The Wardman Wire

Complete this well-known phrase or saying: ‘The Christmas……’

If you thought of ‘rush’, congratulations, you win this online version of family fortunes. There’s nothing like Christmas for testing our patience: queues in the post office, queues into the car park, queues in the shops. My old church in Darlington does a Christmas service at the local ASDA at closing time on Christmas Eve, and people were still streaming past for last minute turkeys, CDs and crates of ale.

Slow thinking is better thinking

There comes a time when hurry stops being something we do occasionally, and becomes a way of life. I blame the internet. Not completely, obviously, but just look at what’s happened to Rowan Williams in the last couple of days. A perfecly sensible comment on 5 Live (transcript) about which bits of the Christmas story were core and which were the barnacles of history, and he’s being blogged over the head for calling the Nativity a ‘legend’. , though Damian Thompson’s commenters have, quite rightly, set him straight . Dave Walker has a good summary of the story, and a great cartoon.

The web makes it possible for words spoken in one part of the world to be known instantly, everywhere, followed rapidly by a flood of commentary from all and sundry. I’ve watched with increasing dismay as the Anglican church has pulled itself to shreds over sexuality, and the gigabytes taken up with every minor twist and turn, with people piling in on both sides, has made a decent debate almost impossible.

Whilst Rowan Williams does his best to take his time, think, pray, consult and create space, a thousand other voices have been squealing in cyberspace for immediate action.

It’s Deeper by Camel … They stop and drink, You stop and think

(Ed: apologies for the subhead: that was me).

Just to go back to those wise men. Whether they travelled by camel, horse, on foot or woolly mammoth, their journey took time. They didn’t rush from 1 meeting with Herod to another with Jesus, they had a journey of 2-3 hours, plus an overnight stop in Bethlehem, which gave them time to hear God warning them to treat Herod like a Big Mac: avoid at all costs. Though there are plenty of angels (a spiritual version of Instant Messenger) in the Christmas story, there are also lots of journeys on foot. These take time. They enforce reflection, and face-to-face relationship between those who journey together. Kings on Camels cannot hit ‘Send’, say “Abracadabra”, and arrive at the stable two seconds later.

There is a reason why pilgrimmages are designed to take days, weeks, or months - because it fits people.

Children (and The Incarnation) take time to arrive

Human development is no rush either. 9 months of pregnancy, many agonising hours of labour, and kids who we spend 3 years teaching to walk and talk, and then the next 15 telling them to sit down and shut up. But this is what God chooses at Christmas as his way of getting known. Though it takes time, getting face to face with people, rather than a mass duplicated Christmas letter or ‘Select All’ email, is God’s way of relating.

Time for a Slow Reconciliation Movement too

The restorative justice movement, taking its lead from Desmond Tutu’s work with the Peace and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, is finding that face-to-face works. Facebook is no substitute for real faces, and I’d much rather sit down for a pint with you than type words into an anonymous box. But here I am typing in the hope that somehow these words, for someone, won’t become just more verbiage in cyberspace.

Wrapping Up

The story is told of a Himalayan expedition who were behind schedule, and had marched, with a team of sherpas carrying the kit, at a relentless pace for 3 days. The following day, the sherpas refused to move. The expedition leader, in increasing frustration at the delay, asked the translator why they wouldn’t budge. “You see”, replied the translator “they have been walking so fast for 3 days, now they are waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.”

May your soul catch up with your body sometime soon, but there’s no rush. Merry Christmas.