A Tree and its Roots

I managed to catch a little bit of old time normal this morning. There were no breakfast ingredients in either the fridge or the cupboard. There was nothing in the cupboard under the sink for cleaning and the last dribble of laundry liquid had been used yesterday. Old Mother Hubbard was playing a mournful tune on her violin. A proper shop was needed, not the emergency tide-us-over purchases we had been doing for so long.

Dobbies was all but empty. No bustle of shoppers and tangle of chairs and tables, just social distancing and efficient service. I sat down with a pot of tea, a bacon roll and my kindle. It had been a while. My Dobbies card had expired some time early into lockdown so there was no free drink to collect.

I’d downloaded a book of devotionals written by a man who taught a preaching course I did a few years ago. I liked his style, the stories he told and the truth he taught. I settled down to read the first chapter.

It was all about a tree, planted and growing somewhere. Throughout the decades a town was built, and the height of the tree was measured in how many stories high the buildings were. There were wars and men went to the moon and the tree grew. Then one day, out of the blue, with no warning whatsoever, the tree fell over. Ah, thought I, ash die-back, dutch elm disease – the kind of tree was never mentioned, but I thought disease. It’s what we battle with today.

But, no, said the experts. There was no evidence of any internal damage going on. The problem lay underneath the ground, with the roots. All the traffic of feet, walking and running and skipping and hopping, had broken up the network of roots and without roots, falling down was always going to happen. The experts recommended that all the other trees should be fenced off so that people couldn’t get near them. And so it happened.

Things in the natural often have a spiritual truth to tell. People have roots too. They are not the kind that tether a person to one spot alone, but a person’s thoughts and feelings, their dreams and memories are all there inside. And then people come along walking and running, skipping and hopping over those things. A word here, a look there, a snatch of a smirk, a rumble of ridicule or a bold insult all serve to break up that precious network of thought-roots. It doesn’t always have to be deliberate. We think that people think like us and won’t be hurt because sometimes we are not hurt by them. All too often the hurt isn’t visible.

We need to do some fencing off.

We need to take steps to guard the things that are precious. When God tells us that He loves us unconditionally, we should not allow ourselves to trample over that truth. When God says we are the apple of his eye we should not list all the qualities of a bad apple and say that is us. God’s word written down and read, breathed upon by His Spirit, helps us to guard the heart inside.

I planted the truth and harvested a poem:-

A Tree and its Roots
 

a glorious tree, it was that grew

leafy limbs in the sky it threw

cool the shade from a blazing sun

a leaning place for those who run

 

it wasn’t the wind on a stormy day

nor insects inside nibbling away

but came there a day when the tall tree fell

what caused its fall who could tell?

 

a wise man lent on his walking stick

he said that the roots had fallen sick

feet all tramping here and there

were more than all the roots could bear

 

without its roots a tree will fall

it matters not how large or small

beneath the soil we cannot see

how strong or weak the roots might be

 

it’s just like folk the wise man said

they too have roots that grow and spread

so much that spills across the soul

can stop a man from being whole

 

a careless word, a touch of scorn

and something deep inside is torn

hope that’s dashed, a promise broke

is all it takes to hurt some folk

 

there’s need, he said, to guard the roots

to nurture new and growing fruits

to mind the spirit deep inside

where grace and peace and truth reside

 

precious are the lives we live

priceless is the love we give

full of power the words we sa

will they harm or heal today?

 

Lifelines

I am knitting a scarf. It’s the third time I have knitted this pattern. I’d bought some lovely sparkly wool for my first attempt. It was the first time too that I ventured away from my usual double knitting and size 4 needles. The pattern contained sections of lace, a lot of knitting two together and yarn round needles. A dropped stitch somewhere saw a gentle unravelling of my knitting. It was the Monopoly equivalent of “Go to Jail”, passing “Go” and not collecting my £200. I am a stubborn sort of a girl at times. I was determined I would not be conquered by the pattern.

I decided I needed a practice run on bigger needles and thicker wool. Yes, I was back to double knitting wool and size 4 needles. I felt that every “knit” row was an obstacle course. It wasn’t the kind of pattern you could knit while watching the TV. A glance at the screen and a blip in the concentration and the stitch got dropped, the unravelling happened, and I’d have to take it all out. I thought of hat patterns I could dig out instead touse up the wool.

Friday mornings, before lockdown happened, were spent with a social/craft group, knitting being the craft and nattering being the social side of things. I am perhaps the novice of the group. I am described to the new people to the group as “She knits hats and scarves”. I could argue my case and point to two baby jumpers I knitted. There’s nothing untrue about it, though. Hats and scarves are what I knit.

I have a fierce concentration face when I’m knitting, and I sigh a lot. I told them about the pattern and the dropped stitches and having always to go back to the beginning.

“You need a lifeline,” said the lady sitting next to me. “when you have knitted a few rows of pattern, thread a different colour of wool through the stitches. If you have to take out any rows afterwards, you only have to go back to the lifeline and not back to the beginning.”

Wow. Why did I not think of that?

I rattled through (slowly) the double knitting practice scarf, and through the delicate sparkly wool one, threading lifelines every so often. There were dropped stitches, but the lifelines stopped me from having to start again. I knitted with confidence, maintaining my fierce concentration face, but sighing less.

I attended a Zoom meeting last night. It was a ladies’ discipleship meeting. Before it was a zoom meeting, we met at a friend’s house and round the dining room table we drank tea, ate biscuits and shared life. God loves variety and the different ways people lived out their faith was always inspiring. The Zoom meetings were no different.

I thought of the lifelines in my knitting and though how much we need lifelines in life. There are so many dropped stitches we deal with. Bills drop through the letterbox and we know there’s not enough money in the account to cover it. The child shoots up over the summer and last year’s uniform will not fit. A word said carelessly by a friend sets us on a downward spiral that we can’t seem to halt. Things are unravelling.

The Zoom meeting, for me, is a lifeline. Collectively we have lived through every experience going and know what comfort to give. Together we have a reservoir of knowledge and experience to call upon. We all have truth to share.

There is a good reason why the Holy Spirit baptises us into the body of Christ. There is a reason why God is not interested in lone rangers. Sometimes we focus on and preach truth that applies to an individual. We read a letter to one of the churches and assume Paul is writing to us as individuals and setting personal challenges. We are a body.

The body brings with it the idea of a lifeline. My life should never unravel so much that there is no one there to help.

We live in a world where we are not allowed to fall apart. We are all expected to thrive and flourish and be productive. The world really doesn’t know what to do with those that unravel.

This is where the church should be better than the world.

 

God the Father - Me His Child

It’s not my comfort zone, this Zoom group “Art and Soul” where proper artists who know what they are doing hang out! Then there’s me still in nursery school, potato printing with poster paints.  Not false modesty on my part, if a picture turns out well it’s more accidental than anything.

The “soul” bit of it relates to a Bible verse as a prompt. One of us chooses a Bible verse. It is something we have thought about and meditated upon. There is always so much truth to be gleaned and to be shared with others.

Romans 8:15 was our verse this week. “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” (NIV)

The sme verse in The Passion Translation is lovely.

“And you did not receive the “spirit of religious duty,” leading you back into the fear of never being good enough. But you have received the “Spirit of full acceptance,” enfolding you into the family of God. And you will never feel orphaned, for as He rises up within us, our spirits join Him in saying the words of tender affection, “Beloved Father!” (TPT)

What’s not to like about being fully accepted, being enfolded into the family of God and never having to feel orphaned?

I wanted to just sit this one out.  Whatever picture in my head I have of what I would like to do I have no idea about how to do it. I Lack skill, but It’s like every skill in life. For all of us it’s down to practice. I don’t practice painting enough.

Fathers are a mystery to me. Mine was a one parent family, a mother and six children. What I know of my dad, who died of cancer when I was young, I know from what my mum told me and what my brothers and sisters have shared. My own memories are vague. I can’t tell the genuine ones from the ones that have been accepted as memories because I have heard the stories so often. There are times when I wonder how different a person I would have turned out to be if he hadn’t died.

The Fatherhood of God has always been a bit of a struggle. Seeing fatherhood demonstrated in other families has been my fall-back position and I have known some excellent fathers.

 After a few attempts at other ideas I settled on a father and son walking side by side. Whoever invented stick men should be made a “sir” or something. You can’t go wrong with stickmen. It makes me feel a little bit guilty for all those times I banned stickmen when pupils were drawing comic strip cartoons of the life of St Columba. The end result was vaguely ET going home.

The “show and tell” bit of the afternoon was upon us. I had coloured around my father and son in rainbow shades of soft pastels. Walking anywhere with God is walking into a life of promise. Yes, there was a journey to be made. The father’s hand will never let go.

It is a mystery how God would want to adopt us as His children.

But He does.

Art and Soul

It has been a couple of years now since I fell in love with painting. A friend invited me to his art classes in Alness. I had little in the way of expectations of discovering a Picasso or a Turner in me. I just wanted to show support for a friend. I loved it. Those art classes changed the way I saw things. I noticed colour and shades all around me. I bought art stuff – paints, paper, charcoal, brushes – and I played around. I liked what appeared on the paper.

You’d think with lockdown and time on my hands I would slapping on the paint left, right and centre – but it all kind of stopped. I’d seen something last autumn. There had been a heavy frost and the field behind the house was white with it. Beside the path was a tree. It was a tree that leaned a little and with a light breeze, golden leaves were spilling like confetti. Around the base of a tree was a circle of gold, bright yellow against the white frost. The sun was struggling to break through cloud and mist. I wanted to paint the scene and rushed home. I dug out all the stuff and set to work.

I wanted it to come together, to replicate what I had seen on paper, but it wouldn’t work. The sky was too blue, the grass was too green. The tree wouldn’t lean in the right direction and the leaves refused to fall like confetti. It wasn’t happening. I wouldn’t say I made that many attempts, but I got discouraged. I put the paints away. If I couldn’t paint what I had seen, I didn’t want to paint anything that was less. I stopped painting. There would be days when I dug the paints out and had another go at the tree, another day of not succeeding.

A friend of mine invited me to “Art and Soul”. They were artists meeting together to read and meditate on a Bible verse. Thirty minutes was given over to painting something that the Spirit stirred. I set out my stuff on the kitchen table just in case I was stirred, but at the back of my mind I was thinking about writing a poem instead. Poetry is my sweet spot. That afternoon it was my fall-back position, if the art wasn’t happening.

By myself I have sworn,

    my mouth has uttered in all integrity

    a word that will not be revoked:

Before me every knee will bow;

    by me every tongue will swear. (Isaiah 45:23)

God speaks a word that will not be revoked. His word is that every knee will bow and every tongue will swear their allegiance to Him. I thought about those words that God speaks that He will not take back. He speaks a word of deliverance over me. He speaks a word of life, of rescue, of release and reconciliation. He will not take those words back. He has decided He wants me to be a part of His family, not as a second cousin twice removed, or the poor relation that gets a roof over their head and a place at the dinner table but not much more. He wants me as His child to flourish. He wants me to discover who He created me to be and live that life before Him.

I dug out the box of soft pastels and started work. It felt good to be back playing with colours.

There was a “show and tell” bit afterwards, of explaining what you had created and the thinking behind it. The other artists were let loose to comment. It surprised me, and encouraged me, that someone had painted something almost identical, the same idea. Another lady had drawn a scene of people bowing down to a golden sky. Her people looked like musical notes. Deliverance and rescue have been themes for songs throughout history. She didn’t intend them to look like music notes, but that’s what another saw. Another picture seemed to me like a path, bordered by lots of red. It drew the eye. I thought about the Highway of the Lord, His righteous path that leads to His throne. I know myself upon that road. He walks beside me.

And the poem, the fall-back position if the paints weren’t working? Here's a first draft

Your word to me is truth

spoken from lips of integrity,

with never the intention to reclaim them.

They work in me to bend the knee,

and announce my allegiance.

I hold out my hand and

accept the deliverance you gift me.

Strength, Yours, pours in to

overtake my weakness

Being Kind

There are days, hard days, when the slog has worn me down and no kind of chivvying moves me forward. The head prescribes a kick up the rear end and sometimes the head gets it right. There are other times when what is needed is for me to be kind to myself.

Lockdown has been three months. The only flesh and blood face I have seen is my husband. I challenge anyone living through lockdown to be always cheerful and optimistic. Even my singing-in -the-morning husband who is not having to deal with busses and taxis to get him up to work on a morning, who no longer gorges on fish and chips and take away curries, who gets to bed at a sensible hour – even he has his off moments.

In these grim days kindness to self goes a long way.

I have been working through some exercises in a creative writing book by Julia Cameron. There are two or three pages to read followed by a “try this” challenge, Yesterday’s pages were about kindness, not towards others which is a given, but towards self.

One would have thought that with all the time that has been granted to one that one should have the to-do list covered. The house should be clean, the writing should be up to date and one should have hands into flour baking something. Aye right. As if that happens. As if the to-do list doesn’t carry over to the following day.

Julia suggested writing a list of ten things to do where I’m being kind to me.  Going for a walk isn’t so easy these days. It’s not being kind to myself always having to plan for a toilet stop somewhere. It has come down to judging the depths of bushes to see whether I am concealed enough to do the business without prying eyes.

I have done one of my suggestions – I bought a girly mag to settle down to read with a cup of tea. The tea was freshly brewed from mint leaves from the garden. It’s an interesting and very fresh taste. I also wrote a letter, another item on the list.

Being kind to myself is recognising that there are days and seasons when it is hard to get the act together. I hold myself to some very high standards. My expectations of myself are not unrealistic, but they are relentless. There never gets to be a clean slate to begin my days. Rather than haranguing myself to get things done, there are times when kindness gets me further along the road.

I sat with God on this one, asking Him if being kind to myself was being too soft, and letting me get away with things I should be doing. In His wisdom He suggested that I write the to-do list in chalk and at the end of the day simply wipe away the things I didn’t do. I can’t point to a Bible verse that says, “Scrawleth thy to-do list in chalk”, but there must be a truth there that applies. Very often when we think of the fruits of the Spirit, we think they are about how we treat other people, but they are also about how we treat ourselves.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”  (Galatians 5:22-23)

Kindness is in there, and gentleness. Forbearance or patience in in there too. Perhaps if we are not kind, gentle or patient with ourselves, the kindness we express to others is missing something.