Trees February 26, 2012

Today I was to be found sitting on the patio of Winterborne House and Gardens. The sun was shining, and there was no need for a coat. Bird song sprinkled through the sky and the happy chatter of a couple of couples discussing wedding plans drifted across the tables. The sound of students shouting encouragement to each other, along with the smacks of hockey sticks hitting a ball could be heard in the pitches over the hedgerows. Spring felt like it was in the air as the sun warmed my cheeks. Yet as I was gazing out over the gardens looking at the trees, I noticed some of them were still clinging on to their shrivelled brown leaves – trying to clothe themselves, yet on others, you can see the buds beginning to form – the promise of new life, new hope, a new season was everywhere. I remember talking with Jay last autumn about trees, and how without the death of the leaves we would miss out on such beauty, such a spectacular display of colour. For a season, the trees seem empty, dead, naked, but only for a season – in time life breaks forth, slowly a little green appears, and then all of a sudden, there is vibrancy, vitality, growth.

A verse in Jeremiah is stuck in my head these days…”My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water”

As I think of the trees, one clinging to dead leaves, trying to clothe itself and the other which has shaken off the evidence of death, and is preparing for new life to burst forth, I think of myself and the many ways I try to dig my own cisterns and drink muddy water, how I try to clothe myself. How often I try hard to make life work, yet I will never find the Spring of Living Water until I abandon all my own efforts. It’s a bit like the John of Landsburg thing. Sometimes death just has to come before life bursts forth.

John of Lansburg February 26, 2012

I have been continuing to read through ‘A Praying Life’ and I have been so struck by this quote by John of Lansburg – where he imagined Jesus speaking personally to us:

“I know those moods when you sit there utterly alone, pining, eaten up with unhappiness, in a pure state of grief. You don’t move towards me but desperately imagine that everything you have ever done has been utterly lost and forgotten. This near despair and self-pity are actually a form of pride. What you think was a state of absolute security from which you’ve fallen was really trusting too much in your own strength and ability…. What really ails you is that things simply haven’t happened as you expected and wanted.

In fact I don’t want you to rely on your own strength and abilities and plans, but to distrust them and to distrust yourself and to trust me and no one and nothing else. As long as you rely entirely on yourself, you are bound to come to grief. You still have a most important lesson to learn: your own strength will no more help you stand upright than propping yourself on a broken reed. You must not despair of me. You may hope and trust in me absolutely. My mercy is infinite.”

Frequently I find myself confused over who I am trusting in – I start out trying to pursue God’s agenda, trying to walk in his wisdom and seek his kingdom and somewhere in the midst of life, my agenda gets muddled up. I realise time and again I have taken over with my own plans and my own ambitions, trying to do things in my own strength and failing miserably. I often find myself sitting in the aftermath, trying desperately hard to ‘fix’ those plans and dreams…. I think this is why the words from John of Lansburg resonate with me.

Paul Miller January 8, 2012

Almost 2 years ago I purchased the book ‘A praying life’ by Paul E Miller and devoured it. It was a challenging and encouraging book; a book that lead me to pray and caused me to question some of the ideas I held about prayer. It was also a book that challenged me on some of my views of God. ‘A praying life’ soon became the present I bought many of my friends, and together our little ragamuffin group tried to read it and pray though the content. We never did make it to the end – doubtful if we even got to the middle.
Increasingly this past couple of months and indeed the months that are to come, I have found myself with no other option but to pray. At the start of 2012, I find myself in a foreign city, missing Bathgate drive, missing my closest friends and wishing I could be with them through the valley that lies ahead. I am picking up my copy of A Praying Life once again because I need the reminder that Paul Miller brings…….
“If God is sovereign, then he is in control of all the details of our lives. If he is loving, then he is going to be shaping the details of my life for my good. If he is all-wise then he’s not going to do everything I want because I do not know what I need. If he is patient then he is going to take his time doing this. When we put all this together – God’s sovereignty, love, wisdom and patience – we have a divine story.”
That reminder that this is a divine story is pertinent right now because our story doesn’t feel quite so divine.

the key May 25, 2010

Last night, Cheryl and I decided to go for a ‘run’.  It’s the first time we’ve been out in a while and so we decided that we’d go for nice and scenic rather than roads round Belfast where people may see the level of our unfitness.  We ended up going to Shaw’s Bridge, and on arrival Cheryl handed me the car key to keep in my pocket.  Off we trotted, settling into what, for us, was a reasonable pace.  About 20 minutes along the path it dawned on me that the key was no longer in my pocket. Whoops.  So we headed back, eyes down along the track, praying that we would find the key.  We walked on and on, and on some more, but no key.  Finally we reached the car park and I was sure it would be there, my logic being that if it were going to fall out at any point then probably it would do so in the beginning.  But it wasn’t there.  We had no key, no phone, no money.  So again I started off along the path, eyes peeled, looking for a glimmer of silver and praying a bit more.

I’ve recently been reading a book on prayer, by Paul E Miller called ‘The praying life’ and am realising that prayer is something I’m not very good at.  I’m cynical, mainly because I think we have a tendency to turn God into a genie in the bottle type, cosmic vending machine.  I shy away from anything that reeks of prosperity teaching and get up on my soapbox when people lament that God is not answering them or is not fair.  I remember a recent conversation with someone who was struggling to see God at work when prayer was not being answered in the way they wanted.  They recited a number of verses about God promising to give us what we asked for and meet the desires of our hearts, all those verses we hear bandied about.  I remember saying at some point during our conversation that I hoped that regardless of how my prayers were answered I would trust the goodness of God.  I know he is faithful even when desire is unmet, I know he is good even if I am surrounded by brokenness.  My hope is that my faith will not be in faith itself but faith in my Abba, who knows best.  As Miller says, “I am not called to put on rose-coloured glasses and see everything in life as pretty and good and uplifting.  Rather, I am called to trust that God sees what I see.  In fact, he sees beyond what I see.  He sees the whole story and is completely trustworthy to be at work on the grand scale, in the minutiae and even in my own life”

The more I have read Miller the more I have wrestled with the though of prayer.  What do we do with the fact that Jesus does tell us to ask for anything and he will give it?  It’s quite a generous offer, and yet, the fact is, what I hope and ask for, and the reality in which I live, are two very different things.  The place in between hope and reality is a hard place to dwell and recently I have used my share of kleenix as I wrestled and lamented with living in this place and wondering what God is doing.  So with the theory of asking anything of Jesus, I set out along the path for a second time more earnestly praying, telling God that for once I would really like him to answer me with the answer I want/need!  It sounds selfish and childish and not particularly a prayer of faith but really, no key, no phone, no way home, what’s a girl meant to pray!  Whilst in no way was this a faith crisis, I was telling God that it was particularly frustrating that he knew exactly where the key was, and he also knew exactly where my heart was with the prayer stuff.  Miller has encouraged me to let the real me meet the real God, to ask boldly yet surrender completely.  I find the surrendering completely part tres hard!

Now back to the key – (and I know, I was thinking it myself, ‘Come on Pamela, it’s just a key’ – but in essence in my struggle with prayer and cynicism a lot of stuff has arisen regarding what I believe of God in terms of bestowing blessing and favour upon his children.)  In my bid to dismiss prosperity I have lost the balance of believing in a Father who delights in me, actually does want to bless me and give good gifts to me, yet at the same time being a God who is sovereign, who knows what is best for my heart and who knows how the story ends.

I was telling God all of this stuff, as I walked further along the path and then started thinking to myself, ‘right after this next tree, I’m turning back, this is absolutely pointless, we’re not going to find it’.  I reached the tree, and guess what – no key.  So I turn back totally disillusioned and disappointed to meet Cheryl who was walking a little way behind me.  I say to her ‘I give up, God is really just not going to answer this one’ and look up towards the sky and say ‘are you?’

I say to Cheryl that ‘I really had hoped he would answer, that I’d been praying my heart out, but he just wasn’t answering,’ and to alleviate our disappointment and make Cheryl smirk I look skyward again and say ‘Go on, I dare you”!  I recognise this could be tantamount to ‘testing the Lord your God’ but that was not my heart in it, it was more of a frustrated, I completely give up statement.  Once again I say to Cheryl ‘I guess we got to accept it’s not going to magically appear and figure out how to get home,’ at which point a man walks towards us grinning and saying ‘alright girls, you lost a key?  He proceeds to wave it at us.  At this point I giggle, tell him he is an answer to prayer, and thank him profusely!

As he walks off, I look at Cheryl and remark that I really need to repent!

Nonetheless, I grin the whole way home, not just because God answered in the way we needed, but because, whilst I still know much of the brokenness and hurt we face at present will not be redeemed until the end of the story, God is not remote and aloof.  He knows all the details of our story, even where we place our keys.



January 19, 2010

The crazy lady no longer features in my life. I am disappointed; there was a time when no matter where I went I spotted her. One night she was on the bus lamenting that the church was spending so much on a new roof while there were people starving, another time she was standing at the city hall walking round with her bible held high telling the chavs of Belfast she did not give a (deleted word) what they thought of her. My only hope is that she has a time-share apartment and will some day make it back to Belfast.

In the absence of the crazy lady and not having any particularly exciting bus journeys, I have not written anything more in this blog. It is silly really, because I do like to write. I’m not sure what to write, but I feel the time is upon me where once again I must put pen to paper, or indeed fingers to keys as the case may be.

I’ve been chatting to Rach the potter of late about the concept of story and journey. It is something that fascinates me greatly; particularly after reading Donald Miller’s book ‘A million miles in a thousand years’. Donald Miller for those who do not know is a genius, inspiring, witty and wonderful. In a million miles he talks about our lives as stories, organised into scenes and acts, and talks about the need for a meaningful story. Some days I do not feel I am living a very meaningful story, though I really want to be.

When I think of my life as a story, I think not just of one long tale, but indeed the many fragments which make up my story, shaping and forming who I am.

Church this morning also established the theme of story. Jason was speaking about how we need to share our stories of our experiences with God, so that we don’t forget.
In Joshua 4, after an epic ‘parting of the waters scene’, when the Children of Israel had safely crossed the Jordan, God told Joshua to choose 12 men from among the tribes and tell them to pick up 12 stones from the middle of the Jordan. These stones were to serve as a reminder/memorial of what God had done.

Donald in his book tells of a man who wrote down all his stories; short or long, silly or serious, every story was documented. I don’t know about you, but I know I have had many good stories, which because I haven’t shared, or made a memorial of, have become rather sketchy in my mind. Some of these are particularly amazing, God encountering stories; some display the beauty of friendship or the love of family. Others are very ridiculous and make me giggle whenever they do spring to mind. At any rate all of them are part of my bigger story, and part of my journey, and as such I am going to try in some way to make a memorial so that I don’t forget.

Another day, another journey September 19, 2009

Last year I went to college on the other side of town.  Getting to college required 2 bus journeys, and thus necessitated a ridiculously early time of departure.

Most mornings I managed to pull myself out of bed and face the day.  Semi-alert and semi-awake I would head for the bus in the dark and in the rain.  As I said, most morning I managed it.

One morning it just didn’t happen.   I got up at the same time as always, but my normal routine of shower, dress, breakfast, leave, come back for something I’ve forgotten and then leave again, didn’t flow smoothly.  I seemed more tired than usual, and was having an internal struggle as to whether I should hurry up to catch the bus, or whether, as I was going to be late already I should just take my time.

I don’t like being late, it happens more often than it should, but I don’t like it.  That morning I made it as far as the breakfast part of my normal routine, and didn’t get any further for a good period of time.  I walked into the kitchen and the coffee pot called out to me – it was either the coffee pot or the voices in my head,  I’m inclined to think it was the coffee pot, because admitting to having voices in your head is not a good thing.  The sofa also called out and thus I found myself sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee for quite a long period of time.

I sat listening to the house awakening, my other housemates moving around, getting ready for work and eventually leaving.   At that point I figured I should leave too, I was now over an hour late.  It is my theory that it is better to be late by a lot rather than a little, as long as no one is waiting for you.  If someone is waiting a long time for you, they will not like you, unless they are waiting in their own home, because then they can watch TV or read a book or drink coffee.

Anyway, back to the story.  The first part of my bus journey was uneventful, I was a bit frantic, because I had set a time in my head by which to arrive at college and I was now late again.  But nothing ran smooth on the bus either, the trip into town was fine, but on the one out of town I ended up on the wrong bus.  I got the 9b, not the 9a.  The 9b goes part of the way up the Lisburn road, not as far as college, so I needed to needed to jump off at some point and wait for yet another bus.

I missed the opportune moment of change and found myself sitting in a silly little cul-de-sac for 15 minutes until the bus driver had a good peruse of his quality newspaper.

Determined I would not mess up again I was ready to jump out as soon as we reappeared on the Lisburn Road, and as it happened there was another bus coming that would take me to college.   It was a blustery day, and boarding the bus I definitely had the windswept look going on.  I sat down, and set about fixing my hair and then slumped back into my seat, reassured that I was only going to be slightly later than the lateness for which I had allowed

I was in my own little world, which happens more often than it should, when I saw in my peripheral vision two hands approaching the side of my head, one to the left and one to the right.  These hands clamped onto the side of my head.  I knew this was not a normal thing to happen on a bus, so I bolted forward in my seat and turned around to stare at the owner of the hands.  It was a man, who apologized with a smile and sat back in his seat, meanwhile I continued to sit on the edge of mine for the rest of the journey.

That day I learned that it is not only crazy ladies who take the bus.

September 18, 2009

For those of you wondering what the 3a is, it’s a bus route, more specifically the bus route from my house into Belfast.  Some people use their blog as a record of their journey – given I’ve just mentioned the 3a being a bus route, you may be inclined to think that I have chosen the name to convey this idea.  I did not.  Rather I have just met a lot of crazy people on the bus.

I was trying to recall my stories of crazy bus people for my friend Rachel, who incidentally is a ceramicist, and the stories have started to fade.  Rachel told me that given my semi unemployed status I should start a blog and write down the stories, and due to her semi unemployed status she will make pots, (that’s what a ceramicist should do occasionally).

I am now blogging, so Rach had better be ceramising.

I think the inventor of the ipod probably had to spend a lot of time on a bus once.

Buses attract crazy people, and sometimes it is nice to drown them out.  Sometimes though, I pretend to be listening to music but really I’m listening to the crazy people and they never know.  One day I got the bus, the 3a, and there was quite the eccentric lady on it.  She was wearing red tights, a leopard print skirt and leather jacket.  Her make up was quite effective, or so I thought.  She had drawn herself a bright red moustache and also a bright red cross on her forehead – like Ash Wednesday sponsored by Maybelline.  I didn’t notice this all until I sat down and she started shouting.

“GOD IS THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS EVER LOVED ME AND WHAT I DO, I PUT HIM ON THE CROSS”

She seemed genuinely distressed by it all – and very contrite, and I didn’t know what to do in the face of such torment.  I opted for prayer of the silent kind, and I tried, but she was a bit distracting.

Her contrition only lasted a few minutes, her tears of remorse gone she switched seats to sit in front of a normal looking older couple.  I thought the show was over, but she turned round to look at the woman, and says “blaughblaghtblaughtblaughblaughtblatughtblathggtgtgtfehhjj”, after a momentary pause for breath she goes off at it again….

“blaughblaughtblaughtblaughtblaughtbltuaghtiyutlbluagth”  and again

“blaughtblaughtblaguhtbluaughtbluaghtbluaghtblaguthblaught”

I thought the woman was pretending to speak in tongues, but then she says to the other lady

“God is trying to talk to you and you are talking rubbish*!”

(*Her words were a wee bit stronger than mine, but given my mid Ulster Christian upbringing I’m not yet willing to commit such words to paper, lest my mother stumble across this one day. )

The crazy lady repeated this a couple of times, before telling the woman,

“You are beautiful, and God loves you”

She then proceeded to pull a red candle from her bag – now not your average candle – a pretend candle complete with a bulb – think pound-stretcher, kids toy candle, and you maybe get it.  I tried to find one on google, thinking I might get one for our local Saturday morning street preacher who shouts and sings about the coming day of reckoning.

Anyway, armed with her candle she starts to proclaim “Jesus is the light of the World” She moves away from the couple and comes down towards the back of the bus at which point I panic and think “Dear God please don’t let her try to convert me with her candle.”  But she bypasses me in favour of a group of guys who are recording her on their phone – she asks them if they think she is crazy and whether they are going to put her on youtube.  They ask her what she’s been drinking – but she doesn’t drink (I think maybe she’s a mid Ulster Christian too and feel a kinship with her!)

At this point my bus stop came and I had to depart and leave the crazy lady behind.  I checked youtube when I got home, she was not there.  But it appears there are lots of crazy people on the bus……..