I've been applying for jobs and, to do that, must submit a CV of my qualifications and experiences. If I'm applying to be a lecturer, I submit my lecturing persona.; for accounting jobs my accounting persona and for writing jobs my writing persona. With five qualifications and may unrelated jobs to my credit, there are many variations of the three main personas I can adopt - business writer, book publisher, personal development facilitator, business coach, university lecturer, book editor, facilitator of men's groups, change manager, accountant, accounting lecturer … they go on, depending on what I think the job advertiser may want to hear.
And where has that got me? Well, I don't have a job yet! So nowhere, really.
All of these qualifications and experiences are, in reality, no more me than the party mask I might put on for a masquerade ball. None of them are who I am - they're just what I've done. They're my history, my used-to-be. They may contribute to who I am (perhaps, perhaps not) but they're not who I am, that changeless being as a creation of God.
And then it hit me, very gently. I am the smile on the face of God. That I have always been, am and ever will be. It needs no explanation, no analysis, no pretending. I drop the masks and it is who I am - the smile on the face of God and, realising that, I know I will be "faced" in the right direction for the next stage in this adventure called life. :)
So, what is next for Arthur Bayly and Mary Collins in their adverture - continued from the previous blog ...
"The alternative is hammers and crow bars, if you insist," said Mary, sensing their uncertainty. "But we don't have those here either and I gather you're in a hurry. Keys are much quicker. Come this way and we'll leave Arthur to get on his way!" As she strode past him she whispered to Arthur, "Go, go now!" and she marched off up the corridor to the lift, fully expecting the two men to follow her. They fell in line with her expectation and followed her obediently.
Arthur breathed a sigh of relief. He was free of them! But, he thought, Mary isn't. What should he do? As relief, fear and confusion swept over him in alternate waves, he felt a tug at his sleeve. He jumped.
"Oh, I'm sorry sir," said an antipodean accent behind him. He turned to see the cheery elfin figure of Halee there with his briefcase. "Sir, right now, you need to take this and go home."
"But where did that come from," asked Arthur, confused. "It disappeared before ..."
"Ah, that's easy, sir, I disappeared it for you!" said Halee with a grin.
"You did?"
"Yup! I did!" said Halee. "They seemed to want it and Mary had warned me someone might want it and shouldn't have it. So I disappeared it for you. Now you must go and all will be well, I promise you."
"But Mary's with those ... those rough men ..."
"Mary's fine, Arthur, just you go or she won't be."
"What?"
"You want me to spell it out?" asked Halee, with urgency. "That bag, in this building, is a lot of trouble for Mary. So you just get going and make it safer for her. You understand?"
"Uh, I think so," said Arthur not understanding at all but knowing that he didn't have to. He just needed to go. "Thank you Halee. Thank you so much."
"That's no trouble at all, sir. Just you get yourself going and don't stop till you're home."
Arthur turned and walked into two large men in police uniforms.
"Oh, gosh," said Arthur with a feeling of déjà vu.
"That's alright, sir, we're looking for a Mary Collins," said one of them.
"Come with me, gentlemen, and I'll see you later, sir," said Halee waving him away surreptitiously.
Arthur walked rather briskly from the building, down the street and onto the waiting train. The journey home was the longest he had ever known. Apart from the possibility of being discretely manhandled at the point of a gun at the next stop (thankfully, there was only one stop before Croydon - Clapham Junction), there was the delicate matter of telling Joan ... or not telling Joan. How do you keep something so ... well, so exciting, scary and potentially harmful to her - perhaps to his family and neighbours ... oh my God, where did it end? How do you bottle up such an experience and save others from worry while they should be warned?
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As she led the men up the corridor to the lift, Mary wondered what on God's earth possessed her to do this. What was she going to do with them? What was she going to say to them? She smiled bravely at them as she waved them into the lift. They waited for her - suspicious sods, she thought. The ride to the seventh floor took seventeen seconds but it seemed like a day. She smiled awkwardly at them and they smiled awkwardly back at her but their smiles turned to grimaces as they frowned at each other. Mary wondered if they were as confused as she was. She knew their day had not gone as planned - pop into the office, scare a clerk into handing over a file, disappear from said office, hand over file to Mr X, collect cash and be at the pub celebrating by 10.00 am - and here they were, still in the building, going in the opposite direction of the said file while being led around by the noses by a bossy young woman with no idea of where the file, or its offending key, was. Mary was tempted to laugh but she stifled it on the grounds of health and safety. Her health and safety.
At last they reached her floor, with a momentary hesitation as everybody waited for everybody else to get out. Stupid English, she though, so insanely polite, it's no wonder nothing gets done and the place is falling apart ... but then, neither of them appeared to be English ... oh dear, maybe, just maybe, they're suspicious and want her in front of them so they don't fall into a trap. She almost giggled at the thought as she was, at that moment, quite unable to formulate any plan beyond the next three seconds, let alone make a trap for them! Again, on health and safety grounds, she stifled the giggle ... just.
As she strode off down the oak-panelled passage to her office, she was surprised that these two large men had trouble keeping up with her. Mind you, most people did. She also noticed her secretary, Toby McGuire, rising from his seat with a large, toothy smile to attend her every whim.
When she'd moved into Sam's office, she decided changes needed to be made - not least to help expunge some of her wonderful memories of Sam - so she had told his clueless and probably quite beautiful (in a clueless sort of way) secretary that as she was so meticulous about constantly cleaning and preening herself, she would be perfect to work in the cleaning team, on her ridiculous salary. Strangely, the girl didn't turn up for her first day of cleaning duties. In the meantime, she had plucked young Toby from the third floor processing team where she had noticed, for some time, that his typing skills were exceptional, that he seemed to have a functioning brain and, most importantly, the bounding enthusiasm of a young puppy. It was nice to have a bloke around. It was only later that she discovered he was a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. She wasn't sure she'd ever need his brick-chopping skills, but it was, somehow, comforting.
"Ah, Toby, these fine gentlemen are looking for the Atkinson file to take away with them," she said loudly down the corridor, while trying to mouth help silently to him.
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