So I was going to write something Christmassy or even expand on some great things that 
were said at the Lapidus Conference last Saturday, but I’m doing this instead.
Today I went to see my spiritual director. I’ve been seeing him since about April this year, since we moved up here. It has been a great journey and he is awesome and I’m not 100% sure why everyone doesn’t have one. I think I might be spiritually directing the young swoman I see regularly but just calling it by a different name and without the training 🙂
So we chat about all sorts and I have an unloads about life, the universe and everything. It isn’t just how my “spiritual” life is going. My spiritual life is the whole of who I am and what I do. So anyway there we are chatting away about the Anglican prayer for forgiveness that I must say I quite like because it is short and sharp with not much time to try to list what I’ve done and then there is a prayer to say that God has forgiven me.
Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against thee
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved thee with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in thy will,
and walk in thy ways,
to the glory of thy Name. Amen.
For me it draws a line under the week and I can start the new week forgiven. We talked 
some more about how everything we do is ministry and the good things are gathering treasure for us in heaven.
Now here is the cool part – the good things we do whether we do them “unto the Lord” or just by having a chat to the people dog walking, smiling at the supermarket checkout, being normal and going about life in a kind and supportive manner – this adds up treasure for us in heaven. AND God remembers that. But when we do bad things God doesn’t take things out of our pile. The pile of treasure stays. But with the bad things we do, think say, or even the good things we forget to do because we are busy just getting on with life, God not just forgives but forgets. So when I say “Sorry I’ve done/not done that again” God says He doesn’t remember.
I feel like I’ve suddenly got this revelation about what Paul says about Grace. Grace isn’t getting what you don’t deserve, which I had been taught and always found hard because I think the stuff we had to go through in 2012/3 was not stuff we deserved but it definitely wasn’t Grace. It was God’s grace and mercy that got us through but we definitely didn’t deserve it. But what I really do not deserve is for my good things to be remembered and stored up as treasure and my bad things to be forgiven and forgotten. God doesn’t take a good thing out of the pot every time I do a bad thing. That is so cool. But also that does not make me want to do more wrong things so I get forgiven more, but actually gives me the confidence to keep piling up the treasures.
So even though I know I’ll get forgiven I don’t want to do more things that I’d be forgiven
for but actually want to do more things that will build up treasure in heaven. That is my Christmas message for me 🙂
Just recently I have been asked by a lovely young woman if I will be her “older Christian friend”. I was very touched and said “yes” and then didn’t think much more about it. God gave me a nudge and convicted me that I need to be seeing her regularly to do some proper discipleship stuff. So I prayed and I pondered and set a regular day and time that works for both of us. I felt God saying that instead of it just being random stuff we should do some Bible study and let the life stuff come from there. So last week we chatted about stuff. I suggested reading a certain book of the Bible but she suggested Romans. Oh my, thought I, I don’t like Romans, but I let it go and thought I’d go with it.
and it has been amazing. I have found something in those first 3 chapters I never saw before but it has totally deepened how I see God. it has been amazing. Now if I’d been bossy and decided I was the “older” one and so knew so much more where to start and how to do this I would have missed out on so much. Because I acquiesced I have grown in my relationship with God – just in less than a week! Blessed for acquiescing? Maybe 🙂
When I use to facilitate youth groups, if they were small enough, I would let them have as much autonomy as possible. At one group we ran it like the adult group where the teenagers would bring along food to share. To begin with parents would make the food or buy or be surprised that I didn’t make it all but the teenagers felt like it was their group because they shared the food they had made. It is where I have struggle with larger groups where the leaders have felt they should give to the teens and actually the teens have felt they should be given to.
actually I have got each actor writing their own piece from their character’s point of view. And again I am learning so much.
My opinions are mine and mine alone. They maybe right. They maybe wrong. But they are mine. But what surprised me in the last week is how people don’t seem to like it if my opinions differ from theirs. They seem to want me to change or something. Actually I’m not sure what they want because I cannot mind read and would not like to second guess others. One of the things that leads to stress, so the de-stress information says, is to try to second guess what others think.
to get that other side of my brain working, etc. I do understand that this was well meaning but what I was trying to say was that I was excited to find out something that I didn’t want to do. Goodness me there are enough things in the world to do and so I need to know what to use my time in doing. Also what “other side of my brain”? I must say I didn’t ask the question so cannot guess what was meant by it but my first instinct was to think they meant the creative side. And this is where for along time my dilemma came from as a writer. I did not think I was creative at all because I do find I get no joy from painting, pottery, and all those other forms of art. I love writing and I love cooking and I’m good at picking the colours to decorate a room with – though much prefer to then pay someone to do it for me! So because I couldn’t do the official art things I always thought I was not creative, that I had to get that creative side of my brain going. Not true. I am creative. With words I am very creative but I’m not keen on the painting/making stuff side of creativity 🙂
Palestine, that the British had a right to give the land to the Jews and when I voiced about the atrocities that were performed by the Jews on the Palestinians I was given short shrift. I tried to leave as quietly and politely as I could, voicing calmly why I was leaving as I went and got a real hard time from one of the course leaders and from a couple of the people present. Because I felt secure in my opinions, and not wanting to say theirs were wrong I was able to sleep well and calmly that night and have just been left, from both these times, wondering why people seem to not let others have their own opinion.
think differently to you and this is why” then maybe a dialogue could continue. Should I have stayed and not walked out of the course? I have pondered that. And actually at that moment in time walking out was the best thing as I was feeling upset by what was being said so wasn’t in a position to listen. I also knew, from the reaction I received to things I had said during the meeting and as I tried to leave, that I was not going to be able to openly discuss but would be told I was wrong.
would love others to feel the same way as I do but I have to learn that all I can do is show them my enthusiasm and then leave them to see what they think. I can tell them what I know but then respect how they react to it.
God. Christians on the other hand can get so fixated in Father God that they miss the nature side of things. Both Father and Mother are facets of God. And they are not the whole even when joined together.
Oh! I hope that’s not blasphemous. I’m not saying that God has been doing editing and changing and doesn’t know what’s going on. But I do think God works on growing things and changing and being in for the long haul. Even for what He is doing with me personally He has to be committed for the long haul and for things to edit and to change. I am not the same person I was when I first met with God 24 years ago. In fact I’m not the same person I was last week. Last week I was gathered with my Interweave friends and that always changes me. Yes one could say that because God is outside of time and space He knew where I’d be and how I’d been today but He did also give me free will to get to here as I chose. And I’m not sure if “here” is where He really wanted me or whether we are both just working with the material on offer at the moment 🙂
Oh you know I get really fed up of people whether Christian or not going on about how Christmas is a pagan festival. Ok so we know that Jesus probably wasn’t born on Christmas day but what the Celtic church did was show people who were celebrating the return of the sun Jesus within their festival. Also forgive me if I have posted on this before. I feel though it is a bit like the Cliff Richard song “
e greens” which meant that the church was going to be decorated ready for Christmas. Each part of what happened was explained. So Why do Christians put up evergreen Christmas trees and
because of the Pax Romana, but also the pagans had become disillusioned with their religion. They were finding that their sacrifices weren’t working and they were having to do more and more human sacrifices to “make things happen.” They were ripe and ready for something to come along to tell them that the ultimate sacrifice had been made. Now that is God being clever again 🙂
ch deeper
Interesting thing – I once heard a Jewish person say that they didn’t like the idea of becoming Christian because Christians don’t seem to want to celebrate. Jews find an excuse to celebrate a lot of the time but so often Christians can be quite dour about things. Ok so I’m not a party person but in my own quiet little way I am going to make this a festival to celebrate and enjoy. 🙂
So what do I think? Well for someone to win the majority of the voting public must have voted for them, even if by a small majority. I know after Brexit there was a lot of talk of the percentage that didn’t vote and that if they had voted then there would be no Brexit. Um! How was one to know what they would have voted for? The same here. I don’t know how many Americans voted yesterday and one can claim that if the rest had voted the result would have been different but would it? I really do hope we don’t get into that because that’s silly.
finding it easier to keep in touch, people knowing what the rest of the world is like, and also migration became easier. But it appears from these two times of voting that the majority of people who voted do not want that. They do not want to be multicultural. And actually when they see what the media is throwing at them why should they? If you live somewhere that has very few people of a different ethic mix to you but you watch the media and all you see is people of cultures and colours you do not know fighting and killing each other do you really want them living by you?
and killing, to stop integration of those of a different race, colour, religion, background. And in stopping that integration they are working on a basis of ethnic cleansing or assimilation.
But my hope and prayer is that this vote is accepted, that people are kind about it and that
open doors and walking through doors. I love it and have done loads about them. In fact I could do a whole 6 week series of workshops on doors and transitional places. And in fact this is what we were doing last night at the creative writing for well-being workshop I was facilitating. Then on of the participants gave me food for thought. I do love doing this sort of stuff because I only facilitate and encourage others to bring out what is within them and I am always learning too. I do not have it all sorted.
flying open for me with regard to running various workshops up here. Although actually there is a lot of stuff sitting in the pipeline and not actually having anything concrete on it but that’s ok. But all I have been thinking is “Wow how exciting. Open doors.” and being me I’m happy to rush through them cos that’s what I’m like.
Not every door leads somewhere but we all need to be bold enough to walk out of the confining space and try another door.
So when Jesus gets crucified the Bible says that Pilate put up a plaque above Jesus on the cross that said “King of the Jews” and the Jewish leaders who wanted him crucified for this very reason got really angry with Pilate and wanted him to take it down. I’d always thought all that was odd. The reason the Jewish leaders had bullied Pilate into crucifying Jesus was because he had declared himself as king, so they said and “they had no other king than Caesar” is what they said. So why get mad about what was there? But also why did Pilate have that plaque put up anyway?
special punishment in Roman times but was something they did quite a bit and then they would leave the crucified person there for ages as an example. A bit like we use to do over here and leave the condemned man hanging on the gibbet at the crossroads or in a cage on the side of the city walls, or heads on poles from Tower Bridge. That sort of thing. As an example. And to be a good example it was good to remind people what the crimes were that could get you crucified.
festival. Amazing!
enough. Today I was on local radio – blogged here 
be publishing a book about it all soon. Another person who not only found her passion as her children moved on but, like myself, the doors seemed to open then. And there is another friend of a similar age who is now off on mission journeys into India, to the Calais Jungle and on the streets of the town where she lives. Again like myself and my gardening friend she’s up and ready for it but like us both she is starting to make connections with the right people, move in the right circles, be bold enough to step out.
because now they can fly unhindered 🙂
So Sunday I was at the Open day for Gwrych Castle. The theme was Halloween, as it is at this time of the year. Something we can either accept, ignore or try to fight against. For me, as a Christian, I did get some flax about getting involved in something that was centred around Halloween. Did I think about that first of and pray hard? To be perfectly honest – No! I was so excited to be asked to go and do some story telling – something I love doing but haven’t had much opportunity to do ever. Yes I did read to my children when they were small and they loved it. I have read at times but not often enough. So for me the excitement of being asked over road anything deeper than that. :)
introduced to them because Mark, who heads up the Gwrych Trust likes people to know each other. Also these guys were planning on taking my photo at some point during my story telling to see if I had a ghost presence around me. So I chatted to them and asked what it was all about. Well it is all very spiritual and it gave me the opportunity to chat about being a Christian and the spirituality of that. Hey there’s a lot I don’t understand and who’s to say that all these spiritual things are evil?
judgemental Christian worse than the exploring spiritual person. And I’m just hoping God can do something with the words I was able to share.
