take the long way home (on parenting those who are taller than you)

Since last week I have had an accompaniment earworm of ‘Take the Long Way Home’ (that song from the iconic Breakfast in America album released by Supertramp in 1979.) We had been having a conversation at work about our favourite classic rock and pop music and since A, who sits next to me mentioned that this song was playing on his ipod, it has taken up residence in my brain.

The song came to mind during the marathon men’s singles final at Wimbledon on Sunday (from the viewpoint that the trophy was finally after 77 years leaving Fred Perry’s Stockport and heading further north to Andy Murray’s Dunblane.) It returned again today when the inflection of the squeaky office door reminded me of the song’s snake-y opening mouth organ riff (courtesy of an overactive musical imagination!)

Over the past few days I have had a few conversations/text exchanges with friends on the subject of being parents to young adults and older teens (I’m not sharing specifics because the ‘children’ are all people living their own lives and active on social media). The chats were largely about sharing successes but also pains, mental and physical health and the pressures facing both us and our beautiful young people, particularly around the time of significant exams and degree results. The offpsring are navigating their way out of education and out of our regular daily lives and we are watching, holding our collective breaths. Wondering if they will break in the process and our hearts be squeezed just too hard.

Sadly there’s still discomfort in sharing too widely, those sorts of difficulties when we 'fess up and troubles come home to roost in our front rooms, even among church people. The feeling is that some others are quick to judge. Either explicitly through unsolicited advice or implicitly when a slightly superior attitude seeps out in words or God forbid in prayers. 

It makes this particular road even more of a hard slog sometimes.

And I want to say sorry for the times over the years when I have been concomitant in this this pointing fingers thing. Not necessarily externally and in words. But even by allowing myself to indulge in internal finger pointing, inner competitive parenting and smugness that I don’t ‘have these problems’ sadly: 

I have diluted grace with another 

I have racked my brains for a paltry piece of stupid advice when I should have been listening

I have judged how marriage difficulties might have impacted on a child and diminished pain in front of me bouncing off the walls

I have determined that the rod has been spared and a child spoiled

I have concluded that a sense of entitlement has been created when families are well off and that sowing is now being reaped

I'm sorry for that ugly mess friends which has been my heart at times. 

More than anything I want to get on with having the mercy to listen well when you give me the opportunity. And to thank you for the times you have sat and listened to me say the same things in different versions and dispensed thoughtful wisdom and sent texts with pants, cr*p and sorrys.

Give us feet of friendship that will walk all or some of the way alongside each other and hands of kindness that will hold and be held. For the way home is already long enough, let’s love well and not make it any longer than it has to be.

rhythm (5 minute friday)

Joining with the writing flash mob that is Five Minute Friday at the home of the lovely Lisa Jo Baker. Writing not for comments or traffic or anyone else’s agenda. But for pure love of the written word. For joy at the sound of syllables, sentences and paragraphs all strung together by the voice of the speaker.

Five minutes on RHYTHM

When we first came into being we lived so close to our mother’s heart. Our rhythm of growth and movement developing in time with the steady pulse of the beat of blood, coursing and intertwining round both our bodies.

Middle child used to carry and play bass drum in a Yorkshire Brass Band*. Charged with keeping everyone in step so they could construct their rhythms and harmonies around him he was the band's heartbeat. It was really pretty much out of the conductor’s hands once they were on the move.

And sometimes pulse is a completely noiseless; it is the lifeblood that underlies stanzas of poetry and the great symphonies of music.

Silent, constant and steady Your Holy Spirit is the foundation of our thoughts, our beings and our very lives.

Finally the very last thing to stop when we die is our own heartbeat, before we dance across the threshold and home into the arms of Our Father.

END

*anyone who knows anything about Brass Bands will know that Yorkshire is home to some of the worlds best. Not just a mother's boast :-)

#lentphotos - 23 - divine

Mmm chocolate and some thoughts on the hymn, mostly the last verse..

When we got married my mum kept hinting that she and dad had this hymn at their wedding, (probably why I chose not to.)  But I do still love the hymn and had the privilege of playing and singing it this morning at someone's funeral (the charismatic arm waving was restricted to my heart as I was playing piano.)

Pure and spotless this made me laugh a lot when our eldest had chicken pox. As a toddler he'd contracted it the day we moved house and so he and I had to remain holed up in our new home until he was pure and spotless and safe to be let out again.  For me it always has to be spotless not sinless.

Changed from glory .. lost in wonder, love and praise were the lines that made me realise for the first time at 17 that you did not have to be singing a certain type of song to be totally lost in the goose-bumpy wonderfulness of worshipping Jesus.  More than 30 years on my arm hairs still stand on end when I sing these lines (even if an organist is rubbish).  It's all in the words and about those words getting into the heart.

Finish then Thy new creation
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee,
Changed from glory into glory
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee
Lost in wonder, love and praise

#lentphotos - 20 - a reflection

cuilidh

Cuilidh (not to be confused with ceilidh) is a gaelic word meaning retreat (also treasury, sanctuary, secret hiding place).  The Scotsman has been learning gaelic ever since he became aware of the North Uist connection.  It is such a marvellously rich language, reliant much on oral tradition - hence the seemingly multiple meanings of the same word.

From the meanings of the word cuilidh it would seem to be a good place to reflect whether that is in an actual physical place or internally within the heart.  Likewise reflection means different things to different people.  It might be thinking about something read in a book, seen in an art gallery, listened to in a concert hall, ruing a team's poor match performance, an image seen in a mirror, or a visual reflection in water.  

If Julie Fowlis looks familiar it is because she recently sang on the soundtrack to the Disney/Pixar film Brave.  Mainly she sits just under the mainstream radar of popular folk music and Brave aside she sings entirely in gaelic.  Julie also hails from North Uist and one critic says  'the beauty of her music is like trying to grab the Highland mist.'

the instrument: an ode to childhood's passing

It is a representative of many but it is the instrument. 

How do you love all your children equally? Anyone knows it is impossible to cut a smartie into three.

So the flute of one is the instrument. It stands today as a symbol for the end of an era.  Player of the silver-plated tube turns 21 today, the baby.

The instrument is itself a line, a demarcation under childhood.  

Other instruments too have passed through during the journey.  Recorder, piano, trumpet, violin, cornet, percussion, almost the entire saxophone family and not forgetting all manner of guitars.  

Recitals, concerts and exams. Recorded for posterity on photographs and paper certificates. A rush of internal sensory memories, sometimes triggered by hearing just a fragment of music.  

Music that has been a travelling companion along the way to adulthood.  

Hours of time exercising fingers and the mind (not always willingly) but over time aligning the kinaesthetic with the acoustic.  Imperceptibly changing the brain. 

A legacy that has passed from one generation to the next and given wings to fly onwards and upwards, having packed some of the instruments to carry along the way.

Shared exclusive conversations. 

A secret language.

The gift of the instrument has also passed back to its source and right back into the very heart.

She treasured these things in her heart, holding them dear, deep within herself (Luke 2:19)

(Linking with Tanya Amber and friends for #concretewords – communicating the abstract through solid things.)