Thought For The Day – Monday 14th October 2024
Support XI
Week 6 begins at TBSHS.
We continue to support one another.
For World Mental Health Day, Norwich City Football Club once again took the lead.
Following their thoughtful film last year, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX8TgVR33KM, this year they advertised the “Support XI” to signpost key sources of care and support.
Norwich City held “A Minute’s Unsilenced” prior to their recent fixture against Hull City. This encouraged supporters to talk before the match, with prompts on “the big screen”, regarding how life was going .
“A problem shared is a problem halved.” Talking has been compared to taking the top off a fizzy soft drink (be careful of too much sugar). The fizzy drink is our emotions. The bottle is us. If we take the top off suddenly, having shaken the fizzy drink, the liquid goes everywhere. We need to ease the top off. Talking is like easing the top off.
For their awareness fixture, Norwich City once again signposted “Samaritans” on their playing shirts.
The “Samaritans” were founded by Reverend Dr. Chad Varah CH CBE.
Chad was a vicar, a Christian leader, in Lincoln in 1935, when he attended the funeral of a girl who experienced massive turmoil when she mistook menstruation for a sexual illness.
It was a tragedy that changed his life and the lives of so many more.
20 years later, with one telephone line, in the basement or crypt of his London church, see the picture below, Chad started “Samaritans”, so called by a newspaper reporting on Chad’s new service, taking the name from Jesus’ Parable of The Good Samaritan.
Chad wanted to help people struggling to cope.
“Samaritans” took its first call on 2nd November 1953.
Chad Varah said the charity should help all people, regardless of whether they were religious or not.
“Samaritans” now has than 20,000 volunteers and a Samaritan responds to a call for help around every 10 seconds. “Samaritans” listen to others. They do not judge.
Chad Varah, pictured below, who died in 2007, aged 95, also helped people suffering with HIV/AIDS and campaigned for sex education.
In all this pastoral work, Chad never ever forgot the young girl, whose funeral he had attended all those years ago in Lincoln.