Faithful little dog. No apology if I’ve shared this photo before. He is so cute and he is so faithful
Well done good and faithful servant
Matthew 25:23
There is a lot of stuff in organised church about doing things, being busy, making a difference. But you know sometimes life is just hard work and you have to just sit it out, stay faithful to God, stay in the place God’s put you and wait it out.
I did a piece ages and ages ago about a how cormorants have to wait with their wings stretched out drying before they can go back and get more food. Even if they have a nest full of babies they have to be faithful to how they are made and wait until their wings are dry before they dive for more fish.
If God/our hearts tell us to rest then we must be faithful to that and not go rushing off trying to do things – trying to be noticeably fruitful.
Note the word “noticeably” there. By being faithful we are being fruitful because our hearts are healing, refreshing, waiting, faithfully trusting that we are hearing correctly. That is much more fruitful than being unfaithful to the safety instructions we are being given and diving in to the fray again.
At the moment I feel like I am being called to a time of being faithful to writing my story and might just share some bits on here over time. Maybe if my heart tells me. It could be so easy to share because I want to look good, to look like I’m doing something, but would that be being faithful?
Stones thrown from the beach to the coastal path after a storm in April 2024. Photographed by myself
The picture above shows a small part of the power of the sea. There were bigger stones thrown around too but I was obviously in awe of it and didn’t take any photos.
The power of nature, whether wind, waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc are easy to see but what does the power of God look like?
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth
Acts 1:8
One of the last things Jesus says to his disciples is about receiving power from the Holy Spirit. [Read all that story in Acts 2]. But Jesus never actually says what this power actually is.
Now having come into following God through very charismatic churches I was always told that you could see if someone was “filled with the Spirit” if they spoke in tongues [this was seen as a definite sign in some circles and if you couldn’t “speak in tongues” then you were asked to check if you were a “real” spirit filled Christian!!!!], healings were another sign, raising people from the dead, deliverance of demonic spirits, discerning of spirits, and noticeable signs like that.
So last night was youth group night. It is Anglican not charismatic and is a small group of church raised young people with the vicar co-leading with me. We have been using the Bible Society’s Six Beats by Dai Woolridge which is great for opening questions. Sunday we were at Beat five which was about the starting of the Church and the coming of the Holy Spirit. There was no mention in the rap about all the above things that I’d been taught about in my early Christian life.
But then the vicar unpack the above verse and said that showing the LOVE of Jesus to people is the greatest power we can offer. Not just doing good deeds for whatever reason – and often we are all guilty of doing things to get noticed or to get the rewards, the pats on the back, the “thank yous” – But actually asking what people want, not just presuming we know, and then being willing to do what that person wants.
I remember as a single mum getting fed up of being given furniture I didn’t want or need, or food that my kids didn’t like, and then having to either give or throw it away. It was very rare for anyone to say to me “what do you need?”
Too often we presume what people want and even if they say we don’t hear.
Jesus says to the blind man “what do you want?” [Luke 18:35-43]. For the rest of us it was a bit of a no brainer question. The guy was blind. Surely all he wanted was to be able to see. But Jesus doesn’t presume he asks. And this is what true love is.
To truly love the someone we need to be willing to sit with them, to feel their joy or pain, and to ask “what do you want me to do for you?”
A totally different way of thinking! All this healing, deliverance, talking in tongues, etc are just outworkings of that power but the real power is to be willing to show the Love of God to others. And that, I believe is so much harder than just laying hands on someone and praying for them!
Beach on Thursday 19th September photographed by myself
Today is Equinox, the day when the hours of daylight are equal to the hours of darkness – or at least would be if it wasn’t pouring with rain here and just looking really bleak and wintery, which is why you get the photo from Thursday when the sun had only been up an hour or so.
My journaling this morning was that we can see equally the light and dark in our world. Sometimes what we really want is it to be all light and wonderful, blissful and good stuff. But life isn’t like that. Though neither is it all darkness, grief, dreariness and gloom.
So my prayers were for our media that can balance their stories of doom, gloom, wars, rumours of wars, death, the lack of care, and show that there are great interventions going on our world to help with climate change, with caring for each other, with peace, with support, with “holding the door open” type of stories.
But also I pray for social media which can be filled with the perfect couple, the perfect children, the perfect life, and so one can be left feeling inadequate, craving something unobtainable, or even not realising the pain the those FB “friends” because they think they can only post the extremes – the huge highs and for some the hidden lows.
I pray that our conversations will be filled with the truth – which is a mixture of light and dark, of coping and struggling, of joy and grief, of wanting to be noticed and of wanting to notice others.
I do think there are times we either try to ignore or overly focus on the dark because we don’t know what to do with it. Our subconscious is still dealing with fairy tales where the dark was where the evil monsters lay and the knight’s job was to defeat the dark. But if there was no dark when would we sleep, when would we dream, when would the plants have time to regrow. We need to darkness of the night, of grief, of sadness, as much as we need to light of day, of growth, of joy.
May today be filled with openness and honesty, truth and love, light and dark in all its facets.
“Come on. Let’s go this way!” Photographed by myself July 2022
Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
Psalm 23:6a
One of the things public speaking teaches is that if you make something visual people will remember it. Well about 20 years ago at Cross Rhythms Festival, even though I don’t remember who the speaker was I do remember the great skit they did about this verse.
The speaker got two young people from the crowd up and got them to follow him. He called one Goodness and the other Love or Mercy [some bible translations have “surely goodness and mercy will follow me …”]. These two people followed him as he wandered round the tent where we were gathered. His point was that whether we went, the right place or the wrong place, going where God wants us or off doing our own thing, God has promised that goodness and love/mercy will be right behind us.
Often we don’t realise it because we don’t look. We career about on our own thinking we are totally alone and that it is all up to us. Or we are so fearful to “get it right” so we get God’s goodness and mercy that we don’t realise they are with us all the time anyway.
How much different would your life, would my life, be if we truly believed that whatever we did and wherever we went God’s goodness and love/mercy were hot on our tails, were there ready for us to fall into, were there to protect and support us?
All we would have to do is stop, rest by those green pastures – because often even though God leads us into those green pastures and beside still waters we don’t see them because we are rushing past to the “next thing”. What if we stopped and let God’s goodness and love/mercy hang out and minister to us?
So first we need to believe they are there. How do we know that? Well … because God promised us. Maybe we don’t believe really that God promised it to us too. Maybe we think we need to do something more to get God’s goodness and love/mercy and probably also God’s unconditional love????
It all goes back to that thing that if you don’t believe God loves you unconditionally and you don’t believe God has your back – which we see here God does because it says his goodness and love/mercy follow us, which means they watch our backs. Duh! – but if you don’t believe that then you maybe don’t notice the still waters, the green pastures and don’t believe that all that love and goodness are with you in those dark places?
A random selection of photos taken by myself on my walks around my local area
This post today comes with a huge thank you to Lily Lewin and her post Discovering the Garden of Love By doing a couple of the prompts from here –
Think about walking into a garden filled with Love! What would that look like? What would that feel like to you? What would be growing in that garden just for you?
And reading through as Lily opens up about her boxes she had – of fear, of failure, of not enough, I was able to put aside all my anger and disappointment about the British government’s Migrant bill that was filling my head and heart.
I spent time imagining my garden filled with Love. There were of course abundant different coloured flowers and a babbling brook, and ponds with fish and waterboatmen and dragonflies, and meadows, and trees. But there were also people of all sorts of different shapes, sizes, colours, races, sexualities, genders, ages, walking the most gorgeous snaking footpaths, sitting on love seats and chatting, smiling, enjoying each other.
The mixture of nature and humanity lifted my heart this morning. This I believe is what heaven will be like. All fear and war and greed and “not enoughness” and disappointments, etc, will be gone. All peoples will be at peace with each other, will be enjoying each other, will love each other.
I found it interesting that I could not write about this Garden of Love without putting people in it. But I think that is because I asked God for their heart and God’s heart is people. Humanity was made as the pinnacle of God’s creation so why would there be a Garden of Love without people?
This does not mean that I won’t send emails with Freedom From Torture or Christian Solidarity Worldwide or Greenpeace or Friends of The Earth or the anti human trafficking group, Anit-Slavery, but I will do it in a way that does not hurt my heart, does not make me consumed with anger and wanting to fight someone. And you know what those emotions leave me tired and not able to calmly protest.
So when I feel that anger rising I will go and have a sit in my Garden of Love with all that beauty of nature and beauty of humankind.
Here’s some Bible verses to help us all remember –
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other. John 15:12-17
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a]38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36-40
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[d] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, Matthew 5:43-44
18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
I finish with my garden back in July 2023. A riot of colour plus a local squirrel sampling from the bird feeder
Renly deciding he should be navigating. Because I know his limitations I had to move him to the back seat.
Seeing someone for who they truly are doesn’t mean that we let them do what they want. But also it doesn’t mean we penalise them for things they don’t yet know.
As always when God wants to highlight something for me it comes at me from all sides. I’ve been reading Henri Nouwen’s daily meditations and there has been a recurring theme of letting go of one’s own fear to really see and accept others as they are. Here is today’s piece:
Hospitality means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. . . . The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adore the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own.
It is about truly seeing each other and truly allowing each other that space to explore. In the story in Acts 3 John and Peter gave the man what he wished for – being able to walk. They did not try and covert him. In fact when there is a bit within the early church of trying to get people to conform that is when issues occur. Jesus didn’t want his church to be homogeneous but did want them to be loving and accepting.
In this week’s Velveteen Rabbi Rachel talks about Exodus 25:1-8 where all the Israelites bring different things to build the temple and of how this creates community. And she goes on to say that even when a community disagrees about major issues each still needs to come together as they are in God.
When we hold space for our differences, we make community holy.
So hold space for our differences, give hospitality to explore and to fully be within those difference but do it all with the love and respect of God and of our love for each other as a whole.
Truly see each other and truly accept each other and then, like the lame man, we can be truly healed and then go on to heal our world
Here’s my little love. What I love about my dog is how compliant he is. This morning we bumped into friends so instead of doing just a mile walk we did three. He did not complain at all.
Sometimes we think of love as being easy going, about holding hands, about flowers and chocolates and meals out, and just being “nice” to one another. But Valentine, who the day is named after, wasn’t easy going, was not compliant, would not have accepted a bunch of flowers, box of chocs or even a lovely weekend away as a sign of love. For Valentine he was super tough in sharing the message of God’s unconditional love and of how Jesus had loved us all so much he was willing not just to have died for us but to have led his whole life in sacrifice to bring us back to relationship with God.
The being the saint of lovers comes from the belief that Valentine married people against the Emperor’s wishes and took secret messages between jailed lovers.
For some reason in the Middle Ages St Valentine’s day became associated with courtly love; sending knights off on adventures and daring-dos! So even though it has moved into more romantic love it is still about sacrifice and showing one is willing to risk one’s life for those one professes to love.
Whether we give or don’t give, receive or don’t receive, like or dislike the whole thing of Valentine’s day, how many of us are willing to sacrifice for those we love? Let alone how many of us are willing to sacrifice for those we don’t know that well?
[An aside – Valentine is also the saint of epilepsy and beekeepers!!! Hummmm!!!]
Snowdrops hidden in the woods. Photographed by myself 26th Jan 2024. Spring is coming
What does Service mean? To you? To me?
In Josh Luke Smith’s latest email he says that we all want Meaning. Relationships. Service. I do agree but I think for years I got what service meant wrong. And I think I was encouraged to keep believing in the wrong either because other people had got it wrong or because it supported others.
Before meeting with God thirty+ years ago I pleased myself and I don’t think I really served others. Though I probably did. I worked in hospitality, had friends round for parties, meals, etc. But I thought I was just doing things that everyone did and that was it.
So when I met with God the church talked a lot about service and about serving God. Serving God seemed to mean doing something in church as a volunteer which for me was children or youth stuff. So I was always busy busy in church doing stuff and I would get fed up with it all and that, amongst other things, was what stopped me wanting to attend church. [Yes there are other reasons but I think this whole thing of feeling that to belong I had to be volunteering got me down]
But it wasn’t just church. Lots of places talk about serving which again seems to be doing things for nothing to further that organisation. But now I’m not so sure. And I would say as I read these daily emails I’m not the only one.
I’m not in regular paid work at the moment and will continue like that because I’m 62. That doesn’t mean I’m doing nothing though. But I have realised what I do day in day out is service. From walking my dog, looking after my home and feeding my husband, though to chatting with friends and acquaintances, to running the workshops I do, to reading books, to writing stories people may never read, to writing this blog. All these things are acts of service but, I think, because they are things I enjoy and they are not for some church or other organisation I don’t see them as service.
I am now thinking that service is actually me just being the truest me I am and allowing that to flow into the earth in the only way I can let it. So I clean up my act and get healed so my energy is purer, less polluted, less me expecting something from what I do – which I do wonder if a lot of our “serving” is actually serving our own ego! I listen to my heart, to God, to the Universe, to my gut, and only do what I am at peace with. And through that I am so much more than if I was serving for servings sake.
I believe again it comes back to that whole “Love your neighbour as you love yourself” [or as I like to see it “totally love yourself so you can then love others] and then you are serving in ways that others truly need with no agenda for yourself to be bless. But that does take some work to get to that place, some clearing away of traumas and other crap, and being fully free.
know the truth [about yourself and your motives] and the truth will set you free
This is a regular beach walk of mine but often, when there have been big storms, of which we had many over the last few months, the stones and gullies have been changed. It can be a very different walk. I need to remember that we are all different as people depending on our personalities and maybe too the storms we have ridden.
Last night was youth group night. It was a new group and I didn’t want to presume that just because they had come to a church youth group that they all believed in God so our first question of the year was “Would you identify as a Christian? If yes why? If no why?”
Only three young people came and all said they would tell their friends they were Christians or that their friends knew this already. It was the “why?” question that challenged me the most.
For myself, I had a very powerful experience which brought me to really want to follow God in the big way. I would say I “became a Christian”. So for myself it is all about the experiential experience. One of the group said that when she prayers she can feel a presence sat beside her. But the other two, and the vicar, all said they just believed and struggled to say why they believed. The answer from all three of them was “I just do”. No wavering. No changing.
When we talked about what things it meant to be a Christian the main one was that God was centre of our lives. We didn’t get into tenants of faith. Nothing about what you had/had not to believe or do to be a Christian but just that God and Jesus were a major presences in our lives who encouraged us to think and behave in a different way.
The first church I attended, and many others I have been to that have shaped my beliefs, have been very much of the ilk that to be a Christian one had to do and say certain things, believe in certain things, accept certain things.
I’ve also studies not just the Reformation but many of the points in history where Christians have persecuted Christians because they have done things in a different way. Things we would now see as trivial. But as the vicar reminded me, even now [and I experienced in other churches] though there may not be actual burnings at the stake, there can often be judgements against those not have “prayed the prayer”, been “properly” baptised, and also the issues of gender and sexuality, care for the planet, who leads the congregations, etc, etc.
What struck me greatly was that we are all different in who we are but that makes us all different in how we approach God, how we behave about God and with God. For me I needed that experiential experience, something tangible to hold on to as I unraveled and rebuilt my life. But for others it is just that believing and that knowing that that is enough.
But what came out of if for me is that however we experience God and however God is out worked in our lives, that important bit is that we keep God and Jesus central and trust them enough to lean on them no matter what is going on around us. Through that can we show God in our lives to others. Then when we take God’s love to others it is something tangible not something we are just saying.
Here as I mentioned in Love Where You Are are some photos of my park. I took them this morning between 7.45 snd 8am just as the sun was starting to come up. Unfortunately it wasn’t a great sunrise as the clouds were lingering so the colours aren’t great. But it does give some impression of the size and beauty of it. And how easy it is to forget how beautiful the places on our doorstep are.
I’m not sure about the area but the path around the perimeter of the park is roughly a mile, and all the space in the middle is open space for anyone to walk on – except for the rugby/cricket pitch. At the moment though the centre of the park is very muddy and squelchy but it is still there for our enjoyment.
Aspirational Adventures 