Tag: dogs

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lugnasa sow/reap

Lugnasa

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A random selection of photographs over the last year or so

Lughnasa is the Celtic festival to mark the beginning of harvest and time of gathering in. 

One could look at Lughnasa a bit like the end of a year review, a look at what was and what happened and seeing what comes next. For me this works because I don’t feel any pressure like one can get with New year’s eve and all that. And no one is telling me I “should” be doing it 🙂

Here’s a bit more about Lughnasa

Lughnasa is a time to gather in and to reap what has been sown. The other side of the wheel from Lughnasa is Imbolc, February 1st, when the very first signs of spring started to rumble awake on the earth. In these last six months, we have seen a cycle of flourishing and fecundity, both around us and perhaps also within. 

It is sometimes thought of as the time of “first fruits” and is when the grain is gathered in. One of the central rituals for this feast is cutting the first corn and making it into a loaf for the Mass at church on August 1st or 2nd. In the Hebrides in Scotland, it is recorded that families would celebrate Lughnasa on August 15th in connection with the feast of the Assumption of Mary. Each family member would take a piece of the bread and walk sunwise around the festival fire and sing a song to Mary. 

The other liturgical connection is the Feast of the Transfiguration on August 6th, tying Lughnasa with the appearance of Christ in glory to Peter, James, and John on the mountain. The Apostles are filled with an ecstasy from which they do not want to awaken. In some Christian traditions, the interpretation of the text is that rather than Christ changing, the eyes of the Apostles were opened so they could see him in his true form. 

Thank you to Abbey of the Arts for this. It can be found on their regular emails.

This opening from Abbey of the Arts email got me thinking – what do I have to gather in, and more importantly what have I sown over the past year.

Number one, in both sowing and reaping, I would say is our little Willow. She came to us in November – a week before my mum’s husband’s funeral – a crazy bundle of nervous snapping energy. She looked as if she’d been loved but not walked and not given boundaries, and possibly beaten. She appeared lacked confidence and being able to trust a human. Over the last 9 months I have walked her miles, persevered with putting in boundaries – sometimes not helped by Renly our old dog who seems to have decided this is an excuse to bring out his inner teenager!! Willow now has muscles in her legs and a trim waist from all the running she does. She plays in the park with other dogs like a normal 3 year old pup. Her recall is verging on excellent. Even when we encountered a horse on the beach the other day [Willow’s first] she came to me reasonably quickly and did stay close to me the whole time she was barking. Even the rider said she was impressed how quickly Willow responded to me. Yes she still barks when the door bell rings, but then so does Renly. But Willow will then run to the living room door and jumps up to be shut in there whilst I deal with the postman. She no longer thinks she needs to protect me from allcomers. She does allow friends of ours that she knows to come and visit but is still uncertain about visitors she hasn’t met before, and still barks hysterically at my writing group. But I think I am reaching a point with Willow that I am reaping what I sowed.

Other things I will list or this will be a huge post. These are in no particular order of importance

  • I have sown regular postings on Substack especially encouraged by the lovely MJ Polk of Stories From the Jukebox prompts, which have included me being a featured writer some weeks and even getting to pick a song one week [first of many there] I have read negative comments about Substack in some corners but I have found a group I have sown into to have helped me reap support and are a group of really encouraging writers who love my work and I love theirs. Win-win.
  • Over the last couple of years I have been sowing into a local church youth group via discussion groups, hanging out on the beach and being me with them. I am reaping friendships from that as well as a deeper trust between myself and the newer clergy there making church a joy to attend.
  • 8 months my diary entry says I would not drive again. Into this time I sowed prayers for healing, QECing around good sight, and some positive thought. This led me to had my eyes rechecked and I am back driving again, which is so lovely, especially during the really hot weather when I could take the dogs to the beach at 6am so they could run before it got too hot, and so I could get in a good walk too before hibernating.
  • I have been sowing into this lovely home we bought 10 years ago and this year it was the turn of the hall and stairwells. It got off to a shakey start when I was let down by the friend of a friend who started the work back in February but then had issues of his own so never finished. After taking a breath a neighbour told me of other decorators and now I have a glorious entrance to my home. Kitchen comes next!!!
  • I love sowing into creatives that I know and am proud to say that most of the art work in my house comes from people I know
  • I have been sowing into my continuing healing journey for years now. This has made me more self-aware when I’ve overreacted. Though doing a mix of QEC and healing in Christ and prayer and forgiveness I am reaping the rewards. I feel more at peace with myself and others, feel safe and not needing to hold control, and have a deeper love of my own company and just hanging out with me – oh and my dogs.
  • I also learned that I can’t sow into everything. I jumped in to a role with an organisation, my enthusiastic labrador tail wagging, only to discovered this was not the place I was meant to be. The joy of being able to say “I’ve made a mistake” and to step away was amazing. I know it will stop me leaping in like that again. Definitely something I’ve reaped from doing the work on myself I’ve done.
  • Also I reaped, from making this mistake, from the regular Substack posts and from doing the healing work, is that my memoir project is coming together slowly and in a way I would never have imagined when I started on it a couple of years ago.

So this is a snapshot of the things I feel I’m harvesting. I’m sure there are more. It would be interesting to hear from yours at this mid point in the year rather than wait till 31st December 🙂

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psalm trust

All About Trust

Those who know you, LORD, will trust you;

Psalm 9 shared by Bible Society’s Lent readings

Renly and Willow assisting with my writing!!

I have noticed the more our new rescue dog, Willow, hangs out with us the more she trusts us. But it isn’t just that. The more she hangs out with our old dog Renly, the better they get on with each other. We are all getting to know each other and learning to trust each other.

With Willow too, the more often we go round the park the more she gets to know it and the regular people and dogs who walk there and so the more she is comfortable and trusting there. There is also the thing that the more she trusts me on a walk the more she trusts where I take her.

It is the same with God. The more we hang out with God the more we learn to trust God and the safer we are. I can’t remember who it was, maybe Henri Nouwen, who said that we need to get to know God in the calm times of our lives then we can trust God in the rough times.

Fourteen years ago now we went through a very tempestuous time and I know if I hadn’t built up my hanging out time with God before then, spent time devouring my Bible, praying, worshiping, reading about God, then I know I would not have been able to trust God during that time. Like Willow I build up my “hanging out getting to know God” time and knew then that I was safe with God wherever.

Again it is not about throwing requests at God, not about being busy doing things with God, but it is hanging out with God and just “doing life” with God, which is how the trust is built up.

[Though back on the Willow front – it is now 4.30pm and she still doesn’t quite trust that I will remember to feed her and Renly, which just goes to show we all need to work on trust 🙂 ]

this is the first stage of looking longingly
but by this one she’s talking to me

Categories
prayer Trust God

LET GO and Let God!

I’ve been staying in County Durham, UK for a few days helping friends clear out their loft as they prepare to move. It also meant staying with my little dog’s bestest friend ever. These two dogs have loved each other since they were puppies. Even if they go over a year without seeing each other they greet each other like long lost friends and just want to hang out together. This does mean that they want to get up early to be together all day so for four mornings I was getting a gentle knock on the door by Djola asking if Renly could come out to play. Of course I indulged and we were walking at 6am most mornings.

Well one morning we were walking down the path when I could hear mooing. A load of bullocks/heifers/young cows had broken out of their field and were moodling about in the wood beneath the path. Some were starting to attempt the climb up from the woods to the path we were on. Anyway I prayed and asked God is they could sort out these cows so it was safe for us when we came back.

Half an hour later we’re on our return journey and 5 cows, one a very large black one, were on the path. So I prayed again! As I walked back towards the village the cows stayed in front of us. I was concerned because I was walking them towards the village and the road. But I also had two dogs with me, and because the footpath is right by my friend’s house I didn’t have leads for either dog!

So I’m praying but also doing what may of us often do when we pray, thinking through solutions that I could do. Interesting how we do that – say we are handing problems to the God who created the WHOLE Universe but then spend lots of headspace and energy trying to think what we could do. Not really handing it over, is it?

The cows are almost at the turning to the track behind my friend’s house when this man appears round the corner with his dog and phone to his ear. He starts to herd the cows back in my direction. I grab both dogs so none of the animals, cows or dogs, get spooked. The cows give us a wide berth and skitter back to where they came from.

The man says “I’ve just phoned the farmer” and we have a chat about cows and that they all seem to be out and he says they’ve probably broken down the fence again.

When we went out in the afternoon for a walk there was no sign of the cows. Problem fully sorted. That local man and his phone were the answers to my prayers.

Simple.

Hopefully that will help me learn to let go totally when I do pray, not hold on a wee bit and see what I can do, and allow God to find the answers as they know best.

Bullocks escaped

Prayer answered

God is amazing

Maybe not quite a haiku but it’ll do!

Categories
2020 vision apocalyptic

Apocalyptic Times

Llyn Crafnant 3rd March 2024 photographed by myself

Yes apocalyptic can look as much like a sun-kissed Welsh llyn [lake] as it can those “end of the world” movies some of us love to watch.

Do you get it sometimes when you’re listening to something and someone says something and you want to jump up and down and tell the world? This is my space to tell the world – or at least you my dear subscribers. Some posts I really really hope get out there to loads of people and some I’m a bit embarrassed by and some, like this one, I am writing because I cannot contain what is going on in my head and cannot yet find a way of bringing it up when out dog walking 🙂

I was listening to Drew Jackson [yes I have been banging on about Drew and the podcast on Godspace but, for me, it has been amazing]. There is one point, in talking about his poetry that he calls it apocalyptic, and then says that we are living in apocalyptic times. He then explains that, for him, apocalyptic times mean “unveiling times” and not so much as we’ve come to think of them as “end of the world as we know it times” – though it is a bit like that too. But it is much more about things, structures, being unveiled.

I was so excited because I had written around this from 2020 onwards in various forms, and keep saying to my husband when another “unveiling” of something corrupt comes on the news that, I think, the whole of the 2020s – until the end of 2029 – will be a time of unveiling, a time of relooking at things and saying “that’s not right” – governments, health care, education, racism, sexism, gender issues, climate change, nature issues, homelessness, poverty, materialism, the whole Israel/Palestine, Russia/Ukraine, and more that are not coming to mind at the moment. And more that I’m sure you can name.

This is what the book of Revelation talks about, what Jesus talked about when he said about the end times. It may not mean the world is going to end and we will all go off to heaven, or wherever. It means, as Drew said, apocalyptic times are times of unveiling, times of revealing what’s wrong in our systems. A time to change.

At the event I was at last week one of the women speaking said about how things are changing with regard to clairvoyants and how the understanding of spirituality is changing. She said how she believed that the control of religious structures was lifting and people are starting to explore different ways of being. All the way through that day there was an understanding that people are starting to realise that we buzz with energy, and that we do affect others by our energy and other people’s energy affects us. A lot of QEC is about changing your energy as you are healed from your traumas.

Again these things are unveilings, are changes, are seeing things that were there all along but were hidden. As Christians we need to make sure we don’t stay in our safe boxes but that we get rebellious, get out there and explore what is being unveiled. Get out there and really live in these apocalyptic times without fear. I believe it is what God talks of in the Bible but there has been a fear about it. Instead we need to view it as exciting, as change, as seeing things differently.

Also the reason for the above photo is that the sun still shines, the lakes are still beautiful, families still go out and walk their dogs. Things being unveiled does not mean the end but the in-between space before we go into a new beginning.

But again for me personally the most exciting thing from all this was that Drew was saying what I had been thinking. So if he is and I am and things on Christine’s Liturgical Rebels podcasts are saying things then … let’s be awake and aware and responsive.

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.

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stronger together

Stronger Together

My dog and my son&daugher-in-law’s dog thinking that if they if they stand together begging they will do better. Who can resist those 4 beautiful eyes?

Google “Stronger Together” and you get all sorts; from the Manic Street Preacher’s 2016 Wales football song to the UK Labour party’s website, to a campaign to stop modern slavery, to the NHS, to supporting people with mental health issues. Stronger Together is very much a thing, a great tagline, an important way of being. Yet why does so much in Christianity talk about giving it to God, of asking God to sort it, to almost stepping back and letting God?

Now I know there are songs and verses around casting your burdens on to Jesus, praying to God about your problems, etc. But I don’t think that means we’re meant to just hope that God sorts it all out. I think we’re meant to be in this together.

As I’ve worked my way through stuff with QEC, even though it isn’t a God centred program, it has led me closer to sorting my stuff out with God rather than expecting God to do it or doing it on my own. I’ve realised these are my things that I’ve gathered, picked up, been hurt by, taken on board, and that I am not able to do them on my own. But just handing them over still seemed to keep them circling. This could be me and maybe I didn’t hand them over to God “properly”. But what I’ve found is as I have come to see things and then shared them with my QEC counselor, done the activational exercises, put in the changes in my thought patterns, then God and I have been able to sort them together.

In other forms of counseling, of therapy, of inner healing, either I’ve taken control and done it my way or have totally handed it over and expected God to sort it. Neither were overly effective. If God and I work on this together then I know I am stronger. But I also know that God is stronger in my life if we do it together. It was like when I prayed and gave it to God God wasn’t able to walk with me, walk along side me, but was sort of left with my stuff. Yes I walked away from it but God and I didn’t sort it. And I think that to be healed of stuff we need to sort it.

I now do it when I get upset, angry, out of sorts, I ask myself what is going on, why am I feel this way. I sit then with God for a bit and we chew over things. I see the triggers, the things that I think I heard but that is from a badly remembered hurt from many years ago. And we all do that. But if I can sit with my QEC activations, with God, with time, be willing to see that I am maybe not hitting the mark – and I know I’ve said this before but really sin is just not hitting the target of all we are called to be – then I can change.

It isn’t easy. It isn’t quick. But Together We Are Stronger. Together God and I can make changes in my life that will have a knock on affect on the world – hopefully.