As Others See Us

I have to admit that the gallery in Inverness Museum is fast becoming one of my favourite places. The gallery is on the first floor of the building. It is not a permanent exhibition but changes every so often. For one of the exhibitions, quite a while ago, a number of artists were told to do something about chairs. The variety and creativity of the results was amazing. A more recent exhibition focussed on the topic of journeys. Some artists had sculpted boats, others had used shells and seaweed and packing cases.

The current exhibition celebrates the poetry of Robert Burns. A selection of Scottish people from all walks of life and different disciplines had been asked to choose their favourite Burn’s poems and explain what it meant to them.

I don’t pretend to know much about Burns. Joe and I have never attended a Burns Night supper, although we have done our own versions on a much smaller and less formal scale with friends at home.

The exhibit caught my eye because one of the first contributors, complete with photograph and brief biography, was Peter Howson, whose artwork I admire. His choice of Burns verse was not one that I was familiar with.

Holy Willie's Prayer

Yet I am here, a chosen sample,
To shew Thy grace is great and ample:
I'm here, a pillar o' Thy temple
Strong as a rock,
A guide, a ruler and example
To a' Thy flock.

What impressed Howson about Burns was that such a flawed man, touched by tragedy, could write such beautiful poetry. We are all flawed in some way, but too often our flaws and our tragedies poison what we do. We don’t always some out with something beautiful.

One of the other contributors made the comment that Burns’ poetry was accessible. There is no point writing anything is the reader needs a degree or has to have read the classics to understand what you wish to communicate.

Before I found the room with the Burns poetry, there was another exhibition of various artists. On one wall was a series of still life paintings – a bowl of fruit, another bowl of fruit with a ball on the table, another bowl of fruit reflected in a mirror, another bowl of fruit in shades of grey. The next wall had a series of black and white photos, many of them looked like close ups of a pile of driftwood. The following wall – that could only be appreciated by a person with an art degree – contained canvasses with, how can I put this? When I was a child I played with wet paint and a straw, blowing the paint in different directions. Had I kept any of my masterpieces, they would have stood side by side with any of those canvasses! “Heron on Water” had lots of blue paint, but where the heron was anyone’s guess! Not accessible at all! The final wall was a collection of sculptures. Again they had some exotic names but didn’t look like anything recognisable. There is nothing worse that staring at something and just not making the connection.

Another of the Burns’ contributors was a musician Eddi Reader. She has snag her way through every Burns’ song going and recorded an album. In her comments she said how she had been to all the places that Burns had been, stood in the same doorways, drank in the same bars, looked out on the same scenery he had seen. It reminded me of all those people that go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and walk in the footsteps of Jesus! They feel closer in some way.

There were a couple of other comments that have made me think about my writing. Someone mentioned that Burns looked all about hi, at the society of his day, at all the issues that people were talking about. He responded with poetry. Poetry was his heart speaking about all that he saw around him. The idea of making poetry my response to the things around me is challenging.

I am aware that my poetry is very much limited to spiritual things, although in some sense all things are spiritual. “A poet should cast his mind widely”.

For me poetry seems to be born out of meditation on scripture. There are few poems that I don’t muse about long before I start to string words together. Maybe if I mused more about all aspects of life, I would have a wider repertoire of poems. The more poems you write the more you perfect your craft.

Much to ponder!

Normal

Earlier this week, Joe and I spent time with a friend of our helping her to strip wallpaper from her bedroom wall ready for the expert painters to take over. One wonders about the foolishness of folk in the 1970s and 80s putting up woodchip! It comes off in bits and pieces and leaves the plaster below it with pock marks. I suppose that we should be grateful it comes off at all!

In between dousing the wall with water, and vigorously wielding the paint stripper and maintaining an interesting conversation, it was time well spent and we achieved a healthy patch of naked wall!

It was the tea break and the trip to the toilet that impressed me most. My friend’s house is very tidy! I suppose that when I look at my mess, and my husband’s, I soothe my guilty conscience by reminding myself that I am a busy teacher and active in the church. So is my friend – busier in fact. I think we both arrive at our respective schools at about the same time, but long after I have dusted the whiteboard ink (I would have said chalk but we don’t use chalk any more), the whiteboard ink (is it really ink? What is it inside the container anyway?), the whiteboard ink and locked my door and walked, driven or bussed away home, she is still there. So being busy is not an excuse.

After being at her house for the afternoon – even the wall stripping was done in a tidy manner – for weeks after we do something similar we trail bits of paper around on the bottom of shoes and slippers over the house – coming home to our house I was assailed by the mess. It doesn’t qualify as a tidy mess. If we were a hotel we could have been closed down and fumigated – or just simply closed down and condemned!

I often muse about the untidiness of the house, and less often do anything about it, but this afternoon, I seriously mused! It was inexcusable to put up with all the litter, the unwashed cups, the empty crisp wrappers (no matter how neatly they had been tied into a knot), the newspapers read and abandoned, the piles of Bibles and notebooks and pens (in various stages of used up), the ironing on the spare chair waiting to be done…it is all there and I would probably have not given them much thought had I not seen my friend’s clean house. Her living room, her kitchen, her bathroom – even the bedroom with the half naked wall, all emanated peace and tranquillity. Everything in my house shouts out “Clean me! Wash me! Move me! Iron me!”

It is amazing what we accept as normal until we see someone else’s normal!

I have heard too many times the people who say that they can be a Christian all by themselves and that they don’t need anyone else. They don’t need to be a part of a church. Technically they may be right! Sometimes I am a better Christian all by myself and it is the people that I deal with, inside and outside of church, who are the ones that trip me up.

Just like the example my friend set in the neatness of her house, I think that the examples set to us by our fellow church family member is essential! Only by being in her house could I see how neat she kept things, only by being side by side with other believers can we be encouraged in our walk. We need to be witnesses to people’s triumphs of adversity. We also need to be witnesses to people failing to triumph too, so that we know “life in all its fullness.” We don’t get that by ourselves.

We get a very skewed view of what normal for being a Christian is all about and only as part of a body can we see what really is normal.

I would like to say that my house is that much the tidier this week – I would like to. It is perhaps a little tidier. Some of the ironing has been done. Most of the papers have been collected and put in the recycling box. The used cups have been washed up (to be used again and left). But I have a picture in my mind about what tidy looks like. Maybe tidy for her looks like one thing and tidy for me looks like another…lets not open that can of worms!

MOT Musings

I have spent too much of this week at the garage just down the road from my work. As ever my MOT was overdue and I booked the car in to get seen to. I was quite confident that it would be fine. The tyres had been seen to just a couple of weeks ago.

Well, so much for confidence. We did not pass successfully. The list wasn’t a long one, but one of the items was a bit costly. We have savings for that kind of thing, so I just took a deep breath and offered up the bank card.

They kept the car overnight, not that it was dangerous to drive or anything, or not that they had any clue that the MOT had run out, but simply because there would be no one around early enough to leave the keys with.

The next day I phoned to see how things were progressing. I was actually in a position to leave work early that day, but being told “another forty minutes” I just stayed on a did a few things. The forty minutes easily became an hour and bit before I arrived at the garage. The car was hoisted up and being tinkered with, so I took a seat in the waiting room.

An hour and a half later I was still there.

I read my way through the newspapers on the table, averting my eyes from a scantily clad woman on the front cover of the Daily Star. Someone had left behind a couple of weightier papers. If you watch the Sunday morning programme, they do a section that covers interesting articles in papers.

I picked out two.

The first was an article about drivers' licences. Who ever issues them is raking in the millions because the plastic picture licences have to be renewed every ten years. Most people don’t realise this and end up getting prosecuted. The “use by” date is printed in very small print just above the picture. However, just to complicate things, on the reverse side of the card there are a list of other “use by” dates next to the list of vehicles that the driver is able to drive. The dates are not the same. People look at those dates and not the one, the smaller print one, on the front of the card. Needless to say I got out my licence and scrutinised the date. I am OK for another five years! You have to pay to get the card renewed! Seems mean to me!

The second story was focussing on the anniversary of Charles Darwin in his legacy of evolution. Have we unlocked the mysteries of the universe? The unravelling of DNA codes were supposed to tell us so much, but in fact have posed more questions. The differences between species, not just chimps and humans, but flies and humans, and worms and humans, is so slight that it is amazing that such a slight variation in the genes results in such variety of life forms. The technology that has been developed that allows us to scan the human brain and light up bits of it that are used for different tasks was supposed to mind-map the mind. The more we seem to find out about ourselves the less we seem to know! What amazed the writer was how simple everything looks, but how incredibly complex it all is. It is like Torvill and Dean – they made Bolero look easy to skate, but when you and I put on our skates and take to the ice, it is not so easy at all. The secret of a good creator is to make creation look simple, when it isn’t!

As I was reading, I just wanted to scrawl across the page – God! The more I read the more I was amazed at the creative genius of God.

The afternoon wore on. The car was lowered and driven out the garage to join the queue to be retested. I had done the newspapers and dug through the purse to buy a cup of hot chocolate from the vending machine.

Meanwhile other customers came and went. I have to admit that one man reached over to pick up the Daily Star with the scantily clad woman pouring out of a bikini. I must have given him my most disapproving look because he put it down quite swiftly!

The car eventually got released into my custody and I went home!

Worshipping like the Whales

I caught the tail end of a nature programme last week – Nature’s Great Events. The place was the Artic and the events might have been more to do with polar bears, and how they were dealing with the warming up of the oceans and the melting of the ice caps.

In amongst all the struggles of the polar bear, there was a small snapshot of a pod of beluga whales. They look like white dolphins. They have the same shaped face.

Apparently once a sufficient amount of ice has melted, the beluga whales swim into the coastal waters. They have a two week stint when they all gather together. They splash around and stir up the stones and pebbles from the sea bottom. The friction of the stones and the water acts like a defoliator, peeling off the old skin along with all of the wee parasites that have made their home there.

As the narrator said, for those two weeks they “joyfully” frolic in the water!

I am sure you have had moments when it feels like a light bulb has switched on inside! I had a moment of revelation! Just as the beluga whales were stirring up the stones and the water, and shedding themselves of old skin and parasites, I had a picture of what worship ought to be like.

In worship we ought to be stirring something up – obviously not stones on the sea bottom, but something. There is a sense in which we ought to be shedding “old skin”, and “parasites”. I am not sure that I can adequately work out what the old skin and parasites could be. For me the old skin is the tiredness of the working week with all its little niggles. The parasites might be the words that have been spoken, or attitudes and actions of others that burrowed into my heart, sapping my joy and peace.

In so many churches, people are often too passive in worship. We come away from the meeting without having shed the heaviness and the hurts of the week. We leave pretty much unchanged from when we arrived.

The beluga whales were not passive in the artic ocean. Their tales were slapping the water. They were creating waves. They all got involved. They showed an aerial view. There were lots of whales and the water was heaving with white waves.

In worship we need to create a few waves! We need to stir up the water and shed stuff that irritates!

Writing Love Letters

Valentine’s Day often comes and goes un-marked by some.

I had planned to cook an intimate meal for two, had worked out the menu, but then was informed that the rugby is on tonight and we have been invited to watch it with friends. My carefully planned meal has been replaced with something less romantic… ruby, beer and pizza!

I had been watching TV last night and one of the guest presenters was lamenting that people no longer write love letters. They text a message “Luv U babe” and press the send button! He read out some examples of proper letters – from Napoleon to Josephine – letters that were eloquent and something that the object of his love would put under a pillow and dream sweet dreams over!

I hadn’t forgotten to buy a card. I had it in my trolley at the supermarket. I just hadn’t picked up the envelope to go with it, and couldn’t face the search among the aisles to track the envelope down. Besides which, I had previously bought a box of cards for all occasions and I was sure that there would be one in there.

Aware that perhaps I was not putting enough thought and care into choosing a card that expressed all that I wanted it to say, I decided to take up the presenter’s challenge and write a love letter.

It’s not that I didn’t know where to begin – I am a writer, after all. I just wanted to see how others said you should begin. I googled “writing a love letter” and printed off the list of things to do.

The first item on the list was about the writing environment. The kitchen table over looking the pile of dishes from last night’s meal, with the local radio station blaring out a mixture of adverts and songs, was not ideal. I needed to be near a roaring fire, with romantic music playing in the background. We don’t have a roaring fire, although the romantic music was a possibility. I went out to the local pub. It was early enough in the morning to be selling morning coffees. There was a fire, but no music and I didn’t feel confident asking the man behind the bar if he could find some. I just settled myself down at a quiet table and got writing!

My corner of the room was pervaded by perfumed paper in a pastel shade of lilac. The card, quite a nice one I have to admit, was there, pink with hearts, with a pink envelope. And, of course, my list of what to include in the letter was close to hand.

I wonder what the bar man thought as he glanced over to my corner of the room. I would like to think that he wished that he had a wife or a girlfriend that sat in a quiet corner of a room and wrote a love letter on perfumed paper, instead of the quick text “Luv U babe.”

It is amazing that just the act of writing a letter makes you remember things, it makes you think about the person you are writing to, picture them in your head, imagine how they will react to your words. I say the words “I love you” and they are no lie, but when you write a love letter, you want to find words to explain how you love and why you love. You smile as you write.

“Luv U babe” gets translated into every aspect of life. What is convenient, what is instant, what is fuss free is how we love our lives and we forget to loiter. We do just enough, and occasionally go the extra mile, but we don’t live in excess or over the top. As I sat and wrote my letter, I invested time into something that wasn’t short and snappy, wedged into an already busy segment of the day. Some would say that I wasted a bit of time. It was an enjoyable waste, and from the look on my husband’s face after he read it, not a waste at all!

I think we all need to "waste" a little more time on most, if not all of, our relationships.

A Gross in a Box All Alike

A couple of weeks ago, on a Saturday afternoon, while my husband was perusing the shelves of a second hand book shop, I sat on a sofa drinking a very delicious cup of coffee in a nearby café. I was minding my own business, just appreciating a comfortable place to sit, and the taste of the coffee when someone walked in and said, “Hi, Mel.”

I was just too relaxed to make my mind do the mental gymnastics required to put an name to the face. I had an idea, but wasn’t confident enough to say, “Hi, Avril.” What went through my mind was the embarrassment that would follow if it wasn’t Avril but someone else entirely!

“It’s Avril!” the woman continued, “You used to visit me in my house many years ago.”

I had met Avril once since those days some fifteen years ago. The baby she had been bouncing on her knee was in her last year at school and about to be launched into the world of universities and degrees.

I used to go door knocking in those days. I may or may not have carried a clip board and stood on the doorstep. It was rather like fishing. You cast a line with a tasty morsel of an interesting question and waited for them to bite.

Avril bit! She was probably saved, but because she did not say the right formula of words, she was considered not yet “born again” by our kind of church. She probalby didn’t need to be preached at, but I preached anyway. I visited often, played with her kids, collected apples that fell from her tree, borrowed her bike and baby sat. All the while I coached her to say the magic formula!

I look back in horror on my arrogance that I had got it so right and was moving forward in the Lord, and Avril was not because she was not in my kind of church! I have grown up since those days and abandoned my formulas. God cannot be boxed in, and neither can His dealings with His children fit into neat boxes!

I was reminded of this by some words in a book I am reading by Charles Spurgeon.

“God does not make converts as men make steel pens, a gross in a box all alike. Nay, nay, but in each case there is a living man created, and every living man, every living animal, every living plant is somewhat different from every other of its kind. You must not look for uniformity in the work of regeneration.”

It is not just in regeneration that we should not look for uniformity. Throughout our whole walk with God, we may not always travel the same road. The scenery God want to show me is my scenery and may do nothing to stir and challenge you in your walk with God.

Too Easy

A number of years ago, Joe and I went to Rome. It was an October holiday and I can remember that we went for a posh meal somewhere, complete with wine. The next day, on a trip to the villages in the hills surrounding Rome, we bought the same bottle of wine in a local supermarket for a fraction of the price!

What really sticks in my mind is something I didn’t do, rather than something I did. Somewhere in Rome, in one of the churches, there was a staircase. It had originally been a part of Pilate’s palace, I think. Someone had moved the staircase to this church in Rome. They had a habit of doing that kind of thing in the early days. Bits of the cross, bones of various saints and other religious paraphernalia were collected and treasured. This staircase just happened to be a bit bigger than most other religious artefacts.

Half of the staircase was roped off. It was set aside for pilgrims to ascend on their knees. The other half was for “normal people” to go up and down.

The one thing I regret was joining the normal people! There was something in me that really did want to do the knee ascend, not out of any impression that I could really impress God by the manoeuvre, but I suppose out of a desire to kneel before God and catch a sense of awe and wonder.

Sometimes as Christians we can take so much of the sensory experience of spirituality out of our walk with God that life and worship can be almost bland. I am not saying that anyone should ascend a staircase on their knees, that there is any more merit to be had than just walking up. People can wrap themselves in blankets of sensory experiences and not connect with God at all.

I have just finished watching a programme about a particular Buddhist celebration. I can’t remember the name of it. It is not an annual one, and it doesn’t always happen in the same place each time.

This particular year, the celebration was held in Tibet, in the town where the Buddha became enlightened. Lots pilgrims made the effort to attend, travelling from all over the place.

The programme covered a lot of symbolic actions. I was watching to see if there was anything useful, a small section that I could show to the young people I deal with and provoke conversation or whatever.

Most of the pilgrims walked to Bodh Goya. There were a group that didn’t just walk. They prostrated themselves along the route. They would take a step, kneel down, stretch out on the floor, then get back up, take another step and do the same thing. It didn’t matter about the terrain, over rocks, through streams of water, they would do the prostration. One man was interviewed. It had taken him three years to travel to Bodh Goya, travelling thousands of miles, prostrating himself at every step. He had a wound on his head and fibrous lumps on the side of his hands, from all the prostrating.

I can’t comprehend that kind of devotion. It puts going up a flight of stairs on your knees into the pale!

Part of the celebrations involved walking around the base of a mountain. It took three days to do it. Some of the pilgrims did the journey prostrating. The pilgrims that had not been properly acclimatised risked their lives to do it. At the end of the journey they erected huge pole with prayer flags flying from them.

The monks spent days meticulously constructing a huge mantra, an elaborate pattern, made of coloured sand, only to sweep it all away at the end of the celebration. It was a detailed work of art which had taken them ages to put together. The monks worked twelve hour shifts to get it done, and then it’s all swept away.

There just seemed to be so much to do. It was an endurance test.

Christianity in comparison, the vibrant faith variety, has it so much easier! You choose whether to ascend the staircase on your knees. No one makes you do it. And yet there is a sense that it is harder too. To rest on the work that someone else has done for you doesn’t always sit so easy. To have someone else say “It is finished” and to know that there is nothing you can add to that work…it’s like it is too easy. Inside we almost cry out for something to do, for some part in it…and our part is to receive what has been done, simply to accept.

Pride does not find that an easy part to play.

My Ship of Faith

I was woken up at three in the morning by a combination of a sleeping husband on the sofa downstairs, a weightwatcher's flan slowly burning in a hot oven and a poem inspired by Charles Spurgeon's sermon itching to be born!

"My Ship of Faith"

He said my life was meant to be
A sailing ship upon the sea
To bear His love to far off places
Speak His hope to down-turned faces

Instead aboard a tiny boat
I struggled oft’ to stay afloat
A tiny boat that hugged the shore
I rarely looked for something more

“Come leave that boat upon the sand
Embrace the life for you I’ve planned
A ship of faith with sails unfurled
A voyage through an unseen world

"In the storm let faith be tried
Know My presence by your side
Amid the wind and roaring sea
Be assured you’re safe with Me"

Little boats can never be
Vessels for the open sea
Little dreams cannot fulfil
The Father’s plans, the Father’s will


(c) Melanie Kerr 2009

"To Lilian"

I had no intention of buying a book. I have more than enough books in the house that I have yet to read, but seeing as I was in a bookshop, a second hand bookshop at that, I had a muse about the shelves.

What attracted me to this particular book was not the title “Twelve Sermons for the Troubled and the Tried”, nor the author, Charles Spurgeon. It was the handwritten note at the top of the title page “To Lilian…13/10/81” There were at least half a dozen “Twelve Sermon…” books in a series, one placed right next to the other. All of them carried the inscription “To Lilian.” Only the date was different in each case.

I wondered who Lilian was. I wondered whether Lilian had actually read the books. I know that I am one for buying books, even books of a favourite author, and dipping into them as interesting chapter headings capture my interest. I don’t always read a book from cover to cover.

I wondered if, when reading one of the sermons, how much she had been touched by the words. There are times when I pick up a book, turn to a chapter, and the words written there speak a truth to my heart that almost hurts as it cuts deep. I wondered if Lilian had any kinds of those moments when she read the books.

Reading through the early chapters of the book of Exodus, and seeing how Pharaoh kept hardening his heart, and refused to hear the truth, even when it was spoken by his magicians and sorcerers, even when it was believed and acted upon by some of his officials, I don’t want to be like him. I don’t want to be faced with God’s word and have too hard a heart not to be touched by it.

Reading my recently purchased book over a cup of coffee in yet another newly opened coffee shop in the city centre, my attention was caught by these words.

“God never gave us faith to play with. It is a sword, but it was not made for presentation on a gala day, nor to be worn on state occasions only, nor to be exhibited upon a parade ground. It is a sword that is meant to cut and wound and slay; and he that has the grit about him may expect, between here and heaven, that he shall know what battle means…His gift of faith to you is a hint that you will want it; that at certain points and places you will especially require it, and that at all points, and in every place, you will really need it…and if God is to give thee great faith thou must expect great trials…Little boats may keep close to the shore, as becomes little boats, but if God make thee a great vessel, and load thee with a rich freight, he means that thou shouldst know what great billows are and should feel their fury till thou seest His wonders in the deep. ”

I crave safety too often, and spurn the great vessel in favour of the small boat keeping close to the shore, and when I do so my faith is so much the poorer for it!

The Ten Minute Comfort Factor

It was a CTD teacher than passed on this morsel of interesting information. He didn’t pass it on to me as such. I just happened to be present when he was talking to a group of young people.

They had been set the project to design a sports shoe.

He had a box with a trainer in it and pointed out the various features. The colours, the logos, the quality of the laces and the cushioned sole – all of these features were not random choices but carefully constructed for one reason or another.

Then he went on to say, “Of course, you all know that every design for a sport’s shoe incorporates the “ten minute comfort factor”. Of course, we all didn’t, so he explained. We have all done it. We have gone into a shop and tried on a shoe. We have twisted our feet to peculiar angles in front of the mirror at the bottom of the wall. We have all walked up and down the carpeted shop. We have lifted ourselves up on to our tip toes, and then dug out heels into the ground and tried to lift our toes. This all apparently takes under ten minutes.

The shoes pass the comfort test and we line up at the check out desk, where the queue seems to be abnormally long and slow moving. And we walk away with out purchase. Once out of the shop, wearing the new shoes, we come to the realisation that the shoe isn’t that comfortable at all. I am sure that it actually makes a difference what time of the day we try the shoes on.

I suppose that we are honest enough to admit that however comfortable we felt in the shop, there is always going to be some breaking in. It’s new leather and there is a bit of stretching that has yet to happen.

Maybe this doesn’t happen to you. Maybe you have lucky feet! Me, I have unlucky feet. One foot is definitely half a size larger than the other. Whatever feels good on my right foot, you can bet that on the left foot it will be much tighter. Whatever feels good on the left foot will probably slip off the right foot. I have a feeling there is probably some company that mixes and matches shoe boxes precisely for people just like me.

The shoe might have felt comfortable for ten minutes in the shop, but believe me it’s not comfortable an hour or two later!

It doesn’t help that I am too mean and miserly to pay for a really good shoe that costs more than my entire food budget for the next month! I wait until the sales, and even then, hum and ha over the price which is still, in my opinion, a bit steep. Don’t criticise me, please…I was born and bought up in a hand-me-downs household!

It doesn’t help either that my last pair of ten-minutes-in-the-shop-wonderful pair of shoes have rubbed sufficiently persistently to give me a corn on my little toe. I rubbed away at it with an emery board a few weeks ago…probably not the best use of an emery board, or the best way to deal with a corn! It worked, for a while.

I wonder if it is possible sometimes that we “market” our faith with an incorporated “ten minute comfort factor”. For a while, perhaps not as short as ten minutes, perhaps as long as a week, or a month, or two months everything is fine, then reality hits. People sometimes don’t seem to be aware that, yes, there is grace, but yes, there is also discipline and devotion and dedication. We don't take enough time to really lay down the foundations of our faith. Just as the new leather needs to soften up to the shape of the foot, our lives need to do some softening up to take on the shape of our new faith. It is all too easy to soften the faith to make it more palatable to our lives…but the change needs to come from us.

Just as shoes that rubs and rubs results in a spot of hard skin called a corn, one wonders if the result of badly fitting faith that rubs and rubs results in a few hard spots in our hearts.

Tomorrow

The teacher training college that I went to was a place called Middleton St George, about seven miles or so from Darlington. It was perched at the end of the runway at Teeside Airport. Teeside wasn’t the busiest of airports, which was all well and good seeing as the noise from the planes landing or taking off was rather loud. It you happened to be outside when it happened you could almost identify individual faces in the round windows, the plane being so low!

The college, in a previous existence, had been an air force base during the Second World War, and maybe the first one too. It was very military looking. The buildings were built not to look good but to be practical.

The place was closed down just after we left. In fact, we were the last intake. Our final year saw just the couple of hundred of us bouncing around in the buildings.

One thing that they did have was an earwig infestation. The earwigs lived in the ventilation system. The vents were at the top of the walls and the rooms being a certain shape, the beds would only fit alongside the wall where the vents were.

It was not uncommon to be lying on the bed and have an earwig fall on you. It was more common for you to be out of you room for most of the day and when you returned there would be half a dozen crawling around on your eiderdown (this was the days before duvet covers).

I don’t really do creepy crawlies. I don’t do them crawling around on the bed, and I certainly don’t so them falling on me! After a while, I guess we just got used to them. We stopped screaming and jumping around like banshees when one landed on us. We just picked it up and tossed it out the window. It was just part of the college experience!

I am not even sure if the college every got in the pest control people. It was never deemed a serious risk to our health and well being, but had someone offered to get rid of the earwigs, I don’t think anyone would have protested. There would have been a resounding “Yes, please!” They may have been harmless, but they were not loved and respected!

It just makes me wonder why Pharaoh, when confronted by the plague of frogs put up with them one more day than he needed to. Once he had agreed to let the Israelites leave, Moses offered to pray for the frogs to go. All Pharaoh was required to so was to say when he wanted Moses to pray.

Imagine frogs in the bed, frogs in the bath, frogs swimming in your tea, and in your bowl of cornflakes. There were frogs everywhere…and not just the ones that Moses had summoned. There was a double dose because the magicians had conjured up their own frogs too.

Pharaoh’s answer to “when” was “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? Why wait another moment? Why put up with the inconvenience any longer than you need to? Tomorrow means more frogs in you bed, more frogs in you bath? Why wait until tomorrow?

I have no answers.

“Tomorrow”. How many times have we said “Tomorrow” about certain things? There are things that we put up with when we don’t really need to. We can do something about them now. Why wait any longer?

Before a Watching World

I was sat in the car. To the left of me I could see the wall of the garage. It probably wasn’t as near as I thought it was. To my right were a pile of tyres, recently removed from my car when I went to get the tyres checked and changed. Again, they were probably not as near as I thought they were. The audience comprised of a half a dozen or more mechanics, most of whom were probably a lot busier that I supposed. Two or three male customers stood beside the door to the waiting room, cigarettes stuck in mouths, mobile phones glued to their ears, probably not even watching.

Every fibre in my being wanted to ask someone else to reverse the car. I could have simpered with the best of simpering females, and smiled helplessly, but in that one manoeuvre I was aware that it was being witnessed not just by a bunch of men, but that the spirits of dead suffragettes, who had chained themselves to iron railings to ensure that I would have a vote, were also watching!

Even though I had an all male audience, and there were obstacles to the left of me, and obstacles to the right, I clamped down my panic, told myself boldy that I could do this, gently reversed my car out of the garage, confidently executed a three point turn and drove away!

I watched the other day as Obama was sworn in as President of the USA. With obstacles to the left of him, obstacles to the right and in full view of a watching world, he took on the mantle of leadership. Watching him were the spirits of every black civil rights campaigner, and every white civil rights campaigner, who had died in the struggle for freedom and equal rights.

If he manages all his political three point turns without hitting the wall, or the pile of discarded rubber tyres, his success is the success of every black person in US. And if he fails…well, failure is not an option.

No pressure!

Mashed Banana Doctrine

I am valiantly ploughing my way through one of the classics, Charles Dickens’ book “A Tale of Two Cities”. I picked it up in a charity shop a month or two ago.

At school I was deemed not intelligent enough to qualify for the top stream which tackled quality literature like Shakespeare. Placed in the middle stream we ambled along at a slower pace with a slightly dumbed-down syllabus. There were few expectations that any of us would amount to anything in the academic world. I broke the mould!

“A Tale of Two Cities” is somewhere in my husband’s top ten best reads. He admits that it was a long time ago when he read it, but he remembers it as a rattling good yarn. I am not so sure that he is not remembering the black and white film of it, which is also a rattling good yarn! Dickens has a way with words, as we all know. Where twelve carefully chosen ones would do, Dickens eaks it out to a paragraph or two! Where a concisely written paragraph of action is sufficient, Dickens spreads it over two or three pages! I loose myself in the maze of clauses and sub-clauses, and have to retrace my steps to find out what was at the beginning of the sentence!

It’s just not how people write these days. Short sentences that go in a straight line, without meandering make up most of the books I read.

A W Tozer in one of his books makes the point that we have lost the art of reading through difficult prose. The heavy theological tomes that the fathers of the faith either wrote themselves or read are left on the shelf. We look for short and snappy ideas, where the writer spoon feeds us the mashed banana version of something much chewier!

Our mental muscles are atrophied and we don’t even know it.

I think that by challenging myself to finish “The Tale of Two Cities”, I am in the process trying to halt my mental laziness. If I can finish Dickens I will feel that my mind has become a little less flabby and piled on a little more muscle.

I don’t want to be lazy in my apprehension of scripture either. I don’t want the mashed banana version of doctrines either. I want to know what I believe, and know why I believe it. I just want a little bit of depth and a little less fluff!

Tending the Soul

A friend persuaded me to open a “facebook” page a couple of months ago. I even managed to track down a fairly decent photo for the page to replace the androgynous grey image in the photo box. It allows me to maintain some form of connection with people. I like keeping an auntie’s eye on my two nieces who seem to post a million pouting poses of themselves and their friends every day. Oh, the exuberance and the vanity of the young!

There seems to be a lot of applications and programmes to play with too. I kind of drowned for a while in a half dozen word puzzles, and now I am spending my time sending and receiving plants for a cyber-garden. Occasionally I have to wield a cyber rake to get rid of my cyber leaves, or feed a cyber bone to a cyber dog that seems to have found a way under the cyber fence that no doubt needs a few cyber nails to repair it!

As I send out plants I am apparently saving square feet of the rainforest – the real rainforest, not the cyber one!

Underneath the green space of my garden there are some interesting statistics that tell me not just who of my cyber pals have contributed most of the plants, but also who else, apart from me is raking up the cyber leaves and feeding the cyber dog in my garden.

It goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, that I wish that in real someone would come into my real garden. There are no leaves the rake up, but the doggy do left by the non-cyber-dog that makes free with my lawn – it would be nice if someone scooped it up!

I bought a book at the weekend. “Finding Our Way Again” by Brian MacLaren. He talks about the need to tend the soul. Left unattended, our soul, he suggests, “will become a stale room, an obnoxious child, a vacant lot filled with thorns, weeds, broken bottles, raggedy grocery bags and dog droppings.” What exercise does for our bodies, and study does for our minds, we need something for our souls. The book then launches into spiritual disciplines.

I like the idea that I am not called upon, alone, to tend my soul – although the chief responsibility lies with me. Just as I have cyber friends popping in to chase the cyber rabbits out of my cyber garden, I also have friends who join with me in tending my soul. We are all called upon to tend each others souls – to keep, not just an auntie’s eye on the nieces, but speaking a brother’s word of encouragement, and a sister’s gentle reproving into the family that God has birthed us into.

In the Thick of It

I can remember many years ago having a discussion with a friend about opting out of Religious Education when they were in school. It is one of the few subjects in some school that is compulsory. Pupils don’t really have a choice about attending or not, unless their parents can produce a letter highlighting what the “religious” issue is. They are not allowed to opt out simply to dedicate more time to other subjects that they feel might be more valuable to them. They have to prove that what is being taught compromises their own religious values in some way.

There is a sense a which some parents feel that the beliefs of their children will come under attack if they study the theory of evolution when they have a creationist background, or how studying Islam is somehow going to confuse them, or convert them!

I am all for nurturing a person’s faith, but at some time or another their faith need to be tested. As much as a person needs to know why they believe the things that they believe, they also need to know why they reject the things that they don’t believe.

Some people live in a religious bubble. They bounce from church on a Sunday, to a prayer meeting or Bible study mid-week, a cup of coffee with a Christian friend…and they never really touch the yet-to-be-Christians.

I was reading in Exodus how as soon as Moses was weaned he went to live in the palace with the Pharoah’s daughter, surrounded by Egyptian culture, customs, religion and way of life.

God wanted his people out of Egypt but plunges his deliverer right into the centre of Egyptian life. Does He sit wringing his hands, worrying that Moses is buying into the whole Egyptian lifestyle? I don’t think he does. God knows that the gods of the Egyptians are just wood and stone. They don’t have any power. He also knows that somewhere down the line Moses is going to encounter the Living God in a burning bush. Whatever Moses might think about Ra and Seth and all the other gods, when he encounters the real thing, he will know who is real and who isn’t.

In the meantime works on developing the heart of His deliverer. Watching an Egyptian beating up a Hebrew slave leads Moses to take action. He even attempts to deliver one Hebrew from the violence of another. When he eventually leaves Egypt all together, his first act in the wilderness is one of deliverance – fighting off shepherds to protect a bunch of girls. Deliverance is in Moses’ DNA.

This whole opting-out thing, and religious-bubble thing is a lack of trust in ourselves that what we know and teach others is enough. Sometimes it is a lack of trust in our children. We don’t think they can discern truth from error – because we often can’t ourselves. Perhaps too, it is a lack of trust in God that the lure of the world is too powerful and God is too generous in giving us freedom, and that deep down we are really not sure that He will look after us.

Just think about Moses – in the thick of everything Egyptian, and yet he becomes the one person that God speaks to face to face.

Back on the Road

There are some people that can tell you exactly what they were doing when Neil Armstrong took those first memorable steps on the moon, or when the shots rang out from the grassy knoll that felled J. F. Kennedy, or when someone opened fire on John Lennon. These are defining moments in some people’s lives. I was probably outside “playing”.

Where were you between the hours of half past two and half past four yesterday afternoon? One would hope that you steered well clear of the roads in Inverness! Joe asked for and was given a block of driving lessons for his birthday. It has taken me a few months to get around to phoning an instructor.

“Has he driven before?” I was asked.

Two cars before the one we now have, Joe drove some of the way down to Rugby. Joining the A1 at Newcastle during rush hour was a notable event! Driving over the Aberdeen regularly for fertility treatment, Joe tackled some of the roundabouts in Elgin quite fearlessly! He has, in his time, accidentally driven into a privet hedge – the difference between forward and reverse gears can be a stickler at times. During a hill start he panicked, rolled down hill for a considerable distance and ended up in a ditch! Yes, he has driven before!

“Let’s call it 20 hours, shall we?”

The lesson yesterday was a two hour diagnostic operation to find out how much Joe had retained from his lessons and “practice” some fifteen years ago. You see, Joe doesn’t really want to learn to drive. He has a perfectly good chauffeur who is willing to drop him off and pick him up. It’s just that the nature of his job is changing and it is no longer of case of not wanting to learn to drive but having to learn to drive. The job demands it – and Joe loves his job.

We were swapping words the other night that best described how he was feeling. Anxious? A little bit too strong a word. Worried? Again a bit too strong a word. Uneasy? That’s more like it!

He phoned after the two hour lesson to tell me that it went well. He liked the instructor and thought that the instructor liked him. I think what Joe liked more was that he was getting to grips with actually passing his test this time around!

Me? I am looking forward to passing on the mantel of the MOT and all car related concerns!

Ninety Nine Places

I am not sure that what I have in my head is a working title for a poetry book or a gauntlet being thrown down by my imagination. The title is “Ninety Bine Places”. It comes out of a book I got at Christmas, “Teach Yourself Creative Writing”. It doesn’t actually specify ninety nine places, but one of the exercises is to find different places, or venues to write. You don’t write about the places, but observe people and places and find inspiration to write about whatever the place or the people provoke you to write. Naturally it doesn’t have to be poetry either – any kind of writing will do.

The request for the book is a challenge in itself, never mind the ninety nine places. Some friends of ours are looking into the coffee culture and seriously thinking about opening a coffee house to provide an alternative drinking venue from clubs and bars. Most cafes and coffee places are daytime establishments and our friends are looking into something geared towards evenings.

This would not normally float my boat. I am a home-body, but another one of the exercises in the book is about joining a writing circle or a creative writing club. It would appear that there isn’t one in Inverness. There might be one that you need to be in the know to know about, something you find out about by word of mouth, rather than hitting the google button, but for all intents and purposes, there isn’t a “findable” one. On discovering this, my brain tootled “So start one going!” That’s rather proactive for me, but I decided to arm myself with a Teach Yourself Creative Writing book just in case I actually got proactive. A venue like a coffee shop would be ideal.

So, yes, challenges abound. Working titles? I am working on it!

Barrenness and Other Women's Babies

I can remember coming across Psalm 20:5 many years ago. “We will shout for joy when you are victorious and will lift up our banners in the name of our God.” It is the pronouns that impress me. It is easy to shout for joy when we are victorious but perhaps not so easy when the victory belongs to someone else. “You” is not you personally but the other person. While they are experiencing the victory, perhaps you are ankle deep in mire and not feeling the rock beneath your feet. As Christians we are a body and the victory of one member of the body is a communal victory – we all share in it. But we are all too human and when someone experiences something great, our all too human reaction is “Why them? Why not me?”

I was reading the opening chapter of Exodus, the account of the two midwives. I seemed to dredge up from somewhere that it was often barren women that became midwives. If they could not enjoy their own experience of giving birth to a new life, then they could enjoy it vicariously by aiding another woman to do so. I suppose that because they did not have the same responsibilities as mothers, they could respond to a call for help at any time of the day or night.

In my early days of discovering my own barrenness, I found it extremely hard to be around pregnant women. I found it hard to shout for joy when someone was so obviously enjoying a victory that was denied me. I am sure that most people did not begrudge me my silences, or my tears, and they didn’t last long, but my first response at hearing the “good news” was not joy.

When called upon by the Pharaoh to dispose of the baby boys as they came out of the womb, the two midwives refused to get involved. Much is made of the lie they gave to Pharaoh that the Hebrew women were strong and vigorous, giving birth before they could reach them. A lie that saves a life…particularly when one of the saved lives is Moses…is OK by God, and let’s not forget that the Ten Commandments along with “Thou shalt not bear false witness” was not yet given. And let’s not forget either that God rewards them with families of their own. I don’t think the reward is for the lying part, but for refusing to kill the babies.

I got to thinking about times when we all feel barren in our spiritual lives. There are seasons when things flourish and life bursts forth. There are also seasons when, like winter time, nothing is happening apart from ice crystals forming on frosty branches. It may be easy to look at someone who is flourishing, when we are not and ask “Why them? Why not me?”

The secret may be to not dwell upon our own barren state, but to involve ourselves in the lives of other people to ensure that what God has birthed in them comes to fruition. Not every birth is without its struggles. Our help and our encouragement to “Push” is needed. In helping Moses’ mother to give birth to him, and protect him from Pharaoh’s wicked scheme, those two midwives had played their part in the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt!

When we have helped others to bring to birth the things that God has conceived in them, it opens up the way for God bring to birth great things in us.

Being Fruitful and Multiplying Greatly

“The Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.” Exodus 1:7

You know, that sentence so does not apply to my shitake mushroom kit! Apart from half a dozen very large mushrooms a few weeks ago, nothing much is happening in my block of compressed wood chips impregnated with shitake spawn.

I get excited when I read words and phrases like “fruitful”, “multiplied greatly”, “exceedingly numerous” and “the land was filled” and it is also a New Year with resolutions. I can just see it there written down…my resolution is to be fruitful, to work with God to see the church I am a part of multiply greatly… and so on.

If there was ever a day of pressure and great expectations it has to be January 1st of any year. People come out with some very grandiose resolutions. They wash off the chalk from last year’s list that they never really achieved, draw a line under their lack of success and take a clean stick of chalk from the box and start all over again with a new list.

Before I had written the first word on my resolution to be fruitful, God reminded me that the verse doesn’t stand in isolation. There is a “before” that came generations before the Israelites were fruitful. Way back in Genesis, God had made a promise to Abraham that just as the stars in the sky were beyond counting, his descendents would be beyond counting. And Abraham believed it would happen because God said so. Without God’s word and without Abraham’s faith in God’s word there would have been no “fruitful”, no “multiplied greatly”, no “exceedingly numerous” and no “the land was filled”. Abraham’s faith was the catalyst that made it happen.

There is no doubt that being fruitful is good. But there is a danger that the fruitfulness that I would like to see might be Mel manufactured. I am capable of great achievements when I put my mind to it. It needs to be something that begins not with me, but with God.

My problem is that I want the word to be “Mel-sized” – Mel manageable if it cannot be Mel manufactured. I don’t mind stretching if I can decide how far and in which direction, but that’s not what God wants. This is not about what I can manage. It has to be a “God-sized” word, managed entirely by God and where He gets to decide how far I am stretched and in what direction.

Hmmm…

Trust

The nice man who came to repair the heating system recognised me from his previous visit. We had had an interesting dilemma over a five pound note. I can’t remember exactly how much the bill had come to, only that I didn’t have the exact change. He didn’t have a spare five pound note to give me any change, and I had magnanimously said, “It’s OK. Keep the change.” I would have paid more than he asked anyway to get the heating back! But, no…he insisted that he would only take what he charged.

“What if,” he said, “I put the five pounds into the collection plate at church? Would that be OK?” He then assured me that he would really put the money in the collection plate…he wouldn’t hang on to it. He wouldn’t just spin me a line. He called around later to tell me that he had put the five pounds in the collection.

That was a year ago. A couple of days ago, the heating broke down. It wasn’t unexpected. Along with last year’s repair had come a warning that one day there would come a day when the heating system would be unfixable. We had been thinking that we would have to upgrade the whole system…sometime in the summer. We never got beyond the thinking stage. So on discovering that the heating was broken, we slipped and slithered to a friend’s house to get warm and phoned the repair man.

I thought he said “Tomorrow” (Tuesday) between eleven and one. He thought he had said “Wednesday”. The next day I waited. I timed my quick slip to the shop to be back in time for his visit. By half past one he hadn’t come. Our electric heater was bravely churning out heat, but making very little impression and clad a hundred layers of clothing, I phoned to see where he was. His wife assured me that if he said he would come…he would come, and promised to phone him on his mobile to chivvy him along.

Maybe an hour later there was a knock on the door. “It is you,” he said. He told me that he had marked me down in the diary for tomorrow. Had he not remembered out previous meeting, and the five pound note, he told me that he might not have come around. Apparently he was all too used to people making arrangements for one day and then “pretending” they thought it was an earlier day. Some little old biddy would insist that the arrangement was for “Tuesday” knowing full well that it was on the Wednesday, but he didn’t like to call their bluff.

He looked me full in the eye, “But you wouldn’t do that, would you?” Actually, no I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have phoned his wife to chivvy him along if I had thought it was anything but the Tuesday. Even now, I was almost closing the door on him saying that I would see him tomorrow then, apologising profusely from dragging him away from a freezing pensioner!

Seeing as he was here, and not due anywhere else for a half hour or so, he said that he would look at the heater anyway.

“So when was I last here?”

“About this time last year…maybe a little earlier.”

“And what exactly did I do?”

I explained that the pilot light had gone out on the gas heating and despite trying to relight it, it kept going out. I wasn’t sure what he had done exactly.

“And that was last year? Not the year before maybe?”

This wasn’t some kind of memory game. It really bothered him that he had possibly done a bad job. Just as he was used to the old biddies spinning him the line that it really was “Tuesday” he had agreed to come, he was also aware of workmen that did a less than good job. They would spin out a job, doing it less than well, and get to do it again and earn more money. That was not the kind of workman he was. When he did a job, he did it well. One could almost hear him muttering to the heater that it had no right breaking down again like this, not after he had fixed it. It mattered to him that I knew he wasn’t playing the system.

“It’s very sad that we live in a world where we no longer trust people,” he said as he folded his earnings into his wallet. He had come armed with a five pound note this time. “No, wait a minute…it’s really sad that I don’t trust people. I don’t trust that you always knew I was coming on Wednesday. No…wait a minute…I know that you thought I was coming today. I know that because I know you are a Christian.”

Flesh to Flesh Immanuel

It is amazing sometimes how one verse in scripture can create such a vivid picture in your head that almost haunts you.

I have been reading through the book of Amos. It is not cheerful reading until the final few verses when I guess Amos comes to the conclusion that if God doesn’t finish on a word of hope, people will simply be crushed beneath heavy words of judgement.

The verse that hit me isn’t in the last few verses, but Amos 9: 5 – “The Lord, the LORD Almighty, he who touches the earth and it melts, and all who live in it mourn.”

Once upon a time, in the Garden of Eden, God used to touch the earth. He used to encounter Adam in the cool of the day and I am sure that there were no tears, or no mourning. There was friendship and intimacy and communion. Once Adam and Eve had tasted the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, all that fellowship went. It wasn’t in an instant. God was still a part of their lives, but as the generations come and went, it got harder to remember what it felt like. It got harder to maintain any kind of relationship with God because it no longer came naturally.

I have never really spent time with ex-boyfriends. There are very few of them to begin with. I am not entirely sure how it would all go. It probably wouldn’t be an issue since I am very happily married, and I might not have been is the ex and I had stayed together.

Imagine though if the only effect that you have now on someone you used to love, and who used to love you, is them bursting into tears when you enter the room. The joy that you used to share together has been replaced with sadness. Maybe you realise that neither of you are complete without the other and that without that completeness you will never be truly happy. Maybe you have left enough time for them to look for happiness elsewhere, knowing that one day they will turn back to you. Maybe you begin to realize that as each day passes, they remember less of what life was like with you. They don’t know what it is they should be returning to.

God used to touch the earth and there would be joy. Now he touches the earth and it mourns. Who would not want things back the way they used to be, if it were in their power? And yet the way things were was not really good enough. Who would not want some kind of plan to make sure that what had happened the last time, wouldn’t happen all over again?

Christmas is about God touching the earth again. Nothing melts this time and there is no mourning. This time he touches flesh to flesh – no mystery, no majesty – just flesh. Immanuel.

Don't Call Me Prudence

One of my favourite films is “Support Your Local Sheriff” with James Garner. The love interest is a rather clumsy woman called Prudence, who is anything but prudent.

The dictionary defines prudence as “wise in handling practical matters; exercising good judgment or common sense.” I think my mother was prudent in not calling me Prudence, because quite often I am anything but prudent.

I am thinking about prudence because this morning I was reading Amos 5 and came across verse 13 “Therefore the prudent man keeps quiet in such times, for the times are evil.”

The chapter is about the rich trampling on the poor and denying them justice. Righteousness was “cast down to the ground”. Courts were rife with bribery and corruption.

Good judgement and common sense led people to keep quiet during evil times. When is it the right time to be prudent and keep quiet? When is it not the right time? Amos obviously wasn’t being prudent because he was speaking out against the evil doers of his day. Maybe prudence wasn’t an option for him anyway, because God’s message pressed heavily on his heart. Maybe given the choice to speak or keep quiet, Amos might have chosen to be prudent!

I suppose there is a time when, like casting your pearls before pigs, you know that not only is it not going to make any difference to how anyone behaves. Your words, and perhaps you yourself, will end up getting trampled on. Is that sufficient reason to say nothing? Does that count as self-protection, or cowardice, or prudence or what?

I encounter some mildly “evil times” in my work place – very mild episodes. On the Richter Scale they would probably not register at all in comparison to ethnic cleansing or genocide. I have wondered whether I just ought to keep quiet. It seems at times that my expressing any opinions about things just makes it worse and achieves very little. I prefer to think that my words might be chipping away, little by little, and my silence would be even worse!

Who was it that said that all it needs for evil men to prevail is for good men to say or do nothing? Or something along those lines.

Prudence, if it is silence when times are evil, is not really an option.

Mr Angry

Amos 4:6 – 11 makes for really heavy reading.

“ I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town…I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away….Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards, I struck them with blight and mildew…I sent plagues among you as I did to Egypt. I killed your young men with the sword… "I overthrew some of you as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah…yet you have not returned to me," declares the LORD.

This is not a case of bad things happening randomly and God making use of the circumstances to bring about someone’s good. This is not about Satan doing the bad stuff to people and God using it to bring about his purposes. This is not about other people doing bad stuff and God getting the blame. God took responsibility for each of the disasters that overtook the nation. They were to be left in no doubt that none of it was random, none of it was caused by Satan, none of it was caused by other people…it was all caused by God! This is not even God allowing the bad stuff to happen. There is nothing passive about any of the verbs here.

I am having difficulty with this God! This is an angry God.

I was talking with a group of young people the other day about whether parents should be allowed to smack their children. Being as most of them were still of smackable age, almost to a child they disagreed. One lone hand up insisted that sometimes it was the only way to get the message across, and sometimes it came as a last resort when all other attempts at correction had failed. Another voice argued about what happens when the message of the smack doesn’t get heeded. Do you just smack harder? And then harder still? And then what comes next?

I am not sure that I have ever felt God’s smack, or if I have been smacked, whether I recognised it as a smack.

Do you just wipe out these paragraphs of scripture and say that God doesn’t do that any more? If he doesn’t do it any more, why did he do it then? If he doesn’t do it any more, why not?

I know that Jesus has entered the scene. With Jesus comes complete and total forgiveness. We are made right with God in a way that was not possible for people in the time of Amos. We have the ability to please God in a way that the people at the time of Amos didn’t have. I stand in Christ. Christ pleases God, and I in Christ please God.

Does that mean that there isn’t an angry God any longer? I don’t think so. I am just not sure what I do think about it all.

It's All in the Answer

What we say when we are asked a question, or how we respond to a challenge says much about ourselves. I have just been preparing a word for church today based on the parable of the tenants and the vineyard.

You can read it in Mark 12:1-12. Towards the end of the story, after telling the hearers about the tenants beating up the servants, sending them away empty handed, then later on killing them and eventually killing the beloved son, Jesus asks the question, "What then will the owner of the vineyard do? In Mark’s gospel it is Jesus that provides the answer, “He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others”. Matthew has a different rendering here which I prefer, Jesus asks the question and the hearers provide the answer “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end," they replied, "and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time."

What they say reveals their hearts…not God’s heart. We are bent on revenge and people getting their just rewards. God isn’t. God doesn’t think like we do. If he thought like we do, he wouldn’t have sent his Son.

Friday evening I was chilling out. It was the end of a rather busy week. There was nothing on the To Do list apart from the usual ironing and housework that rarely gets done! There was a phone call from a friend asking me whether, seeing as I was leading the Sunday meeting, I wanted him to bring his guitar and lead worship. What? Me? Leading the Sunday meeting? This was the first I heard of it. The little bird that told him hadn’t told me.

The gauntlet was thrown down! Obviously the little bird thought she had asked me. Usually I can come up with the distant memory of a vague conversation weeks ago, and I can usually hunt through a half dozen note books and find it written down. Not this time. There had been no conversation, no note…nothing. I hadn’t been asked.

I usually know about these things weeks in advance and have time to think and to pray. It ends up being the Friday night when I start to sift through my thoughts and bring order.

“So what’s the difference?” asked God. “Had you known two weeks ago, it would have still been this evening that you would have sat down and written something out.”

“They never asked me!” was my stubborn reply. I can be small minded and hard hearted at times and I suppose I wanted my tantrum. Not being asked. Presumed upon. Taken for granted. All these things were what I wanted to dwell upon.

“OK, so they didn’t ask,” said God, “So I am asking. Will you speak on Sunday?”

You can’t really hold out against God! I agreed to have a look at the topic, read through the assigned verses and think about it. And then God shared his perspective on it all and we came up with a word for the meeting.

I just wish that I hadn’t gone through the whole tantrum part of it. I was challenged that I was doing the same thing that the tenants in the story were doing. The vineyard was never their own and yet they wanted to claim it for themselves. Everything that makes me able to share a word on Sunday – the study habits, the access to books and materials, the time and concentration to meditate, the skills to communicate the truths I find – none of it is my own. I can’t claim anything and then demand that I choose when and where and to whom I will share my insights. It’s not mine, so I should not be treating it as mine.

Fit to Teach

It is amazing the amount of people I have got to know over the last couple of weeks just by being in the main building at work and not secreted away in some prefab.

I have learned that one of my colleagues is a tattoo addict! She got her first tattoo for her thirtieth birthday and has not looked back since. Her advice to me, as if it will ever be needed is never to get words tattooed because the ink eventually slips (whatever that means) and the letters shift.

Another colleague does judo. I think that might come in really handy with some of the people I encounter during the day!

I sat next to a lady at lunchtime who is an accordion player! She is one of those people who can pick up any musical instrument and play a tune on it. She doesn’t like brass instruments much, but she can play them.

I shared with her that for while I had piano lessons from a friend. What I didn’t say was that I sometimes led worship in church, and felt that perhaps being able to play a musical instrument might help if I wanted to be able to write worship songs. My friend was told by her own music teacher, that teaching someone else was a good way to learn oneself! I didn’t really need to be motivated, I was keen anyway, but she was teaching a young boy at the same time and had introduced glittery stickers. She thought that the offer of a sticker would make me practice harder or whatever. Suddenly getting the sticker seemed to take precedence. I suppose that it worked to some extent. I stopped messing around on the piano and practiced really hard – but it was the messing around, making up silly melodies that I really enjoyed. Once it became hard work, I got de-motivated! The pressure of getting the sticker got too much.

The work colleague told me about a particular student she taught some twenty years ago. She lived in Falkirk, I think. It was somewhere not far from Edinburgh.

A friend of hers asked if she would be willing to teach her boy. It turned out that the boy was just four years old, so refused thinking that he was too young. The friend asked her to come to the house and meet the boy before she made up her mind.

It must have been a big house because one of the rooms had a grand piano in it. They boy was s child genius on the piano. Move over Mozart! She recognised his potential and he first thought was she couldn’t teach him. It wasn’t a case of there was nothing that she could teach the young Mozart, but she didn’t want to teach him any bad habits! He had too much potential to be damaged by a bad teacher – which she wasn’t by any means.

She phoned up a music academy in Edinburgh to ask at what age they took on children. Six years of age was the minimum. She couldn’t persuade anyone that he was worth the effort. They did, however, give her lots of advice of how to teach him. The most important thing was not so much the technique but making sure that he stayed interested. As it was, he has a very severe asthmatic illness and was often at home. He spent the day playing the piano.

The academy in Edinburgh eventually enrolled him not long after his fifth birthday. He went on to be a concert pianist, played a million other instruments, released albums and all the rest!

To be involved in part of that has got to be good!

I was thinking about her hesitation to get involved with him because she recognised his potential and didn’t want to cause him any damage. To teach him bad habits, or to use an approach to teaching that would turn him off piano playing for life was a heavy responsibility. In the end, armed with all the help from the Edinburgh academy, she went for it.

I think of the responsibility of being a teacher in the church setting. Every child of God has the potential to be a world changer. Perhaps some people never get to be the world changer they were meant to be because some other people taught them badly.

I don’t think that anyone deliberately sets out to bring a sermon, or a word, that is designed to mislead or deceive another, but sometimes there is a vibrant truth that gets watered down to make it palatable to as many as possible. It may not be bad teaching, but it doesn’t qualify as good teaching either!

If we are looking for a people of God leading powerful lives, it has to come because the word of God was preached powerfully to them.

Deal or No Deal

I know that my husband enjoys watching “Deal or No Deal”, the programme hosted by Noel Edmunds where contestants have to guess which box contains £250,000 and trick the banker into buying the box they have in front of them for more than it is worth.


Yesterday I decided to do a pile of ironing. I am not sure that I actually chose to do the ironing – it was that or traipse around the house in the buff! The bottom of the pile has not been exposed for months.

The lady that was in the hot seat was a fairly elderly Asian lady. She was so calm and unwound up that it was very different from most of the contestants. Some quiz shows drive me to distraction when the contestants explain why they reject certain answers or choose others. This lady was not one of those. She just chose one number after another, quite calmly, and politely and no matter the amount of money she exposed – the big red number or the small blue ones - she seemed to be unflustered.

She had decided right from the start that she didn’t want the £250,000 box. It was far too much money for anyone to win. For her, it would be a burden to have that much money. Noel Edmunds tried to persuade her that she could so all sorts of good things with it, but her reply was that she could do just as many good things with a lot less.

The game progressed and she seemed to have lots of the big numbers left and just a few small ones. It was a gambler’s game. The £250,000 was still in place with six boxes left to choose. One box was a blue one, the rest were all red. Then there was the banker’s phone call. He offered a deal of £30,000.

Noel Edmunds reminded her that when she had been asked how much money she would like to win, in an early questionnaire I presume, she had said £30,000. Presuming she would pick the blue box in the next round, the minimum she would walk away with was going to be £20,000 – but the £250,000 was still in the game.

He was offering her exactly what she had asked for, but yet there was the chance of getting much more than that.

Everyone was giving her advice on what to do. “Play on” seemed to be the general consensus.

Behind my ironing board I was shouting “Deal!”

To my mind there was more than £30,000 at stake, and more than £250,000 too. This was about someone’s integrity. She might walk away with the top prize, but it would cost her too much.

Without any fuss at all she said, “Deal.” She took only what she had asked for and turned her back on the big prize! The next box she chose was the wee blue number and the banker said that he would have gone up to £50,000, but she just smiled. She didn’t have the £250,000 in her box, just a mere £20,000 so she beat the banker.

She stood against the temptation to be greedy and take more than she had asked for. Her integrity was not worth £250,000!

We seem to live in a world where people grab and snatch and never seem to be satisfied. It was refreshing to see someone who was different.

A Missed Encounter

I had a dream a number of months ago. It was a third person dream much like watching a film. The man in my dream was very much a down and out. He was just one step up from homelessness having just been given a flat to live in. He had suffered one disappointment after another and was just about surviving. He might have even spent time in prison. He wasn’t a bad man, just really down on his luck.

There was a talent competition in the town centre and my man (I don’t think he had a name) was persuaded by some of his friends to have a go. He had the most amazing singing voice and had the audience wiping tears from their eyes.

I am not sure if he won the competition but he went back to his flat totally unaware that he was being followed. The person following him knocked on the door and as soon as the door was open swiftly got himself inside.

“This is not the way it’s supposed to be,” he told the man. “This is not the life you are supposed to be living.”

He went on to explain that an encounter that should have set his life on a different course was prevented from happening. Some one stuck their oar in and shipwrecked his life. The homelessness, the prison sentence, the deep sense of failure – all these things were not part of the plan for his life.

I don’t know whether the missed encounter was with a specific person, or an event that he was supposed to attend, but the result was he never got to be the person he was supposed to be.

I was reminded of the dream when I read a few of the verses from John 1:35-39

The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, "Look, the Lamb of God!" When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, "What do you want?" They said, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are you staying? "Come," he replied, "and you will see." So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour.

Imagine how different their lives might have been if they had not encountered Jesus. If they hadn’t been listening to John, if they hadn’t followed Jesus, if they hadn’t been curious enough to know a little bit more about him, if they hadn’t taken up the invitation to come and see, if they hadn’t spent the rest of the day with him – they would have missed the path that was planned for them.

Sometimes we think so much about the things that we add into our lives that don’t always do is any good. Sometimes it is what we fail to add into our lives that causes the most damage.

I wonder what I would say in answer to Jesus question “What do you want?”

I wonder how I would have responded to Jesus’ challenge “Come and you will see”

I wonder whether I would have spent the day with Jesus.

I wonder…

Sometimes we focus on Jesus being where we are and neglect to consider us being where Jesus is. Where I am is often somewhere quite colourless and insipid. Jesus inhabits a place that is vibrant and lively. I plan my life to almost avoid the extremes. Too much joy, I believe, will not last long, and come crashing down eventually. Better to be “just happy enough”. Too much pain, I believe, seems to last longer than it should and leaves me wrung out like a twisted dishcloth. Better to be “just comfortable enough”. Jesus inhabits the extremes. Anointed with the oil of joy and yet a man of sorrows he lives in the extremes.

“This is not the way it’s supposed to be,” he told the man. “This is not the life you are supposed to be living.”

How many times do we end up in a place where we were never supposed to be because of a missed encounter?

Come and see the place I stay
Remain with Me throughout this day
The life that you are searching for
You’ll find in Me and so much more

Holes

I think that the programme QI ought to come with some government health warning! Things that I thought I knew I am no longer sure that I know them at all. Holes are being drilled in that part of my brain that is labelled “Undisputed Facts”.

I am not sure any more that the Battle of Hastings happened in 1066, apparently we have more than the five senses I learned about and drew diagrams of in Biology and centipedes seem to have lost some of their legs!

There is a sense in which I suppose we should never simply take things for granted, or accept something as true because some else said so.

Just as Stephen Fry is drilling holes in my general knowledge, I have felt over the past or so a similar drilling going in my knowledge of God – although Stephen Fry is not to blame for that!

My every day circumstances don’t seem to match up with what I read in scripture. I want to believe that God will never leave me or forsake me, but that doesn’t seem to stop me from feeling alone and abandoned. I speak truth to myself, but it doesn’t always mean that I necessarily experience that truth in a tangible way.

I was having a very “down” time this morning. It is the usual battle with the winter blues. I was reading the opening chapter in John’s gospel.

Verse 14 reads “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” That might be true of the disciples when they wrote the gospels, and members of the early Christians who had been in the crowd when Jesus spoke or healed someone, but that is not true of me. Jesus said that the people who had seen it all and witnessed it were blessed and that those who hadn’t seen and yet who would still believe were even more blessed. I just don’t feel blessed! I just feel it’s all a bit of a struggle sometimes.

The solution is to lay down the struggle before God. Perhaps we are hesitant to confess our struggles because we feel that we are letting God down, that we have failed in some way. Keeping a lid on it really doesn’t help. Frustrations come out in all sorts of ways – in physical illnesses, or, in my case, very unsettling dreams.

My morning study led to reading Exodus 33, Moses asking God to show him his glory. I think this request was not born out of a spiritual high. There had been the unpleasant Golden Cow incident (Cowgate!), and Aaron’s part in it all, the breaking of the first set of commandment stones. I don’t think that Moses was on a high. I think he was pretty discouraged and his request came out of a sense of desperation. What he knew about God just wasn’t enough to meet the challenges of leading the nation to the Promised Land. He needed more!

And God gave him more!

The things we ask God for reveal the state of our hearts. What our lips ask for and what our heart asks for doesn’t always match up. What we ask for and what God would like us to ask for doesn’t always match up.

God uses our circumstances to drive us to our knees before Him. Stiff necks aren’t always our problem – it’s our stiff upper lips that gets in the way. We wrap determination around us like a cloak and persevere when we should surrender – not to the circumstances, but to God.

Not Scotland Not Fair!

I can remember on holiday one year travelling to Paris on the train – the one that goes under the English Channel, through a long, long tunnel. The Euorstar! My husband had been looking forward to the journey for ages. He likes train journeys.

He was rather disappointed that there wasn’t anything to mark the line between when you had actually passed from the English bit of the tunnel to the French bit of the tunnel. I suppose they could hardly have stuck a notice on the side of the tunnel itself that would wisp by in a second and no one would be any the wiser. Perhaps what was needed was an announcement over the sound system. “We are now in France,”

On another holiday to Saltsburg we went into a salt mine. Trailing through the original mine shafts hundreds of feet underground, at one point there was a notice on the wall that we had just crossed the Austrian/German border!

Borders! I have crossed many of them in my life time!

There are no lines along the ground to tell you where one country finishes and another begins. They may be there on a map, but there isn’t a corresponding dotted line that someone had painted across the fields, meandering up hills and through forests.

Of course there are more tangible landmarks like Hadrian’s wall, a little to south of the border, or the Antonine Wall a little bit to the north.

I discovered today another wall! It is the television broadcasting wall.


I was very delighted to discover that my hero, Sean Bean, alias Richard Sharpe, will be back on our screens tomorrow. I have fought all those peninsular wars by his side. I have been with him in dingy prisons when he has been betrayed by various baddies. I was by his side when he won the eagle! Sharpe and I go way back!

It was my husband that pointed out the words “not Scotland”. Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t bother me. I know that somewhere in our millions of Sky channels I would be able to track down Sharpe. However, right now we don’t have millions of channels. We just have four. The digi box died last week. It refused to be revived. The Sky man will replace it sometime in mid November!

“Not Scotland” doesn’t apply to all of Scotland. If I lived in Jedburgh, or Melrose, or Dumfries, or Gretna, around about the borders, chances are that I might be able to see Sharpe. I just live too far north and Scottish channels want to show Scottish made programmes.

I just wish that a Scottish newspaper, with a Scottish television magazine, had not taken out a half page article, with a large picture of Sean Bean looking scrumptious, telling me about a programme it isn’t actually showing!

It’s just not British…or Scottish…or fair!

A Christmas Recipe

Most weeks I enter a story or a poem or an article of some kind into the Faithwriters website weekly challenge. It doesn't cost anything to enter. There are no prizes in terms of money to win. It is simply an opportunity to practice writing to a topic, with a specific word limit and a deadline. Members of Faithwriters generally comment on the piece and a number of volunteers each week judge which entries have made the top ten.

It is fun, although sometimes you take it too much to heart if few people seem to be reading or commenting on your work. You are also inclined sometimes. particularly when you think you have written an especially good piece if it doesn't rate in the top ten, or the top 40 that get posted up later on in the week.

This week the topic was "Christmas Baking (not recipes)". I have to admit that even thinking about anything to do with Christmas, yet alone writing about it, is not my cup of tea. I suppose as a professional writer you don't always get the chance to choose the topic you are commissioned to write about. You just have to lay aside your inbuilt prejudice and do the best job you can.

I wrote a poem. This was last week, the night before we went on holiday. The deadline might have been a week away, but by Friday might I would be in Italy. So I took a couple of hours to see if I could put something half decent together and submit it before I left.

I loved it, as I love most of what I write! I was aware that I was stretching the rules a bit. The topic did say "no recipes" but I figured that mine was not a proper cooking recipe so it didn't count.

Imagine my delight to find that not only did it get into the top ten, but it hit the number one spot! I am well chuffed!

A Christmas Recipe

Begin with a night, so silent and still
Across the expanse a million stars spill
Cast into the heavens a star really bright
That fair draws the eye, with radiant light

Stir in a stable, a mother with child
A manger to lay him with hay freshly piled
A father to watch them, a smile on his face
Amazed to be part of God's glorious grace

Fold into the mixture a trio of kings
Complete with their camels and valuable things
Empty the gold, frankincense, myrrh
Hearts full of worship and gently stir

A pinch of shepherds, and handful of sheep
On a Bethlehem hillside sharp and steep
Blend in a choir with a heavenly tune
In the warm silver glow of a cold winter moon

Generously spread a dollop of joy
Lashings of laughter for a Saviour boy
Sprinkle with wishes for peace on the earth
Liberally douse with a belly of mirth

Cook in a prophecy, a secret foretold
Wrapped in a promise, spoken of old
Simmer and watch tepid hearts start to glow
Bear witness as mustard seed faith starts to grow

Dole out a portion to each hungry soul
That fills hollow hearts and makes all men whole
A dish to remember as each year goes by
The taste in our tongues no money can buy




(c) Melanie Kerr 2008

Bad Boat Days

Over the years, I have got into the habit of keeping a journal while on holiday. Seeing as I don’t usually have access to my computer, it is down to pen and paper.

Let me replicate for you exactly what I wrote this time round. This takes in five days in Venice.

“Venice – 2008”

I hope you didn’t blink your eye there and miss it! Yep! That was it! That was the extent of all my sights and insights about Venice!

I am quite disgusted with myself! This is perhaps why I don’t have the cheek to call myself a writer! There are no excuses – I was just too busy doing things to write about what I did.

One thing that Joe and I usually incorporate into our holidays together is a day apart! In the normal run of things we see each other in the morning and then in the evening. To go from that to twenty four hours, five straight days is a bit unreasonable! There are no children to act as buffers. There was no day off and about half way through, maybe towards the end of the holiday, we had a bust up. It was more heated than usual with loud threats to head out the airport for the next plane home!

I hate it when you get these terrorist bombs and then every known organisation phones up to claim responsibility. I claim just some of the responsibility for our “bomb”. I am one of these people that replay the whole incident over and over again. I don’t alter the details, but they take on a significance that was never intended. I get really stewed up.

I had got myself into such a state when a picture of something that had happened earlier in the week came to mind.

Venice is all about water, and canals and boats. Where most cities would have busy roads and lots of traffic and pelican crossings, Venice is a bit different. It is so unlike anywhere I have ever been. The main road is the Grand Canal, the traffic consists of various kinds of boats, and the pelican crossings are bridges everywhere.

I was standing on one such bridge watching the gondolas. In amongst them all was a man in a rowing boat. Where we would park a car in the garage, the folk that live in the centre of Venice would tie up a boat to the back door.

This particular man was trying to tie up his boat to his back door step. I don’t know whether he had the rope on board and was trying to tie it round one of the poles beside the door, or whether the rope was tied to the pole and he was just trying to reach it. Whatever the problem, things were not going well. He reached too far over and the boat tipped over and he fell in the canal.

For a while he had a hand on the side of the boat, but he just couldn’t physically pull himself back into it. A couple of the gondolas came to help.

That man had probably done the manoeuvre a million times before and never fallen out of his boat. He could probably have done it blindfolded and with one hand tied behind his back – well, perhaps not. You know what I mean though. What made this time different? I suspect he might have been returning after a drinking session with his mates. What is easy to do when you are sober, is a sheer impossibility after a few bottles of wine. I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t a hangover but the onset of a touch of flu. Or maybe he was just having a bad boat day.

As I was giving myself a hard time over the argument with Joe, I remembered the man and his boat. I don’t think for a moment that the next day he went down to the newsagent and put a “Boat for Sale” sign in the window. He had had a single bad boat incident, not a lifetime of falling out of boats. Three hundred and sixty four days in the year he had tied the rope around the pole with no problem. Just this one day he had missed the pole and fell in the canal. For all the days that Joe and I have been married – the “bad boat” days are few and far between. They happen. It’s life.

There was still some fallout from the explosion to deal with but nothing a wine tasting day in Northern Italy couldn’t deal with!