Chapter Three

He is frail, crumpling, curled and greying, a fragile relic of parchment inside his tired stature. If he were in a scrum now his head would snap off. In his old age a game of rugger would leave him shaken out like a Russian doll. Inside and inside and inside again there would be a small foetus-like creation. There he would be, vulnerable without his skin. The effort to bring the tap into full song was the cause of his current exhaustion. Since his sculptural fingers showed no real enthusiasm in coaxing the torrent out of the drip he tried persuasion. She finds him crooning to the tap's silver neck. "A little water, a little water, sing to me the river's melody" he hums. No more rugby chants she thinks. "Wet my lips and sing like a stream" he mumbles and his voice rumbles like stones in a leather barrel.

"Benedict" she sings out, adding notes of music to her voice, joining in with the spirit of things. "Benedict".

He turns. He stares. It is the flat-eyed stare of the startled. There is fear in the brown flecks of his grey eyes. There is a hint of confused panic in his frown. There is the beginning of a smile. It grows wider on only one side of his mouth. The other fixed in a dreadful resentful grimace. She waits. She grows impatient for a word. She waits. She stands frozen on the flagstones. She cannot tell if she is giving herself away. He stares and She waits.

"Is you", paralysed speech.

"It is", paralysed response.

"How di you kno where do find m-me?"

A paralysed answer.

The flagstones absorb the silence and the evening light is sheening everything up. The tap is in its best light and still isn't singing to his melody. Benedict turns his resentment away from her towards the tap. She is waiting now for a her own answers.

She moves away from the flagstone which seems as though it might lift suddenly and topple her over. She waltzes oddly to the tap. The anxiety is making her unsteady. Each step takes another two to sustain it. He watches. She turns with strong and dignified hands the cold metal grip. She is on the wrong side of his resentment now.

She drinks and he is thirsty. He waits and she stares. Her hand reaches out, the glass seems to glide across the air alone, the water is moving at its own pace. She tries to pull back the sustenance from his lips but it is done. He is drinking. She is shaking.

"Why?" Benedict speaks.

Her heart beats too many times. She can't sustain it, if it carries on beating so fast something will crack apart.

"Because" She breathes sharply upwards, shoulders lifting.

long time no write

Well it has been some time since I have been able to write and really I don't know which comes first the lack of time or the lack of inclination. I have had lots of encouragement recently, unexpected and very healing. I lost my nerve I'm afraid. There is so much I have to write about but I'm not sure where to start, so tomorrow, having dealt with the first step here tonight, I will start at the beginning again.

Chapter Two (the chapters are tiny)

She creeps into the cottage in darkness as usual, savouring the anonymity of it, leaving off the light until the last possible moment. Keys are flung down, the fridge pours light onto the sheet metal worksurface and shimmers upwards onto the brickwork. The cat opens his mouth wide enough for his head to snap off and squeaks by mistake with the effort of it. "hello Audrey" she croons.

The morning had been fragmentary, piercing winter light, particles dancing like Parisian Spring. Everything had started to come apart, her mind disintegrating as she tried to concentrate. There was a tiny grave inside her mind on a hillside, lush green in another place, sea close, cottage nestling. The tiny stone had a name she couldn't read and it asked her not to forget it, to remember. There was something useful in this place she didn't know, this dead infant that wasn't hers and a tragedy she didn't own that was claiming her imagination for reasons she didn'tyet understand. The cottage near the grave was beamed and smoky with woodsmoke and there was a friendly presence, and elderly woman. She watched the scene with interest, surprised by its clarity. It was as familiar as that white Church on the hill she visited sometimes in her sleep. It had a particular feeling, nameless of course.

Audrey was yet another victim of an absent-minded vet and had been lumbered with a sexual identity crisis in his early kittenhood. He was quite 'Hepburn' in fact but he was in denial, like most cats, about his true identity. She had given him a diamante collar anyway. Perhaps he had regarded this as a final act of cruelty against his vulnerable psyche and had developed into an adolescent phase of sulking and stropping whenever his biscuits ran out. Crunchies are poured, diamante clicks against crockery, the purring begins. Legs are circled, marmalade hairs on black tights. She wonders why it all broke into her head today, the nameless stuff, but it had, and Audrey certainly couldn't care less.

Chapter One of my new novel: Nameless

"Hurry up, they have come, they are coming in, hurry!"
Her mother's voice
She packs the strange grey textured suitcase, striped along the centre, small metal buckles, torn leather trim. She piles random patterned skirts, crumpled and ironed together. Squeezes the red Morrocan slippers, and still thrills at their glitter and pointed toes, even now, even here.
She scans the room, apricots, peaches, soft colours, floral patterns, ragged oatcake carpet, gentle flounces, swags, delicate fine cotton, valances. She calls out.
"Mum, Mum, I'm ready". She turns. She goes to speak. Opens her mouth to breathe, pushes the hollow door. Silence.
She finds herself standing on the edge of an open French sliding door, the metal cuts into her tender feet, the plump soles flushed with pain without her Morrocan slippers. She raises her eyes. No corridor, no bathroom, no spare room.

She is on the edge of a vast expanse of water, edgeless, mirrored in the glass door, permutating a million times the sheer gossamer surface. The wide and inky watery darkness merges with the wide and inky absent sky. Where one ends and the other begins she cannot tell. It is a lightless box, it could be glass, it could be frameless and infinite or mirrored and complex but limited. There is no one on the edge of the precipice but her in her tender naked feet clutching a battered suitcase full of ageing photographs.

It happens sometimes. The nameless stuff. She knows she is about to reject the idea of visiting a shrink for the millionth time. They won't share her creativity. They will try to explain it for her, but it isn't theirs to explain. It happened in childhood too. The nameless stuff.

She clinks the breakfast bowl onto the table, pours, scoops, crunches, grimaces, swallows reluctantly, winces, sips, stirs, sighs, yawns, wonders if there is time for another cup and goes in search of reality.

Her life along with the lives of everyone she knew had not turned out as she planned it, or as she imagined it. There is no name for that either, the way it all changes shape, all the ideas that weren't and the surprises that were. As children they were all 'going to be' when they grew up, as if 'being' was a thing for the future. How they had all ended up 'doing' instead had alluded her. What she was 'doing'with her life was trying to name things. But she didn't see it at the time that she started 'doing' it and now it was a habit.
To Be continued...

mr B

Mr B is, as I have doubtless whined before, HOPELESS at understanding insomnia. He doesn't get it. His 2am bathroom visit used to raise my hopes of him tending to my needs by warming my milk and renewing my hot water bottle. Years of experience have taught me to stay disillusioned. He will, he just did, emerge from the loo looking like a mole fresh out of hibernation, squeak an odd noise at me and then pat me on the back. He usually manages a brief mumbled random and useless jumble of words before sloping back off to bed and leaving his 'mouth guard' (which is supposed to stop him grinding) spat out on the bedside table.

married life is so romantic

Blogs are great

The wonderful thing about a Blog is you can bore your audience to the point of insanity and not end up in a divorce court for 'irreconcilable differences'...a Moose-hair flannel being a case in point. If I was a Moose I wouldn't want to end up as a flannel.

Sleep continues to elude me, crafty little creature that she is creeping away from me and hiding in a corner behind a tempting midnight feast, saying 'eat me and then I'll come back to your pillow'. She has even convinced me that if I write endless, inane monologues about The History of Moose-flannel manufacture in Alaska
she'll come back...but she won't...because she is

Out to Get me

Last night was another one of her little games. The 'just watch a little bit of Psychic for the Stars'...it surely can't do any harm' revelry. So I snuck downstairs and thought, Sleep is right when she says 'you can't go to bed now, you haven't 'wound down', a little Psychic for the Stars is what you need. I sat guiltily watching in disbelief morphing into convincement (yes it is a word,I borrowed it from the Quakers) listening to this nauseating bauble of a woman blowing bubbles of artificial sweetener into innocent fake-tanned faces. She was so atrociously awful and in the end I loved her for being so unashamedly appalling. Then, as sleep sat mocking me in the corner I started to believe her. Then all the spirits started creeping into the room.

Well, as spirits go they were a bit rubbish. The main one kept pretending he wasn't really pushing the door, it was just 'caught in a draft, honestly'. I wonder why these spirits have got nothing better to do than pretend to be drafts that slightly rattle doors at midnight. You'd think if you were a spirit you'd be in California on the beach not lingering around Linda Lusardi wittering on about David Seaman.

Spirits these days...

Back to life...Back to reality

And now I am chilled out no longer. Sooooo NOT Zen. Stillness and listening my arse!
Am totally unable to sleep or to stop beating myself up. My mind is in chaos and I'm convinced its a full moon but I can't see it because you can't see the sky in Birmingham.


Nothing works, if I go and make hot milk I'll get bad breath in the morning and if I make chocolate I will have to deal with the guilt on top of it all.

Its all hormones and hysteria round here. Why, pray tell, would the good Lord in all his wisdom pick me to be still, peaceful etc etc? I feel like I just stuck my finger in a socket

Total paranoia set in without warning about 12 hours ago and seems to be currently resident. This makes me behave like a strange, badly house-trained puppy scratching at the door to go out and then beggin to come back in.

I started feeling persecuted about church chairs this evening, you could make up the most random thing, select anything and i would turn it round to some kind of failure on my part. All the Moose in Alaska are catching foot and mouth (for example...and no, I had no idea...I thought I'd made it up). It isn't that I would blame myself for the plight of the Moose with immediate effect, I would just convince myself that you had a point and that I was partly responsible. I would somehow turn it around. I'm not sure how I do it in theory, but in practice it works. I might (for example)assume that you assumed that I had a Moose flannel with which to lather my Radox. I would argue that you had been shocked that I would use a Moose-fur flannel and should be ashamed of myself for lathering my Radox with it. Especially when that poor Moose had been battery-farmed in Alaska, the source of the outbreak of Moose disease. I would then be perfectly at ease explaining to the long-suffering Graham that I thought maybe you were right and that my flannel really was developed from Moose-hide in an appalling fashion resulting in a foot and Mouth outbreak in Alaska.

Furthermore...it would seem reasonable, until the next morning when I read my Blog and wondered what on earth was going on...in Alaska, with a Moose taking a shower with my flannel.

...I've lost it

Odanadi-uk.org

Last night we went to the official launch of the charity which my niece helped to set up. She is now a trustee. It was a fabulous occasion in London's Docklands/Canary wharf at the Docklands Museum which has been concerned to address the issues of Slavery in the past. It was particularly apt as this charity Odanadi-uk.org is specifically concerned with present day Slavery. Odanadi-uk is set up to fund-raise and awareness-raise for Odanadi-India who work with the results of Sex-trafficking, sexual exploitation and abuse in India. The charity works with women, girls and boys enslaved to the sex-industry, exploited and then subsequently destitute in Mysore, India. They house the children of women forced to become prostitutes.

The evening was very moving because it was intensely personal, we had a very positive and affirming photographic exhibition to look at. We were even given the names and stories of the women. We had a photographer's commentary of the experience of photographing some of the young girls in India. We watched a film of the place and heard more heart-wrenching stories. We were inspired by the founders of the charity in India, listened to a speech by Katherine Hamnett and all the time were reminded of the charity's name 'odanadi' which means 'soul-mate'. The charity has an ethos which is concerned with equality, it is not patronising, does not put any conditions on the money given and insists that people work in a voluntary capacity for the organisation. Therefore all the money goes directly to India without being wasted on admin costs. The venue was given free-of-charge, and everything was done at minimal cost.

What impressed me most was that the founders of Odanadi-India and Odanadi-UK all insisted that this kind of work is concerned with global-solidarity. Words like 'brotherhood', 'sisterhood', 'soul-mates' and other words concerned with intimacy and relationship were used frequently. The founders of Odanadi-India had flown over to speak to their UK fund-raisers, and there was a film made of the charity by a woman who had visited the area to witness for herself the work being done there.

At the end of the evening we were given some little bags made from re-cycled newspaper by the women in India and on each bag was a photo of the project. We were constantly reminded of our connections.

I was also particularly impressed by the aims of the Charity which are to rehabilitate not to encourage dependency and therefore further enslavement and inequality. The charity uses a lot of highly creative ideas, a photography project developed from our discarded cameras, an interactive theatre project, and funding to set up small businesses to encourage and enable the women's independence. The project is passionate about stopping the cycle of abuse which is developed when these people are exploited, working with the children and in training the people in counselling and support work. The families are supported as a whole where appropriate, the children are housed as far as the limited resources of the charity will allow. The consequences of sexual exploitation such as physical illness, mental health issues and the difficulties faced by these women when they wish to get married are all confronted and addressed. The charity is also working tirelessly to raise awareness of the all-pervasive culture of social stigma associated with sexual exploitation.

I left feeling a powerful need to 'do something' and hope to compile a list of contacts for Odanadi-uk so that they can develop links with the Asian community here in Birmingham. I am also going to pray for them daily and ask others to pray too. We have set up a standing order but cannot currently afford to give more. We are thinking of creative ways of supporting this charity.

The heartening thing about this charity and the location of its launch in the heart of our capitalist, finance centre in the middle of a credit crunch was that many of the women who had developed Odanadi-UK had reduced their working hours, taken pay-cuts to work in charity work, even a top clothes designer had designed a t-shirt for nothing. The launch was filled with young middle-class well-connected Londoners and they have a social conscience which many people of my generation are only just discovering.

They are absolutely determined to change the world. They are not religious or pious or pushing an agenda they are just so entirely human. The founders of the UK branch of Odanadi are all gutsy, strong women, feminists at their best determined to fight for their fellow women and bring justice. Idealism is not dead. Thank God

Please visit odanadi-uk.org and see what I mean

my prayer before leaving

This is a prayer which I prayed before leaving the Retreat. I prayed it in front of a small ornamental lake and threw something into the water as a symbol of that comittment. It was, sadly, a stick...not an attractive rock, but it was all I could find and it made me laugh. I cried a lot as a I did this, it was a significant comittment and I knew what I was getting into, it was as if I was finally standing up and being counted, finally deciding to serve God and the Church graciously, without moaning about it or pretending I can't do it.
As the pitiful stick hit the water it caused ripples which extended out and touched he ripples of the other objects and rivulets spilling into the water. It was a glimpse of God in that it caused a movement on the water and represented to me the way in which all our different gifts ripple against each other to create a beautiful pattern.

This prayer is based on an exercise where we were asked to make sense of our journalling exercise from beginning to end. We were asked what God might be saying to us, where God might be leading. It became clear from my journal that I was called to a role of listening in many senses. I was called to being still and at peace, present to God and others and listening, but I was also called to laughter and prayer. Most of all I was called to listening in whatever sense I could to God. This was a revelation to me, but not to anyone else, mostly people sighed with relief when I told them. "At last, she finally 'gets it'"

It was news to me really, I think most people would have expected a more tangible idea with goals and objectives and purpose, but this is a strange role to be given and although I am already developing it and enjoying it it never seemed to me like a vocation in itself. I have never heard of such a thing! Anyway, here is the prayer:

God
You
Know
Me
I
Know
You
Use me to hold others in your embrace
To show them your smile
To trust you
To be unashamed
Bring me to accept
That I must be still
Be listening
Be present and at prayer
To claim my gifts with gratitude
And to use them with humility
To know that you will be present
To accept that I too must be present
and bring healing through your presence
With your people
I pray that I will trust that
What I have been given I have responsibility to share
and what you ask of me
I must do
Use all of me Loving God to your Glory
Amen

At the end of the retreat we sat together and shared. I made a gesture by laying down my journal in the centre of the room next to another woman's work. It was a form of gratitude, we had been pilgrim's on a journey together and we had changed each other, for that I am eternally grateful because they helped me to be fully myself and to start enjoying being Jess simply for who I am

A Prayer of Consolation

We are known
You, lover of our souls, know our resting places
Our rest is in the healing heart of God
The God who is our sleeping and waking
Our God of mercy and compassion
Whose nature is never to blame
Heal our broken hearts
it is your promise
And you will not let us go
Our wholeness is your embrace

Penitence and Confession

I am sorry for nt wanting to enter the darkness
For being afraid to stay there
For forgetting that darkness is a shared space
That we must visit it so that no one goes there alone
For not wanting to accept that communal confession is concerned with healing
For not wanting to enter, to share that room full of brokeness
I am sorry, and I do repent with my whole heart
For not wanting to cry before others when the tears of others heal our own wounds
It is part of the running - this remorse
This fear of sharing more and more deeply
The mutual darkness
I confess to you, Loving God, God of Mercy
Compassion and Kindness
I have nt done what I ought to have done
I have not stayed with the darkness for long enough
Without the depth of it
I cannot be dazzled by your healing light
Forgive us; for we know not what we do

Lectio Divina

Quakers have borrowed from St Benedict's ideas about meditating on the Word of God
I took Psalm 139 and studied it out loud and in meditation.

I took one message from it, but it had a much deeper resonance than it would have if it had simply been said. I found it written, three simple words circled

You Know Me

Intercessory Prayer: A prayer for my husband

29 September 2008

My prayers for you are always for your happiness
For your freedom, joy, fulfilment and fullness of life
I pray for you to have courage
For you to live
For you to stay, here, happy and with me

reflections on my thanksgiving

29 Sept 2008

I notice:
The absence and inadequacy of words
Reaching for non-verbal mediums
The extension of prayer into life and movement
The recurrence of healing

Is there a link between healing and gratitude
Is gratitude in itself 'healing?

A Prayer of Thanksgiving

29 September 2008

You astonish me God
This nameless shapeless enormous space
Filled with something like liquid
Gratitude is a luscious, moving expansive form of poetry
Thankfulness is a meaning which emerges
Slowly
Gently
In increments
And then suddenly swallows us whole

Thanksgiving doesn't welcome structure
It delights in surprises
Creates mischief
Leaps up and blocks our throats
Smarts our eyes
Shivers our spines

Feeling grateful is a movement with a life which cannot be accounted for
It will never stand up and be counted
Will not stand still and speak up
It isn't even eloquent

When I am thankful I am suddenly afflicted
I am brought closer to God and myself and those I love
Without warning, speechless, voiceless, amazed
Gratitude is an incarnation of love
It beats in our hearts, takes that beat to its wings, flies and carries us beyond a million thank yous into an unspoken sky

Perhaps laughter is a form of gratitude
It is a volume of celebration
A claim to life and vivacious spirit

and maybe song is also thanksgiving
and music
and other wordless offerings and words which reach beyond speech
giving something back in exchange for a gift

A clasped hand
An embrace
Tears of relief, of joy, of healing
A simple touch, a flat hand on a shoulder
A smile
Even memory
Even dance

My Gratitude Journal

If you are not on the 'friends' list, please don't think I'm not grateful (and you are in no particular order, these were just the people for whom I was grateful at that particular moment)!

Areas of life...Home, Church, Friends, Writing, Health, Work

Home:
Graham
Graham's smile and soul, his laughter, joy and care
I am grateful for his constant un-relenting love and devotion
I am grateful that I married my soul mate

The cats and their comedy and simplicity
The beautiful home I live in
For having money for food, lighting, heating
For luxury and contentment

Church:
For...
Freedom
Healing
Beauty
Spiritual formation
People
Prayer
Candlelit Church
For constantly being humbled by astonishing people

Friends:
Graham !
Pauline
Rob
Mina
Myra
Camilla
Catherine
Steve
Ann
Anna
Crystal
Anne
Christian
Pamela
Rebecca

For shared sorrow and hilarity
For acceptance
For being cared for

Writing:
For release
For healing
For truthfulness
For Pam Lunn and this course
For poetry
For prayer
For creativity, imagination, pen, paper, computer and keyboard
For Blogs
For writers
For Freedom of Speech

Health:
Bliss, Bliss, Bliss
For my recovery from fits and despair
For my happiness
For my body
My teeth
For good dentistry and a fantastic GP and medicine and money

Work:
For my vocation

A prayer inhabited by Joe

Walk with me Joe
You have left me with a memory of a life lived in God's presence

Share my ministry Joe
I would be inhabited by Christ as you were
Would be genuine as you were

I share your intentions, I am continuing your work
You would understand how small that privilege makes me feel
Walk with me until my tiny-ness is God's greatness

Bring me laughter Joe
More of your joy
Something of God's smile

Listen with me Joe
Teach me more of compassion and kindness
Walk with me through this open door
Accompany me on my walk
Shepherd me as I shepherd others

The Rule of St Benedict

Our retreat took shape around the Rule of St Benedict and the shape of life in monastic communities and so around each of these journalling sessions we spent hours in silence, alone and together. We also followed a liturgical form of prayer and so we worked with concepts such as gratitude and thanksgiving, penitence and offering.
As part of our response to the idea of gratitude we were encouraged to keep a daily journal of our gratitude on that day. Then we were asked to follow a process of thinking of someone to whom we have never expressed our gratitude in person. The person 'chose you' from our list of people, who might be dead or alive or just not the kind of person to whom you could write or speak in this way. We were encouraged to write a prayer and reflection around the person who jumped out of our list and demanded attention, however uncomfortable.
I was totally unprepared for the person who chose me. His name was Joe Foster and he was one of the first people in my life who made Church seem like a good idea. He worked for our Anglican Parish Church but I think he worked in a 'Lay'capacity i.e. like me. He worked with young people and established a youth group with my friend's Mum. I don't know how I had forgotten his influence, but he recently died and I was sad not to have been there at his funeral. As you will see he has been a great influence.

Silence and Stillness

The silence and stillness needs to somehow encourage a pace of life where stillness, attentiveness, patient listening guides everything else

A Prayer for what I want and need from this workshop

29 September 2008
This prayer is distilled from this journey of writing. It is authentic for me.
I prayed this prayer twice a day for the entire retreat.

Plunge me deeper than my breath will allow
But float me safely on your own breath
Stretch your arms widely so that I can see your embrace from a distance
Envelope me
Each step floating on your tide
Until I know that the door is on solid ground
and you will keep me still
listening

Reflections on Memories of Prayer

Woodbrooke 29 Sep 2008

As I read it I felt calm, amused, happy and excited
It seems that prayer is linked for me with acts of trust and a feeling beyond control

Falling, sinking, floating, moving, suffused, overwhelmed, enveloped, plunged, embraced, 'last breaths underwater'

and

it is intrinsically linked to my Mum. Which is an extraordinary and wonderful discovery because it means that a part of her is always with me and within me

Perhaps teaching me to pray was the greatest gift she ever gave to me

It is forever connected to her embrace

Memories of Prayer

Woodbrooke 29 Sep

Depth and sinking
Floating deeply, moving and falling
God Bless Mummy, God Bless Daddy, God Bless

Our Father
Who Art in Heaven
Hallowed moments
Hollowed moments
Times of desperate moaning, pleading, begging
Answers and questions
Calm in the chaos
A last breath underwater

The Lord make his face shine upon you
and
Grant you His Peace
The Lord Bless you and keep you

Kept safely in his keeping, alone beneath the stars
Pining for mercy, longing for justice
Calling for comfort

Recieving a gift

My Mum taught me to pray
She taught me to pray in company and alone

I have never been able to stop
Prayer is remembered lots of ways
it is most profoundly an experience of being held

Prayer in the ancient stones of Iona Abbey contained me
Prayer in the eucharist consumes me; for gratitude is all i feel
Prayer is a person held tightly in the form of a hand-picked pebble, wrapped in my thoughts, love, connections and tears
Prayer is remembered as connecting to God, to others

It is wholeness and it is healing, it is being allowed to hold our questions, and to scream our 'why'

My memories of prayer are of moments of utter clarity of being overwhelmed, enveloped, plunged into otherness and enormity with every thing I am being plunged together.

Before my Mum's death I sat before the cross in the hospice in the chapel
I was suffused with peace and wholeness
I felt the hands of the people praying with me
The Holy Spirit embracing me
My Mother slipping away from me
and I knew that everything would be alright
Prayer in my memory and now is what allows me to be human but not to be overcome by it. It is reaching out with my soul to touch another so that we can be human together and held in God's exquisite embrace
It brings me the tears of others
The pain of others
The joy and excitement of others
It makes it impossible not to connect
As it shows us our humanity it also shows us the humanity of others and that we share it
As long as I pray I am connected to God and to those God loves

The Retreat!

I have decided to share step-by-step in date order the journey of my retreat

Woodbrooke Quaker Study Journalling Course
Monday 29 Sep 2008Hopes, Anxieties and Fears

I hope that I will not walk away from the light of the open door
I fear that I might stand still and walk no further towards the door
I pray that I will push the door wider with confidence in the steps that lead me there

I hope that I won't use more words than I need
I fear that I am greedy for words to fill the space which should be still

waiting

I pray that I will have the courage to be

still

listening

I hope the words I use are worth it
I fear that silence is better
I pray for the right words when silence is not enough and something needs to be said

Commissioning

For a person who likes words, it is hard when I don't have anything adequate to say

Last night was so completely 'other'. Some theologians argue for talking about God in terms of what 'he is not'.

There were a lot of things that last night was not

There are few words worth using to describe what it was

But it was a moment in time which stood outside of time and brought the past and the present together. A moment which made sense

In that moment everything made sense in ways that it hasn't before and mostly won't in the future

I have felt very small before, but that moment made me feel smaller still

It was an unbearable sense of the enormity and ancientness of God which I felt before whilst looking at the sky on Iona

It is odd to feel so insignificant in such a significant moment. It was my own insignificance and the thought of what God can do with that which made me feel so tiny

The only word worth using is gratitude

writing lull

The temporary unwelcome guest called The Migraine has significantly reduced writing output. The even less welcome guest called Paranoia reduced it even further. The new 'role' officially starts this Sunday, but then I am going on a course in Benedictine Spirituality and journalling at the Quaker Centre. I will write to you about it on my return, quite brilliantly if all goes well, disastrously if it doesn't. The course pack advises taking a favourite notebook or 'whatever you write with at present'. I thought about causing a stir and looking fantastically cool by taking my laptop and saying 'I Blog Darling'. Seemed a bit hypocritical since I've only just stopped referring to my Blog as my 'WebLog' and only learned what one was in April.
Anyway the official 'role' as Lay Pastor, already the subject of much confusion and mis-understanding and even some derision, starts on Sunday. The first week will be a bit of a flop, given that I will be 'comissioned' and then will disappear into the bosom of the Quakers is 'neither here nor there'(to borrow one of my Mum's favourite phrases). Full-scale psychological meltdown...and resultant Migraine already discussed swiftly followed glimpse of newsletter with my name on it under 'Team' as 'Hon. Lay Pastor': Mrs Jess Boulton.
You may remember a Post on here about something I couldn't share with you at that time, following the untimely conversation with God on the number 1E bus about boats, sea and fishes. You probably don't but my new 'Role' is its direct descendant. The pronouncement of Mrs Jess Boulton being a Lay Pastor has been met with a mixture of delight and dismay. The Verger thought that perhaps I was secretly affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventists or the 'American' Church. This was because she had been Anglican and in this Church 'from the cradle', but had 'never heard of such a thing'. Would I, she wanted to know, 'be wearing Robes? would they, for example, 'need to refer to me as Pastor Jessie?'. I broke out into a sweat. I had the previous weekend been to a wedding of some Seventh Day Adventists, albeit in an Anglican Church, it was my first encounter with them and they were fabulous. However, I am not a Seventh Day Adventists. My contact with Americans is non-existent, dreadfully ignorant in fact. I know George Bush and now Sarah Palin, I've seen Michael Moore's documentaries, I'm not keen to be one. This enquiry into my credentials was the least of my worries. It was kindly meant. One man who shall be nameless but whom you have previously encountered with his Belgian/American ancestry and a wife from Hull was particularly unpleasant. Before admitting that he was 'picking on me', he grilled me mercilessly. Would I, he wanted to know, 'be preaching from a soap box on The Green'? Would I, he persisted, be 'taking Candlelit Church on tour and going global? Even this was preferable to the blank face and the 'whats that?'
Not only am I an object of mild but not particularly rivetted curiosity, it seems I am to be permanently associated with the one thing I would most have wanted to avoid. The Conservative American Right. Hallelujah Sisters!

.

feeling ill

A migraine, a slight cold, a runny nose and my medication doesn't work too well. My Temporal Lobe epilepsy flares up, I get migraine-like symptoms and dis-orientation, a bit of paranoia and an inability to do anything but sleep. For me this is a nightmare, I become convinced that I am a breath away from being locked up in a psychiatric ward, I lose perspective on everything. Soon my medication will be doubled. I will never recover. I will never live a normal life again.
Of course, two days later, a lot of sleep and some migraleve and I am back to my usual self. It is hard to for adults who have lived with ill health in a traumatic way in childhood to understand that ill-health is a sporadic and ordinary part of life. It doesn't always progress or become very particular to you. It just has to be lived with for a few days or weeks. I have learned that the only helpful thing to do is ring a friend and check my perspective. That usually takes two days anyway by which time I am convinced that the friend will bundle me in a car and take me to a doctor/psychiatrist/behavioural therapist/you name it...So I am usually almost better before I ring the friend who says 'its normal', 'you have a migraine'.

Forgiveness

Last night in our group we talked about 'forgiveness'. We based our conversation around Matthew 18. I found it really hard. Because I am reading about self-harm and all that it entails and when I think of my own story and the story of others I begin to worry that my own wholehearted approach to forgiveness could be seen as immoral. I sometimes think that my behaviour is immoral.
We talked very openly and very diversely about the centrality of forgiveness to the Christian Faith. We talked about how we marry these ideas to real life situations.

We all have known unforgivable things. All of us had slightly different take on the practical application of the commandment to forgive to our own situations, the people involved and those of others. One person, whom I shall call Penelope had a wonderful, moving story which made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. She had a Godfather, a Jewish man who embraced Christianity. He had been in Dakau Concentration Camp until the end of the war. I don't remember at what point he was imprisoned there. I think it was towards the beginning because I think he remained there for three, possibly four years. At the end of the war he was handed a gun with which to shoot his persecutors. He handed back the gun. He had told his God-daughter that revenge and unforgiveness is the beginning of hate. He didn't want his tormentors who were full of hatred to turn him to hatred. His forgiveness of them was a way of preventing the hatred from perpetuating. Penelope therefore grew up with a passionate commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation. She had even worked in Germany with various people who during wartime did terrible things to others and had terrible things done to them. She sees no way out of a commitment to forgiveness for any Christian. For her the distinguishing feature of a Christian is his or her determination to be open to forgiveness in any given situation. She extended this to being open to forgive those who are not repentant and indeed even forgiving them in our hearts regardless of their awareness or contrition. We all have a central tenet around which all aspects of our religion move. This is her immovable point. Forgiveness. She says none of the other religions have this concept as a central commandment. For me, this is what makes us complicated, I am ashamed of our decision to forgive unforgivable things, she declares it as the single thing that keeps her publicly proclaiming herself as a Christian.

This was a helpful revelation. What one woman can see as a shameful theology, another can prize as her salvation. She had an abusive Mother with psychiatric issues, mental health problems triggered by wartime circumstances. Penelope forgave and continues to forgive because she sees this as a consequence of her Mother's experience of life. She employs the 'to understand is to forgive' motto.

I did this for years, I had the same conviction for years. My family has been described by my sister-in-law as 'the most forgiving family' she ever knew. What she loves about my family, who are actually also her family, is that infinite capacity to forgive unforgivable behaviour. I think it is our downfall. The interpretation of the commandment to forgive in our family is that 'everything and anything will be alright.' It has been applied to eradicate rules of conduct. When everything is forgiven then nothing really matters and consequences are not considered.
We have an elderly man in our group, I'll call him Frank, who keeps us on our toes. He thinks it is all baloney, Christianity full stop is just total nonsense. The aspect of Christianity he most despises is the emphasis on forgiveness. He thinks it is immoral to forgive unspeakable acts. 'Why', he argues, 'should they get away with it'?

Our Priest, lets call him Bob, had some fascinating arguments. Forgiveness in the Jesus stories of Matthew is concerned with relationship, with the Church community, with unity and accountability. It is a corporate and not an individual matter. It is also concerned with justice and witness. Forgiveness is contextual. Forgiveness also includes an attitude of the heart, and a readiness to forgive should repentance ever be apparent. Not only this but he argued that we depend upon the grace of God to give us the capacity to forgive. In God's time, God will make it possible for us to forgive. It is not a quick fix and can be a lifetime commitment to be open to forgiveness and the possibility of it. He also argued, with Penelope, that we cannot forgive on behalf of another person or community. Their resentment, pain or experience is theirs alone or together and we cannot make that decision for them.
Bob has thought through the possiblity of going to the Palestinian border when he retires (although he hasn't talked it through with his wife!). There is a group of retired priests (mostly men I would imagine, since women have only been ordained for just over a decade...but we forgive them of course!) who stand between Israel and Palestine, taking no side simply being there as a witness. This is a unique opportunity for the Christian Church because of our theology of forgiveness in place of revenge. This presence leaves an openness to reconciliation an example of the choice which can be made.

A woman we shall call Pru, a good friend of mine, who knows many of our stories, spoke of the propensity of society to see those who forgive as easy targets. She spoke of the vulnerability involved in that decision. How easy it has been for us to become doormats. This led us to a view from another friend that the converse was true. We agreed that although this might be the case, we are still viewed as 'weak', as Jesus was when he refused to fight back and argued that those who killed him 'did not know what they were doing'. A lengthy discussion ensued as to the legitimacy of forgiveness when the person concerned does not understand that they have committed an act of cruelty. How do we forgive those who are not sorry, or are not aware? We were brought back to our attitude of mind and to prayer, to commitment to the potential of the human to forgive. Penelope even equated her humanity with her capacity and willingness to forgive. Inhumanity stems from the unforgiveness of communities who have never let go of old resentments. Inability or unwillingness to forgive led to war, she said. There was no justification in pullng people from current day into previous conflict. Controversially, given recent discourse around the Holocaust and the need for apology from people who were not there, she argued that we cannot legitimately apologise for something we did not do or forgive what we did not experience.

For me the prevailing question is what to do when a culture of abuse is living with abuses from the past which are dictating our behaviour in the present, and threatening through the continual forgiving of unrepentant abusers, to continue in the future? If I forgive the abusers, what becomes of the abused? Bob helped with Penelope by arguing that forgiveness can be important in our healing, in 'letting-go'. Here the healing of new relationship can take place. Any forgiveness is not an act of an individual in isolation but both a confrontation of an offence, an acknowledgement of that offence and a decision and willingness to start again. It is about new beginnings. The person forgiven must agree not to commit the same offence again, must acknowledge their own wrong and be willing to find new ways of being in relationship in the future. If this cannot happen then the relationship must be left in the past but we must continue to pray for our offender.

Our own relationship to our own personal behaviour was then examined. If we have 'sinned against another', which we inevitably have, we are called first to remorse, second to repentance and thirdly to new relationship and reconciliation. This is the pattern of the Christian life and is linked to the Crucifixion. Our own sin is forgiven and this sets us free from the life bound by the cruelty of our common humanity into a life which acknowledges human cruelty but tries not to participate in it.

I saw this as my own identification with the abuses and cruelties of others. We had a corporate responsibility to forgive, because we sin corporately too. Christian Theology will argue that we are set free by Christ's death from that pattern of revenge and hatred which binds us to war. Forgiveness as demonstrated on the cross is an unarguable part of this. I need to find ways in which I cherish and am grateful for Christ's action in my life which has given me a different way. I cannot judge people who have not been given another way. We concluded with the well-known idiom 'there, but for the grace of God, go I'

Evil

The worst thing about evil is the way in which it seeps underground and nourishes its plants, watering its roots. Evil doesn't kill things before it comes into bloom itself. It fosters its own growth until it kills healthy plants suffocating them with its tendrils.
Evil attempts to pervade healthy things, it desires to infect healthy people, tries to seep away nourishment from healthy landscapes poisoning the rivers as it does so. Evil stops at nothing. It spreads underground in a network of open sewers leaking effluent into our taps and the very food that we eat, it tries to enter our bloodstream. Before we can understand how or why our relationships begin to falter, evil has begun its attempt to ensure that trust is destroyed, it seems we betray each other but we don't know why. The worst thing about evil is you cannot see where it came in and you cannot make any claims with any evidence about where it started. It is deception and delusion and calculated dishonesty. We do not see where the contamination starts, until it seems as though it is too late. It has crept in stealthily through the back door, tried to steal your friends. A convivial gathering in warmth and safety, and now the room has gone cold, the warmth evaporates but you can't find the draft, can't blame an unclosed door for the dispersal of all that joy.
Evil is known by its successes, by the triumphant theft, it gains its joy from the demise of others. It gloats over futures thwarted, talent supressed, relationships destroyed and delights in depriving people of their own happiness. It will soak into our shared existence without us knowing. It is invisible until the lines show, the faces crease, the bitterness and resentment begins to develop. We have bile in our mouths instead of sweetness. We notice it when we start to look at people differently. We are shocked to realise what has become of us.
Hannah Arendt speaks of the banality of evil. I am rarely so persuaded by theological arguments so wholeheartedly. Evil is banal. Evil breeds in the most ordinary places. It is made from the stuff of our lives and what people choose to do to them without our consent or knowledge.
We shouldn't ever berate ourselves harshly when we come close to evil. Most people would have run from it if it didn't wear such friendly disguise or such a banal demeanour. Evil decieves us by hiding behind something innocuous. If something creeps up unexpectedly upon us in disguise as a friend or a lover, a parent or a priest, a teacher, or any person we respect then we cannot be expected to know that here is the leak in the vessel. This can be the open door, the cold wind blowing. How can we know where trust is in danger? We leave it exposed because that is the nature of trust. It thrives in open places. We risk everything when we trust and that is why we honour trust left in our safekeeping.
If our trust is almost destroyed, its lifeblood nearly drained we have not chosen this. It is removed, snatched from our possession without our permission. What can we do with evil. How do we point at it and say it started here, this is the hole through which it crept?
Sometimes we do find the leak, we do see, we realise. When our eyes are open and the evil becomes transparent it often looks so ordinary, so well-meant, so charming.
But evil is not charming. Evil is pernicious, vile and banal. It is there in the middle of an ordinary day waiting for us, in a phone call, a devious lie, an anonymous letter, a tiny theft which is the precursor of another. Evil is a thief. Evil is a common or garden thief. It is so hard to acknowledge it that mostly we don't. I have never been keen to discuss evil before. Hannah Arendt knew about the Holocaust and she knew about the evil use of banal things. You can, after all, foster evil by refusing someone food, by stopping them from drinking. You can choose evil by ignoring an injustice. You can steal a letter, write libelous things under the guise of a kind warning. You can choose to believe a liar by ignoring your God-given instincts because you choose the fantasy first and the reality second. Evil is on our doorsteps. Evil appears in anything as simple as a bottle of milk. A poisoned bottle of milk; a stolen milk bill which leaves it unpaid and the person without milk and labelled irresponsible. It is a sharp knife deliberately left in the washing up, a severed tendon, a careless stitch, a tetanus infection and an invisible culprit.
This invisible poisoner, thief, planter and cruel plotter has followers who do the same, this kind of evil depends upon denial and accusations which distract. To you: "Who would do such a thing? Poisoned milk? Are you sure? You must have left it in the heat. "Poor you, how sad, you have been poisoned!" and to another "poor thing, she thinks she's been poisoned!" and to a group, "I must look out for her, she is poisoning herself, How needy she must be that she is deliberately going to hospital.". To you: "I must buy you a special box for your milk!", to the group "I have bought her a box for her milk, poor thing!, to the public: "Don't praise me for buying the box for the milk" I am only an ordinary person, looking out for a vulnerable soul." To you: "there you can see, you are not being poisoned, your box has been protecting it from intruders, it has a key and everything!". All the time the box is contaminated by poison by the poisoner themselves. To you: "poor thing you are in hospital"; to the group:" she is vulnerable, even though she has a special box she still thinks she is being poisoned.", to the public "paranoia is a terrilbe thing'. And so on, and so on, until this sustained poison does indeed poison us, we no longer know who is poisoning us, we think perhaps we are imagining it. We had thought we knew our adversary but we cannot be right, this person is so kind. Soon, everyone pities you for your madness, they no longer trust your judgement and you no longer drink milk though it sustained you for all of your life. You stop eating anything at all, no longer able to trust it, you become frail, weakened, the people around you stop eating too, they become frail and weakened. The poisoner starts to sell these milk boxes in bulk. To you: "I have paid with my own money for some more boxes, you never know where or when the poisoner might strike". As the poisoner sells the boxes, they are taken as gifts, taken in trust, their milk is poisoned. To the group: "you can never be too careful, when people are delusional", the public "a mad person is on the loose, the devil is at work'. slowly all the milk is poisoned, we have been deprived of our life blood, our sustainance. We no longer eat together, in case it has been poisoned, in case one of us is the poisoner. The giver of gifts at least cannot be the poisoner, and so we join the poisoner, sure of our safety, they at least know where it began.
Whole communities are starved slowly, allegiances to the poisoner formed, innocent people secretly, covertly, invisibly violated in public in an apparently legitimate way for apparently legitmate reasons. They have been played with, lied to, stolen from, they have been cleverly manipulated because of their trust, power has been abused.
All evil starts with this tiny banal deliberate innacuracy, the slight intonation, the tiny double-meaning which can be taken anyway you choose. Evil makes us think we have chosen it. But it has poisoned us.
So far, so bleak, but the banality of evil is nothing next to the triumph of the human spirit, the courage of faith, the insistence that we should foster trust, truth and feed each other regardless of the risk. We should never honour evil with claims that it is powerful. There is no power so strong as a shared human desire to trust again and to point at the evil in all its weak, self-concerned despicable stench. Evil violates us, it takes us to places that we have not chosen to go and gives us no way out. Human love gives us a way out of that imposed exile from our homeland. Love thrives with truth, honesty and trust, seeking the joy of others, the fruition of lives, the unity of communities. Evil is banal in comparison.

Good news

Jan is coming out of hospital probably today. I was so relieved when i heard that I burst into tears and couldn't stop crying.
We have more time.
Relief

clots

Now referred to as 'several clots'

sadnesses

Left to right: My niece Lucy, her daughter Lily-May, my sister Jan (Grandma) and my late Mum June (Great-Granny)

I was at Church on Sunday, recovering from my first visit to Mum's grave since she died. My first momentus stay with my Dad on my own. Some terrible truths, some difficult realities, some poignant photos and books full of tributes to my Mum. Some desperately difficult conversations.
I lived to tell the tale and then couldn't tell it
Communion was very healing and then I came home. Dad rang and said 'have you heard about Jan'. I stopped breathing and thought she was dead. He said 'she has had a heart attack'. She hadn't as it turned out. She has a clot on her lung. She has been in a high dependency unit.
I visited her today and the poem below is for her
This is part of my survival
We will not be beaten by life

One question

I am wordless
She is breathless
I am crushed
She is clogged
Her lungs
Her heart
Endless catalogue

Therapies and specialists but just one question
How long?
Too long?
Not long enough?

Enough already

Small comforts clutched and held
Survial things
Tiny things
Moments
Rage flung into emptiness

and just one question

Desperate jokes spill into absences too painful to hold in silence
Sobs for the missing vocabulary
Sentences that don't fit together
Tears meant for the funeral turn up early
Bravery stays behind

She belonged to us before she belonged to this
She is ours first
Yours last
Thieving disease
Keep your hands away from my family
Give her back
To us
She is ours

Grieving disease, haven't you have had your share?
One brother-in-law, reduced to ashes
One nephew, his son, wrists screaming for survival
One sister, his wife, drowning in her sorrow

Gluttonous disease
Shameless disease
One question
How much longer?

One grave devoid of grass
One mother four months in the grave
Her child my sister
Clogged and breathless
Awaiting the same

One question

Insomnia

I am a sporadic insomniac, which could be a good name for a band.
The Sporadic Insomniacs are coming to Wembley.
Sometimes I sleep wonderfully
Sometimes I don't sleep at all. Tonight being one of those times. It is 02.54 and counting. The trouble with insomnia is that it makes you obsessed with watching the clock. This being the most unhelpful thing of all. I tried marmite on toast: hopeless. Reading: hopeless. Thinking over the day with my Dad and my peace-making exercise: hopeless.
I am warming towards the idea of a hot milk. Usually a last resort. Think the Peace-making exercise alongside visiting my Mum's grave for the first time since her burial may be culprits.
Although blogging may well be the answer. At least I can keep an obsessive eye on the bottom of the screen...02.58.
I had loads of things to write about, but this isn't one of my more creative bouts of insomnia, it is just plain, mind-numbing, eye-aching, leg-itching, sheet-tangling, stomach-rumbling, toilet-visiting, water-drinking, toast-making, head-whirling sleeplessness.
I'm going

Peace-making

I went to Cornwall on an extremely odd whim. I had an instinct that I must 'make peace with my Dad'.
I will let you know if I achieved my objective in a few weeks
I think I may have cracked it
But am not entirely sure
I find we have shared ground
and I am yet to see this as a good thing

Grinding

Mr B is Grinding again
Its not as exciting as it sounds
If you've ever slept with someone who Grinds all night you will know exactly what I mean
His incisors are like spatulas

Claire with an 'i'

Claire with an 'i' has itchy feet again, I don't think she's that keen on England either, generally speaking she is somewhere else. Either way, she has randomly booked herself in for a trek up a Ugandan mountain in January. She may have done it on a whim I think because now she's panicking. She "...can't even get up the stairs without having a heart attack", obviously a lie because her bedroom is upstairs. But, she has convinced herself that she'll never make it if the Gorrillas are at the top (of the mountain, not the stairs)she is praying they will be 'going local' and hanging out near the bottom so the trek isn't life-threatening. Claire with an 'i' is as over dramatic when she puts on a few pounds as I am. I must remember ask her if she has the same relationship with Muesli and Porridge oats as I do. She swears she has put on so much weight that she can hardly walk, which is another blantant lie. I, on the other hand really am such a lard-arse that getting out of the front door is significant challenge. Especially since the onset of the crescent-shaped fetish.
So we thought we might get fit together. She is going to join a gym, she says. No, I scream, don't do it. You are right she says instantly. She'll hate it she says, its a waste of money I say, its boring she says. The ladies waiting to book a wedding join in, those treadmills they say, try walking they say. Silence. Walking? Thats a good idea we say.
Where shall we walk, we say, when will we have time, we say. Try walking to work they say. Tricky for me, that one. Tricky for Claire with an 'i' too, unless she had those weird leg extensions and she's taller than she'd choose already. Where shall we walk then? Up Parson's Hill they say. I don't know if you've ever walked up Parson's Hill but I'd rather be on a tread mill with a blindfold personally. Its not the French Riviera or a Ugandan mountain put it that way.
Sensing a dead end, the bride to be intervenes, perhaps out of a sense of public duty. Try a class she says with a classic, unpretensious, smile from her smooth, young, cheek-boned face. She didn't judge us, you could see that, but she reallly wanted to help. Yes, says her Mum, in an encouraging tone, Salsa, Becky does Salsa. I know for a fact that Salsa is dull. I try being willing and have harboured a secret desire to return to Ballet but the floor to ceiling wall to wall mirrors make me look like Dawn French in the Darcy Bussell sketch and if you haven't seen it lets keep it that way. Ballet? I say tentatively. Claire with an 'i' almost ruptures her unwanted stomach laughing and I realise that my ballet days really are over. Jogging and cycling are out for me because my gargantuan arse makes me unstable. We have a good canal network locally, most jogging and cycling takes place around those because they are our most attractive landscape feature round here. You get the picture.
I am unashamed to be an avid Woman's Hour fan. There was a horrifying account this morning which made me want to eat crescent shaped indulgences without shame and turn down all offers of humiliating exercise regimes. Research now shows that women now face increasing pressure to have attractive bumps during pregnancy. The despicable magazine people air-brush them into an acceptable shape. Furthermore women are expected to be thin all over, gain no weight but still have an perfect shaped baby bump. The radio piece was about the horrifying fact that an estimated 1 in 20 pregnant women are currently suffering from an eating disorder. It is worse than this of course because eating disorders demand secrecy. Women, whatever their cravings are denying them so that they can be thin all over but still have perfect bumps. Is their no end to this nonsense? It is all blamed on Demi Moore and an extraordinary photographer. Because Annie Leibovitz took a photo of Demi nude complete with bump. At the time of its release the magazine had to sell copies covered with paper because it was so controversial. These powerful women made it acceptable to show our womanhood in all its glory. What I do know of these women is fabulously feminist. They are doubtless mortified to be associated with a change in culture which forces us into an unatural shape literally and metaphorically.
I'm off to buy something life-affirming to eat

Muesli

I've started eating Muesli again. Vile stuff. I had started buying the most expensively packaged box. It seems that I believed it would somehow make Muesli alright. It was the most beautiful packaging I've ever seen. It came in a lovely duck egg blue matt cardboard with a stylised leaf motif pattern entwining it. It is recyclable, organic, dust-free (whatever that means), toasted leaves of corn, whole hazelnuts as opposed to unfulfilled ones presumably, slivered almonds blah, blah, blah. It has an essay on the back in a trendy silver embossed typeface singing its own praises. In the end though, I am a mug, and its just Muesli. Could have made it myself of course, but, oh that box! All the boxes are exquisitely designed, I even bought the cranberry one because I liked the colourway but the contents were still vile. Between you and me I've tried all the different colours. The Chocolate and orange box, with the inevitable juicy raisins and succulent dates smattered with golden sultanas. There is a whole array of Farrow and Ball paint pallette colours and absurdly sensual adjectives for what is basically and heap of shrivelled fruit, shiny bald nuts and chaffinch food. I got through most of them to spite Mr B who ridicules me everytime I try Muesli again. He sees me approaching the cereals because I've "...given up bread" (again) and groans. It is on an equal footing with my porridge fantasy. In the wake of my intended porridge regime (my Mum swore by it) I always have so many different types of oat left that I have to make massive batches of flapjacks to use it up. Before we left for France I had almost eaten my way through all the different colours, and had decanted them into some beautiful glass preserving jars. The same jars beloved of designer Terence Conran in the Essential House Book, but as you will quickly have realised I have unconventional ideas about what is Essential, and what isn't. Anyway the Muesli family looked pretty lined up together on my Habitat shelves. I was pleased with its 'rustic' appearance. With one jar left, the decanted hazelnut one from the duck-egg blue box I was feeling pleased with myself. I had started gloating at Mr B. He hadn't believed I could do it, I had passed the Muesli barrier, hadn't he seen that all the colours had been eaten, etc etc until his ears bled. But there has been a set-back.
The set-back is crescent shaped and made almost entirely of butter the scent of which would reach us in our Burgundian apartment before we had even opened the wooden shutters. For all its romance, living above a French Patisserie, even for one week had its disadvantages. It makes even expensive designer Muesli for middle-class toffs look like horse food all over again. When you've languished in your husband's elegant pyjama top on the balcony tearing the gentle downy dough of a fresh -from -the -oven croissant. When you've slathered hand-made confiture into its folds and then torn into an artisan loaf of bread, lyrically called a 'flute'. When you've discovered Creme de Marron, which predictably sounds dreadful translated as Chestnut Jam (Mr B viewed it with suspicion, but then he is from Norfolk)...Muesli no longer seems like an option. Its like dreaming that you are stroking the pectorals of one of the delectable Olympian swimmers and biting his biceps and then waking up drooling on a greasy pillow wearing the pyjama top of your bed-mate for fourteen years. The fourteen years referring to the sharing of the bed with this particular mate and not the wearing of the infamous pyjama top or even drooling on a greasy pillow for well over a decade.

On a lighter note

Reverend Rebecca, aka Jackie O, but that is another story, has a dog called Father Ted who can open the fridge and help himself to chocolate mousse or an assortment of savoury pickings and has taken to picnicking on her bedspread, gorging himself.
Never a dull moment

Humble pie

First night back at Candlelit Church. I was strangely hermit-like until tonight, lying low and pretending I wasn't really home. For all my griping about England, my wondering at how I ended up in Brum, the people never fail to delight me and humble me. That is why we stay. The people I know from my work at Church have genuinely changed me. When Iam working at Church doing what I do and being who I am I always think that 'working' is an inadequate and innappropriate word. This is because it is pure joy. I love it so much that it transforms me. Being with these delightful people and hearing their stories, being changed by them, shaken up by them, challenged and touched by them. I can never understand how they wake me up and keep me where God has told me to be. If only they knew that I would not be there if it weren't for the knowledge of God's call to me in that place at this time doing what he gives me to do with the gifts he gives me to do it with. I do it for love, yes, but really I do it because he told me to. It seems so much less noble when you see it for what it really is, a reluctant obedience. I have enjoyed having time away from our Church, although I couldn't keep away from Church while 'on the Mainland'. Nipping in and out of 'Mass' and the Feast of the Assumption like a fraudulent Catholic. I tried to convince myself I'd got it wrong. That we should be travelling the world, doing thrilling things, we didn't need to stay here. The world, forgive the use of the word, is our oyster.
But it is always like this with me and God, I try to talk myself out of it and then an extraordinary person will floor me with their certainty about the Church's need of me. On this occasion, knowing nothing of my yearnings to be free of this vocation, a simply remarkable young woman of 17 picked a perfect time to remind me of why I must be where God has placed me. She looked me in the eye and said 'you and this Church, you saved my life, thank you'. She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me with undeserved gratitude. If you knew her story as I do you would find it impossible to understand her survival. Only a miracle would have kept her alive. I feel so small and inadequate in the light of her gratitude because all I did was say a squeaked and angry 'yes' in a frankly very bolshy and petulant manner to what I thought was God's most unreasonable request. I always thought that if I had only known the joy of it, the warmth and the love, peace and bliss that would come from that one absurd decision not to walk away it should have been easy. But the wrestling and sulking didn't stop there at all, I still resist, I still sometimes fantasize about fleeing. Even with the countless and priceless gifts I am given by these people, I still think my work here is dispensable. I wish for a simple, standard, more predictable, less unusual job, somewhere more exotic than the industrial Midlands. Couldn't God have made me a different character, a more tickbox human being in a more interesting landscape? But there she was, genuinely convinced that the Church has saved her life. If I am a part of this Church then it is true that my being here has helped God to save her life.
What was I thinking? How do I live with myself? I don't really, I just about tolerate myself and even that isn't easy.

cat-scratching

One of the cats, real name Rosie, affectionate name Minnie, is incensed. She is unable to make the connection between the arrival of new sofa covers and the sudden disappearance of the sofa into a cat-proof room with a shuttable door. It is her sofa and she tried sending me to Coventry for a considerable time, not realising that living around here most of us have survived that once if we're lucky, several times if we're not, already. She has given up with the cold shoulder treatment and is now whittering at me, nagging, following me around the house using an irritating tone. The other cat, real name Tabitha, affectionate name Mimi, is unconcerned. As long as she has opportunity to put her bum in our faces twice daily and bat our faces like ping pong balls...in a loving way, she isn't that bothered. She is more pragmatic. As she sees it life is life and there is always the fur rug on the bed. There is also the cat bed in the spare room, donated by another feline who was above these things. It is supposed to reside on the radiator but she insists that she prefers it on the bedstead. Mimi/Tabitha is quite content with her lot, she didn't even bother ignoring us when the sofa disappeared.
As a consolation prize in the absence of the sofa I bought them another one of these cat-scratching posts. I don't know why because we've been down this route before and it is always treated with disdain. This one is a weird contraption that spins in the middle. We doused it in catnip and they were grateful at least for that but have refused to use it because it fails to be a sofa.
I think Rosie is over-reacting, which she generally does, she is after all allowed supervised times on the sofa. She never takes advantage of this, she demands to be drooling all over my lap and picking my linen trousers to bits. I idenitify with Rosie.

A piece of grit

Some British people never, ever go 'abroad' to Europe. Or as my half-Belgian'/half-American/British citizen friend with a wife from Hull would say: "some British people never visit The Mainland". I wouldn't put it past him to say 'visiting The Mainland' just to be contentious. But then that is what I like about him. The funniest thing is the way no one says anything in response, mostly we nod politely. When you grow up on an island called Great Britain it doesn't immediately occur to you that he is visiting somewhere else. It takes a while to process it. Saying I'm "visiting The Mainland" really does put us into perspective though. When I 'visit The Mainland' the first thing I notice is that the weirdest thing about living in my homeland, on this tiny island is that it is so bloody small. The ostentatiously named 'Great' Britain is a tiny piece of grit. I don't understand how we all fit onto our little piece of grit, or even why we love it so much with its diabolical sandwich shops and hairdressers that impair our vision. Most people who don't go into mainland Europe probably don't go because they can't afford it. Perhaps other people never visit The Mainland because they know they won't want to come back. I don't blame them really. It is easier not to have seen it than to know what you are missing.
I have lived on this piece of grit for 36 years now. Well, how have I done that? The most overused sentence in my head since my return from The Mainland is 'you should be grateful for what you've got, you are a spoiled brat, if you didn't have Democracy and Healthcare and clean water and sanitation then you'd have something to moan about'. Unfortunately for all the truth of this I am still sulking like a child denied a new toy. On the Italian Border it seemed so idyllic that I found myself saying "they must have their problems'. I mean, it can't all be Focaccia baked in a wood oven with sea salt and rosemary can it darling? (I can't tell you how good that was)
When I got back The Guardian had a piece in it about some Roma Gypsy girls who had drowned on the Italian Amalfi Coast. Their bodies had been washed up, corpses covered in towels and then abandoned while a couple observed them curiously and continued to put on suncream and eat their picnic. A couple of weeks on The Amalfi Coast has been on my wish-list for years, but I feel a bit uneasy about it now. In France they have terrible problems with Racism apparently, you name it, anywhere in the world there is something. When we finally got home on that dreadful snail of a train from The Old Smoke there were reports about Russia invading Georgia, President Mugabe being President Mugabe and endless other horrors. For two weeks we had only occasionally caught sight of a headline or two on a newspaper or on TV and we discovered that we'd won the Olympic cycling while drinking peppermint cordial and eating sorbet by the sea. Unfortunately because we were busy pretending not to be British we failed to celebrate wildly. Subsequently this has really hurt because we had pipped the French to the post when the medal was meant to be theirs.
It is moments like this when we are on The Mainland and we suddenly feel patriotic and terribly, terribly English or suddenly get a glimpse of the world's ugliness even in places of exquisite beauty that I try to remember when it takes me four days to dry my washing because of the endless rain.

and another thing

Why must my hairdresser ignore my pleas for a hair cut where I can see out of both eyes? He calms me down with false promises and then sends me out blind in one eye staggering like a pirate,walking into doors. Today he even admitted that he didn't care. Cheeky bastard. "Fabulous" I heard myself say as he held up the mirror, and then wondered if this was because I could only see half of my face and I was looking at the back of my head anyway. He only did it at 12.30 and I already have a hair grip in at 4pm.
But then...I do look fabulous, half of me

oysters

I've not met many Brummies who are passionate enough about oysters to have told me about it. Nor have a met many Midlanders with a particular taste for them. I think we might have one oyster bar for the few incomers who visit the 'posh' bits of the Second City, and many of us living in Brum are people who have claimed it as our home rather than 'Brummies born and bred. I am unsure about the point at which a newcomer becomes a Brummie, but I'm not aware that we ever do. So, I can't generalise about Brummies and oysters but in my experience a Brummie, 'born and bred' or newcomer, won't talk to you about oysters, tabasco, lemon, darling...it just won't happen. An Oyster to a Brummie is first thought of as a thick slab of potato, dipped in fish batter and deep fried to a crisp, probably smothered in curry sauce. If this proves not to be the case then they will think of it as a strange type of indulgence which will cost you a packet and not fill you up. They won't judge you over it, but they won't get it either.I have heard plenty about oysters. I think I tried one once, because you have to if you grow up in the Surrey hills, you tend to bump into someone rich enough who hauled some in on their yacht. I must have loathed it because I never tried it again.
I am in a minority group of my own. A Southener from the Home Counties I rarely, thankfully, meet my own kind, although there are a couple of real Brummies who are as foodie as the best Surreyite. I turn to them for moral support at times like the one I'm about to describe.
This isn't about oysters. It is about the point at which a culture decides what is reasonable, extravagant, pointless. How do we decide to put value on something? Something like service or quality?
I realise that I have reached the grumpy old woman stage because I really am cross about this incident in the inappropriately named sandwich shop Upper Crust. By all appearances this is a simple and unremarkable incident, be warned it is doubtless that my Surrey-girl core has been re-activated by two weeks in Foodie France, where everything is 'simply divine'. You might think it ridiculous to be so upset about it.
It went like this: girl buys large slab of 'pizza slice', which isn't pizza or slice it is slab of cheap bread mix with tomato concentrate topped with soap. Girl is slight and looks like she has a small appetite. Seems reasonable when she asks 'can you please cut it in half'? So far, so ordinary. Person 'serving' agrees sullenly before being randomly summoned by her supervisor to go on a break. Person 'serving' simply mentions that she will when she has cut the so-called 'pizza slice' in half. Supervisor bites off head of person 'serving', shrieking at her that she must take a break immediately and screeching hysterically that 'we don't cut pizza slices in half' over and over again. I'd been looking for an excuse to bite someone's head off myself to be honest and maybe I was jealous. However, instead, skinny woman and me catch each others eyes (in my case she only caught one of mine thanks to hairdresser Anthony's most recent experiment with my fringe but don't get me started). I roll my one eye, she rolls both. I drop it into conversation that 'I've just been to France and there they have service' like the Surrey girl I can't help being. I get asked whether I want a drink with my 325 calorie brown bread with plastic re-hydrated ham, cheap margarine, over-ripe tomato and wilted cucumber sandwich. I want to scream 'if I wanted a drink don't you think I might have thought of that on my own', and say 'no thank you' through pursed lips instead. I wish her luck and totter off with some Hagrid sized bamboo twigs from TK Maxx and a new water jug because from now on I'm going to do it the French way and drink water with my sit-down lunch. Today of course I swallowed a sandwich on the run in one gulp, without a drink because I was too proud to admit that I wanted some water but was too mean to pay £1.75 when I could 'make it at home for nothing'.
This place, it gets under your skin.

Post-Holiday Blues

We had such a great time. So completely wonderful. The right balance of everything. We came home on Saturday evening and on Sunday I was inconsolable. Today I was on top form getting back into my life and the future. Tonight I woke up with a horrible sadness. There are so many things to say.
On the answerphone on our return there were twelve messages, ten from the fish man saying that I forgot to pay him, one enquiry about an RSVP I hadn't sent, and one from my sister Jan. I realised tonight that the absence of a message from my Mum should have been the thing I noticed. As it happened the first conversation I had on my return was with my sister and concerned the hard fact of her cancer refusing to bugger off and of her chemo, in her surgeon's words, 'killing her' and therefore being stopped. She had a brave and positive outlook on how she wants to spend the rest of her life 'however long I've got'. She has been told unequivocally that it will definitely come back even though it is currently in remission. We don't know when or where but the facts remain. Grappling with the solid truth of these words only re-enforced an inner knowledge and a widely acknowledged one. My sister has terminal cancer, there are no magic answers and we must all face our loss and hope that it takes a long time before it hurts her further and kills her. So listening to her speak blinded me to my Mum's absence on the answerphone, her passionate interest in everything we did. I hate telephones, as anyone will tell you, but I missed her voice.
On holiday me and my sister were in text contact about her scan and so I knew even on holiday for certain that the cancer hadn't gone, I knew anyway, you just do somehow. She let me know the scan results while we were away, I couldn't settle and asked her to tell me. The night that I found out I woke up after a really happy day screaming 'no, no, no!'. In my dream someone was stealing something of such importance away from me and I was desperate that they wouldn't take it, there was a figure in the doorway and I was begging for mercy. The screaming was so loud that it even woke up Graham (bear in mind that earthquakes and tornadoes have failed). The next day I carried on as normal.
Our minds must store these things away. After a constructive and positive peaceful day today tonight I find that suddenly I can't sleep and I can hardly be surprised. On holiday I let it all fall away as much as I could in my conscious moments. The landscape seemed to absorb it better than this one. Without the sea and the sky and the trees it crushes my breath which is simply breathing 'please, not again, not yet'.

First day of freedom

First working day since I finished my year at Sparkhill.
Feeling liberated. Looking forward to two weeks in France as of Friday.
Hoping that I'll manage to find a way of replacing my income by doing more suitable work
Off to wash, iron and get ready to pack

Our church and our future, thoughts on what really matters?

My simple hope for the future of our Church is that we embrace our humanity more fully, before we embark on any more striving. I know, first -hand, how hard this is, how painful, what self-revelation can do to us. But we reveal each other to each other, we don't stand in front of a mirror saying 'who are you'? we make complete berks of ourselves and get love in return.
I arrived as a stranger and was warmly welcomed to make myself at home,, even as the quivering wreck I was. I have been so affected by one person's decision to embrace me as a friend he had not yet made, that I have been moved to do the same to all the strangers I have welcomed at the door. His decsion was to accept me as I was. The man in question is our Rector, a flawed human being by his own admission, and all the better for it. I trust his wisdom. He made a wise decision when he accepted me as I was, though it has often, I am sure felt like an idiot's choice.
If all we do as we ponder our future is to prevent each other from trying too hard I will be happy. There is nothing worse than an over-anxious host. We must feel comfortable saying 'you know where the kettle is', help yourself to milk. This is certainly a much harder thing for me than making the perfect cup of Darjeeling and offering it to someone on a tray with a linen cloth. But I have learned that I am not here to impress. None of us are. The more impressive we are, the more alienating we become. I recently discovered a Church with an 'objective' to have 'spirit-filled children'. This saddened me, because we are all Spirit-filled children by definition. This is my greatest discovery and this is all that we need to understand as we consider our mission for the future. Our neighbours, strangers and friends are God's spirit-filled children, and so we don't need to be perfect we need to be embraced through an open door as we are.

I'm not so far removed from my old self to be unaffected by lack of consideration or mean-spiritedness or poor quality. I am keen to stress I don't think of 'not trying too hard' as the same thing as 'not trying', or 'not bothering'. What I point towards is the art of simplicity and authenticity. If we write or paint or sing or play self-consciously, and by that I mean deliberately and with deep regard for how we are being percieved we lack integrity. We become performing seals rather than human beings expressing the beauty of our humanity. My prayer for our Church is that our instincts are good, our responses charitable and warm because we are comfortable in our own skin. We must be in touch with our frailty. We are not, as I had always assumed, another corporate institution. We are corporate only in as much as we consider ourselves one body and responsible for one another. We are not corporate in the 21st century capitalist sense, so overly structured and monitored and protected as to become sterile, performance-based, strategy-led, soulless institutions. We are so entirely not called to this distrustful premise. We do not have to prove anything other than that we are what we say we are, we are what we are, we do practice what we preach. That God is love and that we love because he told us to and because he loved us first. We must understand that not trying too hard is an art in itself. A lavish set for a play is rarely as effective as a pared down set devoid of distraction from its message. Ask any chef they will tell you that simplicity is the key, and quality, ask any designer, any artist, any teacher. The same message will reach you again and again: keep it simple and keep the quality. If it were that easy to do so we would all be doing it and no one would need to tell us. The fact is it is hard and we don't do it. We distract from our own simple message when we strive. Striving in its contemporary sense as concerned with performance is not compatible with our Gospel. St Paul has been interpreted, I have always thought, as someone commanding us to strive. This is fine if we know what we are striving for. Performance-related statistics? I don't think so, I really don't. Striving for simple, authentic, genuine commitment to live a life of love sounds much more likely. I think he would be gutted if he thought we had started striving to have spirit-filled children. He thought it was obvious that striving was for a purpose concerned with our Good News, that we are all spirit-filled children. Striving in itself is not ever good news. I know this, for I have lived it.
So as we consider our Church I pray that we can hold on to the simple truth that God is at work in our lives in ways that we can hardly percieve. The simple truth that we are human and God is God. The simple truth that God is love and that everything we do and say flows from this conviction. It is loving to offer quality of welcome of preaching of training and so on, it is loving to do things well in the service of God and others. It is not loving to try so hard to achieve and alter ourselves and our community so that we forget who we are: Spirit-filled children of a loving God

I should be telling you what happened next, but I can't yet so you'll have to wait...I bet the suspense is more than you can bear

Sparkhill Dreamboat. Next installment

and then I must tell you what happened next...

Creative Process

This post will be delayed due to this navel-gazing woman having important domestic duties to perform.

And so: the boat

The boat motif has returned endlessly. I have visions of me in a boat. I had a very long conversation with God about this. If I write it here you may think me a bit unhinged, but if I've given you this blog address it is doubtless because I know that you know and love my unhinged-ness and embrace it.
Instead of 'vision' I'm going to use the term 'minds eye' because I think 'in my minds eye, I am in the boat with Jesus', sounds marginally less bizarre than 'I had a vision and I was in the boat with Jesus'. Either way I had a moment on the bus where for all of ten minutes, I wasn't on the bus at all, I was in a boat, with Jesus. Coursing through the streets of Sparkhill on the number 1E at 7.23am precisely is not really the time for it. I wasn't overly impressed with his timing, but I rarely am. The 'mind's eye' is one of my Mum's terms which she used particularly for describing deluded individuals. She probably used it about her daughter. 'In his mind's eye' she would say, 'he really sees himself as Royalty dear', and then she would giggle like a child. In this context her deluded daugher uses it to describe her peculiar conversations with God.
In my 'mind's eye', whilst in the boat coursing through the streets of Moseley and Sparkhill I was struck by how lonely I was feeling in the boat, and Jesus, rather predictably said 'I am in the boat'. It might not strike you as momentous even at 7.23am on the number 1E, it just seems quite obvious I think. But for me it was a revelation. Please forgive the religious language, but you know it is 85% of my vocabulary these days.
It does seem like a totally different boat with Jesus in it. Not normally one for conversations at that time in the morning, ask anyone, let alone on the bus, on this occasion I couldn't resist answering back. "So why can't you row me to the shore?" Which isn't unreasonable. He is Jesus, we are in the boat, he rows, we reach the shore. "I am sick to death of this boat and not seeing the shore". I should point out here that I was referring to my vocation to Christian Ministry and not to my life per se. Given my relentless year of journeying to Sparkhill to do a job which left most of my gifts in a wrapped box on a filing cabinet, those of you who know me have shared these frustrations. So the argument with Jesus at 7.23am on the no 1E referred to my endless pestering to find out what this ministry might be and if anyone offical is ever going to do anything about it four years after its unwelcome appearance. To be quite honest, I was beginning to wonder if God was going to do anything about it after his unwelcome appearance. But Jesus was more than welcome in that little boat on this particular and memorable morning. It was a turning point for us. I ranted for as long as the relatively short journey would allow "why can't I even see the shore?", "what on earth is the point in being stuck here in the middle of the sea with no wind for the sails and no directions and no skyline?" "Why, am I here when I should be there?" Given the opportunity God usually takes it. "This" he said bluntly, and it has to be said self-evidently "is where the fish are"

Navel gazing

I have been procrastinating again. Writing is such a luxury and sometimes I deny myself the pleasure. Writing is essentially a self-centred process but unlike other self-absorbing things it is more like art in that the self-absorbed, self-reflective inwardness of it can reach out and touch and transform in turn. Hopefully the process also in turn makes a writer less self-obsessed and not more because of the reflective nature of it. I try to convince myself that this is the case, that being a writer isn't just a clear example of a pathologically self-obsessed individual. I am not sure that it is true.
However, I was not brought up believing that it was alright to be selfish and so maybe this is the key to why I don't write. It is too pleasurable, too much about me, too much fulfilment and fun. I had always thought that it was because I found the thought of it a trial, I have spent much of the time when I could have been writing dithering about why I didn't write. This has been a great excuse to beat myself up and lose motivation.
Today I am starting to think it was quite the opposite, that writing is associated with luxury and leisure and the sign of a woman with too much time on her hands when she could be doing something useful instead. Navel gazing was never encouraged in our family. When you are a navel gazer by nature this is a terrible shame.

too much to say

I have a lot to cover today. It has been storing up all week. There is now way I can get it all out. There are comments about boats and moorings, floating in the sea, about Jesus being in the boat. Then there are thoughts about the creative process and then thoughts about trust and thoughts about what I think about interfaith work and all sorts of other concerns. I will have to go away and calm down and start one at a time.

I am struck by my friend Ann's analysis that where we are now is what matters. She has a saying where she argues that the centre of the egg timer where the sand slips through the hourglass is the real present where everything is lived. The future and the past may have formed us and may drive us, but being here now is what I must embrace and all that this entails and means for me and those I love. In fact in some way indescribable the present holds the past and the future together. So this means letting go of living in the past bringing what is good from the past into the present. The all that we regret is part of the future we choose. By doing this we are allowing the future to be what it is and being hopeful that God will be in it. Knowing this is central for Ann to living in Christ. I find it really hard.

There is a poem which has the line 'the meaning is in the waiting'. Sabina said that she had read that real life is what happens to us while we wait and plan and think we are in control. It is the unplanned, unmanagable, unforseen, sometimes unwanted or unwelcome happenings that come our way and shape us as human beings.

I am persuaded by these arguments, but unmoved by the argument that 'things happen for a reason'. I prefer the thought that things happen for sometimes for no reason at all. I think that God is able to create meaning from those experiences. God can do something creative with any situation. Where there is engagement with God there is learning. We are engaged with God and God is engaged with us and so we are learning. This is not the same as saying that something 'had to happen' in order for us to learn. What it means, for me, is that we learned something specifically because something random or unjust or even lucky happened specifically to us. Our unique experience is naturally unique in what it teaches us to learn. We are uniquely created by our unique experience and so, in one way, for any particular thing to be learned we must have a particular experience. By this argument that particular incident 'had to happen' if we learn a particular lesson or skill, because only that experience would have taught us this particular thing. These things are not the same as God inflicting horrid injustices on us so that we 'learn a lesson'.

This brings me to my next point. I face the ordination of Rebecca and the licensing of Jayne to work in a paid and public ministry with all the things they will be allowed to do that I will not. As I face conversations like the one this morning with Deb's mentor from her placement regarding Deb's brilliant aptitude for ministry and cheering her on to start her training in September. I am as unconvinced by 'things happen for a reason' and more and more persuaded by the thought that this now is where God is at work. God will re-create me and God will use this mess, no doubt unexpectedly. God will find something to say because of the mistakes that have been made and will change us and fill us with yet more hope as an insurmountable and unneccesary injustice is re-designed. It is like sculpture. I am like sculpture. Vocation and Calling and Priesthood and Christian life is like sculpture.

The potter and the clay image, overused as it is, serves us. I do feel like a lump of clay being mucked about with and currently feel that I have been placed in a firing kiln to bake. The Fire and the Clay book about Vocation had warned me about this. I was a cynic then, but as I am being cooked I take it all back. What the pot looks like at the end can't be anything as important as the creative process where material and artist work together and take on a third life.

What happened to me was and remains an injustice. It was not meant to be. What God wants to happen is healing and wholeness and company and laughter and love. This is what God pursues in any given moment in the present and I am resolved to do the same.

Why do people feel the need to make statments and decisions about what other people can cope with? Specifically here I am referring to learning. I have been told that it is percieved wisdom that 'average people in average churches', the first question emerges, would be 'unable to understand Rowan Williams', and the second question emerges. As I continue to think about this another question arises and another and another. What is an average person? and what is an average Church? how do we know these average people cannot manage Rowan William's work? In particular how can we know this if these average people are not given an opportunity to read his work? How are we ever to cease to be average unless we try challenging material and make it accesible to those who struggle to see it as writing for all of us, and not simply for the academic elite?

The most important question of all is 'why would the fact of something being deemed 'heavy' be something we should avoid? Even more frustrating for me is that anyone should consider it their place to decide that someone average is unable to cope with something and should be helped to avoid it. The largest question therefore is my first, 'why do people feel the need to make decsions about what is bearable for others?

Here I am judged an average person in an average church by someone average who has never visited this Church or found out about me in all my averageness. As it happens I am an avid reader of Archbishop Rowan Williams, however 'heavy' some people judge him to be. He is not a 'heavy' writer. He is challenging, but to call him 'heavy' does him an injustice. He is poetic, uses difficult ideas which are not easily broken into neat black and white piles of ready answers. Perhaps this goes some way to answering the question of the motives of those unwilling to engage their 'flock' in his work.

If we average flocks start to think in hazy ways, in grey areas, start to live with ambiguity, look for meaning to emerge, start to read between the lines and to engage critically with Political scenarios we stop being average or a statistic or a person in a particular box and start to be persons in our own right finding our own meanings. Surely this is why it matters so much that we read his work and works like his. Here is a national treasure a widely recognised international scholar with creative flair and ingenious crafted arguments. Perhaps the it is those who accuse the average of being unable to cope with Rowan Williams who really cannot cope with the challenge he poses to their own positions.
Rowan Williams for those of us lucky enough to have read him is pure poetry to those who love him. To hear senior clergy argue against using his material for Lenten study because he is incomprehensible to us mere mortals is something only someone who had never properly engaged with his work would say.

In the brilliant Tokens of Trust Williams writes 'There was nothing bland and obvious about Jesus in his own day' (p 61). Likewise ther is nothing bland or obvious about William's work or God's people in each place and time. Until people who are making decisions about those they have never met and the educational needs they assume we need stop putting us into bland and obvious categories they will impoverish us.

And that...dear reader...is why I am so angry