Dear Chris,
This is a difficult letter to write. Indeed, I’ve never written a ‘Dear Chris’ letter before but believe me when I say that it’s not you, it’s me.
The thing is, I came in here a few weeks ago, as I occasionally do – but this time it was not to see you. I wish it had been, because since that morning, everything has changed and nothing between us can ever be the same again. You see, Chris, it was a Saturday. And it was the day I met Dermot.
Dermot and I hit it off straight away. We chatted about anything and everything; running, cycling, Ernest Shackleton, cauliflower, you name it. It was special. It was as if we’d known each other forever.
The thing is, Chris, my head is easily turned. I’d like to say I’ll always be here for you, but … well, I’m human.
And it’s not just you I let down. Earlier this term I failed to show up for a class because I thought I’d done with teaching for the day. Last week I forgot my niece Elsa’s birthday (sorry, Elsa). To paraphrase Hamlet, ‘Frailty, thy name is Jim’.
I’m not alone in this ‘being human’ business. We’re all pretty much the same, reliably unreliable. So how do we learn to be better at it?
In the bible, St John gives an amazingly simple piece of advice: do not imitate what is evil but imitate what is good. No kidding. But what is good? Who is totally reliable? Well, the Letter to the Hebrews teaches that only one human person has ever been perfectly consistent – the man who Christians believe was also God: ‘Jesus Christ – the same yesterday, today and tomorrow’.
Finding reliability like that is an amazingly reassuring thing. It gives us a model, something to aspire to, someone to emulate. And I reckon that’s as good a starting point as any if I’m going to clean up my act.
So, Chris, I’m sorry to be so human, so frail and so fickle, but I am working on it. And I hope that when the call next comes for a Saturday Pause for Thought, I’ll say, ‘No Dermot – my Pause belongs on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday, Friday. My Pause belongs to Chris’.