ahead of the game

This morning when I was out and about I saw a sign which rather took me aback.

It said - "Christmas trees for sale: half-price"

Nothing like getting in early, I suppose. Being ahead of the game. That sort of thing.

Except I'm inclined to think the sign had been simply forgotten. And was hopeless out of date. Which made me think of the sign we have at the top of the lane by the road.

No one has taken it down as yet. Which is unfortunate.

Our sign says - "Christmas is ....." and then at the bottom of the picture it says "...Jesus". Which is just about passable (at a pinch!) in the run up to Christmas-time. But in the bleak mid-winter of February? Hardly.

To add to the sense of being totally out of date, a bit of graffiti's been scrawled on the poster's middle. Someone had the wit to write "...coming soon". As in "Christmas is .. coming soon"

Which of course is true. Always. Well, except for one day in the year.

I sometimes pass the poster at the top of the lane and wonder what folk must think. Like ... the rest of us have moved on, and you guys there, you're simply living in the past.

We're getting the sign replaced, I hasten to add. Not just a different poster, but a whole new board with a rather different design.

And not before time. Because our sign at the top of the road is a very graphic symptom of the whole malaise from which the church as a whole is suffering.

The rest of the world has moved on.

It's not that the message is now not important. Far from it. It's more that the manner in which we express that message is hopelessly out of date.

It's February. And much of our life has got stuck in the ruts of December.

We've got to move on. Not just catch up with the rest of the world. But step out ahead, as we're meant to be doing. Like Jesus was always doing. Ahead of the game.

Leading the pack. Not lagging some decades behind.

That's been the theme of the day, I guess.

The girls who run the place we have down here for serving coffees, teas and lunches week by week - from time to time they have a kind of 'team meeting'. Off site. Away from it all.

And I'm part of the team so I try to be there.

Today they had lunch at a place just out of town. I didn't manage the lunch but I joined them there for a coffee after their meal.

And I think it was maybe twenty to four by the time we got up from our seats! It was that sort of lunch!

At this time of year these girls and I, we try and mark the six and a half week run-up to Easter Day that's commonly called simply 'Lent' in a way that is appropriate.

We've done some fairly daft things in our time, I guess. Like the time we had a fruit and fruit juice fast. (Nothing but fruit or fruit juice for the whole of Holy Week. That was one long, long week, I assure you!)

We got talking today about our doing a 'carbon fast'. I'd mentioned this on Sunday in our worship time at night. An idea which the Bishop of Liverpool's used and which the latest issue of Teartimes featured as its centre page.

And soon we were talking about how we could in fact, as a people here, actually make a huge big, massive impact if we dared to take the whole thing seriously.

Like using our grounds in a far more appropriate way than we presently do. Like growing and using ingredients grown on the place. And a whole load more.

Which got us on to thinking through what 21st century monasticism might look like here. Since we've already got a more than sufficient starting point the way things presently are.

And since it was in truth essentially through the whole monastic movement that a bastion was preserved against the sweeping hordes of rootless, crude barbarians in an earlier era. Not entirely dissimilar to the way things are today in the western world.

Some fairly radical thoughts were floated! But exciting as well. We agreed to go and sleep on all of this and then come back and meet again and see where this might lead.

A fairly fruitful lunch!

Except, as I say, I wasn't in time for the food!

I was at the SU group along at the school again. A couple of weeks ago there were just five of the children out. And then it was up to fifteen coming along. Today there were some 19 of them there! It was wonderful!

So many possibilities. And yet so short a time. A brief half-hour and so much that we want to pack into the time.

Kind of like my life as a whole, I guess! So short a time - and so much I want to be filling it with.

I can't afford to be stuck in the ruts of December when the world is already in February. Life's too short to be left behind like that.