The Fluff of Fantasy

As I write this by old fashioned method of pen and paper I am sat in my tent on an airbed that refused to stay fully inflated!

We are away on our annual pilgrimage to Newark for the New Wine North and East conference.

This is our fourth year and I’m not getting any better at this camping lark. I still forget to bring the essentials and end up grabbing a cup of tea from anyone who has a boiling kettle. But that’s OK – this is Christian living in action!!!

However I am not writing to extol the virtues of community sharing and the pooling of resources. I NEED to tell you about something that happened one evening.

First you might like to go and read a post from last year Merry Christmas to a Stranger where I wrote about last year’s New Wine – or more particularly about a man who I thought would be more important in my life than he ever will be.

I thought at the time that we shared a look, a bond perhaps even a common experience (I first spotted him at a bereavement seminar). All year in the back of my head has been a giggly girlie waiting for our next meeting, creating potential out of nothing, like a teenager with a first crush.

Now I know it is just the fluff of fantasy, like candy floss in the rain it disintegrated before my very eyes when he sat in front of me in the evening meeting with his wife!

Now I knew he had a wedding ring on when I first caught sight of him last year but then so did I.

Sometimes I wonder at God’s sense of humour and timing. All evening I confess I watched him convincing myself he was the man I saw last year while erasing the dreams I had created.

I had a sense God told me he has someone even better lined up for me but I can’t fully believe, maybe that is the fluff of fantasy too?

…and this is what happened when the Archbishop arrived!

It must run in the family because I was not the only one yesterday with a case of mistaken identity.

Before the proceedings started the young people were stationed outside the car park to stop any rogue vehicles from parking.  The space was to be set aside for dignitaries in “posh cars” as well as being an area for us all to congregate for the actual dedication.

Unfortunately youngest son and his friends had no idea what the Archbishop looked like.  So when a car drew up wanting to get in they decided it didn’t look grand enough for an “important person” and wouldn’t let it pass. 

 

(All morning they had been worrying he might get stuck in traffic so maybe they didn’t really expect him to arrive at all.)

Archbishop John Sentemu got out of the car and fearing he was an irate gentleman wanting a “word” one of my son’s friends scarpered!

The Archbishop called him back and spent time talking to all the children gathered there. He spoke a lot about them in the service and even had them help him cut the cake in the hall afterwards.

“So what did you think of the Archbishop?” I asked youngest son when we got back home. “He’s a very important man.”

He was spectacularly unfazed by the meeting.

“He didn’t seem like a very important person.  He was too jokey.”

I’d like to think John Sentemu would be pleased with this assessment.  That he had not impressed the children by “who” he was or the car he arrived in but “how” he treated them and made them feel special.

There’s a lesson there for us all.