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. 

damselfly, dragonfly, damselfly, dragonfly (a letter to tuck in your pocket)

One of the best things about being out and about in the British countryside in sunshine in the late summer is the dragonflies. They flit and dart, and mostly their sheer, luminescent wings glint a thousand times more beautifully in the sunlight. As for some of those species that don’t possess the natural irridescent beauty the wonder is seen in their size, like miniature bi-planes dancing in their solo aeronautical displays. 

And are most are too fidgety to be photographed or identified.

Yesterday I was watching a blue-hued specimen and trying vainly to capture an image with the camera. For one shot the lens and insect were aligned but because of the creature’s speed its definition still merged with the blurred background. With the help of filters this was the best I could muster:

Many of us know relationships where the other person wants to rescue us, fix us and stealthily impose their opinion on us. For want of a better expression (and for all its potential sexist connotations) to them we are a damsel in distress. And for the most part if the circumstances or atmosphere becomes too difficult we can set boundaries and keep our distance. But if that person is a close relation for whom you care desperately if something were to happen to them, boundary setting is not quite so straight forward. Just difficult, messy and painful.

I don’t know what the technical difference is between a dragonfly and a damselfly and the ones I have seen have never kept still enough to co-operate with species identification. The cryptic twitter quote I made was something of a way to try and align these insects with thinking about people in our lives who are rescuers and do this because they know no other way and are driven by a strong need to avoid fixing themselves.

Whether or not the tweet made sense to anyone else is beside the point, because that doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. The One who created us and the dragon/damselflies knows and understands. 

As if to emphasise it all I have seen a number of dragonflies elsewhere since yesterday, on the button tin as I was doing some clothes repairs last night

and again this morning on a cover photo on someone’s facebook profile.

If that is God’s way of saying ‘I get you’ that is enough for me.

And it is what I want to keep on the letter in my pocket, next to my heart.

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

immensity beyond my grasp

The quote is via @twitturgies and the photo is Dornoch beach on the east coast of Scotland.

Almost 200 years ago, my 4x great grandfather Alexander Barclay left here and travelled pretty much directly 5000 miles south to St Helena (his story is here)

I love the sea, don't get to see it nearly enough and today I know it is all immensity beyond my grasp.

love that doesn't come back empty handed

Our Senior Pastor has been on sabbatical for a few months, therefore we have enjoyed a variety of visiting preachers. Each one has spoken on a different biblical character and to accompanying their sermons has been a diversity of presentation methods. Yesterday was the turn of Esther and the speaker used classic works of art as backgrounds to his powerpoint slides. (And like a cashier operator in the days prior to automated queuing, he startled anyone who was thinking of napping with a firm ‘next-please!’ to the pc operator).

Esther is one of the books of the bible that doesn’t mention God directly but has His fingerprints all over it (I’m sure this is a statement can be attributed to any number of people.) To be honest I didn’t pay terribly close attention to most of what the preacher was saying; it was largely a plot summarisation. But one phrase did register clearly:

Love letters from God

After the service we chatted generally with people, we are in a large church and still getting to know people. The Scotsman was chatting with a friend of ours who is newer than we are and I was flitting in and out of the conversation. Sadly her dad had died last month and she was telling us about the day of his funeral. How some friends had rallied round and tidied up his garden so they could all spend the afternoon sitting out in the sun after the service, with the feeling that her dad was looking down. The Scotsman shared the story of how the rainbow appeared after my mum’s committal at the crematorium.

Both these things, making sad days special

Love messages from God

Later in the evening I tackled the ironing whilst the feature film Australia was on TV. It has a strong theme of love running through it and several interweaving storylines, great scenery and a good musical score. The song Somewhere over the Rainbow is also a recurrent theme (the character Lady Sarah teaches it to Nullah the boy of aboriginal heritage just after his mother dies and it is later assimilated in song and also on the harmonica.)

I could feel tears pricking my eyes at the first rendition of Somewhere over the Rainbow. By the time Nullah was playing it near the end of the film on the harmonica, for the sound to carry through the fog to the harbour so Lady Sarah (Mrs Boss) could hear it, I was adding more than steam to the clothes being ironed!

I also love Eva Cassidy’s version of Over the Rainbow and have often used that gentle and understated version as a piano piece when playing for funerals. There is much love and hope in rainbows.

The words that come out of God’s mouth are not always physical words and the manifestations of His love are as many and varied as we are.

That is Mystery and Divine and beyond our understanding.

I love it when God reaches down in our interweaving stories with His love messages.

Time after time (if we are listening)

Isaiah 55 v 8-11

I don't think the way you think
The way you work isn't the way I work. God's decree.

"For as the sky soars high above the earth
so the was I work surpasses the way you work
and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
Just as rain and snow descend from the skies
and don't go back until they have watered the earth,
doing their work of making things grow and blossom,
so will the words that come out of my mouth
not come back empty handed.
They'll do the work I sent them to do,
they'll complete the assignment I gave them.

the real time lord

I'm not a bone fide Dr Who-head. I like to watch it if it is on and am not unduly upset if it gets missed. I was born in the exact same time dimension as Russell T Davies (he who rejuvenated the programme in 2005) and we shared 50th birthdays last weekend (not literally because obviously I don't know him and was too geeked out to introduce myself when I saw him at Manchester Piccadilly station.)

****

Last Sunday in church we were singing the song 'The splendour of the King' during worship. Lately I have often felt God has been highlighting certain words in songs for attention. Sometimes it will be clear in an instant what that means but not always. Last Sunday during the particular song the words in bold were:

               time is in His hands, beginning and the end


These specific words have often put things into perspective, when things are going either well or badly, the equation of in everything God > me so it's OK and I thought this was just another reminder He wanted me to hear, because He loves to love us. The loving message that God is not constrained by time in the same way we are, He is so much greater.

But during the week I have found myself again considering comments made frequently by someone about their dissatisfaction with corporate worship at our particular church. Being on the worship team it is difficult not to take such comments personally and on the spot I find it hard to discuss things in conversation.

In essence I think the person is saying that God will bless in a particular way if we 'allow' it when people worship together. I do agree that this does happen and that we all need to have genuinely open hearts to fully participate in worship. But hearing the same criticism repeated regularly is uncomfortable and also coveys the opinion that the person thinks this is the only way God will speak in corporate worship (since they seem to be generally dismissive of the regular weekly approach.) 

A finger pointing that tries to invoke shame, that fault of this perceived failure lies with someone else. I too have done this at times when services have been dry and dusty and devoid (to me) of the voice of God. When the song choices/musicians could have been better. Do I look at my own heart first? Nearly always not..

Thankfully God is not constrained by time, place or human action. 

He can speak anywhere, anyhow and anyway He chooses. 

Just who are we to determine how and when God speaks? 

Are our hearts really fully open?

Are we always listening?

In corporate worship God might be illuminating for us something that happened years ago or puts a past event in its place. He may say a word or phrase that speaks in a single moment. Words that might be something we need to go away and think and pray about, before meaning becomes clearer. Or He may be saying nothing to us and speaking to others.

Past, present and future, beginning and the end.

And it is not just in corporate worship that He speaks and blesses. It is in our run of the mill, every day living that He does so just as clearly (if we are listening.)


Past

Last autumn God spoke very clearly through a photo that I had taken two years previously, where I noticed a heart shaped snow flake for the first time. I wrote about this in even when the photographer is an off-colour amateur God can still sing His freedom song.

Present

I was preparing potatoes for baking one day and a lump of earth as I scrubbed became heart shaped. It stayed heart shaped until the very end. 

Future 

During a recent walk in the Peak District, Derbyshire, I took some photos of a sinkhole, just with a feeling that they might come in useful for an unknown future abstract art work at some point. The next day the preacher in church spoke these words 'dreams borne of God don't have to die in the pit' which spoke very clearly to a number of people in different situations, in the service. 

That is why I am convinced that God is not constrained by time, space, place or humanity and that time is in His hands, not ours. His concept of time is way beyond ours.

****

I am returning to full time work next week, temporarily for the time being, with up to a one hour commute on two trains at either end of the day (cheers for extra reading time!) There have been hardships in the last two years, but above all I have valued the time God has given me as a gift to re-engage with Him. I also value the people I have met on twitter and interact with in tweets, blogs and prayer. 

I am not sure what direction the blog will take from here and what lies ahead. I am sure it will not entail getting vertigo from spinning in a blue box but I am certain whatever that He the Alpha and Omega, is in it all. 

Every last little atom.

the piano

The #concretewords link up currently lives at Nacole's place at sixinthehickorysticks join in with us over there. To find out more about #concretewords, click here

This week's prompt was utterly irresistible and you get me just about as authentic as you will get. 

It is - the piano

****

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Frail, tiny, elderly lady leaning with her arm for support, on the curve of the wing-shaped case of the grand piano. Gently waving her arthritic hands in time to my tentative playing of elementary pieces from the old primer. Her long necklaces gently swaying as she moved within confined space, teaching, imparting and carefully cultivating.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Stumbling self-consciously through ‘Solo per cembalo’ for the pivotal grade examination. Teenage hormones crushing confidence, fingers falter and hit right notes at the wrong time. The corner of the eye sees the examiner is disengaged, concurrently absorbed in picking his nose and writing, scratching deeply the scathing remarks into the paper.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Realising in mid-teens that I could use the piano to reproduce songs heard just a few times and without needing music. Guided by intuition and a sizeable aural memory bank, I was able to adopt a style allowing flexibility away from written music and enabling freedom to worship in song. It was a crucial juncture, this acknowledgement of a God-given gift and was the spur to re-engage with it fully and go back to piano study after a break of a couple of years.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Challenging Nanna to a chromatic scale race from the extremities to the middle of the piano playing all 88 keys in sequence, her ascending, me descending. She herself weakened and recuperating after a bout of pernicious anaemia having spent much time with her terminally sick younger sister. Her hands where the olive, Olay drenched skin had long given up its elasticity, still deceptively agile and we reached the 44^th note in the contest at roughly the same time. Motor skills unused in decades still resident in her dancing digits.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

University teacher whose often sherry-seasoned breath filled the small, sound-proofed box rooms, where we took lessons. His imagination that paced corridors and opened doors to previously unknown pieces. Favourites were aural impressionist paintings by Debussy and peculiarly, beautiful pieces published after composers’ deaths, where I learned to master the art of complex musical fractions, four against three. ‘Pedal with your ears my dear!’  he often cried, one of the most lucid lessons he left with me.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Now as the teacher watching over pupils who wanted to do-it-all. Listening to the Dying Swan, dead already within a few bars. Admiration for the boy whose fingers assuredly flitted with a feisty lightness through the De’il Among the Tailors, but who otherwise never uttered more than a few words. Adult airline pilot who wanted to play Concertos but vanished from the radar within a few lessons. Tentative pensioner, confidence scarred, Jesus her best friend later in life, duetting  together I know Him so well, art never more appropriately mirroring life. In all the learning, pedagogue always being educated by the apprentices.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Music is an essence that leaks out of my pores and has passed to the next generation. We encouraged each one of our children to pursue the study of at least one instrument and to learn to love music. As a mother at the piano I was able to help them over the years, sitting with them while they practised, to foster the discipline and for them coming through to nurture their own genetically inherited gifts. (This process was definitely not without tears, tantrums and much wallowing of the artistic temperament on all sides). The blessings have multiplied and each child is today involved with music at their own church. I was in floods of tears the first time I heard our eldest son lead worship (not least because he and I probably had the most arguments about practise but also knowing that his musical gifts have been clearly blessed by the Holy Spirit.)

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

To play the black and white keys for Your glory Father whether alone or with a team of fellow musicians. To play, to sing your praises so Your Holy Spirit enables every fibre of my being, heart and soul to give to others a small portion of what you have lavished upon me. Sometimes creating roadblocks by desiring affirmation from others to boost fragile esteem, for them to say that You have blessed them, so in turn I can feel warm, fuzzy goodness within. Other times feeling overlooked because others' personal preferences are different and another musician is exalted with plaudits. 

But exactly who am I to say how your love, grace and mercy are made known to others? Discordant and hollow piano with broken strings and rotting case is left when Your love is absent.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Recently I was playing Abide With Me on the piano to practise for a funeral, where I needed to lead the congregation in singing as well. The hymn has the effect of invoking tears easily, there’s just something about it that does that to me. Perhaps it is having heard it played by Yorkshire Brass Bands (the world's best) or Emilie Sande’s soulful performance at the Olympic opening ceremony. I figured the best thing was to keep playing and singing it out to execute the combination of notes, giving the right weight to rich harmonies and to make the words more habitual so as not to be taken over by emotion.

In the repetitions God suddenly whispered at a junction with only me in the audience, the significance of just these four words ‘ills have no weight’. It is something that I can't explain adequately in words yet, partly because it's one of those situations you need to have lived to understand. So for now I will say it was extremely deep and significant. God is right there in the detail and because he knows me thoroughly the whisper was only for me, in that moment.

And this is why He wanted me to keep playing on so I could hear Him speak.

At the Piano, oftentimes a place of Holy Ground

****

After Nanna’s death it seemed appropriate to invest some of the money she bequeathed to us into a new piano. This is the instrument that has so far moved with us three times.

It is one of my most cherished possessions, the Piano.

place

Dornoch Cathedral, Scotland

Place of ancestors whose steps on these streets are part of their story

Place of awareness where You are before and behind me

Place of celebrity when madonna and guy married to the sound of a thousand fake flashbulbs

Place of faith where generations have worshipped You

Place of hope which leans into a cornerstone

Place of light where Your Son aligns with our eyes to reflect glorious colours of the spectrum

Place of refuge when my own child speaks from Your wisdom, words of love straight into my heart, smoothing healing balm on bruises

Place of transition where the master craftsman painfully places every element and hue in its place, forging a unique masterpiece

Yet

place of gazing into the window of Your soul

knowing that if all falls away

You still are

hockey sticks and that comparison habit

A number of people have written recently about the realities of struggles, mess and doubts of daily walking with Jesus. I'm adding mine here because I am weary from carrying it around for so long and it is a major element of the clutter part of the blog title. It often happens without warning and in unexpected places...

*************

We went to a church meeting last week. It was a good meeting. I had led worship and the songs seemed to fit well with what was being said and with what was prayed. Good things were shared. Yet I still came home feeling rattled.

Why?

Actually that thing when people share prayer answers or pray earnestly for someone else was happening, so good yes? Except when there is a tiny spark of comparison in there and I start to shrink and shrivel because:

• I have similar needs that are not being answered in the same way
• I don’t pray quite so earnestly for something, so maybe that’s why I'm not getting answers for that thing
• I have reluctance to share a particular struggle with the rest of the church and feel guilty for it 

So by the time we got home my inner critic had already made a précis of these thoughts and was furiously scribbling a checklist on a clipboard:

• Rubbish at prayer - check
• Not praying enough – check
• Don't get the answers that others get – check
• Don't share enough with others – check

I also had to phone someone when I got home (the sort of person it is not necessarily good to talk to when I’m already feeling a tad vulnerable.)  So now these thoughts had been through several cycles and negativism had been reduced to the lowest common denominator:

Not

Good

Enough

Eventually I did sit down and scrawl my heart out to my heavenly Father. All the negative thoughts accumulated in that short space of time pencilled onto paper. Warts and all. As I wrote gradually the weight of invalidation lifted and a healthier perspective came back into focus.

Some time ago I either heard a speaker or read a writer who referred to a hockey stick to illustrate how the Psalmist pours out His heart to God, plunging low with his feelings and doubts. Having spent time in God’s presence the Psalmists feelings are turned around by God at the point of meeting in the crook of the J shape of the hockey stick. Not the world's greatest illustration but it has stuck with me (maybe because a major part of my school sporting legacy was to be dumped from the school hockey team..)

photo credit: chelmsfordblue

Confessions

It would be great to avoid the palaver of even getting into this position of inner-self-beating in the first place over small-things-that-become-big-things because it is difficult and more than a little depressing

A lifetime of thought patterns learned in childhood, slowly germinated along the way and deep-rooted

For the times when prayer is not the first port of call in the refuge of the storm and thoughts are given permission to fester because that is easier, especially if a raw nerve has been trodden upon

Consoling the hurt I feel, feeding it and giving it sympathy rather than acknowledging it and handing over the burden to my heavenly Father

For the times in the past where this cycle has been overwhelming  and has multiplied into the beating of a thousand tiny hockey sticks in the mind, developing into full-blown periods of depression

Grief for these times where happiness has been completely crushed and overwhelmed

All consuming seasons where the comparison habit has unwittingly leaked sharp fragments into the tender hearts of my own children

That is great sadness

But never ever venturing down this unhealthy route of absorbing negative comparisons again is highly unlikely. Many lessons have taught me that I know that these warped perspectives are truly and fully met head on in the very act of praying, wrestling or handing over before God, however we do this part. Something then cracks open, allowing the divine exchange of His love to take place in our hearts. I do not know how, but I know that it does, figuratively speaking between the heel and the toe of the hockey stick.  

In willing hearts I believe God is in the business of breaking the cycle of the comparison habit wherever and however it manifests itself. And He in His grace still chooses to use me to do His work while the work is in progress. The very antithesis of what comparison tries to tell us.

Processing thoughts when others lay their weakness cards on the table gives us two reactional choices: 

• to listen and hear them out, walk away from comparison and enter into the mess, with grace
• invoke the comparison, inwardly roll our eyes, tut and say to ourselves 'thank goodness I'm not like that', ignoring the fact that THAT with maybe a different face is looking right back at us eyeball to eyeball

The stupid comparison habit is out on the table, or in this case out on the field. I am more than happy to keep knocking seven bells out of it with a hockey stick when it's needed. And on days when I'm not so successful at stopping those comparisons carousing I suspect there will be a team of you who have my back and will be waiting on the benches ready to help me out with your hockey sticks.

It's game.



Is this something you struggle with?

Are you able to nip comparison and negative thoughts in the bud before they start running riot on the field?