I Minus 7 Days

This is it... the final countdown.

It's been a long road but in seven days, I finally reach that crossroads where I choose adventure or fear. Do I stay here and live according to routine, or do I break the cycle and do something different and a little risky. If everything works out... this time next week I'll be in another country having ridden upon the clouds for the very first time.

Of course, the time for questioning myself is practically speaking... far too late. I've invested too much time, money, effort and hope to abandon my personal quest now. So it's time to spread the wings and let the breeze take me up into the stratosphere, a time to raise the main mast and tack into the wind.

If you had asked me 9 months ago how I would have expected to feel about this trip, I would tell you that it would be something like 85% anxiousness and 15% eager anticipation, so I'm quite surprised to find myself in a position that is somewhat the reverse of that.

It is interesting that in the time I've waited since booking my little holiday, my destination has become more than a little politically unstable... and the average number of aeroplanes dropping out of the sky has also increased. It's almost as if the world doesn't want me to break the chains it has forged for me... but I shall not be bound by a lesser master.

Curiously I've also been dwelling on a dream I had some time ago concerning my destination and wondering if it was as random as I might have thought.

It's also interesting that I caught the end of Vanilla Sky on TV the other night. It's kind of the position I find myself in:

... and I think I'm going to leave you with that thought - that every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around,and that more importantly... if the world around you is becoming a dystopia shaped by your fears and anxieties. You need to surrender to what is greater (Him) in order to wake up to a real life.

God bless

Nick

Real Reality TV

Take a good look at yourself in the mirror.

No, really... take a long hard look.

Do you like what you see? Do you think you measure up sufficiently to the standards of those around you? Do you think they would approve of you being seen in public?

You probably don't have the faintest idea what I'm talking about.

Following on from my recent post entitled Lepers, Shades and Pariahs; it wasn't long before a very real and disturbing example of the kind of prejudice and discrimination I was talking about, surfaced on the news...

CBeebies TV presenter Cerrie Burnell, was the unfortunate target of some pathetically bigoted parents here in the UK. What was her crime?

Cerrie was born without the lower half of her right arm.

This doesn't in any way affect how she does her job, but some "worried" parents voiced concern that her appearance might disturb their children, stop them getting a proper night's sleep and terrify them.

Shall I tell you what terrifies me?

The fact that there are adults out there who share that opinion. Sometimes there is nothing as bigoted as parents who are full of their own self righteousness.

It's people like that who have in the past helped to neutralise my own sense of self worth. You see, I myself have a slight disfigurement - a scar on the centre of my chest... but I'm extremely lucky "tis but a scratch!" I can cover it up... the convenience of that fact is quickly substituted for cowardice and without exception I hide my scar away.

The fact that there are people out there such as Cerrie, who not only cannot hide their differences, but furthermore say "why the heck should I hide?" is a source of great inspiration. I do not believe she chooses to do this to provoke a reaction or make a point, she just does what feels natural and comfortable to her... and that is the real point.

Children will not be terrified - true... some kids who have been raised poorly (and sadly there are a number of them), will mock, but the vast majority of children will probably insatiably curious at first (as children so wonderfully are), and then they will just shrug and get on with it. Children don't start out with discriminative attitudes... these are learnt as they grow up.

I never used to be bothered by my scar as a child, but it all changed when I grew up and I never really understood why... it was a puzzle to me. However, it's through this recent turn of events (which I am reliably informed by a transatlantic friend has now hit the US national news), that I think I have finally grasped what a significant part of that puzzle might be...

As a child, I thought like a child. I didn't care about adults opinions of what I looked like, I just wanted to have fun and... be a kid. However, when I grew up... suddenly the opinions of adults started to matter a lot. I've talked recently about the danger of being defined by others views about yourself... and I know I promised to return to that subject (I haven't forgotten). It's yet another example of caring too much what people think. I don't think the timing of this is entirely coincidental for me, as I'm on a part of my journey where I will perhaps have a chance... no, maybe even a necessary opportunity to challenge that.

There's a certain level of unfair expectation on television here in the UK. People are known to get their noses out of joint even when presenters retain their regional accents (I was very surprised when my current favourite weather presenter was criticised for this... even though I think her accent is slight). Society is enthralled by so called "reality TV", but if we are genuinely serious about reality on our televisions; then surely true reality is not merely showcasing ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, but breaking down barriers and allowing people who don't fit the traditional stereotypical roles, to be extraordinary people in ordinary circumstances.

Humans come in all shapes, sizes and designs... why shouldn't they all find equal representation on the glowing magical box in the corner of our living room.

Lepers, Shades and Pariahs

Today at church, we looked at the topic of leprosy.

Biblical leprosy is pretty vague, because the term leprosy could apply to any number of skin conditions that made a person unclean. I would imagine that even eczema would come under the umbrella of leprosy back in the ancient world.

Essentially if you woke up one morning with a skin condition, you had it looked at... and if it was proclaimed leprous, you were carted off to a remote place, tucked conveniently away from the guilty eyes of a society that feared you, where you could not spread your uncleanness. The image that says most prevalent in my mind, is the leper colony in Ben Hur - a vast, labyrinthine desolate quarry where people wander aimlessly, devoid of hope... like wraiths... shades of Hades.

Imagine the life you were being condemned to lead...if you had a non-contagious skin-disease, and you were lumped in with people who have a contagious one.

With the advent of modern medical understanding and treatment, I wonder how easily do we look down with disdain on our forefathers for excluding their stricken brethren?

Do we have an excuse? Do we have a right? Or is there an inconvenient log of wood lodged firmly and hypocritically in our eye?

We are all familiar what the connotations of the disease were because the meaning of the word has diversified to include people who find themselves on the society for a whole multitude of different reasons... not just medical.

As we were reminded in church today... we all have our lepers.

There are people around us in society we find it all too easy to turn a blind eye towards, because we foolishly allow ourselves to fall unconsciously into the deluded notion that the world revolves around our sphere of influence.

Preaching this morning, Julian Davy highlighted the plight of the elderly... how just saying hello in the street more often, might make their day. It brought to my mind the recent news that statistically, dementia is on the increase. Although most forms of dementia probably have a genetic trigger; the more isolated and less occupied a person becomes, the swifter the curtain draws in on them... and the shades come to claim them. As society becomes more and more insular... as we take less interest (and when I say interest I mean that of a compassionate nature, not nosey or meddling), the people on the outside become more distant and are in more danger of being lost. It doesn't matter what they are being lost to... what does matter, is that they are needlessly being left on the event horizon of a calamitous emotional black hole - at the heart of which sits the unquenchable singularity of loneliness and despair.

We can ill afford to abandon anyone to such a merciless foe... lest one day through mishap or neglect, we too find ourselves on the other side of the coin... drifting ever closer to the point of no return.

Personally my own thoughts took me much further than the sermon went today. Just before setting off for this morning's service, one of my bugbears reared it's ugly head in the news... and I was reminded that lepers aren't just people who are less fortunate, or ignored... they are sometimes people who are very much in our face - those we consider our adversaries.

We need to learn to separate our rejection of certain ideas and acts, from those that hold them. Love the sinner, hate the sin. What the sin is I won't preach on... that's down to whatever God convicts in your heart.

The remarkable thing about Christ, is that he didn't just acknowledge lepers... he engaged with them. The scripture tells us he was moved with genuine compassion. He did not fear their contagion and he did not despise their uncleanness. He walked right up to them and pulled them out of their personal Hell.

He didn't just do this with the physically sick. He did this with all societies outcasts - the foreigner, the prostitutes, the lunatics, the terrorists, the corrupt. He went out of his way to ignore the mores of others around him, if he thought they were wrong. Tax collectors and zealots were mortal enemies... but it didn't stop Jesus appointing one from each group to be among his apostles. In Christ's company, the individual wrongs and weaknesses of both those groups were wiped away and someone new was born within both Levi and Simon. He accepted them as they were and let his nature, his truth transform them. You can only do that from a place of acceptance.

Since when did we decide we should do otherwise? Who preached this message?

Martin Luther King once said that he was convinced that in the final analysis, unarmed truth and unconditional love would have the final say in reality. We were talking about truth the other day and as we discussed, truth needs no weapon to strip us down and bring us crashing to our knees.

We don't need to rage aggressively against the things we disagree with, to make our point stick. If we do, it will not avail us because those are not the weapons we were equipped with. If you look at the armour of God, you'll notice something interesting. Righteousness is not a weapon, it's a breastplate. Righteousness protects us. If we remove it and start battering other people over the head with it, we leave our heart exposed and unguarded... and in the end it will be to our own ruin.

The weapon we are given is sword of the Spirit... the word of God. Scripture describes it as being able to separate marrow from bone. It can discern. In short, it is God's word that convicts people... not our interpretation of that word. A dozen people can be sat in a room and told the same story... and each one will walk away convicted and/or inspired by God in their own way. It is our place to deliver God's message. It is he himself who shapes it and crafts it to fit each individual.

We merely need to be assertive with the unconditional love already given to us by God, extend it to others and be faithful to the word given to us.

There's a Good Friday hymn that we sing in which we proclaim that:

My song is love unknown,
My Saviour's love to me
Love to the loveless shown

That they might lovely be.

This is the message we must reclaim if we are sincere in our belief - if you want someone to be lovely, you have to love them.

I am utterly convinced that Chris Martin was at least in part influenced by that hymn when he wrote the Coldplay song "A Message". That song is the thought I'd like to leave you with tonight. Please listen to it and think very carefully about the people you know who have become lepers, shades or pariahs in your life. Or perhaps you feel that you are on an outcast... and if that is the case, I urge you all the more to listen... because no matter how the facts as you see them seem to be playing out, you do not have to be alone:

May God bless you.