“Postscript” Moments

Going for a walk is always on the to-do list but doesn’t often get done. Mostly it’s on account of the weather. I know I’m not made of sugar and I won’t melt but I don’t like getting wet or being cold. Just lately access to a toilet needs to be factored in. Today was an almost-spring day and I swear the sun called to me to come out and play. The sun and Seamus Heaney that is.

I read his poem, “Postscript”, this morning. In the poem he had driven out west and the wind and the light played off each other. The sea was on one side of him, wild and wave tossed. On the other side of him was a slate-grey lake and a flock of swans. It was one of those moments of rare beauty.  Nature lines up a spectacle and most people miss it. They are, writes Heaney -

“…neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass”

I suppose I didn’t want to be “a hurry” through which things pass. I wanted to be there when those moments happened and to not let them pass. Heaney had climbed into my head, I climbed into my car and off we drove to a forest trail that I like.

It might have been a sunny day but it wasn’t warm. The tide was out as I drove along the road that skirted the Beauly Firth. The firth stretched out in a dozen shades of the pale blues and the distant mountains were snow-capped. It was breath-taking in its beauty.

It was a Seamus Heaney Postscript moment.

I tried to stir the poet in me to write something. The Seamus Heaney in my head kept poking me to describe what I was seeing and scorned my choice of words. Later, not then, I wrote something -

I rest my eyes

Gazing on a distant horizon

Snow brushed mountains blur into

Cold blue sea

I inhale deeply and

My soul settles

I have worn glasses since I was three years old. I have worked my way through a number of NHS plastic frames of every colour of the rainbow. I once asked the optician if there was anything I could do to improve my eyesight. I’d read somewhere that there were exercises a person could do to improve the eye muscles. There were inspiring case studies of people tossing their glasses away because they no longer needed them. My eyesight problem did not fall into that case study category, said my optician. If I was looking for an exercise to do I should relax my eyes by looking at a distant object. It wouldn’t improve my eyesight but it might slow down the deterioration that would come with age. Looking at a distant object seemed more like putting strain on my short sighted vision but I did it for a while.

I relaxed my eyes by looking at the snow-capped mountains far off in the distance. Nothing was moving. Seamus Heaney might have had his wind tossed sea and a flock of swans with ruffled feathers. I had a light blue sea and stillness.

The stillness crept into me, through my skin and into my soul. The “hurry” in me slowed down and the known and the strange things stopped and tipped their hats and we engaged in conversation.

The Things Tied to Us

Yesterday’s Streetwise was all ours. The usual three people was down to just Joe and myself. It’s a Sunday evening ministry – preparing a meal for some of the people that the Street pastors meet on the streets over Friday and Saturday evenings. I try out various soup recipes, some more successful than others and there are sandwiches, crisps, tomatoes and cucumber. And there's pudding.

There is also a time of reading the Bible together, sharing our stories and praying together. Last night we read through the opening verses of Hebrews 11. I am working my way through a Lent poetry book and Hebrews 11 was one of the readings given for Sunday. It’s a lot to live up to when we read through the list. We have a habit perhaps of dragging out the mental plumb line to see how we measure up. What God calls us to is not Enoch’s calling or Abraham’s but our own. How we work out that calling doesn’t always look like Noah building an ark in the desert.

Verse 8 reads, “By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going.”

When I left Rugby to join a gospel outreach team in Inverness way back in 1989, the church prayed for people who it was sending out and they were sending me out. They spoke words of encouragement over us. This was one of my words. Just like Abraham I was responding to a call from God. I was called to travel to a place I didn’t know. I’d looked up Inverness on a map. It was a long way north of where I was. I left not knowing much about where I was going.

There were eight of us on the team, piled into a minibus heading north on the A9. We stopped in a layby in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t just having second thoughts about the destination and the job ahead. I had convinced myself that I was not the one for the job. This shy hermit didn’t seem to have a place proclaiming the kingdom of God on the streets. It wasn’t just Inverness that was unfamiliar but the “mission”. It was too big a change for me to deal with.

It was dark. It was in the middle of nowhere. There were not street light to pollute the sky. So many stars pressed down on me.

“Look up, Mel,” said God. Mel? I’d always been Melanie. New start, new name perhaps? There was of the Girl Guide in me to recognise a few constellations.

“See those stars? Those constellations are still the same. They are the same stars you saw back in Rugby.” I chose not to point out that the I rarely saw the stars in Rugby because of light pollution.

“Just as those stars in the sky haven’t changed – neither will I change.”

I might doubt myself and my readiness for what lay ahead, but I didn’t doubt God. The shyness was eventually shed like old skin. The hermit took a back seat but never really left the stage. I was in my element proclaiming the kingdom on the streets.

This morning, thinking about last night, God reminded me of the other half of the encouraging word that day back then when I was prayed over. It wasn’t tied into any particular scripture. Someone spoke over me a word about bringing down the strongholds that the enemy had built. I was marching forward to inflict damage on his kingdom.

I had fulfilled the Abraham word more or less. I had made Inverness my home. Sadly I had swapped the tent-frame-of-mind for a terraced house. I had settled and let go of my pioneering roots. This was something God said we would do something about. The bringing down enemy strongholds? The inflicting damage on his kingdom? That word seemed to have been forgotten.

I was reading “The Pilgrimage” by George Herbert this morning. It’s an allegorical that might have inspired John Bunyan to write “Pilgrim’s Progress”. There’s a verse that talks about passion and a wasted place and of being robbed of his gold. All the poet had in the end is “one good Angel which a friend had ti’d” close to his side. The Angel was a specific coin in those days. I was challenged to consider what I had tied to my side, or my friends, what they had tied to my side. Bringing down the enemy strongholds was perhaps one of these things.

I suppose I lamented that I hadn’t seemed to inflict that much damage over the years. I hadn’t cast out any demons. Yes, I prayed – but for the most part my prayers seemed pale and powerless to my ears.

“It’s the small victories, Mel,” said God, “and maybe the pale and powerless prayers are not pale or powerless when I hold them in my hand.”

I wouldn’t say my life passed before my eyes – but I was aware of so many times I could have reacted in a way that took away God’s glory, or demonstrated that I really didn’t trust in him – but I held firm. I have planted so many words through conversations over the years. The poems I have written have touched people’s hearts. It is the little persistent victories – I’m inflicting death by a thousand tiny cuts. It is in the choosing to do things God’s way that I inflict damage on the enemy’s kingdom.

That said, it is perhaps a good time to take the words that have been tied to my side and really look at them. They’re not dead words. They’re just covered in a lot of dust.

Time to dig out the spiritual equivalent of Mr Sheen.

All The Kingdoms

there’s Son

there’s a Father

there’s an enemy and

there’s a desert

there’s the Father’s promise

“ask of me and

I will make the nations Your inheritance and

the ends of the earth Your possession.”

there’s the enemy’s promise

“all this, all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour

I will give you

if you will bow down and worship me.”

the question isn’t whether

the Son gets the nations, the ends of the earth

and all the kingdoms of the world

make no mistake, they will be His

the question is not “if”

but “how”

how will He build the Kingdom?

how will He redeem the world?

“ask Me, “ says the Father

and He will give all the kingdoms to the Son

but the cross stands in His path

“worship me,” says the enemy

and he will give all the kingdoms to the Son

and he takes the cross off the table

the Son

asks the Father and

embraces the cross

More Than Pancakes

The supermarkets have gathered all the ingredients necessary for making pancakes and put together on the shelves even down to a new frying pan should you need one. I had a practice run earlier on in the week and I’m ready to tweak the recipe. That’s Pancake Day for you. Another day not safe from the curse of commercialisation.

Pancake Day goes by another older, less jumping-on-the-money-bandwagon name. I know where the pancakes come in, but wasn’t quite so sure about the “shrove” part of Shrove Tuesday. Shrove?  I know that we are on the brink of Lent, the season leading up to Easter and that it’s time of sacrifice. For us it is Jelly baby time – our replacement for all things chocolate. That still doesn’t explain the “shrove”.

Before Lent begins it was necessary to confess sins and receive absolution for them. It's a day of penitence, a time to know and own your sins and pull them out into the daylight. It’s time to be forgiven and to know a clean soul. It’s a day of celebration. The weight of all the wrongness has been lifted and tossed away. That’s the “shrove” bit.

Too many people are consuming their pancakes without being “shriven”. The holiday has lost its heart and soul and no one has noticed. Sims are not confessed and absolved these days but talked through and labelled, understood and perhaps excused.

This morning I was watching on old DVD with some young friends. “After Apartheid” followed the journey of a white police officer as he returned to a village where he had massacred eleven people. He had thought a meeting of black rebels was in progress in a house. Shots were fired through the window and the door kicked, all guns blazing. It was the wrong house. The police officer was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Then apartheid ended. A new government was sworn in. Decisions were made abut what do with the prison population whose crimes had been politically motivated.

This is the “shrove” bit. Prisoners were given the opportunity to confess their sins. If they were prepared to tell the truth of their involvement in the violence and death inflicted in the name of apartheid, they had the chance of amnesty and being released.

We weighed up every word spoken by the police officer, and every word not spoken. Had I been heading back to that village I would have done my homework. I would have known the names of every person killed that day and the names of every person that had been present, giving evidence at my trial. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name,” would not have been an option. The villagers shed tears while he remained “sorry” but dry eyed. We were cynical enough to wonder how sincere the apology was or his intention to redress the balance. He had been facing a life sentence and now, just by telling it as it was, he was about to be released after serving four years. Four years seemed too little a price to pay for ending eleven lives. Was he genuinely penitent? We also observed that he probably got off quite lightly too because of the camera crew filming it all. How would he had fared if no one was filming?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee that set Brian Mitchell, the white police officer, on his journey of repentance. Tutu had to listen through so many stories of the horrendous things one man did to another that day in day out his heart was being broken over and over again.

The confession and absolution, the really letting go and the really being forgiven, the release, the freedom, the knowing of our burdens slipping from our shoulders – that is the start of Lent, not the finishing point. Lent with all its sacrifices is not about earning the forgiveness and the release from guilt and pain. We cannot earn forgiveness. We can only accept it and live in the good of it.

The Lent journey tells me who forgave me, why and the price paid.

Being a Friend of God

An earworm according to the urban online dictionary is “a song that sticks in your mind, and will not leave no matter how much you try. The best way to get rid of an earworm is to replace it with another. Be prepared to become a jukebox.”

At our church fellowship meeting last night we sang a catchy little tune. “I am a friend of God…I am a friend of God…I am a friend of God…He calls me friend.” It was enough that I was singing the chorus over and over again throughout today, but I couldn’t stop my head bobbing from side to side as I did so.

“You do know what being My friend means, yes?” asked God. I got the impression from the words spoken to my heart, regardless of the head bobbing about, that the answer was something serious. Friendship with God really isn’t something to take lightly. It comes at great cost. It comes with great responsibility.

A story came to mind from Jesus’ teaching about prayer.

“Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within and say, ‘Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you’?  I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.” Luke 11:5-8

Jesus was talking about persistent prayer. The door opened not on the basis of friendship but on the basis of the man knocking and knocking and knocking.

Being a friend of God means that I don’t have Him yell at me through the bedroom window to come back tomorrow. He doesn’t say, “I’ve gone to bed. All the angels have gone to bed.  Heaven is closed for the night. You are taking this friendship thing too far!” I am assured that whatever the gap between what I have and what I need right now, God is ready to meet the need. He is not Old Mother Hubbard with an empty storehouse. I know that. What I know and what I do with what I know doesn’t always match up. I think it is an insult to call God my friend and then live my life struggling to survive on so little when He has so He is aching to give me.

That wasn’t the serious bit although that was challenging enough.

God fully expects me to knock on the door at midnight to ask for the three loaves to feed the unexpected guests.

“Yes, but,” said God, “It works both ways. If you are My friend, can I not also knock on your door at midnight and ask you for three loaves of bread for My visitors?”

Let’s be clear – God doesn’t actually need me, or my three loaves of bread.  God has chosen to give me the bread and I am to hold it in my hand so lightly that if He wants them back He doesn’t have to prise my fingers apart to get them. Yes, there is a storehouse in heaven but it’s as if God has plundered His own storehouse and given all the stuff away to His people on the understanding that when He wants something back, it is surrendered swiftly. Everything we have is His.  It never becomes ours.

I have been given all manner of gifts none of which I own. Yes, I can say that my gifts are well-honed because of the work I have put into practice and perfection. My hard work is what got me my degree. God gifted me the mind-set to do the work.  He wired the brain to be capable of making the mental connections to do what I do.

All of it is there to work for Him and His Kingdom. There’s a poem. He tells me, that I wrote years ago, but someone needs to hear it now because they need to be encouraged. They have fallen over, grazed their spiritual knees and to be lifted up. That poem says it all. Dig it out, He says, read it at the poetry slam. Not three leaves of bread to feed a surprise visitors, but a poem to meet the need of a hungry soul.

Yes, I go to God for the things I need but it works the other way too. He choose to come to me for the things he knows I have that are needed there and then. He knows I have them because He gave them to me. He doesn’t rip them out of my hands but asks…and asks…and asks. I get the message and I hand them over.

Chasing the Moon

There was a lot of hype yesterday about the moon. It was a super blue blood moon.  I understood only the super part of it as being bigger than usual because it was at its closest to the planet. I’m not sure where the blue bit and the blood bit come in.

Last night as I picked up my husband from work and turned to drive down the hill back into town, the moon was there, all big and orange and swathed in threads of cloud.

“The moon! The moon!” I said, excited. I tried to explain how it was different from other moons. I told him that I would drop him off at home, grab the camera and indulge in some moon chasing. By the time we got home, however, the clouds were no longer threads across the sky but hulking great masses of grey and spitting rain. The moon was hidden and the rain was getting heavier.

“Come on, Mel. Take a walk with me.  Let’s chase the moon,” said God.

I grabbed the camera, took a quick toilet stop, and headed along the path around the housing estate. I wasn’t sure I could get a big enough stretch of sky with no houses or street lights and decided to take the picture of the moon through the trees. They were still in the bare winter state, black naked skeletons again a bright moon. I had the camera lens on zoom and the pictures – just two of them - looked atmospheric and spooky.

I was reminded of a poem I had written last month prompted by another poem “The Moons” by Grevel Lindop.  I love these two lines from the poem.

How many times did you call me from the house,

or from my desk to the window, just to see?

On first reading I thought it was the moon calling the poet from the house or from the desk. Looking at the moon seems almost a waste of time. I have moments when I feel nature is calling me to go outside, to switch off the TV or leave the laptop behind. In this poem it’s another person. He responds by writing a poem, seeing as he can’t string a necklace of moon glimpses. He was called away from his desk, his place of work, to glimpse at the moon. It’s almost as if the work at the desk has become all-consuming, urgent and necessary.

Last night as I zoom-lensed in on the moon, I thought about my poem “Wasting Time” and the first verse in particular.

come and waste time with me, my love

stand beside me and see the moon

leave those pressing things behind for

tomorrow’s moon is not this one

How much we miss when we don’t allow ourselves to be called away from what seems important to do something that seems trivial.

How much we miss too when we don’t surround ourselves with people who will call us away from the desk.

I really thought about the phrase “waste time with me”. We live in a world where wasting time is frowned upon. “Efficient” is becoming a horrible word for me. I like the extravagance behind the idea of wasting something.

Yesterday’s moon isn’t today’s moon. Some of these wasting time experiences are just one off opportunities. They don’t turn up day after day. If we miss them – we miss them. There are some things that ought to be unmissable!

Jesus promised He had come to give life in all of its fullness:=

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10.

I have a friend in God who drags me away from the desk to waste time with Him chasing the moon. I might not think to chase anything if God did not stir up the adventures in me.

Stamping on the Hermit Gene

There are a hundred websites dedicated to the art of conversation. I should have read the information on one of them before I went on a staff leaving do at the weekend. For years I battled with extreme shyness. I am still not comfortable in the presence of people. I was talking to a friend of mine about my approaching retirement. Right now I have to interact with people – soon, I won’t have to. The hermit gene will kick in and I will start hunting for an empty cave. God has told me that mine is not the role of the hermit – but my DNA feels wired that way.

Back to the website on conversation. An autopsy of the evening is probably not a good idea but I might learn how to be not such a dull dodo of the person sitting next to you the next time. This cones from a page highlighting six tips to a better conversation.

!. Lead with a compliment.

I didn’t do this. I thought about it twice. The people either side of me had poshed up for the occasion. I had changed my top for something brighter. We did compliment the food and the size of the portions. We had been led to expect something along the nouveau cuisine line with an emphasis on presentation rather than quantity. I’d planned a stop off at the chippy later.

Oh yes, I forgot to say that I had left my hearing aids behind. It wasn’t deliberate. I thought about going home to get them but I’m one of these must-arrive-early kind of people and there were roadworks everywhere. 

2. Embrace small talk.

“Small talk is what leads the way to deeper conversation, much in the way that a car must gradually accelerate to a certain speed rather than hitting 60 miles an hour instantaneously.” I don’t do small talk. Actually, I don’t talk, small or otherwise. I do silence and I do deep and nothing in between.

Did anyone talk about the weather? I don’t think so. The people around me were conversation experts and I was happy to nod and smile in what I thought were appropriate places. Remember I was without my hearing aids!

3. Ask lots of questions. 

This I did well. One of the ladies near me was a keen skier. I shared my skiing story with her – note the use of the singular rather than the plural. I tried it once, without lessons, and with a young lad trailing after me to pull me back to my feet when I fell over. I fell over often. 

She also has many American connections. What to say about President Trump can be a bit like walking on ice. To those who are Trump supporters her response is a chuckle and a “He’s a bit of a rascal.” To those who are not supporters she can be a little more direct. 

The lady on the other side of me was holding down a second job. She was being paid less than some of the younger staff and doing more work than them. They seemed to spend time, elbows on the counter, mobile phones in front of them if they weren’t serving someone. They could have been wiping tables or brushing floors or something more useful. 

“You should be scouting the entire conversation for “tell me more” opportunities.” The people around me seemed quite happy being nudged into more talking. That’s not to say I didn’t say anything. Eyes almost popped out of heads at the news that I was one of six children, the boys topping over six feet and the girls barely scraping five feet nothing. Once upon a time I was four feet eleven inches – but I’ve shrunk a few inches. Was I going to keep shrinking? They seemed concerned.

4. Be nice

.

I really don’t know whether I come across as friendly. I’m not sure I do. Remember – I don’t have my hearing aids. Asking someone to repeat what they said could have been taken as me not paying attention, or me apparently not interested enough to listen. It’s me trying to hear in among the general noise of scuffed chairs, dropped cutlery and other restaurant noises.

Maybe my smile had taken on a manic look – me overcompensating for the lack of being able to hear!

5. Let the other person do the talking

Definitely happy with this one. I rarely dominate conversations. That’s an understatement if ever there was one. ”Try to keep the focus on them as much as possible.” This is where I come into my own in conversations.

I wouldn’t say that I live a boring life – but watching paint dry probably has more appeal! That’s not true. I think the problem is that I can’t bear for people to show too little interest in the things that float my boat. Or maybe it’s the potential of mockery. I don’t know many people who love poetry – the writing and the reading of it. To confess to being a poet feels like it is too far out of people’s experience. They don’t seem to realise that every song they listen to is poetry put to music. There is so much about what I do that I feel I have to justify doing it. People’s natural reaction to learning that I’m an RE teacher is to tell me that they didn’t like RE in school. And you needed to tell me that…why?

And of course, there’s God who floats my boat – in a world where He gets so little respect. 

6. Keep it light. 

The workplace had just gone through a mini inspection. I had escaped the experience because one of the people due to visit me was sick.  There was no complaining about the visits. No one has added any song and dance routines to appeal to the visitors. It was business as usual. No one really talked about the job and all the pressures at all.

I would have liked to have ordered dessert – but no one else did. I suppose I could have asked for extra spoons and allowed people to dig in. I didn’t think about it at the time and I do tend to be a little territorial where pudding is concerned. I settled for coffee.

I remembered it was Friday and putting two coherent thoughts together on a Friday evening is a challenge. I wasn’t wanting to be the first to leave – but neither did anyone else want to be. Someone has got to be the first. I left first. I didn’t stop off at the chippy.

I wish I found being sociable easier. I am reminded of something Elizabeth Bennet says to Darcy in “Pride and Prejudice” about being sociable – one needs to practice.

Ness Book Fest Poetry

The event was a poetry workshop, part of the Ness Book Fest and celebrating all things books and some things Burns. I had almost persuaded myself to give it a miss but poetry and I just can’t keep our distance. We stalk each other through books and workshops.

The venue was Leakey’s bookshop. A second hand bookshop housed in a de-commissioned church, shelves from top to bottom and piles of books not yet assigned a space cluttering the floor – a perfect place for a penning poems. Upstairs used to be a café that served obscure versions of soup. There are a couple of sofas, and a circle of chairs.

I had sorted out my hearing aids and thought they were in the bag. It turned out that I had left them in the front room. It’s always a bad move to forget the hearing aids. I sat as close as possible to the tutor - a friend of mine who works harder than I do at her poetry, who submits things to magazines and wins prizes. A teacher, she knew how to talk loudly. The various writers in the circle of chairs were not so loud. Maybe there’s a thing that when you read poetry and it’s not something you really do often, and you are not so confident of what you’ve written that you speak softly. Only the man sitting opposite me was loud enough for me to hear.

The warming up exercises were 60 second blasts with a title for a prompt. It was important to write for every second and not lose yourself in too much thinking.

The Special Occasion

Hitting sixty this year.  I try to tell myself I’m happy to slide into seniority quietly, but deep down I want a party. I would rather not have to dress up but…

I really am hitting sixty. My husband talked about arranging a party. Not him exactly, but one of my sisters. And for the party to be down in their neck of the woods so they have no excuse not to come.

We thought about flights rather than driving down but with all the birthday presents we might need the boot of the car to take things home. I thought about a money only rule for practical reasons but I like wrapping paper and bows.

The second warm up made use of post its. The small green stripy one was for listing six everyday objects like cushions and carpets. The larger orange stripy one was for definitions of the objects, not detailed but just a phrase or a short sentence. We passed the definitions sheets around the circle to see if we could match up someone else’s definition to one of our objects.

My “letter” matched quite sensibly with someone else’s “means of communication” and a more creative link with “method of shutting a door”. I have written more than my fair share of letters which did damage to relationships. Saying it as it is, without an ounce of grace – I used to be an expert. I have softened over the years.

My favourite connection was my “carpet” fitting perfectly with someone else’s “transport for some people.” It conjured up all sorts of adventures.

The main part of the workshop was, of course, writing a poem. If you could imagine someone you know as a book what kind of a book would they be? Who would be listed in the acknowledgments page? What would be in the contents page? Would there be footnotes? What kind of cover would there be? What kind of pages? The font?

I’d like to say that I can’t believe her poem, my tutor friend’s poem, wasn’t one of the Blue Peter “here’s one I made earlier” things. But it wasn’t. She had the same title as us, the same list of things to think about and the same amount of time to write it as the rest of us. This is where her hard work and submitting things to poetry competitions and winning all came into being. She had written a wonderful poem about her mother-in-law. It was so full of rich pictures of this woman – perhaps a little intimidatingly competent.

Here’s mine. No prizes for guessing who it is. The first couple of lines give the identity away.

A book made in Glasgow

Not far from Parkhead

Yearns to be handled

To be held, to be read

The faint whiff of curry

Touches each page

There’s snippets of history

From birth to old age

The paper looks fragile

But really it’s strong

The stories look short

But really they’re long

And that was it. My time in the carpark the other side of the alley was all used up. I felt like Cinderella leaving the ball early.

A Curious Turn

“A Curious Turn” could refer to what happens when I get up too quickly from sitting down. The head spins a little bit sometimes.  It’s the name of the exhibition currently on at the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery - “A Curious Turn - Moving, Mechanical Sculpture”.

“In this exhibition, automata sculptures are brought magically to life through a sequence of cogs, cams, cranks and levers.” The cogs, cams, cranks and levers from the most part were hidden from sight. I walked around the exhibition quite amazed at the workmanship – but nothing moved. I hadn’t realised until I was half way around the room that there were buttons to push and levers to turn. It was interactive, but I didn’t know. I had been walking around looking at the sculptures thinking ti would be so much more effective if things moved!

“Visitors will be able to turn, push and crank to see many of the pieces in action” – I don’t always read the instructions!

My favourite exhibit was a row if old men, carved in wood, sitting behind a long desk with little sheets of paper in front of them. Pushing the button they all began to move. One man was yawning, another smoking a cigarette, another scratching his head and so on.  It was very inventive. Long before the cinema took over as entertainment these little mechanical pieces were all the rage.

Push the button or turn the lever and there is an intended action.  For the exhibits there was just the one action. The man smoking didn’t suddenly begin to scratch his head.  The man appearing to write something on the paper didn’t suddenly lean back and begin to yawn. Their individual actions were down to the cogs and cams and cranks assigned to them. They didn’t get to choose how they behaved.

As I was walking around, pushing buttons, turning levers the thought came to mind “Just who is pushing my buttons and turning my levers?”

As much as we say we are free to act as we wish, that’s not always the way it works out. We have accumulated a whole set of prescribed actions in response to various stimuli. Someone insults us? We retaliate. Someone parks in what we consider to be out space in the carpark at work and we grumble. We have our buttons that people push and we have our actions that happen as a result.

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:36

I am not like the automata. I am not wired up to cogs and levers. I am free to choose how to react when someone pushes my buttons. 

The freedom I have isn’t about being given permission to do what I like.  He has dismantled the lever and the buttons, with my cooperation to be released to love and to serve Him, not to love and serve my own interests.  When I choose to misuse the freedom given me, too often I end up binding myself again to the buttons and levers that I was released from in the first place.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”  (Gal 5:1)

Hibernation

Cold wind murmurs a gentle melody

Through skeleton trees

Snow beats a soft staccato
On grass and concrete
Stars pulse in the winter sky
Diamond beads on black velvet
I drag the blanket up to my chin and
Listen to the lullaby
Breathing slows and deepens
I sleep and dream of spring

Speaking to the Wolf and the Lamb

“In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all.” Isaiah 11:6

I suppose I have always thought of the wolf lying down with the lamb not in a literal sense. I have tended to see in as the church family with all its personalities, getting on together, showing unity and working hard to submit the tendency to dominate or terrorise others, to God. I have known too may wolves in the church family and too many lambs. Sad to say, I might have given up any utopian vision of a world living in peace and harmony.

There must have been a time before the Fall, before the serpent, Eve and the fruit eating event when the hunter and hunted didn’t exist. There was a time when there was no eat or be eaten mind-set in animals or in people. Venus fly traps didn’t trap flies once upon a time. Spiders wove webs to show off their creativity, not to catch insects.

I’ve also thought about seeing it as all the complex bits of a single person living in peace and harmony with themselves. I love the word “integrity”. A dictionary defines it as “the state of being whole and undivided.” When all the bits of me fit together properly, and there are not broken bits or drifting bits, just a single whole – that’s what I would like to be. It’s a challenge for any single individual or a community or a nation – to be whole and unified, not broken into bits.

Malcom Guite’s advent anthology “Waiting on the Word” contains a poem by David Greive - “Advent Good Wishes”. The poet speaks to the wolf and the lamb. The wolf is told not to stop roaring but to roar about thing that matter like justice for the poor. The lamb is told not to fear because the Messiah is on their side.

Part of our problem, as individuals or communities, lies in not saying anything to the wolf or the lamb at all. We don’t tell the wolf to change its roar direction. We don’t tell the lamb that there’s someone on its side. We don’t speak at all and our silence gives approval to whatever injustices are there. The wolf keeps eating the lamb and the lambs keep living in fear and no one tells them there’s a different way to live. We accept as normal the things that were never meant to be so.

What is the wolf in me that I am not telling it to turn its roar into a cry for justice for the poor? I want things my way. I want my advantages. Sometimes I roar at the wrong people to get what I want.

What is the lamb in me that I’m not reminding it about God’s converting grace and the Messiah that saves me from jeopardy? I allow myself to be terrorised by the people with all the power. I flinch when I should be facing up to people and situations that make me cower.

I was looking out of the window not so long ago. The day had been bright and sunny. The afternoon had clouded over.  Evening had darkened. The half-glass-empty bit of me wondered if in one day I had glimpsed what my year might look like. A beginning followed by a clouding over and ending in darkness. I’m not up for that.

It is time to start talking to the wolves and the lambs and the leopards and the goats. I’m not that clear yet on what we ought to be telling them but silence won’t do.

To the wolf in me
I say roar at injustice
And not at the lamb

To the lamb in me
I say God is on your side
And roar with the wolf

Santa V Jesus

I have been secret Santa-ed. It causes some concern as I never put my name down on the secret Santa list. It wasn’t anything anti-Santa, although I have deep seated Santa issues. The whole list was constructed on a google form. I never found my way on to it. My username and password didn’t grant me access to the list, and yes, I could have emailed or phoned and days went by and I did nothing. I felt stupid that I couldn’t get on to the google list. Yes, pride was involved. I skipped the part of the lunch where the maths teacher dressed up as Santa and invited the rest of them to sit on his lap. My present remained alone and unclaimed in the bottom of the box. I feel unsettled that someone out there should have had an answering secret Santa present and they don’t. There are other Mrs Kerr’s on the staff but it’s not a case of mistaken identity as the label clearly states Melanie.

Yesterdays’ newspaper, read over a bowl of porridge, contained two articles about Santa Claus.

The first was a very tongue-in-cheek thing. Apparently Santa Claus is not in good health and some of it is our fault and some of it is his. We are responsible for the weight problem by leaving out mince pies for Santa to eat as he stuffs our presents under the tree. He would, apparently, be better off eating Rudolph’s carrots and giving the mince pies to the reindeer.

His part of the health problems comes with the stress of delivering presents to everyone all over the world in one night. Maybe we could help by asking for fewer presents, or none at all.

The reindeer came in for some of the blame. Who was to know how many ticks and fleas they carried, some of which could skip from hide to beard and cause distress. Of course, if he didn’t have the reindeer at all, Santa could do a lot more running from house to house and climbing on to roofs to get to chimneys. He would be that more fitter, that more streamlined.

All of this was said by a dose of doctors who ought not to have that much time on their hands for such frivolity.

The second article was written by an atheist who felt the need to justify celebrating Christmas without the Jesus content of it. She talked of church attendance when she was young and going through all the rituals of growing up, but always feeling that it was done for her parents rather than herself. She felt that everything about Jesus didn’t make sense. Christmas for her was all about family and present giving, for trees and tinsel and something good to break up the winter darkness.

She ended her article with the sentiment that it would be nice to go outside and look up. I thought she was going to say something about looking out for a really bright star – that somewhere still deep inside was a longing for the Jesus part of Christmas to be true. Not at all – she would be looking for a glimpse of Santa’s sleigh.

Something in me mourned the apparent loss of Jesus in the Christmas celebrations. What Satan couldn’t do by sending Herod into Bethlehem to slaughter the babies, he has found a neater way by replacing Jesus with Santa – so much more appealing. Santa with his nice and naughty list doesn’t make a permanent change in anyone’s life.

I confess that I have never been a fan of Santa. I see beyond the “Ho! Ho! Ho!” to a very unfair gift giver! It still rankles that good behaviour really doesn’t have a say in what goodies he leaves. It is all about how what parents can afford. I grew up in a one parent household with six children. She wasn’t irresponsible to have such a large clutch – just a good Roman Catholic and with a husband that would have looked after us all well had he not died young. It really didn’t matter how good I behaved, I was never going to get a bike. Other children grew up with both parents and the 2.4 average children. Bikes were no problem.

So, yes, Santa and I have never been on good terms. Had my family been born a little later into the pay-day loan era, who knows what kind of debt my mum might have got into to provide the bike simply to keep up with the neighbours. My Santa grudge goes deep! He is not harmless fun, not in my book.

“Santa will never topple Jesus from His throne,” said God as we sat reading poetry together over a cup of tea. “People might look at the tinsel and the trees and feel they have something to celebrate but all too soon the Easter eggs will be out in the shops. Christmas will be done and dusted and everything put away. Jesus – you can’t put Him away and move on. He insists that He walk with you through every day of the coming year.”

Wasting Time

come and waste time with me, my love

stand beside me and see the moon

leave those pressing things behind for

tomorrow’s moon is not this one

come and waste time with me, my love

stand beside me and see the sky

clouds morning kissed and blushing for

tomorrow’s sky is not this one

come and waste time with me, my love

stand beside me and see the sea

Feel the sand between your toes for

tomorrow’s sea is not this one

come and waste time with me, my love

stand beside me and embrace life

explore the untouched corners for

tomorrow’s life starts with today