do you know this man?
my son and i- not to mention uncle mark and nic- have been spending much of the last week looking for him in the land of the fighting dwarves, a strange sylvan venue and most tricky of all in the world of the wallies. for this is indeed wally and his whole raison(iprefersultanas)d'etre is to play hide and seek in the pages of his books. and it is extremely difficult to find him tucked away amongst hundreds of distracting other figures.
tomorrow is the beginning of lent and if it weren't for the fact that i cannot drink at the moment because of some medication(nothingseriousdon'tworry), i would be about to give up alcohol. i did give it up once as a student although my fast lasted less than 24 hours. found inexplicably in an oxford hostelry on ash wednesday evening, a friend offered me a drink. to which all too proudly i said 'an orange juice please'. my friend, who by the way was very tall and gentle, asked me why i did not want a beer. to which i replied 'i have given up alcohol for lent'. to which ('towhoo' - special edit for owls) he replied 'thats a bit silly, isn't it?' and becasue i respected his judgement that was that and my self denial ended abruptly in the murky depths of marston's pedigree.
before moving on i did give up alcohol successfully last year, so there.
the reason for my trouble in oxford was i did not really think about why i was doing it at all. what was the point? what is the point?
loads of people give up stuff for lent to prove their self control and to be fitter for a little while...but that- good as it may be- is not the point. it seems to me that lent is not about proving that we are in control. indeed if anything it is about quite the opposite.
and that's where wally comes in. one of the reasons it is hard to find god these days is much the same as the reason it is hard to find wally. there are too many other figures and too much other stuff in the way. the more stuff we have the more he becomes like the woodpecker- lesser spotted. it would be easier to find wally if the page was cleared somewhat and it is easier to find god when we clear away some of the distractions. hence lent is about erasing dwarves in order to see wally or something similar.
jerry myer tells us that god says 'you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart'. a 40 day season to go looking for and finding god- and, if you give up a spot of telly, time to indulge in a few more 'where's wally' books too.
2 comments:
Interesting thoughts Steve - but I wonder if there is a tat more to giving something up than just clearing-space. I could do that by giving up something I dont like. But if I give up something that usually makes my life more "comfortable" then I suspect I am moving beyond space-clearing.. although I am not confident enough to say in print what precisely the value of this is. TTFN Andy.
Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice; I don’t think he needs us to make even minor sacrifices at lent. Lent sacrifices are also so negative. How about doing something for lent? If we need to ‘do’ or ‘give up’ we have New Years resolutions which have the advantage of being permanent but if we really need to ‘give up’ time will tell us when as you have found with alcohol. So perhaps you’re not such a ‘towhoo’after all!! My New Years resolution was to give up making New Years resolutions. JOHN.W
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