When Giving your All is Not Enough...

Hull City's manager Phil Brown is a lucky guy. Most of us can't imagine having such support at work. His players are with him, dedicated to his cause to a quite extraordinary degree. So committed are they, he claims, that they are behind him 1,000,000%.

It is great to have such clear-cut backing. Far better than the confusion created by Tennis star Rafael Nadal on the even of last years Wimbledon. Then he openly admitted to only giving 200% to get himself 100% fit for the tournament. It was probably just as well he wasn't going all out, that level of fitness would, almost certainly, not be enough in the modern game.

Even that level of determination though throws a shameful light on the sportsmen and women, and business leaders, of just a few years ago, who laboured under the lazy assumption that they could expect success by only giving 110%!

When will we learn what total committment really is?

Life...

Yesterday saw the 3rd episode of the latest extraordinary offering from those clever bod’s at the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol. ‘Life’ has a broad remit, uncovering how every animal and plant group live, breed and survive, sometimes seemingly against all the odds.

This week it was our turn, well mammals at least. We humans weren’t referred to explicitly, but clearly lessons for our own survival, and success, were strongly inferred. As ever beautiful filming, and wry observations from Sir Richard, told a series of remarkable stories of how the particular features of mammalian life meant we are on to a winner in the survival stakes.

Clearly the ability to generate warmth with within our bodies and feed our own young was useful, especially if you were a seal in an Antarctic blizzard. Having your legs directly under your body certainly gives you an advantage if your trying to outrun a lizard, not something I’d ever had cause to be thankful for previously. The ability to learn from, and across, generations is certainly more widely appreciated, and not only by baby elephants pulled out of mud-holes by their grand-mothers.

Most of all though this was a story about the power of community. Whether it was a hyena, struggling to confront a pride of lions on his own, but far better equipped when joined by his clan, or the complex division of labour in a meerkat colony. A reindeer, keeping safe and mobile among the herd, but still prepared to leave it for days on end to search for one missing calf, or a polar bear willing to risk its life to forage for a rare meal for it’s cub. A key ingredient of our collective success was our sense of family, our inbuilt capacity for relationship.

A week ago I had an invitation to a book launch. A small book with a large claim, ‘The Best Idea in The World’. The strap-line, ‘How putting relationships first transforms everything’. It’s funny how the same ideas keep coming up, perhaps because they’re important, and right.

Not So Secret Motivation ...

Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire is always an uplifting watch, even if the same plot is repeated each week. A successful person is placed ‘under-cover’ in a deprived area for a period of time. They work as volunteers as they discover locally based cash-strapped charities and organisations that are trying to help. In the final scene, with much emotion, they reveal their true identities and hand over large cheques, of their own money, to various deserving causes.
This week’s episode was a ‘special’, where Gary, a millionaire scrap-metal dealer, returned to the projects that he had supported during his stay in Blackpool a few months previously. A veteran’s charity, a respite holiday home for children with terminal illness, a homeless project and an individual with drug dependency were all significantly supported.

2 things stuck out for me, in this episode specifically and the series in general. Firstly the huge impact the opportunity of giving had on the ‘millionaires’ themselves. This was a recurring theme, and a feature of ‘Gary’s’ story. He spoke of his values being turned upside down, his life changed, his relationships improved and his sense of self greatly enhanced. Although we struggle to believe it, and even more to live it out, it is really better to give than to receive.

Secondly, it was striking how many of the projects that were supported, though the programme itself did nothing to highlight it, were faith-based. I personally recognised 2 initiatives, one an Urban Saints project and the other a church based youth group that used to be run by a friend of mine. It really is true that in some of the toughest places the church remains a real, in some cases the only, source of hope. This was powerfully brought home to me in this week’s programme. Gary took his 15 year old son back to Blackpool with him, to show him the work he had been involved in. He struggled to cope as he spoke with a terminally ill child of around the same age, then, in an eloquent piece to camera, spoke about how he couldn’t believe in the presence of God in the face of such suffering. As the story continued we moved to the homeless project, the camera focussed in on the name-plate at the entrance, it was called ‘Vincent House’ – the ‘t’ of Vincent was in the shape of a cross. Nothing was said but this viewer, at least, was left with the sure and certain knowledge that God was present all along.

Welcome ... to an Ordinary Life...

I’ve always been more attracted to the ordinary than the spectacular. Maybe that’s just my personality. I’m a little suspicious of the extravagant; wondering if it is genuine or sustainable. The everyday though, that seems to me to be where it’s at; the reality of things, as they are, without adornment.

I remember well a session when I was at theological college. We were being invited to consider our vocation, our life-calling if you will. The task was to create a personal coat-of-arms, to depict our sense of our own mission. My artistic skills were typically non-existent and I can’t remember what I drew, but I knew straight away what I wanted to express: A life that would seek to understand, to express and to share, an awareness and appreciation of God in the everyday. In no way dismissing or demeaning the super-natural, but hauling it into the realm of the ordinary.

I’ve always felt this is important, not only for the sake of my own taste, but for the task of mission too. If our talking about and living for God only appeals to those of religious sensibility, whether Catholic or charismatic, most people will be missed. Jesus, it seems to me, was concerned not to miss anyone, and so he pitched his tent right in the middle of us and walked our streets.

Now, over the years, this passion has worked itself out in a variety of ways and now I thought I’d begin to write about it. Who knows what I will say or where it will lead. No doubt I will reflect a lot on ‘Christian’ things, but I’m not particularly interested in narrowly religious questions, nor about church affairs. There will, no doubt, be much football and film. An ordinary life indeed, but one looking for ‘rumours of glory’, perhaps I will approach each entry with the question; ‘Where have I seen God today and what was he saying?’ I’d love to invite you to ask the same …

Amazing what confidence can do ....

3 goals in 6 minutes! A bit of belief goes a long way ...

The Soloist...

‘Something’s missing!’ We know that experience. The frustrating final piece of a jigsaw, the absent taste from a meal. Frequently though the anxiety comes from not quite being able to place that thing, without which the whole seems incomplete. Everything seems to be present, yet we are still conscious of a, sometimes gaping, hole.

In the recent film ‘The Soloist’ that question is explored. An adaptation of a true story, originally recorded in LA journalist’s Steve Lopez’s award winning book, the film records the relationship between Lopez himself and Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless man he comes across after hearing him playing Beethoven on a beaten up, 2-stringed violin in a city subway. Nathaniel clearly has plenty of holes in his life, a childhood musical prodigy, schizophrenia has robbed him of his promising career, and almost everything else besides. Lopez on the other hand, celebrated and successful, seems to be much more ‘complete’.

Near the beginning of their relationship Lopez asks Nathaniel, what is his greatest desire? “To find my other 2 strings” is his answer, and that search sets up the remainder of the film. What might they be, those things that would enable him to play, once again, to his full potential, and where on earth might he find them?

Christian imagery abounds. Large illuminated crosses adorn the homeless charity’s premises. As Nathaniel struggles with the chaos of city life he recites the Lord’s prayer. A professional musician, tries, unsuccessfully, to exert his evangelical influence yet, in a flashback, Nathaniel’s mother affirms that when she listens to him play she hears the voice of God. All of this serves as a backdrop to an evolving friendship which is seen as being transformative in itself. At one point Lopez tries to explain to his ex-wife, the influence that Nathaniel and his music is having on him. "It’s Grace”, she whispers in his ear.

At the conclusion of the film, Nathaniel is off the streets, but any recovery is acknowledged as very fragile, Lopez though is profoundly changed, he seems to have found what he didn’t know was missing.

What were those strings? That which was missing yet proved to be so profoundly life enhancing. Not so much the obvious things, the provision of an apartment, simple recourse to medication, or the trite slogans of religion, but friendship and faith, community and beauty … something like grace.