Tag: shared blog

Categories
letting go Slow down

Letting Go

First published on Thursday 22nd February 2024 on Godspace Light – Letting Go

Christine’s post Relinquish, Let Go  and Lily’s post on Jesus going into the wilderness, I think, sit hand in hand. Letting go of things is like going into the wilderness. We’ve got used to what we do and we do it well, so why let go? Some of the reason can be that, like with Christine, new projects call us and there are only so many hours in the day. Some of the reasons are that even though we might have the time and the energy they are not what God has for us. Now that can be a hard one. It’s one I’m going through so I can speak from experience. I was doing a few writing workshops and projects and working with children, which I am also good at and love. In fact I wasn’t doing as much as I used to do in my 40s and I still had the energy to do it, but something was niggling in the back of my head/heart. 

You know that feeling when God’s still small voice is pulling on you. Those things you love are not giving you the joy they used to. You put it down to needing more zinc, hormones being out of sync, partner/children not pulling their weight, seasonal light deficiency. So you change your diet, get a SAD lamp, sort out a chores list for the family, but still something isn’t quite right. 

For me God got fed up of me not listening and it was my 84 year old mother’s health scare that brought things to a grinding halt. No worries she is fine now she’s slowed down a bit and decided she isn’t 30 any more. But the worry of her not being around and me being so busy that I didn’t have time to drive down country for 6 hours to see her. So it caused me to have to rethink things and hold things lightly.

But isn’t it a shame that I didn’t hear that still small voice in my heart that was trying so hard to tell me not necessarily to slow down but that there are things that I was doing that I am not meant to be doing. Interestingly in everything I do now those I work with know that if there is another health scare I will drop everything and just go. And of course, because I’m only doing the things God wants me to everyone I work with is content with that. 

Not just in the “big wide world” but in Church circles there is so often that push to be busy. The question “what have you been up to this week/today?” comes up when you meet. “Where have you been worshipping/serving God?” And if one hasn’t got a full schedule one feels like one could be missing out on some form of service/ministry/doing! Added to that the inner jealousies that other people have “ministries” and you’re just bumbling about drinking tea!

Jesus going into the wilderness just after he’d been baptised and God had affirmed him as his son was not a good PR move. In our fast paced world his “team” would have told him to grab the opportunity immediately because if he didn’t someone else might. But Jesus was secure in not just who he was but in what he was meant to do. 

Did you know that if you acted out the gospels and all the things Jesus did and said in them it would not last that long at all? Jesus had lots of down time, lots of time that was not worth recording in any of the gospels, lots of time just being, not just with God but with his disciples, his friends and even, I think, his family. 

Hanging out not just for the sake of “friendship evangelism” or as a “teaching opportunity” but, I think, he was hanging out to enjoy other people’s company. We can learn so much from hanging out with other people and also find out more about ourselves. We also need quiet time not just for praying, not studying, not reading but just being and letting the world flow past. 

So perhaps we all need some time over this Lenten season to stop, to think about whether the things, whether many or few, are what God really wants us to be doing. And then be brave enough to have gaps in our lives where there is nothing to do!

And I’ll finish with Christine’s poem from Monday’s meditation

Stay close to your inner world,
Travel slowly through the hidden corridors
Of your heart.

Listen quietly not for answers,
But for the questions
Hiding beneath the stress,
Of your uncertainty.
Do not be afraid,
Of what you will uncover,
Of what you might relinquish,
If you become honest
With yourself.

Categories
end times Humanity

Is The World Broken?

Is the world broken? Are we in the end times? Has humanity run its course?

These are all questions that seem to arise from fellow dog walkers whilst walking round the park in the morning. Most have just seen the news and so need to ponder out loud, need a sounding board for their thoughts whilst they are alone.

Now the Ukraine/Russia war is coming up to a year old and Europe and US has stop standing on the sidelines that makes on think of the “wars and rumours of wars”. And we too often forget the wars raging through much of Africa; the drug wars in South America and the mass migration that has caused. Then there is the huge earthquake in Turkey and Syria, with at last count over 15,000 people dead. Plus flooding in New Zealand, floods in this country, fires in other places. And let us not also forget the covid pandemic.

Is this the end times? Has humanity ran its course?

I found it hard to say whilst standing in the park, which is a man made phenomena, listening to the birds coming to the end of their morning chorus, see people who have got to know each other over the last three years of pandemic, who have become friends, become supporters and confidants of each other, who care and look out for each other.

There is so much good in the world, I believe, that too often we take it for granted. We see the big things – which are horrendous; the wars, the deaths, the natural disasters, the man made disasters, the hatred – that too often we don’t see the small things. Not just those random acts of kindnesses but the day to day “Good morning”s, holding doors open. In fact I need to quote the poem that was on Beth’s post this morning, Small Kindnesses because this proves to me that humanity has not run its course, is not done yet. Things happen but there are too many kindnesses going on for it to be the end!

I’ve been thinking about the way,

when you walk down a crowded aisle,

people pull in their legs to let you by.

Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes,

a leftover from the Bubonic plague.

“Don’t die,” we are saying.

And sometimes,

when you spill lemons from your grocery bag,

someone else will help you pick them up.

Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,

and to say thank you to the person handing it.

To smile at them and for them to smile back.

For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,

and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.

We have so little of each other, now.

So far from tribe and fire.

Only these brief moments of exchange.

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy,

these fleeting temples we make together when we say,

“Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

by Danusha Lameris, Small Kindnesses

I’m planning a follow to ask “What does God think?”

Categories
christmas Mary

Mary

Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com

I was pondering a piece by Ordinary Pilgrim this morning around Mary and icons from from Medieval European female monasteries that open up to show Mary with anything from just Jesus to the whole Trinity growing within her

Externally, she is portrayed as a simple mother; on the inside she hosts the mysteries of heaven. 

https://www.ordinarypilgrim.co.uk/blog

So I got to letting my thoughts flow through my pen and what struck me is how we have turned this simple, ordinary teenage girl into something super human; have taken something that could have happened to anyone who was willing into an hierarchical structure with, depending on denomination, either priests and vicars, or with pastors and a pastoral team.

Mary was so amazingly ordinary and yet too often people are not allowed to believe this could happen to them. Or have to take it through a leader of some sort – whether vicar or church pastor or whatever the denomination calls those who stand at the front.

The amazingness, for me, of the Incarnation is that it came to an ordinary young woman in an ordinary town. I’ve often wondered if Mary was the first person the angel came to or whether there were others who said No? It is Mary’s willingness that is amazing. But also each of us can grow something of God within us and take it out into the world. We don’t have to be gifted orators, or want to win everyone over to be a signed up follower of Christ. But each of us can willingly say “I have God living within me and I can take that wherever I go”.

I wonder if the line “your kingdom come, your will be done“, which too often we prayer much too quickly but also see as for something bigger, actually is “let that little seed of you, God, that is growing in me come to fruition today”.

So as I pondered what is being birthed in me this season I also prayed for all who profess a faith in Jesus, and even those who don’t, that they would allow what God has within them grown to be something as amazing as Mary allowed.

Jesus does say we will go on to do more amazing things than he did. Maybe, just maybe, that is allowing God’s incarnation in each of us to grow unhindered into all it is meant to be. Not held back by the culture of our churches, our church leaders, our families, our own hearts that can’t believe God would do that with us. And I also prayed for all church leaders of whatever denomination, whatever stream, that they would not get caught up in the machinations of leading their congregations and be able to let the seed of God that is within them grow into whatever it is God wants it to be.

Mary did not know what Jesus would be like when she said Yes to God’s proposal. She did not know what would come next. In fact she did not even know is she would live through the birth of this child – death in childbirth was very common up until very recently. But she said yes. Am I willing to say yes to this seed that God has inside of me whatever happens to me? Are you?

Categories
learning Viewpoint

Viewed Through Your Lens?

View across the Solway Firth looking from England to Scotland, photographed by Diane Woodrow whilst on holiday in this area in September 2021, and realising for the first time how much further Hadrian's wall went
The start/finish of Hadrian’s Wall taken by myself September 2021

Every thing we look at or interpret we interpret through our own lens, viewpoint, life experiences. I take a quote here from Michael Moore’s blog that I read this morning

Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing

by Thich Nhat Hahn taken from Learning by Michael Moore

I am reading and pondering on a lovely devotional book by my friend David Pott about the painting of Jacob and his sons that hang in Bishop Auckland Castle called Listening to The Boys. My interpretation of some of the paintings and thoughts are very different to David’s. Because I know him I know he is from a large, close family, who enjoy being together and has been married to the same person for over 50 years. Yes I do also know there have been challenges within the family but there has been a lot of support too. He is also a man – obviously.

When I read his thoughts and look at the paintings I am viewing them through the eyes of a woman who isn’t from a large close family and who has had very different life experiences to David. For instance when I read about Simeon and Levi killing the family of the man who raped their sister I, as a woman, side much more with them and their violent justice than I do with Jacob, their father, who is looking for reconciliation and expecting his daughter to marry the man who raped her! In fact, as a woman who would spent time wanting a father to stand in the gap for her I have often struggled with white, male preachers’ take on Jacob in this story.

I think this is where we have to be very careful when, especially in churches, we say “this is what this piece says”. Too often someone will stand at the front of church and speak for 10 minutes to over an hour, depending on the denomination, and say “this is what the Bible says” when in fact they should be saying “this is what I believe this is saying to me at this point in time“.

As a writer and author I know that what I write gets viewed differently by whoever reads it because the reader views it through their worldview/their lens and I have to learn that it does not mean I am wrong or they are wrong. It means I have to slow down and listen, really listen, and try to remove my world view, my experiences, etc.

I also this is this why it is so awesome to read books by writers of different countries, classes, ethnicities, sexualities, etc to myself. If I really listen, and don’t try to cover them with my known world I can learn so much – not just about the other writer but about myself.

Categories
acceptance Achievement Contentment

What Have I Achieved?

Picture of a broken wall and pebbled beach looking across water to a town and island. Taken by Diane Woodrow
Abergwyngren coastal path looking towards Beaumaris taken by myself – Aug 2021

I woke up feeling low this morning. Low and old. Bemoaning that I only had a handful of years left to live and what had achieved with it. So I sat on my yoga mat with my cat and pondered. Because I’m also following Christine Sine’s example of deep gratitude I did my best to move into that place.

Well to begin with I have two amazing children who are doing great in the world. I have published a book [and trying not to beat myself up over the fact that it is my only one so far. I will go back and read my last post if I get issues there]. I encourage lots of people with my writing groups, with the youthshedz project [more on that in another post]

But it is too easy to look back and think of all the things I haven’t done – not had a great career, not entered politics, not invented something that would change the world, not some recognised person in the media.

But what really is achievement? What does it really mean? As a Christian I have come to believe that it means knowing God deeper and myself as well so that I can love others.

Doing the work with the Youthshedz young people I realise like them that I am luck to be alive. At 25 I didn’t like myself but now, 35 years on I can say that I like myself. I trust myself, and I have noticed the more I trust myself the more I trust God and also other people.

There is a verse about “judging as you will be judged” [Matthew 7:1] and I think that when one is striving to “achieve” something noteworthy one is too often looking at others, judging what they are doing, rating them as better or worse than oneself – generally better than – rather than just getting on and doing the stuff.

So I may not change the world and neither may my children or the young people I encourage, but you know I think if I make my world a more contented place by being more contented myself – by creating that energy around me of acceptance and contentment – then I have achieved enough.

Like the harbour wall in this picture one day all will be gone and I will be forgotten and you know that is ok.

Categories
change Intentional trust

Intentionality Written In Pencil

Picture of stoney beach looking out to still clean sea taken by Diane Woodrow author of The Little Yellow Boat book
Llanddulas beach walk which I did when a writing group I run had been cancelled due to only one person showing up. Intentionality written in pencil!

I was reading Lisa’s blog on Musing From a Sacred Summer, of how she is being intentional with the things she does before leaving Seattle, but that so often we don’t know what is round the corner. If these past 18 months have taught us one thing it should be that we don’t know what’s coming. Every January we sit and plan, roughly, our year so that we’ve at least got some idea of what is going on. Even as February 2020 came into being and rumours were starting about this new virus we still went ahead and book a trip to see my son’s flat and a couple of other events later in the year. For us here in the UK March 23rd was “end of the world as we know it” day. Lockdown day!! The signs were there. It had been coming. But I don’t think anyone really believed it would be as it was.

So things will change but does that mean we don’t plan any more? I don’t think so. But it is how we plan that will help to keep us sane.

I am trying to make my whole day intentional. I am a writer and, as most writers know, unless you carve out time then you don’t get to write. In fact I think that is probably true for most self-employed creative people without deadlines. I don’t have a publisher waiting round the corner for me to produce my next book, next collection, but I do love to write. I have published a book. I would like to publish again. But there won’t be anything if I don’t intentionally set aside time to write. So I am putting aside time in my diary. I also live in a big house that needs cleaning regularly. It is easy to keep clean if I intentionally set aside time to do it. I have paid projects that I need to be doing too.

Some people write their plans in stone. Some people don’t write them at all and wonder why things don’t get done. But I am planning on writing my plans in pencil. Not because I don’t take them seriously but because things can change. Take for instance my cleaning routine. I had it all planned out and then heard from a friend that someone she knew was going to be homeless for a couple of days, so a quick change, replan and they’ve got rooms ready for them. Or this morning, I had a list of what I was going to write. One of which was to finish off a blog post to share on Godspace but as I was writing it I put in a reference to this blog, that I hadn’t written at the time so thought I’d best get it done!!!

As I’ve mentioned before I intentionally put an Artist’s Date in my diary, where I go for a walk and write. I was planning to do that today but in the end went yesterday because there was a space. I am so glad I did because today there is sideways rain crashing down. Even the dog only got a 15 min walk. Intentionality written in pencil.

Hopefully this will make me more flexible, more trusting in God and the Universe, more able to do what I have to do. So I put things in my diary, make my to-do list, and hold everything lightly, and trusting that what I get done for that day, be it writing, cleaning, working on a project, emailing, seeing friends, or all the other myriad of things I love to do, will be what I am meant to do for that day

Intentionality written in pencil!!!

Categories
GodspaceLight Love self-love shared blog

A Love Note by Ana Lisa de Jong

This was originally published on https://godspacelight.com/2021/05/06/a-love-note/ on Thursday 6th May. It fits in so well with my last post that I felt I had to share it with you too.

Do check out https://godspacelight.com/ to read other inspiring posts. And also check out Ana Lisa de Jong on https://livingtreepoetry.com/

A Love Note 2

poem and photos by Ana Lisa de Jong,

A Love Note

I want you to write yourself a love note.
A story of the spirit that lives in you,
rises up,
defies opposition.

I want you to write the inverse of everything
you’ve been told that hurts,
limits,
keeps you sold out to other’s opinions.

Who do you know,
even amongst those who love you,
who see you truly,
who do not see you through a lens imperfect.

You are everything to the one
who perceived you before you stood up,
this one calling, every day, your name,
that you might live unto yourself.

And know that when the darts come
out of the night,
you have a shield, and a counterpart
to every word that isn’t true.

That you have comfort,
when strength is in short supply,
encouragement when
to show up smiling takes every ounce of will.

I want you to write yourself a love note.
From the spirit who lives, breathes in you,
stands up to bless you,
declares against

all that would hurt, intentionally,
inadvertently,
that the words echoing,
might die out on the tongue,

dissolve before they reach the ear,
meet the light,
come undone.

A Love Note 1
Categories
hope poem shared blog

The Leaves of The Trees

I would like to share a poem by my friend, Julia McGuiness, who is poet in residence at Chester Cathedral. This poem can also be found on The Leaves of The Trees and on the sidebar you can click to find other poems by Julia. I have chosen this one because I feel it fits in with my Review of 2020 and also my posts about Joy and Hope.

The Leaves of the Trees

by Poet in Residence, Julia McGuinness

Trees weep, a fall of leaves
swirled by wind to lost heaps
of silence, of dry beauty.

Scattering unswept, vulnerable
to being trodden, trampled
under indifferent heels.

Bend, humble as a branch.
Lift to the light with tender hand
what weather and time have torn.

The scars leaves bear are cuts
that frame the sky with HOPE.
This holding is for the moment.

Shimmering silver turns to bronze;
leaves shift colour and currency.
Let it go. You too have changed.

The air you breathe is imprinted
with invisible shapes of hope;
love is a gift with holes.

Categories
accepting being me carpe diem Easter finding anew No pictures! seeking shared blog

Searching

I love this quote from Velveteen Rabbi’s son on her post Seeking: Seeing the ordinary through new eyes about how he feels on the eve of Pesach we search for hidden hametz and about searching for Easter eggs with his Christian Grandma.

It’s fun because it’s about finding something new in regular places. If you find something new to do, then you always have it with you. And that makes it like you’re traveling, finding new places, even though you’re not going anywhere.

It was this whole thing of “if you find something new you always have it with you” and about travelling and finding new places even though you’re not going anywhere. I think this is so profound and so deep and I wonder how often we, as adults miss it.

From my reading of Mindfulness if it about looking at what we know and finding newness in it, of being ‘present’ full with what we already know. How often do we take a walk along the same route and not notice how amazing it is and yet if we take a child or even just someone who’s not been that way before they see things we have gotten used to?  How often in a relationship do we just get used to the same old same old and forget why we got involved with this person in the first place? How often do we forget that some of the flaws we see glaringly now we used to gloss over before when we saw them through new eyes?

I want to be able to travel to new places without going anywhere. It is why I write. I can be here in my room, can take something I know and can rework it. I am working with some of my memories which come from running memoir-writing groups and I was looking at them with new eyes. What slant do I want to put on them now? That isn’t lying about what happened but, I think, saying I want to look at what I think I know with new eyes. I want to travel somewhere new with what I already hold in my hand. I can then choose what light I want to see it in. Even the most tragic circumstances, if I want I can see amazing things going on. But also if I choose, even in the best of circumstances I can focus on the one bad bit in it. I can choose how I view my life. Sometimes I need to search hard, sometimes like with the Dragon Easter Egg Hunt at Gwrych Castle, where I volunteer, finding the eggs is easy because they are so big, but sometimes it can be hard to find that spring flower trying to appear through this unseasonally cold time. But the buds and growth and colours are there just not as visible as the Dragon eggs.

It is so true that once we do find something new in familiar places we remember it and hold on to it. I remember finding a clump of primroses along a path where I walked the dog regularly. Primroses for me bring back special memories of a bright patch in a hard time in my life which does make them special. But now whenever I walk this path I not only look out for these primroses but also look out for other changes. For me finding that something new and special in familiar places makes me want to look more and look harder and find something else that I didn’t see before.

I think I need to make sure I do this in places that I have yet to find something new. Who knows what is hiding in those familiar places?

Categories
accepting belief boundaries choice choose life counter-cultural empowering gun crime relationships shared blog

Choose Life

Moses repeated the words God told him about the Jewish people’s having a choice life-spirit-feature-imgbetween life and death, blessing and curses. The apostle Paul said Jesus came to take the sting of death away. This poem on Velveteen Rabbi’s blog post this morning, says it all for me about how too often we choose death. For me not only are the gunmen responsible for deaths, the terrorists responsible for deaths but we all are. We are in a world that allows guns – ok so in the UK and Europe we don’t have the same gun laws and the US but we still have guns; young men in inner cities with guns because of fear and need for power, farmers with guns to shoot rabbit, vermin, etc, Policeman carrying guns because there are gun crimes. We live in a landscape that gives rise to fear and hate, for the need to control, for the need to be seen. Too often we choose death not live, we choose to put the other down rather than raise them up. We choose to fear rather than trust, to see the bad rather than the good.

Each time we fear or need power, don’t trust and don’t accept, we are choosing death empower1over life. Yes we need to stop gun crime. Yes we need to stop stabbings. But we also need to stop fear and disempowering others. If we gave people a voice, some place to speak, gave them power without the gun, maybe that would help them choose life over death.

 

Here’s Rachel’s poem

Prayer-after

I loved and grieved from the day you claimed your free will,
Knowing that you too would open into infinite love and grief,

Knowing how your hearts would bloom with gratitude and hope
With every child’s every first, and lament every child’s every last,

As I do and always will with My children’s every first and every last
In the raw and wild cosmic dance we began together in the garden.

What else could I do? You must become what you must become,
Like Me infinitely becoming, infinitely capable of love and grief,

So I clothed your shimmering lights in skins and hid in plain sight
For you to seek and find Me amidst life’s sweetness and sorrow.

How fast your lights flickered underneath: your second son’s blood
Cried out to Me from the ground, too soon returning earth to earth.

The guilty wandered the land howling, pining for peace and safety
Denied by the very violence that condemned the guilty to wander,

Setting in motion also the vicious whirlwind spinning through
Columbine, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Las Vegas. Where next?

I did not mean for you to live like this or die like this – in fear and terror,
In trauma’s torrents, in shrapnel showers turning streets into killing fields.

You still can choose life: the free will your ancestors claimed for you
Remains yours even now, and still I gasp with loving pride and worry

With your every first and every last, grieving the countless innocents
Returning to Me in My own image too soon, bloodied and bagged.

But still you choose death. Aimlessly you wander the land howling,
Pining for peace and safety that senseless violence steals from you.

Choose to be My love, My strength, My intuition, My prophets, My beauty,
My healing hands – My living essence in this bloody and weary world.

Only then will this cruelest of your roulette wheels stop spinning red.
Oh, how I long with you for that day when you truly will choose life.

 

Claimed your own free will – Eve’s “defiance” in Eden claimed human agency for all her successors (Genesis 3:6-7).

Knowing … bloom – An allusion to the Tree of Knowledge and humanity’s “opening” into the knowledge of love and loss.

You must become – God describes God’s self to Moses as אהיה אשר אהיה / Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, “I Am Becoming Who I Am Becoming” (Exodus 3:14). We who are made in the divine image are also called to perennially become.

Clothed your shimmering light in skins – Because the Hebrew words for “skin” (עור) and “light” (אור) both are pronounced or, Zohar teaches that Eden’s first humans were beings of light, before God made us garments of skins. Even so, our skins cover our light, which we still can see if we look carefully.

Your second son’s blood… returning earth to earth. Humanity’s first murder – Cain killing Abel (Genesis 4) – spilled Abel’s blood (דם / dam) to the earth (אדמה / adamah).

Wander – Cain, after murdering his brother, was condemned to wander the land without peace (Genesis 4:14).

Setting in motion also – From Cain comes not only the first murder but also the rhetorical question – “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:8) – that continues to reverberate through the generations, and also the first “Why?” (Genesis 4:6), which teaches all future generations the possibility of teshuvah / return and repair (Radak Gen. 4:6).

Whirlwind – An allusion to the סערה (storm) from which God answered Job (Job 38:1). The storm’s circular shape resembles both a roulette wheel and a gun’s rotating cylinder that conveys bullets.

Choose life – “Choose life, if you and your progeny would live’ (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Aimlessly – The indiscriminate shooter, the nation’s inertia.

My love, My strength… – Seven emanations of the divine, corresponding to the seven lower sefirot of Kabbalistic tradition: chesed (love), gevurah (strength / boundaries), tiferet (balance), netzach (endurance / momentum), hod (beauty / gratitude), yesod (foundation / generativity), malchut (indwelling).

Roulette wheels stop spinning red – For the gaming tables of Las Vegas and the ultimate gamble: walking the streets safe and unafraid.

14 stanzas – 14 for יד, the yad (hand) of God: we now are the hand that must act.

332 words – 332 for לבש, lavash (clothed) in divine skins that cover our light.

 

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat and Rabbi David Evan Markus

(cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi and to R’ David’s website; feel free to reprint, with attribution.)