Tag: Newborough Beach

Categories
fickle gratitude

Easy To Be Ungrateful

Newborough Beach, Anglesey, June 2024

I had a free day and it had been warm for a few days so I decided to set off for my favourite beach within an hour from my home. But when I got there the wind was blowing wildly and it was cold and overcast. So I still did a stamp along the beach scowling into the wind. Then on the way back I thought I’d check out a coffee shop we’d been meaning to go to. I’d checked its reviews and I was sure it was dog friendly. So in I trot with the dog and was told by the very nice owner that they were not dog friendly inside but I was welcome to sit outside. I was cold and fed up after not having a fun walk on the beach and so did not want to get blown away outside. They sent me to another cafe they were sure were dog friendly which wasn’t!

So there I am in my car grumbling about what a waste of a morning I had had, made worse by the sun then coming out and one of my closer beaches looking blissfully sunny. But of course by then the dog had walked enough and was dozing on the back seat. Also I was grumpy and sullen.

But of course then the revelation came as to what an ungrateful person I was being. Firstly I had been able to drive all the way to this beach, had the time to do it as well as the money. I could afford to stop for a coffee without having to worry about money. So many things to be grateful for – not just the time and the money, but my super little car, my super little dog for company, being safe on the road. And all those things were just for that morning. Lunchtime I was meeting a friend who is one of those true friends who encourages, supports, reprimands and challenges, is open and kind and sharing too. And that doesn’t include all the other great people I have in my life and the great things in my life.

It is so easy to dip down that slipper slope of moaning and complaining, of seeing the negative and not the possible rather than being grateful.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! [or in other versions “Rejoice in all things”]

Philippians 4:4

It doesn’t say just rejoice when things are going well but “always/ in all things”. But we are a fickle and perverse people and we very quickly go into grumble or worry mode.

But there is no reason to feel guilty because the amazing thing with God is we can repent/say we’re sorry and turn the other way. So at that moment in the car, when I got that revelation that I was being a grumpy, ungrateful mare, I said I was sorry and turned around [repented] and moved into being grateful not just for that morning but actually for the revelation that I was being ungrateful. Sometimes the revelation is as brilliant as the change of behaviour, I think.

But of course, because I am perverse and fickle I have had a few more times when I have been unnecessarily ungrateful when actually I should have “rejoiced” and let deep joy fill my heart. But again I repent and move. Again it is interesting how looking at the world with different eyes makes the world look different. It doesn’t change but I do!

So much of the real deep healing I’ve done has been about turning around and going the other way, of seeing situations in a different light.

Categories
Born again Spirit of God

Born Again!

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.

My dog showing how exciting it is reaching soft sand. He does this every time and during walks too. Life is just a wonderful born-again moment again and again and again for him.
Categories
Higher Path walk

Choosing Pathways

Photos are of Newborough Beach and Forest, Anglesey and Llandudno West Shore. All photos taken by myself on either Saturday 5th or Sunday 6th March 2022.

With all the talk of the war in Ukraine and it being hard to forget it I thought I would show you some pictures my walks over the weekend just for a change of focus.

My husband was away for the weekend so the dog and I were home alone and the sun was shining. I wanted to go to Newborough Forest and beach. My daughter and I had been there two years ago just before words like pandemic and lockdown became common place. The weather was similar this weekend to the one two years ago and I really wanted to go, yet I realised I was nervous. Nervous of driving 40 miles to Newborough. Guilty that there are lovely places closer to me. But my heart was really craving to go.

So on Saturday I tried to make my heart change its mind by going for a walk by the sea. It was only 10 miles from my house and I combined it with a trip to get some colour charts to repaint rooms in my house. So fear and guilt were dealt with there, and also dog and I got to walk by the sea and enjoy.

Interestingly on that Saturday walk due to the battering the shore has received in recent months we could not go on our usual walk but had to take the newly constructed coastal path which took us higher up and so the view was different. Noticeably different.

But it wasn’t what my heart wanted and so on Sunday morning I gave in and decided to go. I was amazed at how nervous I felt. I can easily drive 40 miles without thinking about it yet something was nagging at me. I really had time to pray about some of my older friends who have been doing nothing since March 2020. Once their stimulation of going to groups, clubs, shopping, driving places, interacting with others was taken away their brains and bodies have reacted. For one it has moved her dementia forward quicker than if she’d still had that stimulation. For another it has caused her body to stop wanting to eat and she is exhibiting signs of anorexia. Fears and anxieties have grown in others where before they could have talked them through with someone else. So even though I could feel my stomach churning I decided to keep driving. Newborough was where I wanted to go.

Of course dog and I had a lovely time but even there due to the rain and winds we did not find the same paths and had to go a different way, which again led us to a higher path. Once again we were looking down on something we had walked along before. We walked for 2 1/2 hours, probably about 7 miles. And the sun shone all the time. I am glad I pushed through and did not let my fears and guilts and anxieties win the day.

As as you see on each walk I found a higher path. I feel there is something significant in that. I had to push down fears that would have made me pick somewhere else, and in fact even in my trying to pick somewhere else still I walked along a higher path. So maybe it isn’t whether I deal with my fears or stick to the easier way that will lead me to a higher path? But whatever it is I know I need to overcome my fears and push through.

With the way the last three years have gone – with Brexit, Covid and now Ukraine, plus climate change, rising prices, etc, etc, etc – there are a lot of things to be fearful of. Yet I think after my weekend walks that we need to push through our fears and walk that higher path – however that looks to each one of us.