Christ and the Chocolaterie

Hilary Brand

Week Five: Growing Up -The Process of Change

To start you thinking

I want you for a few minutes to take an imaginary journey with me, and with some of the characters of Chocolat.

Picture Paul de Reynaud as a chubby seven-year-old in short trousers, stiff collar and tie, with hair slicked down ready for mass. 'One day you will be Comte de Reynaud: his mother tells him, 'and upon you the moral welfare of this village will rest: Picture him, passing each day the statue of his ancestor in the square and seeing that steely gaze of responsibility, falling, it seems, on him alone.

Picture Josephine, a teenager giggling as the boys pass by, full of dreams for the future. Watch as it gradually dawns on her that her father is a collaborator with the hated Nazis. See her shame as the Germans withdraw and her father is dragged into the square to be spat upon and beaten. Picture her, forever tainted, her dreams dashed, reaching out for some glittering jewel left behind in a bombed house. Just for a moment it stills the ache in her heart.

Picture Caroline, a gawky eleven-year-old in the high school gym. 'Sorry: says her new friend, 'my mum says I can't come to tea with you: Caroline knows why. She knows what they say about her mother. Armande Voizin - the slut. She swears, reads dirty books, drinks with the men, never does any housework. Worst of all - she says exactly what she thinks. 'When I am older: vows Caroline, 'I'll never put my children through this:

Picture nine-year-old Vianne on yet another rattling bus, journeying to yet another unknown town. 'It's fun; her mother tells her. 'We're not like those other people. We are wanderers. This is our life: See Vianne as she presses her nose to the glass and conjures that ever dimmer memory of the man who seemed so kind and gentle. Her father - one of those other people. 'Yes, maman: says Vianne. 'It's going to be fun.'

When we are small children, our parents are God to us. As we grow, we discover they are sometimes wrong. By the time we are teenagers, we are quite likely to think they are wrong about everything! But still they leave with us an immense heritage of ideas, attitudes and emotions - things so deeply ingrained that we never question them. Indeed, we probably don't even know they are there - until one day something or someone comes along to challenge them.

There are two ways of dealing with this subconscious legacy. One is to try and dig it all up. Bring the whole lot to the surface, examine every bit of it. The other is to keep it all deeply buried. To stamp it down. To cover it over, the moment it threatens to pierce the surface.

The first way is costly - in time and probably in money (this is not a task to be undertaken alone) - and although it may reap dividends in terms of increased self-knowledge and there may be times when it becomes a desperate necessity, it also runs the risk of exposing things you are not yet equipped to deal with.

The second is also likely to be costly - certainly in terms of mental wellbeing and quite possibly in terms of physical health. Its benefit is that on the surface things keep running smoothly. There are times when life is just too demanding for introspection. But it can be rather like tiptoeing around a minefield. If you don't know what is buried, then you never know when anything is likely to explode.

Thankfully, as I have gone on in the Christian life, I have discovered that these are not the only two ways. For if you have given your life into God's hands, then you can trust God to bring these hidden attitudes and emotions to the surface at the right time, at a time when you are ready to deal with them. It becomes possible to welcome those challenging intruders as friends, rather than resenting them as enemies. Because you are no longer facing them alone.

Of course, it will never feel like the right time. It will never feel comfortable and cosy when the deepest things about us are challenged. But if you are committed to growth, if you are learning to trust God as a loving Parent ' who wants only good things for his children, then it at : least becomes possible to ride those feelings, to hang on in there and trust that God is a specialist in bringing strength out of weakness and joy out of pain.

Read John 3:1-8; Matthew 18:1-3

These readings can provoke many thoughts and be interpreted in many ways, but one thing Jesus seems to be saying is that it is possible to begin again. No, we cannot enter again into our mother's womb. We may not be able to undo our parenting and our background culture, but we can release its hold on us. We can become new people. We can see the world through childlike eyes again. It is not only possible, Jesus implies, but necessary. To be fully the people God wants us to be, we have to take off our adult straitjacket and become willing to learn.

Pause for thought

Ask God whether there is anything from your past that is quite near the surface right now and ready to be dealt with. Perhaps you will need to look at your present tensions, reactions and emotions and ask yourself if they have their roots in something from your past. If something does come to mind, look at it for a while, but then commit it into God's hands. Ask God to deal with any shame or blame, but to show you also what strengths and blessings your past has given you.

To continue your thinking

Lighten up

When I came to write these concluding words, I asked myself, 'What message has doing this course left with me? What message would I most like people to take away with them?' The answer that came into my head and lodged there, somewhat unexpectedly, was this: 'Lighten up.'

That's a bit rich isn't it? I hear you say. Haven't we just been talking about change and growth, and confronting subconscious attitudes and inappropriate control and loving your neighbour and self-denial? Not exactly lightweight. And aren't we just coming up to Easter and Jesus on the cross and pain and blood and death and sin and all that stuff?

All true.

But it seems to me that the picture Chocolat paints of church is as a place full of grey, guilty, burdened people, straitjacketed by convention. In contrast, Vianne's chocolaterie was a place of lightness and ease. It was a place people were listened to rather than talked at. It was a place of acceptance and fun. And because of that it was a place where people blossomed.

And even though that is all a bit caricatured and simplistic, my experience of life in several churches tells me there is more than a grain of truth there. Church is not often the first place people think of when they are looking for love and acceptance.

But that is not how it should be.

If you visited some of those churches of my experience, you might wonder what I meant. After all, I have spent a great deal of my Christian life in the sort of churches where people wear casual clothes and sing to guitars and drums and clap their hands and even sometimes dance. I have been in churches where people are genuinely warm and caring and committed to each other, where they are genuinely trying to shake off tradition. They certainly don't appear straitjacketed places.

But it seems to me that wherever faith becomes an organisational thing, be it in the most traditional cathedral or the most right-on charismatic fellowship, then it is likely to be subject to controlling influences, a pressure to conform, and a sort of constant drip, drip, drip of guilt inducing 'Could do better' from the pulpit. Often this is unintentional. If not, then it is mostly the result of well-intentioned zeal. And yes, just now and then, I have been aware of more malign forces at work.

Do I mean then that we should abandon organised religion?

No. I believe that Jesus intended his followers to be banded together, that God wants Christians to be community and that we can serve the world better together than apart.

But I do think that very many Christians need to lighten up.

I think church should be a place where people blossom.

And I think it can be. I have seen it happen - many, many times. Discovering that God loves you and accepts you Is the most wonderful liberating experience it is possible to have.

But sometimes I have seen these same people go on to wilt under the pressure of what others are telling them they now ought to be and do and think.

Christianity should be about relieving guilt, not inducing it. It should be about lightening burdens, not piling them on. I am not saying this because I want to change the nature of Christianity, but because that is what Christ always intended. And because that is what is there, built into the very fabric of Christianity itself. Repentance and confession are intended to lift the guilt, not pile it on. Holy Communion is intended to be a gift not a duty.

A few years ago I went to a Communion service in Salisbury Cathedral. It just happened that I had seen the film Billy Elliot the night before. The atmosphere of the cathedral inspired me - the deep harmonies of the organ echoing around ancient stone, the exquisite choirboy voices soaring up to the magnificent arched ceiling, the glow of light through stained glass. But when it came to Communion, I looked at us - solid, respectable, middle-aged, approaching the altar stiffly and reverently with lowered eyes - and it all seemed so wrong.

We should have been tap-dancing down that long aisle, running and leaping and twirling and kicking like Billy Elliot. There should have been a jazz band and trumpets and a chorus of angels jiving above us. Because what we were actually celebrating was so amazing. God loves us. Enough to die for us. He wants us to be free and strong and forgiven.

No, I didn't start tap-dancing. (But maybe it's not too

late to learn.)

Read Matthew 11:28-30

These three verses have been haunting me for months. What does it mean to take on Christ's yoke? What can I learn from him about living under a light yoke? Following are just a few thoughts on the subject:

• We are designed for activity and work.
• But Christ does not intend us to live weary, burdened lives.
• Therefore we need to learn a new lighter and easier way of being.
• We need to resist being dumped on by others.
• The trick is only to take on what we believe Christ wants of us.
• The secret is in being gentle and humble of heart.
• Living humbly for Christ relieves us of the burden of always having to get it right.

I don't think I've yet discovered all these verses have to tell me - but I'm still looking. Perhaps you too would benefit from reading and rereading this simple appeal from Jesus, letting it sink into you until you begin to grasp what it means to live under his light yoke.

Give joy room to flourish

When I tested the part of the course that talks about having fun, someone said to me, 'But you haven't mentioned joy: You can create fun, you can create welcome, you can create pleasure - but you can't create joy. Joy is a by-product. Telling Christian they ought to be joyful is about as silly as telling newborn babies they ought to be able to talk

But you can, I believe, create an environment which allows joy to flourish. I think both the film Chocolat and the words of the Gospels have some clues on how to do that I hope that as you go on to celebrate Easter, you will have begun to catch a glimpse of what that might mean