Yesterday was normalish at both ends and stressful in a thought provoking way in the middle. I’m working mainly from home this week so the morning was lecture preparation for the coming Semester, (Galatians), the occasional phone call. The late afternoon I read and revised a paper I’m doing on Baptist hermeneutics at ICC Post-grad research seminar, ‘Under the rule of the Word as Christ and Scripture’. The evening, after our meal, was a jaunt to Borders where Sheila bought a book and I didn’t!
But around mid-day I was walking down Paisley High Street on the way to the bank, and heard the oddly familiar strains of Hey Jude being played by a tromboning busker. The incongruity of the instrument and a favourite tune I’ve enjoyed for decades both as Beatles original and Shadows instrumental, and the crisp frosty sunshine, raised the feel good factor. Going to give the guy some money when I get back from the bank – because he was quite good on the trombone, it was cold to be standing there entertaining the shoppers (and I was entertained!), and if he was doing it, he needed the money.
I got to the bank and went to do the business and discovered my Switch card wasn’t in my wallet. I know all about the gospel sayings about not being anxious about money and material things, but that slim piece of plastic is invested with considerable anxiety potential when it aint there! I took every other card shaped thing out of my wallet, fled home to check other possible locations, and was back at the bank pdq to ask about the only remaining possibility – did I leave it the day before?
It isn’t just the possible loss of money – it’s the identity thing, the threat that someone has a hold over some part of who you are and what you are about. Then it’s the annoyance at yourself for misplacing it, losing it, being careless when you should know better. I’m quite good at beating myself up given the right scenario – and standing at the bank missing a plastic debit card is as good a reason for self-recrimination as I can think of.
Och well not to worry – doesn’t life consist of more than the abundance of things, like debit and credit cards? Hauerwas has been drumming that home every chance he gets in his treatment of the Sermon on the Mount. I don’t live by bread alone; daily bread is enough anyway. Aye right! But I needed to get the card or cancel it with all the hassle that was going to cause.
The sun shines on the righteous and the unrighteous. My card was indeed left at the bank- unfortunately it was in the safe and couldn’t be available for at least half an hour. Nae problem, said I. Walking to the Piazza I heard the trombone in the distance playing the Trumpet Voluntary – in January, Paisley, 1.30pm, on the trombone – I fair floated to the Post Office grinning at the oddity and grace of it all.
On the way back to the bank a man in a shell suit was standing looking suspiciously at a paving stone. Our eyes met and he said in phonetic Scottish slang
Y’ve goat tae watch thae yins. The durty watter splashes yur legs!
He pushed his foot down slowly and sure enough it was one of those paving stones that rocked, and gathered water under it. He winked, stepped to the side of it, and went on his way. I got my card at the bank, decided to walk the longer way back to the car, and only when i got home did I remember the trombone player.
I’m genuinely scunnered at myself because that young guy was making, for me anyway, a contribution to what Sirach meant when all the trades and crafts are praised
By their work they maintain the fabric of the world, and their prayers are in the works of their hands (Sirach 38.34, NEB)
So I’ll go looking for him again – and when I do I will be acknowledging one of the ways in which God intimates the goodness and mercy that follows us.
A friend has paid a gift subscription for me, for the Reader’s Digest, for over 20 years. The late Murdo Ewan MacDonald, pioneer in securing practical theology a place at the academic round table at Glasgow University, once referred to it as "that saboteur of the modern intellect". But now and again, by accident or intent, it gets it right. One of its snippets illustrates the ethical ambiguity, rational dexterity, logical inconsistency, dubious ecology, theological illiteracy, philosophical stupidity, social irresponsibility, technological rapacity….och I’ve ranted long enough – just read it…………. and laugh………., or weep.
