Token Effort

Sorry to my huge dedicated readership for the long delay in blogging. Let me make it up to you with a report from a delightful almost-recent road trip.

One evening in the Family Home, we were browsing Google maps for stupid place names and were quite delighted to discover that we live a mere hour from:

Ready Token.

I mean, really? So, off we went the next fine Saturday, with high hopes and a bottle of wine in an actual wicker picnic basket.

It wasn’t sunny.

Now, I know that using GPS on a road trip defeats the whole point of getting lost, hungry and despairing of life… but when the destination is an hour away, it’s probably okay. And anyway, the GPS didn’t help.

“You have reached your destination,” it declared. Halfway down a road to nowhere. Any signs? No. Houses? No. One miscellaneous building. Were we in Ready Token? Who’s to say?

We carried on towards what looked like greater civilisation, but the combined wisdom of two GPSes and a map indicated quite strongly that we really must have been in Ready Token before, halfway down that road of nothing.

We got out. There was nothing to see.

Then, finally, we found something. Some sort of manor house or estate with the words ‘Ready Token’ carved into the gateway.

So. This was it, then.

It started to get quite chilly. But you know what, we had driven for an hour to have a picnic in Ready Token, so that is what we did. On the grass verge at the side of the road outside the big house. We wondered if somebody might call the police.

Well, once we’d finished the picnic, we decided to leave. I’ve gotta tell you, there’s not a whole lot more to do in Ready Token. You can stare at some trees, I guess. Or walk down a long, dull B road. But we were too easily bored.

The best moment came as we were getting back into the car. A lone cyclist came pedalling up the deserted road. We glanced at each other. Then did a double take. Then she stopped and came back. Yes, it was one of our friends from Oxford.

“Is this Ready Token? Oh good!” She was cycling back to her hometown. It has to be said, we didn’t really expect to bump into anyone we knew in Gloucestershire’s most obscure (possibly non-existent) village.

“And what are you guys doing here?” We tried to explain that we had purposely driven for an hour to have a picnic in Ready Token, but I’m not sure she quite understood.

Oh, and we didn’t go straight home. Later on, we bought a commemorative thimble from a trout farm.

Will you argue the case for God?

Recently, I have really enjoyed reading Job.

I’ve never enjoyed reading Job before. Has anyone? Well, I’m sure some other people have. But it doesn’t sound normal.

There is so much that could be said about this amazing, ancient book. It has a great message about the priceless value of faith and relationship with God above everything else. About how we need to fight for this, because it’s the one thing the Devil wants to destroy, and cannot destroy directly. Also about how we really can’t see what’s going on a lot of the time. And about how wild and untameable God is. But the main reason I’ve enjoyed it this time is that I realised some things about it that I hadn’t really registered before:

1) It poses and answers one of the most basic questions in world religion – a question that anybody wondering about God, and everybody superstitious asks:

Do bad things happen to people because they have done something bad?

The answer given in Job is, in summary:

No.

And I was just blown away by the fact that this is the conclusion of the oldest book in the Bible; the first Jewish text we have. It runs counter to most people’s most basic assumptions about how God and life work.

2) It is a whole book about how religious people can be really unhelpful and annoying when you’re going through a crisis. Job has four friends who show up when his life has fallen apart, and instead of being sympathetic, they feel like they have to give him the correct doctrinal explanation for what is happening to him.

“You must have done something bad. Just admit it, repent, and then you’ll get all your prosperity back.”

That’s what they tell him, over and over. Job’s replies are wonderfully sarcastic. But it made me think about Christians too, and how depressingly often they (we) can feel they ought to make some sort of excuse for what is happening – to provide some theological explanation, as if they need to defend God and give him good PR.

When, “I’m really struggling because I lost my job and my boyfriend left me,” is met with a cheery, “Ah, at least we know that ‘all things work together for the good of those who love God’”… that’s really not cool. And, in Job, we see that God doesn’t like that either. At the end, he slams those friends for their religious platitudes and tells them they should have just been honest. And if they didn’t understand something about God, they should have just kept silent in wonder, alongside Job.

I’m not sure why we feel the temptation to act this way. Is it fear? Are we afraid to say, “I don’t know”? Are we afraid to admit that God is wild and infinite, and not a genie in a lamp? Are we afraid to suffer alongside our friends when life deals them downs as well as ups?

This, from chapter 13, is the most amazing warning against that sort of defensive, cheap religious comfort. It’s scary and wonderful:

I desire to speak to the Almighty
and to argue my case with God.
You, however, smear me with lies;
you are worthless physicians, all of you!
If only you would be altogether silent!
For you, that would be wisdom.
Hear now my argument;
listen to the pleas of my lips.
Will you speak wickedly on God’s behalf?
Will you speak deceitfully for him?
Will you show him partiality?
Will you argue the case for God?
Would it turn out well if he examined you?
Could you deceive him as you might deceive mortals?
He would surely call you to account
if you secretly showed partiality.
Would not his splendor terrify you?
Would not the dread of him fall on you?
Your maxims are proverbs of ashes;
your defenses are defenses of clay.

spoons; skeletons

I think doing strange things reminds me I’m alive.

Strange things I have experienced in the last couple of weeks:

1) Going to see art painted by animals at the Museum of Zoology in London. In fact, it wasn’t the animal art that was the best part. It wasn’t even the fact that you could ‘adopt’ an exhibition, meaning that a jar of preseved pickled moles was proudly sponsored by someone with a sick sense of humour. Topping even that was the museum’s signage.

Who had the job of annotating the exhibitions in this museum? Whoever it was, they were some kind of sarcastic genius. A stuffed flying lemur was displayed with the caption:

“Flying lemur. It is not a lemur and it cannot fly.”

That was it. No further explanation. Just that. This was just about surpassed perhaps the best sign I have ever seen:

“Mole skeleton. It is extemely common for children to think that all skeletons are dinosaurs. This is not the case.”

2) Throwing lots of plastic spoons at a cinema screen. Simon persuded me to go to a screening of The Room – widely acclaimed as one of the worst films ever made by man. Of course it was an ironic screening full of people who love to hate the film. I’ve never before gone into a cinema to be told by the ushers:

“No booze, no american footballs and no metal spoons.”

Oh yes – every time an inexplicable photo of a spoon appears in The Room, that’s your cue to hurl plastic cutlery at the screen, with a cry of “SPOOOOOOOOONS!”. At one point I stood up to let someone out, just as a tidal wave of cutlery hit me in the face.

Amazing.

3) Taking a tourist trip to Slough. It only lasted five minutes, sadly, but by then I think we’d probably seen the highlights. (Roadworks; Tesco Express.)