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.

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)

singed in the middle

Addie Zierman has written a book that I can’t wait to read ‘ When we were on fire’. At the time it was launched a couple of weeks ago Addie hosted a synchroblog on her blog How to Talk Evengelical. I missed the boat on #WWWoF synchroblog, but reading some of the submissions helped with the writing of this post. Please check out some of the posts on Addie’s blog and BUY HER BOOK!

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Middle class, middle England, we were and just up the road from the Midland Oak. That’s our Youth Group heritage. It’s fair to say for a number of us, church was something parents did with a kind of quiet persistence, turning up faithfully week in and week out, but not with a demonstrable, on fire excitement. A small core of us went to the same school as well, thrown together in the 6^th form after five years in the single sex grammar schools. Heck we were even all in the same tutor group at college too, navigating our way through the fug of hormones, dating each other in turn, debating life’s eternal questions, parties, nightclubbing and sneaking under-age into wine bars and inappropriate films.

Our Youth Leaders were two of the dads, two high class professionals. They treasured us as people and had good, willing hearts. Their dressing down with the yoof on Sunday evening was always jacket, tie and trousers. We mercilessly teased the one who attempted the guitar and his dogged determination lead us in singing ‘We are one in the Spirit’. The chord changes were always playing catch up to the singing and the bottom end of his jacket flapped increasingly he shifted on the seat adjusting his position, as if that would somehow enable his fingers to get the chords out on time.

There was a period when we had a small gang of town centre kids hanging on to the group. They came back and piled bovver-booted, into the back corner pew and fidgeted noisily during the evening services. Volleys of tongue clucking and tutting from older members of the congregation, flew backwards in their direction. At the language, values and behaviour that was alien to most of us, never mind the oldies. They made all of us youngsters at least question our comfortableness and gave us an itch to scratch. I wonder if they ever found what they were looking for after they left us?

We were no more mature. What on earth is it with metal communion cup holders on pews? Are there or have there ever been any of these anywhere else in the world? When we crammed two too many in a pew it made the person at the end twang the cup holder when we sat down, and we always snickered helplessly at the loud comedy boing.

I felt the love of God most deeply at outside events. At the local youth evangelistic rallies we went along to occasionally. And a few of us ventured to Spring Harvest in the early days and caught the fire which elevated us in our own eyes. We convinced ourselves that we had stumbled across ‘the way’ and rightly irritated the others with our ‘holy’ ideas. It tainted the word holy for quite some time but in the end the draw, comfort and loyalty of the middle was always greater and ultimately the end point of spiritual hokey cokey.

Sterile, hymn sandwiches out of the 1969 green Baptist Hymn book were a major dietary element in services; some of old melodies that screeched thinly at the top of the soprano range or others that crammed an absurd number of syllables of arcane words into as few lines as possible. Not more than once at the time (and since) have I felt strongly about pipe organs, poor organists and fire in the same breath. But something beyond the particular singing ridiculousness kept drawing us back and thankfully so. In spite of antipathy and boredom, words and ancient truths from the better hymns were finding their way in, burrowing deep along with the chord structures which were crucial building blocks in my musical memory from early days.

Worship songs of the time were still finding their way, and enthused us mainly because they were new and shiny. We had and lost the customary arguments with church leaders over their suitability for corporate worship. Although most of them have now largely fizzled out and have had their day they too were crucial in the early development of a piano playing style that still I use today in leading worship.

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But the old good hymns, they have lasted, they are the ones insistently still around. Each time I sing their words now, either ones we don’t sing that often or ones we sing more regularly, there is always a fresh nuance, a change in weight of a particular word, and a much deeper understanding of Jesus’ love. That is the way at the moment God speaks most often, from those places where the deep things have been in storage, From where steady, quiet and persistent fire burned the words in, in the years gone by.

And I was back in the middle town these past few days with the Scotsman, visiting surviving parents who are now more frail of body and mind. Driving along the beautiful tree lined avenues, the tunnels of burnished browns and oranges that come around during the autumn season, with leaves on fire. Most of the rest of the group also have ageing parents in the same place a quarter of a century on, and although these ties call us back during the year we mostly pass as ships in the night. We could even be driving down the same avenues and not even know it. Our wings are now spread all over England, older, mostly rounder, greyer and enough baldness for a fair contest among the men (the very same competition that went on with our leaders in the Youth Group days.)

Most of us are no longer close friends but we are loosely connected by the fine threads of social networking. For me I look back and see times when making friends was uncomplicated and relatively easy. At that time the actual making friends with Jesus personally bit didn’t happen right into the heart for me, mainly because the middle was too comfortable. That came much later, after disappointment, failure, tiredness, brokenness and everyday living finally pushed me off the fence and out of the middle. He was the one who turned up persistently, whatever and He needed me to learn that.

For a long time I looked back on these things of the early days and looked down on them, as something you learn as a youngster and move on to better things as you get older. But lately the realisation has dawned that I am now grateful for the heritage of all the ‘on fire.’ That which came from both the very slow burn of persistence within and the flames of excitement that licked from the outside. 

my heart will go on

I’m not a Celine Dion fan although I did once go to a concert of hers because someone had a spare, free ticket. And by virtue of tagging along I discovered the music of The Corrs, whose music I do love, so clouds, silver linings.

When our children were in primary school I did a little piano teaching. Celine’s song ‘My heart will go on’ sprang up everywhere at that time, making it a piece that a number of pupils wanted to learn to play. It was actually a great piece to teach balance between hands, with the aim of making the melody line sing against a flowing accompaniment. All too often as students wrestled with mastering notes, fingers and pedals the efforts sounded more like the deep, dark depths of the ocean that Jack Dawson sank into. But occasionally a pupil would master it well enough to perform in the end of term concert.

As the teacher teaching those who were not quite able to master it, the lessons were something of an endurance feat, and sometimes could not end soon enough. I’ve not been put off the song for life, but neither is it top of any playlists.

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2 Chronicles 7: 1-3

When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. ² The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it. ³ When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, “He is good; his love endures forever.”

This morning we sang the Matt Redman song based on this passage ‘Lord let your glory fall’. And we sang it twice during the service, second time after an excellent message on Praise and Revelation. I was leading worship from the piano today, so given the time spent practising in preparation at home, warm up practice prior to the service and repeating it during the service I’d ended up singing those words quite a few times.

I’m never bored of hearing these things. It is one of the best ways in which God enables His goodness to sink into my bones, in repetition and rhythm, allowing thankfulness to diffuse into my heart and to know that His love endures.

Not endurance as in long-suffering, resignation, tolerance or sticking it out, but enduring timeless love as constantly encountering, meeting with, persisting and holding on.

Without resorting to cheesy song, He says ‘My heart will go on’ long after yours has given up, cooled off, forgotten or wandered off and I am committed to running after You, whatever.

silver celebration (a letter to the fly on the wall)

So, yesterday friends of ours celebrated their Silver Wedding. We, a small crew of friends and family assembled in the gloriously named Dog and Hedgehog. While we were arriving from the different places we call home, we broke and ate hunks of bread that had been dipped into bitter olive oil and sharp balsamic vinegar.

Not long after we sat down at the long table, flies started to appear. It bizarrely made eating indoors feel more like we were eating al fresco. But wine was flowing and beautiful food was beginning to arrive and so the insects were relegated to the league of minor occasional irritation.

'A day to remember all the good things' said my friend in her later speech, quipping that she had not had the opportunity twenty five years ago and was sure as anything going to make up for it. They had chosen to gather us, we who have weathered good times and bad, sometimes together, sometimes in our separate lives. To sit with them, break bread, drink wine and share delicious food. Applaud, cheer and celebrate all the goodness.

Flies on walls over the years have witnessed the joy and sad of the years of the collective; the illnesses, the births, the bereavements, the weddings, the broken relationships and the enduring.

Most particularly with our friends we have shared the goodness and pains of times in church leadership. Times of difficulty are more recent and therefore in sharper focus. Things go inexplicably wrong and are horribly messy, the wailing that no-one else understands, periods of dark doubt, and baggage of unmet expectations. At times closing in like hordes of insects, the overwhelming noise of buzzing is too hard to bear and their sheer numbers close to snuffing out the Light.

A short nod to those things too, in the conversation at the table, but an acknowledgement that they have shaped us over the years, not defined us. The fact is that the ones that matter are the ones who have remained.

Later when leaving our friends house the sky had darkened, the weather had closed in and a short, torrential downpour had started. As we drove west the Scotsman was momentarily struggling to see clearly through combination of heavy rain on the windscreen and the bright sunlight shining through ahead onto the wet road. He glanced in the rear view mirror and commented that I might like to look behind at the rainbow. Right over the place where we had just driven from, enhanced by the darkest of brooding grey skies was the most brilliantly clear rainbow.

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

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.

the tainted

Don't touch me please 
I cannot stand the way you tease 

Tainted love

We made our angled moves and shapes to the staccato synthpop sounds of the early 1980’s. Fashions and make up still flouncing through yet another androgynous cycle. My best friend and I shared many Saturday evenings and early mornings in our late teens dancing away to these sounds, shouting out the words in unison with the room and stumbling bleary eyed into church a few hours later.

                                                                                 

We had spent our schooldays dressed in blue. It started out as a specific shade of royal blue (only stocked by the independent department store) but rules relaxed to more general shades of dark blue as we moved through the classes. Near the end permission was given to wear knee length blue socks, enabling us to dress from head to toe in blue.

Recently b/f and I went away as part of our 50^th birthday celebrations for a weekend away. We also met up with two other friends who we’ve not seen since schooldays. Chatting, raising glasses, dividing pots of tea and breaking cake, we shared our stories of the years. Each of us giving space for another to speak, joys and sorrows that we have known well and sometimes worn heavily. Broken and imperfect love featured strongly in the different chapters and we gave room to hear the hard things, but we quickly cheered and applauded all the anecdotes about our dearly loved children. We laughed hard until we cried, recounting our own days in blue and wondering how the path of life and love had worked for others.

Yesterday I stood in the presence of God with His people wearing a new royal blue shirt which I had bought during that weekend away. The keyboard player led into the middle of the song, and we repeated these words before singing the whole song:

Your majesty, I can but bow

I lay my all before You now

In royal robes, I don’t deserve..

I live to serve Your majesty

Tears welled up, blurring my blue eyes and dropping on my cheeks. Overwhelmed in the moment that I don't deserve. That He holds back what I really, truly deserve, all for love and to clean my tainted heart. Not only when I’m wearing blue and not in the same way every week, but even so.

(And I think sometimes I sense just the smallest hint of a gentle tease along with an eye-twinkle, when He tells us twice). 

#concretewords prompt is the tainted over at Nacole's blog & hosted by Ruth this time. Link up, join in - go on, go on, you know you want to!

the rope

This week has been difficult

more down than up

watching my little brother come to terms with treatment for illness and all-the-things that go with it

the heaviness of wondering whether daughter is OK

the tiredness of a daily commute that leaves me with sharp teeth that bite those I love best

the weird dances that introverts do with new work colleagues 

the work itself that has systems that are left patchily wanting

the pecking order that leaves temps as the needed but unwanted at the bottom of the heap

the meetings that you hope will refresh and revive but end up going in circles where the old, familiar and gregarious do the talking

the forgetting to pray for those who I have said I will pray for

and hanging on to the end of a rope that is fraying.


In and between all these things You are constant, noiseless, silent yet blessing, in the same way that You have been patiently shaping those You love for a thousand ages.


Reaching down for our hand to help us back up

healing in ways beyond our understanding

carrying our load with us

renewing our strength when it fails and enabling the antiseptic of forgiveness to soothe bite wounds

ensuring that people know they matter even when social and psychological systems shout otherwise

equipping us with knowledge to work out missing parts

making the last first and the first last. 

Kingdom come.


Refreshing and restoring us in unexpected ways; vibrantly colouring nature's landscape and  elevating the every day ordinary to extraordinary if we choose to be captivated with hearts and  eyes

never forgetting and always forgiving us first

mending the rope

washing away the dirt

untangling the knots

and reeling us in when we don't have the will and strength to come to You.


Who alone could save themselves
Their own soul could heal
Our shame was deeper than the sea
Your grace is deeper still

You O Lord have made a way
The great divide you heal
For when our hearts were far away
Your love went further still
(O yes) Your love goes further still

a splintered song [25 minute friday]

I normally join with the community that is Five Minute Friday with the lovely Lisa Jo Baker. But it just didn't turn out that way and was more of a 25 minute friday :-) 

So to keep true to the #fmf spirit I've not linked up there this week...

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Do birds ever get sore throats? Their songs never seem to run out as they flit from tree to tree, freely tweeting. You never see the invalid in the nest having a duvet day with lemsip.

Sometimes I feel like an inarticulate, wordless mass of person. Like a dodo extinct or some other form of wingless bird.

But give me a song and my vocabulary can soar high above everything, like an eagle on smooth on the thermal wind currents. (But if it is the early morning the initial sound can be a little inelegant, rather like a gangly flamingo on take off.)  

In flight my heart sings with fluid melody and the words are poetry, not stuttered staccatos with hiatus, concomitant with shame flushing on my face.

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A thousand songs in the rainbow stacked books. Unending ways to paint You with scripture and song. We have so much, yet we have so little, so rich and yet so poor.

With voices, brains and hearts we have the innate ability to sing and express our inner selves. But sometimes in the process, short-circuits cause a block in the communication.

Broken and fading hallelujahs

                                         hallelujahs

                                                 hallelujahs

                                                         hallelujahs

                                                                 hallelujahs

                                                                         hallelujahs

Father I want to be like Matthew, man trapped in a child’s body. He who unrestrained flailed his whole body with wild abandon in a field when we sang these words. He was your cheerleader that day *\o/* we were the unenthusiastic spectators. So rich and so poor:

So like a child in Your sight
I dance to see Your delight
For I was made for Your pleasure, pleasure

And like Mary whose soul magnified You when she knew the most precious thing was happening deep inside her own body and everything came flooding out in word and song.

Pouring out

Your love in transaction with our meagerly offered melody

insistently reaches down to us 

and begins to mend the hallelujahs..

(Oh, and I also wonder if birds get splinters in their feet when they land on branches?)

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.)

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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.