‘‘My time’s my own,’ we say. Well, yes. Yes and no. Most of us have to sell our time. We call it earning a living. We forfeit our control of our daily schedule to pay the bills and put food on the table. We keep the remnant of the day or the margin of the week for our own use. For 40 years we sell our time and earn a pension that will support us in our declining years.
To balance the sale of our time against the personal use we cherish is not easy. MPs find this difficult as do others. It is uncommon to see a hobby blossom and take over the day job. Most of us can do no more than dream of such a development.
Conversation was the spice of life for Samuel Johnson. He was fortunate in having a reporter at his elbow. The result is a stock of common sense maxims noted by Boswell. We should be the poorer without them. Johnson thought highly of John Wesley but he regretted his inability to see a conversation through. ‘He is never at leisure.’ He always remembers he has another appointment to keep. Here is a reminder that conversation is regarded differently in different cultures. It is not uncommon for conversation to have a structure, to require forethought before embarking on it. We in the West tend to rush our jumps on that one.
You can have too much of a good thing – even religion. It’s not only that we are favoured with religious programmes coming from the USA to our TV screens. It has to do with how our minds work. They flitter; they look one way, then another. We are more like butterflies than elephants We find sustained concentration difficult.
It is the inescapable surge of world news that lays claim to our waking moments. We are made captive. We have no time to respond, to measure, to assess. The news is ours moment by moment, packaged, presented and delivered to worldwide recipients in a way that has been possible only since the advent of the digital age.
This does not favour a concern for quality, for determining whether one report is better than another. There is no time for that.
This harum-scarum rush undermines our defences and insists on immediate assent. It has the same effect as the semaphore signalling or the telegraph that served our grandfathers.
TIME’S FOOL?
Kipling had something to say about filling the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run. Time is not to be wasted. Opportunities are to be seized. To be sizzling with energy and making the most of what we have is better than allowing occasions to slip through our fingers.
Love’s not time’s fool said Shakespeare in his most notable sonnet.
‘Pray that every time I open my mouth I’ll be able to make Christ plain as day to them.’ (Colossians 4.4 The Message)
PRENTON PROGRAMME
We forget the Wirrral. That little tongue of land where Birkenhead salutes Liverpool harbours some busy churches. One of them is St Stephen’s, Prenton. It majors on pictures on its website and on Christianity Explored in its programme. Like other church buildings designed originally to have a tower and spire, it has neither and serves a developing area. Matt Graham is the vicar.
BUSY BEBINGTON
Also in the Wirral is St Andrew’s, Bebington. For the past 900 years it has been adapting its building to suit current needs. The first documentary evidence of its existence comes from 1093. The church has a full programme and an active communications officer, Jenny. The Rector is David Vestergaard. He says: ‘We are a church that knows that Jesus Christ can make an enormous difference in everyday life.’
AND IN AUCKLAND
The Wirral is not the only place to have a Birkenhead. Jordan Greatbatch is the Vicar of All Saints, Auckland NZ. He welcomes visitors to his church, which majors on the liturgical year.
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