Becoming Known

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new book to see me through Lent. “Barefoot Prayers” by Steven Cherry contains meditations for every day. He says, “True prayer is the poetry of the Spirit.” Rather than follow the usual pattern of devotionals, the meditations are prayers that look and sound very much like poetry. The Psalms are like that – prayers expressed in poetic forms.

Today’s prayer begins…

Never take from us that vaguely anxious

curiosity we feel when we

behold a new face,

hear a new name,

when we give attention to someone unknown

(Steven Cherry, “Barefoot Prayers”, 2013, SPCK)

These people come with their storms and stories.

Last Sunday, the two of us, a lady I didn’t know very well, and myself, agreed to talk to one another. It had sprung from something I had said, a picture I had shared, that had echoed in her. We are both visual and picture-orientated. It wasn’t a vague idea about meeting for coffee some time, but actually making no firm commitment. We dug out mobile phones and diaries and decided that we would talk aver the phone on Friday night.

The “vaguely anxious curiosity” morphed into nothing vague and nothing curious, just the anxious bit of it. I don’t do easy conversations well. I worry that I will have nothing interesting to say, that there will be long awkward silences. I picture the person on the other end of the conversation following the clock hands around and wondering when it will be polite to put the phone down.

I’d tidied the front room. There was no way the woman could know the room was tidy. She couldn’t look down the cable and see things in their right places, and ironing pile neatly folded on the chair. I had the vague idea of battle grounds and the tidy room being like part of the armour worn.

Friday came. The evening came. The telephone rang.

I wasn’t coming as a cold caller. I’d done some homework – not the stalker kind. I hadn’t chased a Facebook profile down or hacked into her twitter account. I hadn’t whispered questions in the right ears. I’d made a point of praying and listening to what God might share. I printed off a poem I’d written that day as part of my poem-a-day Lent challenge I thought she might like to hear. I was equipped. That went some way towards easing my anxiety. You have no idea the hurdles I clamber over when it comes to being sociable – it’s not a natural thing for me at all. I spent over thirty years of my life in shy silence, and the next thirty years in, at times, a battle. I’m not a social being and yet God will not let me live in a hermit cave.

We talked easily for an hour or so, sharing biographies. It was the lightest of touches on the surface of who we were. There were no deep confessions of anything. We talked some of the story and some of the storm of our lives.

I have a very vibrant imagination. I’m not sure sometimes how much God participates in our conversations, or whether He just listens in as I supply His side of the conversation. Pictures and prophesies are murky ground for me because I can’t tell where I end, and where He begins. In my prayer tine, I had a picture, an imagination-kind-of-thing. I’d pictured a baby sitting on the knee of its mother. The mother held the baby in her arms, bent down and kissed the top of the baby’s head, perhaps inhaling a fragrance of milk and baby lotion. As she kissed the top of the baby’s head, it was as if the baby became translucent. I could see waves of something pouring into the baby from the kissed spot. I imagined what was poured in was love, waves of love. There was also a sense of safety, that the baby was in the most secure space in the universe. I thought too of the way kisses convey healing in the very young. My friend was the baby, God was the mother, and all the love and the safety and the healing were pouring in from His kiss on the top of her head.

We spent time in prayer, taking turns to speak and to respond. It was part of the conversation. She prayed for me in my struggles with my degree course, which I thought would be a stroll in the park but turn out to be more like climbing Everest.  I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew, but learning is not so easy as teaching. I prayed for her as she slowly recovers from illness. Earlier in the week someone had been talking about testimony. We don’t get the testimony without the test, she said. Difficult days are not always to be waved away with a magic wand. They must be lived through and learned through and the lessons shared with others. We never go through these alone but with others – with God first, and with our church family second. The trouble is that we become this lone soldier on the battlefield facing the foe. We forget that we are part of an army – a victorious one at that.

Friday conversations are part of my landscape now. Through them, we will both grow and change. It’s an exciting place to stand.

Coming Out of the Facebook Closet

I have only myself to blame! I got involved in a conversation with a group of young people about Buddhist enlightenment…as you do. I am neither a Buddhist nor enlightened.

I was trying to explain the concept of enlightenment, not merely as knowing more information, or knowing facts that you didn’t know before. It is, apparently, a new way of looking at things.

A Facebook friend of mine had posted an account of a near-miss with a neighbour’s bullet….that brush with death scenario. It has produced in her an appreciation for life and for all that Jesus had done for her. She was looking at things differently. So, I was using my friend’s experience to illustrate what enlightenment might be like – a new way of looking at things.

The young people were not as impressed with the account of the brush with death and all the repercussions, as with the knowledge that I had a Facebook page! This really impressed them! They wanted to how many friends I had, whether they were “real friends” or cyber pals.

I suppose I should have anticipated the next move. “So and so has added you as friend on Facebook.” is becoming a regular tag in my emails. They tracked me down!

Despite having a Facebook page (and a My Space page…and a Shoutlife page…and a blog…) I am a surprisingly private person. I can’t imagine that anything I get up to can be that interesting to someone young enough to be my granddaughter!

I am “friends” with some of my nieces and nephews. I have had my fill of the pouting poses of a zillion photographs! So you will understand why for the most part I am politely refusing to be friends.

Getting to Know Me

For no apparent reason our Sky digital receiver box has decided to stick on standby and nothing we can do, or the nice support staff on the end of the help line can do either. We have been advised to get a new one. The man on the end of the line suggested we try a local dealer rather than have one of their men come out and see us. We did think for a moment of taking the opportunity to upgrade to a HD package but it was more than we could afford right now.

So last night was a quiet night. I might have switched off the TV and found something else to do anyway, but I didn’t like the decision forced upon me.

I decided to pop along to Blockbuster to see if there was Mel type DVD I could chill out with. I picked up one or two that sounded interesting. I wasn’t looking for girly romance. I wasn’t looking for scary horror. I’m not sure I was up to grisly murders and who-dunnits. That kind of narrowed the list. What really put me off many of the ones I picked up was the box on the cover that informs you of strong language, level of nudity and sustained violence. Just about everything I thought I might like had lots of strong language and violence and stuff. I actually stood in the line for all of five minutes before I realised the one I held in my hand also included “sustained torture”. I put it back in the shelf.

I lived for a while with my parents after returning from working in Cyprus for five years. It was a mixed faith kind of street. The corner shops were owned and run by Pakistani gentlemen. One of the shops was a video rental place. We used to hire videos quite often. The man in the shop got to know my tastes over the months. It was nothing I said, but the comments from my mother, “Our Mel wouldn’t like that film…too much swearing.” He used to carefully select a half dozen or so films just for me and keep them aside until I visited the shop. I never really needed to browse because I would be presented with this pile of videos he had vetted! I have to confess that they were mostly PG certificates with the occasional 12 certificate thrown in. 18 certificate films never made it into the selection.

I missed that last night! I missed popping around to the corner shop to find out what my Pakistani friend had decided was suitable for me! I miss someone knowing me that well and looking out for me.

We seem to live in a society where people don’t seem to know people. I bought a book a couple of weeks ago. “Just Walk Across the Room” by Bill Hybels. I shouldn’t need a book to tell me that I need to walk across a room and talk to people. I certainly shouldn’t need one to tell me how to walk across a room. Having said that, I have been trying to walk across a few rooms in my work place. I have joined a couple of working groups looking at aspects of our working day. Partly it is because I feel strongly about the particular issues, but also it is to do with allowing people to get to know me better. Whether these connections I am making will lead to deeper relationships and challenging conversations I don’t know. It just feels good.

Incidentally, this morning I was complaining to my husband about the over abundance of films with too much nudity and swearing. His reaction was to fling off the covers, swing his arms and legs about, in the bed, dressed in very little, and chant “Bugger, bugger, bugger.”

“You mean, like, that kind of nudity and swearing?”

It maybe doesn’t come across so well in writing – but it was a very funny moment.

Kay Carver and Melanie Morrison

Last night as part of our Valentine celebrations, Joe and I went to the cinema to see “Music and Lyrics”. It was labeled as a romantic comedy and I thoroughly enjoyed it. For an hour or so after wards Joe and I were humming the song the two main characters had composed. It was very romantic and very sing-able and if they bring out a record, I will buy it! Hugh Grant has a very nice voice, although in an interview he put it all down to the sound equipment. Just as computer packages can airbrush models so they look slimmer, or have perfect skin tone, you can do the same with voices! I prefer to think that Hugh is just being his usual self-effacing self.

I enjoyed the movie because it struck a chord with me. You have probably never heard of a couple of song writers before – Kay Carver and Melanie Morrison. This goes way, way back in time.

Kay Grant was one of my best friends at school. She was visually impaired and used to wear plastic glasses with very thick lenses. I think that she was virtually blind in one eye, and not so far off blind in the other eye. She was very tall and gangly and not at all graceful. She was good at sports – she always won the cross country races. She was kind of person that just kept running.

The love of her life was music. She played the piano and taught herself to play the guitar. She really was a genius on the piano – after one lesson she composed a tune.

She discovered Jesus a short while after I did and she began writing songs. She would come up with a melody and then wait for a while for the lyrics to come together. It is a long time ago so I don’t remember any of the songs, but they were her heart to Jesus.

The Christians that I hung around with then were guitar players and singers, so I have always had a soft spot for music, although I don’t play. I had guitar lessons, kay tried to teach me, but I never got beyond the pain. I didn’t like sore finger tips!

I can remember one time Kay playing a melody and saying she didn’t have any words yet. I asked if I could write the lyrics. I am not even sure if I asked. My interest in writing was just in the bulb beneath the ground stage, no shoots as yet, but I thought I could string a few words together, and she was too nice to tell me to back off and let her do it. The words that I came up with, yet again it is too long ago to remember them, they were nice words. They were beautiful words and the song sounded great – but they were not “heart” words. They were “head” words, strung together because they fitted well, but they lacked soul. Looking back I cringe at my audacity. I am sure that if Kay had been allowed to do her waiting thing, the lyrics she would have settled on would have been so much better.

As it was, years later, she got married to a man called David Carver (hence Kay Carver). When we met up we tried to remember the song lyrics, but because there was no heart and soul to it, the words had been forgotten. She could still remember every word of the songs she had written!

Where does Melanie Morrison fit into all of this? I had been away living in Cyprus for five years, returned home to live with my parents for a while and started attending their church. I was single at the time, and there was a wonderful man who I thought I was in love with and thought I might marry – Michael Morrison. It never happened but Kay Carver and Melanie Morrison had such a good ring about it! I imagined the two of us, Kay and myself, getting back together to revive our songwriting partnership. It didn’t happen.

I watched the film and I remembered those days. I am so different now. Today my lyrics would have heart and soul, but I wouldn’t but in and invade someone else’s melody the way I did then.

The Journey

I have been reading a book called “The Call” by Os Guinness. I bought the book ages ago, and rediscovered it while having a cleaning session just before Christmas. For many religious festivals, cleaning the house seems to be an important part. I don’t think for a moment that Santa is going to pass us by if there is a inch thick coating of dust everywhere, but a clean up for me is also something that cheers me up too.

I digress! The book has an interesting chapter on life being like a journey. When Jesus said to Peter and Andrew, and later James and John, and later still Matthew, “Follow me!” it was an invitation to join him on a journey. In this life we never reach a place where we have arrived, and all of us are somewhere along the route. Life is not static and settled, although we often live like is. We are not wanderers because we know where we are heading and we have the company of the Holy Spirit to guide us there. Not everyone has the same milestones that we have on their journey. They have the same destination but might not be walking at the same pace, or taking notice of the same landscapes.

I can remember, during my time in Cyprus, every year the school held a sponsored walk. It was not a five mile stroll, but a really difficult hike. The route was twenty five miles and began high in the Troodos mountains, and ended a few miles west of the city of Limmasol. It took in forests and vineyards, old monasteries and almond tree orchards. There were bits of it that followed a tarmac road uphill for two or three miles, while another section of the walk was following a goat trail along the top of a hill. It was a picturesque route, but very challenging!

The route remained pretty much the same year in year out, but the company changed as old students left and new ones arrived. You began the walk with member from one class, for them to decide to race on ahead somewhere further down the line. You caught up with another group, perhaps as they stopped to catch their breath at the top of the hill.

This is what Christian life is like – different people along the route. Sometimes they walk a few miles with you, sometimes it may be just a few hundred yards. Maybe they just wave as they overtake!

I was thinking about the people I had walked with for a while. I say people, but I mean just one person – my friend, Shona. I missed her company and decided to seek her out, just to find out how she was doing. She has stopped along the route, she is spiritually sitting down by the side of the road, perhaps catching her breathe, perhaps hoping for a sympathetic driver to come along and offer her a lift!

We invited herself and Patrick and Shannon to lunch on New Year’s Day. Joe entertained the kids – they were showing him the wonderful tricks is new mobile phone could do. Shona and I sat in the kitchen and chatted. I didn’t particularly avoid any talk of God. She admits to feeling a little adrift right now, but not cast aside or cut off from God.

It was nice to drop back a little and walk beside her again for a few hundred yards – simply to remind her that she was in my thoughts.