Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Matt Woodcock, Church of England Pioneer Minister and Mission Supporter in the Diocese of York: 
I couldn’t have been happier the other day. My daughter suddenly announced a new-found passion for music. She’d joined her school recorder club. So proud. Then she brought one home and blew into it. Nightmare. I could withstand hours of workmen drilling, tuneless hymn singing, or fingernails being scraped down chalkboards. But my eight-year-old endlessly practicing Three Blind Mice? Unbearable. It shredded my nerves and pierced my ears so relentlessly, that I did a bad thing. I made her instrument mysteriously disappear for a few days. 
The trouble was, I then couldn’t find it. I still can’t. After a grovelling apology, mercifully my daughter found another interest. I just wish I hadn’t tweeted about the incident. The next day an anonymous package arrived. It contained not one but two recorders. One for each of our twins. Double helpings of London's Burning from now on. I deserve it. The episode has reminded me that a healthy tolerance of such irritations remains a challenging spiritual discipline. ‘Be patient, bearing with one another in love,’ the Bible teaches. No easy feat, I find. The colleague with the maddening cough. The friend who’s always late. The daughter on a mission to make your ears bleed. For me, bearing people in a spirit of patient love never comes naturally.
It was a relief, then, to discover that a friend who was a proper spiritual heavyweight – a nun sadly no longer with us - struggled too. She found the silent meal times at her convent a real trial. The chomping and chewing noise generated by a fellow sister drove her potty. Bearing it well became a daily spiritual exercise. A time to seek divine help. Seeing through more compassionate eyes - hearing with less sensitive ears. Gradually those meals became a source of inner joy and satisfaction. Just not on the convent’s spag bol days. The slurping was unbearable, apparently. 
So I’m trying to use my daughter’s recorder playing to practice a more love-tinged tolerance. I’m praying it might even become a joyful noise. Recorders are the least of my worries now anyway. Our mystery benefactor recently delivered another gift. Kazoos - dozens of them. Accompanied by a short Bible verse. One about trumpeters and musicians praising the Lord. I haven’t quite managed that yet, Zoe. But I have found another great hiding place.