Â鶹Éç

Available for over a year

Good morning. One day a little while back I was walking along our local high street, holding my takeaway coffee, when I could have sworn I heard my name being called. I looked around but no-one was calling me. Martin. Martin There it was again. I was still being called and eventually I realised the voice was coming from above. I looked up and on the top floor of a block of flats I could see my friend - Frank - waving at me from the balcony. Martin. I’m trapped, he shouted. You gotta call the Fire Brigade. I have known Frank for a long time through church and at first I thought he was having a turn. Sometimes Frank has a turn. But he lives alone and has no mobile or landline and so, long story short… I did call the Fire Brigade, wondering all the while if I was being a massive time waster. Sirens blaring they showed up in minutes and asked me to go up to the top floor with them. I kneeled down and spoke to Frank through his letterbox, and he agreed his door could be forced open. And there he was, beaming with relief and delight. Trapped for three days he was running out of food. He’d been yelling for help every day… but presumably everyone thought someone else would sort it out. I thought of Frank earlier this week when a report was published attempting to calculate the financial value of church buildings in the UK. £12.4bn apparently. Food banks. Toddler groups. Lunch clubs. Night shelters. I get it. Everybody’s under pressure to prove themselves these days and the market is where we turn to justify our existence. But I also thought of my favourite fridge magnet which says ‘The best things in life are not things.’ A phrase I hope they consider for a future edition of the Bible. Not everything can be measured or quantified. Numbers are not our only language, and often not our best. When we walk under the Autumn canopy of red and golden trees in a local park no-one can calculate how our pandemic-lowered spirits are lifted. When we finally negotiate the rules of lockdown life and are allowed some time with an ageing parent or distant child, no algorithm can capture the spring that was just put in our step. Some things we cannot put a price on. Nor do we need to. Friendship and kindness and checking in with a neighbour refuse to live as numbers on a spreadsheet. And as people in some parts of the UK now cautiously gather again in places of worship, it’s a reminder of one of the invisible virtues in the calling of our different faith traditions to meet together. That this is when we may get to know people outside our peer group or social background… and sometimes become friends with them. And as the Irish priest and poet John O’Donohue put it, friendship is the nature of the divine.