My little Gnudren,

Apparently, the majority of us on the planet seek for meaning. Old Gnu doesn’t know because he hasn’t counted. But he got this need for meaning in his dentist’s waiting room in 1989. He picked up a large colourful book with its front hard cover and first few pages missing. It was from a pile that was placed there to allay the terrors of children and distract them before the impending horrors of the dentist’s chair. He didn’t fancy perusing a dog-eared out of date copy of Country Living; this seemed a worthy alternative. 

Old Gnu was mesmerised by this coverless book. Each double page (which measured larger than A3) depicted hundreds of tiny figures all doing peculiar things in claustrophobic proximity, such as would have alarmed any health and safety officer. Page after page of them! In many ways it reminded him of parish life, when he was a dog-collared Gnu. Bewildered, Old Gnu wondered what the point of it all was. True there was a short message on a postcard in the corner telling us that this was the scene in which the sender found himself. After many pages of perusal and much wonderment as to how the artist could conjure up so many activities and postures for so very many little people, he got to the last couple of pages.

There he learnt that he was supposed to find one particular person among the multitudes of people crammed on each page. One such page appears at the top of this blog and yes, we were in the land of Where’s Wally. Old Gnu then flicked back wildly through the pages in search of Wally, but he unfortunately it was too late. He was summoned to the dentist chair. His teeth had lived in sin for far too long and he was not spare the Great Tribulation.

I know you are meant to get your sermons from the Bible, but “Where’s Wally” affords us a great Christian insight. Many and various have been the pages of Old Gnu’s life. And many deluded religious people like him believe that there is a benign presence on every one of life’s pages, which gives it continuity.  What is more, it may be possible to discern it. This presence has been very easy to find on some pages. On others it has only become apparent in retrospect when one has revisited the pages which stumped them first time round. Yes, yes, indeed.  

Many have found this presence in the midst of extreme hardship and even in the concentration camps of the holocaust. Some folks would regard this as a survival mechanism and reaching for your teddy bear. O blessed is that Teddy Bear which can endure life’s harshest realities! Even back in the days when Psalm 139 was written, the Psalmist had an awareness that God was on every page of life. Jesus said, “I am with you always, even to the end of time”. Some folks would say it’s jolly good that time is going to end one day, because it isn’t going well for many. But if you try living in this supposed land of “delusion” – according to some – time seems to go much better and it doesn’t sap your energy from playing your part in the well-being of community life. And we all need communities of some sort in which to live. 

“May the Force be with you”, say some. Maybe it’s better to say the Force is with us. We are not alone out on a limb with a catastrophic jumble of people and events round us.

Vetus Pater Gnu
Musicorum et Theologia
Turris LA
XXV Mensis Novembris MMXXIV