Lydford Parish and Community Magazine
February 2012
The TV programme Big Brother isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. The prospect of watching a house full of strangers thrown together for a few weeks with very little to do except eat, sleep, do their make-up and talk, doesn’t appeal to all. And the characters, chosen for their quirkiness or likelihood to create tabloid headlines, aren’t always the most endearing, more often instead self-promoting, self-serving, not the easiest people to live with in a confined and highly-controlled space, for any length of time.
But look at it another way and Big Brother is a fascinating experiment in human behaviour, an exploration of how people relate, bond, make decisions, form groups, fall in and out of love, when all that they have to do all day is to focus on that very process and their part in it.
My friend Pip has worked with vulnerable young people all his life and is to me a very wise man when it comes to helping people to unpack their own behaviour and relate to others. Many of the good lessons I’ve learned in how to help people to open up to themselves, others, even in time to the divine spark within, I’ve learned from Pip. He champions Big Brother because, he says, ‘It is people-watching, and this is what I do in real life. Observe people and try to understand with view to entering a helping relationship: and at the same time learning myself! It is great to get to see the real humans emerge as time goes on. Interesting to see masks slip and real strengths and weaknesses visible. Plus there is little else on TV late night when I am slowing up before bed.’
Contestants on the show mature, over time, into people with some wisdom to share about insights they have gained about themselves and their behaviour. Often they will confide to the camera in the confessional ‘Diary Room’ that their time in ‘The House’ has given them space out of their normal lives to reflect on who they are and where they are going. It has been (in terms which some religiously-minded contestants have actually used) a ‘desert’ or ‘wilderness’ experience: a painful but ultimately revealing time of self-encounter.
Many of us have had Big Brother-type times in our lives: whether in boarding school, in the forces, in prison or monastery or package holiday, or in a family home full of people. So we understand what it is like to be thrown together to live in close quarters with others, with no choice but to be there and little opportunity for escape. Some may have found a means for reflection in that situation, in the form perhaps of a diary, or a chapel, or by escaping into books, or even into prayer. And we’ve learned and grown from the experience. The desert, the wilderness, the place of self-appraisal, then, is a hard but valuable place to be.
This is, of course, my invitation to you to take a little desert time, to wander in the wilderness awhile during Lent this year, which begins with an Ash Wednesday service at St Petroc’s at 6.30pm on Wednesday 22nd February. For those seeking a real-time Diary Room in the village, the church is open each day, a place which holds the silent thoughts and prayers of all who have used it for that purpose over the centuries. For those asking questions about life and God and faith there are courses forthcoming, called Christianity Explored and Discipleship Explored, to which all are welcome. Introspection; interaction; contemplation - all add up to understanding, revelation, development. This Lent, allow yourself the desert experience.
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