The Journey Stick

An interesting envelope was delivered last week. It was white and light. Very light. There was a sender’s name on it, which I won’t share with you. Inside the envelope was a stick. Yes, just a stick with no covering letter. Just the stick.

A couple of weeks ago I enrolled on a meditation and relaxation online course. It was something to do with the elements and a compass and finding out compass directions, facing them as we drifted into a meditation. Earth, air, fire, water, little bit of new-agism and directing healing energy to someone who wasn’t well. New-agism aside, it was space to reconnect with me. If my whole body, and not just my tongue, was talking it would have been saying, ‘Hello there. Gosh, it is nice to spend time with you.’ Yes, I am one of the few on this planet that says, ‘Gosh’. I don’t stretch is to, ‘Golly gosh. So often I am busy and when I am not so busy, I am knitting. I am not generally rolling my feet over a massage ball.

This morning it was constructing a ribbon stick. The ribbons and the twine were in last week’s envelope. It was not a hard thing to do. I am still battling to make my pompom from a different project I’m signed up to. I had a mixture of elastic bands, wool and tapestry thread to secure my ribbons to the stick. I was humming Ian Drury’s ‘Hit me with your rhythm stick’ as I was working, replacing ‘rhythm’ with ‘ribbon’.

I pictured myself younger, slimmer and more athletic as I moved about the kitchen with my stick, pretending I was a gymnast doing a rhythm routine. I twirled. I span around. I waved. All with ribbons rippling beside and above me. I got dizzy and I had to sit down.

I am reading my way through ‘365 Days Wild.’ It is about finding ways each day to connect with nature. Yesterday I was supposed to be eating rainbow coloured fruit and veg. I think the curry vaguely qualified for the orange day.  I haven’t plucked up the courage yet to make today’s suggestion of nettle soup. A few days back I was asked to make a journey stick.

I was sharing with the ladies at the relaxation class what a journey stick was. It was all about getting outside and taking a walk. Armed with a stick and a dozen pieces of string, I was supposed to be tying interesting things to my stick. A feather perhaps, a leaf, a curl of lichen. You get the picture. The bits of string are still in the pocket. It is still on the to-do list. You were supposed to arrive back home with a fully covered journey stick. Noticing things. The little details the eyes wash over.

This afternoon, speaking with friends I was thinking about the journey stick. A walking through life journey stick and what we end up tying to it. There are a lot of ‘can’t do’ and ‘it just wouldn’t work’ and ‘nothing will change’. Lots of negatives. I had a conversation with a friend on the phone the other day about all the things that will never change. It is too easy to hold an inner dialogue of the impossibilities of life. It there had been a journey stick, I could have seen myself untying some of those things. There has to be a better conversation going on inside.

Every so often, mostly when my phone battery needs recharging and I don’t have access to my Bible study app, I read instead ‘A Shorter Morning and Evening Prayer’. What can I say? I am a bit of a liturgy girl. The font is very small but nothing a magnifying glass can’t cope with. This is one of the morning songs. I don’t know the tune so I don’t sing it, but when it comes around it speaks to my heart.

‘I bind unto myself today

The strong Name of the Trinity,

By invocation of the same

The Three in One and One in Three…

 

‘I bind unto myself today

The power of God to hold and lead,

His eye to watch, His might to stay,

His ear to hearken to my need.

The wisdom of my God to teach,

His hand to guide, His shield to ward;

The word of God to give me speech,

His heav’nly host to be my guard…

 

There are a lot more verses than my little book contains, about wielding the power God gives to stand up against the enemy and his hellish plans. It is all part of St. Patrick’s Breastplate.

It is just the binding to myself that concerns me. That and my journey stick. The walking through life journey stick. I don’t know that I could handle the whole tying a leaf or bit of lichen bit to a real stick. But what do I tie to my life metaphorically? What am I holding on to that hinders me? What am I tying to my life that is positive and encouraging?

At the weekend I untied a particular church from my life. I had been looking for a new church family and was determined to give things time to see if I fitted there, or if they fitted into my way of doing church. Someone had posted a Facebook word that we don’t just go to a church we like bit need to go to a church that we can build with. The church I had been trying out turned out to be not one that I could build with. So I untied it. It wasn’t arrogance, or presumption on my part but just listening to my heart that told me I wasn’t home – not yet.

When something you tied to yourself a long time ago, and perhaps needs to be untied and cast away, it’s not so easy. The Holy Spirit is the one to talk to about it.

I am a person that actually enjoys untying knots. Just watch my patience when it comes to a tangled ball of knitting wool.

The Ripped-to-Shreds List

I stood at the bus stop, my mind engaged in a mental conversation with God. Technically it doesn’t qualify as a conversation as I was not looking for His views on what I had decided to do. There was no exchange happening, so that made it a monologue, didn’t it? I was telling Him. Not asking Him. I didn’t want to be talked out of what I planned to do. It was a good plan I fooled myself into thinking. Reasonable, thought out, pros and cons listed.

I’m church hunting. Much as a house hunter might carry a list of requirements that their new home must measure up to, I have my own list. Determined not to make any instant decisions I have decided to commit myself to a month or two to see what comes or not. I am into week six, although weeks three and four I didn’t do to church as I had a really bad cold. Four weeks of going.

There is a voice in my head that tells me that this isn’t the way to do things, the list. It’s a very detailed list and I’d rather not have to compromise on any item. The voice also tells me that it is not what I get out of going, but what I can contribute.  It should be God directing my path, rather than me marching off in a certain direction, armed with a list.

I crossed through much of the list and just two things remained. If, I said, to God at the bus stop, these two requirements were not met, this would be my final visit. I’d try another church.

Just two things.

The first was worship songs. The church has a very young band who bounce around at the front. I’d not yet met a song I knew. To be honest, the lyrics were ‘me’ and ‘I’ and ‘we’ and ‘us’ and very people focused. I know that God has done a lot and I wouldn’t be where I am without His help. I wanted to praise God without me getting in the way. That condition was not met. Not really. I have to admit that it did not stop me worshipping. There was a line about God rescuing us in one of the songs and I turned my thoughts toward someone who I had long thought impossible to rescue and God did it. I was thankful. It added to my list – that opportunity to testify to God’s goodness. I didn’t know the working of the church to know if I could just go forward and say something, so I kept quiet.

The second thing was about the preacher. I wanted it to be someone else, not because this man is not a great preacher, but because he always preached. I sometimes feel that when a church leader doesn’t invite others to take the pulpit, it can be down to a lack of trust. If you are a church leader and you have grown up and matured people in your flock, why wouldn’t you trust them to speak a godly message? Part of this is down to a church I once went to in South Africa. It was in the years immediately following the end of apartheid. Churches were in the process of integrating people. There were Indian and black members of the church that knew their bibles and had a solid faith walk, but they were not given the chance to speak. No one but the church minister spoke there. It seemed the wrong way to grow gifts in people if they did not have a chance to exercise their gifts. I like variety. I like being a potential part of that variety of preachers.

That requirement wasn’t met. It was the man. There was no different a preacher. However, he began speaking and my list was really torn to shreds.

The word was about Gideon in Judges 6. God had called him a mighty warrior even though Gideon was threshing wheat in a wine press hiding from the enemy. Gideon did not see himself as a mighty warrior and needed some encouragement. The story moves into the fleece prayers.

My own personal fleeces about the worship songs and preacher had not been met. I hadn’t thought of them as being fleeces but they were. The preacher went on to say that Gideon’s actions with putting out the fleeces fitted into the way people did things in those days. They did not have a personal relationship with Jesus. They didn’t have an abiding Holy Spirit within. Fleeces are all a part of chance and randomness and the very fact that Gideon did it twice shows that it did not always give you an answer you could step out in faith on.

Today, he said, we don’t put out fleeces. We pray. We search scripture. We ask wise friends. But we don’t look to chance or random stuff like a red lorry passing by in the next five minutes. Please don’t assume I am not praying, searching the scriptures or asking advice. I am, and others are praying too. And giving me advice.

If there are things from my list not there in the church it does not mean that this is not the church God has ear-marked for me. I have often done things in churches that perhaps were technically not allowed, or not usual or common, but I have had such a burning inside that I have to say something, and I have stepped over or around these things to do them. There’s nothing to stop me asking the music group to sing a familiar song once in a while. If there is no outreach group, it doesn’t mean I can’t start one. It no one shares a poem, it doesn’t mean I can’t. If I want to share a story about the un-rescueable man that God rescued, then I should – or at least find out what the rules are.

Church meetings are not just about worship songs and sermons. My list was defunct. It was after all the worship and the speaking and well into teas and coffees that I discovered there was something important I had not put on my list – fellowship and friendliness. I could have been a psychopath with an axe in my rucksack but someone, knowing nothing about me, offered me a lift home so I didn’t need to dash off to catch a bus. Someone else said to me, ‘I hear you write poetry…’ How did she know I wrote poetry? I’d like to say it was a word of knowledge but another lady in the church had been at the Sunset café way back when I read it out over the noise of a coffee-maker-hiss and the echoes of wooden floor boards.

So list demolished, permission not granted to go elsewhere, I will be there next week. Armed with a poem? Perhaps. Ready with a testimony? Maybe. Talking to a member of the worship team about golden oldies? A possibility. Taking my tambourine? Absolutely yes.

Splashing in Puddles

I am a visual kind of person. I make connections between things that are seemingly unconnected. A tree flattened by a hurricane wind, the three crows working out how to dismantle my bird feeder or a snail on the path. It says in Romans that nature itself speaks a clear message of who God is and what He does.

I’d walked along to the shop to buy newspapers and lunchtime pies to warm up in the oven. It was damp, but not raining. My mother’s wisdom said that if the paving stones in her back garden were not dry there was no use in hanging out washing. The paths were not dry so I figured it wasn’t a day for hanging out washing.

On the journey back, which was a little wetter, I noticed a deep puddle next to part of the pavement. It’s the same stretch of pavement that seems to be a gathering place for snails on wet days, but not this day. There were birds, small brown birds, maybe three or four. It had all the elements of a swimming pool with youngsters splashing around. They were dipping and slapping water everywhere as they washed themselves. It did not seem to be a solitary bath. It was too small a puddle and there were too many birds to fit comfortably. They heard the sound of my approach and lifted off in a small wet cloud.

My Thursday afternoons are spent with a small group of Roman Catholic ladies. I am not a Roman Catholic myself but I had been invited along. In those early days, they were not shy about bringing out their rosary beads. I was given a set to hold. Sadly, I know people that would be very uncomfortable dealing with rosary beads. I just held them. Nowadays, they don’t do that, not because they think I might be offended but, they just don’t do it. It is a gentle hour and a half of touching base with the quiet space inside.

I thought about the birds in the puddle and the splashing about. The word ‘refreshing’ came to mind. It had been morning. The birds had done their singing much earlier on. It was time for a wash and breakfast and meeting the challenges of the day – refreshed.

I thought about the meeting that afternoon and how much we played with prayer and singing and shared life with one another. The word ‘refreshing’ came to mind.

I introduced them to twenty-second hugs, somewhere I had read somewhere. The quick embraces do nothing to ground a person. Twenty seconds allows for something deep inside a person to be touched. There is probably a name to a specific hormone that is released. People melt somehow. Bodies that have held it together for so long, relax.

There is a special something that occurs in a communal event that doesn’t happen when a person is alone. It all depends on the kind of community whether it’s a good thing or not. The birds could have cleaned themselves up just as well on their own – the dust and dullness washing away in a pool of water, but doing it together with other birds added something. The dust and the dullness of something more than feather happened.

Something deeper.

Something like the bird equivalent to a twenty second hug.