Don’t rush the creme eggs

As Lent approaches, mark each season for what it is.

Iona Curtius

Iona is a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen, studying how we can understand truth.

A giant creme egg lies smashed on the ground beside a tilted market barrow.

Creme Egg publicity stunt, 2012.

The Grocer.

Christmas before last, we ran out of milk on Boxing Day. An emergency of epic proportions that had to be remedied immediately with a trip to ASDA. Stepping out of the howling wind into the sanctuary of the entrance of ASDA, shaking my hood out of my face, I saw them. My stomach sank, dread rose, I heard my blood rushing in my ears… the Creme Eggs were back.

This may be a slightly exaggerated account. But there really were cream eggs at that ASDA. On Boxing Day. Now, I don’t want to launch into ‘back in the day…’ wailing or a bemoaning of the ignorant capitalist machine (that’s an article for another day…). But that moment really did give me pause.

Why does it matter? Well, I suppose in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t. It mattered only because of what it represented to me: a rushing onwards, an inability to properly acknowledge and celebrate the seasons, a restlessness.

I have long found this (ever increasing) tendency to rush from one season to the next unhelpful and difficult to deal with. Every year, I am labelled the token grinch for refusing to join in the ‘Christmas cheer’ before December. I have, at times, leaned into that moniker. But it’s not actually true. I do like Christmas. All 12 days of it. None of which are in November, let alone October! (we’re getting dangerously close to rant-territory now.)

I love the anticipation of Advent. I find the slow blossoming of Spring every year one of the most joyful experiences we in temperate climes are lucky enough to witness. I enjoy the slowing down, the preparation of Autumn. I take comfort in the opportunity Winter gives for taking a break, for taking stock, re-evaluating, laying old things to rest. I find days like Ash Wednesday and All Saint’s Day so helpful and important. I don’t want to rush past Lent to Easter and chocolate.

I did not grow up in a liturgical tradition. So, when I joined a Church of Scotland a few years ago that marked these days and seasons, I felt like I had finally found a frame for my wandering.

Marking each season for what it is, appreciating its gifts, being present in the moment, not rushing ahead (or lagging behind) is so valuable. It gives me a ground, a certain foundation when everything else feels like it’s spinning, faster and faster. The news never stops, social media races past me and before I know it it’s time for pumpkin spice lattes, hot cross buns, Wham!ageddon, and Halloween, all at once. But Christmas is always on the 25th of December. Easter is always preceded by Lent and followed by Pentecost. Going through the year with these way-markers helps me to keep both feet on the ground and my gaze on the path ahead.

I’m not particularly invested in how exactly each season is marked. Whether it is cream eggs, or pumpkin spice, the first crocus, or the celebration of a saint’s feast, we all find different things helpful and attractive. What I do think is important is to recognise and mark the seasons.

I read a lot of headlines and posts at the start of the year that talked about how to beat the ‘overwhelm’ of modern daily life. I don’t pretend to know the answer or have a cure-all. I do think that one thing that can help is to step out of the consumerism-driven, ever-rushing, ever-increasing race through the seasons that never lets us stop for a minute to rest and reflect on the moment we are in right now.

So whether you want to mark Lent in a more traditional way, by giving something up, maybe attending an Ash Wednesday service, reflecting on life and death, or by perhaps buying yourself a bouquet of daffodils. I encourage you to mark this season in some way. Before rushing on to the Creme Eggs.

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Article

Belief

Creed

30 September 2024

4 min read

Are miracles real?

In miracles, as in much of life, you see what you're looking for.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A woman sees her reflection in a mirror and hold a finger up.

Ivan Lapyrin on Unsplash.

Recently, I heard a remarkable story about a friend of mine who happens to be a vicar. He had been diagnosed with a serious cancer, and the diagnosis was bleak. He was preparing himself for a difficult few months, readying himself, and his parish, for the end before too long. His body was reacting poorly to chemotherapy, and the prospects did not look good. However, he continued to try to get a balance of rest and work through the tiredness, praying when he could - little and often - but without too much discomfort.

A short while ago, during a routine visit to the hospital to receive the results of a scan on how the cancer was progressing, something puzzling happened.

The surgeon showed him the scan related to the original diagnosis. He asked, "Can you see the tumour?" My friend replied, "Yes, of course, it's right there," pointing to the black mass. The surgeon then showed him another scan.

He asked again, "This is the most recent scan we’ve just taken; can you see it on this one?" My friend peered closely into the scan and said, "Hmm. I'm not sure I can." The surgeon then responded, puzzled, that somehow, between the two scans, the tumour seemed to have disappeared.

He added: “To be honest, in my world, we don't really have an explanation for things like this. But I suspect in yours, you do.”

Besides being delighted for my friend, since hearing the story, I've pondered what it means. Of course, miracles are by their nature rare and we cannot automatically predict them, My friend was in the kind of church that doesn't routinely demand God for miracles but simply carried on gently praying that somehow God would be with the vicar in his struggles, hardly daring to hope that the cancer would in fact vanish.

Was it a miracle? Or was there some other explanation? It seems to me that the answer you give to that question depends on the framework you bring to it. If you are a believer in a God who might do this kind of thing from time to time, and consider that such things can and do happen occasionally, not regulated by the usual course of cause and effect, but by some extra dimension of reality unseen to us and immeasurable by the methods of science, you will probably simply accept it as one of those occasional interruptions to the normal course of things. And then give thanks to God and rejoice with my friend at this sign of God’s goodness.

Of course, it raises the question of why this cancer was healed and others aren’t, but that takes us into other territory, which I’ve examined before in relation to Donald Trump’s narrow escape. Would we rather a world in which such things as this never happened, and my friend’s cancer had taken its usual deadly course? Or a world where just every now and again, something delightful and unanticipated happens, like stumbling on a gloriously unexpected view of rolling hills and a dramatic sunset at the end of a routine walk on a summer’s evening?

Belief in miracles doesn’t mean an irrational rejection of science and its benefits in favour of an entirely random world. it simply means an acknowledgement of the limits of our reasoning.

An honest doctor like the one treating my friend, might recognise that the methods of medical science, for all its brilliance, value and wisdom, on which we all depend so much, has to shrug its shoulders at this point, realising that it doesn’t have the categories to explain it, reverting to a kind of agnosticism. A more thoroughgoing materialist would say: “Of course we know there are no such things as miracles, so that’s the one thing we know it is not. There must be some other explanation, and science will one day discover why such mysterious things happen.”

What we believe about such things is determined not by the self-evident ‘facts’, the bald evidence of what is before us, but by our pre-conceived mental map of the world, our framework of faith, what we think the world is, and what, or who we think God is, (if he exists at all). We are all believers in the end – the difference is what we believe in.

Belief in miracles doesn’t mean an irrational rejection of science and its benefits in favour of an entirely random world. it simply means an acknowledgement of the limits of our reasoning, open to the possibility of an extra dimension of enchantment that occasionally shows its face, and that there is a bigger world out there than we with our small minds and spirits are able to comprehend.

GK Chesterton once put it like this. "Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has risen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles except them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them, rightly or wrongly, because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them, rightly or wrongly, because they have a doctrine against them."

In miracles, as in much of life, you see what you're looking for.