Hunny! 40 Days in the 100 Aker Wood – Day 24 – Tuesday after 4th Sunday of Lent

To Read:

It went on raining, and every day the water got a little higher, until now it was nearly up to Piglet’s window…  and still he hadn’t done anything. 

“There’s Pooh,” he thought to himself.  “Pooh hasn’t much Brain, but he never comes to any harm.  He does silly things and they turn out right.  There’s Owl. Owl hasn’t exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things.  He would know the Right Thing to Do when Surrounded by Water.  There’s Rabbit.  He hasn’t Learnt in Books, but he can always Think of a Clever Plan.  There’s Kanga.  She isn’t Clever, Kanga isn’t, but she would be so anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking about it.  And then there’s Eeyore.  And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow that he wouldn’t mind about this.  But I wonder what Christopher Robin would do?”

Then suddenly he remembered a story which Christopher Robin had told him about a man on a desert island who had written something in a bottle and thrown it into the sea; and Piglet thought that if he wrote something in a bottle and threw it in the water, perhaps somebody would come and rescue him!

He left the window and began to search his house, all of it that wasn’t under water, and at last he found a pencil and a small piece of dry paper, and a bottle with a cork to it.  And he wrote on one side of the paper:

HELP!

PIGLIT (ME)

and on the other side:

IT’S ME PIGLIT, HELP HELP!

Then he put the paper in the bottle, and he corked the bottle up as tightly as he could, and he leant out of his window as far as he could lean without falling in, and he threw the bottle as far as he could throw – splash! — and in a little while it bobbed up again on the water; and he watched it floating slowly away in the distance, until his eyes ached with looking, and sometimes he thought it was the bottle, and sometimes he thought it was just a ripple on the water which he was following, and then suddenly he knew that he would never see it again and that he had done all that he could do to save himself.

“So now,” he thought, “somebody else will have to do something, and I hope they will do it soon, because if they don’t I shall have to swim, which I can’t, so I hope they do it soon.”  And then he gave a very long sigh and said, “I wish Pooh were here.  It’s so much more friendly with two.”

(Winnie the Pooh – In which Piglet is entirely surrounded by water)

(Acts 28v1-50)

To Reflect:

“So now,” [Piglet] thought, “somebody else will have to do something, and I hope they will do it soon, because if they don’t I shall have to swim, which I can’t, so I hope they do it soon.”  And then he gave a very long sigh and said, “I wish Pooh were here.  It’s so much more friendly with two.”

Today ‘Piglit’ is feeling very little indeed.  He recognises how few resources he has to manage a crisis.  The list he makes of his friend’s ‘abilities’ to find their way out of a pickle is illuminating and reminded me of several bears and owls, rabbits and Kangas amongst my circle of friends.  I particularly love Eeyore’s coping mechanism for crisis, ‘Eeyore is so miserable anyhow that he wouldn’t mind about this.’  There are some advantages to being morose as your hopes never ever get dashed!

But to have a friend and friendly people next to us is one of life’s special gifts.  Friends help us become more ‘us’ and, if we listen carefully, also help us become less ‘me’.  The Book of Proverbs describes how friendship works perfectly, ‘Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.’ (Proverbs 27v17).

My very first adult friend (that I remember) was a Maltese Roman Catholic Nun.  Being a Royal Naval family with Dad at sea much of the time my brother and I were not baptised as babies but only when he was posted to Malta were we settled enough to sort things out.  I was six years old and the rest of my class at school was being admitted to First Communion which I, being Church of England, was denied.  To compensate for my disappointment my parents arranged for me, along with my 5-year-old brother, to be baptised in the ship’s bell of HMS Narvik in Sliema Creek.  The next day my nun teacher took me into church and asked me to kneel at the communion rail and gave me my very own First Communion from the Reserved Sacrament in the Tabernacle.  Looking back I am still amazed at her bravery and commitment to loving the children in her care.  She was, even at the risk of breaking the rules of her Religious Order, committed to obey Our Beloved’s command to, ‘Let the children come to me’ and would not allow any dogma or dictum get in the way.  For this act of friendship I am forever grateful and I only wish I could recall her name.  It was at that moment seventy years ago when, because of her friendship, I first heard Our Beloved say, ’Andrew, you are mine.’

Friendship is crucial to our growth as a community of faith.  Elsewhere I have written of the importance of friendships in church and in our faith groups.  But, a little bit like Little Piglit, it is all too easy to wait for someone else to do something about reaching out and building friendships…

It went on raining, and every day the water got a little higher, until now it was nearly up to Piglet’s window…  and still he hadn’t done anything. 

People often quote the aphorism ‘If you want a friend, be a friend’, but it’s words, in most circumstances, ring true.  Like the Grinch we must learn that friendship and joy is never about possessions and gifts and stuff, but about each other.  When we finally realise that all our hearts will ‘Grow three sizes’.

(Teresa of Avila)