All Walls Will fall

One of my all-time favourite films is “Saving Grace” with Tom Conti.  It’s not on DVD in the UK and although the VHS version is quite costly, it would be a price I’d be willing to pay if only I had a VHS player.

Thankfully youtube.com has come to my rescue. The film in ten minute chunks is floating in cyberspace ready from me to start watching.

The plot summary goes as follows:

“A newly-elected Pope Leo XIV finds himself accidentally locked out of the Vatican. Unknown to the outside world, he winds up in an impoverished Italian village, where his adventures ultimately teach the Pope and his new friends some important lessons about friendship and self-esteem.”

A 6.7 rating?  Who are they kidding?

I like the film because it presents the Pope as a human being making choices like everyone else – but unlike everyone else his decisions don’t pander to the “me-first” obsession we seem to cultivate.   What he wants is what is best for everyone no matter how difficult it is to accomplish.  He sets out to help people to discover and reclaim their dignity.  He doesn’t particularly win friends that way. There are no easy solutions and no one is allowed to take the short cut or the easy way out.  In that respect he is so like Jesus.

I am not much of a Pope fan.  I don’t have anything in common with someone who claims to be infallible. I don’t have anything in common with such a male dominated set up.  Maybe I would be a little less hostile if the Pope and his cardinals, bishops and priests had wee wives.

I am a fan of Pope Francis.  I like him because he selected the name of one of my favourite saints to be his own.  He is like Tom Conti’s Pope Leo XIV.  He doesn’t distance himself from his flock and he leads through service.

This is why I find this photograph so amazing.  It is not just any wall he is standing in front of.  It is the Western Wall in Jerusalem.  I have seen that wall from afar many years ago when there were very strict rules about who was allowed near and who wasn’t.  I think it has all changed somewhat – but Pope Francis is there, not as a man on holiday, but as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church.  It seems such a symbolic gesture – not something empty or hollow, but a reflection of a heart that is distressed by so much division and separation between people, much as God is distressed by it all.

We build our walls to separate

To close the door on those we hate

But brick by brick and stone by stone

All walls will fall before God’s throne

All For Jesus

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Eph 2:8-10

Familiar words, yes? I daresay it is one of the top ten verses memorised by the entire Christian world! I read it this morning and it was like greeting an old friend.  In one of my previous churches the pastor was very keen that learning verses wasn’t just something for the children to do but for adults as well.  Each Sunday meeting incorporated a memory verse complete with people standing in a circle and throwing a ball about or jumping along a string cardboard stepping stones as we recited the verse.

I took it a step further, as I often do.  The last line, which was the line we were supposed to remember, I set to music.  Feel free to phone me and ask me to sing it to you if you are so inclined! The tune is Caribbean/ Calypso in nature and I have no idea how I came up with it but it has stuck with me.  I no longer read Ephesians 2:10 but sing it – it’s my default setting now.

One might expect someone to be impressed that I can sing the verse – but I have come to the realisation that singing it is not as impressive as doing it!  You know, those “good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

I was watching a documentary on Mother Teresa earlier.  She probably couldn’t sing Ephesians 2:10 like I can, but she put it into practice. When God challenged her to step out of a clean and peaceful convent into the streets of Calcutta to serve the poor she obeyed. She did the good works that God had prepared for her. She put herself in a place – not just a physical place on a retreat in Darjeeling – but ion a spiritual place of listening to God and He spoke, not in an audible voice, but clearly enough in her heart for her to act on it. There is a well-documented account in books and magazines of the help she gave to people in Calcutta. She consistently refused to take any credit for her actions saying repeatedly “All for Jesus.”

Some people might frown about some aspects of her life. She responded to people in poverty but did not really address the issue of why people were in such poverty.  Perhaps you can only pick fault with the woman when you have matched her compassion and service.

There have been times when I have heard and responded to God’s call to the “good works” he has prepared for me.  There are other times when I have just fallen into something which may or may not be His “good works”.

Come the end of next month, our church has planned a day away together – a retreat focussed on the “us” part of our Christian walk.  We are in the process of planning how to organise the day to make the most of the opportunity we have to be together. I can’t help thinking about God choosing the time when Mother Teresa was on her retreat to talk to her about His plans for her life. God is still in the business of talking to people about His plans.

I cannot help but sing Ephesians 2:10.  It’s like breathing.  It’s something that I do. But – the greater challenge is to do it. In doing it I change not only the world around me – but I change me too.

The Thorn

I stood before His Royal throne
To seek a gift to call my own
I took His gift, made to depart
It was a thorn that pierced my heart
How strange a gift He gave to me
Treasure there I could not see
The thorn within was sharp and sore
I sought His presence more and more
I learned that with the thorn comes grace
As God the Father shows His face

Destiny

I once watched an interview with Dame Judy Dench.  She talked about what led her to become involved in acting.  One of the things she mentioned was being involved in drama from a very early age.  I am sure I have mentioned before that my first appearance on stage was as a pygmy in a local pantomime “Robinson Crusoe”.  As I listened to her answers to questions it was fascinating to discover that our lives ran pretty much parallel in childhood and teenage years.  I’d always been involved in drama right through university. She went on to a great acting career and I went on to a teaching career.  Come to think about it there are times when acting comes in handy in the classroom.

Acting was never my destiny. It would appear if you talked to my mother that teaching was the one and only thing I wanted to do.  I don’t remember this business of lining up my dolls and teaching them what I had learned in school that day.  It feels too much like a cliché.

Last night’s Women Aglow meeting with Alyson Sim from Fire Ministries International was really inspiring.  She was talking about finding the treasure in each other and pulling the destiny out.

She began by talking about Barnabas in the book of Acts. I had never thought that without Barnabas there might not have been a Paul.  It was Barnabas that stepped in to open doors that others insisted should remain closed.  The disciples were suspicious of Paul, with good reason, but Barnabas chose to see what Paul could become rather than what he had been. He took Paul at his word choosing to believe that God had spoken on the Damascus road and turned his life around.

When interesting things were happening in Antioch, Barnabas fetched Paul and the two of them joined in the fun witnessing an outpouring of the Spirit there.  Barnabas was a link man – linking Paul to his destiny.  Later on he did the same thing with John Mark – choosing to leave Paul to travel with Silas and Timothy, while he and John Mark ventured elsewhere. 

When we are in the place where God planned for us to be there are blessings to be had.  That doesn’t mean to say that we are in the wrong place if there are trials to be lived through.  There is a whole long list in 2 Corinthians 11 when life was not a bed of roses.

What God wants us to do He prepares us to do.  He makes the necessary changes to fit us into the place He has planned for us.  Square shapes in round holes and vice versa are not part of God’s plan for anyone.

God links us up to the people who speak into our lives, who see the treasure there that we are sometimes blind to and are able to draw it to the surface.  And it’s never too late to look for the treasure and find the path of destiny.  Some people never get to be the people they were meant to be.

I had a dream one night, many years ago, about a homeless man who was meant to be a great opera singer.  Childhood had messed him up and thrown him into a path of drugs and crime.  Then one day there was a microphone set up in a city centre street.  There wasn’t a stage, or lights like the Britain’s Got Talent show.  It was just a single microphone and people were encouraged to take a turn – tell a joke, read a poem, dance or even play the spoons.  My man sang a song.  He had a wonderful voice, rich and vibrant.  People just stopped to listen.  In the dream Marie Osmond, who just happened to be shopping at the time, joined him and sang a beautiful harmony.  Afterwards my homeless man went away.  He didn’t give a name, or a contact number – he just sang and walked away. He was eventually tracked down and offered a music deal and a slot on a TV show.  I don’t know whether he took it up or not.  Yes, it was a very cohesive dream.  It had a feel good factor to it.  

I am not sure that at the time I read anything into it. I wasn’t conscious that I was about to be presented with a super-duper opportunity and God was saying not to let where I had been stop me from being where I should be.

But today I am thinking about what Alyson said about the treasure in my life and being pulled onto a path of destiny.  I am also challenged by her insistence that it’s never too late.  I have had treasure pulled out of me by my church.  Their generous funding to publish a poetry book drew out treasure inside.  I have embraced the poet in me and found myself on an amazing path.

But there’s more treasure to be unearthed and more of the path to tread.

Life continues to be an adventure.

Telling and Being Told

A teenager declared in yesterday’s newspaper “If I had been taught about HIV, I might not have the virus.”  He said he had received absolutely no information on the subject in school and that sex education should be compulsory in schools.  He said that his generation had not been exposed to the campaigns that were part of the curriculum in the 1980s.

I can’t imagine that in this day and age HIV awareness isn’t part of the curriculum.  According to a survey done in 2011 one in four teenagers knew nothing.  I find that really surprising.  I’m also just a little inclined to think that just because something is taught in schools doesn’t mean that anything is actually learned.  Just because a student is physically in class doesn’t mean that they are there in mind and spirit.  There’s also an unwelcome notion that if someone doesn’t tell us something we can never know it. Only a small amount of the knowledge we possess comes from someone telling us.  There’s a lot of learning to be done outside of the classroom and a teacher’s telling.

That said there are some things that we need to be told.

This morning I was reading Acts 19:8-12. Paul was speaking boldly about the Kingdom.  After three months there was sufficient opposition for Paul to move out of the synagogue and into a lecture hall. For the next two years he spoke every day.  The end result was “all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.” There was no one able to say they had not been exposed to Paul’s teaching.

Along with the compelling preaching of God’s truth, there was also the evidence of miracles of healing and evil spirits being cast out.

I am sometimes inclined to think that my town doesn’t have people like Paul.  What I really mean though is I am not like Paul then therefore there isn’t anyone like Paul.  As if it was all about me and what I am not doing that perhaps I should. 

There are Pauls in my town.  There are people like the Healing on the Streets team, the Street pastors and individual men and woman who regularly talk to people about the Kingdom.  Over the next week our churches are collaborating on a Prayer Space project in one of our local schools – giving young people and opportunity to explore what communicating with God is all about.

Paul would be impressed by that and join in.

This morning as I read about Paul and thought about the variety of things that are happening, God did ask the question “What about you?  How can you contribute to telling people about the Kingdom?”  Evangelism has become an uncomfortable word. 

What came to mind was my long-ago days on a gospel outreach team.  Like most out-of-the-comfort-zone experiences there was a lot I didn’t like doing but the one thing I excelled at was the sketch board.  I was so far in my comfort zone that I didn’t really let others take their turn.   It involved lots of paint, squares and pictures.  Painting in bits of the squares produced letters, then words and provided a prompt for a short gospel message.  Having run through the sketch boards we had been taught I set about designing my own.  It’s not pushing the Bible down anyone’s throat.  People stay till the end because they want to see what happens next, but they are free to walk away any time.  Truth comes in teaspoon sized doses. 

Our church is working slowly through a study about getting the message of the Kingdom into our local community.  I shared my ideas about using a sketch board in the city centre.  There was support and enthusiasm for the idea.

The next step…to be bold and just do it.

The Disciple Jesus Loved

“Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” Because of this, the rumour spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?”” (John 21:20-23)

“The disciple whom Jesus loved”  - I have a warm fuzzy feeling inside because, like the apostle John, I am also the disciple Jesus loved.  

Because he knew that he was “the disciple Jesus loved”, John positioned himself as close to Jesus as he could get, and he leaned on him.

Because I know myself to be “the disciple Jesus loved”, I will also position myself as close to Jesus as I can get, and I will lean on him.

Crying to Order

So there I was sitting outside my husband’s workplace.  I was early.  I had stopped off at the recycling bins at one of the supermarkets to dispose of three bags of bottles and jars in assorted colours.  I am not a druth.  The bottles had been collected over a few weeks.  There was something almost satisfying about hearing the smash of glass deep in the container and knowing it was a good smash – not of a window or a dropped wine glass on the kitchen floor. 

I was listening to the radio.  They were talking about audition interviews.  Apparently the boy who played Elliot in ET did a superb final stage audition interview.  He was required to cry when the government threatened to take his alien off him.  They played the relevant clip over the radio and agreed that he cried well.

This led to inviting drama teachers to phone into the show and explain how to cry to order.  I thought this was perhaps a little irresponsible.  It might be suitable for auditions for films when there things were necessary but I could see where crying to order could be exploited. 

One method involved doing something to one’s diaphragm.  Something to do with tightening something up. 

The other method involved thinking about a past memory of something really sad.  Of course, you are warned not to go overboard.  Pick a memory that is sad, but not too sad.  You have always got to be in control.  There are a number of actors that cry well – Julia Roberts, Anthony Hopkins and Natalie Portman.

I thought I might have a go at crying to order.  I still had a good ten to fifteen minutes before my husband tumbled out of the office door and into the car.  I didn’t really understand the diaphragm approach but I thought I could come up with a few sad memories. 

My eyes were beginning to water and the first tear was about to fall. 

What did I say about being irresponsible?  I very promptly put my sensible head back on.  Yes, I could probably cry to order and do it really well.  Truth be told, the sad memories are very recent ones that really should not be tampered with.

Just because I don’t work at my husband’s office doesn’t mean that I am a stranger to people working there.   I have bowled with these people. I have quiz-nighted with them. They know me well.  I think they might even fear me!  Behind every great man there is a great woman.  My husband is a great man and that makes me a great woman.

I pictured myself sitting there in the car acting my heart out – weeping buckets.  Then I pictured a knock on the car window and a very concerned person looking in.

“Are you OK, Mel? Shall I go and fetch Joe for you?”

Within minutes there would be a trail of folk to the car with cups of sweetened tea and sympathetic cluckings.  There would be a posse roused to track down the man, woman or child (in my line of business it would most likely be a child somewhere between the ages of 11 and 18 years old) and wreak vengeance.

I kid you not!  It is all entirely probable.

Best dry my tears quickly before anyone spots me weeping. I can’t imagine how embarrassing it will be to explain that I am just crying to order just to prove that I can. 

Sitting there in the car, pulling myself together, I was glad to know that people care about me.  Where I am too distressed to know how to accept the comfort of friends and family there is always God.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction…” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Verse 4 goes on to say “…so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God”.

Too many people in really distressing situations cry alone because we don’t always give them the comfort God gives us.  Let it not be so.

The Heart's Time

I suppose I could make this into a book review but I choose not to.  Ever the one looking for stimuli to stretch my imagination I noticed a book posted on the CLC Facebook page.  The post was all about Lent resources. 

Last year for Lent Joe and I successfully gave up chocolate.  Long car journeys where a Bounty bar had been a strong feature, Bassett’s Jelly Babies had taken centre stage.  With the phrase “Jelly me!” Joe would slip one jelly baby into an outstretched palm when the road was straight or when queue of cars and lorries was particularly slow.  “Uber jelly me!” was for two jelly babies.  Ah…we thrive on these lovely little routines of ours.  This year the Lent intention was to use the car on only essential journeys.  The definition of “essential” changed with the weather conditions.

I went to the bookshop to have a look at the book – “The Heart’s Time” by Janet Morley.  Packed with poetry and reflective commentaries for each day of Lent and Easter it had caught my interest.  The shop didn’t have the book.  It was assumed that I wanted it to be ordered and a couple of days later I was informed “my book” had arrived.  I have a thrifty gene somewhere in my string of chromosomes.  It takes a lot for me to open the purse and splash out on something but I splashed anyway.  I am a sucker for poetry. 

Because I hadn’t had the chance to ready any blurb about the book I had assumed that it was Janet’s poetry and he commentary about when, where and why it was written.  It was a collection taken from many different poets. 

I read the final poem today – “And that will be heaven” by Evangeline Paterson.  I have checked the rest of the pages to see if there are any more but there is just a long list of poets.

Things that come to mind on finishing the book:-

• I finished the book!  I am a great starter of things – knitting projects, crocheting projects, gardening projects and reading books.  I am not always a great finisher.  It wasn’t a hardship to keep reading day by day. I love poetry.  That’s not to say that I loved every poem in the book.

• I now know more poets that I used to.  There have been times, since my book was published last year, when I think about teaching a poetry or creative writing class.  What has always stopped me has been my general ignorance of the subject.  I am a teacher and I am a writer and you would think it was a no-brainer – and it probably is – but the teacher in me and the poet in me are not entirely convinced.  Steps of faith don’t require me to be entirely convinced!  I still like Roger MCGough.  I’ve discovered I like R S Thomas.  Carol Ann Duffy remains a mystery to me.

• I know less about poetry in general than I used to. A review of my poetry led to a comment, made to me personally, that my poetry was simple and was not meaty enough for serious debate.  Basically, had Janet Morley known that I even existed, my poetry wouldn’t have made it into her book. T didn’t react or take offence as I had never thought they would be debated and discussed. Having read the poems Janet selected – I see what the reviewer meant.   I am not sure that I want someone to have to wade through metaphors and similes, to have to speculate on what I wanted to say. But I confess that I am starting to stretch myself on that score.  Reading through the lists of poets at the back of the book I think I might have been thrilled if my name had been there.

• I know more about the structure of poetry than I used to.  Janet slings around the technical terms like the pro she is. I came to the book with a smattering of poetic jargon.  I learned from Stephen Fry how to form iambic pentameters.   I had a vague notion of sonnets and haiku. Now I know much more.

•  I should have followed through with the task at the end of each meditation.  Writers are always looking for things to write about and I didn’t really write that much.  Sometimes the act of writing something down makes it more real and obliges you to do something else – to change something or demonstrate what you have learned in what you do.  I know myself well enough to know how challenging I find that.

• I underlined things.  I felt that some kind of acknowledgement that I had the read the chapters was required.  I felt that I was breaking some unwritten law but equally compelled that it was necessary.  I guess that it makes the book really and truly mine

•  The book was just the right thing for me to be reading through Lent and Easter.  It was like peering through windows at what other people were thinking and experiencing about Easter.

I feel like I have been introduced to a roomful of new friends!  We shall try hard to keep in regular touch.

Resurrection

Longing for home

I’m dressed in flesh for

A little while longer

Patient with its limitations

Its hunger and its hurts

Soon will come the time

When I will dismantle

This framework of bones and

Step out of this canvas of skin

Gently will I smooth them out and

Fold them away

Then clothed in my immortality

I will walk again among the stars

"Love. Loss. Hope: The Art of Easter 2014"

It was the final hour of the "Love. Loss. Hope: The Art of Easter 2014" Exhibition at King’s Fellowship. I was minding the quiet room.  

It wasn’t quite the same quiet room it had been the day before, or the day before that, when I had visited with friends and family.  The walls were in the same place and no one had moved the door but the contents had changed somewhat. 

For just a few days the Breathe Chapel in Merkinch had moved into the quiet room with its benches, wood stump tables and ceramic pathway.  The artwork that usually hung on the walls of the chapel, or littered the bookshelves and window ledges was also there breathing peace and rest into the room.

They were moved back to the chapel and a couple of soft sofas, a round glass table and a lamp took their place.  It wasn’t the same quiet room and no one really stopped and sat down on their way through the exhibition.   The room might have maintained its quietness but without the Breathe Chapel breathing their peace it was just another room.  There was no invitation to linger that had been present then.  I might have hurried through like everyone else in that last hour.

Most of the time, I don’t really get art.  I get the obvious stuff – the still life stuff that looks like it’s supposed to look.  It’s the symbolic stuff that escapes me.  It was enlightening to hear the artists explain their ideas as I listened to the commentary on a MP3 player. 

I really liked a painting by Dot Walker entitled “Gethsemane”.  It was at the very start of the exhibition.  I also thought the screen presentation of the work of Nicholas Mynheer was very moving.

Artists use colour and shape and shade where I would use carefully chosen words and meter and rhyme to put across a message about God.  They use paint or clay or wood where I use words. We are creative creatures and mirror God’s love of variety. 

A lot of work went into the exhibition.  So many people contributed – not just the artists and the poets, but also the huge variety of people who recorded parts of the Easter story so that we could listen as we walked around the exhibition.  Lots of people manned the welcome desk or minded different rooms.  The exhibition was a real demonstration of unity among the individual Christians and different churches here in Inverness.

A lot of prayer also went into the exhibition – my own prayers as I minded the quiet room were that people would reflect on the artwork they had seen and allow it to touch the deepest part of them.

It was a touching testimony to Jesus’ journey from death to life. 

Plaudits must go to Heather Greig, the organiser and curator of the project.  She told me at the end of the day that “next year will be better…” This year was really good.

Inspired by all that art I dug out paper, coloured pencils and a box of soft pastels to create my own piece of art. I don't pretend to have any skill and the recycling bin is full of first, second and third attempts. What I had in mind, but no way of doing it that way, was one of those 3D plastic pictures.  You see two different images when you tilt the picture in different ways. What the enemy might have seen as Jesus' defeat on the cross was always a victory.

 

 

Speaking Peace to This Soul

I am the sea

In endless shifting scenery

Of blue and green

Mine is the untamed rage

Of a wave whipped fury

I am too deep to plumb

I am the boat

Built solid and strong

Of seasoned wood and workmanship

Yet tossed and tumbling

Tilting and turning

I strain to stay afloat

I am the fisherman

Born to the nets

Fostered to sail and to sea

So fixed and firm, yesterday

My hand trembles today

I am afraid

I am Jesus

And I determine the boundaries

Of wind and waves

I still this storm

I steady this boat and

I speak peace to this soul

Shipping Alphabet Flags

Pi and I

It would seem that I share my birth date with p - 3.14 or 14^th March for those who are slow to make the connection.

Some people in our workplace, on this day, challenge each other to recite p to as many decimal places as they can.  The current record stands in the 600s somewhere.  They also wear witty T-shirts featuring p. Someone who heralds from the Western Isles wears “p in the Skye”.  Another wears “Scotch p” whilst a strapping lad has opted for “Pop p”. I think if I went down that road I might have to be “Humble p”.

Yesterday my husband and I were catching up on TV programmes we had recorded but not yet watched.  One of them was “Person of Interest”.  In this particular episode Harold was on his own trying to save someone from either committing a crime or being on the receiving end of a crime committed against them.  He had taken the post of a Maths supply teacher.  The class was just too reminiscent of many that I have known – totally switched off and playing on mobile phones. Harold tried to inspire a little interest without much success.

He wrote p on the board with a string of numbers after it and asked if anyone knew what it was.  There were blank looks – not because they didn’t know but because they didn’t want to betray their interest.

Harold went on to explain that p consists of a string of numbers that never repeat themselves.  If you were to look through all the numbers that could ever be printed off – an infinite number of numbers – lurking somewhere an amongst the numbers would be your birth date, your home telephone number, your social security number and any other number you can think of.

That did capture the imagination of the class.

P and I might share a birth date but we are not twins.  P has a string of never repeating numbers where I always seems to fall into old habits and thought patterns that constantly repeat.  I find myself falling into old traps that I thought I had dismantled and thrown away. I suppose not all habits have to be bad ones but all habits have the potential to become ruts.

Faith is not about following some formula that always works.  It’s not like the never-let-me-down-once cake recipe.

I think faith is more like p.  Every day is a new never-to-be-repeated adventure.  God is the constant factor but everything else, my worship, my prayers, my sense of His presence, should always be new. I may find God in the familiar places but every encounter teaches me something new or something old with a fresh understanding.

Politics

I listened to the radio

While dozing in my bed

A summary of parliament

And all that had been said

I listened to the baying

From a most unruly crowd

And thought that such behaviour

Ought not to be allowed

Nothing spoke of order or

Respect for other views

Words were hurled like boulders

To injure or to bruise

And as they played their savage game

The heart inside me broke

These men of power behaved as if

Life was an empty joke

They cross their “T”s and dot their “I”s

With such a casual air

The safety net that many need

They cut and slash and tear

They live in castles far from me

And feast on gourmet food

For trifling pounds and pennies

The indigent are pursued

There is no honest shepherd who

Will feed and guard the sheep

And stand against the hungry wolf

His flock, in safety, keep

A better world is promised

With all we'll ever need

I fall upon my knees and ask

For God to intercede!

On Parliamentary Debates

It has been one of those weeks that has been tougher than most.  When this little flower-head has been crushed between the cosmic fingers it has not been a pleasant fragrance that has been released into the room.  I know I am only human but there is a huge bit of the divine in me too.  I seem to have missed the opportunity to be a good witness.

It has been the accumulation of lots of little things rather than anything big. To list them would take a few pages and not serve any useful purpose.

The other day was not so good.  I was under the impression that it wasn’t getting-up time.  I thought I had fifteen lazy minutes.  In truth my watch had stopped.  The radio was on.  Radio 4. There are some things that people should not be allowed to eavesdrop on.  What goes on in parliamentary debates falls into that category. 

I listened to the snipping and sniping from the previous day’s parliamentary debate and…how do I put this?  It was frightening.  Someone elected these people – not me – to take control of my country and have authority over things that touched my life.  To say that they were behaving badly was an understatement.  If their mothers had been listening they would have been digging out the soap ready to wash out a few filthy mouths.

They strut and flaunt their feathers

In brash and bold display

And those who see the sordid show

Are drowned in deep dismay

These were grown men acting like squabbling children.  They seemed delighted to score points off one another.  And I thought – we have put these people in control?

It comes as a comfort to me to know there is someone else who has a greater authority over things that touch my life.  The ConDems do not have the final say. They can be overruled.  All it requires is a man or woman of God to pray!