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

Doris Lessing

I have just watched Alan Yentob interviewing Doris Lessing. She seems to be an amazing writer, she has won the Nobel Prize for Literature and almost every other award going. She is critically acclaimed in other words. The worst part is that she is one of those whose writing I have never read. Many of the quotes from her novels I have heard and remembered just because they made sense somehow. It is rare to be so inspired by a person that the response is to feel it is futile trying to be impressive or approved of. Since in many ways this has been my life's work it has shaken me. It is odd being someone who seeks to please and impress, we are locked into our own demise, our desperation to be loved, liked, approved of etc leaves us immobile or trapped into uncomfortable spaces draining our creative impulse, the very impulse which impresses and inspires in the first place.
She was so inspiring and I really identified with her. I feel that imperative to write all over again as part of who I am. At the same time, seeing a woman who was published as a young adult reaching around 80 and recieving a Nobel Prize for literature leaves me breathless with panic that it is already too late to write everything that I want to get out. She had about 60 years, I'm 36 already. Not helpful thoughts if they stifle but helpful motivation. What is great about this woman is that she didn't write to please, doesn't apologise for doing and being what and who she was at any given time. Being as old as she is hasn't meant saying 'if', in that she says 'yes, I did and said that', and I was wrong or it was unforgivable or I know longer believe what I once did'. But she doesn't die with embarrasment or shame.
I do. When I read past writings I can't reconcile myself to the differences between the reader and the writer. I often used to destroy my past writings as though I were trying to re-write myself. Doris Lessing was entirely herself. It was what I admired about my Mum. I do not think that I always am. To be entirely ourselves sometimes means being displeasing to others. Invariably and perhaps unavoidably by being entirely ourselves we become problematic. I cannot be me with you in the same room without having to share space and air. I can't stop breathing so that you have all the air you desire.
I am saying that inspiring people for me are people for whom being themselves continues. They are not people who continue unchanged and unchallenged in their behaviour and way of life. They are people who are true to their character and essence and in so being give and enrich life. They respond and behave in ways which are 'of them'. They are certainly not regardless of their capacity to harm and do not evade their responsibility to others or the care of others. They are people who bring what they bring, nothing more or less with which to persuade you to applaud. The people who really inspire are the ones who are able to do this and by so doing inspire, affect, touch and engage other lives. They are people whose decision to be who and what they are without apology brings out the same ability in others. They are people for whom doing this and being unique brings a kind of reconciliation for themselves and for those around them. The flip side to this is that for every person who says 'this is who I am', there is another who says 'I can't help it if this is who I am'. For those people 'being myself' can become an excuse to behave badly. They are not the same thing but they are certainly two sides of the same coin. I think the key difference is that people who inspire good things in people are people who are aware of their human capacity to harm, to cause harm and to create evil. Perhaps people who inspire bad things or use their 'intrinsic character as an exuse are not fully aware of their capacity to injure or more specifically, what it means to injure another. They may be aware that being themselves might involve doing bad things, they may be unaware of what this means for other.
To be inspiring people need to have an ability to be entirely, unapologetically, unavoidably 'as they are'. But this must be coupled with a decision to retain an insight into what this means for others. Really inspiring people know what capacity there is within them as a unique individual to use their being uniquely for harm or for good.
So, Doris managed to get me writing this at least. My little half an hour once a week shown to five people total, who I know won't be cruel or ridicule me. It is better than nothing and it is, after all, true to my need to start somewhere which won't overwhelm me.
Doris Lessing avoided being labelled. I like people like that. I try to avoid it too, but I don't think we ever escape. If we don't label ourselves, others will. Maybe it is better to choose your own.