Resolution

Already it seems a long time since the turning of the year, which was celebrated in an unusual manner by running away, stomachs bursting from poussin, gumbo and baked apple, after setting off a firework on a roundabout on an M11 sliproad. The firework was strangely apposite as a metaphor for the year gone, as it didn't really leave the ground like it ought've to, instead it made a loud noise and exploded at ground level - exciting.

Well, you see, for the firework it was either there or through the letterbox of a neighbour as an opening gambit to meet them, get to know them better and all sing Auld Langs Syne together... I have now met 1 neighbour, and she is lovely, but I mainly travel under cover of darkness, and this is not the best way to meet neighbours, at least not in Grantchester.

Now, as we are in January, a month of looking forward and back, people ask me if I have any New Year's Resolutions. "Yes and no", I tell them cryptically but truthfully - following a rest and chance to think, I have a reinvigorated resolve to improve in both specific and general areas of my life, but then again these things existed before, and are not new but ongoing, and will continue to ongo. These things are the same things as last year, and the new year only serves as a measure of how much progress has been made or not made.

Instead I rather made a list of 2006 ACTIONS. Things that will be done this year - achievables, but not in an indefinite "I want to be a better person" type-of-a-way - these things must be done i.e. I have made them imperatives. As much as I have administation-itis, sometimes I like to tick things off on lists, or rather to scribble them out with a big pen.

But there is an exception, an important exception - a real resolution. To explain, let's backtrack to last year - September I think, and I was down in London on the Central line, which incidentally is my second favourite Underground line. There were free seats, but instead I contentedly perched on the misericord-like window seats at the end of the carriage next to the doors, you know the ones I mean. Interestingly and not entirely without relevance, misericord comes from the latin misereri (mercy) and cor (heart) - and means merciful. Anway, I was thus reposed, lost somewhere between thought and the stress of PhD thesis.

At Tottenham Court Road the doors opened and in jumped a young girl in a Leeds United football shirt, who shot past me, and was followed by a young boy, similarly resplendent in a white LUFC top. But the boy did not zoom past and stopping right in front of me, looked up at me through his specs and said "I want to sit there. Can I sit there please?" This made me really happy as it wrenched me out of my self-consumed torpor - "Yes, you certainly can".

His behaviour rather shocked his father, who had got on just after him, "What did you say?" he asked him, although I'm not sure if this was merely in reference to his use of the word 'please', or the fact that he was usurping strangers from their half-sitting-half-standing situations. And thus ensued one of the finest conversations I have ever had with complete strangers on the Underground - all about football and the fortunes of our respective clubs and the match they had just seen. Maybe it was because we were not Londoners that made this possible. They disembarked a few stops later, along with all talk of football, but what the little boy had said mysteriously stayed.

Later I prayed, asking God about what to do in a number of difficult situations, and all I heard was 'be more like that boy in the train'. Nothing more. I think it's about boldness, and asking for what we want. That boy was bold - bolder than I am - and he knew what he wanted, which was to sit where I was sitting. The fact is that his odds of sitting there were low - first, I was already sitting there, and secondly, he was small and had no real way of removing me, and third why should a big scary-looking man move out of the way for a small boy? Personally, I would have difficulty asking a man, who was as proportionately larger than me as I was to the boy, to move because I wanted to sit where he was.

But the boy was bold. He didn't see all the problems. He didn't appear to consider what I might think, say or do, or the complicated inter-personal code of grown up society. All he knew was what he wanted, and he asked for it, AND which is more, he got what wanted and asked for! "Ask and it will be given to you." Asking requires boldness, which is rewarded.

It is not currently fashionable in christianity to 'want' things - i.e. we should want God's Will to be done, and our list of wants and desires is not important, in fact it's probably dirty and wrong: for many piety outranks desire. Sometimes we want God to do everything for us and tell us exactly what to do and how all of the time, but we have free will, and our will counts for something.

It reminds me of The Godfather Part I, when Johnny, an actor, is rather pathetically and sycophantically asking Godfather for help;

Johnny "Oh, Godfather, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. "
Don Corleone "You can act like a man!"
(and then slaps him in the face)

Indeed, God wants us to -"in every circumstance and in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God." God wants us to want what He wants, but it is important that we do the wanting ourselves.

God wants us to follow desires, which if we are paying enough attention, should be generally in line with God's will, as they are part of who we are and have been put in us by Him, instead of always 'waiting on God' for divine intervention. Why not just get on with things? If they are in accord with God's Will they will go forward, and even if not, our boldness will be appreciated.

For example, looking back to the previous post on speed dating, the people there had made a positive move by saying "I have a desire to be in a relationship", and acting upon that. And, they are more likely to see that happen than if they had not admitted to this desire and acted so boldly. I believe that, while not necessarily resulting in relationship, such boldness will be rewarded;

"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of power and of love
and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control."

I have many big decisions on the way in the next few months, and I am doing well at putting them off, but I want to be bold. I want to tackle things head on and boldly go where no Dr Joe has gone before, aiming forward, asking and, like the boy in the train, believing in receiving.

So my New Year's Resolution is to be BOLD. Bring it on..!

Freedom lies in being bold ~ Robert Frost