Author: dianewoodrow

I married Ian in 2007. I have two grown up children, who I home schooled until they were 16. My son has just joined the army, my daughter has just moved to Cardiff.
I have a degree in History and Creative writing and a PGDip in using Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes.
Until Feb 2016 I lived in a beautiful part of England and now I live in a beautiful part of North Wales where my time is filled with welcoming Airbnb rental guests, running writing workshops, writing, serving in my local Welsh Anglican Church, going for long walks with my little dog, Renly, and drinking coffee and chatting with friends

Categories
Encounter forgiveness

Hagar

For me the beach alone early in the morning is a great place for me to encounter God.

The Bible version of the story of Hagar can be found in Genesis 16

At our last youth group we were looking at the names of God and by mistake I picked out the verses where Hagar runs away from Sarah but meets with God in a big way. She is the first person to say “God sees me” [Gen 16:13] Amazing.

Lots of this story we gloss over but it was horrendous and where I struggle to get my head round Abraham can be one of the founders of the Jewish, and subsequently Christian faith. Hagar was a slave. We don’t know her nationality so she could have been trafficked, stolen from her family, sold by her family. She has no past in the Bible. But she was there to be used to her mistress, Sarah. Hagar is probably very young, and probably a virgin. As we know in the story Sarah and Abraham couldn’t have any children so Sarah “gives” her maidservant to Abraham to have a child with. That is the line that is used. Do we ever think about it too much? Abraham had sex with Hagar, whether she wanted it or not. He raped her. I suspect he raped her more than once just to make sure she was pregnant. Hagar is loses her virginity to serve her owners. It is very similar to what went on in the slave plantations where the master would have sex with his slaves. Funny how we don’t often put this story in that context.

Anyway Hagar gives Sarah what she wanted and Sarah is angry that Hagar has a child and also we get the feeling that Abraham is fond of the child and possibly of this nubile young woman he has raped. Sarah is abusive to her maidservant, the mother of the child that would be classed as Sarah’s. In the end Hagar behaves like a lot of young girls I know would do, she runs away. And it says she leaves her baby some distance away to die. I wonder if she liked the boy? Can one love a child of rape? Some can. Some can’t. I am suspecting she would have been grateful if Ishmael had died. Maybe she believed that if he was no longer about she could get on with her life, forget she’d had a child. Thankfully God knew that she would always love that baby and it would always be apart of her. A baby once conceived is part of a woman forever whether it lives or dies, miscarries or is terminated, very few women every forget that baby.

So there is Hagar weeping under a tree hoping that her baby dies and she can then run away somewhere. And God appears. He reassures her. He shows unconditionally love. But here is what I find the most amazing – God tells Hagar to go back to her abusers. I know my reaction would have been to say “really! Like I love all the things you’ve said about my boy. I claim them. But to go back. I don’t think so”.

What struck me as I was doing a potted telling of this story to my youth group was that Hagar must have had to forgive Sarah and Abraham before she went back. Otherwise she would have gone back all full of anger and hate and resentment and that energy would have caused issues with her relationship with Sarah and Abraham. Hagar had to full forgive them. Then Ishmael could be a full son, could be fully loved, and could gain all that God has promised.

But I think I know how Hagar was able to forgive. Because she had had an encounter with God. Because she knew God loved her unconditionally. God loved her as a slave, a victim of rape, of abuse, of displacement. God saw her for all she really was and loved her unconditionally. I wonder if we can only fully forgive others once we know God fully sees us and all we are. God fully loves us and all we are.

Perhaps if each of us realised we were fully seen, fully loved by the Creator of the Universe then we would be able to fully see and fully love others and not be afraid of what they might do, say, take, react?

Categories
creation Love

God Made It With Love

As always the youth group I co-run blows me away every time. We haven’t met over the summer and I realised when we got together how much I’d missed them. The eldest is only 14 and yet their wisdom is amazing.

I’d decided we would do about the names of God. Unfortunately I hadn’t read the Bible verses I picked for them to read but they were so amazing and I learned so much. Firstly we read about where Hagar meets God [I’ll do a full piece on this in the next blog] which was complicated to explain but I got so much from it especially as it connected to the Forgiveness theme of the all-age service. But this was much more my revelation than the groups.

We then read Genesis 1:1 and I posed that old question of “what did God make the world with?”

One of the girls gave me an almost withering look and said “well God made the world with Love”. Wow! Of course! You know I had never thought of that before. All the world is connected with love and when we love each other and love the world all runs smoothly but when we fight, are greedy, want more, don’t trust and love each other, or when we abuse the natural resources of the world, then things are awful. Then there is suffering. It goes back to that “Why does God allow suffering?” Well God doesn’t. We do More to come on this soon.

This leads us to this bigger picture, to this need to be connected. To trusting and listening to God. God loves each of us unconditionally so that we can love each other unconditionally. Many of us haven’t received that unconditionally love from earthly sources so haven’t given it back. But if we get our heads round the God of the universe loving us unconditionally then we can love each other unconditionally. Or at least give it a try.

So with all this buzzing in my head I then read this blog by Dave Andrews. Someone I met many years ago in passing at Cross Rhythms festivals. Another connecting connection. In this post he talks about how as he has got older he has let go of doctrines and now just accepts that God is love, God loves unconditionally, and we are to do the same.

Well it seems to me, Dave, that at least some young Christians have reached that point in their teens rather than having to wait till we got into our 60s. To me this gives hope for the Church, as in big time Church with capital C, and God moving within and without.

As I was saying to someone the other day “something has to change and it has to come from those in their teens and 20’s”. Well maybe it is but I need to be connected and need to see the bigger picture so I don’t miss it?

Categories
connecting God

Connected

Connected cobwebs. Photographed by myself Sept 2023

I’ve been reading about the Red Crescent and the Red Cross lurching from disaster to disaster, appealing for donations and funding; Greek fires, Greek floods, dams bursting in Libya causing horrendous flooding, on-going strife in various African countries. And then there’s the fires in the West of the USA, floods in the South-East, on-going drug smuggling in various South American countries. Add in the migrant crisis – fear of those who leave whether from wars, famines, or for economic reasons and the fears of those who live in the countries the migrants are trying to reach. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But we live in a world that is connected. The whole chaos theory of if something happens in one part of the world it can majorly effect something in another part of the world. The migrant crisis is a prime example of this – wars and famines often in countries we have never heard of affect us here not just with people coming to try to find safety but with commodities too.

So we need to be seeing the bigger picture not just lurch from crisis to crisis, not just try to find resources for X which takes it way from Y, not just giving time this when that means we can’t give to that. We need to know what the big picture is. But, and I know I’ve said this before, we need to slow down. We need to listen, need to really listen – to our world, to God, to stop trying to logically rationalise.

But how?

I think it is by connecting. Connecting with others. Connecting with God. Connecting with the world. When we lurch from one thing to another, one crisis, one trauma, one anxiety, we lose connection. We lose how we fit into the bigger picture.

As I’ve often said I don’t go to regular church any more, but I do feel connected with God and a group of Christian friends, and with the online things that are out there. But last Sunday I went to a church service. It was the sort of thing I like; for all ages but not cheesy; a deep message; time to chat with others about the message and other things; even though it was led by the vicar he did not portray himself as the one with the answers. It did make me realise I do need, occasionally, to connect with others, to hear other people, to think. But also what happened within connecting there was that the things in the all-age service connected into what we were doing in the youth service which followed.

But I think the reason it “worked” was because I did not go along on a superficial level, did not think I was better/more spiritual/more knowledgeable than others – both in the service and in the youth group. But I went along want to connect, wanting to learn, wanting to grow, wanting more than. And because I wanted “more than” I got it.

Going back to thinking about the bigger picture and want to stop lurching from one thing to another – I wonder how often we really want to know more. Whether when we watch the news, see newsfeeds, or even read blogs about all sorts, do we really want to learn, to grow, to get “more than”, or whether we come with our ready made answers that we will then trot out to others whether they want to hear them or not?

I think to connect we need to go in with an attitude of wanting to gain from others as well as give. Then I think we might get a glimpse of the bigger picture of what God is up to in our world.

Categories
Contentment Trust God

It Ain’t What You Think It’s the Way That You Think it

[misquote from Bananarama & Fun Boy Three’s It Ain’t What You Do, It’s The Way That You Do It]

Sunrise over Conwy beach photographed by myself

I haven’t had time to post for a while. I’m also still working on some thoughts to add to series I was starting following on from my friend’s visit. So far I’ve got Hope and Free Will and a drafted post looking at Why Do We Allow Suffering? but I’ve not had time to fully get my thoughts in order as this week has been really busy. In fact last week was busy too.

But this got me thinking about how we look at things. I can be really grumpy that I didn’t get a day off last week and worked more hours than I was rotated in for and that this week has gone the same, or I can accept that this is just the way things are at this moment in time. I can look at my diary and see that there isn’t much down time and feel grouchy about that or I can enjoy each day as it comes and feel grateful for the spaces I do have. Not a false push through sort of gratitude where we try to be grateful for things but a deep into my heart gratitude that I don’t just mean with my head and my will but that I can feel through my whole body.

Now I see these feelings flip flop throughout the day. So I have moments when I feel that true deep gratitude and then I feel lighter, the children I’m working with are easier to deal with. But then being human I can then feel just fed up that I’m still at work and wish these children would go home, feel my legs and eyes aching, and then, guess what? The children pick up that energy and are harder to be with. It is my energy that changes not just my own body but those around me.

I don’t want to just be working towards the coming fortnight when I shall be on holiday but want to enjoy each day as it is. So to add to those lines

It ain’t what you feel, it’s the way that you feel it

It ain’t what you think, it’s the way that you think it

It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it

It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do.

Thank you to – Bananarama and Fun Boy Three

I know I won’t get this right every time but I will try. So today, even though I am doing twice as many hours at work and can’t have time write as much as I’d like, enjoy my dog, etc, etc I will be grateful for this day, this week, this time God has given me and enjoy it to the full rather than wishing it was something else and I was doing something else.

Because “This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it” Psalm 118:24 rather than bemoaning what we don’t have.

Categories
free will Mystery

Free Will

“I’m just looking, Mum” – my dog on the beach 6th September 2023 Photographed by myself

[This is the second of some blogs following on from discussions with a friend who stayed with us over the last weekend. She is exploring her faith and asking those “awkward” questions]

One of those things that comes up in those discussions about God is free will. As in “these things happen because God gave us free will” . But sometimes one does ask why!

I work at a local after-school club and yesterday was really struck by the meaning of “free-will”. It was the first day back and I wanted to give the children ownership of their after-school club so I came up with some great ideas. Did they want to do them? No! All they wanted to do was play hide and seek in the confide space of the after-school club room [a converted double garage] with very limited hiding spaces. All worked very well until they started to fight about who could hide where, who was actually counting, etc, etc. as I put away all my games I’d got out for them.

But it made me think of God and how in the Creation myth God gives humankind this beautiful garden but humankind goes “no I want to find out about good and evil”. Then later on God gives some suggestion on how to live a long, peaceful life – take the 7th day as a full on rest day, take the 7th year as a full on rest year, trust that you will always have enough, believe God will supply in the right timing.

So mankind thinks that really that 7th day is to do some extra-curricular things [sports, church, shopping, etc]. Of course you can’t really not do anything for a whole year because then you’d starve/not have enough so humankind does not give the land a rest or themselves. And then we come down to the “enough”. Humankind then decides they don’t have enough land, enough food, enough, possessions, etc and so some take more than they need. In fact most of us have more than we need or will ever use but we think we’re ok because we can point to others that have even more again. But there are so many in the world who do not have enough. And that’s not God’s fault. That is our greed, fear, and not trusting God.

So like the children in my after-school club who did have amazing things they could be doing, we reject the good because we think we know best and then we fight with each other when things don’t work out. And of course with my friend in her explorations we blame God for all that. Doh!

Categories
hope Mystery

Hope!

Conwy Beach, 7.10am 6th Sept 2023. Photographed by myself

[This is the first of some more following on from discussions with a friend who stayed with us over the last weekend. She is exploring her faith and asking those “awkward” questions]

I love a good sunrise. It always fills me with hope for the day ahead. Here on this deserted beach yesterday, even though there was a busy day ahead I was filled with hope.

Hope in what you may ask. Well just hope of a great big God, of a great big world, that all my needs would be provided for the day, that I would not walk alone, just hope

I was reading Creed: reexamined beliefs just now. In this Fiona talks about whether what we believe really does bring wholeness to us and to the world. The part that jumped out at me was the bit about Hope and I will requote her quote

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”

Barbarba Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

As Christians what do we hope for? I mean not what do we say we hope for but what do we really hope for? Does what come out of our mouths echo what is in our hearts?

Things like do we really believe in going to be with God when we die? Do we really believe God is with us in all that we do? Do we really know we can call on the Holy Spirit whenever and they will be there?

It seems to me that there are a lot of people who still would say they are Christians who don’t go to church but are exploring the things they were brought up with. Things just don’t “work” for them. For instance how can God be a God of love if certain denominations tell us to hate people who are not heterosexual, not living the lives from that denominations view point. How can the Holy Spirit be there to guide us if we look so glum, worry about death so much, are anxious, are fearful, greedy, don’t ask for help? Etc etc.

If we aren’t living the basics – God, as in the whole full Triune God, is love, loves us unconditionally, and is there for us always – do we really believe what we then try to tell others?

Categories
success writing

Coal Penguin

Today is a bit of a change to my usual blogging.

I was reading a piece and in it it said how we should share our achievements, which is something I think, especially as Brits, we are reluctant to do.

Most of have been brought up not to boast, to be careful we aren’t too proud [“too” like “enough” is one of those non-quantifiable words], “pride comes before a fall”, “no one will like you if they think you’re a smart arse”, add in your own phrases that have held you back in sharing your own achievements.

I don’t think writers are plagued by the imposter monster any more than many people and professions out there. We just write about it more 🙂

Generally I slide my writing on to my “My Writing” page on this site, hoping or fearing, that someone will come across them. But, today in the spirit of “sharing my successes” I have decided to share it here.

Arabel, an art student, sent out a group email to various writers asking if they would like to write something about one of the pieces of carved coal she was using in her degree show. I think she was very brave because even without knowing what she was getting, once each of us writers said we wanted to do a piece about a certain piece of coal she marked it as “taken” without even knowing what would be written. All the pieces are at a high standard but it was still a brave move I felt. She also offered payment.

I think this piece inspired by a penguin carved from coal entitled The Parent We All With For But Often Fail To Be could be the first time I’ve been paid to actually write a piece. Yes I have won competitions and just received complimentary book/booklets for the win, and of course have published my own books – “The Little Yellow Boat” and, my self-published poetry book, “Inspirations From Walking In North Wales“, but to be paid for a 200 word piece is something I feel should not go unnoticed.

Although to be honest, I have found this post very hard to write and it has taken a few days to get it together. Sharing one’s successes is not the easiest thing to do.

Categories
not in a box questioning

A Questioning Faith

Taken from https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-question-mark-galaxy-photo on 27th August 2023

In The Colour Green I was saying how I was remembering my early days of being a Christian, 30+ years ago, and how I have always had a questioning faith. I thought this photo from the James Webb space telescope was a good opening.

Actually space is a great place to go for a questioning faith. As is the deep ocean. Both are full of mysteries we cannot fathom. Much like the colour green and all its different hues.

It makes me wonder why people have tried so hard over the centuries to put Christianity, and even many other faiths, into a closed container. Where is the mystery in that?

If God can fit into a box I am capable of making then I’m not interested. I want to lean on, worship, and trust, a being that is beyond my understanding, that is mysterious, unfathomable, uncontainable. This means I have to look at what I know about God and find out more. Each time God fits into a box I want more and more and more.

I think its why I do love being by the sea or up a small mountain [climbing a big mountain is a bit beyond me!!] because it is always changing, always showing me something I haven’t seen before – if I choose to look.

I find church tries to contain God, tries to make God a him, a being we can tell people and a tangible way. I think that’s why I struggle to go. With the youth group I co-run I am always trying to get them to push their boundaries and understanding, always to question what they think they know.

One of my big hopes, as I explore all these different online people looking at “deconstructing their faith”, is that they don’t then just find a different box to put God in. But instead let God loose so when people ask us why we follow God we don’t give some glib answer that we feel we ought to say, but, as I said to a friend recently – I don’t know why things I don’t like happen, bad things, deaths, suicides, wars, sickness, but I do know that through it all I can lean on God who loves me unconditionally. They might not stop these things from happening to and around me but they are there to hold me, to love me, and for me to rail at. And bit by bit I am learning to trust and be and just stay at peace when the storms do crash around me.

Though as we know from my post from 13th August I would prefer these storms to happen on dry land and NOT when I am in a boat!!!

I’d like to finish with a Chris Tomlinson song that sums up God for me and why I hang in there.

Categories
freedom Rich Mullins

And The Colour Green

I realised the other day, after reading a book about walking mindfully, that this is what I do most mornings. Yes it is a mix of pondering the day a head, chatting with other dog walkers, etc but also I am aware of God, nature, the Universe. And the words from Rich Mullins The Color Green always come into my head. I think it just says the amazingness of God and the complexity of the colour green. The above pictures of of various beautiful places in and around where I live and to me it is always the amazingness of the different greens. And God made all of them. Then it opens up to me how different we all are and how amazingly we are all made and how diverse. But also how if we show our true depth of God colours without our traumas, hurts, fears and needing to protect ourselves, how beautifully we would all look together, like the different colours green.

I decided google the song so I could listen to it again – as I seem to be listening to music again after a period of silence whilst I worked, played, etc. Listening to the song took me back to my early days of following Jesus – starting in 1992 and onwards. I had always been into music and used to organise venues for up and coming bands in my area so once I got into Jesus and God someone pointed me towards contemporary Christian music and Cross Rhythms.

Amazing how one song could lead to so many memories. I wonder if you are as old as me and if you know this song. If so I wonder where it takes you as you listen. What other songs do this for you?

Rich Mullins was an amazing influence in my Christian life. He challenged ideas that my small town, small charismatic church were teaching me. He was evangelistic, converted to Catholicism, worked with Native Americans, but then also was killed in a car accident because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

From him and many others that I came across via Cross Rhythms and others in the contemporary Christian circles I have also been challenging the things I am taught not just from the church pulpit, but within the books I read – both those that identify as Christian and those that don’t, the music I listen to, the conversations I hear around me, and even this relatively new concept of deconstruction one’s Christian faith. I’m not sure I’ve ever had one set in stone to deconstruct thanks to those like Rich Mullins, Cross Rhythms, Greenbelt and others. And that makes me so glad.

Categories
Spoiling words

Its not the words but how you interpret them

Happy spoilt dog at Newborough beach, Anglesey, August 2023 photographed by myself

We have diverse TV habits but from them it is interesting what God can say to my husband and I.

We were watching Scandi crime drama, Beck, which used the overused story line of the white girl being bad because her parents were fundamental Christians who used the bible verse “spared the rod and spoil the child” [a misquote of Proverbs 13:24] as their disciplining of their strong willed child. As always with these story lines it involved the child being punished severely. Though I think many of us have been brought up this way. Not necessarily physical beatings but lots of emotional withdrawals if we did not behave. In fact I notice myself saying to some of the children I work with “if you don’t do x [behave as I would like] you won’t get x [something you like]” as a way of encouraging what we, as adults, have decided is acceptable behaviour. It isn’t as extreme as in the Beck story line but it does work along the lines of not spoiling the children – as if spoiling is a wrong thing.

We also were watching “Dogs behaving [very] badly” and noticed that the dog behaviouralist encourages the dogs to be calmer and more fun to be around via a series of treats until those treats are not needed. Spoiling the dogs??? Maybe!

But here’s the thing – what if we’ve put the wrong emphasis on the wording. So the phrase “spare the rod and spoil the child” has more often than not been used, as in the episode of Beck, to say that one must reprimand challenging behaviour in our children, often leading to a spank [illegal now in Wales] or some other form of discipline, and if the parent does not discipline their child properly then their child will grow up spoilt and being spoilt is not a good thing.

But what if it means that a parent should “spare”, as in not use a form of discipline, but instead spoil their child with love and attention, of understanding and care. Not material things but time, understanding, being there for them, accepting them as they are, loving them unconditionally.

The last paragraph sounds more like how a God of love would be to their children than one who grinds their children into submission and compliance.

As with the dog behaviouralist man, he takes dogs that are so unruly their owners are thinking of getting rid of them, and via love, understanding, lots of treats, and never any smacking or punishing, takes these dogs and turns them around to be wonderfully content, loved, well-behaved dogs. Spoiling the dogs does not make them selfish, greedy, needy. They were those things beforehand. Spoiling the dogs makes them feel more loved, more secure, more wanting to be pet dogs.

With many things I think we need to be aware of how we put written words together and the emphasis we place on them, whether this is the Bible, emails, books, text messages, etc.

I just wonder how different all of us would be if we were “spared the rod” [as in not punished] but were spoilt a bit. Not just as people in and of ourselves but I do wonder how differently we would be towards God if we knew that God always spared us from punishment and just wanted to spoil us.