GUILSBOROUGH 2ND JULY 2000  
Who, I heard someone ask recently on a Radio 4, is the world’s best known artist to-day? 
Rembrandt, Titian, Picasso, Hockney ?   Gainsborough’s Blue Boy must have been on more chocolate and biscuit boxes than most.  And anyone who earlier this year saw that impressive exhibition at the National Gallery “Seeking Salvation” will probably have views.  
The answer, however, was Charles Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts strip cartoon, its hero Charlie Brown and his pals Peppermint, Patty and Big Ben.  He died earlier this year.
And the statistics seem to prove his pre-eminent place.  Every week for over 50 years Schulz’s drawings and wry comments on life were read by an estimated 355 million people in 2,600 newspapers, published in 21 languages around the world. He produced a staggering 18,000 cartoon strips – all drawn by himself with no ghost writers for the dialogue - each having some kind of pithy comment or message about the life we lead.  Words like monumental spring to mind. 
Charlie Brown, eternally frustrated in his efforts to achieve his objectives or gain recognition, came to signify much of what life was about for millions in the twentieth century.  “Good grief, Charlie Brown, what’s the matter with you” was a phrase, which echoed around the world.
Yet in creating a cartoon about kids, but essentially for adults, Schulz did more than anyone in his generation to explain the world of children to those adults. He knew what they were thinking and, too often, their parents did not.  
In one strip Charlie Brown defines day and night  “Daytime is so you can see where you are going. Night so you can lie awake worrying.”   
There is a simplicity there that reminds us all of the hopes and fears of life.  Schultz concentrated in miniature on the neuroses of adults everywhere.
Asked why he did not allow Charlie Brown to win from time to time, Shultz explained that he was trying to be funny.  “Winning is great he said, but it’s not funny. Happiness, too, is not funny”.
I agree, happiness is no laughing matter.  It’s too serious and too often misunderstood.  “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is the rolling phrase in the American Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson coined.  But I have come to the gloomy conclusion that the unrestrained pursuit of what we call happiness accounts for much of the mess we are in.  
Man’s will seems to rule supreme.  Only last week the newspapers were telling us that the mapping of the human genome would be equivalent in its impact to the discovery of the wheel. We think we have the secret of life itself within our grasp. Move over God. 
And yet, as Charles Schulz demonstrated, we are often lonely and apprehensive, lacking in confidence, barely able to cope with the world.  Counselling is a growth industry. Despite free education for all and record numbers going on to higher studies at university, a recent survey conveyed the sobering truth that 1:5 of our people is functionally illiterate and 1: 4 innumerate.  Add that to the highest divorce rate in Europe, the highest rate of teenage pregnancy and the highest rate of incarceration, and its obvious that something seriously is wrong. 
But I keep cheerful by reminding myself that there is nothing very new about gloom and doom.  In the 7th century the Venerable Bede looking out from his monastery in Jarrow was a past master at it.  “Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey/ Where wealth accumulates and men decay” lamented Oliver Goldsmith about the deserted village.
I am sure that Bede, were he here to-day, would agree however that w e need more than ever the guidance of the Bible on how to conduct the fundamentals our daily lives. To-day’s epistle provides a good starting point  “And this is his commandment, That we should believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another”   
It seems to me that many ills in our society stem from neglect of those two commandments.
  
Looked at overall, then, our situation is not very bright. So what do we do about it, you may well ask. Can a Christian in Guilsborough make a difference?  As a layman I think the answer to that question, if we are worth our salt, has to be yes: and we can do so primarily by giving more of ourselves to support the Christian way of life. And to do that we shall have in turn to do things that we may not like doing or that are inconvenient to us.   
I normally count myself among the forces of conservatism:  but I think we have to be more radical:  “See him take of his coat and get down with a spanner/ To each repressed Joseph and unhappy Diana/Say Bo to the invalids and take away their rugs/ The war memorials decorate with cider mugs” Well, perhaps not that radical.  But certainly we ought seek for new initiatives in our lives as Christians.
Good grief Charlie Brown what’s the matter with you?   Nothing, I would argue, then, that cannot not be improved, even cured, by paying more attention to what God is telling us and as the collect for to-day reminds us ask that he “ never fails to help and govern those whom thou dost bring up in thy steadfast fear and love”
We may not reach out to 355 million people a week like Charles Schultz, but let us remember, as the poet put it, that each in our own way, and thinking of what men like Schulz achieved
We can make our lives sublime;
And in parting leave behind us
Footprints in the sands of time.
 
