Dod, thankyou for all the lovely food we have but Dod the people in India and Africa only have rice with dirt in it and why do they only have rice with dirt in it betause that’s not dood. Why do you do that Dod? Why? You need to div’ them nice food like apples and bananas and chocolate and yoghurts and things. Otay Dod? Amen
Deep theology
I’ve been frying my brain looking into the Calvinist/Arminian debate. Suffice to say that I don’t have the energy or inclination to articulate my views at this juncture. Maybe later, when I gain inspiration from the long summer evenings in our tin box home. However, I did come across this T-Shirt slogan and its subtle irony made me chuckle.
Some things I learned this Bank Holiday Monday
I ran the Deep River Rock Belfast Marathon on Monday, all 26.2 miles of it. I’d never bothered with that .2 miles before but you’re not going to take it away from me now.
The marathon should be an experience from which one learns, so here’s my list.
- Don’t flirt with arrogance. It will only bring pain. Retain a healthy dose of realism about your own ability.
- Running 26.2 miles by yourself is incredibly mentally draining. Stick with your friends. Don’t go off thinking you’re faster, you’ll only end up being the hare in that old kids’ story.
- Getting cramp in both calfs, hamstrings and quads all at the same time is very sore. So much so you’ll want to cry for your mummy.
- Embrace science. However much you want it to a fun size bottle of water, a Boost and a Dairy Milk Whole Nut will not provide your muscles with the essentials necessary to run a marathon as specially designed drinks and gels.
- Pain is addictive. Don’t say this will be your first and last marathon until you’ve completed it. You’ll only have to eat your words. Roll on Dublin in October!
A scientific approach?
Find below my Marathon Eve diet (real rather than advised):
McCoys Flamegrilled Steak crisp sandwiches, large Big Mac meal, mixture of various fun size chocolate treats including Mars and Maltesers, large bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes (complex carbohydrates).
A large bottle of Lucozade Sport before bed has redressed the balance and turned me into an athlete again!
Cut it out!
I’ve just been reading back through some of my posts and have been alarmed to find I am developing something of a quirky, habitual style in my narrative, a sort of language idiosyncrasy. I don’t like it and I’m going to stop doing it. I’m not going to tell you what it is for fear of being ridiculed.
But I’m sure you’ll work it out.
The end of the beginning
For those of you who haven’t seen the film Once but want to see it, I would suggest you look away now, as one does on a Saturday night with the news before Match of the Day comes on. Alternatively, you could read this post with your eyes shut or just avoid the next paragraph. Reading on will spoil the ending of the film, not because I like to do that sort of thing but simply because it’s the premise on which this post is based.
Sandra and I watched this film on Friday night and it is a cracking little show - characters you can love, a setting (Dublin) that you know, and a simple but uplifting storyline; boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love. Until the end when boy goes off to London to make his music fame and get back with his old (as in previous not seventy-five), unfaithful girlfriend and girl stays in Dublin to try and make things work with her previously estranged Czech husband (she is Czech too so there’s nothing very strange about the fact that he is Czech, I suppose). I should also mention that boy buys girl a piano, which arrives after he has gone, the perfect romantic gesture as their most connecting of encounters had been playing and singing together in a little music shop she always went into because she couldn’t afford a piano of her own.
So, enough of the York notes. I want to talk about my reaction to the endings of books and films. On Friday night Sandra was gutted because the two protagonists didn’t even manage a proper kiss. The romantic in me (somewhere) wanted to see them snog, consummate in a flurry of action and carefully chosen camera angles, wake up early, go for a full Irish with black pudding at a little place beside the beach, hold their socks and shoes while they paddle in the breakers and throw a stick for a random mongrel that neither of them own before watching the camera pan out to the beach with its low sun and rolling credits.
But another part of me was really relieved that something like this didn’t happen and I’ve been wondering why. Is it because happy endings just aren’t cool anymore and I find them corny? It didn’t used to be this way. The Secret Seven always solved the crime. Santa Claus and Patch resolved their differences and had a harmonious working relationship. The Littlest Hobo always disappeared but you knew that was the way he wanted it. Heidi and Peter got married and raised their children in the place they both grew up among clanking cow bells and yodelling (I know, I can’t believe I read those books either). I liked the happy endings then and never found them unsatisfactory. I fear my thirty-year old cynicism is repressing my ability to enjoy them now.
Or, perhaps, in this story and in others, there is much more romance in a love lost and what could have been than there actually is in a love found and spoiled. To steal a line from Winston Churchill or Brian Houston it can be the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end.
Maybe it was a happy ending after all.
Be on your guard
Easter holidays didn’t fall exactly the way I had hoped. Sandra’s break began a week before mine meaning that this week I was left with looking after the boys for three whole days, on my own, with no one else to help me, all by myself, just me, me alone.
I did ok. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Mrs Doubtfire but I maintained the status quo adequately for the three days. I even managed to go shopping (spending forty quid more than I would moan at Sandra for spending), visit my mother (although I shouldn’t have let Callum slide down the banister like that) and even go on an outing to Funworks. For those uninitiated among you this is one of those big indoor adventure places where you pay money to let your kids disappear into a mountain of netting and plastic for an hour.
I was executing my plan to perfection. Callum doesn’t need my supervision anymore and the drive was long enough to knock Ollie off to sleep. I was even skilful enough to transfer him from the car seat to the buggy without him wakening. Callum into Funworks, Ollie asleep, me reading a book with a hot chocolate and a fifteen. That was the plan. Unfortunately, Ollie’s subconscious must have alerted him to the fact that he was about to miss out on something and he woke up just as I was handing over Callum’s shoes. Another four quid and my anticipated hour of peace was no more. It was now an hour of crawling around after my one year-old making sure he didn’t break an arm going head-first down a slide. Now I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it but you know how it is when a plan hasn’t come together.
Now here’s the key part of the story. While looking after Ollie in the toddler bit I talked to a woman! Yes, a woman that I didn’t even know. A standard, quite boring but polite conversation. “So, what age is this little one?”, “What’s her name?” etc. A gentlemanly thing to do, I think. And that was it. I went home and thought no more about it until last night when Sandra asked me if I had been chatting up any women lately. The Female Gestapo had tracked my movements and anything suspicious had been reported to my wife within thirty-six hours! Fortunately Sandra is not possessed by the green-eyed monster and was only joking but I was still shocked at the extensive surveillance network women have at their disposal. What was more worrying was other women’s reaction to the same event. According to the girls who lunch on Thursday my guilt was compounded by the fact that I knew the episode in question when Sandra asked me. Because my answer to Sandra’s question was, “D’you mean the girl in Funworks?” then I obviously had guilt weighing down my soul!
Let this be a warning to you all, my male comrades. Don’t be fooled and never be complacent. That woman at the table next to you doing Sudoku, she’s actually taking notes in code. The other one across the room with one of those cups of Starbucks that would drown an elephant, she’s not drinking it, she’s using it to conceal her camera and audio device. And all the information goes back to central intelligence for analysis. And if they have anything, they’ll crucify you with it, be sure of that.
Business time!
For all you married couples out there . . .
Big enough
“ ‘Welcome child,’ he said.’
‘Aslan,’ said Lucy, ‘you’re bigger.’
‘That is because you are older, little one,’ answered he.
‘Not because you are?’
‘I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.’”
From Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis
Church feels bleak. Key people resigning roles, friends leaving, a feeling of despair hangs heavy among some of us who have our eyes open to the situation that unfolds. The temptation to jump ship back to the church from which we came 2 years ago is huge.
But God is bigger . . .
Juxtaposed against this feeling of despair I have about the situation is a sense of excitement that God has a plan. That perhaps we are now in winter but should be preparing for spring.
He has been teaching me so much recently. He’s very thematic as well. He’s like a good primary school teacher, not moving on until he’s sure I’ve got the point. For more than six months now it’s been the same two-fold message – ‘Listen to my whisper’ and ‘I’m big enough’.
The story of the Lord passing by Elijah greets me every time I run because Bluetree’s song, Life’s Noise, and more specifically when the drum beat quickens, sets my pace for the rest of my run, reminding me that God is in a whisper as the huge tune blasts my eardrums to pieces!
Every time I wait for his whisper he is reassuring me that he is big enough. I love the story of Gideon as his army is stripped away, I can just imagine his face as God tells him to keep the guys that lap the water of the river like a dog! 300 lappers to fight the Midianites who were as numerous as locusts. God made his point. He’s big enough. And just like Lucy in Prince Caspian, as the constraint of my understanding stretches, God grows into it.
I’m ready for the plan, God. Bring it on.
Please forgive me
I’ll humbly admit that I’m really good at saying ‘Sorry’. I think it’s all the practice I’ve had or maybe my pragmatic nature. I know I’m going to have to apologise at some stage, even if I don’t really know why I’m apologising, so I might as well get it over and done with sooner rather than later.
Three year-old Callum hasn’t quite grasped the benefits of pragmatism yet. It has been known, on one occasion, to take 45 minutes in a room by himself before ‘Sorry, Daddy’, has been uttered. The great thing about being three is that the acts of confession of the child and forgiveness from the parent are one fluid movement, and, like ripping off a plaster really quickly, relatively painless. Sadly, we find out that as we grow up things aren’t always so straightforward.
After chatting with elliecooke last night about the situation she alludes to in her post ‘Unforgiven’, I contemplated something about forgiveness which I had not really considered before. A minor, insignificant grievance can have a far more destructive impact than a major sin against someone, depending on the reaction of the aggrieved person. The nature of the sin is only half the equation. It’s what the aggrieved does with it that determines its measure on the Richter Scale.
This episode has taught me a simple but profound lesson. Whenever someone offers me their apology, I, as much as them, have a responsibility to minimise the destructive impact it creates between us. After all, all God expects from me is ‘Sorry, Daddy’. Why should I have any higher standards?
‘Easier said than done’ I hear you whisper . . .
