Dear Friends,
A life long puzzle!
A little while ago, I began to notice yellow and green dots in a square appearing on peoples social media. I had no idea what it meant nor how to even attempt it. It’s a daily puzzle is called “Wordle”. I’m not sure if your household has been caught up in the recent craze of the ‘wordle’? Deacon Pru sent me the link one day and every morning we look at this puzzle. Wordling (if such a word exists) has very much taken off in the Vicarage. Phrases such ‘wordled in two today, might well be the peak of my day’ or ‘only just got it in six, clearly not awake yet’ have become common sentences. There are days we just don’t get it or we miss the American spelling.
For those of you who have missed the obsession so far, I’m told it’s a bit like that game of mastermind you might have played with a child where the aim is to guess the colours of the pegs hidden at the top of the board by your opponent, only in wordle, you’re guessing a five letter word in six tries. Fortunately for productivity levels, there’s only one issued every day and so the obsession is kept well in check. Of course, there are many things that we solve a letter or number at a time. Some of you might be daily crossword or sudoku solvers and know the joy of plugging away at a new puzzle in the paper each day and it struck me recently that Easter, although technically a letter too long of course, is itself rather like a wordle. Somehow, another year has passed and here we are again trying to make sense again of a great mystery. Having another shot at it. Guessing at what makes up its meaning. Using our previous experiences and our knowledge to try and understand it. Coming at it each year from a slightly different angle, sometimes feeling that we ‘get it in one’ and it all makes sense. Other times wondering if we understand it at all. And as with Easter so with life. Each of us wakes up and tries again each and every day. Some days the sense of where we’re going and how we ought to get there is clear, on other days it’s all a bit of a mystery and we just have to hope that tomorrow is that bit easier.
Sometimes, we notice things we haven’t seen before and we feel that progress has been made that will help us not just today but in the long run. Always there is the very real chance that we will be utterly surprised by something completely unexpected. It’s reassuring, to me anyway, to know that faith and life don’t always have to make sense.
There were Godly people who in my teenage years taught me that some things are a divine mystery were on to something or as St Paul put it – now we see though a glass darkly. It’s meant to be a life long puzzle with which we can engage and question and struggle because we know that someone far greater than us is holding it all in love. So I leave you with a poem that, although about neither a wordle nor Easter, reminds us that some things aren’t meant to be understood and the greatest of these is love.
It’s nonsense, says reason.
It is what is, says love.
It’s a disaster, says logic.
It’s nothing but pain, says fear.
It’s hopeless, says common sense.
It is what it is, says love.
It’s ridiculous, says pride.
It’s foolhardy, says prudence.
It’s impossible, says experience.
It is what it is, says love.
Erich Fried
translated by Jean Bollkaemper
