Hayley - Episode 1

Hayley Cropper has just had Coronation Street's very own Humanist Funeral.

What with her bumping herself off the week before we have been exposed to the 21st Century wrestling with the caveman/woman's problem.  Death.

Tribute to Corrie for introducing death in a more real way than soap operas and light entertainment normally do; and for raising big issues in wise ways.

 

I'm sure the screen-writers would say that it is not their place to provide the answers.  That's why you get a telephone number if you or someone you know wants to end it all. 

 

The trained person on the phone won't provide any answers - because that's what they've been trained not to do as well.  They will help you explore why you feel as you do.

 

It's like buying a lovely book of Cryptic Crosswords that intrigues you.  Only to find that when you are stuck there are no answers in the back.

Snowlessness

So we reach the end of January without a snowflake in sight.  If I wanted this I'd have moved to Australia years ago!!  I was feeling miserable enough about a lack of snow when I came across this picture from just before Christmas in Bethlehem.

 

So, after all those over-clever Christmas talks about there obviously being no snow in the place where Jesus was actually born it turns out, this winter at least, to be more snowy than High Wycombe . . .

Trolleys

On my study wall is a picture of a trolley bus that someone gave me for a present.  It is from my home town and I can never look at it without casting a smiling thought back to what, at the time were quite miserable experiences.  I thought of them too when, in Salzburg last summer, we travelled on the city's trolleybuses (below) but they seemed a world away from the ones I remember.

 

I remember them because, quite simply, they were almost useless.  The number of things that could go wrong were amazing.  In addition to all the usual hazards of a busy town's roads and bus system they added

 

A) the ability to get stuck at junctions that dislodged the contact poles because of joins in the wiring

B) losing the power contact when overtaking too wide when vehicles were parked

C) not being able to continue for fear of B)

D) just losing contact for no apparent reason

E) losing power when the wires themselves came town because of weather etc.

F) getting stuck behind another trolley bus that could not progress because of A) - D)

 

The picture on my wall is drawn as if from the kerbside and this is very apt because walking onwards along the path leaving looking back at the trolley bus at just that angle was a childhood experience that is etched on the memory.

 

Maybe it helps to understand how we relate to God though.  No human life is as free as a vehicle that can go anywhere; our times are in his hands.  No human life is as regimented as the tram that can only follow a rail.  We are free, but if we use our freedom to move from him we become redundant very quickly.