Stourhead gardens, Wiltshire, just before the rains came. Oct 2023
I am reluctant to say … but as you may have noticed … the blog posts are not so frequent at that moment. I’m reluctant to say that I’m taking a break from posting to process things because often once I do a post like that it seems to release a dam and I start posting again. But at the mo it looks like I’ve got some stuff to process around family stuff.
Being in my 60s with one parent gone and another coming up to mid 80s it is inevitable that thoughts move on to becoming an orphan, what ties there are with parents, what ties there are with my children, and such like. All those things need to be process. And processed slowly. And with God who sees much more clearly that I do.
So there is a lot of taking breath, of rethinking, of not speaking out too soon, of waiting. So I am allowing myself to process and to think and to have time. I also need time to visit with my family because for me one of the things I realise is that as my parents age so do I and so not only does my time with them start to come to an end I realise that my time with my children is finite and I want to make the most of that.
It is interesting to me how one of my big realisations as I see my parents age is that I want to make the most of my time with my children.
But also I realise how grateful I am to have got to my 60s and still have parents. Too many people have lost them much sooner than that.
So as I ponder, as I think, yes I’m sure thoughts to blog will come out so please don’t give up on me, but also please be kind as sometimes I’m not ready to share my thoughts so readily.
Cobwebs interconnected. Photographed by myself Sept 2023
Hands up who has been upset when a church you attend uses the phrase “we are family” and then you feel shut out? I’ve been there. One of the most recent times was when the large congregation we were attended kept going on and on about how we were all family and then announced a very messy divorce by someone in leadership that those of us in “the family” knew nothing about.
My first thought was that surely if we were family then we’d know before it was too late so we could be helping, supporting, praying, etc. But this morning on my dog walk, out of nowhere, because I wasn’t even thinking about church and family, though was pondering what I should be putting in blog post today as it had been ages since I’d done one, I got this revelation that I felt I had to share. And it was that my disappointments and hurts over this whole “church being family” thing was because of my expectations. [I have pondered expectations before]
As I have found that God is the perfect parent, beyond my wildest expectations of what a parent could be, so I expected when a congregations says that they are “family” I expected something way beyond what I knew of family, something I had hoped and dreamed of. But it isn’t that at all.
My family is small. I don’t remember ever meeting any of my dad’s wider family, apart from a cousin and his children, and that was for a short time only and I thought he was very rude anyway. On my mum’s side I knew my grandmother until she had a major stroke when I was about 6 and then my mum’s uncles who came to visit my grandmother, but then I never remember seeing them again. My mum talks about a cousin and his children but I’ve never met them. My sister and I drifted apart as we got older and of course now she’s died well …. And her son doesn’t keep in touch and really I don’t keep in touch with him. So family and the mechanics of it I really don’t quite understand.
But as I was walking God showed me that this whole “family” thing that the church talks about has nothing to do with being close but has to do with being “related to”. In fact it goes way beyond just a congregation. It goes way beyond those who profess to being Christians.
If God made the whole world and everyone in it, if we are all made in God’s image not just if/when we say we’re trying to follow Jesus, then we are all God’s children. Thus, whether we like it or not, we are all family. Some of this family we will be close to, will get on well with, will spend time with, will know each other’s deepest thoughts and feelings, but others we just won’t.
My husband’s family does a good example of this. The parent generation all knew each other well and the cousins all played together as children. Then the cousins all drifted apart and got on to doing their own thing and not communicating. But the parents kept hanging out, kept phoning each other, kept in touch with each others lives. But when something happens, when there is a need, the cousins appear and help out, or the siblings form different cliques to help and support depending on their schedules, their needs, their space in their lives. So sometimes it looks like they don’t get on, don’t spend time together but there is always that thread of “family” running through.
Once one starts seeing the whole of human kind as “family”, as God’s family, then one does start to realise how much time we do connect and we are part of something. Like my friend who bought a homeless man a pizza the other day, she was just feeding her brother when he was in need and when he came across her path. I was deeply affected by the death of a fellow dog walker, went to his funeral and have been grieving his loss, but that is because he was a brother I got close to.
My revelation was that I need to stop thinking small. Stop wanting to part of some small congregation, even large congregation, some clique where I can “fit”, and realise that I fit into this whole world and I need to be aware of the God prompts when I’m pushed to connected with a brother or sister. This isn’t always to give to them. Sometimes it can be to receive. Or in the case of the fellow dog walker, and with many of my friends, it is to give and to receive in mutual friendship. It is about being there for others but also realising there is a whole world of fellow “relatives” whether they say they are follow Jesus or not, who are there to support me too.
As I walked in the large open park, that is my special place each morning. I felt God was saying just look at the big because that’s what I’m part of, but then like with the spider web to also look at those small connections. Those small connections that make something strong.
Perhaps I need to be looking at connections rather than craving the impossible of some close knit family? Perhaps we all should?
Magic of a river in full flow after a storm. Abergywngregan August 2023 Photographed by myself
Did you know you could do magic? In fact you do it every day by the things you think and how you hold on to your feelings.
I tried to write this without mentioning the people concerned but realised it didn’t make sense otherwise so I’ve had to name the relationships. Bit of tough vulnerability here!!!
This revelation came to me whilst I was having negative jealous insecure thoughts around my daughter-in-law. As I was journaling and pondering and, I suppose, justifying my feelings, I got a picture in my head of the Snow White’s wicked stepmother. From that picture this came.
Snow White’s stepmother would have been a kind and beautiful woman when the Snow White’s father pick her as his second wife. He didn’t have to marry to have someone to look after his daughter after he was widowed as some men do. He could have had servants to do that for him. He chose her, I am sure, for her beauty and beautiful nature. But she had been wounded in childhood by someone so as Snow White grew into a young woman she got jealous. Then I am sure there were times when Snow White went off and did things just with her father. This would have exasperated the stepmother’s wound. I wonder too if she also pondered whether the father looked at his daughter and remembered his love for his first wife. All this added to the stepmother’s insecurities making her feel angry dark thought inside. She then chose to act on those thoughts and, if she had been successful, instead of helping her step daughter through teenagehood and out into the wider world, she as good as killed her.
It made me realise that we can choose what magic we use and how we act on our feelings. I had a choice – 1. to be jealous and angry with this person and to send out negative vibes. Ok not a poisoned apple but something close to that which would have killed our relationship and killed my relationship with my son 2. I could accept that this was how I felt but then let those feelings slide from me, know that my relationship with my son was not based on who they were with now but on some “deeper magic”.
I could trust in the depth of the relationship with my son and no longer be jealous of his wife then give life to our time, or I could spoil everything with my jealousy.
[I was going to say petty jealous but actually it was very real and I had to accept it before I could let it go. I think too often we dismiss our feelings and so they fester about because they haven’t been truly banished.]
The stepmother did not accept her jealous feelings, instead she acted on them and went into destroy mode. I decided to accept my feelings, let them go, go to my safe place of deep gratitude, and allow a better magic to flow.
And of course as you know the answer to the Snow White story so you can guess the answer to this story. Yes we all had a great time together. There was no negative animosity. I grew in love for my daughter-in-law and got some great times on my own with my son.
The magic I made was my choice, but it comes through the healing I’ve gone, my relationship with myself, my trust in God/The Universe to have my back and love me unconditionally. Without all that I would still have that wound and be wanting to hold too tight, to poison what was, not be able to enjoy what is going on around me.
Though sometimes I think we don’t realise we can do magic so we say things about a situation or person that are not uplifting or positive, we work towards a worst case scenario, and we are not disappointed. Snow White’s stepmother “knew” that eventually Snow White would be more popular and more beautiful than her so she had a plan on what to do with her then. If I had planned in a “I know this time will be hard work” I am sure it would have been. But instead, once I’d free wrote/journaled around it, accepted what I was feeling and accepted that this was not a good place to be, ANSed myself, etc then I could believe this was going to be a lovely magical time with my son and his wife.
Because it was deep magic from being healed and knowing I am an amazing person then it wasn’t a “trying hard” but was from a place deep in my heart.
We need to all remember we are all making magic every day by what we think, feel, do and believe.
Connected cobwebs. Photographed by myself Sept 2023
I’ve been reading about the Red Crescent and the Red Cross lurching from disaster to disaster, appealing for donations and funding; Greek fires, Greek floods, dams bursting in Libya causing horrendous flooding, on-going strife in various African countries. And then there’s the fires in the West of the USA, floods in the South-East, on-going drug smuggling in various South American countries. Add in the migrant crisis – fear of those who leave whether from wars, famines, or for economic reasons and the fears of those who live in the countries the migrants are trying to reach. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But we live in a world that is connected. The whole chaos theory of if something happens in one part of the world it can majorly effect something in another part of the world. The migrant crisis is a prime example of this – wars and famines often in countries we have never heard of affect us here not just with people coming to try to find safety but with commodities too.
So we need to be seeing the bigger picture not just lurch from crisis to crisis, not just try to find resources for X which takes it way from Y, not just giving time this when that means we can’t give to that. We need to know what the big picture is. But, and I know I’ve said this before, we need to slow down. We need to listen, need to really listen – to our world, to God, to stop trying to logically rationalise.
But how?
I think it is by connecting. Connecting with others. Connecting with God. Connecting with the world. When we lurch from one thing to another, one crisis, one trauma, one anxiety, we lose connection. We lose how we fit into the bigger picture.
As I’ve often said I don’t go to regular church any more, but I do feel connected with God and a group of Christian friends, and with the online things that are out there. But last Sunday I went to a church service. It was the sort of thing I like; for all ages but not cheesy; a deep message; time to chat with others about the message and other things; even though it was led by the vicar he did not portray himself as the one with the answers. It did make me realise I do need, occasionally, to connect with others, to hear other people, to think. But also what happened within connecting there was that the things in the all-age service connected into what we were doing in the youth service which followed.
But I think the reason it “worked” was because I did not go along on a superficial level, did not think I was better/more spiritual/more knowledgeable than others – both in the service and in the youth group. But I went along want to connect, wanting to learn, wanting to grow, wanting more than. And because I wanted “more than” I got it.
Going back to thinking about the bigger picture and want to stop lurching from one thing to another – I wonder how often we really want to know more. Whether when we watch the news, see newsfeeds, or even read blogs about all sorts, do we really want to learn, to grow, to get “more than”, or whether we come with our ready made answers that we will then trot out to others whether they want to hear them or not?
I think to connect we need to go in with an attitude of wanting to gain from others as well as give. Then I think we might get a glimpse of the bigger picture of what God is up to in our world.
In The Colour Green I was saying how I was remembering my early days of being a Christian, 30+ years ago, and how I have always had a questioning faith. I thought this photo from the James Webb space telescope was a good opening.
Actually space is a great place to go for a questioning faith. As is the deep ocean. Both are full of mysteries we cannot fathom. Much like the colour green and all its different hues.
It makes me wonder why people have tried so hard over the centuries to put Christianity, and even many other faiths, into a closed container. Where is the mystery in that?
If God can fit into a box I am capable of making then I’m not interested. I want to lean on, worship, and trust, a being that is beyond my understanding, that is mysterious, unfathomable, uncontainable. This means I have to look at what I know about God and find out more. Each time God fits into a box I want more and more and more.
I think its why I do love being by the sea or up a small mountain [climbing a big mountain is a bit beyond me!!] because it is always changing, always showing me something I haven’t seen before – if I choose to look.
I find church tries to contain God, tries to make God a him, a being we can tell people and a tangible way. I think that’s why I struggle to go. With the youth group I co-run I am always trying to get them to push their boundaries and understanding, always to question what they think they know.
One of my big hopes, as I explore all these different online people looking at “deconstructing their faith”, is that they don’t then just find a different box to put God in. But instead let God loose so when people ask us why we follow God we don’t give some glib answer that we feel we ought to say, but, as I said to a friend recently – I don’t know why things I don’t like happen, bad things, deaths, suicides, wars, sickness, but I do know that through it all I can lean on God who loves me unconditionally. They might not stop these things from happening to and around me but they are there to hold me, to love me, and for me to rail at. And bit by bit I am learning to trust and be and just stay at peace when the storms do crash around me.
Though as we know from my post from 13th August I would prefer these storms to happen on dry land and NOT when I am in a boat!!!
I’d like to finish with a Chris Tomlinson song that sums up God for me and why I hang in there.
Newborough beach, Anglesey, One of my special spaces with Renly, one of my special companions
Boundaries, another theme I keep returning to, but my ideas about it keep changing.
I felt I had to share what came to me the other day, almost a follow on from my post back in February 2022, No More Boundaries where I was sort of exploring what I meant by not having boundaries and of being in alignment. Now I think I’ve moved to a deeper place.
I was in the car the other day contemplating a conversation with a friend. I’d had some really busy people filled days and felt thI needed a long walk on a deserted beach. It was wild and windy and I just wanted to reconnect. I also planned to take myself for a coffee after. Just me and my dog. Then this friend, who I hadn’t seen for a while, messaged and ask if I was free to come to the park with her in about 10 mins. I calmly replied that I was going to the beach on my own to recover from my frantic day the day previous.
What struck me on the way home in the car, hair windswept and feeling more myself, was that it isn’t about boundaries or about being aligned to the universe but it is about knowing and honouring my space. With all the healing that has gone on I am in a place to know my space, know my needs, feel comfortable within my own space. I know at one time I would have cancelled my plans and gone with my friend because I wanted to please her but also because my space would not have been important enough for me.
In church there is often talk about “doing what Jesus would do” which always seems to be busy doing something – praying for others, feeding others, being there for others, etc. All of which are good things and yes Jesus did all those things. But another thing that Jesus did was to go away on his own, to be comfortable in his own space, to honour his own space.
Often we are told that he was praying that whole time, with prayer made out to be a doing thing. I do wonder if what those early gospel writers meant was that Jesus just hung out with God, that they were just being together – no asking what he should do, no being reassure about anything, but just being together as I suppose I was with God alone on that windswept beach.
I don’t think we do enough of being in our own space. We have the TV on, our phones close at hand, on Facetime to friends, etc. Even things like having good devotionals books, educational books, etc, things that are good for our brains, though great in keeping us forward thinking and challenged, can stop us being in our own space. We are all, or at least most of us, the ones stopping ourselves from being alone with ourselves, our thoughts, our God, and just allowing our own space to revive and restore us.
I know I’m not that good at it so I book in times for me to be on my own [maybe Jesus scheduled these in too?] and I walk. I have my phone turned off. Yes I do take it with me because I do like taking photographs but make sure I check nothing else other than maybe the time. I find if I walk it takes away that distraction of things that are good – answering emails, journaling, reading, playing solitaire, writing, playing word games, messaging my children. All of which [well maybe not solitaire and the word games] are good things, but all of which stop me being alone with my own thoughts. Stop me being alone with the God of the Universe.
The more I get content with my own space the more I will say no to things and I suspect the more I’ll know where I’m going in my one wild and precious life.
I’m sure I’m not the only human being who is a bit thick at times. Yes I talk about listening with my heart but as it says somewhere in the bible “The heart is fickle” or something like that. Well I’m not sure about you but my heart can get lost in its own stuff at times and it takes a few things to nudge it out again. And the nudges came in shed loads over the weekend.
As you know I’ve got this part time job 4 afternoons a week. It is great. It is right. It also helps that the rotas are not confirmed until the Friday of the previous week so I cannot get into planning because I don’t know when I’ll get that day off. The last couple of weeks it has been a Wednesday but the couple of weeks previous it was a Friday and who knows what for next week. So I have to be patient and wait.
I said to someone when I got this job that it was good because it meant I would have to say No to things but instead I have been filling up those mornings with things. Made all the more sneaky in that they are great things, all of which felt right. But what all these great things did was not only did they stopped me writing they also stopped me from pondering, from thinking, from knowing how I felt.
I managed to justify it all by saying to myself that these were the right things to do. In fact a couple of them were things I had been hoping to do for years. Why is it sometimes those things you had set your heart on are not what you should be doing? At least not at this moment in time because they get in the way of the bigger thing.
The bigger thing in my writing. Not just these blogs but the other projects that need peculating time. But not just that. I have also learned that I need, like we all do really, to have time to feel my feelings and to really know my heart.
It is always interesting how taking time out to know ourselves and be the best version of ourselves is so overlooked!
So on Saturday I’m at a writing workshop and am saying to one of the group that I haven’t written much and she almost gives me reassurance that this is ok because we are all busy. My heart jumped. Busy is a key word and so I tucked it away.
Then on Sunday we went to a ceramics show. Firstly I chatted to a woman who now makes huge slab bird baths and she told me her story; of how she had once been a renowned collectable potter but had felt a call to something else and she’d had to spend time pondering until she found out how all her things connected. Again I felt that heart bump and had to stop and write down the key things that she said
Follow your interests. It is your interests that will take you where you should go. But take time out to find what they really are. It is about being brave enough to take time out.
Then I came across a lady who made the Caretaker bird in the photograph. Some of the info about these birds says how they came out in lockdown but now have disappeared. This bird is about resting, being, drinking tea, listening. I could not leave it behind. I was going to keep it in my study but it now sits on the hall table so I see it as I come and go. And it reminds me to take things slower, to listen, to drink tea, to be rather than do, to have time to look around, to not have to fill my day, my diary, with stuff.
I sat on the grass, wrote a bit on the backs of the business cards I’d picked up and listened to God/The Universe as my husband continued round talking to potters. I realised again I had filled my time so I did not have to listen to my emotions. They had been telling me for a while to give up a voluntary position but I had been ignoring it because I really wanted to do this. But I had to listen when I was getting bombarded on all sides to slow down.
So I cancelled something that only took up 2 mornings of my week but actually took up a lot of my headspace. Once I had made that decision emotions around a family thing came flooding in. All I could say was it was like slit being disturb on the river bed. Now if I hadn’t stopped this thing I think the slit would have stayed put. I think that’s why we keep busy. To stop the slit being disturbed. But the silt isn’t good. It stops the river of me from flowing freely.
So I’ve put in place some QEC time and also been able to spend the last 2 mornings pondering and being. I have felt such peace and not having to fit things in around other stuff. Pondering isn’t something you can fit in anyway. Neither is listening to your heart.
Yes we do all have things we have to do but too often we fill our days up with things we think we ought to do – to look good, to be busy, to feel we belong, etc. Stopping does hurt for a bit but it is better to know and to feel truly than to keep blundering through and taking one’s unhealed bits forward into something new.
I know I’ll falter at this. I know I’ll fill time up again. But I am hoping Beaty, the Caretaker bird on my hall table will keep reminding me of my true purpose.
Interestingly in planning for this something else popped up and I wrote a piece around King Charles’ coronation to do with cultural diversity. As a good detective says “there’s no such thing as coincidences” and my QEC practitioner is always saying how things come up for a reason that we need to explore.
So what does come to mind when we talk about “cultural diversity”? What picture/image comes to mind? And what does cultural diversity look like?
the cultural variety and cultural differences that exist in the world, a society, or an institution: Dying languages and urbanization are threats to cultural diversity.
the inclusion of diverse people in a group or organization: to embrace cultural diversity in the workplace.
The Modern Cockney Festival looks at how the culture of Cockneys, which was originally a word used for those born within the sound of Bow Bells in London, has morphed and changed and come to embrace all those who feel they can relate to some of the cockney traditions. There are other events like this that are for people who feel they relate to those traditions, cultures or similar, that at one time certain races, genders or creeds may not have.
There are differences in cultures that we need to recognise, honour and celebrate and I believe we are getting better and better are recognising the big differences, but what about the more subtle ones?
I live in North Wales and when we moved here we did think that the only differences were between Welsh and English, but the longer we’ve lived here and the more people we have come to know we have found that there are much more subtleties within the land than we originally envisaged. Many of which can get lost within the bigger picture. We’ve had both Anglican church parish boundaries and electoral boundaries changed recently due to population density. But there is a major cultural difference between those who live on the coast and those who live in hills, those who live nearer the English border and those who live on the Western reaches, those who live in the large towns and those who live in isolated villages. Within a population of just over three million people there is a great range of diversities.
I lived in Belfast in 1996-7 which gave me a feel there for the cultural diversity of the city and the surrounding countryside. I got to know people who were Protestant and Catholic, Unionist and Loyalist, who had moved to the city from a village where everyone knew each other and those who lived in the city but also knew each other. Belfast in the mid 1990s was like no city I’ve ever lived in before. I cannot comment about the rest of Northern Ireland because I never made it over to Londonderry or into the hinterland. The population of Northern Ireland is less than two million and yet so diverse.
Having lived in both these places I have seen how especially government or media do not honour the diversity of these nations but make judgement calls about what they need as a whole, what they want as a whole, and even what these people think as a whole. There is no space for different wants and needs.
I know too that I am guilty of this with Native American tribes, with people who live in India, Asia, and all those myriad of countries I have never visited and never had the time to really get to know. Yet Revelation 7:9 says
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from EVERY nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands
I think the reason the bible says “multitude” is because then no one can give an exact figure. I think this is because God understands and knows each different group of people however big or small, however diverse, and is going to make sure they are fully represented in heaven.
Note the word EVERY in there. Not most, not a few of, not even the majority, but EVERY nation, tribe, people and language will be there whether here on earth they have been recognised at all.
I believe that we need to stop lumping people into easier to handle homogeneous groups believing we know what they want or need or think but we all need to start listening to, talking to and really finding out how we can all fit together but still stay cultural diverse.
I think we also all need to be true to our own cultural diversity and who we fit with. I’m working with people who are between 15 and 40 years younger than me. Even those who are 15 years younger than me are of a different generation, have different values, different tastes, remember different music and TV programs. I have to accept that even though I am friends with them I also have a different culture that I relate to and fit comfortably into.
I do think too often we try to find a homogeneous whole that we can fit into instead of enjoying the over laps. There is nothing to be afraid of in being cultural different to someone whether they are in our street, town, workplace, country, or that we never meet at all. God says “EVERY nation, tribe, people and language” will be standing shoulder to shoulder praising. We’re not going to have to conform to a “holy homogeneous huddle” but will be able to enjoy our different hues, words, styles, etc in heaven. Maybe we could start doing it now. But also realise how much overlap there is.
No presumptions with this little dog. Photographed by myself near Moelfre April 2023
I was amazed at my own presumptions the other day. Husband brought back a handout from church around Luke 24:13-35, where the disciples meet Jesus on the road to Emmaus but don’t recognise him.
Lots of it is things I’d known or thought previously but it is Lorna Bradley’s opening line that I’ve been chewing over for weeks now
And their eyes were opened – the two disciples of Jesus – Cleopas and one unnamed and ungendered …..
UNGENDERED!! How many times have I presumed, without even thinking about it, that it was two men? And I’m sure that’s because the Bible says “disciples of Jesus” and for years we’ve been led to presume that ALL Jesus’ real disciples were men even though women are mentioned, but they are there in the supporting role.
Lorna doesn’t say if the other disciple was male, female, trans, non-binary, or whatever. She does not say if they were friends, siblings, parent/child, lovers, spouses. She actually just puts it out there, states, the fact that the other disciple is unnamed and ungendered, and then goes on to explore the piece.
It made me wonder if we would read this piece differently if they were homosexual partners, young unwed lovers, a father and daughter/son, even a married couple. To Luke these are just two disciples of Jesus who were out for a walk trying to piece together what had gone on over the last few days. One is named. One isn’t.
Interestingly the name Cleopas, which appears only in this story in the Bible means “Glory of the Father” or “Glory of Everything” and is either the male derivative of Cleopatra or a shortened version of Cleopatra or shortened version of Cleopatros. So it could be that the Cleopas we’ve always presumed to be male was in fact female as was their traveling companion.
It is the presumption that intrigues me. How many times do we all read things through our own lens of expectation, of prejudice, of culture, of lifestyle, of what we know? How often do we stop to realise what we have done?
But from our own presumptions and censoring and prejudices we tie organisations including religion into boxes, put people groups into boxes, put ourselves and those around us into boxes.
This does follow on from Cultural Diversity and will fit in with the post I am doing for 21st May. That person waving/not waving the Union Jack at the coronation is “obviously ….[fill in your own]. We make presumptions as to whether someone smiles/doesn’t smile at our cheery “good morning”, replies/doesn’t reply to our message, wears certain clothes and talks in a certain way.
And I don’t think God cares. Not that God doesn’t care for people. I believe God cares more than we could ever imagine. But God doesn’t care what gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, family background, education, etc someone has. I think this is why that story has someone in with no gender and the other person with ambiguous gender in it. And if you start looking there are many stories in the bible where once one lets go of one’s presumption then things could be more ambiguous than we’d presumed.
I wonder if I look harder how many stories I can find, where I presumed one thing and so pictured the story in my head a certain way, in fact actually are about “Glory in Everything” and especially “Glory to God” and not to gender, sexuality, orientation, or even belief.
Just this one phrase in Lorna Bradley’s piece has set me off on a whole new way of thinking. As Rick Rubin’s says in The Creative Act [and I paraphrase because I can’t find the actual quote in the book because I’ve underlined so much in there!] “sometimes we need to look at the minute to see the infinite”
Husband and son enjoying karting for son’s birthday. Lots of judging went on during this afternoon as we watched groups of other people also enjoying their day. Many were stage and hen parties. March 2023. Photo taken by myself
I think this might fit in with the last few blogs.
I’ve been pondering judging others and Jesus comment about “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judgeothers, you will be judged” Matthew 7:1-2. Yet we do all judge on a regular basis. We are continually putting others into that “good box/bad box” But I think we do it so we can be safe, because we’re scared.
It is easier to make a judgement call on others than really get to know them, easier to put them in a box than lift the lid on them. But I think that is because we want to belong.
Jesus as that we will be judged in the same way as we judge others. I think too often we’ve thought of that as God doing the judging but I think it is each and everyone of us. So if I think of myself with my own internal labels of good/bad behaviour, of what makes a good Christian/writer/person of my age/add your own then I judge that person over there as being either part of my clique or not then I decide if I am going to like them or not, if I am going to let them get close or not. But I do it all much more for my benefit than for theirs. I want to be surrounded by people who will affirm my beliefs, behaviours, tastes, etc so that I have a group I am apart of.
I think there are not just Christian denominations but others groups, but it is the Christian ones I know best, who say if you do x then you are a better Christian than those over there. If you get involved and do things, behave like someone else, but in actuality it is when we are truly who we were made to be, our genuine selves, that we belong fully, especially to God.
I’ve just started a new job four afternoons a week. It is the first job I have ever had, I think, where I haven’t wanted to “fit it” and because of that I am being my genuine self. Yes it has helped that I have got rid of some of the things that held me back from being genuine. I am finding that I am really enjoying the job and I think that is because, even though I am hearing that things are not perfect and that there are things that the old-needing-to-fit-in-me would have been hurt by, I am not judging, but also not needing to temper myself to be “part of the clique”.
There is a freedom in not judging others, in not being fearful of not fitting in with culture one is in. It is not stepping out of the culture but not needing to be part of it, or even not needing to oppose it. Opposing is a judgement call as much as needing to know the “rules” to fit in.
The need to judge other and to belong is a survival mechanism but there is so much more freedom in not having to judge and being one’s genuine, authentic self.
Much of this post came from thoughts I had from a video and newsletter from the daughter of friends of mine who is on mission with Ywam in the Pacific. I felt the only way to end this was by taking a quote from our email conversation.
“I think it is very common to want to do things to get peoples validation and feel like you belong. But in the Kingdom of God you belong by simply abiding. My friend, Julie, introduced me to the song abide by kingdom culture. I love it! It says “there’s no striving, just abiding“, how beautiful that all we have to do is abide in the Lord. And with abiding in the Lord comes being yourself and not having to worry.”
Aspirational Adventures 