Month: October 2024

Categories
faith suffering

Hope Inside

Baby seals at Angel Bay, Conwy. Photographed by myself Oct 2024

The seals, whether with babies or alone, always make me smile. There is something hopeful about them. I’ve been told that their numbers started to increase when the wind turbine were put in the sea because this made it harder for big fishing trawlers and so the fish population could increase and so things like seals could increase too.

At our last Upper Room gathering we finished up, after many roundabout routes, looking at the verse

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you – 1 Peter 3:15

But what is our hope? Is it just that we believe we’ll go to heaven when we die? I don’t think that’s what was meant. To be something that people will ask us about our hope has to be visible. It has to be a hope that we have enough time, energy, money but it has to be more than that. I know lots of people who don’t have a faith in God that believe that, especially after they’ve done some inner healing.

As I write this I can feel myself struggling to know how to put the hope I feel inside. It makes me realise why believers need to gather together. When we were all sat around the table together we could encourage each other and remind each other what our hope is, what goes on in our lives that we lean on God for, what goes on that we know without it we couldn’t make it.

One of the Alcoholics Anonymous steps is to give things to a higher power. Most addicts say that once they can pass things to a higher power, whether they call that power God or not [and sometimes names are not important] they let go of trying to fix things their way. Their hope for their future was placed in the hands of a higher power.

Someone recently suggested that even if we are not addicted to something noticeable we are too often addicted to our own way of doing things. They were working through the twelve steps replacing the word “drink” with “think” and handing over their thinking to a higher power.

I believe that hope comes when we fully acknowledge ourselves, fault, failings and all, and hand them over to a higher power. As I’ve said before we must not pretend we haven’t suffered because suffering is what produces the hope inside.

So if I was asked I could, hopefully say, that the hope I have inside comes from knowing that I can hand everything over to a higher power, to the Creator of the Universe, who will help and guide me, heal me and help me become all I was meant to be, and loves me unconditionally even if I get lost along the way. And that I don’t need to go back to those old ways of survival but am, is it says in the Bible, “born again“, which as I’ve said before I don’t think is a one off experience.

My hope is that even if I mess up I’ve not severed communication with the Creator of the Universe, I don’t have to go back to my old ways, but can grab on and hand things over again and again and again, and move to that place of acceptance of myself as who I truly am.

Categories
fig tree Seasons

Fruitful – When?

Aberlleiniog Castle, Anglesey. Photographed by myself October 2024

I am not going to attempt to unpack the story about Jesus cursing the fig tree [Mark 11:11-25] though too often it has been used to say that we should be fruitful in all seasons. Well just is daft.

The trees in this picture are coming to the end of their fruitful season. There berries are being eaten by birds and other wildlife, their seeds falling to the ground either to be stored by squirrels or to maybe grow into new trees. They will soon lie fallow with no leaves and nothing much going on that we can see. Though as we all know a lot goes on with both ourselves and wildlife when it looks as if we’re sleeping. Then the spring will come and leaves will slowly appear and soon the trees will be covered in leaves and flowers or catkins or something that attracts the pollinators. They are still not fruitful. It is a very short period in a tree’s life cycle when it is fruitful.

So if The Creator of The Universe made the natural world like that why on earth do we, in our busy 21st Century minds, think we should be fruitful 24-7-365? Surely The Creator intends for us to have fruitful periods and fallow periods, periods of rest and periods of growth? Isn’t that what being “natural” looks like? And I don’t know about you but I would like to look as natural as possible.

But to be natural we need to be like the trees and plants and animals and be in touch with our bodies and what they are asking of us. And because we are human beings too we need to be in touch with our hearts and be able to hear what they are saying without all the dross of “shoulds” and “oughts” of upbringing and culture.

So let us all be brave and be restful when we should be, bursting with new growth when we should be, and then, I think when it is time of us to be fruitful we can be totally committed to being fruitful because we’ve done the rest and the new growth we were meant to do beforehand.

Categories
Fakeness social media

Is Fakeness New?

Penmon lighthouse Photographed by myself October 2024

I shared this photo with someone who told me it wasn’t that good a photo because it looked like it was just a farm gate. To me this photo talks about the lovely day I’ve had with my daughter, the tranquil place we finished up, how warm it was that day that we could sit comfortably outside, and actually is the view from where we were sat. And yes it does contain a big red bin, a fallen down fence and a farm gate but it was what we really saw.

True photo not faked.

I was at a gathering of women of a certain age and the topic rolled round, as it often does, to the fakeness of Facebook but I don’t think this fakeness is anything new. As I explore writing around my growing up years I am seeing the fakeness there; those times when I would say I was fine, that yes this was what I wanted, that the world was an ok place, when I was doing things that were not healthy for me, was breaking up inside, and yet I held it in and kept the smile and the compliancy papered thickly.

I think what we see on most social medias are people still covering up their pain but in a different way with photos of their holidays, their lovely relationships, their sorted kids. Or overly sharing on their hurts and pains and wanting someone to reach for them but not knowing how.

I’m about to start something in the local primary school called Transforming Lives For Good, in which each of us get one pupil for one year that we will see every week to help them sort out their emotions and navigate this crazy world. I had to take over documents today for yet another DBS form and was chatting to the secretary who was about my age. We were saying how we so could have done with something like this Transforming Lives For Good when we were young but we just had to muddle by.

It got me thinking about Facebook and other social media things which are really just another form of muddling by because we don’t know where to place our emotions, get told to “be good”, told that this makes parent/teacher/etc happy if we behave that way and so we’re responsible for other people’s happiness.

Kids today are being parented by those we parented and we were parented by those who had been born just before or during the war where a stiff upper lip was the way and disappointments were hidden behind a smile [photo on social media] and an I’m fine [happy tag] or some t-shirt with some slogan on it.

Yes I do think Facebook accentuates the issues but I think we went through the masks and fakeness when we were growing up too.

Here’s another thought from my friend Matt’s substack where he talks of how we use, or shouldn’t use, “they”, and too often we bemoan the things on social media as fakeness and falsehoods and yet we are always expecting “them” to change.

But also, too be totally honest with you, I’d rather see the things my friends and family share to the wider world as light and fluffy and then we can honestly share things together around a coffee, a phone call, or a meal together.

Perhaps, like when we do the “I’m fine” it is better to take time to find those trusted few that we know will be able to look after our hearts and yes be fake to the rest of the world who probably doesn’t care that much.

But please don’t believe this falseness and fakeness that appears on social media is something that was invented by Mark Zuckerberg, Elton Musk and the like!

Categories
faithful fruitful

Be Faithful

Faithful little dog. No apology if I’ve shared this photo before. He is so cute and he is so faithful

Well done good and faithful servant

Matthew 25:23

There is a lot of stuff in organised church about doing things, being busy, making a difference. But you know sometimes life is just hard work and you have to just sit it out, stay faithful to God, stay in the place God’s put you and wait it out.

I did a piece ages and ages ago about a how cormorants have to wait with their wings stretched out drying before they can go back and get more food. Even if they have a nest full of babies they have to be faithful to how they are made and wait until their wings are dry before they dive for more fish.

If God/our hearts tell us to rest then we must be faithful to that and not go rushing off trying to do things – trying to be noticeably fruitful.

Note the word “noticeably” there. By being faithful we are being fruitful because our hearts are healing, refreshing, waiting, faithfully trusting that we are hearing correctly. That is much more fruitful than being unfaithful to the safety instructions we are being given and diving in to the fray again.

At the moment I feel like I am being called to a time of being faithful to writing my story and might just share some bits on here over time. Maybe if my heart tells me. It could be so easy to share because I want to look good, to look like I’m doing something, but would that be being faithful?

If I’m not faithful am I really being fruitful?

Photo by Jay Lockyer on Pexels.com
Categories
altruistic Love

The Power of God!

Stones thrown from the beach to the coastal path after a storm in April 2024. Photographed by myself

The picture above shows a small part of the power of the sea. There were bigger stones thrown around too but I was obviously in awe of it and didn’t take any photos.

The power of nature, whether wind, waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc are easy to see but what does the power of God look like?

 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth

Acts 1:8

One of the last things Jesus says to his disciples is about receiving power from the Holy Spirit. [Read all that story in Acts 2]. But Jesus never actually says what this power actually is.

Now having come into following God through very charismatic churches I was always told that you could see if someone was “filled with the Spirit” if they spoke in tongues [this was seen as a definite sign in some circles and if you couldn’t “speak in tongues” then you were asked to check if you were a “real” spirit filled Christian!!!!], healings were another sign, raising people from the dead, deliverance of demonic spirits, discerning of spirits, and noticeable signs like that.

So last night was youth group night. It is Anglican not charismatic and is a small group of church raised young people with the vicar co-leading with me. We have been using the Bible Society’s Six Beats by Dai Woolridge which is great for opening questions. Sunday we were at Beat five which was about the starting of the Church and the coming of the Holy Spirit. There was no mention in the rap about all the above things that I’d been taught about in my early Christian life.

But then the vicar unpack the above verse and said that showing the LOVE of Jesus to people is the greatest power we can offer. Not just doing good deeds for whatever reason – and often we are all guilty of doing things to get noticed or to get the rewards, the pats on the back, the “thank yous” – But actually asking what people want, not just presuming we know, and then being willing to do what that person wants.

I remember as a single mum getting fed up of being given furniture I didn’t want or need, or food that my kids didn’t like, and then having to either give or throw it away. It was very rare for anyone to say to me “what do you need?”

Too often we presume what people want and even if they say we don’t hear.

Jesus says to the blind man “what do you want?” [Luke 18:35-43]. For the rest of us it was a bit of a no brainer question. The guy was blind. Surely all he wanted was to be able to see. But Jesus doesn’t presume he asks. And this is what true love is.

To truly love the someone we need to be willing to sit with them, to feel their joy or pain, and to ask “what do you want me to do for you?”

A totally different way of thinking! All this healing, deliverance, talking in tongues, etc are just outworkings of that power but the real power is to be willing to show the Love of God to others. And that, I believe is so much harder than just laying hands on someone and praying for them!

Categories
compassion Grace

Procrastination

Newborough October 2024

We are all guilty of procrastination at some point. Procrastination is not the same as listening to our hearts and leaving things to another day. Procrastination is when you know you want to do something but you put it off yet you can feel your heart telling you to do it.

Procrastination is a voluntary deal. As writers it is when we do all the chores, etc before sitting down to write and then wonder why we’ve run out of time. Procrastination is to do with emotional disregulation, of lacking emotional clarity, so we put it off and give it to our future selves as if they can deal with it better than our present selves. But of course if our present selves couldn’t handle it why would our future selves be any better at it, especially with the guilt that then comes with it for not having done it in the first place. And so as we all know we then put it off again, and again and again, which explains why so any things get harder to impliment as we get older.

It is almost a kind of self harm, but a self harm of our future selves.

So we need to ask our present selves the “why” question rather than trying to get through our procrastination with grim determination. Perhaps the “why we’re procrastinating” question will reveal that we don’t think we’re good enough to, that we have doubts that we’re up for the task. But if we feel we’re not good enough [that enough word again] then our future selves will feel even less like they can do it!

So what do we do?

We ask the questions of where did this idea that I’m not good enough come from and then we treat ourselves with compassion as the answers come up.

If we are kind to ourselves, compassionate with ourselves, give ourselves the grace to forgive ourselves for believing we are not good enough, then we can start slowly to move forward. We can learn to be curious about ourselves in a gentle way not a condemning way, and what we must do is keep ourselves safe from allowing the procrastination to hold us back.

Also we must not compare. I’ve been reading Stephen Kings “On Writing” book. He started submitting stories in his teens and has been writing prolifically in, at times in challenging circumstances, for over fifty years. His philosophy is to write about 2000 words before doing anything else. I could so easily have been doing that if I hadn’t been procrastinating, but I didn’t. Instead I am 63 and have put off the “big write” till now.

So I could sit here condemning myself and giving my 63 year old self a hard time for not putting in more time and effort beforehand. But, you know what, I cannot go backwards. I can only start where I am now. I can use the present to move forward because the past is the past and it is gone. What good is it going to do me if I spend all my present energy trying to change the past? Daft idea when you see it written down but it is what a lot of us try to do a times – that whole “if only” syndrome.

So each day as I feel myself wanting to go and do something else, to procrastinate with my own writing, I gently ask myself why, and slowly, slowly I am moving forward with writing what I want to write with a confidence I have never had before.

Perhaps it also helps to know I am a lake not an ocean and am secure in that.

Categories
endurance hope

Suffering is good for us

Beauty of a dead tree. Isle of Wight. August 2024. Photographed by myself

… suffering produces endurance,  and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, …

Romans 5:3-4

Yet in the world we live in we take pills, whether prescribed or self-medicated, whether alcohol or drugs, whether taken in moderation or to excess, or buying stuff, watching TV, to elevate our suffering rather than acknowledging that we suffer.

I wrote a piece a while back about acknowledging grief rather than just trying to make it go away and really grief is a form of suffering, but there are loads of other things that cause us to suffer which lead to anxiety and depression, to various illnesses [Read The Body Keeps The Score and other books by Gabor Mate and others like him]

Who of us does not want to be able to endure, to be of a character people admire, to have hope that we can pass on? Yet too often we don’t want to go through the suffering to get there so we fill our lives with stuff, etc.

The Bible also says “Blessed are those who mourn” [Matthew 5:4] which means those who mourn are comforted by God, if they are willing to acknowledge their need. Suffering and pain teach us things, help us in getting closer to ourselves and to God/something beyond ourselves; help us acknowledge our true selves.

A wise person said “there is no hope without the acknowledgment of suffering” and “a denial of suffering is a denial of hope” and yet too often we try to deny our suffering behind so many things.

I was writing a short piece about an older couple I knew many years ago. They had been through a lot – she had lost a lung through TB and told she couldn’t have children, and also they were very involved in CND [the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament] and had been on the original CND marches Aldermaston back in 1958 when fear about the world being destroyed by nuclear war was high. Yet they chose to have children – one of which was my boyfriend for a couple of years – and chose to have hope and to be involved in the lives of others. They very much acknowledged their own suffering and the suffering and pain of the world yet were so full of hope people were drawn to them.

A leprosy doctor [can’t remember the article but do remember what was said] said that from what he see we treat pain as an illness rather than the symptom of the illness. So we treat the pain, the outwards signs, but we do not name and treat the actual problem.

If the above bible verse is true then won’t it happen that the more we treat suffering rather than acknowledge it, surely slowly but surely we will lose endurance, will not gain a depth of character others want to emulate, and so will lose sight of hope?

If we need suffering to have hope then let us be willing to be open about our suffering, name it for what it is, and so grow in endurance and character so we can be a hope to the world!

Categories
hard outer shell made good

And God said it was Very Good [Gen 1:31]

This dog totally believe he is good, where he is is good and life is just good, especially if I am with him. Photographed by myself at Newborough beach, Anglesey October 2024

Renly believes that wherever I am is good and that he is good and that life is good. Did you know God is omnipresent which means God is with us all the time? So surely we could then at least believe that we are good – very good.

So Genesis 1:31 says God made humankind and said humankind is good; very satisfactory, our best, pleasant, interesting, better than anything else we’ve made. [paraphrase]

Meaning of “Good” thank to https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/good

very satisfactory, pleasant, interesting, better, best

But do we believe it? Do we even get taught it in many of the churches we’ve been to? Too often we get taught that we are sinful, that unless we accept Jesus [whatever that might really means] we are condemned to eternal damnation, and need to repent.

I will go back to the whole idea that sin is just missing God’s mark, which we all do, but isn’t about not being made good.

Sometimes, I think, good can appear a bit of a weak word. A bit like nice. A word that is used more when things are not bad but not great, which is why I’ve added in the Cambridge Dictionary definition.

I think God looks at us and when they say good they mean more on the amazing side of ok than the “just got through” side. How about if we looked at that verse and realised that when God says good it means that we are pleasant, interesting, very satisfactory, the best for the Creator of The Universe to want to hang out with. And not just when God first made Adam and Eve but when God made each and every one of us!

But too often we get caught with the things we’ve done wrong, the hurts we’ve endured, the traumas we’ve picked up, the intergenerational stuff that hasn’t been cleared, and we look at ourselves through all this hard outer shell stuff and we forget that we were made good.

I also think it is this hard outer shell that can make us do horrid hurtful things to ourselves and to others.

I think the amazing thing about healing and learning to trust and hang out with God – whether this is through QEC, Sozo, Freedom in Christ, other trauma healing stuff from wherever, hanging out with friends who see through our hard shell and enjoy being with us, or even a phrase or sentence that slides into our hearts and chips away at that shell – is that we do see that shell for what it is; something that kept us safe from stuff that was going on around us but it is not us. And we will be safer without it.

So as we see the shell for what it is and even get to chip away at it we learn to see ourselves as was originally intended; without the “good/bad” judgements we and others place on us; without those epigenetic tags our ancestors and ourselves picked up; without the mistakes we have made. We start to see ourselves as good, very satisfactory, interesting, pleasant to be with, the best.

And I for one think that if the Creator of the Universe thinks I am good then who am I to argue????

Categories
hiraeth lake ocean

A Stake in the Ground

Llyn Idwal October 2024 photographed by myself

I feel like I haven’t blogged for a while and don’t have much in my head for blogging because I’ve been writing. But then I got a little nudge to suggest that maybe I share on here what I’m writing around and about.

My main project – which definitely has become a project thanks to my lovely ladies at the writing group I run – is fictionalising my teenage-hood. It was quite dysfunctional and traumatic and has had some long lasting influences, but recently I did some QEC intergenerational healing and that seems to have given a firm foundation to be safe writing from.

Then in Write Club – an online group I meet with at 8am on a Wednesday morning – we were commissioned to write something around lineage and our lives. So this is what I’m going to share because I feel in sharing it I am putting a stake in the ground to say “this is who I really am and I’m going to stop chasing something I’m not”.

So here goes

It is inspired by Memet Murat Idan’s phrase ‘not every lake dreams to be an ocean’, but also of discovering that my Hireath is not just a physical place but a heart place. It is as much about belong with the authentic person God created me to be as it is being in the physical place I belong. And it is from this places of belonging with the authentic me that I feel i can write about the things where I was trying to be something non-authentic – like many of us go through in childhood.

The poem is called “I am a lake not an ocean“

I am a lake not an ocean

Though for years I railed against this.

I wanted to be an ocean with a capital O

Roll with the big ships, change courses of people’s lives

Kick arse with the big boys.

Be part of the noticeable team.

I despised the majestic mountains that hemmed me in

Rolled and pushed at the wild flower strewn banks that encased me.

Did not appreciate who I was and what I was called to be.

Now? Now I can look clearly.

I see where I end and where land begins

Appreciate the flora and the fauna of experience that surround me

Relish in the mountains that contain me.

Remain in place though storms blow and buffet my surface.

Let the pebbles chatter and churn on my shores without trying to hold them,

can trust the process of the flowing in and through.

As a lake I am always here, but now I know where here is.

The waterfalls flow in and the bubbling stream empties onward to the sea.

I glory in it as I watch the sky change above me.

I can contain the storms and sadnesses,

know when to release the glories and the joys.

A boat is tied to the wooden jetty that reaches into my waters

My children, family and friends are free to use it when they wish.

They can rest or row or glide or sail across my waters

Even if the waves rise high from unexpected breezes

I am always willing to keep them safe.

I maybe a lake but what happens within me eventually changes the oceans of the world

if I am willing to release the flow.

When I read this to The Write Club group I felt something shift in the atmosphere as if now I had spoken it into the world something had shifted. I am now the most contented little lake ever with no desire be anything else

Some references –

Hiraeth is a longing for one’s homeland, but it’s not mere homesickness. It’s an expression of the bond one feels with one’s home country when one is away from it. The only English word that comes close to translation would be longing/longingess https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-English-equivalent-to-the-Welsh-word-Hiraeth-I-come-from-a-Welsh-speaking-family-so-I-know-what-the-word-means-in-Welsh-but-I-am-stuck-for-an-appropriate-English-translation

Find out more about Memet Murat Idan on https://mehmetmuratildanresmiwebsitesi.wordpress.com/

Categories
content safe place

Contented Little Hermit Crab

From openverse – hermit crab

My QEC practitioner did a podcast for our group about being a contented little hermit, exploring how for most of us the more we QEC the more we enjoy being on our own. Yes we still like people. We still like to connect but it doesn’t rule our lives.

Anyway this got me thinking about shells.

How often as a quiet, maybe shy, maybe introverted, maybe a deep thinker, were you told how pleased everyone was when you “came out of your shell” as though being in your shell was a bad thing?

Why is it a bad thing? No one would tell this hermit crab or any other shellfish to “come out of its shell”. That’s is home, its safe place.

We had visitors this week and at times there were things that I found hard work in the conversations. I found that I am now in the habit of ANSing myself [calming my autonomic nervous system and staying in regulation and balance] rather than reacting. But I also realised that I was no longer biting my tongue so I didn’t say anything. I was going into my shell, my safe place.

Inside my safe place I could be quiet, let the conversation flow around me, not have any desire to react to what was being said. I had space to breathe, to really listen to what was not being said too – the energy, so that when I did respond it was, on the whole, light, breezy and safe.

So for anyone who is getting a hard time about not “coming out of their shell” often enough ignore those people. They are jealous that you have a safe place to be to view the world when they aren’t brave enough to slide inside their shell.

Our shells are our safe places, are places to catch breath, are place to connect with ourselves and with God, which is where we should be on a regular basis.

Go on! Be bold and connect with your inner contented little hermit crab.

https://giphy.com/embed/xUA7bh63SnoXTl66Na

via GIPHY