Thought for the Day

Sometimes a lighter thought is called for so I had a bit of fun with numbers today. As delivered a couple of hours ago on BBC Radio Bristol:

5th anniversary

20 miles per hour
20 thousand pounds

Today's show seems to be surviving on numbers.

Recently I celebrated my birthday, but because it didn't end in a 0 or a 5 it was not a 'significant' birthday. We love our numbers don't we? Long as they divide by 5.

Wouldn't it be strange if we only partied properly when it was a prime number? Normal people celebrate being 60 but why not enjoy being 59 and 61 far more? Certainly be odd.

The thing is that we use round numbers as a convenience. We like patterns so we tend to see sequences even if none exist. We like a party and have come to celebrate significantly every ten years.

What difference would it have made if the speed limit was 21 mph and the fund-raising target £19,999? Very little; but it would feel culturally wrong. Not rounded but weird.

Welcome to the Bible call-centre:

Press 7 for deadly sins

10 for commandments

12 for apostles and

666 to disconnect immediately

Some people try and play games with the numbers in the Bible. What do you get if you multiply the number of times Jesus said you had to forgive your neighbour by the number of the beast? Well, a headache at minimum.

The God of the Hebrew Bible self-described as 'one'. Jesus said 'I and my Father are one'. Christians believe in one God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - three persons - one God. Monotheism.

I like 1. It's simple, memorable and celebratory. You can count on it.

Adult or Child?

Do centuries end with 99 or 00? This is one of those number questions where the facts and the feelings clash. Of course it felt like the new century began at 2000 (when the big number switch 1999-2000 took place). But in fact (not feeling) there was no year zero and so each century lasts 100 years and actually finishes with 00.

Also, our country defines an adult as someone aged 18, but others don't. So the statement is only true based on our culture and values.

So, trying to anticipate all pedantry, the following statement is either going to be true on 31/12/17 or 31/12/18 or not.

And I am grateful to @bethbethbeth_ for telling us what her Dad told her. And to the ubiquitous @richardosman for making it more widely known. This is the thing:

'...on New Year's Eve, every single adult in the world will have been born in the 20th century and every child will have been born in the 21st century and that's the only day that's true for...'

Isn't that a beaut?

Advent Thought 21 and Number 23

I was fortunate enough to hear Marcus du Soutoy at Bristol Festival of Ideas a few years ago. We pause a moment to note what a delight it is to live in or near a city that has such a festival. Bristol celebrates that its people are thinking.

Marcus du Soutoy is the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science. I recall he started his talk by explaining that no six lottery numbers were more likely to win than any other six but that the amount you might expect to win (with how many people you shared the prize) would vary greatly according to your choice.

As compared to his predecessor in post, one Richard Dawkins, he has declared that his interest whilst in post will be science and not religion. He is a mathematician. He also plays football and the trumpet. Smart, sensitive, numerate, musical and sporty. What's not to like?

After Lotto he then went on to discuss the fact that David Beckham played at real Madrid with the number 23 on his back and how interesting that was. A prime for a player in his prime, as he didn't say.

Why is 23 so interesting. Let me count the ways. OK done that. Here's one. It is the lowest prime that consists of consecutive digits. Take a moment to work out what the next one is. There are more interesting thoughts about 23 here.

It is the 23rd of December. A Saturday. Clergy always have to develop a psychology of Christmas. There is a pattern of services which needs adjusting according to the proximity of Sunday. I hear my sons' voices from the past saying 'Not church again; we went yesterday'. In my church, when Christmas Day is Friday or Saturday, we abandon conventional Sunday and all pitch up at the Vicarage for carols. When Christmas day is a Sunday, as last year, it feels like we are at a normal Sunday service. This year it feels like the weekend lasts an extra day. My church is making our annual Crib Service the main worship focus of the day tomorrow afternoon, but I have been asked to preach and preside at a neighbouring church's early communion which they are having on Sunday and again on Monday.

There is a Twitter clergy-single-malt-club, where knackered vicars share a picture of their post-midnight communion tipple as they calculate how few hours sleep it is before the enxt daysa early communion (or the kids wake up).

How does your relationship to 25/12 change according to the day of the week it is? And is Saturday 23/12 a comfortable feel, or an odd one?

Well, it's been a year
It doesn't surprise me

Advent Thought 20 and Number 21

I was brought up to understand that December 21st was the shortest day. It was some years before I realised that this referred to daylight. I was boasting my superior knowledge to a friend, as 7 year olds are prone to do, when it was pointed out to me that all days are the same length and I had to admit that yes, of course they are.

But yesterday was a bit light on light. It was gone 8.00 a.m. before the dawn broke properly and by 4 p.m. it had pretty much gone. Fewer than 8 hours of daylight. It is a story of gentle inprovment from now into the spring. Lovely? Is it?

But does the darkness bother you? I sympathise with those who suffer from SAD (Seasonally Affected Disorder) and have to work to get the serotonin/melatonin balance right. I am an indoors sort of person and thrive in gloom. Huddled in a dark corner is a creative place. Put me in the sunlight for too long and I'll crawl under a stone.

But I wonder if you now feel better in the knowledge that the days are getting longer?

What things, over which you have no control, bring you down? The weather? People being stupid or rude?

This is the world into which the baby we came to know as the Son of God was born. A world over which he had surrendered control. A world in which dark stuff happens. But there is a light. It is human now.

...time's still ticking enough to send hearts all over that cliff
So what place is this?
Not sure I fit

Advent Thought 19 and Number 666 or 144,000

The Bible, and step forward please the Book of Revelation, teases us with numbers:

12 tribes and 12 apostles
40 days and 40 years
7 days of creation and deadly sins
The Holy and Undivided Trinity 3 in 1 and 1 in 3
Feeding of the 4,000 and the 5,000

Even the number of fish recorded by John as the miraculous catch at the end of his Gospel is counted - 153.

So we are left with some numbers that look important but probably aren't. And some numbers which don't seem all that significant but surely are. And despite all that Dan Brown has written we are left with no easy way to sort the one from the other. We will not find our symbologists able to provide us with dogma.

Revelation tempts us to be interested in the Number of the Beast - 666; and the number of the saved - 144,000. But both those numbers are clearly symbolic and are neither code nor amulet; not a secret insight or parameter.

The number 7 is far more interesting in Revelation. It is the narrative device John uses to hold his book together. 7 letters to 7 churches, 7 seals, 7 trumpets, 7 visions, 7 bowls, 7 heads, 7 kings.

The band Genesis got from 666, to 7 to Pythagoras who:

...with the looking glass reflects the full moon

(See I gave you a big clue today.) But they were playing with symbolic numbers too.

What we do find is that where a number has significance in the Old Testament the New Testament writers will use it to add relevance to ther story. The Israelites wandered for 40 years in the wilderness; Jesus was tempted 40 days in the wilderness. This is not a trick. It was widely used at that time. There is history behind both events; the numbers should not be seen as part of it.

And if you think we have got beyond doiung that. Well that's a good subject for today's ponder. I'm happy to wait for your answer. For years. For ages. Until hell freezes over.

Advent Thought 15 and Number 1729

For anyone who has come to these thoughts late, and hasn't gone back to the beginning, I am trying to offer a series of reflections which engage with those who experience the world by numbers more than by words. If you make dull periods of time pass quicker by finding things to count; if you play the Countdown number game using hymn-boards or if you love finding patterns in the day, week, month, year (like that) then these might be more helpful to you than for people who consider themselves wordily normal and you weird.

It is the third Sunday in Advent. On this day I am happy to be an outsider to a strange debate about the colour of candles which break out around the Christian world. Not experienced it? Google 'pink candle', 'gaudete candle' or 'Mary candle'. It's a forest fire out there. Wax meltingkly hot.

My church tends to save its smirk for next week when an outbreak of the two Ronnies infects the lighting of candle four.

I used to annoy my children. It is because I pretended to be a great mathematician but really was only good at remembering numbers. When an interesting number came up such as:

147 or 180 I would  note that they were the maximum break in snooker or score in darts with three arrers.

Slightly more obscure was a knowledge of  'squares'.

'625, that's 25 squared. Everyone knows that.' Son looks baffled.

I taught anyone who would listen a short cut to the 11 times table.

If any member of my family had cared they would have become the mathematician I never got the chance to be. As it happens the boys channelled their energies into my other loves - music and words. They also picked up excellent social skills due to the strength of their mother's personality and genetic material. Today both also have to be numerate for a living in divers ways. I digress.

So why 1729? It's the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. Sometimes called Ramanujan's number.

1729=103+93=123+13

And it makes me stop in my tracks and want to hope and pray more than a sunrise, a painting or even (and this is going some) the sight of a puppy.

My life is brilliant
My love is pure

Advent Thought 14 and Number 2

If...

Then...

I know nothing about computer programming but if I were a betting man I would take a punt on some version of if... then... being important.

If I press the x key then a letter x appears on screen. Bongo, which is like bingo only typed wrong.

A lot of people conduct their relationship with God this way. I'll do this for you 2 3 if you do this for me 2 3. The gospel of the business deal. We end up not understanding why our surgery had complications 'because we prayed about it'. Whereas believing God, somehow, in all the mess, has a bigger picture and will be faithful, liberates us from only trusting him when things are good.

Which brings us, rather niftily, to covenant.

The Christian gospel is not if... then... It's, 'I'll do this for you, whatever.'

What difference would it make to your relationships today if you covenanted not to make your behaviour towards the other person be if... then... but 'I will'?

... words will never show
The you I've come to know

Advent Thought 13 and Number 13

Was it because of the thirteenth and last god in the Viking pantheon? Maybe the number of times the Israelites are said to have murmured against God? That the Code of Hammurabi reportedly omitted a 13th law? Or perhaps the number of people at the last supper? There are all sorts of reasons why 13 is deemed unlucky, although I reckon the last one is unfair on the women who almost certainly  prepared the food.
Whatever, our first house after marriage was number 11 and the next door neighbours were numbers 9 and 15. Bryants the builders would not sell a number 13 in the 1970s. Don't know if they do today. Frankly I wouldn't have been bothered if we'd bought number 13 on Friday 13th and stapled a black cat and a sweep to the door.

In my imagination
There is no complication

Superstitions are determinative. You read your own bad luck back into the circumstances. You tend not to have easy power of recall over the many times you spilt the salt and nobody died.

We can even treat our prayers as if they were a superstition. 'I prayed about it and things still went wrong,' I heard someone say only this week.

So why not take a moment today to drift into your own Advent destiny, in control of the response to the circumstances, which may be lucky or unlucky. And trusting in a God who has a bigger picture. That ladder you need to walk under? Do it, rather than step into the road and risk being knocked down.

Trust me when I say, as a Christian minister, that any day you aren't crucified is your lucky day.

Advent Thought 12 and Number 3 (again)

I have a soft spot for 3. For some reason it was decreed at some time or other that the best evangelical sermons should have three points. The best vision statements seem to wind up focusing on three targets and strategies.

It is a tradition rather than a rule. A bit like knowing the conventions in order to occasionally break them. I have preached a 26 point sermon. The congregation's faces when I announced that (possibly a mistake) still live with me. That said it was a good sermon and was well received. Each point lasted but a few seconds.

My church currently has three priorities. The danger, as we planned that out, was of stopping when we reached three rather than allowing our minds to think if there might be a fourth, and greater, call on our time.

My deanery has three priorities but we were very clear from the beginning that we had scope to prioritise four streams of ministry. It's just that the first three came easily and we couldn't agree on a fourth. We have left a gap in the fourth box so that we have time and energy to add something.

Then there are the initialisms, acronyms and tautograms (what you call it when all three points begin with the same letter) which often follow these phenomena around. Another danger - I can only make a fourth point if it begins with, say, C.

That said I am rather pleased with my four point approach to incoming correspondence:

Do it
Delegate it
Diary it
Dump it

A few years back I offered feedback to a group. I said 'I have three things to say. I don't know what they are yet because I can't think until I start talking.'

An audience member interjected; 'Why not hedge your bets and go for five?' Thanks Bob. Happy birthday.

Good point. I love three points but always carry at least a four point strategy planner around in my head and a willingness to go to five. Douglas Adams' increasingly improbably titled fifth volume of the Hitch-Hiker's trilogy refers. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit will be proud.

Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to your perfect light

As you wait, hope and rest today consider what limitations numbers from the past place on your thinking about the future.

Advent Thought 11 and Number 12

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, 12 drummers drumming.

So, by the time that had all finished, of what did I have the most?

Take a break and have an intuitive think. Don't do maths.

In fact the answer is a tie between geese and swans. On seven days I got six swans and on six days seven geese. Making 42 of each. The total is:

12 partridges
22 turtle doves
30 French hens
36 calling birds
40 gold rings
42 geese
42 swans
40 maids
36 ladies
30 Lords
22 pipers

Which makes for a splendid sequence. Well I think so. If there had been a thirteenth day the swans would have won clearly with maids and geese sharing second place.

Forgetting for the moment that the twelve days of Christmas is nothing to do with Advent and is a period running from Christmas Day to the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th, my question to you is this. How good are you at guessing numbers?

And does it make a difference to how it feels to wait, hope, rest and pray? Today, find someone who might love this piece and consider if it communicates deep truth to them differently to emotionally charged words.

What does a Bible study for maths nerds look like? Some people, floored by an opening question to do with how we all feel, are longing for one. Count on it. We hate the way the world brings, as John Oliver put it, 'feelings to a facts fight.'

The majorette? A ha ha ha.

Advent Thought 10 and Number 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21...

People think writing is important but its first use was as a way for traders to record increasingly complex business deals. Sumerian record keepers between 3500 and 3000 BCE kept themselves strictly limited to facts and figures. Our oldest record is of one called Kushim's record of his barley receipts.* 50 Shades of Grey was a way off.

Fascination with numbers over letters was dominant for approximately two further millennia.

Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician born in 1170 in Pisa. He posed a simple problem about how many rabbits there would be at any given time if gestation took a month and maturation a month. In other words he introduced a lag factor to exponential growth (2,4,8,16,32...)**

It turns out his sequence describes a lot of things in nature from petal patterns to the development of snail's shells. Da Vinci saw it as a divine proportion.

The sequence is constructed thus:

0 + 1 = 1
1 + 1 = 2
1 + 2 = 3
2 + 3 = 5
3 + 5 = 8
5 + 8 = 13
8 + 13 = 21

...and so on.

So, when you see nature, what sort of beauty do you see? God's invisible qualities inferred from what has been made (Romans 1:20)? 'Nature red in tooth and bloody in claw' (a phrase popularised by Tennyson)? Or lovely, simple mathematics?

Bitter-sweet and strange
Finding you can change

* Source - Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
** click here for source

Advent Thought 9 and Number 11

Today is the 11th of December. On the 11th of September I sat down and breathed a deep breath. It was the first day of a three month sabbatical.

Thirteen weeks later it is over and I am back on duty. I was wise enough to leave my diary clear today so it has been a gradual dip in the ministry water.

Mainly I have been reading and archiving emails but also catching up on what has been going on. The phone has rung again. The undertakers were the second call so people have carried on needing to be buried.

I also went to the gym because I usually do that on a Monday. And one person I know said 'I thought you were supposed to be back at work'. He had a twinkle in his eye. I think.

So today is the tale of two 11s. But the interesting thought is that, on the one hand, thirteen weeks have raced by. And on the other it has been a slow autumn of reading and writing by contrast with which today is a blur and tomorrow, which has appointments in it, will feel like the merry-go-round once again.

Standing in the shadows
Where the in crowd meet

Think of your time. Which bits drag and which bits rush by? And is Advent a long or short wait?

Advent Thought 8 and Number 87

How predictable are we? Derren Brown works his magic based on a brilliant reading of people's 'tells'  - those little involuntary facial movements we make when we recognise something - and a sound knowledge of psychology.

Pick a number between 50 and 100. Sounds random enough but a surprising number of people choose 73 or 87.

If asked to choose a number between 50 and 100, with both digits even and different, David Blaine reckons 68 is then a banker. In fact there are only six possibles:

62
64
68
82
84
86

0 isn't seen as even.

87 is an unlucky number for some cricketers because it is 13 shy of 100. And therefore more wickets are lost at this number than you would expect because it makes bowlers try harder and batters over-cautious.

Your numbers and, by extension, your passwords are predictable. Change them today. Advent is a predictable time of year - we know what's going to happen or, at least, we think we do - so try and let it shock you. Change a tradition.

The effect is 'Mmmm' whan a daisy grows in your mind.

Advent Thought 6 and Number 42

It is some years now since the late, great Douglas Adams forced the number 42 into our collective imaginations. If you managed to avoid the fact that the computer Deep Thought was a key player in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, well done. Your culture avoidance is impressive. How are the rest of the Amish?

But, asked to give the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, the computer came up with 42 and then had to be reprogrammed to come up with the question as well because nobody was smart enough to know what they had asked. I hope plot-spoiling thirty-seven year old novels isn't a bit off.

In our Christmas letter of 1997 I described myself, on reaching that eponymous age, as being at sixes and sevens. Possibly my favourite maths joke sneaked into the family news.

Here's the thought. There may not be an answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything but what, for you, is the question?

Let your thoughts meander like a restless wind.

Advent Thought 5 and Any Number You Like

Here's something I find hard. It's a question that begins 'What is your favourite...?' Some people seem to have a ready answer to such probing and are able to name their favourite book, film, shirt, song or food without breaking stride. Me. I go off on an internal monologue for hours, which is bad luck on the other guests at the dinner party.

You see it depends. Let's take film. How could I choose a musical over an action adventure? Or a dialogue rich narrative over a mystery? Some days I fancy The Blues Brothers to keep me company; others Where Eagles Dare. Sick on the sofa I might enjoy Pulp Fiction. One day I will watch The Sixth Sense again because I loved it but it was disturbing and I have to be in the right mood to be redisturbed. It depends.

The same sort of choice presents itself between Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Book Thief. Illywhacker and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Choice depends on time, place and mood.

It's not the right day for that favourite shirt. I need to wear this one.

And should I consider carefully why all my favourites seem to be the work of men?

Maybe my existential circuits are broken. Choose damn you, choose.

It's not necessarily always the same favourite in your head. Sometimes the band you're in starts playing a different tune in there. Well, mine does.

So. Do you have a favourite number? What do you do with that information? And why?

Advent Thought 4 and Number 45

Who would have thought that so many people would find themselves entertained by putting numbers in boxes?

The trend for Japanese number puzzles which began with Sudoku shows no sign of ending. Far more people now are familiar with there being only two ways to express 12 as the sum of four different integers than there were ten years ago.

24 is 7+8+9
23 is 6+8+9
22 is 5+8+9 or 6+7+9

And so on.

And as each of the nine squares, columns and rows must contain the digits 1 to 9 once and only once we know that each row, column and square must total 45. Much closer to the ultimate answer than 42 ever was.

What is the fascination? For me I think it is keeping the brain ticking over in order not to think about other things because, peculiarly, it is when I am not thinking about other things but am thinking that solutions to other things tend to occur to me.

It is a very zeitgeisty way to wait, hope and rest.

Don't know what a slide rule is for
But I do know one and one is two

Advent Thought 2 and Number 27

Do you have favourite numbers? Do you like 25 because it makes you think of Christmas? 

I was born on the 27th. Has it made any difference to the way I see the world? I find that an interesting question. Whenever the number 27 comes up in conversation I am reminded of my birthday. But has it meant, for instance, a willingness to buy products that are over-priced at £27? I'm not sure I can say.

I have lived at numbers:

107 for 22 years
11 for 4 years
1 for 3 years
3 for 4 years
16 for 5 years
82 for 14 years
29 for 11 years and counting

When those numbers crop up do I treat them more favourably than I should?

Adjectives add mood. It was a day. What sort of day? A very grey day. Now we have a picture. It was December 4th, a very grey day. Feels like we now have precision.

If we treat numbers merely as adjectives we will have our favourites and that might cost us.

'I'm counting out time,
Got the whole thing down by numbers.'

A better idea for May 4th than the Star Wars joke

Congratulations to all you people who didn't simply notice or anticipate the time but stayed up for it too. I hope you enjoyed being awake at two minutes and three seconds past one on the fourth of the fifth two thousand and six. Remember to tell your grandchildren (I believe that's still the done thing).

For me, although the time of my going to bed is getting nearer and nearer to the time Lizzie gets up (refitting shops in Wokingham and Salisbury in the same fortnight); I was in the land of nod.