Eternal Echoes

Bits and pieces

                                The day started at 5.00am I just couldn't sleep with pictures and ideas going rounnd in my head... I gave up trying to sleep, got up wrote it all down and crawled into bed for an hour...

Assembly next for the infants (4-7's ) at Clackclose school, we told the story of creation, they got to be fish and animals and birds... they love people coming in to tell them stories...

Home lunch and a swim then Tuesday Fellowship.. then other end of the age range, a good open discussion though..we've decided to approach the school to see if the R.E. and Philosophy classes would like to come for an informal discussion. These people have lived through so much, war and personal disasters and yet retained their faith, in this youth driven culture they are seen as old and irrelevant and yet they have so much to give... I'll approach the school  next week!

At home I managed to get a bit of housework done ...so all is well on that front. The twins have a busy week... Jon has the Lead role in Toad of Toad Hall (he gets to wear a fat suit! ) while Jo has a paying concert 4 shows playing viola for Gilbert and Sullivans The Sorcerer...

Chris is struggling with his study and with the fact that his leg is not healing...he still has no sensation in it, we see the Orthapaedic surgeon next week...

Emma has her last concert in Canterbury Cathedral as a Uni student... she graduates this summer...

I just went to Tai-Chi, it was a good class...

Life is so full sometimes it seems too much, our finances are stretched but we have so much to be thankful for, unlike so many people in the world I have never been hungry or cold or lacked a place to sleep...I want to see more integrity in my life more orthodoxy more authenticity...more simplicity...

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference....

--Reinhold Niebuhr

The Sucess Factor

                           Just had an interesting staff meeting where we were discussing our need to be sucessful and how that need was played out in our ministries.

We talked about building projects stemming from the need to appear sucessful, and then about how we all feel inadequate in areas of finance and buisness and yet we feel that we should be able to do everything... also about the sense that we have a need to produce something a legacy if you like to show that we have been here... that we have made an impact!

I am challenged to ponder what Jesus left behind. He left no building, no institution of anything accept what has become known as The Lords Supper, he left no hierarchy....

He left 11 men who had followed him for 3 years, misunderstood and misinterpreted him frequently, he left numerous other followers women and men whose lives he had touched and they found themselves challenged or changed in some way.... he left a call to a new way of living that echoed in their hearts and he left the instruction to pray and to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit...

He left nothing that we can point to to say see how sucessful that is...dying a criminals death all seemed lost...

From this the early church sprang forth, a group very different individuals brought together by their shared love of Christ, by the words of his teachings burning in their hearts and minds setting their souls ablaze...

The early church was not an institution but rather a community called out, imperfect people trying to follow ...imperfect people living in the power of the Spirit and experiencing renewal and rejuvenation in themselves as they encouraged and spurred on one anothers in faith and deeds. There were disagreements, there were problems...

We are their legacy...we are Christs legacy...

How then shall we live?  (a question asked by the Northumbria Community)

Allowing healing

I think that this is the essential point, that we must somehow lower all of our defences and allow the healing to come through...let the love in that will so warm our hearts that we will be forever changed...

Our spirituality I sense is a cry form the deepest parts of us that long to re-unite completely with our creator... we try so hard to work towards this little knowing that if we were simply to abandon ourselves to it that we would be gathered up as a mother gathers up a hurting child in her arms to bring comfort and healing.

Our Independence makes us want to achieve this end ourselves, and so we remain unconnected and lonely and our deepest needs are not met...

How hard it is to make ourselves vulnerable, and yet that is what God did for us in Christ, vulnerable at the incarnation as a tiny seed growing inside Marys womb, vulnerable at birth and then all through life to the ultimate vulnerability and helplessness on the cross...

Konowing this does not make the intimate relationship any easier but perhaps it seems more possible...

Intimate and Organic relationships

John 15:4-9 (MsgB) 
    "Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can't bear fruit unless you are joined with me.
"I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can't produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.
  "I've loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love.

What does it mean to be in intimate and organic relationship?

connected living vibrant relationship, not vibrant as in loud or charismatic but alive in a vital and undeniable way..

Is this truly what God desires for us, what he came to show us in Christ... will this relationship when it is allowed to flow, bring healing flowing through our inner beings "igniting our bones"... if so why does it seem so bittersweet?

Do we base too much of our relationship with God upon one another? I know I have been struggling with that recently.. I look at some of the people around me and think to myself if that is what being a Christian is all about then I don't want anything to do with it... and I have to acknowledge that they probably look at me and think the same, or similar thoughts!

Yet today I find myself wondering

You got me looking up
Even when I'm falling down
You got me crawling out of my skin
You got me wondering why
I am underneath this big old sky
Stopping the loving getting in -KT TUNSTALL

So perhaps that is what an intimate and organic realtionship is all about...allowing the love in (bit hippy I'll admit but I think there are hidden depths there we need to unpack...if we dare...!)

True Spirituality

Driving home from dropping Jo off at a rehersal today I was suddenly caught up in the beautiful scenery that I was driving through, wondering at creation, I did some house work and gardening when I got home with renewed energy and a lightness of heart that I have not sensed for a long time, as if something in my spirit has reawakened,

I was not trying to be spiritual but sensed a connectedness at that point with creation and through it to the creative forces of Gods Spirit..

I cannot explain or contain this, but I can allow it by not shutting off ...

Music has the same effect and I found myself weeping whilst peeling vegetables to Coldplays lyrics

When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse
When the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

High up above or down below
When you too in love to let it go
If you never try you'll never know
Just watch and learn

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse
When the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

High up above or down below
When you too in love to let it go
If you never try you'll never know
Just watch and learn

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

There is something deeply spiritual in those words and in the music that again I cannot define, it is not a religious song but...

I was involved in a discussion about spirituality the other day and in trying to pin it down I sense we loose something but I'm not sure what... I guess I'm not too good at letting go! Ah well will keep on musing throughout the day...

The year of yes

                          I was listening to Radio 4 on the way home from dropping Jon at his Bass lesson today when I caught an interview with Maria Headley about her book The Year of Yes. It was inspiring, her year of saying yes to everyone that asked her for a date opened her eyes to the fact that What you see isn't always what you get!!! She dated a number of people she would have turned down previously and discovered hidden depths...

1SA 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

Clearing the ground

                           I've just spent a couple of hours out in the garden clearing old leaves and dead growth from last year. I'm frustrated that I've let it become such a mess, with Chris (my som) in hospital for so long last year the garden and the house slipped on the priority list, we've just about been keeping up with essential house work but the garden was totally abandoned...

I feel tired just contemplating all that needs doing, but I have made a start and seen the promise of new growth in the snowdrops and in the spring bulbs that are starting to make an appearance ...I have resolved to do a little each day, I cannot do everything at once but rather to set aside half an hour to get out away from the computer and the books to dig or weed or prune something...

I've started the same approach with the house too, a little at a time and soon I'll be on top of things again and not feeling swamped by them...

I believe that more often than not God chooses to work with us like that... a little at a time revealing to us things that need change, calling us and drawing us to take one small step at a time, empowering us by the Spirit to do the things we are unable to do in our own strength, and gently like a mother who is teaching a little one o walk he holds us by the hand until we feel safe, when we stumble he will pick us up and set us on our way again...

A good gardener is aware of the seasons and the needs of the garden at different times of the year...our God is well aware of the seasons of our lives and takes care to nurture and sustain us through the difficult time, the times we simply need to rest.

So often our own expectations and demands of ourselves are the things that criple us, we are hard task masters of our souls demanding more from our brokenness (for we hide from it)  than it is able to give, then like petulant children we blame God for being the harsh one and lash out at him for not caring... I know for I have done all of these things...

So what is to be done? I need again to stop I need to catch the unforced rhythms of grace that are constant towards me accepting healing, accepting my own brokenness and allowing time for the ground to be cleared, the house to be cleaned before the new growth can emerge...

Dancing to the unforced rhythms

Following on from my last entry, I have been studying the life of the early church today. Looking at how they served one another and interacted with one another and their communities... This was truly Messy Spirituality in action, these flawed people made plenty of  mistakes in their attempts to live out their calling as the Body of Christ...

How different they must have been to the well ordered institutions ( on the surface any way) we find ourselves a part of today... often institutions where there is no place for those who dare not to follow the set plan...

Don't get me wrong I love The Church local and world-wide but I think it is about time that we owned up to our messiness again... so often we hide behind an idealised mask, and wear individual idealised masks unable to really get to know one another. Yet Jesus demanded the lowering of pretence, he took people as they were and loved them for who they were messiness and all...his creativity reaches down to our messiness and brings right order and healing, the building blocks of our lives like my children's Lego can be put together creatively and thoughtfully helping us to reach our full potential in Christ. He has a plan for us one that is unique, he will also build individuals together using our rough edges to create beauty in unexpected places.

The unforced rhythms are rhythms of the Spirit at work

John 3:5-8 (MsgB) 
    Jesus said, "You're not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the 'wind hovering over the water' creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it's not possible to enter God's kingdom. When you look at a baby, it's just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.
"So don't be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be 'born from above—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God."

So much of my boxed in Theology has been overturned during the last couple of yearsand I have been struggling to rebuild it...I can't so I've decided to abandon myself to the unforced rhythms and allow the Spirit to blow away the chaff and create something beautiful for God...

Bet I struggle with the process though!!! Parts of me hate messy!

Lego with no plans...

When my children were small they loved lego building bricks, we had a huge box of bricks that the 5 of them had collected over the years...

Each box of bricks came with a set of plans to show the children how to build the fortrees or space station or whatever the design specified, occassionaly they would buils something according to the set design, more often they would empty the new bricks into the box of older bricks and get creating, they built so many things there were no plans for and had huge amounts of fun incorporating lego models into make believe games

One of my friends was much more ordered her boys built according to plan, their bricks were never mixed together and when the models were dismanteled they put each set away seperately, at the time I felt guilty that my childrens rooms seemed chaotic in comparison and that we lost bricks on more than a few occassions. Now I see the creativity paying off in the lives of my 5 very creative children and the fact that life was a little messy and still is is ok.

If we apply the same principle to our spiritual lives I wonder what we would see? Would there be freedom to develop new ways of praying, of being would we see play as a spiritual activity ...would our devotional lives and habits expand as we took in new ways of celebrating and worshipping God together?

Can I celebrate housework and cooking as well as writing and reading... can I take as much pleasure in cleaning the car as in crafting a message or sermon... I should be able to...

I want to celebrate God in all things even the difficult and messy times, free to be me to grow and to change and to become... growing in the unforced rythms of grace....

From Black and white to shades of grey

There was a time when I tried to have my faith neatly packaged and tidy. When the security of tight boundaries provided some comfort if also some confusion. The world was black and white... there were or should be no grey areas!!!

When grey areas bacame apparent I explained them into the balck or the white category and thought little more about it, but all of those shades of grey built up and refused to be ignored... and so I have found myself on a journey of discovering faith in shades of grey... a beautiful and sometimes mystical world where faith cannot be so easily catergorised or explained, where laws and rules exist but so do grace and freedom...

I am trying to reflect on the path and the circumstances or people who have guidied me on the way and how it is that moving away form the defined I am able to say that I am more in love with Jesus than ever, and am beginning to know that he truly accepts me as I am...