be most effective in doing so, supporting each other in that through our interconnections, is what Methodism has always been about. We best honour those who have gone before us by doing the equivalent in our time and our circumstances of what they did in theirs. It is our DNA as a people to be a group of disciples who are committed to glorifying God in worship, to holiness and to being obedient and active in mission. We are therefore delighted to see an increasing interest in and commitment to discipleship amongst us.
We believe that God has a role for us in this mission, and we are increasingly embracing it. We have about 265,000 ‘card-carrying’ members, and that number has been decreasing because of the age-profile of our members. But more churches are making more members each year; a quarter of our churches are growing; the numbers worshipping with us on Sundays and, increasingly, mid-week is rising; fresh expressions are starting to flourish; we have regular contact with over 800,000 people; and we are part of a growing world-wide Methodist communion of over 70 million. There is a growing self-confidence amongst us accompanied by an appropriate humility about ourselves, and a releasing of energy for mission.
But we are not the whole of the church, and we cannot do it all by ourselves. So we have voted consistently over the years for unity schemes that are designed to increase the whole church’s effectiveness in mission. This is not a death wish, but a desire to be obedient and a willingness to be transformed. We can countenance ceasing to exist as a separate Church because we know that we will still be the Methodist people within a wider Church.
As our major statement on the nature and mission of the Church Called to Love and Praise put it in 1999 “the British Methodist Church may cease to exist as a separate Church entity during the twenty-first century, if continuing progress towards Christian unity is made”. Methodism will still contribute some of the riches of its own distinctive history and mission to any future church. We know from that history that we can be the Methodist people either in our own separate church or in some wider expression of the universal church. Helping to create a wider expression of the universal church and becoming part of it will require not just us but other churches to be prepared to move forward together and to leave some things behind in the process for the sake of the Kingdom. So it is not a question of Methodists being submerged or absorbed in the Church of England or any of our other partners. It is not a matter of Methodists returning to the Anglican fold, but of seeing whether together we are prepared to become a ‘new fold’.
This is not just true of our relationship with the Church of England. We have also signed a Covenant with other churches in Wales, and recently a partnership with other churches in Scotland. We have many local partnerships with other churches, the United Reformed Church in particular. And we are all part of wider denominational groupings. For example, the world-wide Methodist communion is over 70 million strong and the world wide Anglican communion about 78 million. Both are faced with questions of how they cohere in the 21st century, and how they deal with situations where there are competing and even contradictory convictions within them. In addressing these we have a lot to share with each other.
When we addressed the General Synod it was only the second time that the President of the Conference had done so; the first since the Covenant between the Methodist Church and the Church of England was signed in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen in 2003; and, importantly, the first time the Vice-President and the president had been invited to address the Synod together. What we were saying to the General Synod was that Methodists have always been committed to unity in order to create greater effectiveness in worship and mission. We said that thinking like this comes naturally from our spirituality. We approach our Covenant with the Church of England in the light of the Covenant Service in our Worship Book which we pray each year. We were gently but urgently asking the General Synod whether the Church of England was prepared to make the same commitment and allow itself to be transformed for the sake of the gospel. And what we say to the Church of England we say to our other partners.
So what happens if other churches are not prepared to be changed in order to become more effective in mission with us? Rather than being groups of Methodist people in a new and wider church, we shall continue as a Methodist people in a separate Methodist Church faithfully trusting in God’s continuing leading of us. We could do that, and we currently do. But even as a separate church we shall have to continue with our commitment to co-operate with others in mission wherever possible and to whatever extent it is possible.
Whether co-operating with others or allowing a wider expression of the universal church to come into existence will require a lot of working together in mission locally. Doing that will throw up some obstacles that will have to be removed and some issues that will have to be resolved if mission is not to be hampered. Some of those include matters of interchangeability of ministries, common decision-making structures, the role of women in the church, and how oversight is embodied. Much work has been done on these and some people will have to be asked to keep working at them on our behalf. When we signed the Covenant we committed ourselves to working to remove any obstacles to visible communion so far as our relationship with the Church of England is concerned. Any solutions will have to be agreed by all of us in due course and by due procedure. But in the interim we must all keep striving to engage as effectively as possible in worship and mission.
We have found the Methodist people in good heart, and an increasing sense of the energy of God’s love being released amongst us. We are a people of one book, the Bible. We allow the gospel to both comfort and challenge us. We let the love of God both confirm and transform us in the body of Christ through the Spirit.
We are yet alive. We shall be alive in the future in whatever form God wills. God has not finished with us yet!
The Revd David Gamble
President of the Conference
Dr Richard M Vautrey
Vice-President of the Conference
The Revd Dr Martyn D Atkins
General Secretary
[End of letter]
UPDATE, Wednesday 24th February, 11:45 am: Pete Phillips has just blogged on the letter and vibes he’s picked up from the C of E that they’re not even minded to respond. Does that once again leave the Methodist Church as the bride jilted at the altar? Are we – as I suspect – the party making all the running in the Covenant? Why? Is it an issue of power, as I suggested in my orginal blog? Where does that leave one of my churches which on Palm Sunday will be renewing its covenant with the local parish church for another five years – something both parties enthusiastically embrace?
Comments, debate this way please!
UPDATE 2, Thursday 25th February, 1:00 pm: The Church Mouse has weighed in with an impassioned plea from an Anglican perspective.
Official British Methodist Blogging Feed
Here’s another excellent new resource from the Methodist Church’s Connexional Team. Put together by Dave Webster, our Internet officer, you can now find a fed with all the latest from British Methodist bloggers. It’s available here on the official site, powered by Yahoo! Pipes. Dave told me (and doubtless other bloggers) about it in an email yesterday, just before it went live, when he asked permission to include my blog. It is officially now public, although this morning it doesn’t seem to be pulling in any feeds (whereas yesterday it was working well). I imagine normal service will soon be resumed. You may find it an easy way to check out official and unofficial Methodist thinking all in one place.
PrayNow
Right, I’m back to topical blogging. If you’ve followed my Twitter feed, you’ll know where I’ve been – Disneyland Paris. With Debbie and the children, of course. It was an advance present for a rather big birthday I have looming in the next fortnight. Too big, in fact, for my liking.
I’ll blog a bit about the experience soon, but in the meantime let me just put a marker down for something I came back to discover when I was wading through my Facebook feed. The remarkable Sir Peter of Phillips has blogged today about an excellent new initiative set up by the Methodist Church, called PrayNow. Send a text saying PRAYNOW to 82088 (at your network’s standard message rate) and you will receive free weekly texts with personal and topical prayer requests. (To stop, send STOP PRAYNOW to 82088.) Small church groups have been doing things like this for ages, and it’s good to see it taken up on a national scale. And having been somewhat wary in recent weeks about some official Methodist attitudes to social tools, it’s only right I praise what looks like a positive initiative.
Do read Pete’s article for links to other Christian-flavoured social tools, especially ones that help people interact with the Bible.
The Wife-Swapping Club
(My last repost in this series. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to tell you what’s been happening.)
“If you get bored, then look at the windows.”
So said our leader at the beginning of a course I attended.
“They are beautiful stained glass, I’m sure you’ll enjoy them if you find what I say is boring.”
I didn’t need to gaze at the windows. But her self-deprecating comment reminded me of other occasions.
There was my friend Pete, struggling through a boring and lengthy sermon by an earnest and well-intentioned preacher. “I know exactly how many window panes we’ve got in the church,” he told me a few days later.
But there was also the time at college in Manchester. Once a year the college put on a lecture to which old students and friends were invited. A distinguished speaker was always invited. This was my first year. I wasn’t any the wiser.
He was well-known for his views on marriage. We, however, remembered very few of his views from that lecture. His inspiration level was that of window-pane counting.
Except that … we all latched onto one of the things he advocated. He said that given the fragility of marriage today, it should not be viewed as a life-long commitment but as something that should be reviewed by the couple after ten years. More like a fixed-term renewable contract. This was not what we expected to hear from a Christian speaker on the subject.
And so it was that over coffee afterwards, one of the students went around canvassing to start up the college wife-swapping club. He was generous enough even to include the single students.
Christians may be known for sharing (or we should be), but this is not an area to which our generosity is expected to extend. An early Christian leader called Tertullian said, “We share everything except our wives.”
I suppose our distinguished speaker wanted to take seriously the tragedy of relationship breakdown in our society. Being married now to a divorcée myself, I am not without sympathy to that concern.
I know too the statistics that suggest second marriages on average last fewer years than first marriages. I have heard the saying that a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
Yet for all this there is no way I want to model a relationship on the fixed-term renewable contract idea. My understanding of love must come from Jesus, whose love is unconditional, unchanging, and a covenant commitment of faithfulness.
Yes, that means relationships where we burn our bridges. But what kind of love is it that does not have risk and vulnerability at its heart?
Pregnancy The Easy Way?
(And another old post.)
“So how’s Debbie?”
I knew the reason for the question. Debbie was seven months pregnant with our first child. The woman who asked barely knew her, so it was a kind question.
“She’s doing well, thank you,” I replied, “there have been odd little things, but really we couldn’t have wished for a better pregnancy. She’s having the best pregnancy of all the mums-to-be in our ante-natal class.”
“Ah well, you know why that is, don’t you?”
I recognised the implication: Debbie’s model pregnancy was because we were Christians. I countered:
“But of the eight couples in the ante-natal class, we aren’t the only Christians. We are one of three Christian couples, and they haven’t been let off as lightly as we have.”
“Oh.”
Not only that, but around that time, two other Christian women we knew gave birth to babies with major health problems. One baby had just a one in three chance of survival; the other had a hole in the heart and a bowel disorder. A colostomy bag from birth until she was strong enough for corrective surgery.
So God isn’t just some celestial insurance policy. Believe in God and life will be ‘lovely jubbly’, as Del Boy would say. It’s not like that.
A young child is reputed to have asked its mother, “Mummy, do all fairy-tales end with the words ‘And they all lived happily ever after’?”
“No,” said Mum, “some say, ‘When I became a Christian all my problems disappeared’.”
Christians live between the glory and the flame, the joy and the suffering. God’s reign has begun in Jesus, but there is still plenty of cosmic and human resistance.
I still believe in an ‘optimism of grace’, that God loves to hear and answer our prayers. I don’t know why I don’t always get what I think I need. I simply don’t have all the answers.
But I’ve seen enough of God in Jesus to believe he is trustworthy. And in the meantime I’ll pray and act in the cause of the flame giving way to glory.
Laugh-A-Minute Faulkner
(Next in my series of old articles is one about joy and personal integration.)
Laugh-a-minute Faulkner, she called me. She had not worshipped at the church where I was the minister during my time, but she had heard the stories. David Faulkner told jokes in his sermons, and it was not the done thing.
It was her misfortune, then, to attend a united service for all the churches in the town one Easter Sunday evening, where I was the speaker. Having read that on Easter Day in Russia the Orthodox priests gathered in the afternoon to tell one another jokes as a sign of their joy, and having also read a line of a poet who called the resurrection of Jesus ‘a laugh freed for ever’, I felt I had adequate theological precedent to begin my talk with a joke.
One person conspicuously avoided me afterwards.
I thought of that occasion again recently, when someone said that I had matured: I had gone from ‘flippant’ to ‘serious’ sermons. I would take great issue with the idea that I was flippant, but I am concerned for those who feel you can’t have a belly-laugh in a service.
My concerns are twofold. Firstly, I think they’ve misread Jesus and the Bible. Yes, Jesus in his sufferings was a ‘man of sorrows, acquainted with grief’. But he was more. He was the one who turned water into wine. Wouldn’t you invite him to your parties? (By the way, Lord, if it’s not too much to ask, mine is a Californian Zinfandel or an Aussie Semillon.) He said he had come to bring ‘life in all its fullness’ – was he bringing a misery package? And he told his petty critics that they were ‘straining out a gnat but swallowing a camel’ – sounds like satire to me.
Jesus wasn’t unique in the Bible. Laughter among the spiritual didn’t begin with him. When Elijah had a ding-dong with the prophets of the idol Baal at Mount Carmel, Baal’s gang got so desperate that their god wasn’t answering their prayers that they even resorted to self-harm. Elijah mocked them, saying, “Perhaps your god has gone to the loo”. Yes, really.
If my first concern is for a lack of wholeness in appreciating the spiritual life, my second concern is that the criticism of laughter in worship implies another lack of wholeness: a lack of inner wholeness as a person, a lack of integration. It manifests itself in other ways: the same person may listen to secular pop music for entertainment, but insist on traditional hymns in a church service. There doesn’t seem to be enough sauce goose to cover the gander.
Such a lack of personal wholeness is often allied with an approach to Christian worship that regards it as an escape from the world. Yet Jesus didn’t come to set up a ghetto of escapists. He came to transform people who would engage with a broken world, people who would bring the whole of themselves to worship and service, not just a religious segment.
It seems to me that these symptoms indicate a number of problems: a inner dualism, a lack of sensing that all of life is lived in relation to Jesus, an unacknowledged inner brokenness. It suggests that life is something to run away from, rather than to look in the eye. Given the healthy postmodern desire for wholeness, is it any surprise that so few people are persuaded by we Christians about our faith when this is often what we are like?
The Hearse At The Pub
(Continuing my series of old posts reposted.)
It was a warm evening, with drinks to match. We were relaxing in the garden of a local pub, toasting the end of a well-received musical production we’d been involved in these last few nights.
It was then that we saw it arrive. No ordinary car being driven into the pub grounds, it was a hearse.
Ribald comments flashed around our group, jokers trying to top each preceding witty remark. Until the hearse passed our table, and one of our number realised: the people in the hearse were friends of his.
“What are you doing with a hearse?” he asked his friends.
“Oh, we’ve just bought it.”
“Why?”
“We’re going to take a holiday touring Europe, and wanted a vehicle where whoever wasn’t driving at night would have room to lie down and sleep.”
Now what would you have given to have been a border guard on the European mainland, maybe Romania, somewhere near – oh, for argument’s sake, Transylvania? You go round to the back of the hearse, peer in, and someone rises from the catafalque. And what if the person who had been disturbed from sleep and was now getting up had not had American standards of dental work?
Sometimes life comes out of nowhere and grabs you. Sometimes all your preconceived ideas get thrown out of the window.
I like the story of the man who was convinced he was dead. He told his wife, his friends, his work colleagues.
So persistent was he that they became very worried about him. As you would.
Finally they clubbed together to pay for him to see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist set about his work diligently. Using medical textbooks, he proved to the man one simple fact: dead men don’t bleed.
“OK, OK, I accept what you’re saying,” said the man, “Dead men don’t bleed.”
At which point the psychiatrist produced a lancet and jabbed it into the man’s flesh.
As blood throbbed out, the man looked in horror: “Maybe dead men do bleed after all.”
Got any preconceived ideas that need a decent burial? About God, for example?
Big Circumstance 