Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Psalm 139 contains the phrase “fearfully and wonderfully made” – at least that’s the wording of the New International Version.  The Message reads “Body and soul, I am marvellously made!” The New Living Translation has it as “wonderfully complex”.

As I look in the mirror “fearfully and wonderfully made” isn’t my first reaction. There are some people who seem to have the right combination of genes that produce a beautiful face and an hour glass figure. I am not one of them.  I clean up nicely for weddings and funerals but the day to day me is rather blemished.

But that is OK. 

I know that when God says I am fearfully and wonderfully made He is not thinking about Fibonacci’s golden ratio.  He looks at my heart, and my soul, my strength and my mind – all those things He commands me to love Him with.  That’s the bit that is marvellous.

We were sharing favourite words and phrases from Psalm 139 with friends.  I talked about tattoos.  A while ago, I thought about getting a tattoo.  It wasn’t a serious thought.  I will die tattoo-less.  What might look good when the skin is young and elastic probably doesn’t look so good when things begin to sag.  And then there are the needles.  Need I say more?

The tattoo that I won’t ever get will not be pretty patterns around my arm, or a mural on my back, or love engraved onto my knuckles or “Joseph Forever” in honour of my husband.  I would opt for “Fearfully and wonderfully made” written somewhere. That will be the tattoo I will never get.

I looked across the table and said to one of my friends, “You are wonderfully and fearfully made.”

He looked back at me and replied, “No, I’m not!”

If it was all about that mental checklist that the world insists we use when defining something wonderful or marvellous then many of us miss the mark.  We strive to meet the criteria.  My friend didn’t come close to ticking many of the boxes. 

More than that, his life hadn't landed him in a good place.  His world was often one of thistles and stinging nettles. That man in the parable of the Good Samaritan that was beaten up at the start of the story - that's him.  Or the seed that fell among the thorns in the parable of the Sower - that's him. 

Life in all its facets tells him, “You are not wonderfully and fearfully made.”

The part of town he lives in tells him, “You are not wonderfully and fearfully made.”

The government that writes the rules tells him, “You are not wonderfully and fearfully made.”

People, the pretty people, the successful people, people with big cars and fat wallets, tell him, “You are not wonderfully and fearfully made.”

And the enemy sneers and says, “You?  Wonderfully and fearfully made? Really? You? I don’t think so.”

But when God says a thing it matters not what life says, or the government, or the pretty people or the enemy.  When God say you are wonderfully and fearfully made He means it.  And when you take Him at His word and believe His word…your heart, your soul, your strength and your mind are transformed.

And then you begin to live it.

Forgive Me Too

She wears her guilt for all to see

In tears of sorrow falling free

With scented hair she wipes His feet

Bestows her kisses soft and sweet

She owns her choices, doesn’t flinch

Excuses neither yard nor inch

Nothing hidden, nought concealed

Her sullied soul to Him revealed

He chooses not to reprimand

Compassion stirs to stay His hand

Instead forgives and sets her free

His words disturb the deep in me

Beneath a mask my guilt resides

Dressed in righteous deeds it hides

Those secret sins that weary me

I yearn, like her, to be set free

He looks and sees my naked soul

I grasp this chance to be made whole

Transparent, rid of all disguise

Forgive me too, my spirit cries

One Woman Drumming...

There was an invitation today to take a break from the usual work day tasks to attend a short concert given by a group of African drummers. The to-do list didn’t really have any space to accommodate them but it was an unlikely-to-be-repeated opportunity so I downed my tools and headed off to be drummed at.  Throughout the concert my spiritual synapses were firing – so many connections were there to make.

The group was made up of five Africans, one woman and four men.  There was another man who did most of the talking.  The men were all shapes and sizes just like the plethora of drums they sat next to. There was also a table full of shaky things and tappy things and knocky things and bangy things to create rhythm, but they didn’t hand them around. There was a workshop later on in the day.

The concert started off with some crowd participation.  In Africa there is an element of the spiritual involved in creating music.  They don’t presume that the gods (or God) is present or wants to be entertained or petitioned or wants to lift up downhearted souls.  Permission needs to be sought.  There was a prayer to be said or a song to be sung to ask permission. 

In the Christian worship meeting we don’t need to ask permission to worship God. We are commanded to do so!  We can come freely into His presence but I think it doesn’t hurt to have an internal check of the heart, spirit and soul to know we are ready to engage.  We are often told to come as we are, but how much better to come ready and equipped?  It never does one good to take a casual and careless attitude to worship.

Part of this permission-granting ritual involved a leader and response dialogue.  We were taught our side of the script. The leader shouted out his part and the congregation shouted back. It was conducted in an African language – we could have been shouting anything.

What came to my mind was Isaiah’s experience in the throne room of heaven.  Imagine being there to hear the seraphim calling to one another, “Holy is the Lord!” I preached about it once - that kind of worship excites me! There are churches that have a liturgy, words spoken by the leader and a response given by the congregation and it’s all written down.  The seraphim had no scripts.   It was heart to heart.  Would that not be something that transformed our often predictable meetings?  The writer in me wants me to compose a dialogue – and then I need the bravery to persuade the rest of the church to join in.  Speaking truth to one another, loudly, has got to be a very powerful tool that builds us up while at the same time pulls down the works of the enemy.

We were given a quick demonstration of the basic drum patterns using fingers and fists at the side or the middle of the drum face.  Never just about the one man and his drum, it’s all communal. It’s not a solitary performance! You learn with the intention of playing with others. Everybody plays together. That’s my kind of picture - worship being at its best when it’s communal.  It not about a performance by the musicians with the rest of us being spectators, but everyone joining in - everyone from the very young to the very old participating. 

The rhythm was set by someone with a bell – a clear note that stood out against the drums.  The drummers, as much as they listened to the other drummers, first listened to the bell.  As they kept pace with the bell, there were no awkward moments when someone was drumming to a different rhythm.  There was harmony.  With the volume they generated, they had to have their ears tuned to the bell first.

We live in a noisy, busy world.  I was reading a newspaper article some weeks ago about birds.  Some species of bird are finding it difficult to compete with the noise we generate.  They have learned how to turn up the volume of their singing if they want to attract a mate.

Tuning our ears to God’s “bell”, filtering out the distractions around us, is important if we are to live in harmony with Him and with each other. We should be teaching others not to play according to our rhythm, but to listen for God’s voice instead.

I challenge you to find a person whose toe didn’t tap, whose knee didn’t jiggle or whose head didn’t nod back and forth this afternoon.  The aim of some of the songs and their rhythms was about stirring the spirit.  People were not being given permission to “sit this one out”.  It was an almost unconscious response. There is power in music.  None of the songs we heard were dirges played at funeral pace.  They were lively jigs that almost pulled you to your feet. 

The songs they shared were also work songs.  They talked about the end of the day in a fishing village.  The nets needed to be hauled in and the boats needed to be pulled up on to the shore.  Why do it in silence?  The music made a difficult and tiring task easier to do.  How sad that we often wait until a Sunday morning when there is a band playing and the lyrics are projected on a screen before we begin to sing.  We toil through difficult days in silence, perhaps with a vaguely negative mental dialogue playing in our heads.  The answer is to sing! I think we rob ourselves of so much joy and so much victory when we choose not to sing.

I admit the concert has left me with fingers that can’t help but tap out a rhythm on my desk. When I get home, no doubt, I will dig out the pots and pans, arm myself with a wooden spoon and let my heart rise as I bang away.

One woman drumming!

The Suffocating Weight of Blankets

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7 (NIV)

There is a dream I remember from childhood.  I remember it because it was a recurring dream - the same dream night after night. There were two dreams, although the second one probably wasn’t a dream as such because I was awake at the time, or I had fallen into that place between being awake and being asleep, not quite one, not quite the other.

I’ll tell you about the second one first because it’s not really relevant to the rest of the story but it’s interesting.

It was in the days before duvet covers.  Blankets and sheets ruled the bed.  I liked to have my sheets and blankets very tightly tucked in – very tightly.  It was impossible to tuck them in tightly once I was actually in bed so I was very careful to slither in from the top and move as little as possible once I was in. I always slept with an arm outside the bed regardless of how cold the room was.  Not only was it in the days before duvet covers, but it was in the days before central heating.  There was a coal fire in the living room downstairs, but upstairs there could be ice on the inside of the windows.  Still the arm would be outside the bed.

I was convinced that the blankets were moving upwards.  Without the arm to stop them, I was sure that the blankets would move up the bed, cover my face and suffocate me.  

I hated to go to the toilet during the night because I was convinced that if I left the bed, the blankets would move upwards and tuck themselves in at the top and I wouldn’t be able to get back in.  I was always amazed that the blankets hadn’t moved an inch while I had been away.

The other dream, the recurring one, also involved blankets. 

The dream would start with me lying on the bed.  I was always cold because I didn’t have a blanket.  Someone would pass by the bed and spread a blanket across me.  It was just the one blanket, not a thick one, so I wasn’t that much warmer.  Minutes would go by and another person would pass by the bed and spread another blanket over me.  I was a little warmer, but it was a cold night.  When the third blanket arrived I was beginning to feel warm and cosy. Then there was another blanket followed by another and another. More and more blankets kept coming.  I could feel the weight of them pinning me down onto the bed.  I couldn’t move.  They were so heavy that I was struggling to breathe.  I began to panic and often woke up screaming.

I don’t have that dream anymore – but sometimes the reality that I live in feels a lot like it.

Not blankets this time, but the cares of the world pile upon me.  There’s a burden that’s given by God – the yoke that is light.  There's also the burden that we give ourselves – the not-so-light one. All it takes sometimes is an article or two in the newspaper, or some careless remark tossed out to the world by a politician or a picture of a three year old boy dead on a beach.  The “blankets” tossed over my spirit become heavy, one after another.  I am weighed down and struggling to breathe. 

Long before I get to the waking-up-screaming-stage I seek out God. I may not be able to take off the heavy load by myself, but in His presence I off load all my cares.  I tell him about the stories in the news.

I tell Him about people who are accused of petty crimes, who no longer qualify for Legal Aid, who have to defend themselves and can’t, who plead guilty to something they never did on the off chance that a guilty verdict means they only have to pay hundreds of pounds of courts costs rather than the thousands of pounds. 

I tell Him about the people who can’t work who get pushed through an assessment that insists they can to snatch back a paltry benefit and how the person they said could work when they really couldn’t…really couldn’t and dies.

I tell him about the boy on the beach.

Of course, He already knows these things but as we talk one “blanket” after another is lifted. The world and all of its bad news ceases to paralyse me.

I ask God to act and the government sometimes does its U-turns.

River Connections Public Art Project

As promised, my circle poem has been printed on to a postcard and will be available to buy at the Museum shop or Eden Court.

 

Morning Rendezvous

Early I wake and slip out through the door

Morning? Not yet, but the stillness before

Birdsong? Not quite, just a whisper, no more

A rendezvous planned on a high mountain peak

Time set apart, my Father to seek

Before the day’s work I hear His voice speak

I open my hands and receive for that day

All things abundant for giving away

The love of the Father in me on display

To heal the leper, give sight to the blind

To speak to the injured, words that are kind

My time with my Father each day I must find

Beer, Bats and Bruises

I had added to my store of loyalty cards but after last night I might not stay loyal.  This time it’s not my ninth cup of tea or coffee that I get free but my sixth country ranger event.

The freebee magazine that comes through the letter box packed with information of what to do and where to go included a few sentences about a Highland Council Ranger-accompanied walk – a dusk stroll around the Merkinch Nature Reserve looking for bats and moths and other nocturnal life. The meeting place would be revealed if one phoned and booked a place, as if this were some illegal activity that could get raided by the police! I phoned and was unable to book a place.  Knowing there was only one possible meeting place I planned to gate crash.

I knew from the start I wasn’t properly dressed.  A friend of ours currently living in Germany told us that if they send out their children badly dressed they get reprimanded.  If only we were in Germany that might what followed last night might never have happened.  The other walkers were dressed up warmly, armed with stout walking boots.  I had must-replace trainers and a light jacket.

Our first stop along the trail was a bush that had been doused in beer.  My initial thought was that it was a naturally produced night time fragrance. The wonders of nature.  I pictured addicts licking leaves when the liquid version ran out.  The ranger had doused the tree before we arrived with the intention of attracting moths.  We would, she promised, be able to see them on the way back.

With the light fading, we were seeing less.  Colours had faded to greyscale.  Now, was the time to awaken our sense of smell and hone in on the sounds we could hear.  An experiment.  I failed to listen properly as she handed around plastic cups, foil tops with a number written on top, slashed open with a mushroom knife, and asked us to identify the smell.  There was nothing unusual about smelling coffee or a slices of apple concealed beneath the foil but my mind had linked the smells to the nocturnal life about to come alive.  I thought the smells were wild life smells.  How was I supposed to know what bats smelled of, or roe deer? That some species of night life smelled of coffee impressed me.  It’s a Friday night.  Please don’t expect my brain to make sensible connections.

We moved on.  The ranger was a source of interesting information.  As we waded through a field of meadowsweet, inhaling its almond fragrance, she told us about its healing properties.  It’s an active ingredient in pain killing.  I had an opportunity to put it into practice later on that night but, you know how it is, in through one ear out the other. 

We moved on.  There is a board walk around the outskirts of part of the reserve, the wetland part.  Dark spots on darker spots at that time of night.  Someone spotted a family of ducks on a late evening swim.  Someone else spotted a heron standing among the reeds.  My eyes and my glasses were not up to the task and I just took their word for it. 

At this point the ranger distributed the bat gadgets.  Bats echo-locate things but the frequency is too high for humans to hear, too high even for the dog in our midst to respond to.  The gadget located the sounds and translated them to a lower frequency. Cool. Seriously cool. We switched on the gadgets and set the frequency at 50 something, or 40, and aimed it at the sky.

We were surrounded by bat noises.  It was the sound of the “triffids” from the old TV programmes – swift, slapping, clacking sounds. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.  In torch light the ranger showed cardboard cut outs of various bat sizes.  It was the smallest one that we could hear.  They eat midges, she said.  If only they would eat the midges eating me, I thought.  Apparently bats save the government millions of pounds they would have had to spend on pesticides.  Well done, bats!  Is there anything else you can do the help the government to make savings?

We moved on.  The canal had a different species of bat – bigger ones – bats that skimmed the water and ate the bugs that floated on top.  We were ordered to set the bat gadgets to 30 something.  Not only could we hear them but we might also see them.

The moment approached.

Did I say I was probably the youngest person in the group? The ranger was younger than me, and there was a child with trainers that lit up lights as she walked, but bar them, I was the youngest.  We crossed a railway line to get to the canal path.  I was following someone whose torch was bobbing about the path ahead of me.  There as a step up to the part of the path across the lines.  I didn’t make the step and came hurtling down solidly across the lines. Yes despite being the almost-youngest, I fell over. 

Railway lines are not ideal places to fall over.  Did I imagine on-coming lights?  Actually, yes.  We had seen a train earlier.  I wanted to just lie still for a moment for before dragging myself up.  No one knew the train timetable and insisted I got up straight away.  Eventually I was helped to my feet.  I hurt everywhere - knees, elbows, my left shoulder and both hands.  I couldn’t see the damage but I could feel it.  I wanted to cry but cheerfully insisted that only my pride was injured!

I have to confess that the whole walk lost its magic at that point.  I lost my interest in the bats as too much of me squealed with pain.  We watched the waters of the canal.  It was very still and there was an unruffled reflection of the houses on the opposite bank.

Someone insisted the plop and the ripples by one of the locks was an otter or a seal, but the ranger corrected him saying that otters and seals rarely plopped and rippled the water.  It was much more likely to be a duck.  She talked about otters.  Apparently they had an otter expert out when the reserve was first being reclaimed and the boardwalk built.  He looked around and declared the absence of otters on the reserve and went online to say so.  Pictures flooded in over the next weeks and months of otters sunbathing on the boardwalk, and splashing about in shallow water pools.

The water-skimming bats were a no-show and the hour was late so we turned back to return to our starting point and check the beer-infused tree for moths.  I approached the railway line crossing with uncertainty.  Falling twice seemed unlikely but I was still feeling shaky on my feet.

The moths were a no-show.  We collected a profusion of leaflets the ranger put out on a picnic bench table on moths and bats and went our separate ways.

In the light of day I examine my injuries. The top layer of flesh has been scraped off my hands.  My elbows are as pointed as ever and sore to the touch, the left knee is quite bruised and the shoulder tells me I will never play championship tennis ever again.

Was it worth it all – my scraped hands and bruised knees?  Absolutely, yes. Exploring a side of nature I never get to see, with an expert, was great.  It amazes me that we can see, hear, smell and touch such a variety of life – and yet we choose to live in such a narrow strip of it.

And of course it amazes me that God made it all!

The Faith that is MIne

A faith convinced that God is there

He turns His ear to every whispered prayer

And I - his name and nature bear

This faith is mine

A faith that fills my heart with song

And celebrates that I to Him belong

That in my weakness He is strong

This faith is mine

A faith that laughs at trying days

That thumbs the nose at come-what-mays

And in the battle always, always stays

This faith is mine

A faith that anchors in the storm

That sings for joy amid the locust swarm

That surrenders to God’s Spirit to transform

This faith is mine

A faith that lays before God’s mighty throne

All crowns and works of great renown

Content to ever be my Saviour’s own

This faith is mine

In all my scenes that play across life’s stage

The narrative God writes upon the page

With life in light and shadow I engage

This faith is mine

Time, Talk and Trust

This morning I was introduced to Rick Warren’s three “T”s in developing intimacy with God – Time, Talk and Trust.

It seems to me that they can apply to any relationship, not just the God one. The opposite truth is also relevant – to create distance all that is required is a lack of time, a lack of talk and a lack of trust.  All relationships need to be fed and nurtured.

Let’s start with time. This last week has been spent with my friend Marion in her house in Armadale, the south end of the Isle of Skye. The house is amazing.  It’s not a new build but an old house.  It smells not of new paint but old dust.  Piles of books inhabit every room. Stacked against every wall there are pictures in frames.  Nothing gets thrown out and everything is waiting to be assigned a place somewhere.

I have this habit of assuming that because I like someone’s company for an hour or two in a specific context, I will like that person’s company for a longer period outside the context of our usual meeting.  It doesn’t often work that way.  We discover quickly that we have little common ground and things become awkward after a while. It has sometimes led to the end of a friendship. So, yes, spending a whole week with someone I spend a couple of hours with once a month qualified for the bitten-off-more-than-I-can-chew label.

I arrived at her house a little after two in the afternoon.  It was a slow drive – made stressful by the incredible beauty of the landscape and hairpin bends, other drivers overtaking and being midgie-attacked-and-bitten when I stopped for a picnic just outside of Kyle of Lochalsh.  It was more than anyone could ask of me to negotiate the curved drive without hitting the white stones that bordered it.

So, we sat down to a cup of tea at two o’clock and talked our way almost all the way around the clock face. We woke from a deep and involved conversation to realise it was way past our bed times.

Marion’s house has no television, no radio and no mobile phone or wifi signal.  It has field mice that sit on the kitchen floor undisturbed and a family of ducks that pass by the back door on the way to the bay for a morning swim. It has two rooms decorated in 1950’s style, the living room and the kitchen, which form a film set for Aunty Peggy’s house in the ALABA series “Bannan”. The film crew arrive, like migrating birds, in the spring and the autumn.

I discovered that I loved being in Marion’s house and in her company. We spent a lot of time together!

What about talking? Marion is writing a book on Scottish clans.  She began telling me about some new houses that had been built just across the road.  They are not like Marion’s house which has character and history and two rooms of a film set. These are neat white boxes with green wooden porches. Apparently when the diggers came in to pull up the soil, it was more than soil they excavated.  Archaeologists were no doubt called in to examine and date the bones found – three or four thousand years old - and identify the black ooze in stone jars – brain matter – but once they were all moved to a safer place the builders continued with their project.  History was an inconvenience.  No clues left as to who the bones belonged to and seemingly no desire to find out.  Too many aspects of life are in the same kind of danger of being neglected and forgotten.  Living in a place where MacLean and MacGregor are becoming just surnames and losing their history – Marion stands like King Canute trying to halt the waves of “who-gives-a toss?”

The lesser known stories of clan events, along with snippets of Marion’s life story and grilling me on my views about God TV and American evangelists, there was no shortage of things to talk about.

Marion had worked with a publisher friend of mine, but he hadn’t met someone like Marion before.  Her synapses are always firing and she probably can’t write in a straight line.  We called her diversions “rabbit holes” and there were lots of them.  I remember once being taught how to roll out pastry by continually tapping the edges to keep it square or round.  Marion needed the tap the edges of her creativity to keep it in shape.

So much talking. When Marion is staying in Armadale, she tends not to leave the grounds.  She said it was because people talk to her and hours can drift by.  It’s not wasted time by any means but it doesn’t help progress the book. 

And trust? Writers are strange people at times.  There are times when they lack confidence and are not sure that what they are writing has any value to anyone but themselves.  My publisher friend was looking for a particular book format that he recognised. It was as if he tried to snatch the pastry out of her hand and start tapping the edges into his kind of book.

Much of the time Marion and I spent talking was about finding a format and a structure that she was happy with.  It was as if she had put the pastry into my hands – her hopes, her dreams, her stories, her personal anecdotes and all of her confidence issues.  We worked together shaping her book, identifying themes and stories that would make the grade and setting aside the ones that wouldn’t. It will be such a book that I will be first in the queue to buy.

I found plenty of time to sit down and plan a second book of poetry.  It has been something I have hesitated to do because the first one was so good that I didn’t think a second book could match it.  But, as the first book was, it was never my book to make such decisions about, but God’s.  I know that I had Marion’s support anyway, but talking to her it really helped.

The three “T”s?  Marion and I did them all and our friendship is deeper for it.

This Fragrant Patch of Ground

“Wake up, North Wind, get moving, South Wind! Breathe on my garden fill the air with spice fragrance. Oh, let my lover enter his garden! Yes, let him eat the fine, ripe fruits” (Song of Songs 4:16 The Message)

This verse has quite captured my spirit.

I’m sure I have mentioned before about my two garden-proud neighbours and how my little patch of wilderness is an eyesore in comparison.  I don’t think either neighbour would want my niece’s neighbour living next door. There are worse gardens out there than mine.

Admittedly, her neighbour is a lot older than I am and his health is not so good.  Where I have a copy of the yellow pages, a co-op around the corner that has a window of adverts and access to an internet full of green-fingered gardeners waiting to cut my grass and chase down my weeds, he keeps himself to himself and doesn’t ask for help.  Where I have a willingness to pay for said green-fingered gardeners, he is not willing.  His grass is far higher than mine – far higher.  The house is all but obscured by it. 

The back garden is really bad too.  I may have one or two statuesque thistles but he has a tangle of nettles and brambles and wild growing stuff.  It’s quite possible that some remote indigenous tribe is living undiscovered in his back garden.  I can make it to my back gate without a hatchet – the same cannot be said for him.

The stately thistles in my back garden are in a patch of ground near the back gate.  There’s a rhubarb plant nearby that is holding its own and a selection of herbs - mint, oregano, sage, rosemary and thyme (I feel a song coming on) - that are wholesome and hearty and refuse to tremble in the presence of the thistles.  It’s a very fragrant patch of ground.

I don’t need to call up the north wind as it is blowing stiffly outside. It’s not filling the air with a fragrance of spices but dragging my washing off the line and decorating the honeysuckle bush with my not-so-smalls.

I’m never really sure how to take the Song of Solomon.  I blush as I read some of the verses.  It’s one of those books in the Bible that had a hard time persuading the scholars it wasn’t the early edition of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and holds its place in the canon by insisting it’s really a picture of the intimacy of God and His people rather than just about a king and his concubine.   

This morning I pictured the garden as my personal relationship with God. Commentaries talk about the north and south winds being the activity of the Holy Spirit – the north wind being the Spirit’s purging and cooling, the south wind, the Spirit warm and cherishing.  For too many of us it’s the world that seems to do all the blowing.  We rise and fall to the winds of opinion and current affairs and allow ourselves to be stirred to a state of mania and hype.  The breath of the Spirit should be what we respond to.

This morning I pictured the north and south winds as simply being the circumstances we find ourselves in – like the disciples on the Sea of Galilee when the storm blew out of nowhere.  The storm revealed, not just the fear in their hearts, but the weaknesses in the fishing boat they were sailing. Jesus ordered the storm and the wind.  Sometimes the storms we sail in are there to reveal our heart and the things that we place our trust in.

It’s the wind stirring the fragrance of the garden that attracts the lover.  The fragrance in our lives comes from the grace-character we cultivate and through the access we give to the Holy Spirit to breathe upon us. 

As the Spirit breathes upon our faith walk with Jesus, we should ask ourselves whether it’s a pleasant walk for Him.  Sad to say we have a tendency to get used to a smell so much so that we don’t notice it any longer. It ceases to bother us.

A bad smell bothered me today.  Someone posted a picture and a comment on Facebook, something not necessarily untrue, but something that did not build me up or encourage me. I sensed the Holy Spirit blowing over my inner garden, for want of a better illustration.  The fragrance was not a nice one and I shuddered.  

We shouldn’t be giving garden-space to thistles..

.

A Place to Rest

The theme for the Eden Court Poetry people yesterday was "Gardens".  I didn't make it.  After a week spent in the constant company of people, nice though they were, I felt the need for a bit of isolation. Here's one I made earlier:

This is the council housing estate

where Edgeware Road meets
Southwall Close,
built in 1959,
just west of the A27 trunk road,
north of Whiteparish

These are the trees

the builders left standing
with strong limbs, deep roots
and thick, twisted trunks
climbed by four generations
of scruffy children

These were the carrier bags

of used disposable nappies,
and half empty beer cans
plundered by seagulls,
and left like gutted bodies
spilling entrails

These are the flowers

Frank bought and planted
Too many for his garden,
he dug a border beside the path
A riot of red and a blaze of blue
And the fragrance of summer

These are the paving stones,

scraped of moss and
scoured of weeds
by Frank’s grandson, George
who was made redundant last month
and needed something to do

This is the rose bush

offered by Elsie
whose husband died last year
Creamy white flowers with pale pink hearts
and a sweet and spicy aroma,
resistant to blackspot and midlew

This is the bench

that had always been there,
now sanded down and re-painted forest green
by Gavin, who smokes too much.
He was watched by a ginger cat
scrupulously licking its paws

These are the spring bulbs

planted by the pupils
from Miss Garrick’s junior class
after a careful survey
of the insect life and
catching spiders in clear plastic cups

This is the tyre

strung from the branch of a tree,
spinning and swaying
Skinny arms and scrawny legs swinging
until the man from the council took it down
because of health and safety concerns

These are the cup cakes

baked by Amanda, aged six
with a little help from her mum
Eggs and flour,
butter and sugar carefully weighed.
Pink frosting generously shared with everyone

These are the Kendal sisters

the estate's first residents,
witnesses of the ebb and flow
of a nomadic community,
Hands together and eyes closed,
they pray for their neighbours

This is the community

laying claim to a few acres of wasteland
and creating a place to rest
They smile at the camera
as the man from the Whiteparish Gazette
takes a picture for the paper.