Thought for the Day

As delivered this morning at BBC Radio Bristol. The previous story was about a crane-driver who composed tunes from his cab in his 'waiting' time. Quite cool ones, actually:

In one of my favourite songs by a band no-one else has heard of the Irish musicians The Four of Us wrote:

I wanna burst outside this canned reality

I wanna turn it around and see it like the way it's meant to be

They may not have known that they were channelling St Paul's:

Now see see through a glass darkly

Then we shall see face to face

And he was channelling Plato's cave allegory. That's far enough back.

Thing is. We all benefit from standing in someone else's shoes, seeing things from another's point of view. It's no surprise to me that a crane driver finds his view of the world a creative place.

I'm reading Robert Macfarlane's book Underland. He writes about places - landscape, nature and people. His latest is about the ground beneath our feet; under-city worlds, huge caves, mines, burials and offerings. The underworld. Seeing the world with him by looking up at it, the opposite of Spencer Fley's craneview, has been eye-opening. It helps that Macfarlane writes as the angels might.

When people ask what my faith means to me; how it works, what difference it makes I often see a sense of longing in the eyes of the enquirer. 'I wish I had your faith.' But you can't. Nobody can. It's mine and not yours. It's my world-view. It's my crane or cave.

If you dared a prayer today may it be one taught to the boy Samuel 'Speak Lord; for your servant is listening.'

Today is the 11th September. 9/11. A day which gave us an altogether different view of how the world was. Try and make peace with it.