Feline blackmail!

Nothing important, but just to give you a laugh - and some insight into the devious workings of the feline mind!

As you know, Rupert sleeps in bed with me. As you also know, since that anxious time when his jaw was first dislocated, about six months ago, the pain and dislocation have seemed to recur more often than not in the night. I now know how mothers of young babies must feel . . . bleary-eyed and in need of sleep!
Normally, our sleep patterns are pretty similar. We go to bed at around eleven, we awake in the region of seven the next morning. But, if Rupert has had an undemanding day, a dull day, a day devoid of stimulus or good exercise, then he wakes up early and, in order to obtain breakfast and a morning game, needs to waken me.

His means for wakening me are subtle. First of all, he positions himself on the pillow just above my sleeping head. He then reaches forward and gently pats me on the cheek. If this produces no effect, he pats again . . . a little more firmly. If this still fails to rouse me, he pats me, with great delicacy, on the eyelid. By this point I have usually been shamming sleep for several minutes. After the pat on the eyelid, I cautiously open one eye . . . tell him that it's not yet morning, and suggest that he returns to bed. With great deliberation, I close my eyes again.
The whole procedure is repeated . . . and repeated . . . and repeated, until, worn out by his persistence, I finally get up.

This morning I was awoken by these familiar, persistent tactics. Opening my eyes, I saw that it was a cloudy morning. The time was uncertain, so I switched on Radio Four. A talk was being given by the Bishop of Rochester. Concluding that this must be the "Sunday" programme, and that the time must be around seven-thirty, I succumbed to Rupert's demands, and got out of bed. It was only when I looked at my watch that I realised it was only ten-to-six - no time to rise on a Sunday morning. To Rupert's shocked amazement, I proceeded to return to bed.
He was dumbfounded. This was not part of the morning procedure. Once up, we stay up!
Once more he returned to his place on the pillow . . . once more he patted my seemingly sleeping face . . . once more I feigned sleep.

But this time Rupert boxed clever. Crawling back under the covers he rejoined me in bed. Surprised, but relieved, I began to relax. It was then that his devious plan was put into action. Slowly . . . deliberately . . . he opened his mouth. He opened it as wide as he possibly could . . . realising what was going on, I opened my eyes and watched apprehensively. Rupert watched me watching him . . . still he held his mouth open. He tested his jaw . . . he wriggled it about . . . I heard the distressing sound of the bones rubbing against each other . . . I pleaded with him to stop and not cause further dislocation . . . he looked at me, and opened his mouth even wider!
It worked . . . it worked like a charm . . reluctantly, grudgingly, I got up!
I had been blackmailed out of bed!

Now, two hours later, his breakfast devoured, an energetic game enjoyed and his morning brush completed . . . there hasn't been a single further trace of discomfort in his jaw! Nor, I suspect, will there be until he wants to blackmail me into something else . . . how's that for a manipulative, devious (much-loved) cat!

(Or has he guessed that, later this morning, we're off to the woods in search of bluebells!)

Answers or questions . . . ?

Why is it that questions are so much more powerful than answers?
This thought came to mind when I saw the Easter poster outside St. Mark's. Have you seen it? In great, bold lettering it states:
GOD IS LOVE.
I'm sure that's perfectly true. But what I was being offered was a statement, a reassurance, a conclusion . . . where did I come into this picture?
Just see the difference if you add a couple of question-marks:
WHAT IS GOD? WHAT IS LOVE?
Immediately the observer is involved.

Why, I wonder, do human beings have this obsession for answers? Answers, or so it seems to me, are full stops. They close us down. Whereas answers are cul-de-sacs, questions lead us to the open road and new horizons. Questions stretch the mind and spirit. Questions invite greater, more profound, more liberating questions.
Children ask questions. That’s how they grow.

If we could answer the question about God, if we could describe God, we would not be here. Any God capable of being held within the grammar and syntax of a sentence cannot, by definition, be God. Any God that causes us to cease wondering, and marvelling, and questioning, and doubting, and straining at the restrictive limitations of our mind's capacity (for God can never be held within the mind) is surely not God. Any God that can be pulled down from the skies and labelled and courted and bargained with . . . is not God. Any God that demands politeness, and Sunday best, and a sanitised version of events can hardly be God.

God catches you when you're not looking . . . speaks to you when you're not expecting it . . . carries you when you've given up hope . . . shines from the sunset . . . blazes out from great music . . . shouts at you when you're about to do something stupid . . . holds you within the arms of a tree . . . is reflected in the faces of those you love . . . looks back at you from the mirror. And, finally, when you're ready, absorbs you so that the petty 'you' no longer exists.

And love? Who can possibly describe love? We recognise it the moment we see it . . . there's no denying when it's absent . . . and there’s nothing we can do to artificially create it. We can rejoice in it, be thankful for it, marvel at it . . . . the one thing we can’t do is to describe it.

Yet we know what love can do. Love holds our fragile world together. Love is the component of unity. Without love flowing through its veins, our physical creation would turn to dust. It is love that holds the shape of the flower before it withers away. Love that, as water, refreshes, revitalises and renews creation. Love that, despite its apparent fragility, is the strongest power that exists. Love is not the stuff that sells the magazines on the top shelves of the supermarket, nor the ingredient that demands bigger and better gifts and trades on gratification and selfishness. To give it away is to increase its abundance, to experience it is to be empowered as by nothing else, to trust in it is to acknowledge divinity.

Do you know what I'd like to put on that notice-board outside St. Mark's? The incredible photo that you showed to me last week. The picture of a sunset at the North Pole . . . do you remember . . . ?

There are no answers in that picture, just questions . . . wonderful, wonderful questions. And, who knows, it might even prompt us to ask that vital question of our age, a question that is very relevant to Easter:
'How do we, between us, nurture and protect our endangered planet?'.