being – Aspirational Adventures

A cafe somewhere in the UK. Photographed by myself sometime in 2024

A group of us were talking about our relationship with God and someone had heard a couple of stories from nuns who say that they are so encouraged to think of other people and other people’s needs that they forget that they have a personal relationship with God.

So does that mean we need to be self-centred to have a relationship personal relationship with God?

Well, as I’ve explored before, it does say that we are to “love our neighbour as ourselves” which, I believe, means that we can only love our neighbour as much as we can love ourselves. We can really only give to others what we can give to ourselves. I know many who would say that you see people doing good things for others who are then hard on themselves. But my question would be, firstly, why are they hard on themselves? And also wonder what their motive for being kind to others is?

For some people, and I know because I’ve been there, we are kind to others in the hope that they will like us more, will be kind back to us, others will think we are good people when deep down we know we’re not. For others, like the nuns, they have been taught to value others higher than themselves, even though this isn’t what God is saying – possibly isn’t walking in “The way, the truth and the life”

I got a great example of how we should be with God from my dog. I’d done some housework and was taking a break to finish a book I’d been reading. So I gave him a shout and said I was going up to lie on the bed and read. Well you have never seen anything so excited. He bounded up the stairs, leapt on to the bed, jumped on me when I sat down, and the curled himself up between my legs and was asleep snoring gently perfectly surrounded by me.

Now I think that is what God wants for us, for us to be excited when God says “let’s go hang out together and do nothing”. We should then be rushing to be in that place on God’s lap and then we can just let go of what is going on in our world, trust that God has it covered, whatever else God might be up to. We don’t need to talk to God, ask for things, do things. We just need to contentedly lie with God just like my little dog does with me .

As those who know my dog will know that he is at his most content when he is with me. My husband says if I go out without the dog then he’ll stand and look at the back door and he has to really encourage him to come upstairs and wait somewhere more comfy.

To have this personal relationship with God we need to remember that God doesn’t go out without us, is always there, and for a lot of the time really does just want us to snuggle close and enjoy being together.

Being Really Human

Photographed by me on Christmas Day 2023

This is a follow on from yesterday’s post on how Deborah and Jael were most powerful by being in situ and not trying to fill their day with many things. Yet this is so often what we do even as Christians.

We pray as an activity rather than as a just being. But often if we try the just being we then need to tell someone about that. Or to fill in time we read a book. It becomes another activity. We got to church. We join a club. We meet with others. We do things all the time. We rarely just sit about “wasting time”.

Like I said Jael could have been somewhere else being busy but instead I like to think she was at the entrance to her tent maybe watching the battle unfurl in the valley below. She wasn’t waiting for God to use her, which I think we can often be guilty of, but she was just being.

I have been amazed at how many fitness apps and organisational apps and books are being advertised as something to “fit into your busy life” as though being busy is the important bit. And not being busy is wasting time. When we see someone they are “what have you been up to?” and rarely ask “how are you?” And even if they do ask “how are you?” that is quickly followed by “what have you been doing?” And a young friend of mine once showed me how people ask younger people “What have you been up to?” and even “what have you done at school/college/exams are you taking/doing in your future?” and rarely ask them how they are leading to that conviction that doing nothing is not a good thing.

As you know I’ve been challenged on this recently and I decided to do some QEC around it. Turns out that, for me, and I suspect for others, I worry about what other people will think. I feel that to justify my existence I should be doing something., that I should not be wasting my time and that I should be productive. So I get busy busy busy and then don’t have time for what really matters – being me.

I am now in my 6th decade and there are those things that pull to say “time is running out” and that one should “do something with one’s life“. Now Jael was just being by her tent and because of that God could use her. She may have been young. She may have been old. But she was there. And I don’t think she was sitting there going “God use me” or even bargaining with God that if she learned how to be then God could use her.

Also I am learning if I am not busy doing then I have time to think. Not think about what I can do but just ponder life. I probably pray more as a chatting with God thing than an activity. It is a longer process. I also read a lot more which gives me more things to think about.

We live in a world, whether sacred or secular, that tells us we should be doing. And not just doing but being seen to be doing. We need to have something to tell people. But I am finding the more that I am just being the more I can listen to people because I’m not tired, not stressed, not wondering what I should be doing to fill my time. It means I have time to walk the extra round of the park to find out how someone is, time to go for coffee, time to listen to my husband, my children, my friends, to God.

I don’t know if I’ll even be expected to drive a metaphorical tent peg through someone’s head [whatever that means in 21st Century North Wales terms] but I do hope I am sitting by my tent to do whatever God wants of me if God ever does. And I also hope that if I spend the rest of my life hanging out by my tent and am never used I will also known and trust I have been in the right place.