The Carnival is Over ...

Unless you're in Notting Hill, of course, when Europe's greatest street carnival, celebrating it's big 4-0th birthday this year, is reaching its grand climax tonight. It's the very officially named "Late Summer Bank Holiday", and true to form the weather and assorted traffic problems on rail, road and air have made that very clear this weekend. Only the water seems immune.

Mind you, this Bank Holiday in some ways has been no different to any other day for me. It's the first time in six years a public holiday has occurred when I am not actually working full time, so it's significance is a little lost. Bit like me, really, as today I long to be out there being part of "the crowd" and taking part in an event or visiting an attraction somewhere- it's the extrovert in me. One of these years, maybe I will be courageous enough to catch the tube up to town and enjoy all the colour and spectacle of the Notting Hill event, but not today I think. Despite the early promise of a sunny start, it has been rather overcast most of the day and there's a chill win tormenting the net curtains and banging the bedroom door.

I'm still minded to go and visit a garden or something somewhere, but as it is today has been very much a bit of a sad anti-climax now tha THE carnival, the Olympics, is over for another four years. The 28th Olypiad has closed :-( This reflective period will be when all the hyperbole mongers ply their trade, and why should I be reluctant to buy from them- words are free, thankfully. Without a doubt, it has been the Games I have most enjoyed of any I've seen in my 45 years but perhaps more importantly the most inspiring. After last night's amazing closing ceremony from Athens, my first thought was "roll on Beijing 2008!".

But of course, to say that is to wish life away for the sake of one event, or series of events really. That may be the athlete's way, to live for the games-but experience has shown that to put all your hope and trust in one happening is folly. Or is it...?

Who knows what the next four years will bring, who could know what a megashock the most horrifying event of the last four years- and surely the only one attracting as much international attention as the Olympic Games- could have brought. The world of Sydney 2000, the Millennial games, seemed a safer and perhaps more hopeful one than that a quartet of years later. September 11th 2001 changed all that.

Yet what the Olympic games has proven once more, it seems to me, is that the human being and the human spirit is the most wonderful, supreme example of God's creation and that's the way it's meant to be. We are made in His image. Every gold medal won on a Grecian podium, every plaudit "urned" is of nought compared to the wonder and the rapture all humanity will witness at the end of time when He comes again. All human life was indeed there in Athens these last sixteen days, and every emotion of humanity was there too. Every great thing that he or she can achieve, as well as the most miserable and diabolical things we can do- though thank the Lord, genuinely, that there were no terrorist attacks or bloodshed, except in the course of sport maybe a graze or two.

And now, the return to reality, though with hopes of back to the future, God Willing. I had my own Olympian effort at the weekend, when I went rowing on the Thames at Twickenham with Messrs Greenway, Kenny and Pennington, four of my oldest friends. The last time I had been in a rowing boat was an absolute farce, almost a Whitehall one really as it happened on the Serpentine in Hyde Park. I therefore entered this boat with some trepidation- enjoying the free ride upstream courtesy of Chris and Dave for the first half hour, reasonable rowers both, but expecting the inevitable impasse when it came to my turn at the oars.

Fortunately for me however, we did not need to summon the RNLI lifeboat from nearby Chiswick, thanks to some patient "coaching" from Chris as I gradually learnt my technique with the rowing implement, albeit with only one oar rather than two. Not much changes with my co-ordination being as useless as ever! But Chris taught me a valuable lesson as he showed great patience and help without patronising me, such that I got to the end of the half hour yearning for more. It's hardly an original tag line, especially in the last ten days or so, but for Four Men in a Boat, there was absolutely nothing quite so splendid as messing about on the river (or was that Mr Toad...?)

For another thing I think these games have highlighted for me is that behind every great athlete, there's a great coach. They were everywhere, either seen or like an eminence superb, not far away in the background. We don't have the ability or the humility to judge ourselves and what we can achieve without someone "out there" to coax us and to guide us, to cheer us on to be the best that we can possibly be and to help us and encourage us in our weakness.
I was thinking last week about the two meanings of this word coach, which seem so very different. But are they? Apparently, the older word, referring to the means of transport, comes originally from Hungarian- in fact from a place name, according to the huge volume of the shorter OED which I almost need to refer to the muscle section of my Gray's Anatomy to life. The latter one is suprisingly recent, only dating from about 1846. But it occurs to me that an athletic, vocal or even these days a "life" coach, is someone who helps to get you from where you are now, to where you want to be. And isn't that just what the founders of Stagecoach, Christians apparently, also seek to do? It's an interesting metaphor, I think- one which maybe I'll get the chance to use in preaching again when the NEXT games come round. Meanwhile, I'm really grateful that the greatest coach of all time, Our Lord,was gracious enough to invite me into team JC!