Remebrance Sunday: Writing scripts

Sun and rain
One of my blog-friends, Rick, wrote something today that picked me up.

"I can only live one day at a time. Today.
Just for today. I can live through this day only.
I can do something for 12 hours that would appall me if I felt like I had to keep it up for a lifetime. This too shall pass."

One day at a time is my mantra at the moment.

Actually, the synchronicity didn't quite work here, because I really enjoyed the last 2 days of my life... I've done such a lot of work for the BBC over the last few years, and I totally love being "produced" - I flourish so much better at being a vital, creative person if there's someone else there looking after the overall details, and coming at me with "come on, you can write me a better line than that...".

This last two weeks I've written and rewritten and rewritten my script for the service - even the links matter; if they are clunky, the service kind of goes dead somehow. The set pieces need to be poetic (lots of depth in just a few words) but not soupy and overdone.

Vicars everywhere will have had a tiring weekend this weekend - it's hard enough coming up with something to say on a regular week, harder still when it's for Remembrance when there are so many different threads going on in a subject that touches so many raw nerves. You have to say something clear and definite, otherwise it's just bland. You have to offer comfort, but also something more than comfort alone. You know that you'll be speaking to people who are in the depths of grief, and others who really need to start moving into the next phase of their life. And, being a Radio broadcast, the couple of hundred people you actually have eye-contact with in the Chapel itself are a mere tiny percentage; there will be thousands more listening who won't see me smile or read my face. (Yes, this is the moment where you tell me I have a good face for Radio...).

A week ago, the radio script was close to done, but there was something elusive that I coudn't quite nail. About 4 nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night. There it was. Bonhoeffer. Of course. He said that if you insist on searching God for answers to the big questions - life, death, guilt - you end in making God abstract, pushing him to the periphery of life. Whereas, with a degree of acceptance of the mysteries of life, and a connection with God right in the everyday experience, you discover the actual presence and reality of God, not in the abstract, but in concrete reality. Try to make God too earthbound and real, too "matey" and domesticated, and he vanishes. But accept the slight veil of mystery, and everything comes into focus with the sense of presence.