Laura (and Calvin and Hobbes): China to Scotland

Last Saturday, we woke up to a cold house.  A trip out into the garden led to the discovery that there was no gas left in the tank; we thought that we were on an automatic top-up plan, but apparently not.  After I had made numerous calls to the gas company, a sweet bloke delivered two canisters at 7pm on Tuesday night, and emptied them into the tank.  This tided us over until Wednesday morning, when the tanker came to do a proper refill.  In the mean time, we were very thankful for our small copse – which provides fuel and kindling for the wood stove – and the electric shower.  Otherwise, we would have become very cold and smelly.

At about the same time that the gas went out, we started catching whiffs from the vicinity of the septic tank.  It suddenly occurred to me that I had been doing a lot of washing since we moved in, because all our clothes and bedding had become musty in storage.  Had I overwhelmed the septic tank?  We decided to have it emptied, just in case, so a local farmer/septic tank emptier came over with a tank pulled by a tractor.  He stopped on the road and walked up to our door to announce that the turn was too tight for him to come up the drive.  On previous visits he had gone across the neighbour’s pasture, but the field had now been ploughed and planted, so he couldn’t cross it at present.  He left suggesting that I call him in September, after the harvest.  Today, the whiff has gone, so I have my fingers crossed that the septic tank has recovered its equanimity. 

As husband said, ‘These are not problems that one has on the 67th floor of a Hong Kong tower block.’

Hobbes: I didn’t really understand all of it.  He talked about birth and death mixed up together.  Oh!  I know!  We usually talk about birth as the time when you come out of the womb, but I think that birth is when you first learn something, first have an experience.  Maybe at death there is a flash of peace that is like that moment of inspiration at birth.

Calvin:  I think the narrator is talking about the death of his old ideas, of his old religion.  He travelled to see Jesus, and knew that he had found the truth.  Now all his old life, his old religion seemed a waste to him, just a waste of all his past efforts.  Now he wants to die, because he is no longer interested in the life around him.

Hobbes: He saw that Jesus was good.  I think that Jesus could have been good without going against the Romans and being so famous.  If he had gone on being good and teaching quietly, and curing people who were ill, he would have lived to do more good, rather than being killed.

Laura: That’s an interesting point.  Do you think that Jesus was deliberately causing his own death?

Calvin: Yes – he had to die in that way, it was how he could redeem people from sin.

Hobbes: But he could have done so much more good if he hadn’t died then.

Laura: You two are talking about two different aims.  Was his aim to do good to the people he met, or did he have to die in order to do more good?  (pause)  There are some interesting images in the poem – let’s look at them.  It says, "Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver."

Calvin: The pieces of silver: Judas.  That predicts the betrayal of Jesus, it’s there at his birth…..