What’s so wrong about serving?

We’ve just got back from a weekend away at a wedding. Friday afternoon flight, Saturday wedding and a Sunday flight home made for a very quick visit – but a lovely one none-the-less.

I was asked to do one of the readings at the wedding. The original plan had been to write and to read a poem for Emma and Joseph, but there was a service written out and coming off script wasn’t encouraged. The passage, not familiar to me, is taken from Ecclesiasticus which sits somewhere in the Apocrypha, that middle section between the Old and New Testaments where most Protestants don’t visit.

Happy the husband of a really good wife;

The number of his days will be doubled.

A perfect wife is the joy of her husband,

He will live out the years of his life in peace.

A good wife is the best of portions,

Reserved for those who fear the Lord;

Rich or poor, they will be glad of heart,

Cheerful of face, whatever the season.

The grace of a wife will charm her husband,

Her accomplishments will make him stronger.

A silent wife is a gift from the Lord,

No price can be put on a well-trained character.

A modest wife is a boon twice over,

A chaste character cannot be weighed on scales.

Like the sun rising over the mountains of the Lord

is the beauty of a good wife in a well-kept house

(Ecclesiasticus 26:1-4, 16-21)

I thought there were one or two lines to take issue with.  It doesn’t really describe a modern marriage, does it? I have always had a bit of a problem with the silent part of anything. The well-kept house would be nice but doesn’t happen very often. Describing anyone in terms of how they benefit another person seems to do an injustice to both partners in a marriage.

I tracked down the missing verses, the bits between v4 and v16.  They describe the kind of wife that a man wouldn’t want to have – the selfish, vain woman who nags him.

I sit somewhere between the two women.

I wasn’t sure I could do justice to the passage. It wasn’t something that I felt I had signed up to myself.  Perhaps my husband has a different view of me as a wife. Maybe I am his joy and he lives out his life in peace because of me. Maybe. If the lenses in my glasses were of an up-to-date prescription I might have seen from my lectern position the eyes of all the women in the room rolling at one line or another. The church, yet again, failing to keep up with today’s world.

“What’s so wrong about serving?” asked God this morning.

Take away the context of a marriage and if people put that kind of thinking into any relationship the world would be a different place.

Why can’t we all be the joy in the lives of other people? Why can’t someone else have years of peace because of the way I live my life as their friend? Do I have to surrender my gladness when the end of the month comes and my wage packet is all spent? Should other people have to live with my misery? “Cheerful of face, whatever the season” – we all respond to a cheerful face.

Silence is not always the option that we choose. We are so quick to defend or justify ourselves.  We feel the need to supply the context for our actions and insist on not being misunderstood. Our silence allows the other person to be free to supply the context and to misunderstand. Yes, there are times when silence is not the right option – there are things that need to be talked about, discussed, air cleared and so on. But there are a lot of things said that need not be.

The “well-trained character” seems to apply more to the dog than to the wife – but let’s not forget that we are all in training for righteousness as Christians.

I do yearn for a “well-kept house” – not particularly for my husband’s benefit but for my own. We all need a place of peace and our surroundings contribute to that.

“There’s nothing wrong with serving,” I admitted, “but why is all down to the wife? Where is the husband’s part in it all?”

“Why not be the instigator?” said God. “Why not set the tenor of the relationship? Why not be the starter of all things good in any relationship? The alternative it to be in a relationship where you have to earn or deserve the good.  The good become something to barter over, to withdraw at times – and that’s not the kind of love that reflects the relationship between Christ and the Church which is what marriage is all about. It’s not the way I do love and it’s not supposed to be the way you do it either.”

Happy the wife of a really good husband;

The number of her days will be doubled.

A perfect husband is the joy of his wife,

She will live out the years of her life in peace.

We should all be the instigators in every relationship we have, setting the tenor, being the starter of all good things – acting rather than reacting.

Praying the Pauses

Yesterday had all the potential to be a great but it didn’t turn out that way.

I like things like Lent – that preparation time of the heart before Easter.  I’m not so bothered about fasting, or giving up chocolate for forty days. Yes, it’s a challenge but with my built in brownie-point mentality it becomes something far too external and physical rather than something inner and spiritual. This year I bought a book “The Little Book of Lent: Daily Reflections from the World’s Greatest Spiritual Teachers” edited by Cannon Arthur Howells. The one contributor who I have recognised so far is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It’s like sitting with the sages and drinking in their wisdom.

Back to yesterday. I like my quiet times in the morning. I am not more alert then than at other times of the day, but I know the day ahead has challenges and I know that the best way to deal with them is to be armed with everything that God puts out on the table. I admit that many of those things are not picked up. They are left on the table and perhaps later on, after some event happens that I could have dealt with better, I rush back into the room to pick it up rather aware that the horse has left the stable and it’s too late to close the door. Yesterday I didn’t make time for my morning quiet time. I didn’t pick up the Lent book. The day would have been so different if I had,

Another contributor I didn’t know was James Catford, Group Chief Executive of the Bible Society among other things. Yesterday, he wrote about William Wilberforce and his intention to “make goodness fashionable” and about how he wanted to begin with his own heart, transforming his thinking, not just his action. James called it “making virtue possible”.

He went on to talk about spiritual disciplines and prayer. Prayer can be slotted into so many small pauses throughout the day. Waiting for the kettle to boil can be a minute or two spent in prayer. Walking up the stairs rather than taking the lift, or even standing in the lift if the walk is too demanding, can be times of prayer. He called them short prayer walks.

Like anything else, this way of praying, catching those pauses during the day, doesn’t come naturally. We don’t drag our attention away from other stuff always to focus on God. That’s why James called to discipline I suppose – because you learn to do it and make it a habit. Three months, apparently, it takes to make a habit. I am almost three months into a Scottish Slimmers diet. Can I presume that healthy eating will become a habit?

Yesterday my day was littered with prayer pauses – or, rather, the potential for prayer pauses. Because I didn’t read the book, it never occurred to me to live my day any differently to any other day. I should be praying my pauses anyway – but sometimes we need to be taught to do these things and I wasn’t taught. The day wasn’t a disaster – don’t get me wrong.  It wasn’t a bad day as days go.  I have had bad days and I know what they are like. Yesterday was not bad but it could have been so much better.

I could have picked up the book later on in the evening but I was reading something else, some fantasy fiction adventure involving dragons. There was a nudging inside from the Spirit – “Read the Lent book! Read the Lent book” and my answer “Just the next chapter! Just the next chapter, please.” So I read the fantasy fiction adventure and not the Lent book.

I took the Lent book to bed with me. I read the chapter and I mourned for my lost day.

Today is a new day and I am praying my pauses – but yesterday is lost to me. All the distractions of the day, the usual and the unusual, robbed me of the opportunity to live a different kind of day.

I am challenging myself, and not quite succeeding, to write a Lent poem a day. This is yesterday’s poem (written today).

My foe proposes

To snatch every moment and

Fill with diversion

Wake up, dear heart, rise

Take back each and every pause

Therein look for God

Putting Pen to Paper with Claire Askew

I was promised “the time, space and support to tap into the writer" in me. I joined a dozen others for a relaxed and informal writing session expecting “some top tips and simple techniques" to get me writing.  I armed myself with a couple of note books, a dozen scraps of paper with half written poems on them, a selection of pens and a determination to leave the biscuits alone.

It was not quite what I expected. I thought I could drop in, focus on the half written poems without the housework lurking in the background, and drop out when I had had enough. I hadn’t planned for a full on creative writing class complete with exercises to do - not that I didn’t totally enjoy it.

Task 1 - We began with a list poem. I have never written one of those before. Claire had written a poem “Catalogue of my grandmother’s sayings”. It was precisely that – a list, alphabetic in nature, of things her grandmother said. The idea that any collection of lines of text can be a poem – I don’t know about that. There are times when I yearn for something more structured – but I’m not the boss of these things.

One of the lines, “Twined as a bag of weasels” was an interesting one. I think that could have been said about me earlier this afternoon – I was very wound up about stuff that had happened during the day.

We worked in small groups to come up with our own list of sayings. Our list was not that inspiring apart from a Gaelic insult that sounded good. I added a couple of my mum’s favourites – “When it’s gone it’s gone” and the whole line of names “Carla, Linda, Sharon, Mel” she addressed me with. Another group came up with “hard as a whore’s heart” which I found appealing but will never use.

Task 2 – the challenge was to pick a saying and use it as a prompt for writing something. I don’t often perform well in these kinds of things. I need an hour or two to simmer the ideas.

“Fly with the crows; get shot with the crows”

She doesn’t approve of my friends. She lives in a world where people wear smart stuff.  She thinks because we wear baggy black jeans, T-shirts with swear words smeared across them and tattoos marching up our necks that we are trouble.

The police cars with their strident sirens are out to hunt down the real criminals. The man at the end of the road, him with the posh car - I know for a fact that he bashes his wife about.  He doesn’t wear baggy trousers or offensive T-shirts.  If he had a tattoo it should be in brand form across his forehead – “wife beater”.

She sees crows where I see eagles. She knows nothing about my friends and doesn’t ask. Take Mickey, for instance. She doesn’t know about his music. Not the boom-boom base stuff I listen to.  He plays proper music on a violin. He can read music. He knows composers and he plays in an orchestra – baggy jeans and everything. She listens to the stuff he plays and she thinks he’s a crow and he’s going to get shot one day.

I blame Clive for all of this.  You’ve probably never met Clive. He goes to some public school and plays cricket. She thinks the sun shines out of his arse but I could tell her a few things about Clive. But I don’t, see. I’m not a crow. I’m an eagle and eagles are noble birds. What good would it do her or me? She wouldn’t listen anyway. She thinks I’m a crow, right?

I fly with eagles – not crows. Eagles don’t get shot.  They soar way above it all. That’s me and my friends soaring way above it all.

The exhibitionist in me couldn’t help but volunteer to read it out. It went down well. It was a complete story they agreed and they liked the juxta-positioning of crows and eagles.

Task 3 – yes, she managed to squeeze in another exercise. The rain was drumming on the roof and I was clock watching. I had long intended to be on my way, collecting the car from the car park before my allotted two hours was up.

The American Sentence is another familiar form of poetry that I have never tried. It is basically a haiku without the line breaks. Instead of a 5, 7, 5 syllable structure it is one sentence of 17 syllables and must tell a story.

Here’s why I was as twined as a bag of weasels.

He exits the room, slamming the door, leaving behind a stunned silence.

It was something I said earlier that day, something I shouldn’t have said, unkind even. I wish at times I hadn’t been taught how to talk. I abuse the privilege far too often. I am supposed to be building people up, not taking a hammer to what looks solid but is often fragile.

She munches on another biscuit choosing to ignore Monday’s scales.

So much for the determination to leave the biscuits alone.

Pol-UK

I climbed on the scales at Scottish Slimmers earlier this evening.  It was a good loss. Two hours later I was eating my way through a bowl of Jaffa cakes! There was no sense of the restraint I had inflicted on myself all week.

Pol-UK should come with a warning – “Writing poetry can damage your health”.

It was my first time at Pol-UK, a writing group led by two Polish sisters which meets every Monday night in the Bike Shed on Grant Street. The Bike Shed isn’t a bike shed though it might have been one in a previous incarnation. It’s a community building for all sorts of groups. I had been in there once before for a Christmas carol singing event.

The group was small and friendly. There was tea, coffee and Jaffa cakes to see us through an evening of creative writing.

It turned out that I was expected. They had been warned I might come. A friend had been there last week and told them that I planned to come. It appears that I am a known entity in the creative writing circles of Inverness.

We talked books for a while. We all seemed to be published authors – although they had managed to break into the “Waterstones” market where despite many meetings with various shop managers, I never made it on to their shelves.

We got down to business.

The prompts were a series of random words – green, Thursday, sweet pea and steam train. What magic we chose to weave with the words was up to us. There was no word limit or apparent time limit – just the four words.

The steam train derailed me. I could work with the other words. I’d had a conversation earlier with my ex-next door neighbour about the conifers in my garden that were knocking down his ex-garden wall. Apparently they were a safety hazard and best taken down. Thursday was a good day for him. The conifers were green. Once the conifers were down I could plant sweet peas – but the steam train didn’t seem to fit into the narrative. Just in case you are curious as to why the ex-next door neighbour is worried about his ex-garden wall – his daughter and son-in-law are my new neighbours and he has a grandson he would rather not find under a pile of bricks.

I was more successful with the second set of words – fire, rowan, April and wardrobe. I wrote a poem.

Spring

New day dawning
Warm April morning
Sun fire burning
Pink sky turning
Winter’s grip fading
Spring wardrobe raiding
Green dress wearing
Round the garden tearing
Rowan tree waking
New leaves making
Light rain falling
Birds in trees calling
Blossom petals drifting
Dark mood lifting

It’s a first draft. The wardrobe is the awkward word. A poem about spring really doesn’t need a wardrobe in it. I didn’t have access to Rhymezone.com either which limited my creativity.

I was impressed with the quality of the writing the group produced. They had subtle nuances and imagery and layers – all the more impressive when English was not their first language. It amazed me how with an economy of words they had written such powerful pieces. There was enough of a narrative to capture the imagination, but enough absence of detail for the reader to fill in the blank spaces and reach their own conclusion. Very much “show not tell” stuff.

I really enjoyed the evening. I enjoyed the opportunity to write. I enjoyed the opportunity to critique the work produced. I really enjoyed the Jaffa cakes. My intention is to go back again. I shall arm myself with fresh fruit, or veggies and a savoury dip or something and sit as far away as possible from the biscuit bowl as I can.

Born into Community

There’s a school on the other side of the road, on the far side of the field next to our house. Interesting things are going on. There are piles of soil, a temporary fence, diggers and bulldozers and a sign that says “Keep Out! Building Site!” The school is over-subscribed, I think, with more children than they have space to accommodate so maybe they are building an extension. If I was a pupil there I would spend far too much time watching the builders.

I walked past the fence and the notice earlier today when I went to fetch the Sunday newspapers. I thought of other building sites and other notices. The “Keep Out” sign never really did its job. As kids we pushed our way through hedges to get onto a building site. They were building the telephone exchange in a nearby patch of scrub land. We explored the pile of pipes and paddled through muddy puddles.

I am my own personal building site, a work in progress, not yet the finished product. I would love to put up a fence and slap on a notice that tells people to keep out. Weeks, months or perhaps even years later I would like to dismantle the fence and present the polished person that is me – no piles of bricks, no cement bags or scaffolding. I would like to testify that, yes, I had a challenge, and it’s all sorted now. Feel free to take pictures and admire to new extension!

But God isn’t like that. He doesn’t like the fence I have put up and tells me to take down the notice. He doesn’t want people to keep out. He invites them in – friends, family and foes. He gives them the keys to the bulldozer. He lets them operate the cement mixer. He rolls out the blueprints on a trestle table and directs their work.

He insists that they speak into my life and instructs me to speak into theirs. Sometimes I cannot see, or will not admit to, weakness and flaws. My perception of His truth is coloured and tainted by hang-ups and short-sighted vision. I don’t know everything I need to know – he gives truth to others to pass on to me.

He never intended that I should be the lone wolf or the solitary hermit I yearn to be. The Christian life is lived out in community.

Sometimes we need to be reminded that we are a body and that the “you” of scripture is plural, not singular. We need each other to grow and to flourish and the journey of faith can never be personal or private.

Gone -  the first person singular in me!

Renounced - the hermit I’m inclined to be

For “him” and “her”, and “they” and “us” I see

Yes, born am I into community

Commissioned

first there’s Him,

mighty in the heavens

King on a lofty throne

revered by angels

Holy God

glory unconcealed

spilling everywhere

then there’s me

unpicked in His presence

dismantled beneath His gaze

a man undone

now purified by fire

purged of guilt

sin paid for

And last - there’s purpose

Who will He send?

Who will go for Him?

Without pause, debate or reservation

I step forward

Here am I 

Send me

And I go

Hand on the Plough - Eyes Looking Backward

“Listen, if your hand is on the plough but your eyes are looking backward, then you’re not fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:63)

I have had very few up close encounters with ploughed fields. I remember a cross country run. It was a real cross country run with fields and hedges and everything. The school I attended was a rural village school with all but a village’s worth of pupils being bussed in every morning. We had something like seventy minutes to complete the route but how many miles I have no idea. A ploughed field was part of the route. We didn’t run across it by any means but the plough had gone right up to the edge. It sticks out in my memory because somewhere in that field my trainer fell off. They were called plimsolls in those days. The plimsoll turned upside down and with the mud on the sole the same colour as the rest of the field I couldn’t find it. I limped the rest of the way home coming in a long way last. I limped alone.

The word yesterday in church was very challenging. It was about the excuses we come up with not to do the things God us given us to do. It was about putting things off to a more convenient time.  For me, tomorrow is the day when I will be busy doing things for God and “when I retire”. We have no sense of urgency and think there will always be another day.  We don’t live as if this day, today, might be our last day.

We think we are too busy. If we are too busy to do the things God asks us to do then, yes, we are too busy. We need to start shaving off a few things from the to-do list. There is always something that we allow to get in the way. The things we really want to do we make the time to do – it’s just that some of those things are not the things that God wants us to really do.

My top excuse is that there is probably someone out there who could do the job better. I expressed such a view to God once. His answer was, “Yes, there are a hundred people that could do the job better.” Before I moved on to suggesting He talk to one of those hundreds, God continued, “Yes, they could do the job better BUT they won’t do it the way you would do it and that’s the way I want it done.”

My second top excuse is “if I do this…I’m going to have to keep doing this…my life is going to change and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.” I love my comfort zone. It’s not that comfortable really but I fool myself. The boat in the storm wasn’t that comfortable, but the disciples fooled themselves that it was safer than the sea, where Jesus was.  I should know that it’s not really about me at all and what I can or can’t do, and how many times I have to do it or not.  It’s about what God can do through me.

My third top excuse is “If I do this and it all goes horribly wrong – then what?” The fear of failure is deeply ingrained. Better, it seems, not to have tried at all than to have tried and failed. We can swap stories about how many lightbulbs it took before Thomas Edison got it right – but such stories don’t always mean that we will chance it.  But if there are mistakes – they’re to be learned from and the mistake is never that big that God didn’t see it coming and He doesn’t have a plan to deal with it.

We rob ourselves when we find something other than the God-things to do. It is in the doing that the learning and the growing happens – not in the talking-about or the making-notes about. What did Peter learn about Jesus when he stepped out of the boat? What did he learn that the other disciples didn’t learn? What do we miss out on learning when we cling, white-knuckled, to the side of the boat instead of answering the call to walk on water? We squander the opportunity to learn a truth we never knew before – that truth we could have learned that would have set us up for the next challenge.

Together in the storm

Will you follow me

And walk on water?

Will you leave the security of the boat

Cast aside your comfort

And join me in the storm?

Will you believe

As you commit yourself

To the first step,

That I have called you

To walk beside me,

That the wind and the waves

Won’t swallow you?

Will you keep your eyes

Fixed on my face alone,

Not allowing your gaze to wander

And leave the boat behind?

For I will hold you

Firm as a rock

On the shifting waves

And I will steady you

Strong and confident

In the whistling winds

I have made the impossible possible

And as You and I

Walk together in the storm

You will demonstrate my glory

And the invisible God

Will be made visible in you

Come

Walk on water

With me.

Picasso Mel

Pastel Shaded Words

I admit that I am not an artist.

I took “O” level art to be with a best friend but the Van Gough in me refused to surface. At the end of the year our best pieces took up residence on the walls of the art corridor. My friend’s art work was gazed at in awe. People reached out hands to grab an apple from the bowl of fruit.  They gazed into the eyes of a portrait and thought they could see the person’s soul.

My part of the wall? Averted eyes and low mumbles – yes, they really could have done better, blind-folded with both arms tied behind their backs and wielding the paintbrush between their toes. I make no bones about my apparent lack of talent.

And yet…

Yesterday the Poetry in Motion folk were at the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery. Katy Dove’s art was on display – animations, paintings, drawings, prints and music.  Her art is modern.

What makes her art art? My coloured blobs and lines back then wouldn’t have been out of place next to hers. My art was scorned and hers are shown in an exhibition! Why is that? What makes her an artist? And me…not an artist?

I can understand the animation thing and the music thing – I can’t do those things. The blobs and the lines – that’s my style. I’m not jealous of her notoriety.  I am just genuinely curious about what makes one picture art and another not art.

Katy studied psychology. Part of her art work was about how colour and shape affect the conscious mind. Dulux worked that one out – rooms painted blue make us shiver.  One room I once inhabited was painted yellow.  I dare you not to smile in a yellow room. Mood and colour, mood and music – I can see where the psychology comes in. Her inspiration for music came from nature and natural sound – a bicycle wheel turning, a bird chirping and the water-tumble of a brook.

The task was to write something inspired by the exhibits.

The first half dozen pictures contained the words “Yes”, “Look”, “Listen” and “Welcome”. The letters fell down the page accompanied by swirls of colour.  The shades were mostly pastel colours.  Some of the brushstrokes were very light, some of the a little heavier. None of the shapes seemed to have a definite shape or form. Sometimes it seemed as if water had been dropped onto some colours and the shapes blurred at the edges. I don’t think there was ever an “I don’t like that” moment for me, but neither was there a “Gosh, that’s incredible!” moment either. It was all too pastel coloured.

The phrase “pastel shaded words” came to mind and a poem was born.

Pastel Shaded Words

we speak to one another

with pastel shaded words
light and insubstantial
that tumble and drift
whispered, then blown away
we grant each other permission
to cut and colour
bold, intense, anaemic, pale
to fashion and shape
what’s agreeable to the ears
absolutes watered down and smudged
not dark enough to offend
not crisp enough to compel
and so one day we
wake to silence

After a little time spent writing, we shared our poems. Even in their first draft form the poems were amazing. My response each time was “I wish I’d written that.”

To step out of the busyness of life, to find space to look, to gaze, to dream a little – we need that. And to respond, to acknowledge that we were there and we saw – that’s what poetry is all about.

May I Introduce You to a Friend?

Last night I witnessed someone being born into the Kingdom of God. I presumed that since he was at a church prayer meeting he knew God.  He admitted that he knew about God, facts and information, but he didn’t know God himself.

I was like that once – knowing a lot about God.  I had worked my way through Sunday School, First Confession, First Communion and all the rituals of church attendance.  For the most part the facts and the information that I gleaned about God were wrong.

Let me be very clear – God doesn’t possess a black book.  He doesn’t observe your life and make notes on everything you do.  There are not two columns of good stuff and bad stuff.  He doesn’t possess a big stick that leans against the throne ready to be snatched up at a moment’s notice to beat you about the head with. That’s not God.  That’s what the enemy tells you about God and what most people believe.

I was born into the Kingdom a long time ago. I wasn’t born in a prayer meeting but possibly the following day because of what I had heard in a prayer meeting. It was not so much the words as the approach of a group of young people into the throne room of God that affected me. They didn’t keep God at arm’s length or seem aware of the black book I thought was there. They came as children excited to be with their Father. There wasn’t a different vocabulary or a different “holy” voice. It was as if they had crawled up onto his lap and were filling Him in with the details of their days.

This was the God I had been looking for.

Two of my friends were guitar-wielding, harmony-singing, fresh-scrubbed, make-up-absent, beaming-for-Jesus teenagers. I suppose it was a friendship-once-removed – they were friends of a friend. They were there when I was born into the Kingdom. They had been singing a song for a long as I had known them (about a week). I was born into the kingdom to a backing track. The lyrics and snatches of the melody have stayed with me over the years.

May I Introduce You to a Friend?

By Jamie Owens-Collins

VERSE 1:

May I introduce you to a friend?
He’s been waiting patiently to meet you
A friend on whom you can depend
His love will comfort and complete you

CHORUS 1:

How long have you been searching
Groping aimlessly for something
To fill the emptiness inside
Someone in whom you can confide
Well, he’s here, waiting for you
He’s waiting

 VERSE 2:

When you’re troubled filled with fear
Simply reach out and he’ll guide you
When all others disappear
Oh he will still be there beside you

CHORUS 2:

How long have you been searching
Groping aimlessly for something
To fill the emptiness inside
Someone in whom you can confide
Well, he’s right here, he’s waiting for you
He’s waiting … Meet Jesus

Can I tell you – it’s true? Jesus really is waiting and He is everything the song says He is.

Niall

Here's something to make us think. Thanks to my sister, Sharon, for her guest post:-

It’s always nice to hear from people who have used the services at Horses for Causes. One autistic boy came for therapeutic riding. Niall (not his real name) was not very confident.  As with most people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders, he came with a long catalogue of problems, issues and difficulties. The team at Horses for Causes became firm friends with Niall’s parents and siblings.  We’ve always kept in touch.

Recently Niall returned not for therapeutic riding but for another equine assisted activity.  This time he was working from the ground. His mum told me that Niall had become upset over an incident at school. He had become quiet and withdrawn because he could not understand or process what had happened.

Two of his best friends at school had been fighting.  They lied to a dinner lady to get out of trouble. One of the boys later confessed to his dad that he had lied. The father told him not to worry and that it was ok.  Niall’s world is black and white. Social stories don’t cut it. There’s no acceptance of “sometimes people lie”. His mum tried to explain this to her son but Niall became upset. He didn’t know if he could trust his friends. Perhaps they would lie to him too. Perhaps as they got older they would get into serious trouble. A parent shouldn’t say it’s ok to lie.

I spoke to a co facilitator and discussed ways in which we could help Niall. It was a complex situation but, as ever, we managed to pull something out of the bag.

The incident had happened before Christmas 2016. We were now in the middle of January 2017. To go over the event was meaningless. Although I am not from a mental health training background I am aware of cognitive behavioural therapy. We decided to look at thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Why do events have such an impact on our feelings and why we react to them as we do?

In the session we laid a triangle of poles on the ground in a small exercise pen. Our equine aid was Dusty, a pony with lots of character. Our other visual aids were a handful of facial icons, similar to those smileys on i-phones. We printed off colourful smiles, sad faces and angry expressions on A4 paper and laminated them.

We asked Niall if he could recall a happy memory and asked him to choose some faces that reflected how he felt at that particular time.  He placed the faces on the sides of the triangle. Each side of the triangle represented thoughts, feelings and behaviour. All went well.  Then we asked about a sad moment. Niall found it difficult to explain.  He wanted mum to talk for him. I suggested to my co facilitator and Niall’s mum that we all come up with a sad or not so happy scenario. In turn we spoke to Niall and each other, sharing our “sad” stories.  We talked about our feelings - how it made us feel and what we did with that feeling. We were careful about our “sad” stuff choices. We avoided some issues like bereavement. After each person had spoken, Niall hugged the person perhaps assuming it would make things better.

While all this was happening we noticed Dusty was trying to eat a holly bush. Niall decided that it wasn’t very nice and Dusty should not eat.  He went over, tapped him on his side and told him not to eat it. Surprisingly, Dusty stopped eating and followed Niall away from the holly bush. In any equine assisted learning session we are always looking at what the horse does and we think about how it relates to our own observations. Dusty looked at the triangle. The smile icon caught his attention. He walked around the triangle, then walked through it and trampled over some of the laminated sheets. Niall laughed and we joined in.

“Dusty has just walked all over my thoughts and feelings,” said Niall.

Dusty returned to the holly bush and I had a light bulb moment!!!!

You know, we can guide our friends away from trouble but what they choose to do is entirely up to up to them. As much as we would like to we cannot stop them doing harmful things. It was a simple message and you didn’t have to be a young boy with autism to understand it.

“He’s a bit like my friend.”

Thank you, Dusty.

Psalm 8:1 Amended

You paint the heavens with Your glory

And spell out Your splendour in the stars

Angels kneel and cry out “Holy! Holy! Holy!”

Nature dances and sings Your praises

Even the enemy through gritted teeth calls You “God”

But the man You are mindful of

The man You’ve made a little lower than the angels

Crowned with glory

Holding the works of Your hands in his

The man with all things under his feet

That man…is silent

He insists the frame he inhabits

The world and all it contains

Is the only reality

Lord of Mercy, God of Grace

Tilt his gaze

Let him look up and see what is beyond

David and the Multiple Smaller Foes

Six days into the New Year and I am following a series of devotions on the book of Psalms, “The Secret Place” by Jerry Rankin.

God and I had a curious conversation the other day.  It was all about dunking teabags. It began with a question – “Mel, why don’t you use your teapot more often?” It is not a huge teapot – enough perhaps for two cups and top-ups. I insist on warming the teapot first – a little hot water swilled around and emptied out before dropping in the teabags and filling with water. And there you have it – it all takes time. Most of the time I’m making tea for one and it is more convenient to dunk a teabag. God continued – “I think you should use the teapot and let the tea brew properly. You need to slow down.” We weren’t just talking about tea – there is always some deeper thing with God.

With any book of devotions it is easy to get into the habit of reading the passage that has been assigned to the day, reading the devotions, reading the prayer at the end of the page and ticking a box somewhere in the head to say you have done it. I am trying not to do that. I am trying to treat the whole thing like making tea with the teapot – slowing down, lingering and waiting for things to steep a little.

Psalm 5 found me sitting in a café with my Bible, a note book and Jerry.

It seemed to me as I read through the psalm, incredible that David, the man who slew Goliath with a single stone, could have been brought to the point of such distress. Weeping? Dissolving the couch with his tears? He defeated Goliath! It seemed to me that in defeating Goliath, a giant, that all other normal sized foes would be a piece of cake in comparison.

But, perhaps it is the nip, nip, nipping away over weeks, months and years that makes the numerous smaller foes that much more difficult to deal with. Maybe those single giants are easier to dispatch than the multiple smaller ones – the one after another, after another that wears you down.

It is not a sign of weakness to reach that place where you have run out of resources and appeal to God for help. You are exactly where God wants you – as close to Him as you can get, leaning on Him, looking to Him for victory.

“I did it my way!” isn’t in the Christian song-book. God fights on our behalf so that we can’t say we did it our way. Only God gets the glory.

David was confident after calling on God for help that His enemies would be dealt with.

“All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish; they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame.” Ps 5:10

He didn’t wait until the enemies were dispatched and disposed of before he began to praise God. The very fact that he had laid it before God was enough. His prayer was as good as answered.

I am already on the victory side. The real enemy, the one that lurks behind all the others, has been defeated by Jesus, at the cross.

Things I Should Not Say

I should not say

My flame was extinguished

By raging wind and storm blast

Can I only burn

When clouds are soft and skies are blue?

I should not say

My faith cannot blossom

Under scorching sun and baked earth

Can I only flourish

When rain is gentle and sunshine is kind?

I should not say

My spirit grows cold

In autumn’s aging and winter’s bite

Can I only thrive

When springtime frolics and summer gleams?

Then I call this to mind, Lord

Yours is the flame ignited within

Yours is the seed stirred to life

Yours is the breath I inhale

I align my life

According to Your seasons

Behtlehem Choir

A melody not heard before
Tumbles over hill and moor
A song of peace that stirs the air
News from heaven angels share

They sing of peace so rich and deep
For those who mourn, who grieve, who weep
They sing of new life - ours to claim
An end to sorrow, guilt and shame

They sing of hope that never died
Of God’s vast love that dwells inside
They sing of freedom, chains that break
Of new adventures now to take

They sing of unrelenting joy
That starts its journey with a boy
He’s heaven clothed in earthly skin
Who ends a curse for us to win

They sing to us, yes, you and me
Ignite in us eternity
And birth in us a thirst for more
Of all that falls through heaven’s door

Be still and listen to their song
Learn the words and sing along
God has stepped into our world
Into our lives salvation hurled

The Sin, The Outcry and the God who Comes Down

“Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.” Genesis 18:20-21

An outcry so great and a sin so grievous – this potent combination draws God from His throne to “go down and see.”

Let’s just remind ourselves of what the sin so grievous was.

“As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done. Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.”  Ezekiel 16:48-50

“…arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” This is God speaking. Ask any of us about the detestable things and not helping the poor doesn’t come instantly to mind.

Who made the outcry? That is what interests me.  You see, without the outcry being so great, the outcry about the sin so grievous, God would not have visited Abraham to involve him in what happened next. OK I admit He might have come down just for the meal and the baby talk, but one gets the impression that it was the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah that drew Him down.

The dictionary defines an outcry as “a strong and usually public expression of protest, indignation, or the like, a crying out or a loud clamour”. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious indignant protesters in the story.

Does it have to be a person? I’ve heard one or two speakers talk about guardian angels of specific towns or cities. Could it be an angel that cried out about Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin?

What about creation? The whole of creation was tied up with Adam and Eve and fell foul of the Fall and the curse that followed. Maybe nature was fed up of being twisted and corrupted.

Maybe it wasn’t an audible cry at all. Maybe it was a heart cries of tears and sorrow, empty stomachs and disappointed hopes of the poor and the needy – the ones the arrogant, overfed and unconcerned wouldn’t help.

God is moved enough to visit when someone protests so strongly about a sin that cannot be lived with or tolerated. 

Today there are outcries so great about sins so grievous.  And God still comes - in church and people delegated form. His church, His people are the ones He sends to respond to the outcry. It challenges me to think about how I react to outcries. How loud does it have to get before I actually hear it? Do I rank outcries according to how great I think they are before I respond? Do I think that someone else will deal with it? Or do I help?

I am also challenges about my own out-crying. I was talking with a group of young people this week about why we find it so difficult to ask for help. We have this idea that asking for help is a sign of weakness. Society demands we cope and frowns on those who are struggling.

Christmas is about God coming down to a whole human race that isn’t coping. The sin so grievous is in trying to live a fruitful life without God – the failure to help the poor and needy being just one of many symptoms of life lived without God.  In Christ, God deals with it.

Where Abraham in his bargaining with God stopped at ten righteous men needed to save the city, God stops at one. His One Righteous man saved us all. God comes to each of us, in Christ, through His Spirit.