caring

The value for the month at the local school just now is 'caring'.

The upper school had their assembly this morning again and the Head was explaining what 'caring' might mean. It's usually interactive, so there are always a good many suggestions 'from the floor' (which is where the children sit, poor things).

I was struck by the way the one word 'looking' kept cropping up time and again. 'Looking after', 'looking out for'.

It made me think how much of the 'caring' we do has got to begin with the 'looking'. Noticing. Keeping our eyes wide open and watching for what's going on.

The Head usually asks me to lead them all in a prayer at the end. And to lead that prayer appropriately I know I've got to keep my eyes wide open and observe what's going on. (I don't mean through the prayer, I mean throughout the time the Head has been addressing all the pupils on his theme).

I was in with the Primary 4s when the assembly was done. This time my task was to tell them at least some of what a guy like me does.

I suppose I could have told them all just to read the blog! But I did some explaining and then we were back to their questions.

Some of the questions were all about what I did. Like 'How long does it take you to make up a prayer?' Or 'How often do you pray?'

Others were back to the deeper stuff - like, 'Does God have a Mum?' (or a wife, as one of them asked). Which maybe isn't all that way off beam, since they'd been keen to know if God actually had a family.

And since he does, I guess they want to explore the family dynamics and get a feel for how the whole thing holds together.

They 'care' about these things. So they're sorting of 'looking' at it all from every different angle and attempting to make sense of it, I guess.

I stopped with the staff for their coffee break, but couldn't stay long. Another appointment here was fixed for 11am. But before I left the Head gave me a little book to read, which I hadn't come across before - 'The Soul Bird'.

It's not a long thing at all. Written for children, with maybe just a couple of sentences on a page and a picture on the next.

Trying to explain our inner 'psyche' in a way. The soul. And the varying different songs the 'soul bird' sings. It's quite good stuff in its way.

And I'm thinking as I read it (I mean, you can read it at a sitting in about 3 minutes flat, it's really not that long) - I'm thinking that it illustrates the yearning that the modern generation has to recognise the spiritual dimension to our lives.

I'm trying to keep my eyes wide open to the sort of thing this little book is saying. I'm trying to see just why the Head is so enthusiastic as he gives the book to me. There's something there that's plainly rung some bells with him. Something that expresses well the feelings and perspective that he has.

So when he gave me the book and I read the book, I'm sort of 'looking after' him. Looking at the book after him, as it were and trying to stand behind him as he reads. See the world from his perspective as it were.

Maybe that's what 'looking after' someone really means. Like they see something special themselves and then say to you, 'Come over here and take a look at this.'

My appointment at 11am was with a girl from Scripture Union who's been working on material that might be used in schools. She wanted to run it past me and see if there was mileage in the local primary school.

It's material on Christmas. And I figured it might be quite good. The sort of thing the school could use. And a way that we could help them at a stressful time of year.

It's really just 'looking' again at Christmas. Not from the viewpoint our modern society's built, which has all sort of stuff in the way. But from the standpoint of the writers of the story. Getting back to the original text. Looking at that.

I think it could be really good!

There were others to see when she was gone, and a quick bite of lunch to be had. On the hoof, while working through issues with someone else and trying to be getting the line of sight of the Lord on this thing.

So that we can 'look after' him, as it were, because we care that his will is done and his purpose here is fulfilled.

Then there was the funeral. There weren't that many there. The lady who'd died was 90 or so, and she'd been for the past little while quite confined. Not out and about at all. Not in circulation and thus, I guess, for many, out of mind as well as out of sight.

Another reminder to me of just what 'caring' means. Keeping our eyes wide open for the people we don't necessarily see.

There was a good spirit of worship at the service. And her husband bore it well. Sixty years married and more, it's hard: when his mind, too, is not as keen as once it was, and it's all a big struggle to take the whole thing in.

What a need to 'look after' him. To stand in his shoes and see things from his vantage point.

There was a different sort of 'looking' going on at night. Someone to see and issues that needed addressed.

A lot of 'stuff' deep hidden in someone's heart. The sort of stuff that blights a person's life in many ways. The sort of stuff the Lord alone can deal with and resolve.

There's a lot of 'looking' involved in this. The concentrated eye the surgeon has, for sometimes hours on end, as he gently looks for all those festering bits of shrapnel in a person's frame and seeks to ease and tease them slowly out.

That sort of looking. 'Looking after' the person. Trying to get that line of sight the person has, the sort of things that they alone can see and know about themselves, but which it's very, very hard to put in words.

Then trying, as well, to see things from the surgeon's point of view. I mean by that the Lord, of course. he's the master surgeon when it comes to healing souls.

A case of trying to see with growing clarity just what's been going on. Which isn't easy and can't be quick, because the whole thing's very delicate indeed.

In surgical terms, it was a lengthy, three hour operation.

And I was glad of the time at the school at the start of the day whereby the Lord made it clear how important this 'looking' thing is. And would be, through the course of the day.

One of the children in Primary 4 came up at the end and asked me a finger-on-the-button sort of question. "How do you hear what God is saying?"

I guess it means you have to keep your eyes wide open, as well as your ears.