Month: September 2024

Categories
epigenetics sin

Sins Of The Fathers

‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’

Numbers 14:18

Until Friday I’ve struggled with this verse. How could God be forgiving and abounding in steadfast love yet still visit the sins of the fathers on their children? Friday, whilst doing some QEC with a small group around inter-generational trauma beliefs it dawned on me what it all meant.

Sins is always a word we get hung up on. Too often it is seen as “wrong things” we have done and then someone decides what is wrong and what isn’t. Like gossiping and even covering over misdemeanors is alright but fancying someone of the same sex or sleeping with someone you aren’t married to are “sins”.

Years ago I heard a sermon saying sin was just missing God’s mark and God’s mark is to put God in the centre of all things all the time. That’s how the apostle Paul can say “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” [Romans 3:23]. Since hearing that this has always been my way of looking at “sin” and I will read it that way, even pray the “Lords Prayer” that way –

Forgive me when I don’t make God’s mark and do as God would for myself, others and the world, as I forgive those who hurt me by not hitting God’s mark for me

[forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us]

So what are the sins of the fathers? I think it should read “sins of our ancestors”. These are those traumas that stay in families and become norms. But they are inherent traumas that effect our mind, body and also our DNA. This can be anything from the belief that “all my family die in their early 70s”, “all my family have arthritis/diabetes/are anxious/don’t do birthdays/add your own” to saying “this is what we’re like as a family”, “it is in my DNA/my make up” as if that is it.

Did you know that there have been studies around genetics and when mice [whose DNA is really similar to humans] experience traumas epigentics tags are added to their DNA which then get passed on to their babies and grandbabies. Do use this Wiki link to read more and use the references to go further Epigentics Ir is totally amazing and for someone like myself who’s been exploring and noticing this sort of thing for a while it makes so much sense.

So back to Numbers 14:18 whether we actually know our ancestors or not, just looking at our recent history shows the traumas that have been faced; The Great Depression, two World Wars, the Cold War, fear of nuclear attack, plus racial abuse or fear of being “over-run” by “others”, fear of lack, of not having “enough”, the education system of having to get good grades, hospital waiting lists, etc and we’ve all experienced untimely deaths and fears of untimely death. So take all those in the last 100+ years and that is a lot of shit that’s happened which, of course, has led to lots of trauma, real and imagined, which has led to one’s DNA adding these epigentic tags to keep us safe.

These, I believe, are the “sins of the fathers”. But, from doing QEC and other inner healing things I know I can get rid of these tags, can be free to be who I am intended to be.

And also forgive those in my past, whether I knew them or not, for accepting those traumas and not being healed from them, and forgive myself for passing those traumas on the my children.

Then I can truly live out the New Creation [2 Corinthians 5:17] God promised I’d be, but I do have to do a bit of work to get there!

Categories
content

Content Right Where You Are

Small dog at the top of a mountain content right where he is. Above Loch Katrine September 2024 photographed by myself

How often do we wish we were somewhere else? Ok when things are really rubbish that is ok but how often do we do it when say we’re in a beautiful place but it isn’t quite where we wanted to be so we wish we were somewhere else? We’re on our walk with God and they’ve got us in the valley when we’d like to be on the mountain top. Ok we often rationalise that into a “this is God’s plan so I’ll go with it” but really we’re not happy.

I’ve spent years chasing after something else, wish I was this big person in Christian mission stuff, chasing after it and it not happening, trying to rationalise it into being “God’s will” or pushing against it because it could be “of the devil” why I don’t get on.

The other day I was reading this is in Beth’s blog

‘not every lake dreams to be an ocean.’ –

memet murat ildan

And I realised that even though I had dreamed of being an ocean in fact I was really a lake and could be content being a lake. Like I can be content walking on the lakeside rather than climbing the mountain, content to have the dysfunctional family but surrounded by inspiring friends.

The Apostle Paul tells us to be content in all circumstances [Philippians 4:11-13] and I think, too often we take that as good times and bad times, hearing preaching on how these things are transient, changeable, and that we can endure because we will pass through them. But, for me, I’m coming to realise that some things will not change. I cannot change my family or that I’ve never done some of the things I’ve done, that I will always be a lake and not an ocean. But I can change how I see things. I can be content to be a lake, to have lived the stories I have, to have had to walk on the lakeside rather than climb the mountain, to have missed out on things, to have at times be really uncontent and angry at how things were. I cannot go back and change but I can now change how I feel about those situations.

So I can be content in all things past, present and future knowing always that so much I cannot change but I can change how I feel about things, how I view things.

Categories
jealousy lineage

Lineage

Binchester August 2024 photographed by myself

[expansion of thoughts from over the summer]

When I was at my friend’s helping to declutter I was struck by jealousy. Jealous of their lineage.

As we went through the loft they were refinding clothes from the past. Not just their old wedding clothes but their parent’s wedding clothes. In one box was the birthing gown worn by my friend’s grandmother and mother. Seven children of two different generations had been born under this gown. But it wasn’t just that. My friend was going to gather her daughters and granddaughters and they were going to talk through who would inherit these. It made me think how one day this birthing gown would be living 5 generations on from the original owner!!! Wow!! Now that is lineage.

They are also genuinely close to each other. When it was my friend’s 75th birthday party you could feel the closeness of the 4 generations. [They are great grandparents now] It is a closeness that they can all open out to others too which is great. What they have is special.

For myself my family are a bit dysfunctional. The only grandparent I ever know was my Nan and she had a major stroke when I was about six and never spoke again properly. I do have some photos from her but as my mum, who was only in her late 20s when my Nan had her stroke says, she had not got to wanting to ask her many of the things she wishes she had. My parents divorced when I was 18 and my dad died without me knowing until 10 days later. So as you can see we don’t go back far. My children are in their 30s and there are no grandchildren on the way, which I am fine with as that is their choice. We’ve never done the family parties like my friends.

I was struggling this when The Write Club that meets on line at 8am on a Wednesday put forward our first commissioning; to write about our “lineage”, meaning as much what you have read as what your family influences were. I refused to let the jealous and a bit self-pitying take over and so allowed my pen to hover over my journal and see what happened.

Well …. I was amazed at the things that came from it, of remembering older people who had passed through my life that have influenced my reading, my writing, and my ways of thinking. People from beyond the constraints of blood ties, many of whom have died, who have opened my eyes and my mind to so many different ways of thinking and doing things. It is amazing.

Would these people have entered my life if I had a strong, large, close-knit family? That I will never know. But this writing has taken me from focusing of what I didn’t have to wayyyyy beyond that.

Once we move beyond what we don’t have our eyes are opened to the well of ideas, to the stories that are us, that come each time we truly listen to our lives.

Categories
Believe ego

Ego in the way

Rhos-on-sea beach gathering lugworms photographed by myself Sept 2024

How often were you told as a child not to get “too big for your boots”? And you knew what that meant. It meant you were being proud, boastful, stepping up a gear, and that was not approved of by the adult who was telling you to be “more humble”, when actually here humble meant to not say you were good at anything.

Someone I know is doing a very brave and loving thing [long story so won’t give details but just know she is being so amazing, so trusting in God and so humble] for her son. I was praying and saw her as this amazing Warrior Woman and told her so. Her response was that she needed to get her ego out of the way so she could believe that.

That got me thinking of how often we see ego as being “egoist” or too big for our boots, boastful, prideful, etc whereas I heard from her that her ego was herself thinking she wasn’t up to the job, that she wasn’t a warrior woman, even though The God who Created the Whole Universe had just told her so.

Too many of us have had too many times when we’ve been put down rather than lifted up and have passed that onwards to our children and others we know too.

I loved working with Americans when I was in YWAM because they were not afraid to say what they were good at or had done well at and would tell others when they thought they had done well. Very unlike us Brits can be. Brits can be very quick to put down ourselves and others, to root for the underdog unless they start to win.

So I say … let us kick into touch those sayings of not getting too big for our boots. As my friend says “get our egos out the way”. And pull on those great big kick-arse boots that are waiting for us to go out and change the world with.

And changing the world might not be solving world peace or climate change but it might just be a kind, encouraging word, or as my friend is doing just supporting her son in a big things, or as another friend did and just obeyed what she felt she’d heard in prayer, or any of those many things that come naturally to us.

Categories
dark light

Equinox

Beach on Thursday 19th September photographed by myself

Today is Equinox, the day when the hours of daylight are equal to the hours of darkness – or at least would be if it wasn’t pouring with rain here and just looking really bleak and wintery, which is why you get the photo from Thursday when the sun had only been up an hour or so.

My journaling this morning was that we can see equally the light and dark in our world. Sometimes what we really want is it to be all light and wonderful, blissful and good stuff. But life isn’t like that. Though neither is it all darkness, grief, dreariness and gloom.

So my prayers were for our media that can balance their stories of doom, gloom, wars, rumours of wars, death, the lack of care, and show that there are great interventions going on our world to help with climate change, with caring for each other, with peace, with support, with “holding the door open” type of stories.

But also I pray for social media which can be filled with the perfect couple, the perfect children, the perfect life, and so one can be left feeling inadequate, craving something unobtainable, or even not realising the pain the those FB “friends” because they think they can only post the extremes – the huge highs and for some the hidden lows.

I pray that our conversations will be filled with the truth – which is a mixture of light and dark, of coping and struggling, of joy and grief, of wanting to be noticed and of wanting to notice others.

I do think there are times we either try to ignore or overly focus on the dark because we don’t know what to do with it. Our subconscious is still dealing with fairy tales where the dark was where the evil monsters lay and the knight’s job was to defeat the dark. But if there was no dark when would we sleep, when would we dream, when would the plants have time to regrow. We need to darkness of the night, of grief, of sadness, as much as we need to light of day, of growth, of joy.

May today be filled with openness and honesty, truth and love, light and dark in all its facets.

Categories
prayer technique

Doing It Properly?

I’m sharing a photograph of my dog at the writing groups I run because one of the big things I keep saying to the group is “there is no right or wrong, just write” when they ask me how to do things “properly”. It is all about finding your own voice and getting your words out there.

At the Upper Room Friday we got on to chatting about prayer. And on thing was how do we do it properly, as in what is the “right” way to pray.

Here’s a quote from Richard Rohr which even though it is about contemplation I think it applies to prayer just as well

When we emphasize specific practices too much, contemplation can become a matter of technique and performance. We fall back into self-analysis: Am I doing the practice correctly? The revelation of God, who always wants to enter the material world as our image, cannot possibly depend upon people sitting silently on a prayer cushion twice a day. That would mean that 99.9% of people who have ever lived on this earth have not known God.

It is possible to get too caught up in the “how to” of prayer and miss the whole point of “why”.

Why do I pray? Well for me it is to chat to God, to build relationships – so as much listening as talking, as much sitting with as doing with. It is to ask God to help me through things, to change situations for friends, to ask God to get involved with the lives of those I know and love so they can feel that deep inner contentment even when life is shit. It is also the same reason I write – because it is what I have to do to know what I’m thinking.

Often my prayers are more like letters in my journal than talking. Often God then speaks through my pen and gives me answers or directions or reminders. Often the outcomes of these times of chatting or writing with God can lead to unexpected answers.

One of our Upper Room friends had an amazing unexpected answer. She had to get her car to be MOTed and needed a lift there so she phone her son because she knew he went that way first thing in the morning. He was a bit short with her and even though he agreed to it said he wouldn’t have time to hang out. In other circumstances she would have found someone else but she felt God say that this was the answer to her prayer about getting back from the garage, so her son picked her and her husband up from the garage early. Instead of speeding off down the dual carriageway the son had to get off at their junction. As he slowed on the slip road of the junction his tyre blew out, the car shuddered and he fought the wheel but was only going at 25mph so all was fine. If my friend hadn’t heeded God’s response to her prayer her son could have been going at 70mph when it happened and who knows what the circumstances would have been.

Now I don’t think my friend did any special prayer technique or if she did I don’t think she’ll always expected that the answer to her prayers; an disaster averted. So it was not the technique she was thinking of or even her son at that time. All she did when she prayed that time was to ask God how to sort a lift back from the garage and her son popped into her mind. Next time, even next time to the garage, it might be a totally different response.

So I don’t think there is a “right way” to pray. I think it helps if we say we’re sorry for trying to do things our own way and not God’s way and that we do so want our hearts to be open to hear God not ourselves. But I don’t think we have to. I think there are times God answers prayer just because God loves us – whether we admit to loving and trusting them totally or not. I think it helps if we do love and trust God but then I think that helps with peace in our hearts thing rather than whether God will answer or not.

So let’s stop worrying about technique whether in prayer, contemplation, meditation, writing, our friendships, our jobs and more and just get on and do!

Categories
holidays waiting

Learning to Wait

I’ve been trying to plan a blog post because I’ve not posted since before we went on holiday but I went down with a fluey sore throat as soon as I got back which has stopped the writing. And when I tried to put something in today I found I was going into rant mode, which is not good for any of us so I’ve saved it to edit after the weekend when I know I will be better. Though who knows with an Upper Room tonight anything could come from it!

I’ve got loads of stuff “proving” like sourdough in my head which I know will be amazing when I’m well enough to share it properly so instead, for today, I’ll share some of my holiday photos of the beautiful Trossachs, Scotland.

Categories
holidays writing

Off Away Again!

Wild flower meadow by a housing estate County Durham. Photographed by myself

I’m off again. This time for a week’s holiday just myself, hubby and dog walking and chilling near Loch Lomond and The Trossachs. Hopefully lots of time for reading, writing and eating too.

I have started the month long “Writing as Resistance” festival with Writers HQ which is looking at climate justice and how we as writers can be radical in our writing. It is only £20 for the month and I would suggest checking it out because, even though I’ve only caught two workshops so far, I’ve been very challenged in both my writing and reading.

And, even though it is supposed to be laptop free week I will be doing the first session of The Write Club led by Josh Luke Smith, a series of workshops I’ve been trying to be part of for a couple of years and this one seemed to just fall into place. So at 8am every Wednesday morning for 11 weeks I’ll be joining other writers with a desire to write and connect.

Then when I return I’m doing a day’s mythical beast sculpturing with Pea Restall so I might be a few days into my week before I resume blogging. Though at the end of the week I’m back is our Upper Room gathering so I might just wait to see what emerges from there.

Have a great couple of weeks and enjoy the coming of autumn. [Oh there’s a whole blog series that could be written about going with the seasons but …. :)]

Categories
Jesus support

Sit By Me

My friend’s daughter adores Renly and, as you can see from the photo, he’s keen on her. She just wants to be with him, to have him all to herself, to sit, snuggle, lie with him. And she kept saying “I love Renly”.. Photographed by myself August 2024.

I love having friends who are open and who chat and challenge me and make me think. My friends might be very diverse in many things [eg the troll/tinkerbell image] but what they have in common is the way they challenge me – and also inspire this blog! The majority of posts come from thoughts others have inspired in me. I am constantly evolving and morphing as I have open, free conversations with people who I love and trust and who love and trust me!

So here is one that grew from the other day –

We’re struggling with someone and we say, in our heads, “Jesus go and sit with them” when really we could do with Jesus giving us a hug because we are the ones struggling. The “difficult” person could be fine in their own eyes. Yes they do also need Jesus to sit by them and give them a hug but so do we. Too often, I think, we offer Jesus to others and don’t grab him for ourselves.

I got me thinking about my friend’s daughter with my dog. What if we were like that with Jesus?

I think that one of the reasons we do the “sit with that difficult person, Jesus” is because Church tells us that. So many sermons are about asking Jesus to go comfort someone else but very few on asking him to comfort, be with, encourage us. So, I think, we get to a place where we don’t think it right that we should ask Jesus to sit by us when someone else is struggling.

The other reason, I think, is because we don’t think we are “worthy” enough – the enough word again! – for Jesus to want to be with us. And sometimes I think that is because we think we should be the “sorted” ones and we should ask Jesus to be with those we don’t think are sorted.

I wonder if we think that if people we are “reaching out to” saw that Jesus was sitting beside us and giving as a hug of reassurance then they would think we weren’t up for the task of supporting them? A thought!

So we, not so much push Jesus away from ourselves but we do keep pushing him towards the “needy” person when in fact we could be much more supportive, much more helpful, much more giving if we had that support with us.

[Also – and I don’t get how this works – Jesus can be holding our hands and holding the hands of the person we are talking to – and many many other people – all that the same time. Now that is an awesome mystery!]

Categories
Achievement success

Proud!

My sourdough loaf 4th September 2024

I am very proud of myself and so I thought I’d share mainly because as Brits we aren’t very good at sharing what we’ve done. We almost think it is a huge sin to say we are proud of what we’ve done. We think being humble and meek is saying we’re not really good at the things we do well.

This summer I’ve got lots I’m proud of for my own achievements – of self-publishing the booklet on my reflections on Psalm 23 – which you can find on Amazon if you wish; hubby and I went Raku glazing at the edge of Snowdonia and I came back with a couple of really cool pots; co-ordianted a Messy Church event in our local group of churches and didn’t come away thinking I had to do more than; ran dragon themed writing workshops in my town; and made this amazing sourdough loaf.

But also whilst doing the sourdough loaf, especially, I learned about me and how I learn.

So I’ve tried sourdough many times and never know quite how to get it to look good. When I was with my friends helping to declutter their loft my friend made a sourdough loaf and I watched right from the start where she started feeding the “mother”. As she did each step I thought “I can do that”. So when I got home and looked at the recipe I could see her doing each step and so was able to produce this amazing loaf.

I need to watch someone so I can learn. Tell me or showing me on YouTube or reading it from a book doesn’t work for me. I need to watch someone else do that. It explains why, no matter how many times I read a book about crochet or watch a YouTube video I still get my hands muddled and nothing happens. This doesn’t mean I’m not going to be any good at crochet but it means I need to watch someone doing it.

Also with regard to the recipe, I am not a recipe follower. To me a recipe is a guideline to give me a bit of a form of reference to see what goes with what. I skim read it and then just go for it. I change ingredients, change amounts and make it up as I go along. I can open the fridge and work out what to cook from what I see there. This of course explains too why i wouldn’t be good at making sourdough because I could potentially skip steps. But because I’ve been shown how to make it I won’t skip the steps.

Though this guidelines stuff is what does make me an awesome cook. It is also what makes my writing workshops fun – because I give myself a rough plan and then make it up as I go along. This week, in the morning of the workshop, one of the group told me it was National Welsh Rarebit day so I just reshaped the session around that – because I’m not set in stone on these things.

Flexible is good at times but with other things, like making the sourdough loaf it isn’t. But this doesn’t make me a good or bad person or for those who are the opposite doesn’t make them good or bad either.

Talking of good/bad – I hung out all yesterday afternoon with a lovely friend who says her natural resting mode is “troll” whereas I would say mine is “Tinkerbell fairy”. We are total opposites and yet we encourage and motivate and adore being together.

So I do think we should accept what we aren’t good at and be honest about it, but also, and more importantly, we should celebrate our strengths, boast loudly about what we can do. Show off a bit. After all the God who Created the Whole Universe thinks we’re amazing so what right have we to judge. So I’ll still be flexible on many things but learn that with others I need to watch those who know and then follow their example whether with sourdough or with crochet .