The Essential Difference Between Dr Who and God

I sat down last night to watch the final instalment of the Torchwood series that has been showing throughout the week. It was compelling viewing, but I have to admit that it was dark and very disturbing. It seemed to portray the very worst of humanity, particularly from those who make the decisions that affect everyone else. I hated the way they decided which ten percent of the nation’s children would be offered up the aliens so save the other ninety percent.

I seem to remember that in the fifties and sixties the films about alien invasions that were around were not really about alien invasions at all, but commentary on political matters. The aliens were communists, or asylum seekers, or refugees. You just needed to decipher the code. One wonders what the axe the writer was really grinding – the unfairness of school league tables, and how their use can be abused perhaps.

One scene that stood out for me was when Gwen and the children were hiding in the barn. She was making a last film for future generations to find that would explain what went wrong with the world. Talking of Jack’s friend, the Doctor (akka Dr Who), she wanted to know why he wasn’t there. The way she understood it was that the Doctor turned up in the bad times to rescue people. He was there when all hope seemed to be extinguished. He dropped in from nowhere, pointed his sonic screwdriver at the bad aliens and saved the day.

So why not this time? Perhaps this time, Gwen mused, they didn’t deserve saving.

Earlier on the government had decided that there were some people who were potential parasites in society. There were some children who would never have a positive contribution to make. They would be the ones on benefits, the ones who couldn’t get a job, the ones who were more than likely to end up in prison. There were the ones who were worth less than others, the ones they could afford to give up on.

How opposite to the gospel! The truth is that none of us is worth saving – regardless of our potential earning capacities, our talents and abilities, or the lack of them. We love to construct league tables and make comparisons. We love to line ourselves up and shove other people to the back of the queue. It makes us feel better to think that we are better than someone else.

Gwen thought there was some requirement for Dr Who to rescue everyone, because that is what he did. In the same vein, I often think that God ought to drop in more often and intervene. There are so many times when I feel that I am on my own, that the help I expected hasn’t turned up, even at the eleventh hour!

Sometimes it is tempting to draw the same conclusions as Gwen – I don’t deserve saving. I am so glad that faith tells me that isn’t so, in capital letters, written in think black maker pen, in permanent ink. OK I do not deserve saving, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t get saved! If it was ever about who deserved what, none of us would be around. God’s grace gives me what I don’t deserve – a vibrant relationship with the Living God, oft-times incomprehensible, sometimes silent, frequently unpredictable.

I don't always get rescued the way I want to be rescued, or when, but I do get rescued at the very end of the story.

My Day of Tambourines and Dancing

“Again you will take up your tambourines and go out to dance with the joyful.” Jeremiah 31:4

This small sentence caught my eye as I was reading through Jeremiah 31 because it contains so much promise and so much hope.

I actually own two tambourines. One is a small one, a kind of tourist souvenir of a tambourine that hangs on the wall in the down stairs toilet.

The other is a real musician’s tambourine. It was on one of my Christmas lists long ago. I was a part of the worship team in the church and lamenting that I didn’t play an instrument, apart from my voice, which on a good day, was passable. I had the heart for worship but had not yet developed the vocal chords to match. I thought that a tambourine would make me feel that I had something musical to contribute. My sense of rhythm turned out to be as hit and miss as the vocal chords. It isn’t the easiest of instruments to wield, not made to measure and a little too heavy for my wrist.

Just lately there hasn’t been that much that prompts me to pick up a tambourine and join in a dance with the joyful. I am more likely to be comfort eating in the café exchanging woeful tales with anyone that will offer a shoulder, or a box of tissues.

That’s what I meant about promise. God doesn’t offer empty words as comfort and encouragement. He knows that there will be a day for tambourines and dancing, because He stands outside of time and He sees it.

He sees what I cannot see right now and tells me that my day for tambourines and dancing is just around the corner.

(Picture from www.nataliedee.com)

Girlie Grunts

I don’t normally watch the girlies at Wimbledon. Mostly it’s the grunting and the squealing that puts me off. It just seems very unnecessary. Also most games seem to be over very quickly, with the winner winning very easily…well, one would assume it was an easy win with 6-1 6-2.

I watched the semi final between Serena Williams and Elena Dementieva. My husband has taken a liking for the other Russian…Safina, so I was killing time waiting for that game to begin.

I suppose if you watch something long enough you are bound to get involved. As much as admire the William’s sisters, I like it when they get beat. And it looked like Serena was getting beat at one stage.

There was one point in the match where the grunting and squealing transformed into something else. Whereas it had just been irritable background noise, in one game where Serena was serving and it was a deuce battle, the grunting almost became snarls and hisses. If you could have translated the grunts I really think a dialogue was going on between them across the net as the ball thundered past.

“I’ll be blowed if you are going to take this point off me!”

“You try and take this point and I will scratch your eyes out!”

“This is my game, get your stinking paws off it!”

“Take that (whack) and that (whack) and that (whack) and there’s more where they came from!”

“Over my dead body!”

I don’t think I have ever heard anything so intimidating. For that single game there was so much ferocity in the grunts and the whacks. It was scary. If I had have been on the receiving end…I would have run away. I would not have snarled back!

I was thinking about the verse in Romans 8:26 “but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”

When I groan it tends to be pitiful stuff. Things are going wrong. I am on the brink of tears. I am feeling frustrated. It’s like I am on the verge of some kind of breakdown.

Imagine then if the groans of the Holy Spirit are like those girlie groans in the tennis match, those really intimidating ones. Imagine that you could translate them.


“You (as in the enemy) are not going to snatch this victory away from Mel!”

“You try and take away her healing and I will scratch your eyes out!”

“This is her time with God, get your stinking paws off it!”

“Take that (whack) and that (whack) and that (whack) and there’s more where they came from!”

“Because of Christ’s resurrected body you will not prevail!”

Wow! So much ferocity, so much intimidation...and the enemy on the receiving end of them runs away!

What does Grace Look Like?

“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:16

It’s a well known verse. You may be one of those people who learned it by heart when you were a child.

I have to confess that when I have read this verse I have always focused on “approach the throne of grace with confidence”. I have always thought of the attitude in which we come.

Once while on holiday in Paris, I was approached by a beggar. That’s not entirely true. The beggar didn’t do any approaching at all. I suppose I did the approaching since the beggar was in my path. She was kneeling on the floor before me with her hands held out in supplication. I was moved to compassion and thought that no one ought to be in that position, kneeling before another person, hands held out. There was something about the posture of the woman that stirred my spirit.

Thinking later about it, I was glad that I do not need to approach the throne of God like that…on my knees, my eyes to the ground, holding out my hands in supplication. That is not confidence or boldness.

This morning, it was the end of the verse that captured by attention, the bit that I know is there but don’t really look at “that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

“Grace to help us” isn’t an escape hatch to avoid the troubles we go through. Too often what I am looking for is a way out rather than a way through the difficult times that I am going through. I want not to feel so torn up inside. I don’t want my brother to be have cancer, or to think about another funeral on the horizon. I want stop crying. I want my sunny days without clouds.

God doesn’t offer that. He offers grace to help us in our time of need.

What does that look like? We had a visit from a friend of ours last night. She and her husband have some kind of time share arrangement. An apartment near Feungirola, where my brother lives, is available to them for a week in July. They have offered the apartment to us if we want it, so that we can spend time with my brother.

That’s what grace looks like!

Approaching the Throne of Grace

Despite this being a weekend, my body was in wake-up mode. Last Sunday we were talking in church about being people who spent time with Jesus. When Peter and John came up before the Jewish council, what set them apart from just being uneducated men was the fact that they had spent time with Jesus. Too often, even in my quiet times, I am not spending time with Jesus, but just ticking a mental box somewhere, that I have “done” it.

I was reading the end few verses of Hebrews 4, about Jesus our High Priest, and the confidence with which we can enter the throne room of God. I was reminded of a FW challenge entry I wrote based on how Aaron, the first High Priest, entered into the Most Holy Place.

Into the Most Holy Place

Aaron rolled over, the faint light of dawn seeping through the window. The space where his wife would normally be sleeping was cold and empty and her lingering fragrance was absent. Soon the Day of Atonement would be over and their enforced celibacy would come to an end. Today he would enter the Most Holy Place making a sin offering for the people.

Aaron Phillips rolled over, the shrill siren of the alarm clock drumming through his head. Rubbing his forehead, he tried to massage away the beginnings of a headache. He couldn't remember how many bottles of beer he had drank last night. Sighing, he rolled on to his stomach. Getting up on a Sunday always seemed to be such a battle. He tried to remember last week's sermon - just in case the pastor asked!

Aaron stood in the sanctuary, a bowl of clean cold water beside him on the floor. The water against his skin felt refreshing. As he washed every area of his body he reminded himself that he belonged wholly to God. Reaching over, he carefully stepped into the linen clothes, inhaling their freshness. He tied the linen sash about his waist, and patiently wound the turban around his head. He flexed his shoulders, ready for the burden of the ephod.

The shower sprayed hot water in a power jet against Aaron's skin. He lathered a palm full of shower gel into a white froth and smothered his chest arms. He hummed tunelessly, trying to remember the songs from the live band that had been playing last night in the club. Wrapped in a towel, he opened the wardrobe door, flicking his way through the hangers. The dark blue weave of his suit would best highlight the blue flecks of his hazel eyes.

The bull stood patient and placid as Aaron ran his fingers down its legs, checking that there were no imperfections. He could feel the strength of its muscles beneath the hide. He imagined the swift slash of the sharp knife against the bull's throat, the warm rush of blood spilling over his fingers and gushing into the bowl. The ram was less placid ,rather skittish, shuffling about on its hooves and Aaron knew that it would take a lot of his strength to hold it still.

Aaron upturned the cushions on the sofa searching for his Bible. A glass of orange juice held at a hazardous angle drizzled a sticky trail down green leather. He yelled to his wife, asking her if she had seen his Bible anywhere. He pulled books from the bookcase selecting the ones with likely looking spines - anything with black leather and gold writing. Suddenly Aaron remembered that the Bible was probably still in the boot of the car, nestled up against his tool kit.

Aaron walked towards the entrance of the most Holy Place. Lighting the incense in the basket, he watched a cloudy mass fill the place where he stood, and twitched his nose at the strong fragrance. It was essential that he wait long enough for the smoke to fill the room before he entered. Aaron knew well enough that no amount of smoke could hide him from the awesome God, but the smoke was there to remind him that he could not look upon the face of the Almighty God and live. Just before he stepped into the smoke filled room, Aaron checked the rope tied about his ankle. If anything were to go wrong, and God found cause to destroy him, at least his body could be pulled out of the room. Aaron felt his heart shiver fearfully as he entered into the Most Holy Place to an encounter with the Living God.

Aaron pulled neatly into the last car parking space outside the church. He dismissed the thought that he aught to show consideration to the couple following behind him. He didn't recognise them and thought they must be visitors. Aaron glanced at his watch, calculating the possible timing of the meeting, hoping he would be home for the start of the game. He ran his hand over the gleaming red bonnet of his car, thinking it might be an idea to take it over the car wash later this afternoon. There was a slight chill in the air and Aaron shivered as he opened the church door. He never entered the Most Holy Place and missed an encounter with the Living God.


(I am glad that we don't need to enter God's presence the way that Aaron, the High Priest, had to. But neither should we enter with the mind-set of my character Aaron Philips)

Hands Held High

I was reading this morning from the account in Exodus of Joshua fighting the Amalekites down in the valley while Moses stood on a hill with the staff of God in his hands held high. I wondered if Joshua could actually see Moses. Come to think of it, it doesn’t matter whether Joshua could see the hill or not. In the midst of the swing and clash of steel he couldn’t really afford for his eyes to stray to a hill behind him. A glance backwards to the hill might have been enough time for the fatal thrust of the enemy blade to kill him.

Did Joshua know what was happening on the hill? Had he made the connection between what Moses was doing on the hill, and how the battle was turning for him, or for his enemies? I suspect not, seeing as the account ends with God telling Moses to write down what happened and to make sure that Joshua gets to hear it all.

Joshua might have thought it was all up to him and his troops to save the day. Those times when they were winning might have been just because of effort on their part, of a second wind blowing in their direction. The times when they were loosing might have been down to weariness on their part as they had been fighting for the better part of the day. It is only in hindsight that he can join all the dots together to see the picture of God’s intervention.

Sometimes I think that I must be like Joshua right now. My battle isn’t physical one. Much as I would like to have a flesh and blood enemy that I could see, and a gleaming sword to swing at them, that’s not the case.

I think that my enemy is a big black hole of sorrow that would love to just suck me in. The Amalekites appear to me as dark thoughts, or a sense of helplessness or a wave of anger at the way in which what is happening to my family is unfair and God chooses not to intervene to stop it all.

I picture another man with His hands held high.

”Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” Romans 8:34

There is nothing to say what posture Jesus has adopted as He intercedes for me, but just as Moses stood on a hill with his hands raised high, interceding for Joshua on the battlefield below, something in my spirit tells me that Jesus is standing with His hands held high in heaven, before the throne of God. He doesn’t hold a staff like Moses, but clearly visible are the scars on His palms which remind God that Jesus died for me, that He has a claim upon my life.

I can’t see this particular hill, or this particular man. Like Joshua I am too busy with the clamour of the battle, but He is there nonetheless. And with him rests my victory.

The Hug

Have you ever felt in need of a hug? It has to be the right kind of hug! Too many people who hug me are too tall and I find myself almost nestled beneath their armpits. We are not like two jigsaw pieces that slot neatly together. I want to be able to rest my chin on someone’s shoulders but to do that they would need to be kneeling down!

I dreamt about a hug one night. I am not even sure that it qualified as a dream because I wasn’t quite asleep at the time.

I had been thinking about my brother. I wasn’t asleep. The rumble from the air conditioning unit on the wall was keeping me awake, as was the slightly louder rumbling from my husband stretched out next to me.

I was thinking that my brother was probably lying awake too. The tumour on his back doesn’t really allow him to lie down in a comfortable position. Sometimes the morphine has worn off and he the pain is gnawing away at the edges, or not so much gnawing as biting viciously.

I thought to God that it would be nice if someone could just hug him so that he would feel better. Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, if I could just hug him and some of my strength could just pass through my skin and through his and into his body and just ease the soreness he was feeling?

I had a picture in my head. It was as if I was watching. I saw God give my brother a hug. It wasn’t an embarrassing pat on the back, and over and done with in as short a time as possible. It was a solid hug, and through it, God imparted strength and comfort. There was nothing awkward in the giving or the receiving.

As God hugged my brother, I couldn’t help but smile. I felt more at peace than I had done for a long while.

God’s a good hugger!

The Time We Have Left

There is one prayer meeting, and I have been to few, that really sticks out in my mind. I suppose that if I could describe it in one word it would have to be “right”. There was no hype about anything, no whipping up emotions. It could have been a departmental meeting I was at. It was about conducting business…business in the heavenlies!

What happened was that there was a list, an agenda, if you will. They would take an item from the agenda, and then pray about it. They would get passionate in their prayers, but then, during a natural lull, someone would ask, “What do you think God is saying about this?”

They would be quiet for a while, and then someone would give insight into what they thought God was saying, and then they would all begin to pray again, taking a slightly different direction or focus. At the next lull, it would happen all over again, someone asking what God was saying, the silence, the insight, they continued prayer in the slightly different direction.

It was like correcting the cannon direction in a war. Moving it slightly to the left, or the right, or upwards, or downwards.

Eventually they reach a point where there was nothing left that needed to be said and move on to the next item. It was not your run of the mill, predictable prayer meeting, and you really felt that you were conducting holy business. No words were wasted. There were no long stretches of silence, but nothing said was irrelevant or waffle.

I suppose that to do that you would have to trust the sensitivity of the people involved in the praying. I am not sure that I would trust myself that much!

They came to one item which involved a young boy diagnosed with cancer.

They began praying fervently for God’s intervention and his healing touch. I am sure you can supply the words! They were looking for the cancer to be stopped in its tracks, for tests to come back clear.

The lull came, along with the question, “What do you think God is saying about this?” The answer supplied was that the boy was not going to recover. There wasn’t a day of recovery written in his book.

My jaw dropped! I thought that it was a given that God healed. You prayed for healing, sometimes you got it, sometimes you didn’t.

The nature of the prayers changed dramatically. The prayers were about comfort, and strength, and inner healing for the boy and his family through the time ahead. This was not a demonstration of a lack of faith, but a response to a word of knowledge.

I learned something about praying that night. It is not just what you say that counts, but what you hear from God. Too often I am more concerned about what I say on the matter rather than what God has to say on the matter.

There have been times when I have shared with friends that my brother is dying of cancer. There have been some that have not known what to say. There have been others who have been quick to testify of other people they have known who have been diagnosed with cancer, given months to live, been prayed for and then in a subsequent test, there is no sign of the tumours.

I prayed a lot for the recovery of my sister when she was unwell. I rebuked the illness. I found words in my daily readings that built up my faith. The times when I felt faithless I felt that I was letting her down, or letting God down, or just plain jinxing her recovery. So much energy expended and she passed away. I wouldn’t say that I stopped believing in God, but I was wary.

I should have spent more time asking the question, “What do you think God is saying about this?” rather than just presuming the given that God healed, that you prayed for healing, sometimes you got it, sometimes you didn’t.

I spoke to a work colleague yesterday about my brother’s diagnosis. It is cancer, in its later stages, inoperable, terminal, with a six month use-by date. My colleague’s response was to ask what my brother intended to do with the time left to him.

I had been so focussed on praying for healing, or praying for salvation, so that if the healing doesn’t happen at least he gets to go to heaven.

Inside of the question of what my brother is going to do with the time left to him, comes another question.

What am I going to do with the time that I have left with him?

I want to enjoy his company, share a tinnie or two, to laugh with him, to cry with him, to tell him funny jokes, to sit on the terrace and watch the sun go down of an evening!

Climbing Mountains

“Who may climb the mountain of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place?” Psalm 24:3

I read the whole of Psalm 24 this morning, but the bit that caught my eye was this verse about climbing the mountain of the Lord. In the NIV it’s called a hill rather than a mountain. A hill doesn’t seem so daunting. You can climb a hill and maybe you get out of breath a bit, if you’re me. Mountains are a different type of climb!

As I read the words, they reminded me of an article I had posted at faithwriters.com on the topic of endurance. I likened it to a mountain climbing experience I had when I was on a Geography field trip at school. One big mountain, one short Mel, one ever-stressed heart, one huge distance lagging behind everyone else, one very red face and one kind teacher who dropped back to walk with me and encourage me that the view from the top was worth the climb.

Thinking in terms of spiritual mountains and challenges in the article I wrote these sentences: “Some mountains move when I apply my mustard-sized faith in prayer. Other mountains are for climbing. True wisdom is being able to distinguish between them.”

How much effort is wasted when we try to climb a mountain that God had ear-marked for moving! How much angst we go through trying to move a mountain that God has set aside for climbing! “True wisdom is being able to distinguish between them”

I am not sure if I am half way up a mountain that I ought to be moving out of the way by faith, or half way up a mountain that I am supposed to climbing! If I am supposed to be moving it, I am not sure that I possess the mustard sized faith to do the job. I have taken a bit of a battering faith-wise over the last few months. If I am supposed to climb, I am not entirely convinced that the view from the top is going to be that spectacular!

Guess who needs wisdom?

My Life in Plastic

I have just decanted the plastic cards out of the purse. I learnt the hard way, when my purse got stolen in Rome, that not all those plastic cards that I carry around with me will be that much use in Spain.

Library Card You don’t actually need to go to Spain to discover how useless it is. The library in Rugby will not let me use it to log on to their computers to access the internet. It would probably be cheaper to use an internet café if Rugby had one!

Blockbuster Membership Card There is a scene in Notting Hill where Hugh Grant flashes his Blockbuster Membership card to get into a press conference. The shop in Rugby obviously doesn’t have the same issues as the library. They let me rent out “The Bells of St Trinian’s” to keep my nieces entertained one evening.

RBS Highline There’s no money in the account. I keep intending to close the account on account of their manhandling of money in general and having to be bailed out by the government. They can’t look after money properly. They can’t be trusted!

Gallery Hairdressers appointment card No time or date filled in, just the name Toni, with an “x” instead of a dot over the “i”. She is responsible for my Mary Quantish look.

Matalan I have absolutely no idea why they require a card for you to buy something out of their shop. It doesn’t serve as a credit card, or a loyalty card. It’s just a very silly way of doing business.

Gala Casino Yes, now you know my secret vice! Roulette is my game! Actually, it’s not my vice at all. A dozen chips each worth fifty pence doesn’t really add up to any kind of vice, particularly when the man you are sitting next to is playing with chips worth fifty pounds a shot. In Northampton I had need to go to the loo, and when I need to go, I need to go. We were parked in a car park in a complex that housed a Gala Casino. I thought they might let me in to use the loo. They didn’t, even when I showed them my card They wanted me to fill out a form and get another card from them. I just held on and found a loo that did not make me fill in any forms.

An Orange Top Up and Go card I have never topped up and went seeing as I don’t know how. The man in the Orange shop tops us and goes on my behalf.

Look Who's (Not) Talking!

I thought that if I maybe spruced up the outside of me, it would have a knock on effect of cheering up the inside of me! It didn’t work. I may have a very nice Mary Quantish hairstyle, and no grey roots, but inside I feel more like Quasimodo, lurching unsteadily about.

The train ticket to Edinburgh is purchased. I didn’t reserve a seat since they are now charging for the service. I also bought my air ticket to Malaga. I think I shall be the only person going there without the holiday mood and the suntan lotion in tact. A quick look at the website that deals with weather all over the world tells me that I am in for a week of sunshine and temperatures in the 80s. I am not a heat seeking body. Give me an igloo any day.

I find that what worries me most, apart from chaffing thighs, is talking to my brother. Talking for me is not built into my DNA. I am not one of the great talkers of the world. You just ask my friend Gill how much talking I do. Zilch! It’s not that I can’t talk, I can. It’s not that I don’t want to talk. I do! It’s just that I worry about running out of interesting things to say. I have not seen my brother for a few years, I have read through many of the backdated copies of the articles he has submitted to the magazine he writes for…but all of that doesn’t help. I am deep waters, not a chattering brook!

Most of the people that I talk to any great length with are sitting in a classroom behind desks and have to listen to me because I am the teacher. What we talk about is not personal stuff and they take tests that tell me whether they have listened to me at all. The other group of people I talk with are Christians in my church. The topic may be some wonderful insight into scripture. Over a cup of tea we talk about personal stuff, but not always that personal, and it’s never for very long!

There are few people that I talk to for hours on end. I am just not one of the world’s talkers. A Thinker? Yes, I think often. A writer? Now we are talking comfort zones! Talking? AARRGGHH!

Take for example, the hairdressers I have just come from. Isn’t it supposed to be that the reason that women are prepared to pay over the top prices for some of the treatment isn’t always just about the hair? Hairdressers may not be trained counsellors, but they end up listening anyway. That is…unless the client is me. I don’t do “hairdresser talk”. I am not sure if my kind of customer is not valued simply because I don’t talk. I will maybe exchange a few pleasantries…I am not rude by any means. I just don’t talk much.

I have to admit that my reluctance to talk this morning was justified. Who wants to hear the catalogue of troubles that I have faced and continue to face this year? I can’t keep up a string of irrelevant and irreverent observations on life – mine in particular. I don’t lead a life worthy of comment.

I am not sure I need to worry so much. My brother is more than capable of keeping up an entertaining monologue. He talks a lot. My only problem is more than likely how to get a word in edge-wise.

Maybe, apart from looking up websites about the weather in Malaga, I should be checking out “Five Steps to a Really Good Conversation”.

Ezekiel's Heart

“The word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears. Groan quietly; do not mourn for the dead. Keep your turban fastened and your sandals on your feet; do not cover the lower part of your face or eat the customary food of mourners. So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. The next morning I did as I had been commanded.” Ezekiel 24:15-18

The Bible contains some incredibly sad stories. I read this one many years ago. It is one of those bits that many people would never know was there unless, like me, they had followed one of those programmes that encourage you to read the Bible through in a year, assigning you a couple of chapters from the Old Testament and a couple from the New each day.

I read it and it broke my heart. It just seemed so unreasonable of God to do that to a servant. It was bad enough that he commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute to get a message across, but this was a different thing. It is hard enough to find the “delight of your eyes” in the first place, that to lose it is harder still.

I haven’t been given a day’s notice regarding my brother’s cancer. The doctors may be thinking in terms of months rather than years of life expectancy, but not days, and not hours.

I have also not been told that I can’t shed tears and I have shed a lot over the last twenty four hours. I haven’t been told to avoid mourners food, so chocolate is still on the menu!

Mike may not be “the delight of my eyes” either, but that doesn’t make it any less traumatic.

I wrote this poem, in response to the story, some five years ago. Trying to capture an emotion that belonged to someone else was a word play exercise. Now I feel it. Now it hurts. Now I wish it was just Ezekiel’s heart and not my own.

The last two couplets are particularly hard. If this is God’s will – it’s not a very nice will, and maybe, dare I say it, He’s not a very nice God to let it happen. Trust is no longer just a word that you casually toss into a conversation but a mountain to climb.

Ezekiel’s Heart

This time you ask
Too hard a task

To take my wife
My heart, my life

You say “Don’t cry.”
My tears deny

My pain, to hide
My grief inside

If I could pray
“Not her,” I’d say

To you alone
I sigh, I groan

Do as you will
Your plan fulfil

I trust in you
Your will I do

Talking with MIke

You know those movie scenes where the difficult telephone call has to be made. She picks up the phone, dials the first few numbers, puts the phone back down, walks around the room, stops and looks out of the window, takes a deep breath and picks up the phone again? Well, I played out the scene last night.


Between the hours of 8-10 pm was the best time to phone my brother, Mike, in hospital in Spain. So I waited until 8.00.

What if I have nothing to say? “Sorry” doesn’t take so long to say. The whole awkwardness of talking to someone you haven’t spoken to for years, and who has cancer, and who is dying doesn’t make for good conversations.

A Spanish lady picked up the phone. I don’t know how to say, “Can I speak to Michael?” in Spanish, and she had no clue and put the phone down.

Next minute he is there pouring a mouthful of abuse down the phone – not directed to me, but to the Spanish woman. He can’t speak Spanish either, so I doubt she has any clue what the problem was.

The problem, once Mike realises that he has a connection and he is not holding a dead phone in his hand, he tells me, is that the ward that he had all to himself, he now has to share and the other occupant, being Spanish, is ruling the roost, and he has been relegated to one tiny corner.

There’s nothing like a mouthful of abuse to open up the lines of communication. I don’t think I even got to say sorry, not that Mike would have listened. He refuses to be sorry for himself. The deed is done and dusted and who cares who is to blame and whether it is fair or not?

“At least they’ve not dropped me from the operating table!” It’s a reference to my sister’s recent illness, death and catalogue of hospital errors. Apparently Mike had been fretting that he never got to see Linda, or attend her funeral. He thought that others thought it meant he didn’t care…and sadly some thought exactly that way. The ones who knew, myself and my eldest sister, had kept it from them, at his request. To him, to tell them how ill he was, would be like the bridesmaid turning up at a wedding far outshining the bride. So he requested silence on the matter. I suppose we also agreed to keep quiet because at that time neither of us knew the true diagnosis. We didn’t know he was dying too.

I asked for a conversation with Mike, and I got one. Liberally sprinkled with colourful language he told me what life was like in the hospital. While he was speaking, the nurses were changing drips and giving him medicine and he was interrupting his discourse to say ”Ow”.


We laughed a lot. I cried a lot, though I tried not to let him know.

It was so different from Linda. I didn’t realise how difficult it had been talking to an unconscious body wrapped in a ventilator, keeping up a steady flow of comments and not having her respond.

Mike’s raucous laughter and pithy observations of Spanish hospitals was entertaining. It wasn’t a performance put on for me, to cheer me up and make me feel better…it was him being genuinely him.

Conversations With my Brother

My brother, Mike, has written himself into the role of the black sheep of the family. I am not sure that he is any blacker than anyone else…and we all have our black moments. He is living in Spain at the moment, and it is only in the last six months or so that he has got in touch. Conversations over the facebook chat line are less than satisfactory, but better than nothing.

There are a couple of conversations that other people have had with Mike that stand out in my mind. One was with my youngest sister. I can’t remember the circumstances that led up to the conversation, only that it took place in a pub and was liberally watered with a lot of alcohol! It was a conversation, that when she related it to me, I was jealous of. They talked about all sorts of things, and he shared with her his thoughts on so many of the events of our childhood that my sister was too young to remember. They talked in particular about our experiences in an orphanage. We weren’t orphans. Our dad had died and mum was really unwell and we had been shelved out to friends and relatives before that, and I think this was the only solution for keeping the kids together. It wasn’t a good time in our lives and it wasn’t the most loving or supportive of environments. He talked about the nuns picking on Linda, and saying quite cruel things. It might have been about her weight. Mike told Sharon how angry he felt because he thought Linda to be beautiful. I remember thinking as Sharon related the conversation that I wanted to ask, “What did he say about me? Did he think I was beautiful?”

The second remarkable conversation Mike had was with my mum just before her left for Spain. Actually, I am not even sure this one happened or whether I dreamed it did. He hated public school. He couldn’t see that Mum wanted him to have the best opportunity possible, but that she wanted him out of the house. Rejection, was how he perceived it and it coloured so much of what happened to the rest of his life. He blamed her for so much going wrong. Anyway, he went to visit her, his “last” visit before he broke off ties with the rest of the family. He wanted her forgiveness. He was sorry for all the trouble that he had been, or for all the bad mouthing, for being “a disappointment”, not just to her, but to my dad when he had been alive. I don’t know whether he would have expressed his change of heart in Christian terms, but God was at work. Some of the first people that Mike met in Spain were Christians.

I am envious of those kinds of heart to heart, masks off, kind of conversations. I wouldn’t say that I haven’t had them.

I must have been in my late teens, or early twenties, just recently come to faith. I had the Roman Catholic background, but it wasn’t until I was eighteen that my faith had become personal and real. Late one night Mike came into the room and knelt beside the bed. He took my hand and said he needed to talk. He wasn’t entirely sober. He wanted to know about the peace that had come into my life. So I told him about Jesus and about salvation. We talked for a while exchanging views about very intimate things. I felt awkward and totally inadequate for the task and I gave myself a hard time because the conversation hadn’t led to his salvation! I don’t think he even remembered the conversation the next day.

The other conversation I remember was much later, before I moved to Inverness, after I had returned from teaching abroad. That would put it somewhere between 1987 and 1989. It might actually have been as late as 1993 when I was recovering from a deep vein thrombosis. There was a healing ministry in the local town hall. It was an international speaker. I invited Mike to come along. He had been suffering from a bad back for a while and I told him that if he came Jesus would heal him. I expected his usual guffaws at the mention of God. His reply surprised me.

“I know God will touch me, and that He can heal me...but I don’t want God to touch me. I will have to change my life if He does, and I don’t know if I want to change.”

There is a more recent conversation with Mike. It took place last night about half past nine. It is not a conversation that I am jealous of. My brother, Richard, phoned him and I guess that some time today I will also be phoning. Mike never made it to my sister’s funeral. For most of my family is was not expected that he would come, but I hoped he would and had been gently nagging him. It turned out that the “wouldn’t come” was “couldn’t come”. He was due to go into hospital having been diagnosed with two tumours. There has been a biopsy done, and it turns out that they are both malignant. The word “cancer” has been tossed into the diagnosis and he has started radiotherapy treatment. Mike, on the phone last night was very positive. He was thinking in terms of success and the cancer going into remission. I just wonder when he finally put the phone down, whether he really felt so positive.

Me? Am I positive and thinking in terms of success? I am still trying to right my boat after my sister Linda died last month. I didn’t think that a storm would brew a second time so swiftly.

Leave Your Country... and Go

It is coming up to twenty years since I moved to Inverness. I came up in 1989 to serve for a year on a gospel outreach team. I came from Rugby. It would probably be about this time that I was being interviewed to see if I was a suitable candidate, although the only requirements seemed to have been that you were a “born again” Christian (how long you had been born again didn’t seem to matter…maturity in Christ wasn’t considered important) and whether you were the member of a vibrant Church (usually within the Covenant Ministries band)

I had handed in my notice for my teaching job at the end of the previous year. I had been teaching abroad for five years and there had been so many changes in the courses and exams that I was finding it hard to catch up. I had been taken on by a temping agency and was filing letters in a big industrial firm. It wasn’t rocket science and once the novelty of people saying “Pease” and “Thankyou” and opening doors for you had worn off I was really being challenged.

Someone came to visit our church to enlist support for people on the outreach teams. They weren’t looking for volunteers, just financial support and practical help like food parcels, but a couple in the church said to me that they would support me when I enlisted. I had no intention of enlisting. Then someone else said the same thing. Then the pastor of the church explained that he had written on my behalf to get the application form and had already filled in the bit he was supposed to fill in recommending me.

I weighed up filing letters against going to a town I’d never been to, to spend a year with people I didn’t know, doing something that completely terrified me – the safe option versus the scary option…and I chose scary.

I didn’t choose to come to Inverness. Along with his recommending me for the job, my pastor also recommended that I get sent as far away as possible. He didn’t want the church and the people I knew to be near enough to me that when things got tough I could just come home. Inverness was the farthest away they could place me.

Before I left Rugby, they prayed and prophesied over me…like they did. Someone made the comparison between me and Abraham, quoting Abraham’s call. Just like the great man, I was heading to another country, to a place I didn’t know, leaving behind the familiar (and the letter filing), leaving behind my family who all live within a twenty mile radius of my mum.

“The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 12:1-3

Abraham was 75 when God asked him to move. Had he been living in the UK in our generation, he would have already moved 5.7 times by then…but he wasn’t. Moving just wasn’t done in Abraham’s day. It wasn’t part of the culture, it wasn’t practical.

Abraham really downsized. He moved from a proper home with proper foundations to a tent. He shifted regularly. He didn’t move within a ten mile radius either,

Leaving you native country, relatives…I did that, but there is a leaving of something else. Leaving behind the familiar doesn’t have to mean heading off to the Amazon and preaching to pygmies. It might mean leaving the spade in the ground and walking over to the fence to talk to your neighbour.

What made Abraham leave?

It wasn’t his knowledge of God because he didn’t know who God was at the time. He came from a nation that worshipped idols.

God said, “I will make you into a great nation”. To get the nation, you need the son. Abraham didn’t have a son. What God was essentially saying to Abraham was “If you want the son, then I can give him to you, but only if you move to where I tell you to go.” The son is tied up in Abraham’s obedience to move. If he stayed where he was, there would be no sons. Abraham wanted the son…he wanted it badly…so he moved.

What do we want so badly that we are prepared to move to get it? The trouble with us is that sometimes we don’t want things that badly. We tell ourselves that we can live without that one thing we want so badly. We change our thinking about that one thing to make it no so necessary. So we stay put. We end up with a life less extraordinary than God intended for us.

Peeling Off the Mask

I just didn’t give it a second thought. I printed off a copy of the all the poems I had written for the Writer’s Digest Poetic Asides Poem a Month challenge. (That was a bit of a mouthful). I gave a copy to a friend. I was delighted that I had completed the challenge and made the crossover from inspirational poetry to writing poems about dandelions and green blackboards.

I forgot that in among the short snappy two liners, and the complicated sestinas, there were a lot of raw poems about the grief of loosing my sister Linda. They were bleak, and dark and sometimes angry. Some of best poems are birthed out of some of the worst of circumstances.

What I had given my friend was an open window straight into my soul. It wasn’t pretty…and yet at the same time, in one of those most mysterious paradoxes we all encounter, it was beautiful. Very strong emotions had leaked out into the poetry. I had lifted the lid on what was really happening in my soul.

In church I wasn’t even attempting to hide my grief, but I made the effort to clean it up a little, make it presentable and palatable to people around me. In my poetry I didn’t. It was just straight from the heart.

Transparency is hard. We all wear masks and show other people the best of us. There is something quite awesome that happens when we peel back off mask and reveal the real us.

Coming Out of the Facebook Closet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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