Born again – Aspirational Adventures

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.

Newborough Beach, Anglesey July 1st 2023 Photographed by myself

There is no better place than a windswept deserted beach to contemplate a theological conversation that I had with a friend a few days earlier.

We were tossing around the idea from John 3 where Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be “born again” if he wants to see the kingdom of heaven. This has become a bit of a “thing” in evangelical circles about having to be “born again” to be a “real Christian”. It has become another way of judging who is really in and who isn’t.

I do remember at my wedding a gate-crasher [longer story there] asking my father-in-law who was a devout Christian and who had encouraged many people to know and follow Jesus, if he was born again. My father-in-law was flustered at this question and because he hesitated got a short sermon from said gate-crasher about the importance of being “born again”.

The beach gets “born again” twice a day. The beach I walked on yesterday will not be the same as the beach today. I am always amazed with my local beach, that I walk on regularly, how often the gullies in it change, the stones gets shifted about, the flotsam and jetsam change regular. Born again beach!

“So as Ordinary Pilgrim, Fiona Koefoed-Jesperson, says in her latest Substack post, we should spend a lot of our time asking questions like “What if this bible story can be interpreted differently?” So running with the conversation earlier in the week and the beach I got to thinking about wondering what God wanted me to see in this story.

Perhaps it isn’t a one-off-prayer-event but a daily thing. Perhaps I need to let go of my earthly birth, the things that tie me to this land, the ways of and/or issues from my parents, the things I’ve picked up – good and bad, things I’ve accepted from teachers, preachers and friends. Maybe I need to put all earthly things away and not rely on them. Maybe every moment of every day I need to be “born again” in the Spirit.

Nicodemus asked “How can someone be born when they are old?” Or maybe that is “how can I let go of my habits and hurts and feelings and ways of being now I’m an adult who leads and teaches others?” As we get older we get more and more set in our ways of doing and being. More afraid of looking like we don’t really know. We believe we have to know what is right and what is wrong.

I am loving working at the after-school club/nursery. Not just because of what I learn from the children in my care but what I learn from the young adults I am working with. The majority of the staff are younger than my children but I go with an open heart wondering what I can learn each time I go in. One could say that I am “born again” in my way of working in childcare each day.

But I know too that the only way I can have this attitude is if I let go of some of those issues and attitudes of my own. I can only go in and be told by an 18 year old what to do if I am walking in the Spirit of God and have been healed of hurts and issues of needing to be in charge because I’m older.

John 3 also says that one can only see the Kingdom of God if one is born of the Spirit. I am sure lots of people on the beach yesterday didn’t see the Kingdom of God but I did -whether it was in the pounding waves, the moody clouds over the mountains or the expression of my dog when he had to paddle through a pool on the beach that came up to his belly. But I also know there are days when I don’t see the Kingdom of God when I’m walking because I am walking in my human self. I’m walking in the flesh.

So I have come to believe that this story isn’t something we should base a doctrine of in/out on but should be something we incorporate into our daily lives moment by moment because we do fluctuate between walking the Spirit and walking the flesh.

But the amazing thing about God is that they don’t see us as either in or out but as fallible humans who sometimes get it and sometimes don’t.

I don’t think Jesus was talking in a teachery “you must” voice when he said this to Nicodemus and whoever else was there. But he was saying “look I know you’ll forgot so why not as you notice you’re walking in your humanness remember that you are actually Spirit people [and I think that applies to all people whether those who admit to being Christian and those who don’t] and can be reborn daily. In fact you can be reborn moment by moment as and when you need.