Field Trips Blues

I had my words rehearsed! I was prepared to argue my corner if necessary! When it came to the crunch, however, I said nothing!

I had put my name down for a two day field trip, accompanying a group of children as they were let loose in the forest paths and trails of Highland Scotland. I had also put my name down to stay overnight in one of the lodges.

I have been trying to drag myself out of my shell and become a little more social. This was obviously one of those I-can-do-this moments. I like walking in hills and climbing things. I like nature. The thing I’m not sure that I like is walking hills, climbing things and doing nature with others. This is mostly because I do things slowly. I don’t walk, I amble and all these people that I am going with are not amblers…they march and they walk quickly. It seems that no matter how far in the front I begin, inevitably, I end up trailing in at the end. I actually don’t mind being overtaken, but I do mind coming in last.

So, the meeting was today, at lunch time, to discuss details. I had been away for the previous week because of the funeral. I had deadlines for various projects to meet. I hadn’t filled in the proper forms to be away from work for two days. There were more people on the trip than they had anticipated. Even sleeping arrangements were proving to be difficult to allocate because there was one woman too many! It just seemed the perfect conditions to absent myself. No one was going to be inconvenienced.

There I was, with the organiser, the first person to arrive at the meeting. The words were just about to fall out of my mouth.

I said nothing. I kept quiet.

Actually, I didn’t keep totally quiet. Part of the first day walk involves a very steep hill climb. I have done the trip before, but never done the steep climb bit, on account of there always being some child that for some reason or other can’t do it. Last year it was blisters. The year before that it was potential asthma attacks. I have always volunteered to accompany the non-steep-climbers along a low route back to the car park.

“But they will all go up the steep hill climb!” said one lady.

I am all for getting some of the younger generation to do some exercise but I have a real problem with setting a challenge that some of them just can’t meet. It is not always a matter of don’t-want-to but simply-can’t. You can’t just expect these youngsters who sit in front of computers or TV at home to suddenly find the resources to climb a steep hill!

Truth to tell, making the younger generation do the steep hill climb isn’t really my concern – making me do it is what concerns me! It’s this one not-so-youngster who sits in front of the computer or the TV that is unlikely to find the resources to climb a steep hill!

The Anatomy of a Tear Drop

My mum and I were talking about grief the other day. We were comparing, not our own experiences of what makes us cry, but how other people were handling our tears.

There are some people that almost insist that you fall to pieces and weep on every available shoulder. If you don’t cry they think you are bottling it all up.

There are others that think that you shouldn’t be weeping at all! They have this notion that tears are some kind of betrayal of trust in God. I am not quite sure what they are looking for, but sorrow seems to send out the wrong message.

My mother is sad. She doesn’t want to hear or speak encouragement. I suppose to put it bluntly, she wants to be miserable and enjoy her misery…for a while, at least.

I am also sad. I cry sometimes, but not for long. The minute to begin, there is this voice in my head that says, “Enough! Pull yourself together!” I suppose I am worried that my sorrow will become like a black hole that sucks me in.

I just want to find, I suppose, a right kind of sorrow and a right way to grieve. As I was thinking about it this morning, a phrase came to…”Cry all you have to, but leave room for joy.”

The Anatomy of a Tear Drop

If you could take a tear drop
Just one from all I’ve cried
Manipulate a scalpel and
Into its parts divide

How much is made of sorrow,
The kind that sheds no light,
A sadness that contains within
The darkness of the night?

How much, if just a little
Contains a spark of joy,
That rests upon a promise
That nothing can destroy?

God uses all that happens
To bring about my good
Reminds me there’s no place to stand
Where He has never stood

The Funeral

I think that, to be honest, one of my overwhelming emotions, during the funeral service of my sister, was actually jealously! There’s a confession!

The service was held in the Mormon church in Northants. A number of people had been invited to speak. Apart from my elder sister and myself, there were two others – a friend of Linda’s who had shared responsibility for teaching the Sunday School children, and a man, possibly a church elder or something.

The first thing I envied was, I suppose, their very obvious and expressed grief. They cried a lot and wiped the tears away as they spoke about her. I suppose that over the last couple of weeks I have done a lot of crying, so it’s not that I haven’t wept buckets. I think it might be all this stiff upper lips thing, and being brave, but during the service – and doing my bit – I didn’t cry. Neither did my elder sister. We were sitting next to each other on the front row, listening to the speakers. I wondered if some people were perhaps wondering how I could be so dry eyed when they were weeping so openly. Maybe it was too much weeping for me – too unrestrained.

The second thing that I envied was how much more they knew Linda than I did. I know that I shared her childhood, but I have a wretched memory at the best of times. They were able to speak for ages about friendship and experiences over decades. Since moving up to Inverness, and before that, I saw Linda very infrequently. Joe and I would visit if we were down to see my mum. She has made it up to Inverness on a few occasions – but our meeting times were few and far between. I am not a phone person – so the spaces between meetings were not filled with phone calls, or letters.

There was almost this desire to tell people to stop crying so much, because they didn’t have the right to own such a close relationship with her…but they did. I was the one without the really close relationship, certainly in the later years.

The lady that spoke at the service came up to me afterwards to ask, rhetorically I think, if I could come and visit her every week, so it would be just like having Linda back in her life! Apparently where I looked like Linda (?) my elder sister sounded like her – the combination of the two of us was Linda to a tee.

My contribution to the service was a poem that I had written, though I did wonder how well it fitted with Mormon theology.

A Warrior's Return

I've fought the battle, won the race
And now I claim my crown
I come before Your throne above
And lay my trophies down

The strength was Yours, the gifting too
My part, but to obey
The light was Yours that showed my path
The lamp that led my way

The tears were mine You wiped away
With gentle, kind caress
The joy was Yours, at my return
Your smile of tenderness

I've fought so long and run so far
But now I'm home with you
And in your arms find peaceful rest
And know your love anew

P.A.D.

I have finally managed to catch up!

At the beginning of the month one of my bookmarked writers’ websites issued their annual “A poem a day” through the month of April challenge. It is always something that I have wanted to do, but never felt that I had either the time or the talent to go for it.

I am glad that I did it this year. It has provided some much appreciated distraction from the sadness of my sister’s death, and the long wait for autopsies, coroner’s reports and funeral arrangements. It has also provided an opportunity to do what Rabbie Burns did – to respond to life’s observances with poetry.

The challenge each day is to respond to a prompt – a word or a phrase or an instruction. My poetry has always had a spiritual focus to it. Even a poem about tulips ended up with some reference to creation and God and worship. There is something nice about everything coming back to God, but there was also a sense of been “poetically crippled” if I couldn’t just write about something and not put a spiritual swing to it.

All of life is simply all of life and it has been a challenge just to write. There are no word limits, and to some extent, no time limits. Although it is a poem a day, there may be circumstances that prevent you from writing a poem one day, so the challenge allows you to post a poem at a later date in the month.

What has surprised me has been the sheer variety of things I have written about. Some are short two line couplets, while others are much more of a free verse ramble – but I did it! I am amazed too about the insight they provide about me – about my feelings and experiences throughout life – maybe not so much in just a single poem by itself but in the whole twenty five of them so far. It is also so unsettling when I see some very raw emotions seeping out! A pocket history of Mel, if you like.

Here is a selection:-

The shortest:- Loch Ness ( the prompt being a landmark)

Despite the way the scientists spin it
I am convinced there’s something in it

The darkest – Friday (the prompt being Friday)

I remember it was Friday
When we said goodbye
They pulled out the plugs
And I watched you die

The most pretentious! - Phoenix (the prompt was rebirth)

I stand within my nest
Of broken dreams
And disappointments

Ignite the fire
And let me burn

Then I will be
Reborn and
Made anew

And the ashes
Gathered by the wind
Will drift away

The one I like most - A Different World (the prompt was Travelling)

Words create the carriage
Sentences carve out the highways
Climb between the pages of the book
Disengage the world
Ease off the stresses of the day
Press down on your imagination
And steer towards a different world

Some of the poems are just too raw to share with people that might know me. My sister’s death has opened up a door – much like the opening of Pandora’s box! I have no hesitation, I suppose, with posting them on a site where there are a hundred other poems just like them, and no one knowing who I am. Sharing things with friends isn’t always so easy.

A Crispy Bacon Moment

Let me describe to you what a “crispy bacon moment” is all about and then you can decide whether you have had one or not.

A long time ago, when Joe and I were in our early days of being married, I baked a bacon and mushroom flan, or quiche, if you prefer posh words! I’m not the greatest baker in the world, but I always seemed to “get” pastry.

I am one of these people that save the best bits of a meal to eat at the end. It’s not that I don’t like anything else on the plate, but I like to leave the meal with the taste of the best bit of it in my mouth. On this particular occasion, it was a bit of crispy bacon. I had carefully isolated it from the rest of the flan, put it to one side to enjoy later.

Suddenly, this fork swooped in, stabbed the bacon, lifted it from my plate…and my crispy bacon disappeared into Joe’s mouth.

There was a wordless kind of expression that could be translated as “What?”, followed by a crimson flood of embarrassment.

“I thought you weren’t going to eat it,” was his first comment.

This was swiftly followed by a bit of honesty.

“I had watched the careful, almost loving way you have placed the bacon to one side. I knew you were saving it for your last mouthful…but I just couldn’t resist taking it.”

As I said, that was early in the marriage. These days, if Joe attempted stealing my crispy bacon moments…well, lets just say I’d put my fork to good use!

I had a crispy bacon moment this afternoon. It wasn’t about bacon…or food of any description. It was about time. I just seem to be disappearing under of pile of “To Do”s that that built up to the size of the Empire State Building. I decided that I would set aside a couple of hours, concentrate fully, no distractions and just get one with it. Just like the crispy bacon, I carefully set the time aside, digging out a radio to play quietly in the background while I got on with things. I was going to enjoy the feeling of a job well done and out of the way..

A friend of mine chapped the door, stuck his head around it and came in.

“I know that you’ve had a bit of a hard week. I thought you might appreciate some company.”

It was the last thing I was looking for, but seeing as he was there, I laid aside my Empire State Building of a “To Do” list and dive in to being sociable.

It was a lovely conversation and I did appreciate him stopping by, and the chance to sound off about things. It was a great way to spend a couple of hours.

The Empire State Building is as tall as ever, and still needs to be dismantled. I just wish it wasn’t so temptingly sunny outside!

Pure Joy

I had a moment of pure joy yesterday, although I suppose if I were to analyse it, it would probably not be pure joy at all, assuming that pure joy is something that’s linked to God in some way, and what I was doing wasn’t really linked with God at all. That has got to get you curious if nothing else!

Maybe in any other week of my life, it would not be pure joy, but just a vague happy moment, but this is not just any other week. It is the first week of living without my sister, Linda. It has been a week that has been full of sadness. There has just been a cloud over everything that I have done…and I have felt a spectrum of not particularly positive emotions!

At the start of the month I decided to take a up a poetry challenge. One of the websites that I have bookmarked is a poetry blog called “Poetic Asides”. It is part of a bigger site called “Writer’s Digest”. Every April, they throw down the gauntlet of challenging poets to write a poem a day. They provide the prompts and you can do what you like with it. There are no word limits or line limits, so what you write can be very long or just a few lines.

I have missed half a dozen days, but you are allowed to go back to the missed days and post something. I wrote a catch-up poem last night, on the theme of memories. All I want to think about is the current situation I find myself in, so it was nice to think of something far nicer.

The Smell of Ginger

The end of a meal and a coffee cup
I unwrapped the biscuit and picked it up
The smell of ginger haunted me
A scene forgotten I could see
Four small children sitting round
A reel to reel recorder on the ground
We learned our lines and pressed “record”
A message for granny who lived abroad
Ginger biscuits in a windmill shape
And us and our message on big black tape

It was after I had penned the verse, and posted it, that I sat for a while with a huge grin, feeling for a moment that all was right with the world.

The pure joy moment didn’t last for long. The shadows soon crept in. But just for a while, I felt glad. It’s nice to know that there will be moments like that…more and more of them.

I did say that pure joy moments were linked to God. To write poetry is a gift from God.

Fixing My Thoughts

There are some many thoughts buzzing around my head these days.

Sometimes I think about the catalogue of mistakes that the hospital made that lead to a simple operation having such tragic consequences.

Sometimes I think about my brother in law and the heart ache that he is going through. I know that he has asked my sister to go over and help sort out Linda’s clothes and jewelry.

Sometimes I think about the funeral, and what to wear, and whether to drive down in the car or take the train. I worry about crying too much and making a fool of myself. I worry about not crying enough and people thinking I didn’t care about my sister.

Sometimes I think a lot about my niece and nephew and how it is too young an age for them to be left without a mother.

Sometimes I think about other people and how my sister’s death means nothing to them. The world hasn’t stopped turning.

Sometimes I think that I ought to be braver. I have these extra resources given by God and I should have a handle on all of this grief.

Sometimes I think I am wallowing in sadness, even though it has not been a week since she died.

Sometimes I think that I will have a Bobby Ewing moment – stepping out the shower to realise that it was all just a dream.

Sometimes I think that I failed to pray enough. I failed to hold her hand as she lay in the hospital bed and rebuke the infection the way some other person might have done. I think I just stood by and let it happen.

So it came as a balm to my heart this morning when I read the words from Hebrews 3:1 - “Fix your thoughts on Jesus..”

Good Grief!

I wish that we were like other races and cultures. I wish we didn’t get so awkward about the “death” word. I think I almost wish that people would say the wrong thing rather than say nothing at all.

I opted to go into work today. There are a lot of things that won’t wait until I feel in a more positive frame of mind. Life doesn’t stop and wait for you to catch up.

Inevitably the question about what you did over Easter was bandied about. People asking it couldn’t know that it was like a landmine to me. I thought, once or twice, about mumbling something vague and indistinct, but it seemed the coward’s way out. They had asked so they ought to be prepared for the answer.

I explained about the hospital visits, the illness of my sister, and finished with the rather bleak pronouncement that she had died at the weekend.

What a conversation stopper!

I felt obliged to justify my presence in school. It was easier to have distractions around me, and tasks to keep me occupied, or I would have just brooded at home. There would be days off to come with a funeral to attend, and I wasn’t sure just how much compassionate leave I was entitled to.

We just don’t seem to know how to deal with someone else’s grief. So often we are afraid of saying the wrong thing that we say nothing at all. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that we don’t know how to express that we do.

It was at the end of the day when I finally bumped into a lady I was deliberately avoiding. I was feeling fragile and knew that in her presence I would start to cry. She is not the kind of person that says nothing. She doesn’t say the wrong thing, or particularly the right thing, but she emanates compassion. We hugged. I cried. She held me and patted me on the back. I worried that people who didn’t know about my sister’s death were looking on curiously. She let me talk about how I was feeling without making it seem all very awkward.

I just wish that there were more people like my friend.

My brother, Richard, was present when my sister died. We had all gone home. Joe and I were due to travel back to Inverness the following day. We didn’t think that the end was so close, although all the signs were there if we had looked for them. Throughout the week, every time the nurses or doctors needed to do something, we had been asked to leave. On that final day, they had just worked around us, never asking us to leave the room.

Richard was asked how he had known that this was the end, when all of us seemed so oblivious. He replied that our problem was our faith. We had always expected the miracle to happen. We had never stopped praying. We had never accepted that her death was inevitable. Faith says that there is always hope. He admitted that he envied us that kind of faith, but to him, reality said that things were not going to improve for Linda. He had been preparing himself for weeks for it to happen.

His daughter was with him when my sister died. She was amazed that he didn’t cry. She asked him why he didn’t cry when Linda died, but had wept buckets when the family’s hamster had died. He replied that he had done all his crying over the last few weeks, so that he could be strong for the rest of the family.

A friend asked me recently how I felt about God. Did my sister’s death diminish my faith in God in any way? I don’t pretend to understand the workings of the Almighty, what he permits, what he allows, why he steps in to intervene sometimes, but seems absent at other times.

I know that I have allowed God access to my heart at all times. At three in the morning I have wept buckets. I have tried to picture where Linda might be now, to feel a sense of her presence, somewhere.

I think there are times that I would like to descend into an almighty sulk at God for not intervening, but my spirit refuses to cooperate – hence the poem!

Pilgrim

Pilgrim, though the night is dark
Dawn is on its way
And with it comes the radiant sun
All shadows melt away

Pilgrim, though the heart is sore
And tears so often fall
With soft and gentle tender touch
I’ll wipe away them all

Pilgrim, though you cannot see
The joy that’s yet to be
I ask that you would simply trust
All that you know of Me

Enthusiasm

Seems to me that there should be some law against it! Yes, we can all see the sense in digging out the lawn mower, weeding the borders and putting in a few hardy perennials in celebration of spring and in anticipation of the summer – when it’s a sunny day. We’ve all been there. We have perhaps tackled a little bit too much, a little bit too enthusiastically and no doubt ache a little in places we didn’t ache in before.

Our next door neighbour, however, is taking things a little too far. On our way out to pop around to put on our Grand National bets, our neighbour was rigged out in yellow waterproof jacket, braving the downpour to dig out the borders of his garden. Too much, mate. Too much.

As my husband said, climbing into the car, “That man would probably be a suicide bomber if he was a Muslim in Iran.”

I thought the comparison to be very apt. This is not to say that all Muslims living in Iran are suicide bombers…just that our neighbour is a very earnest about the appearance of his garden!

The more likely scenario is that he has had a busy week, that is part of a busy month and even if it is raining, he has to do the garden because otherwise it won’t get done.

Me…I don’t think that way. Even if it was sunny, I would probably have a zillion other interesting or urgent things to do, and the garden still wouldn’t get done!

Ezekiel, Eric and I - a brief History of...

Joe and I went to the cinema last night. It was a three way toss up between “Marley and Me” (I’d read the book – I am never sure about watching films based on books that I have read. They never seem to match up to my imagination and I end up disappointed.), “Duplicity” (which was the subtitled version – I’m not sure about subtitles either. I am not a fast reader. OK so the subtitles are there for people who have hearing difficulties, but that won’t stop me trying to read them!) and “Knowing” (the critics didn’t think much of it, action packed perhaps, but leave-your-brain-at-home fare.) We settled for “Knowing” knowing that we don’t always agree with the critics anyway.

Action packed it was. There were some superb special effects. I won’t be giving much away of I tell you it is all about deciphering a pager of numbers, and linking the numbers to various disasters. There are three numbers left to go and it is left to Nicholas Cage to save the world.

The film has a website and a comments feature where people post their views and opinions. It was a film that was very open to Christian interpretation in some aspects. There are a bunch of strange people in the film that basically stand at the edge of the woods and stare at people. They wear black coats and “whisper” things in the ears of children. Later on in the film they take shed their “human disguise” and what you see I suppose depends on where you are coming from. Aliens or angels? They had wings.


There is a scene earlier in the film where the hero and his female companion find a page from a Bible. It contains a lithograph of Ezekiel’s vision. Not the valley to dry bones, but the one at the beginning of the book – his vision of the heavens – wheels within wheels and flying beasts.

Way back in the 1970s I confess to having read and soaked up Eric Von Daniken’s book “The Chariot of the Gods”. His premise was that Earth had been visited and probably populated by aliens. His evidence, taken from the stuff of cave paintings and drawing scratched onto rocks on Easter Island, et al, seemed to my young fifteen or sixteen year old mind, to prove that he was right! (At the time I was wavering between becoming a Mormon because I was a Donny Osmond fan or embracing some kind of atheism/agnosticism based on a vague disappointment with the Roman Catholic church). I remember waving the book before my RE teacher and saying “See, God has been proved to be an alien from space!” (I don’t think kids today actually read much, so no one has waved any books at me and said, “See God has been proved to be…this, that or the other.”)

I have to admit that I can’t read the chapters of Ezekiel’s visions of heaven without thinking about Von Daniken’s alien space-craft explanation. I have probably seen too many Sci-Fi programmes to “de-programme” my brain.

I was thinking last night how sometimes knowing too much can be a disadvantage when it comes to embracing Christian truth. Knowledge – a certain kind of knowledge – can sometimes get in the way of a straight and simple answer. When you have studied textual analysis as a part of a Theology degree, there is a pile of knowledge that sometimes you just have to shift to one side, to reach a response. Sometimes the knowledge helps to reach a better understanding, but often what you pick up is someone’s commentary that isn’t free from bias and prejudice.

How essential it is to listen to what the Spirit says and be prepared to lay aside preconceptions.

A Poet Who Can't Sing

“And I'll be the poet who sings your glory and live what I sing every day.” Psalm 61:8 The Message.

I am going through one of those dry desert experiences right now.

A number of weeks ago I was meandering around the gallery at Inverness Museum, soaking up a exhibition based on people’s responses to the poetry of Robert Burns. One of the commentaries on one of his poems made the point that Burns used poetry to respond to life. Whatever he noticed in the world, whatever caught his imagination or touched his heart – he would respond with poetry.

I love the concept of responding with poetry to what catches my imagination, or touches my heart. Right now, however, I feel that nothing is really doing that. I suppose part of it is that my attention is focused on my sister and the progression of her illness.

Reading a commentary on Psalm 61, Matthew Henry has this to say - “Weeping must quicken praying, and not deaden it. God's power and promise are a rock that is higher than we are. This rock is Christ. On the Divine mercy, as on a rock, David desired to rest his soul; but he was like a ship-wrecked sailor, exposed to the billows at the bottom of a rock too high for him to climb without help. David found that he could not be fixed on the Rock of salvation, unless the Lord placed him upon it.”

Weeping for me has just been plain weeping. The prayer doesn’t always come. God is speaking His word into the situation and for a while is encourages and strengthens, but I suppose I am like that ship-wrecked sailor, clinging to the bottom of a rock that I am too weak and battered to climb. I don’t need to do the climbing. All I need to do is the calling out. God will do the lifting. He will place me feet upon the rock that is higher than I – the Rock of Christ that is higher than the billowing waves that threaten to engulf me.

As for the poems that sing of God’s glory – they will come in time.

A Modern Day Parable

A tale told echoing the style of Jesus’ parables:-

“A certain woman (me) was traveling along Ingilis Street, from Marks and Spencer’s to the Market Brae Steps (having perused the sales rails in Markies, and thought briefly about buying some “Count on Us” desserts) when she fell into the hands of the Healing on the Streets team. (There was a moment when she considered the merits of disappearing down a side street. Talking about the condition of her sister in hospital is not easy! Tears seem to come too easily these days) They talked to her, lay hands on her and prayed for her and her family with words of great faith and power. (Much of what was said confirmed the words that God had spoken during the week! That was very encouraging! From the mouths of two or more witnesses…) They left her to walk on her way, feeling much built up and encouraged.”

“Her husband happened to be waiting patiently for her outside Woolworth’s. (A place they had arranged to meet after having had a very late and leisurely breakfast – after all, I am on holiday now!) When he saw the woman he asked her, “What took you so long? I have been waiting here for hours!” (Not true at all – he had been waiting for five minutes tops – which is a lot less time than I waited for last night when he said he would phone!) She told him about her encounter with the Healing on the Streets team. He was much built up and encouraged too.”

I forget sometimes that God has not called me to a lonely road of burden bearing! Sometimes I am conscious that my view of the glass being half empty needs to be balanced with a more faith-filled perspective.

Thanks, Mark and the team.

Twins

After one of our visits to see my sister in hospital we went for a drink afterwards with my eldest sister and her husband. We bypassed the usual haunts – the Wheatsheaf and the Royal Oak – and opted instead for the Ex-Serviceman Club. I have never been an ex-serviceman, but they didn’t hold that against me.

I can’t remember the last time I was there. It may have been some cabaret night or other, and I think I can remember my youngest sister entertaining everyone with a display of head-banging and air guitar stuff! That was a long time ago!

This time we were there this time to see the tail end of the Scotland v England rugby match and watch the opening few minutes of the Wales v Ireland match.

I was standing beside the bar, minding my own business when I nearly got slapped by someone. The nearly-slapper was a lady that I didn’t know, but who had mistaken me for my sister and was offended that I had not greeted her, and had my back turned towards her. I am not sure whether it was me turning around at the same time as her spotting my sister standing beside me that made her stop mid-slap, but I escaped unscathed and she escaped unembarrassed by perhaps hitting what would have been for her a complete stranger!

This getting mistaken for my eldest sister has been part and parcel of life. When I used to visit more often, before I lived in Scotland, I gave up trying to explain that I wasn’t her. I just nodded politely and agreed with her that my kids were growing up and our garden was looking lovely that year.

I cannot see what everyone else sees. I am taller, slimmer and far prettier than my sister. My hair is not the same colour or style and I wear glasses! What is it that they see? People, when we are together, usually assume we are twins!

Although I definitely don’t have a twin sister, my husband often tells me that living with me is like living with two different women. There is “work Mel” and there is “holiday Mel” and they are very different people. Come the holiday, I seem to shed the “work Mel” persona completely. Do I smile more? Sing louder? Laugh more? Actually do the washing up instead of just saying I will do it? “Holiday Mel” is certainly easier to live with, apparently!

I was thinking about my dual personality. I think there are two more hidden in there – or perhaps the same two but going by different names. There is “Faith Mel” and there is “Doubt Mel”. I have seen a lot of “Doubt Mel” over the last couple of weeks. Despite clear words of encouragement I have tended to focus on the very visible signs of the seriousness of my sister’s illness. I have looked at the monitors and the drips, looked at her pale sleeping head, and bruises on her hands where other drips have been, and on all the tubes, and the ventilator – and wondered if she would really pull through. “Faith Mel” doesn’t think like that. Faith Mel sees it all and then over the top of it all overlays God’s encouraging words and doesn’t think about funerals.

A friend said yesterday that sometimes it is harder to watch someone going through the hard times. If we are the people going through it, we tend to exhibit more faith and more expectation of a positive resolution.

The dictionary defines integrity as “the quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness.” I will aim to be whole and undivided – for there to be just the one Mel – presenting a consistent “Faith Mel” picture no matter what the circumstances are that I face.

Everything Under His Feet

“You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet:” Psalm 8:6.

The phrase “everything under his feet” has been really encouraging of late.

One of my elder sisters has been seriously ill for the last few weeks. I think it was a routine operation that developed complications. She was moved into an intensive care unit and the prognosis wasn’t encouraging. Visiting her was quite upsetting as she was heavily sedated, attached to a dozen different monitors and drips. She didn’t seem to be responding.

The words “everything under his feet” in the psalm leads on to talk about the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. It is reminder that God gave human beings authority over nature.

“Everything” includes everything. I was reminded of those bible heroes like Joshua who asked that the sun wouldn’t move so that he could finish his battle, or Elijah who prophesied a drought or Jesus who calmed a storm. They took a hold of the authority God gave them and their “everything” included the big things – the sun, the rain, the sea. They were big ”everything”s.

As I thought about my sister, I thought about some of the small things that are included in “everything” – the atoms, the molecules, the separate cells, the bacteria and viruses. All of these things are also part of the “everything under his feet”.

There is so much detail and complexity in the human body, it is a surprise that more things don’t go wrong with people every day! I prayed about these small “everything”s in my sister’s body that were causing problems and not functioning the way they should.

The news from home fluctuates. Yesterday she was improving sufficiently to have some of the monitors taken away and some of the drips removed. She was not so heavily sedated, had woken up just for a few minutes and opened her eyes.

Later on in the evening there had been a relapse and monitors and drips restored.

I continue to encourage myself with the knowledge that “everything” is beneath the feet of Christ. I may not always see it in the natural world, but that does not change the truth of it in the heavenlies.

In The Morning

In Psalm 59 David’s enemies were all too visible. They may have tried to hide behind lamp posts in the dead of night, but he knew where to look and he knew what they were up to. He asked God to keep His eye on them and to scupper any plans that they had for his demise!

I was reading the Psalm this morning. I may have many visible enemies, and they might hide behind lamp posts and plot plans to cause me harm, but this morning I was thinking about the unseen enemies.

I am not talking about things like demons and powers and principalities, but the internal kind. Not the ones that plague the mind, but the ones that plague the body. Sometimes the battle ground is the body.

A couple of weeks ago I had really bad news concerning my sister. She was in hospital. It had been something relatively harmless and treatable, but suddenly became something less harmless. She was shifted into intensive care, nestled under a warren of tubes and some of her internal organs shutting down. She was slipping in and out of consciousness. I hated being so far away and so powerless to act. Such was my distress that I didn’t even seem to be able to pray, but sat mutely in God’s presence. I didn’t know what to do, but, like it says in scripture the Holy Spirit turned all those moans and groans and wordless expressions into a coherent prayer before God!

There was a huge improvement in her condition. I remember God asking me why I should be so surprised at that – didn’t I pray after all? Didn’t He listen? Didn’t He act, just like I had asked him to?

There was another phone call later on this week. Another sharp decline! She had gone into surgery to have cysts on her stomach wall removed. I was back to the throne room, this time, remembering her earlier recovery, not quite so silent, not quite so paralysed with anxiety.

As I was reading through Psalm 59, I wasn’t seeing men standing behind lamp posts, with guns concealed in pockets, but microscopic bugs and bacteria doing damage to healthy tissue and organs. I am glad that her condition isn’t a mystery. Doctors know what is wrong and they know what to do to put things right. She is not untreatable!

I prayed that her body would cooperate with the treatment and not fight against it, and through it all she would encounter God.

I was encouraged by v16 – firstly, encouraged to believe that there would be a morning! This illness is like a night time with all the enemies prowling about. And secondly, encouraged that come the morning there would be something to celebrate! The enemies, the illness, would be no more!

Psalm 59:16 “But I will sing of your strength, in the morning I will sing of your love; for you are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble.”

Once Before

“Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him.”

I am sure that if I asked you to tell me where this bit comes in the gospel accounts, you might rack your brains a wee bit and come up with the wise men, or magi, in the nativity accounts.


It comes in the account of Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion. I have taken a line out of context. In context there is a lot of flogging, and hitting and spitting. There’s a crown of thorns, a purple robe and lots of mockery.

I read through the first twenty or so verses of Mark 15 seeing as I was due to preach/teach/lead discussion this morning in church. Pilate and I have been hanging out for the last week or so with me trying find something to say that hasn’t already been said by someone else saying it so much better than I can anyway!

When I got to that line, it was as if I was seeing the scene and next to it Philippians 2:10 where we are reminded that every knee shall bow.

Those soldiers that had knelt before Jesus and paid homage were going to have to do the whole thing again – not before a humiliated Jesus, but before a King crowned in glory.

It inspired me to write a poem.

Once Before

Once before
Another place
Kneeling I
Beheld Your face

Once before
Another crowd
Cried, “Crucify!”
Defiant, loud

Once before
Another crown
Twisted thorns
Pressing down

Once before
Another King
Purple robe
Homage bring

Mocking laughter
Sneering scorn
Wielding whips
Flesh was torn

I never knew
Kneeling then
That You and I
Would meet again

Kneeling now
Beholding You
Regretting all
I put You through

Radiant crown
Upon your head
Glorious robes
Before me spread

Deserving not
The loving Face
I receive
Amazing grace

© Melanie Kerr 2009

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…