Here's To You Mr. Robinson - Redemption in the first two days of 2010

It seems a little early to be welcoming in a new decade with tales of portent, laden with meaning  but two days into 2010 and already the year has given me a story of friendship, community and redemption as well as a social media affirming by-line.

Yesterday, New Years Day, I went to the park with my wife and 19 month old daughter who is a sucker for swings with bucket seats. The park in question was the Valley Gardens in Harrogate which has recently opened a brand new play area for kids. It’s a great place – the kind of place every public space should have –with swings, slides, wooden musical instruments, climbing frames and all manner of currently unvandalised and fully operable toys.

It was here, pushing my daughter on a swing, that I noticed that my wedding ring was getting a little loose. Not that I had managed to lose any of my substantial bulk over Christmas, but the cold weather – the snow and ice were still in plenty supply in the park – meant that the wedding ring that fitted snugly over a chubby finger in the summer of 2006 sat a little loose on the contracted cold – although still chubby -  winter finger of 2009.

After finishing up on the swing, we walked over to a couple of other play pieces, but it was getting colder and there were tears and screams, so we decided to walk back to the car and head home.

Two and half hours later, at home on the sofa with a cup of tea, I noticed my wedding ring was missing. At the bottom of my ring finger of my left hand there was a circular indent in the skin but no sign of the ring that caused it. Of course I panicked and started looking everywhere. The kitchen, the lounge, the sofa, the chairs, everywhere I had been since I entered the house was searched. Thirty minutes later I realised that it was at the park by the swings that I last remembered wearing my ring. So I looked in the car, in the hope it might be there, on the pavement between the car and the house. All the while it was snowing outside and the snow was freezing over into ice.

The ring was nowhere to be seen anywhere in the house or car. So I found a torch and headed back down to the now deserted Valley Gardens, in the dark and the snow, to begin the proverbial needle in a haystack search for my wedding ring. I wasn’t particularly hopeful. The ground had a new layer of snow on it, which was rapidly turning into ice. Even if I had dropped it somewhere here, it was unlikely I would be able to see it.

 

As I swept the ground with my torch a stranger walking his dog asked me what I was looking for. When I told him he said he;d only recently put waya his metal detector in his loft and otherwise he would have gone home and got it. He wished me luck and walked on.

I got home feeling more than a little miserable. I had not found the ring, I had lost it in, and it was now somewhere, anywhere, either in the snow or even picked up and placed snugly into a strangers pocket. I had been stupid not to have taken it off when I noticed it was loose and was now without my wedding ring. I suddenly envied each of those days I had so casually worn  without a second thought and chastised myself for not being more thankful for those times or more careful in these times.

I told my wife about the man in the park and she suggested I email a few friends asking them if they had a metal detector and if they might come out and look with me. “No chance” I thought, and sure enough having emailed a few people, asking if they had a metal detector or knew someone who did and informing them of my woe, I received the replies commiserating with my loss, in some cases offering to come out and look with me, but none with any metal detectors.

So whilst every one was posting facebook and twitter updates wishing one another happy new year or commenting on how great Dr. Who was, I posted from my misery lamenting my loss and informing the world that this was a “fail” on the Happy New Year scale.

And then at about 8 pm I got a call from Keith Robinson. He said his daughter Amy – a facebook friend – had noticed my update on facebook about losing my wedding ring. He said his mom’s partner had a metal detector and could he come and help ? It was now dark, cold, the snow was falling again and I had given up. But I was touched that he had seen it and called so we arranged to meet up in the morning at 8.30 in the park, before any kids got there, and to have look.

Getting up at 7 this morning, my hopes were not high. I got to the park earl and looked again, noticing how the ground had frozen over anew. At about 8.45 Keith, his wife Beverley, his two daughters Amy and Jena,and his father in law arrived. Together we retraced my steps from the day before. It took twenty minutes before the detector started buzzing, and there – at the edge of the swings beneath the snow and the ice was my wedding ring. Incredibly and against all the hope that I had lost, we found it.

A few months ago I read a book called “Here comes everybody” by Clay Shirky. The opening chapter is about someone who leaves their mobile phone in a taxi and is eventually reunited with it after an online campaign. I have been thinking about this chapter a lot since getting my ring back this morning. There are a couple of parallels – without the online posting, the facebook updates, Amy, Jena and Bev wouldn’t have seen it, and Keith would never have rung. But the subtitle to Shirky’s book – ‘the power of organising without organisations’  falls flat as a parallel because without the community or organisation of my local Church, I would not be friends with the Robinsons and there would have been no call from Keith.

Keith’s actions flowed from his desire to help someone who was in need, a desire I believe is born the faith we share. He picked up the phone because of the Church that brought us together in that faith. In this instance the physical community came first, and the online community supplemented it. The online community offered me empathy and shared my misery. But the physical community found my ring.

There is another moral of the tale for me. The metaphor of finding something that has been lost is a constant in Christian theology. Whether it be the parable of the Lost Sheep in Luke 15 or the line from Amazing Grace – I once was lost but now am found – the story of my ring lost and found is a reminder for me of that deeper theological truth that runs throughout the Gospels - there is nothing beyond the redemption of God’s grace, no person too evil, no situation so horrible, no incident so unforgivable, that is beyond the hope of redemption. There’s nothing too lost to us that is beyond redemption.

In the finding of my needle in the haystack, I have been reminded once more that I have been found myself.

So here’s to you Mr Robinson, and the faith that we share; the ring that was lost and now is found and the endless and eternal possibilities of hope, faith and love. 

Not a New Year I am likely to forget in a hurry.