Another year older!

...and deeper in debt? Sixteen Tons is a song I've always liked for some reason, and yet it has a rather cynical ring to it which doesn't reflect the the kind of guy I normally am at all, really. If you've ever wondered about the history of this song and its complete lyrics, just follow the link above. Fascinating- and there was me thinking it was a genuine old time folksong, rather than one written in 1947 for Tennessee Ernie Ford!

Sixteen tons? Now, would that be metric tons or good old imperial? Hey pal, we haven't got room for none of that Napoleonic rubbish round here with them SI units. Good old avoirdupois and pounds, feet and pints, that's the measure of this man.

"What is the guy going out about?", I hear you cry. "He's finally lost the plot!" OK, I know I go off at some rather unexpected tangents during these blogs at times but rest assured I am not going senile at the grand old age of forty-six (thank heavens they haven't metricated age yet!) which I turn today. It's just I'm thinking about work, rest and play- with preferably more of the latter than the former today.

Sixteen Tons is what I sometimes feel myself, and I've generally considered myself overweight for many years. And yet, according to the latest piece of scientific research, I'm probably better off staying the weight I am rather than trying to lose it as that can do more harm than good! According to the researchers, you see, constant dieting weakens the body- something which will decidedly not be music to the ears of the Atkins advocates and the Low Carb Lecturers or even the GI Groupies, the latest fashionable dieting craze supposedly being one that really works. Now, where have we heard that before.

Listening to and following advice can be pretty hard, because there is so much of it about and so often it seems to conflict with what you hear and read elsewhere. It often seems to make it even harder to make decisions for yourself and to make up your mind about what really matters to you in life. Hard enough for the man in the street maybe, but even more so when you really want to follow God's leading and guidance, as this MAMWAM- Middle Aged Man with a Mission- would most long to do.

Decision making is not just a problem in matters of the mass either- you are what you eat say some, but you can't reduce the wonderful complexity of the human condition to a few hundred grams -sorry, I mean a few pounds- of proteins, carbohydrates, fats and fibre, surely? The brain needs its food, but it also needs food for thought. It needs to look at all the variables, the "what ifs" and the "maybes" if it is to make sense. It needs to use that uniquely human attribute of imagination.

It certainly isn't easy at times though to combine imagination with practicality, whether you make a far-reaching decision in the heat of the moment, or whether you ponder something for days, months, weeks, years even in the hope of getting it right. Maybe dieting's a bit like that too: could someone invent a procrastinator's diet, please?

HALF-YEAR ANALYSIS
Or is it half-life analysis? Now I'm no accountant, although some of my best friends are. Most of the uni results are now out, and I recall it was around this point fifteen years ago that to my amazement I became Mark Savage, BA (Wales). A decade and a half later, I'm still a bachelor, and I'm still more of an arty (farty?) than a scientific saint. Unlike William Wales, however, aka Prince William, I've never aspired to be something in the city or even to get much involved with money in my daily working life. The realm of creativity and communication, and serving people has always been much more my forte and I've always supposed and aspired to use my skills in that realm using this wonderful tool of language we human beings both adore and abuse. In fact, I've often thought that my motto for life should be a line from one of my favourite Charles Wesley compositions which I've always thought should be the hymn of the would-be or actual writer:

My every sacred moment spend
In publishing the sinner's friend

In whimsical manner, that hymn always sounded to me like an advert for an eighteenth-century fore-runner of the Sally Army's The War Cry, though I didn't spot The Sinner's Friend on the magazine racks in WH Smith at Waterloo last Thursday. Computer Active had to suffice instead.

WELLINGTONS AND WAVES
So what was I doing in a newsagents at Britain's busiest railway terminus last week then? Trying to keep my cool in the middle of the summer's first real heat wave, that's what. Boarding a packed metal cabinet on wheels with hundreds of other human sardines in temperatures exceeding thirty degrees is not my idea of fun, indeed it seems like Midsummer Madness to me. Even with the blessed relief of the new air conditioned rolling stock which makes up the bulk of South West train's fleet now, there seems little sense in enduring such cramped conditions if you can avoid it. I'm not one of nature's natural commuters and would far rather have a fifteen minute walk to work than a fify minute combination of train and tube any day. And yet, apparently well over fifty per cent of the nation spend more than an hour on a train, tube or bus each day to get to and from work and would rather do this in pursuit of a job they enjoy than be nearer home.

Yet, last week I became both a West End boy and a commuter again, the latter for the fist time in five years. Choosing the hottest June week for years to start my new job in Central London may not have seemed a well-considered move, and I confess that for me the ideal summertime is one where the living is indeed easy and I could spend June to September every yearjust doing what I like, when I like. It must be something to do with being born in the hottest summer of the last century: I love this season, but I hate working in it! I'd far rather immerse myself in the cooling waters of azure seas and gaze on heavenly sunrises and sunsets and just contemplate the miracle of life at its finest which this month of June seems to crown for me every year.

But down comes an angel and pricks my bubble, and tells me to get on with my work- even if I have got another week off to enjoy summer leisure this week! I worked- or rather trained mainly- last week though as a favour to my new employer, because the current postholder leaves on the first of July. Thus it was I found the week of Midsummer and the time when the sun appears to stand still did at times seem to go on forever for me at work, and there were times when I thought "What have I done? I'm not a celebrity-get me out of here!"

But my angel and my friends soon bring me down to earth and encourage and advise me to hang on in there and try my new job out. And on balance, I think they are wise, unlike me at times. It's a watershed in the year- it's halfway point- and another in my life. If I so chose, I could drop everything and give up work altogether by realising my various assets- but would it make me happy? Would I really enjoy being a full-time beach boy accompanied by the sounds of summer?

Of course I wouldn't! Birthdays come and go, Summer comes to an end. The Bible writer is wise indeed when he tells us there is a season for everything. This may well be the season for flooded festivals and gooey gigs, for barbecue bashes and princely pomp- but it is just that, a season. Without an end to summer, where would be the room for the enjoyment of autumn colour, or a world in white with winter snow? God who brought order out of chaos knows our need of these things, though I've often wondered how people in the equatorial regions without proper seasons adjust. So, come next Monday morning I've to roll up my sleeves again and get working in my new role without the welcome hand-holding of another.

What God asks of us most is not that we constantly analyse everything, although of course it is important to ask sensible, intelligent questions about most situations life presents us with. My new employer offers such questions and some answers to these for Christians attempting to make sense of their faith and present it as relevant to an increasingly secular and cynical world. As such, I think I am going to enjoy working alongside them and playing my part in this- as long as I learn to cope with commuting again and somehow recognise that my own peculiar ways must seem just as strange to others as theirs do to me!

But at the same time, what God needs most is our co-operation and our simple trust. The spiritual man of the moment is good old Rocky, Cephas or Peter as Simon became and how often I feel I am just like him. It's "Petertide", when new ministers are ordained and the Methodist church holds its annual conference with plenty of analysis, talking, consideration and debate.
Peter, the man who one moment would go anywhere for his Lord and the next was denying him out of fear and self-interest hours before his best buddy died the cruellest death imaginable. It makes me weep to think how I too can be like that, and Peter's denial of Christ followed by the look in the saviour's eyes was surely the most powerful moment in Mel Gibson's masterful Passion of the Christ for me. Yet marvel of marvels, Peter became the great man of faith who began the church, equipped for works of service and healing, evangelism and teaching and so much more. What would we do without him? Perhaps the best advice on any birthday is to rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice! Summertime, and the living is Godly!