大象传媒

From Nick Baines, the Bishop of Leeds:聽
I鈥檝e just been away for three months on study leave. Apart from all the reading, writing, thinking chatting and travelling, I also used the time to catch up on some long lost music. Crowded House, Eric Clapton and Bruce Springsteen got a lot of space, but it was Bruce鈥檚 Dancing in the Dark, played loud during a massive thunder storm in Tennessee that sticks in my memory. I think part of the reason this one stuck was because a couple of months before I left the UK I had a bit of a stroke - in my brain, not of the cat.聽
As many people know, when something like that happens and is beyond your control, you feel like you are in the dark a bit - even if dancing is the last thing you think of doing. In my case, it wasn鈥檛 a huge deal. It was a minor blip, but it came with consequences. I had to cancel travel and engagements abroad. But, on the bright side, I now have documentary evidence that I do have a brain. Springsteen might have been singing about a different experience, but I spent a couple of months sleeping a lot, reading a lot and reflecting on what it means to be alive. Because the truth is, we all live all the time in the dark - not in any miserable sense, but just that none of us knows what is going to happen next.聽
Not everything is in my control. I can make plans and imagine a future, but I can鈥檛 guarantee it will happen. Tomorrow I will be speaking on the phone with the Bishop of Colombo in Sri Lanka - a more dramatic illustration of my point. Another Bruce 鈥� the singer Cockburn - once wrote: 鈥淪ometimes the best map will not guide you; sometimes the darkness is your friend.鈥� And I know what he means. I didn鈥檛 worry when my brain blipped, simply because, as Easter whispers to a mortal world, my trust is not ultimately in me or my own security - it is in the God of resurrection. Anyway, I am fine, back to work, back to Radio 2, and promising never to dance in the light. If you鈥檝e seen me, you鈥檇 know why.