I'm not a space ranger. I'm just a toy.

So, absurd though it may be, this is a blog, from Malawi, about Toy Story. Many exciting things have happened this week, but it’s all been on the same themes you’ve probably got bored of by now – 12 people in a 7 seater car, me trying to get a passport, God being awesome, me being tired and lonely, blah blah blah. (By the way, for some reason, Malawians find the phrase ‘Blah blah blah’ absolutely, side-splittingly hilarious! One of life’s intractable mysteries…)

Anyway, the only thing I can think of right now that I want to write about, is Toy Story. We watched it yesterday at this strange little forest lodge we’d all gone to for my mate’s birthday, and I found myself unexpectedly moved by this one bit.

Woody and Buzz are stuck in Sid’s bedroom, in mortal peril, and Woody is trapped under a tool box. He asks Buzz to help, but Buzz is too depressed…

BUZZ: You were right all along. I'm not a Space Ranger.  I'm just a toy. A stupid little insignificant toy.

WOODY: Whoa. Hey. Wait a minute. Being a toy is a lot better  than being a, a Space Ranger.

BUZZ: Yeah, right.

WOODY: No, it is. Look, over in that house is a kid who thinks you are the greatest, and it's not because you're a Space Ranger, pal. It's because you're a toy. You are his toy.

BUZZ: But why would Andy want me?

WOODY: Why would Andy want you? Look at you! You're a Buzz Lightyear! Any other toy would give up his moving parts just to be you. You've got wings! You glow in the dark! You talk! Your helmet does that-that-- that "whoosh" thing. You are a cool toy.

Now, I love this bit. I absolutely love it, because it’s true on a much deeper level than probably ever crossed the minds of the people who wrote it, although I like to hope that maybe they knew. It moved me, made me weirdly emotional and happy and soppy and all this, because what Woody says to Buzz in that scene is, as ridiculous as this may sound, something Jesus has taught me. I am the sort of person, I suppose if we’re honest like most people, who tends to care a lot about how good I am at life. How popular I am, how good I am at whatever I’m doing, school, or acting, or circus, or teaching, how good I am at being a boyfriend, how good I am at being a Christian. I get happy or sad based on my own performance, my own current level of awesomeness, my own space-ranger-ness. Or at least I used to – because things are gradually, gradually changing.

Because Jesus comes along and says – “Whoa. Hey. Wait a minute. Being a toy, is a lot better than being a Space Ranger.” He tells me that there is something way, way more important, more awesome, than being some amazing, successful person. He says, “Look, over in that house is a kid who thinks you are the greatest, and it's not because you're a Space Ranger, pal. It's because you're a toy. You are his toy.” He says, “the Creator, the glorious, ingenious, unfathomable, unstoppable God of the Universe is right here, and he thinks you are the greatest. And it’s not because you’re smart or popular or hard working or a good person, it’s because you’re a child. You are his child.” He tells me that I don’t need to worry when I don’t feel like I’m achieving anything of any worth, or when I pray and I don’t feel like I’m being spiritual or deep or loving God very well – the only thing that really, really matters, is that I am his son. “You are his toy.” And once I get that, I can hear compliments, I can be reminded of the things about me that make my Dad in heaven proud, that delight him, without those things becoming too important. Without being crushed by the pressure of needing to maintain and improve and add to my list of good things. No. My Dad loves me, just because he’s my Dad. And yes, I love making him happy, but even when I don’t, I know that will never, ever change. “There is nothing we can ever do to make God love us more. And there is nothing we can ever do to make Him love us less.”

Gotta love Toy Story.

That Big Tree

“Son.” – warm like a log fire, wizened like a leather note-book your grandfather gave you.

“What?” – young, bored, like a hose when you put your thumb over the end.

Remember what I told you.

I will.

What did I tell you?

Don’t climb the tree.

Just that big tree...

... the one at the end of the garden that marks the edge of the forest I know.

Okay. – knowing, a look in his eyes almost like pain, almost like fear, almost like a tear gleaming in the light of the fire behind it – Go on then.

And off he goes, and he doesn’t even look back, not once, but his father never takes his eyes off him. Not once.

And he runs and he runs, and he splashes through the creek and he doesn’t even notice the sun glitter on smooth stones beneath his feet; and in time he comes, as he runs and he runs, to that tree. At the end of the garden that marks the edge of the forest I know. And it’s tall, and it’s a climber. Its long, sidewards branches beckon in their woody way and they seem to say, sneering,

Are you man enough?

                Yes I am.

But you’re only a child, I don’t think that you can.

                Oh I think that I can and I think that I will, as long as you’re fair and you keep standing still.

Very well, very well, I give you my word. While you climb, I’ll be still.

                That’s not what I heard.

You can’t trust what you hear - believe what you see! Look, foolish child - I can’t move, I’m a tree.

And he grits his teeth and he catches his bottom lip and he knows it’ll bleed but he doesn’t care because he’s man enough, he knows he is. And there’s dust in his eye he swears as he hauls himself up onto the first branch. And already he feels that he might be a fool - but he’s not a coward. He won’t be a coward. So he clambers on, onwards and upwards, don’t look back, don’t look down, no room for doubt. No room for the fear rising in his chest like a cold, hard stone from the bottom of the stream. But for a moment, an image of his father leaps into his mind. And he swallows the stone down hard because he will not be a child anymore, he will not be the little one, he will not be the one who’s never climbed the tree and doesn’t even know what the forest looks like from up there. He wishes he had a little brother to be bigger than. And he takes hold of the last branch. And pulls. And as he lifts his leg over onto it and starts to look up he feels it shake beneath him. Just a few times; lightly, quickly. Like a chuckle. And then again, bigger this time and growing, until he can hear the roar, the bellow, the mocking howl of ancient laughter too loud in his ear as he clings on with all his might.

                You said you wouldn’t move! – and he can hear that he’s whining like a baby but he can’t help it and -

Now, what did I say?  ‘I’ll be still, while you climb’? You can’t trust what you hear, least of all when it rhymes. But of course, I was faithful - I kept to the deal. But the climb’s over now – so hold on tight. Things might get surreal.

And the smooth stone sank to the pit of his stomach, and waited. 

And then... the world bent. 

And the tree seemed to writhe and squirm and turn itself inside-out like a worm. And he clung on as tight as he could because he couldn’t tell which way was up anymore and he wasn’t sure there even was an up anymore, only down the rabbit hole. Where the dark things wriggle. And he wanted to go home but he knew, oh he knew, that it was already too late. And the tree swallowed him up, like a fly in its soup.

 ***

Hello? – soft, bright, echoey in the darkness.

                Hello! – excitement spilling over into panic, into ecstasy – Who’s there?

Oh it’s just me, don’t worry.

                Who are you?

It’s a long story.

                The darkness rings silent for a moment – How did you get here?

Just the same as you, I climbed the tree.

                Really?! Why?

Ah, well that’s a funny story. I climbed it because my father told me to.

                What?! No! How could he?! Who would ever tell their son to do something like that and end up somewhere like here?

No reply; patient silence.

                Did he tell you why?

Yes. He told me that someday, if I waited long enough, I’d find you.

                Me? Really?

Really really. And sure enough, brother, here you are.

                Brother?

Yes. It’s really good to hear your voice.

                I – I mean – what? – 

I'm your brother! And it's good to hear your voice.

                Um - well - a smile bursts into the voice - you too, I suppose.

A great chuckle illuminates the darkness, like a forest-brook, but warming like hot chocolate – Thanks. Right, we can talk more later, for now, let’s get out of this place.

                You know the way out?

Indeed I do, father told me that as well.

                And he felt a strange sensation in his throat, creeping into his chest, a bit like something melting. Like he was very confused indeed but somehow it wasn’t too much of a problem. So how do we get out?

It’s easy really – we get lost.

And suddenly a firm hand grasped his in the darkness and pulled him fiercely to his feet, but further than that, it whirled him around in the air, around and around, and he almost remembered the feeling from the good old days in a sun-kissed garden, and then they were falling, and laughing, and he could feel the gentle damp of dewy grass beneath his finger tips, and he could hear his brother laughing, and the sun was rising, and he could feel himself rolling down a hill of grass, faster and faster, the laughter undulating in great waves as they rolled, and then all of a sudden they were swimming, startling, delightful water flooding over them as they struck out towards God knows where, and they were lost - thoroughly, gloriously lost. And yet the little boy felt found. And as they scrambled, panting with joy and exhaustion, onto a beach of smooth stones he heard the crunch of running feet, of eager feet, and he felt his own heart thumping, eager in his chest. And he felt big, warm arms wrap round him, and lift him clean off his feet, and whirl him around just like the sun-kissed good-old days. And a voice that sounded like log fires and old leather notebooks spoke softly, and the smile in the voice seemed to bounce back from the mountains -

Welcome home, boys. Welcome home.

Lose Yourself

I had a minor revelation this week. It was great. I realised that I’ve been praying too much.

It dawned on me on Wednesday afternoon – I was sitting on my bamboo mat outside the hut, reading a bit of bible and ‘praying’, and I was wondering why I felt pretty miserable. And then, like an unexpected Amazon parcel, Miriam was delivered. She was with some other little kids and then they just left her in the middle of some grass near her house, and she stood there looking confuzzled. So obviously, I went over, because this looked to me like a time when I could pick her up and she would actually be happy about it! And indeed, I did pick her up, and I took her to her Mama, and then we played for about an hour. We drummed on stools, and practiced jumping (she can’t jump yet without falling over, it’s ridiculously cute) and she experimented with the zip of my jacket, and I brought round a tennis ball and we played with that, and she discovered the joys of holding my hand and trying to pull me into the kitchen hut, and then me winning and pulling her out and swinging her around... etcetera, etcetera, et-beautiful-cetera. And then, for some reason, I went back to my mat, and I sat down, and I realised that I was full of joy. Genuinely brimming with the stuff. And I thought – ‘Hang on a minute, how come praying I’m miserable but with Miriam I’m not?’. And then Brian’s niece Deborah came back from school and started chatting with me, and she ended up telling me the whole plot of Romeo and Juliet (I didn’t tell her I already knew it because I was enjoying her rendition) and then we talked a bit more and she carried on to her house, and I realised that once again, I was happy. At this point, the revelation struck.

C.S. Lewis says that pride is not thinking too much of ourselves, it’s thinking of ourselves too much. He calls it something like an “unsmiling, relentless concentration on the self”. And I must admit pride is the failure that I struggle with the most – maybe by that definition it is for all of us. I am self-obsessed. Once, while I was working in Torquay, me and Rachael had a phone call and at the end she was really upset because we’d just talked about me and I hadn’t asked her anything really at all, and she hadn’t even got to tell me something that was really important.

What God pointed out to me, very gently of course, as he does, was that I had done the same thing again. I used to spend my prayer time concentrated utterly on God. And it was awesome. It was life-giving, it was inspiring, it was joyful, it felt like a gift.  But gradually I had drifted. I had taken the fact that God cared about me and abused it, just like I’d abused Rachael’s interest and love, by spending more and more time just talking to him about me. Just ‘reflecting’ on myself, on how I was feeling, what I was doing, how I was ‘growing’, whatever. And I would read a bit of the bible and see if anything jumped out at me but generally just get excited when it seemed relevant to me. This, I have discovered, is not prayer. I remember hearing Mark Driscoll get really angry about ‘prayer mazes’, where you move through a spiral towards the centre, praying, until you reach the very ‘core of your being’ – I think I laughed at him at the time but I realise now what he was getting at, he said, “Friends, in a prayer-maze, you’re going the wrong way!” Praying is running out to meet God - pouring stuff out to God, thanking God, delighting in God, learning from God... And I was just thinking about me. And thinking about me, it turns out, is both infinitely inferior as a pastime, and thoroughly depressing as a way of life.

The reason I get so much joy out of being with Miriam is that when I’m playing with her I am utterly focussed on her – trying to work out what she wants, what will make her laugh, making sure she doesn’t get hurt. I lose track of myself completely. I used to think the thing that made being with Rachael so good was that I could completely relax and be myself. I was wrong about that. The thing that makes it amazing is that I lose myself in her.

So when I said I’ve been praying too much, that’s not quite true, I’ve just been praying wrong. And in the last couple of days I have consciously stopped trying to impress God, tried to spend more time with people, and stopped just sitting around feeling virtuous because I’m ‘praying’ but actually not praying at all. I spent some time with God this morning, and I properly studied some Bible - actually discovered things about him - and it was interesting and exciting and it drew me away from myself and towards Jesus. And that is pretty much all that I’m aiming for in life. So it turns out once again that I’m a goon and God is good. And Eminem was right all along.

The Road

This is the other thing I've got for you this week - just a little story thing I wrote on the bus the other day. I hope it is of some interest!

It’s getting steeper.

                                Can we rest here?

                                                                Again?

                                                                                                Again. There’s a long way still to go.

                                We need to rest.

It’s hot.

                                                                Thanks, mate. Hadn’t noticed.

And the road’s getting steeper.

                                                                You said.

                                Is there any water?

                                                                Not anymore.

We drank it all.

                                Oh.

                                                                Well said.

Sweat runs in rivers. A salty mockery on dry lips, rough throats.

                                                                Shut up.

Sorry.

                                Is there really far to go?

                                                                Not that far.

                                                                                                You always say that.

                                In fact, you said that two days ago.

                                                                                                That’s true.

                                I’m starting to worry.

                                                                Starting?

                                Good point. But –

                                                                What?

                                What’s this now – number – number what?

                                                                                                                I’ve lost count.

                                                                Poet?

Me too.

                                Too many.

But, it seems, not enough.

                                                                                                                We’ll find him.

                                                                We will.

                                Yeah, we will.

Or maybe, he’ll find us.

                                                                You wish.

I do.

                                                                                                                Who’s that?

                                Who?

                                                                                                                That.

                                                                What?

                                                                                                                There, look.

                                Yes!

Who is it?

                                                                                                                HELLO!

                                HI!

                                                                HEY THERE!

                                Is it him?

                                                                It can’t be.

It might be.

                                                                                                                It might.

HELLO!

                Hello.

                                It is you?

                Who?

                                You!

                                                                Are you him?

The one?

                                                                                                Are you the one we’re looking for?

                No.

It’s not you?

                I’m sorry.

                                                                                                Well who are you?

                                Me? I’m just the road builder.

                                                                What? What road?

                The road I’ve just built.

It’s there – look.

                                                                Why build a road like that through these mountains?

Why are you smiling?

                Someone’s coming.

                                                                                                With a cart?

                                                                With an army?

                No. He’s got nothing.

So, why the road?

                Wait – feel that?

                                                                What?

                I think he’s coming.

                                The ground.

                                                                What?

It’s rumbling.

                                It’s shaking.

Trembling.

                                                                                                What’s happening?

                He’s coming.

                                We’ve come far enough?

                No, he has.

                                                                The ground’s moving.

Look!

                                What?

The mountain’s sinking.

                                                                                                We’re sinking.

                                We’re falling!

                                                                I think the valley’s rising.

I think it’s both.

                                Yeah – it’s both!

Or neither.

                                                                                                Look.

                                Guys –

                                                                                                Look.

                                The ground is moving!

                                                                                                Look at the horizon.

                                Where?

                                                                Wow.

The mountains are moving.

                                                                                                Everything is melting.

                                                                Shifting.

Like waves breaking.

                                We’re still falling.

                                                                                                Look at the road.

                                                                What?

                                                                                                The road.

It’s straight.

                                                                How can it be straight?

And it’s long.

                                                                                                Very long.

                Incredibly long.

                                I can’t see the end.

                                                                                                Where does it lead?

                It leads here.

                                                                                                No, I meant –

Look!

                                                                What?

                                What?

It’s him. I can see him!

                                                                                                It is. I can see him too.

                                                                We found him.

No. He found us.

                                Is it him? Really?

                It’s him.

                                The ground’s still moving!

                I know. It’s him.

                                                                It’s him.

                                                                                                You’re sure?

                Yeah, I’m sure.

                                                                                                Bet your life?

                I have.

                                                                He’s the one?

                                He’s the one?

                Why don’t you ask him yourself?