Juliet:
O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? . . . ‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
“That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. There’s truth there, isn’t there? But,not the whole truth. If only it were that simple, Juliet! What’s in a name? Lots! For us human beings our names are primarily about relationship. They are part of the complex web of interactions that make us who we are . . . not objects, but living, breathing, hoping, hurting, thinking, feeling beings. Names are about identity. (Now, that’s a trendy word: identity.) And, identity is much about who does the naming.
So, I wonder, who are you?
Across
31. Undeserved competition following end of king (5)
Samuel has been getting into an online game called GeoGuessr lately. It’s quite simple really: you are given a completely random location from Google Streetview and you have 30 seconds to guess where you are. The more accurate the guess the more points you get. The tricky part is that your snapshot could be anywhere in the world, and often all you see is desert, or scrub, or featureless plain with no other landmarks. You literally have to ask yourself, “Where on earth am I?”
Perhaps that’s a question for us as we come to the close of one year and begin another: Where are you? Where do you need to be? Are you sure? Or, is it just a guess?
Feel free to ponder that question any way you choose: geographically, professionally, emotionally, spiritually, etc.
Where on earth am I?
A couple of weeks ago Sam and I were playing GeoGuessr together. We were struggling to identify any of the locations. Our opponent was well ahead. Then, on the screen, up came a location we recognized: Waikerie Lutheran Church. Out of all the possible random locations in the world! If there is any grace in GeoGuessr, that was it!
We knew exactly where we were.
Sometimes a picture speaks more than words
In a one-horse town somewhere in the US of A the local magistrate got an invite to a fancy dress party. He decided to go dressed in a chicken suit. When the evening came he kitted himself out, jumped in his car and headed to the party. The local policeman, fresh out of the academy, spotted a car being driven by a man in a chicken suit. He was sure there was something illegal about that, so with lights flashing and siren wailing he pulled the driver over and demanded to see his driver’s license. Well, it’s not exactly easy extracting a license from a chicken suit so the judge was a little exasperated and said, “Listen son, I’m in a hurry. I haven’t done anything wrong”.
“Are you refusing to show me your license?” said the over-zealous policeman, “That’ll get you an audience before the judge in the morning”.
“Look, you idiot,” exclaimed the magistrate, his feathers now well and truly ruffled, “I am the judge!”
“Right, and I’m Mother Teresa”, said the policeman, “I’m arresting you for resisting arrest”. With that he dragged the protesting chicken out of the car, yanked off his head covering . . . and came face to face with the magistrate!
The moral of the story? Don’t book a judge by his cover.
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness . . .
Whenever I have a group of young people preparing for their Confirmation service I always make sure I let them know how easy they have it these days. Oh yes, don’t worry, they roll their eyes as I go off on my ‘old person’s’ ramble about ‘when I was your age’! But, it’s true . . . when I was their age we had to sit a final exam to pass Confirmation class. And, if you were a generation before me you probably had to stand up in front of the whole congregation and be quizzed publicly about what you had learned! Ah, those were the days.
But, I wonder how you’d go if you had to do it now? How would you go if you had to stand up in front of the congregation now and answer questions about your faith? No problem, right? Afterall, you’ve had so many more years of experience and growth in knowledge and understanding since you were a teenager. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to do that this Sunday, but, I do wonder how I’d go if I had to stand before God and answer questions about my faith? How about you? How would you go?
There’s a character in the Taika Waititi’s movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople called Psycho Sam. Sam lives out in the bush, as far away from civilization as possible. He wisely wears a colander to prevent the authorities tracking him. He’s a bit of a ditsy, doomsday prepper who hasn’t quite got around to building the bunker that will protect him from the impending nuclear holocaust and his cooking leaves a lot to be desired.
I guess that’s one way to deal with the anxiety about the end of the world. Dig a bunker. Stockpile food. Wear a colander. Look after number one. But Jesus suggests that when you see the signs – in the sun, the moon, the stars, distress among nations, the roaring of the seas – when you see the signs there’s another way of responding . . . and it doesn’t involve a colander!
Oh, and, if you haven’t seen the movie, I recommend it.
Tachycardia. Bradycardia. Atrial fibrillation. These are all types of arrhythmia. Which is not ideal. It means your heart is out of rhythm. If you have a heart arrhythmia you might experience palpitations, chest pains, fatigue, light-headedness, shortness of breath, anxiety. Probably best to see your doctor. Left untreated arrhythmias can result in stroke, heart failure, cardiac arrest and sudden death. Sounds serious.
I wonder what the diagnosis would be if ‘the world’ were to see a heart specialist?
Benjamin Franklin once wrote that ‘in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. If he was alive today he might have added: ‘and scams’. According to the ACCC, Australians lost $2.74 billion to scams last year. Maybe you were one of them?
Last week I received an email from the LCA IT department inviting me to complete a S.C.A.M 1 Fundamentals course. Sounds helpful, right? The trouble is the email asks me to click on the link! I would, but I don’t know if it’s a scam or not!
The effects of scams go way beyond just the financial losses. Yes, the financial losses get the headlines, but it’s the emotional and psychological impacts that can have the greater and longer lasting effects: anxiety, loss of self-esteem, shame, cognitive impairment, powerlessness, loss of identity.
I guess it should be no surprise that Jesus was ahead of his time and he knew what he was talking about when he said: “Beware that no one leads you astray”.