Getting back to books

When I looked back at the end of last year at how many books I’d read and realised it was only 18 for the whole of 2015, I was not best pleased (understatement.) Therefore over Christmas and New Year I resolved to do-something-about-that and set an achievable target of spending one hour at least four days a week in our designated reading chair in the bedroom. Largely to get my arse away from the sofa and from extended mindless hours in front of nothing in particular on the telly-box, which was the default evening routine most days. Also to try and re-engage more fully with written words (the evening telly-box mindlessness had spilled over into reading, courtesy of mindless social media scrolling and therefore he norm had become disengaged reading, not just online but of anything really.) A sad state of affairs.

A few days into the-great-intentional-reading of 2016 Mr I joined me so the TV now goes off in the early evening, unless there is a specific programme to watch. And reading does not have to leave the sofa. Happily by the end of March I have read nearly as many books as I did in the whole of last year.

*

Early on in 2016 I read three books:

Coming Clean by Seth Haines

The Listening Life by Adam McHugh

Pray, Write and Grow by Ed Cyzewski

All three books spoke loudly and clearly into the drought that I knew I was experiencing because of disengaged reading, namely that I needed to pay attention more closely to what I read (whatever the book or genre.)

Coming Clean was the book I finished just prior to the start of Lent and this also encouraged me to enter into intentional forgiveness during the Lent period. Sitting for a while each day as often as possible with God in front of a list of people who enter my head space for all the wrong reasons, where scenarios play out over and again, or heckles rise and stay that way for longer than is healthy.

I was encouraged after a few days of sitting and praying with the list, that head space residence started to subside in some situations. There are after all some people you have to interact with like it or not. Therefore practising forgiveness as a regular thing, rather than waiting for an offence to occur took some of the wind out of stewing on situations or time spent working through them.

Naturally being the flawed human that I am, meant that once I was on a roll with the forgiveness thing, I found reasons not to practice each day (yes I’ve done the work, it feels good so let’s trundle on with that for now.) 

We then we heard of a couple of deaths during the Lent period, one of which was particularly tragic and winded us both somewhat. Of course that is the very time when drawing close to God in any capacity is a good idea rather than bolting off finding things to ‘do’ to try and forget about the pain (chocolate, trash TV, trash Social Media for starters.) But on the other hand I know God hears our grief expressed as inner groans; it doesn't feel like the articulation of 'conventional' prayer, but these are often the deepest, heartfelt and most honest cries from our souls.

After this mid-Lent hiatus from the forgiveness practise I found that the persons on the list were beginning to invade my head space again and not only that, it felt like a pile on. A big, fat signal if ever there were one, that I needed to get back on track with the work of forgiveness. 

So I will be sticking with this beyond Lent, quiet before God, praying forgiveness over the list and listening to what God is saying in the quiet.

The journey goes on and I have yet to get out of the habit of mindless Social Media scrolling in the margins when I'm tired or bored. I have moved some of the people I follow on Twitter onto lists; I am interested in what they have to say and maybe dip in to the lists up to a couple of times a day, but it helps me take control over the choice to look at associated conversations, discussions, rows which are for me a MAJOR distraction and often an unhelpful trigger for 'all the feels', which in themselves can lead to depressive episodes.

I'm so thankful for the encouragement I found in the three books above and that God opened my ears to what He is saying through them.

(And of course it goes without saying that the reading goes on regardless)

5th Sunday Worship

When people tweet about it on Sundays and tag their church or worship team I often wonder what makes for a brilliant/amazing worship service/experience.

Yesterday we the worship team at our church were publicly thanked in the service by the minister for the worship. This is as rare as a month with five Sundays.

There’s not a particular formula we follow to get a 'good' result. We put in the practice as we do during most weeks and through warming up on Sunday mornings. 

We are all unpaid amateurs who love Jesus and love music as much as each other (work out what I did there.)

We have a fairly strong core of rhythm and bass most weeks. The music is mainly led from the keyboard and we three keyboard players have different styles. Within the group we have different ideas about; what we like; what works and doesn’t; songs that we like that don’t get picked; songs that we don’t like as much that get picked just a little too often.

My actual personal preparation that I do when I’m on the rota to lead, is for an hour or two on the Saturday:

• play through all the songs, partly about word familiarity and partly muscle memory exercise*
• work out and finalise how the songs in the first set might link together musically if we’ve not already done it in the week
• think about instrumentation, particularly if there are strengths and or weaknesses among the players on the rota
• drink in the words, which is often a deeply personal act of worship and prayer and nearly always for me more meaningful than Sunday itself

I can honestly say I didn’t spend ages praying when I woke up yesterday morning. And as more often than not we were a little late leaving the house for church to get there for the time I’d asked everyone else to be there. My left ear was a little blocked and I forgot my glasses too (*lack of glasses is where the muscle memory practice really kicks in.)

And so I will continue to say it's something of a mystery how things turn out.

The majority of the time we turn up, do our stuff, and someone might say ‘thank you for the worship’ if they are stuck next to you in the coffee queue after the service or if the minister has done a ‘be thankful’-type message.

If we had a prayer/preparation formula that we followed it would cease to be about God. And God doesn’t actually need us to do the work of corporate worship, but He wants us to.

Not a deep piece. Random musings. Just musician, writing here and recording thanks.

continuously shuffling, never dealing

Many are the thoughts that have passed in and through my mind this summer, especially around social media.

Continuously shuffling but never dealing and putting cards on the table.

I have toyed with stepping off the social media carousel and have spent time reading blogs of those who have/are doing. But..


NOTICE or BEING NOTICED

How come someone with a high profile gets a gazillion likes and shares when they post a picture of a pair of shoes?

(totally ironic photo)

Like, like, like, like, like, like, la, la, la, la, la, la

Wading through opinions, hot-buttons, promotions, entertainment, oversharing, myriad holiday photos from exotic and not so exotic locations, excellent writing, writing that other people think is excellent writing (discuss).

Is it how cleverly we play to the gallery?

I say that I like the smallness of my social media world, some days I disagree with myself and start to measure my worth by it.

And I guess that is it in a nutshell, how we measure our worth.

I recall some meaningful interactions and their timings:

• a late night blog comment thread which lead to the discovery of a gem of a book
• a stumbled upon twitter comment that only has meaning for those who know – a ‘me too’ of epic proportions
• gentle, middle of the night,life-giving stories that go largely unnoticed
• tweeting song lyrics which simultaneously had deep meaning for others
• wading through three hours of early tweets with morning breath and stumbling on something priceless

All these is when this happens:

(I ruminated lo-ng on this tweet)

Some days the thing you need to notice is right in front of you and you don't have to share it with the world.

 

Other times you just need to keep on scrolling to find the things that really matter.

keep in touch

keep in touch

I found myself mulling over these words last night as I put away a couple of cards from work. My job finished on Friday, budget cuts meaning release of all temporary staff. People rooting for nice things to say in the awkwardness:

you’ll be missed

good luck

I will miss your cakes and medication (I always have pain killers in my bag and it did not go unnoticed)

and

Yes there are some people from this workplace where effort will be made to stay in touch now we are no longer in close proximity for 37 hours each week.

Yes some of the keeping in touch is guilt laden because of the manner of release (please let us know where you go next so we don’t feel so bad.)

Sometimes though these three words are tossed carelessly into the air for something to say when we find ourselves at the uncomfortable point of saying goodbye to someone and moving on. Because we don’t know what else to say.

There is one person in my life for whom keep in touch is a diktat. Someone who wants me to do runabout because they want a self-centred need to be fulfilled and this neatly avoids them having to ask for help.

Over the years we have moved around a fair bit so I have encountered a number of farewells. I aim to try and only use keep in touch honestly and not throw it away. But I am sure that in reality when the goodbye moment arrives, there has probably a good deal of word-tossing.

Equally in the awkward, help-stop-this-scene-going-on-forever situations like last Friday in the office I genuinely have no idea what I said in those last minutes as I clocked out for the last time.

PS I am taking a few weeks off in the run up to a close family wedding before resuming a search for new work

a hello

Hello

If you have come to this space via Twitter you won't find much recent writing.

From May 2014 I started reacquainting myself with knitting due to the news that we would become first time grandparents in December 2014 (OK I went a bit OTT because all the patterns I found were so darned cute.) I found a wonderful wool stockist Tangled Yarn who lives just up the road and sells the most divine wools and boom, I was hooked! Not only was it blankets and clothes in minature, but suddenly people were getting scarves as presents (whether they liked it or not.)

Just around the time that grandson was born our daughter announced her engagement. Quite quickly she and fiancee decided to get married sooner than originally planned leaving us with nine months to plan from the beginning of 2015. I volunteered to knit bridal and bridesmaid shrugs and once the patterns were agreed, I have since found myself on a schedule to complete them in time.

So currently creative outlets are knitting, music (leading worship at church at least 2x per month) and photography (mainly grandson though I am also on Instagram as piano_jo ) Worship leading weeks involves several hours of preparation and practice, to-ing and fro-ing with others along with the full time job, blah, blah.

Writing is on the back burner for now but I will be back (my head and those around me need it..)

when a month is a wipe out

This has been a month of protracted sadness, more where the see-saw has been doing its up and down daily work as usual but it has been harder to bounce back out of the down parts. Hard slog and wrestling.

It is fast approaching those two months of the year when the journey to and from work will be in darkness, encompassing each end the light in between while I work the hours at the job which may or may not run into next year.

In the middle years of life I have greater self awareness than ever to know when the sad times are taking over and more self-help tools and other people walking the same walk than ever to deal with them.

I know this month was situational triggered, a small insignificant thing looking at it, which underneath has created currents pulling me helplessly this and that way. I have much to look forward to with the imminent arrival of a grandchild. Right now I fear I will not feel the joy when this happens.

I know I will rise again eventually, life-savers keep hauling me towards the surface. Singing  is restorative in a way that nothing else is (even when as this week others are bantering over the top their preferences on the finesse of presentation.) There was a glorious rainbow end refracting against broody skies last Monday, just a brief vertical show on the day six years after Mum died. Enough to remind me that I am remembered.

I have been quieter on Social Media and more under the radar in life for a while but like a lot of others (either on Social Media or in life) it mostly goes unnoticed unless I say something. Which is mainly awkward (for others when I say something and me when I don't.)

So for those of you who are complicated, quieter and more under the radar than usual...

Yeh darkness is doing its darndest to snuff out the light, but it is always light somewhere else and I am hopeful that sooner or later it will come back again.

a big fat 3 good things

The checkout assistant waited whilst I rummaged through my handbag for my purse. Not surly, gum-chewing impatience, just a quiet, all-the-time-in-the-world patience. As I inserted the credit card in the machine she said ‘You do like butterflies and turquoise don’t you?’ It hadn't even occurred to me that I was all matchy, matchy and I was genuinely impressed with her attentiveness and observation.

This weekend just gone we visited our son and daughter in law for the last time before they move south, taking them and our grandchild-to-be an extra 2.5 hours away. I have mixed feelings about them being so far away but I know they have heard and prayed about the God-whispers calling them into a new chapter of their lives. (And should you southerners not look after our grandchild there will be wigs on the green.)

We attended morning service at the church where D has been working for the past few years. We have been there a few times before and in different contexts. The prompt to recount these things is strong. It feels good to be thankful, but I know in tiredness, vulnerability, and motorway traffic jams, gratefulness will easily evaporate.

*****

26 years ago we attended just the one service in the same church when D was a baby himself. We stayed with the minister and his wife. She observed me with him and suggested I might have depression. She was the first person to ever mention it. Then I had no idea, but now I am grateful to her more than she will know. Young motherhood was one of those pressure points which made the depression rise to the surface. It is not until much more recently that I have accepted depression as part of who I am, not just another sorry episode of failure (except during the tired and vulnerable moments.)

Thankful she noticed.

Much more recently we went to another service at the church as a family, a rare free Sunday when we could all be in the same place with all our grown up children. The speaker was talking about times when money was tight for him and his family, when their children were growing up. Hand-me-down and severely price-slashed winter coats, familiar to ours in the years when we were still a clergy family. 

At the end of the service D turned to me and said to me ‘You gave up a lot so you could spend time with us when we were little and we always had everything we needed’ (Rough translation ‘almighty cock ups notwithstanding I think you did an alright job’ - I’ll take the compliment). I know that whichever way motherhood had been done, stay at home or working, the way would have been littered with mistakes on all sides.

Thankful he noticed.

And on Sunday just gone within those same old stone walls we sang these words:

You are my rock in times of trouble

You lift me up when I fall down

All through the storm, Your love is the anchor

My hope is in You alone

I was overwhelmed with thankfulness at what God has done with, for and through us over the years. In spite of all of us really.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer saying “Thus far the Lord has helped us” 1 Samuel 7:12

*****

This morning as I left for work a butterfly was gently flexing its wings on the wall by the front door. And then in the revoltingly overcrowded, standing room only train my nose was pressed up against the blouse of the woman in front (unobtrusive evidence and truly honestly not a selfie)

the dogfather (on moving and closing sub-chapters)

On the walk home this evening, clutching my cup of Costa Gingerbread Latte, I passed the local recreation ground. As I did, a man walking a beautiful golden Labrador was just leaving the park and heading for a 4wd vehicle which was labelled‘The DogFather’ and in smaller letters towards the rear ‘dog walking, training and psychology’.

Today we finally gained possession of the keys to our new home and so it has been marked the closing of a sub-chapter of our lives. Over the last few weeks we have mentally been crossing things off on the calendar:

Him – my last commute when all the schools are not on holiday

Me – I tweeted this morning 'Last commute from this station 2day from next week will be an even less glamorous style of cattle wagon but more frequent #looking4positive 

Him – my last crawl through 40 minutes of traffic daily just to get to the motorway

Me – my last Gingerbread Latte from the Costa in the village

The train journey reading today was the final chapters of Rachel Held Evans’ book A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I particularly loved the last part where she looks back on the year with a grateful heart for all the things that have happened and lets those pesky sins that cling, float away downstream with crumbs of challah bread and a grateful heart.

I walked homewards, via the village and my heart similarly filled with gratitude. For what’s gone before and how we have reached this point in our lives. Middle-age (OK and some), having taken a circuitous route, but finally in possession of house keys *\o/*

(O yes and my phone has been vibrating very frequently with likes and comments since I posted the facebook status ‘Keys. We have’. Many friends have willingly prayed, willed, sent good vibes, felt and shared the house-buying pain.)

Inwardly singing my favourite words from Phatfish songs made tears prick my eyes as they often do:

How good it is to be loved by You

I will say of the Lord He is my refuge, I will say of the Lord He is my strength, I will say of the Lord He is my shelter and hiding place

I know for sure, particularly when I am mindful, I can look back and ‘see’ each of these things in and between every little detail along the way. Sometimes it has been hard to see forwards, to know what it’s all for. When solicitors have dragged their feet or 'forgotten' something (apart from their bills.) There have been times of significant debt in the last few years and sleepless nights worrying about that.

And moving into a new home won’t mean we have arrived. Nor will it be our perfect dream home in that all-eggs-in-one-basket manner that they hope for on the tv property programmes.

There will be plenty more curveballs in this life.

There will be days when I forget God’s goodness.

But for me today the DogFather and his strap-line was a particularly apt thing to see just before I turned the last corner and arrived home. 

mess at the beginning middle and end

This will start a mess and end up a mess. I’ve tried to write it many times. I’ve wanted to be clever and disguise it as a piece of fiction writing, and I am in awe of the people out there who could do that. I want to write it to help me try and understand and process at least for a few minutes. But mostly out from the inside and onto the page.

I’ve alluded to the fact before on this blog that my Dad and I have a tricky relationship. I know I’m not the only one out there and I reckon many of us walk with a bit of a limp when it comes to parent child relationships that never come to full, healthy fruition for whatever reason. In this sense the reasons don’t really matter and to be honest I’m not sure I fully understand them all either.

I have read somewhere about older men whose wives pre-decease them, as they carry on through life they often shrivel and die inside. He will ask me often what the weather has been like locally to me, not because he is interested, but because he wants to tell me what the weather is like where he lives. And most of the conversations go that way. I don’t know how to change them to make them like exchanges you have with other people, to make them more fun, more interactive so I give up trying mostly.

So last night as often happens something particular he said got under my skin and triggered a regular chain reaction of thoughts. Mostly this escalates into an intense irritation. Afterwards a primal scream, a debrief with the Scotsman or a slug of wine can help me vent/make a bit of sense afterwards.

Sometimes the feelings in my head continue on and mirror Dad’s outlook. They hurtle round with abandon like gleeful recalcitrant toddlers in their small circles. I know it’s out of control. Dad’s trying to control me in his way, I’m trying to make sense of things by trying to get inside his head and control him back. 

Patterns, habits.

Dad is one of those text book people that people advocate that you give a wide berth or de-friend on facebook because they are hard emotional work and you can choose to walk away. Toxic is a bit too strong, but elements of that are there. I don’t feel I can walk away completely because he is Dad, but I can try and maintain healthy boundaries by limiting visits.

I would love to be able to write and say there has been forgiveness and reconciliation. I love to read stories of when that happens, but it is usually with a heavy heart because I just don’t see it on the cards. And each time the mess wreaks its havoc (which is pretty much each time I see or speak to him) there is an abject sense of failure again on my part that I have not done what I can or cannot do what I can to show love and to fix things.

It is in this broken and messy state that God continuously invites me to share the pain, lean on Him. Or I can choose to medicate the pain in unhealthy ways and He will wait for me. It’s rare when I do share with others that there is a ‘me too’, but I have a hunch there are a lot of ‘me too’ people out there. It’s hard when the parent is still alive to acknowledge and voice to others without feeling disrespectful. (Heck, a friend of mine with professional knowledge after a long conversation even ended up recommending alcohol when I asked advice on how to deal with the situation.)

One of our leaders shared a photo of a stained glass window in church this morning. It depicts a child with unknown hands on their shoulders. One hand is in a protective position the other poised to gently push the child on their way. God will always be gently encouraging me to pick up and press on with regards to my Dad, but as I do so His protection will never, ever leave my side for a moment. Especially in those moments when it really doesn’t feel like it is there.

I am grateful for the safety of Selina & Ruth’s space to write.

Just because.

Linking up with Ruth & Sabrina at #unprompted (at Sabrina's place this week)

A letter to home

To me home, you are sometimes a funny old thing. Which town to put as ‘home’ on social media when you have moved from place to place? Where you are living currently, where you were born, where you spent secondary school (if you managed constancy during these years?)

I haven’t got the foggiest which postcode I belong to. Place attachment feels about as definite as my grandfather’s birthplace in ‘the cottages near the village pub’.

I’m certainly not from round here. After all this particular physical house was only ever intended to be a temporary, rental stepping stone towards a house that is for the first time fully ours. But temporary has turned into three years and onward progress sees patient patience hanging on by a thread at times.

We have found ourselves in but not of the community. Partly through choice we have not invested time and energy in getting to know people in the neighbourhood that well.  We assumed we would sneak in unobtrusively and move on fairly quickly. A kerfuffle with the front door lock when we moved in lured Bob at No.1 and his watchful eye over the road to investigate.

When I was young, unafraid and newly married I knew that an itinerant lifestyle was on the cards with the Scotsman going into church ministry. Then I found the prospect tantalising, going where God was leading and all the great, exciting things that would follow. It didn't take long for that bubble to burst because the child-like expectations I had in the early days of marriage were actually quite childish and soon developed into demands that others would somehow fulfil long buried unhappiness I didn't know I had buried as I was growing up.

Years have taught me that I really don’t like moving that much. Along the way I have lost confidence when it comes to making new friendships, trying to break into familiar, long established circles. I have also resented friends whose children have had lifelong friends because they have lived in one place - their way looks easy and mine hard especially when I have compared and not been grateful. 

It is still all where God has been leading, just not what I envisaged it would be all those years ago. 

We are all slowly but surely taking the long way home.

This evening I’m following the poet Ian McMillan’s (@IMcMillan) tortuously slow but poetic train journey home this evening via twitter “Back to Manchester. I left here at 1820. Still, time's an elastic concept. Going home via Huddersfield.” Yep, Huddersfield has been one of our staging posts along the way too.

Stability and home have been the greatest gifts to me from those who know and love me for who I am. Jesus, family, friends, a safe stronghold, the Kingdom and not a building of bricks or stone. 

Most of all a place where no-one has to impress anyone.

I had a work colleague who recounted how a leading actress in a TV series once used the loo in her house while filming was taking place in the area. The nub of the story was not that someone famous had peed in her loo but that the cat being in charge of all the comings and goings had been keeping a firm beady eye on all the proceeedings in the bathroom. An observation not lost on the actress either. (Lateral thinking led me back to this particular story because the TV series was ‘Where the heart is’. Home ..)

At the end of the day it’s the little ordinary things like this that really matter. The outworking of home in the every day and in the heart.

For the record on facebook I use the Midlands town where I went to secondary school as ‘home’ even though I was born in the South East and we and all of our children have lived in both the South and the North of England. Very soon we hope to become bone fide adopted northerners as we will own cobbles!

As far as I know I have never been watched by a cat while on the loo.

Linking up with Ruth & Sabrina at #LettersTo (at Ruth's place this week)

Advent photo-a-day The Final Few

This week's photos for the Advent photo project.
(Find more on both Instagram and Twitter using the hashtags #rethinkchurch #rethinkchristmas)

Day 22 :: sign
I was dusting these cuties on the morning of the 22nd December whilst cleaning some of the rooms in the house in preparation for the arrival of family over Christmas. Time was evaporating to get everything done, presents wrapped, cleaning, music to be prepared for the evening service and the service on Christmas day. But I was able to pause for a moment and be thankful in the midst. Grateful for the 22 years shared, ups and downs, joys and sorrows, gifts and grace. And most of all for God who this year has particularly helped me stop and be mindful in the every day things that His gifts are continually raining down on me and on us
On our 22nd wedding anniversary a few years ago The Scotsman gave me these ducks. If I have to explain too much it's pretty pointless, and it might not be aimed at you. But just think 22 and the shape of the ducks in profile..

Day 23 :: neighbour
In my photo collection is this one from the Manchester Day Parade in the summer this year. A woman proffers the 'panda' a drink of water on a warm day, the essence of what it means to be a neighbour unintentionally captured in a moment.

Day 24 :: joy
On the journey to work on the last day before Christmas, patches of light were beginning to poke through the darkness as I travelled on the last stretch of the commute. This was a quick mobile camera shot from the train window. The view reminded me of the contrast of JOY that comes after times of weeping and the contrast that any light has against that particular darkness.

Day 25 :: light
A winter sunset on Southport beach
Light of the world is come to us once again
AMEN!

Advent photo-a-day Week 3

This week's photos for the Advent photo project.
(Find more on both Instagram and Twitter using the hashtags #rethinkchurch #rethinkchristmas)

Day 15 :: rejoice
The praise window at Dornoch Cathedral. I have a tiny, tiny percentage of Scottish ancestry and the Barclay family were born and lived in Dornoch at the turn of the 19th century. I love the way the sun shone straight through the windows when I took this photo. It enhances and illuminates the beautiful glasswork even more.

Day 16 :: strong
The family will verify that I do not function well without a good strong cup of this first thing in the morning. The strength recently went up to 6 from 5..

Day 17 :: free
Still on a bit of a learning curve with the new camera, finally caught a co-operative butterfly and made it look just a little bit stunning (well I like it)

Day 18 :: mercy
Mercy is written in and between every word in this hymn. I love the recent Phatfish version which sadly I can't persuade my church to sing but it gets good airplay at home

Day 19 :: patience
Some days inspiration for these photos as well as time has been short. I was thinking on this day's word as I was travelling home and walked towards the waiting room on Platform 13. I catch two trains to and from work and spend alot of time waiting on this particular platform, with time to think, catch up on twitter or read, depending on connection times. And on these cold winter evenings I am particularly grateful for somewhere warm to wait.

Day 20 :: good news
This little fella was waiting in the Christmas Card pile when I got home. I may have made a sarcastic side-swipe on instagram about round robin letters, because such missives can be over long and a little tedious, even though it is lovely to hear from people. We have an 80-something friend who could teach many people the art of writing engaging Christmas letters.. So this birdy made my day on many levels.

Day 21 :: prophet
My favourite carol is 'It came upon the midnight clear'. So a few key words from this are gathered around our much loved Christmas tree angel. Inspired by the words 'For lo the days are hastening on, by PROPHET bards foretold'