Tag: writing

Categories
clanging bell right energy

Furthering The Kingdom

We went out in the snow and then the following day in Storm Bert and this is the little dog afterwards wrapped in his drying robe! Neither picture has anything to do with the blog content 🙂

Today is Christ The King Sunday. I know this because my mum sends me her zoom links for her early morning church service, which I then forget to click on to but I still read the liturgy!

I love on the Sunday that many denominations acknowledge Christ as King it is also Stir up Sunday. No this isn’t a day for stirring up the congregations to become more Christ-like, to put Christ more in the centre of their lives, to give them a poke to get them out of their comfort zones. No! Stir Up Sunday was the day when all the women of the parish would stir up their Christmas puddings to get the alcohol evenly distributed so the puddings would taste great for Christmas day!

Fascinating that they are on the same Sunday!!!

But it got me thinking about a question that came up on the study we were doing with the youth group. The study had been about the Book of Revelations and the question was “what could you do to help make God’s kingdom come?”

Some of the answers were – giving toys to HomeStart charity, being kind to school friends, saying thank you, or for myself, writing.

It got me thinking about how we should be using our gifts and talents because I still think that it isn’t what we do but how we are that makes God’s kingdom come and I think that comes about when we know our talents, our strengths, our weaknesses, and take our areas of healing to God so they can heal us.

So even if we are being all out evangelical and preaching Jesus to people if we are not doing it from a healed, safe place but doing it because we ought to, or are fearful of what will happen to them if they don’t meet with Jesus, then people won’t notice. Great though it is giving toys to those children who don’t have enough if we do it with resentment or even with hoping we look good then we aren’t doing it with the right spirit, with the right energy.

I believe it is all about the energy that comes from us.

In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul says that if we do things without love we are like a clanging bell, an out of tune bell. In terms I understand I would say he is saying that if we do things with the wrong energy, with the “trying to look good” energy, with the “still hurting inside” energy, with the “needing to be needed” energy, then we are like an clanging empty out of tune bell. We hit the wrong note with others.

So I think whether today we are stirring puddings, trying to bring forward God’s kingdom, acknowledging Christ as king, or like one friend has just shared on FB, speaking gratitude over her battered kitchen, if we do it with the wrong energy then it will be clanging, but if we do those things and even the most benign things with the energy of love and acceptance things will change.

Categories
faithful fruitful

Be Faithful

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?

If I’m not faithful am I really being fruitful?

Photo by Jay Lockyer on Pexels.com
Categories
hiraeth lake ocean

A Stake in the Ground

Llyn Idwal October 2024 photographed by myself

I feel like I haven’t blogged for a while and don’t have much in my head for blogging because I’ve been writing. But then I got a little nudge to suggest that maybe I share on here what I’m writing around and about.

My main project – which definitely has become a project thanks to my lovely ladies at the writing group I run – is fictionalising my teenage-hood. It was quite dysfunctional and traumatic and has had some long lasting influences, but recently I did some QEC intergenerational healing and that seems to have given a firm foundation to be safe writing from.

Then in Write Club – an online group I meet with at 8am on a Wednesday morning – we were commissioned to write something around lineage and our lives. So this is what I’m going to share because I feel in sharing it I am putting a stake in the ground to say “this is who I really am and I’m going to stop chasing something I’m not”.

So here goes

It is inspired by Memet Murat Idan’s phrase ‘not every lake dreams to be an ocean’, but also of discovering that my Hireath is not just a physical place but a heart place. It is as much about belong with the authentic person God created me to be as it is being in the physical place I belong. And it is from this places of belonging with the authentic me that I feel i can write about the things where I was trying to be something non-authentic – like many of us go through in childhood.

The poem is called “I am a lake not an ocean“

I am a lake not an ocean

Though for years I railed against this.

I wanted to be an ocean with a capital O

Roll with the big ships, change courses of people’s lives

Kick arse with the big boys.

Be part of the noticeable team.

I despised the majestic mountains that hemmed me in

Rolled and pushed at the wild flower strewn banks that encased me.

Did not appreciate who I was and what I was called to be.

Now? Now I can look clearly.

I see where I end and where land begins

Appreciate the flora and the fauna of experience that surround me

Relish in the mountains that contain me.

Remain in place though storms blow and buffet my surface.

Let the pebbles chatter and churn on my shores without trying to hold them,

can trust the process of the flowing in and through.

As a lake I am always here, but now I know where here is.

The waterfalls flow in and the bubbling stream empties onward to the sea.

I glory in it as I watch the sky change above me.

I can contain the storms and sadnesses,

know when to release the glories and the joys.

A boat is tied to the wooden jetty that reaches into my waters

My children, family and friends are free to use it when they wish.

They can rest or row or glide or sail across my waters

Even if the waves rise high from unexpected breezes

I am always willing to keep them safe.

I maybe a lake but what happens within me eventually changes the oceans of the world

if I am willing to release the flow.

When I read this to The Write Club group I felt something shift in the atmosphere as if now I had spoken it into the world something had shifted. I am now the most contented little lake ever with no desire be anything else

Some references –

Hiraeth is a longing for one’s homeland, but it’s not mere homesickness. It’s an expression of the bond one feels with one’s home country when one is away from it. The only English word that comes close to translation would be longing/longingess https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-English-equivalent-to-the-Welsh-word-Hiraeth-I-come-from-a-Welsh-speaking-family-so-I-know-what-the-word-means-in-Welsh-but-I-am-stuck-for-an-appropriate-English-translation

Find out more about Memet Murat Idan on https://mehmetmuratildanresmiwebsitesi.wordpress.com/

Categories
jealousy lineage

Lineage

Binchester August 2024 photographed by myself

[expansion of thoughts from over the summer]

When I was at my friend’s helping to declutter I was struck by jealousy. Jealous of their lineage.

As we went through the loft they were refinding clothes from the past. Not just their old wedding clothes but their parent’s wedding clothes. In one box was the birthing gown worn by my friend’s grandmother and mother. Seven children of two different generations had been born under this gown. But it wasn’t just that. My friend was going to gather her daughters and granddaughters and they were going to talk through who would inherit these. It made me think how one day this birthing gown would be living 5 generations on from the original owner!!! Wow!! Now that is lineage.

They are also genuinely close to each other. When it was my friend’s 75th birthday party you could feel the closeness of the 4 generations. [They are great grandparents now] It is a closeness that they can all open out to others too which is great. What they have is special.

For myself my family are a bit dysfunctional. The only grandparent I ever know was my Nan and she had a major stroke when I was about six and never spoke again properly. I do have some photos from her but as my mum, who was only in her late 20s when my Nan had her stroke says, she had not got to wanting to ask her many of the things she wishes she had. My parents divorced when I was 18 and my dad died without me knowing until 10 days later. So as you can see we don’t go back far. My children are in their 30s and there are no grandchildren on the way, which I am fine with as that is their choice. We’ve never done the family parties like my friends.

I was struggling this when The Write Club that meets on line at 8am on a Wednesday put forward our first commissioning; to write about our “lineage”, meaning as much what you have read as what your family influences were. I refused to let the jealous and a bit self-pitying take over and so allowed my pen to hover over my journal and see what happened.

Well …. I was amazed at the things that came from it, of remembering older people who had passed through my life that have influenced my reading, my writing, and my ways of thinking. People from beyond the constraints of blood ties, many of whom have died, who have opened my eyes and my mind to so many different ways of thinking and doing things. It is amazing.

Would these people have entered my life if I had a strong, large, close-knit family? That I will never know. But this writing has taken me from focusing of what I didn’t have to wayyyyy beyond that.

Once we move beyond what we don’t have our eyes are opened to the well of ideas, to the stories that are us, that come each time we truly listen to our lives.

Categories
freedom yoke

Freedom From ….?

https://dailyverses.net/freedom

A moment to write between trips!

We’ve got our Upper Room house group tonight and I’ve been pondering what I’d like to share when this verse came to me. So as I walked the dog this morning I got to pondering about what that “yoke of slavery” really was.

Whilst away I’ve see a lot of people who are trapped, many of whom are Christians, trapped by many things; by holding on to hurts and hates from many years ago and having to regurgitate them; trapped by issues in their upbringing which makes them repeatedly behave in a certain way and where their response is to say “it must be my/our upbringing” even though actually they don’t like those characteristics both in themselves and in others; trapped by diagnoses of mental health or behavioral ways again with this “this is just what I’m like”. When challenged on all these things from the regurgitating hurts to the characteristics, etc the response can be quite aggressive and almost a “so you don’t love and accept me as I am”.

Now I believe totally that God loves us unconditionally just as we are [and from that we are to love others unconditionally] but I also think God wants us to be freed from the “yoke of slavery” that is the often the “this is just what I am, I can’t help it” especially if it holds us back from being content with ourselves and with our lives – good, not so good, bad and downright horrible.

I believe to be in the freedom that is talked about here is NOT determined by circumstance, situation, or survival [which I think is a lot of what brings on these “I can’t help it” responses]. I believe this freedom comes from showing ourselves totally to God and to ourselves as we are, warts, traumas and all, and allowing God to set us free in whatever way they see best; counseling, QEC, therapy, Alcoholics Anonymous type group, or just that touch of God without any human intervention.

As with the joy, peace and love, I believe Freedom is a gift from God that is set before us waiting for us to take hold of. This doesn’t mean we will always be safe from falling back into that slavery of comparing, of judging, of fear, of feeling inadequate unless …, but it gives us a rock, a safe place, to crawl back on to, a place to remember that we are not bound by the slavery of being pitched by the waves of thoughts and feelings and situations. But we are totally free.

https://dailyverses.net/freedom

I had a few times over the past week where I could feel myself sliding back into old patterns of behaviour which came from fear, from survival, from old habits, but I either reached to God or asked others to pray from me and that put me back on that rock of freedom away from those “yokes of slavery” that would have dragged me back into old patterns of behaviour which were not wholesome either to myself or to those I was with.

Even today I had to stand on this rock because instead of the regular 10-12 people coming to our Upper Room evening there are only 6, 2 of which are myself and my husband! I heard the “old me”, the “enslaved me” saying things about how it wasn’t worth preparing for, how we ought to have invited more people to allow for there always to be a “crowd” coming, and fear of how it might not work out. Because I had already had to deal with these thoughts in regard to my writing groups – where I used to cancel if only 2 people were coming but now happily run them even if only 1 person is there, so long as that one person is happy about it – I was able to bonk these thoughts on the head very quickly. Or as the Bible says “take these thoughts captive”, which seemed to release this blog and so bless many more than those who will turn up tonight.

Son and dog safe on a rock – March 2018

Categories
oughts writing

Walking Away from “Oughts”

Write from your Passion

First published on Godspacelight 9th July 2024

Writing workshop about dragons and myths run by myself – Barefoot At The Kitchen Table – June 2024

In Christine Sine’s newsletter to those of us who write for Godspacelight she talked about writing into her passion. This is probably one of the bests prompts I’ve had in ages. I have tried writing what I ought to write. I even set up a Substack account to write about writing for well-being but it’s failed. Why? Because, much as I love free writing for my own well-being, I wasn’t writing into my passion. I was trying to be something I wasn’t. I even tried putting in a regular structure to when I blogged but I’m afraid that isn’t me. 

How often do we do that – try to be something we are not? Whether it is in what we write or what we do? I think of many times when I have done something – job or ministry – that is so significant but isn’t me. Too many times to remember. It could even be something I’m good at, have talents in, but it isn’t my passion. I suppose if one jargoned it up I could say it wasn’t “my calling.”

As I’ve got older I’ve learned more and more not just what my skills and talents are but what I am passionate about. I love people, though I need time alone with a book too. If I’m honest my perfect day would be to go for a dog walk, coffee and breakfast with a friend and have a rolling, random conversation that covers deep and meaning as well as trivial and silly; come home and write a blog piece on something that either the conversation has triggered or that was buzzing in my head; and finish the afternoon on the couch to have a read of a good book, then maybe some intense Netflix drama with a glass of red wine to finish the day. Somewhere in that I’d like to ponder writing a short story or flash fiction, though maybe never get to write it; I’d like to email someone I enjoy writing to; run a writing workshop where I encourage others to get the most from putting pen to paper; and probably free write or journal myself. 

But I can get into thinking I “ought to” write X, Y or Z; I “ought to” be connecting with a certain person or group and “ought to” be doing something with them. But that is my “oughts and shoulds” and not my passion coming through. 

I’ve just read Timothy Keller’s The Prodigal God in which he talks of the older brother attitude being the one that says “it’s not fair” when God doesn’t do as we think they should do because we were “good Christians”. My “ought to” comes, I think, from a place that is where I’ve decided what a  “good Christian” or a “good writer” would/should do. It isn’t coming from a place of my passion. 

I think for all of us there are times when we do not run with our passions for many reasons; a need to fit in, a fear of missing out, having been told by a parental figure that life isn’t meant to be about fun, or whatever. I’m sure we all, if we allow ourselves to really hear our hearts, can come up with many reasons why we don’t follow our passions in work, in writing, in church stuff, in life in general. All of them have some truth in them but remember the devil goes around like a angel of light. The one who keeps us away from our true selves does it subtly not overtly. If it was overtly we would notice and rise above it. But it is filled with limited truths and comes from people who do care for us and want the best for us. But it is still lies if it keeps us from our passions and our true selves. 

I’m grateful to all the healing that I’ve received so I can hear God clearly, hear my heart clearly, and be bold enough to step out into my passions. I’m also bold enough now to walk away from when I’ve try to do something that looks good but isn’t me; when I’ve done an “ought”. But this has come about because I know God loves me unconditionally all the time – not just when I get it right/write 🙂 

Categories
freedom wallowing

When The Going Gets Tough

You Are Loved by Rossie Henderson-Begg https://rossiehb.art/ with the tea drinking covid bird underneath

What do you do when things get tough? Do you retreat into the toughness and wallow there waiting for someone to lift you out? or do you see where life is going to take? Do you go with the currents of life and trust that “all will be well and all will be and all manner of things will be well” – Julian of Norwich

I’m sharing the picture above to encourage you to sign up to my friend, Rossie’s newsletter which you can find on her website if you click the link above. Here is a young woman who has walked through tragedy, sadness and defeat, but has found a way to journey through it. She isn’t one to wallow.

Many people, whether Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, other religions or none, choose between sliding into a pit of despair when something happens – big or small – that doesn’t reach their expectations, or rising above it and accepting it as life. This can the tragic loss of someone too young and too soon, or it can be a dream that didn’t come to fruition, a relationship that they didn’t want to end that ended painfully, an exam not passed, a job not got, etc. And I’m not saying these things are not horrendous. But some people choose to stay there and wallow, almost waiting for someone to pick them up and out of it – but it can often seem that no matter what is suggested they will find a way to stay where they are.

For each of us though there is a way up and out of it.

For Rossie it is her painting, amongst other things, – which she has now bravely gone and turned into her profession. For myself it is my writing – especially the free writing – but also chatting with people. I also love to help others find that freedom and release via writing. My writing groups are not “writing for well-being” per se but they are also not for people who really want to get a book published. They are for people to explore life, the universe, their feelings, etc, via the power of creative writing!

One of my biggies too is to be outside, especially by the sea, but my local park does the same. Just to walk and enjoy the simplicity of the natural world and all its wonders helps me to get outside my own troubles, issues, and disappointments.

Prayer and connecting with God is also another amazing way. But I do think to do that one has to want to trust God to be there, not to sort things out but to hold, to love, and to listen, for prayer to turn one’s heart around. Not the situation, but one’s heart. Too often, I think, there is a disappointment with God because he doesn’t sort things as the person praying would like – doesn’t heal, bring back from the dead, restore the relationship, make the dream work out as one hoped.

Healing via QEC is another one for me. I know others who’ve found a sense of healing through Sozo, talking therapies, and many other ways. But these things must be used as a place to be freed not to prolong things. The same is true is prayer. There is no point keep mithering at God that things didn’t work out as you wanted but, like with the above therapies, it has to be a way to be healed and to move on.

My point from this post is to say that my friend could have wallowed in her grief and despair, even whilst doing her painting, but she chose not to. [check out her photo on her website] But I know of many others who choose to stay in that place. And for some I think they stay, not because they like it, but because they believe the world is a scary place and so it is better to stay in their fear, anxiety, sorrow and loss, than to step out and get slammed all over again.

There is always a choice – to stay and wallow or to find a way out of that place.

    If you check out my earlier blog – Diane’s Daily Thoughts – you’ll see I am talking from experience. And this blog from March 2012 only shows a snapshot of my journey through disappointment, loss and other shit. When someone read my Day of The Dead post they said “I didn’t realise you had dealt with so much loss”!

    Categories
    Distractions enough peace

    Distracted By Many Things

    Single focus dog. Photographed by myself Cardiff April 2024

    This week I have been distracted by many things. I’ve got 3 workshops I am running with funding from Creu Conwy which seemed to have taken ages to finalise but now are imminent. The first two are next week! Also they are in the evening – one from 5-7pm and the other from 6-8pm, times when I am usually in that downward curve energy-wise and just want to mooch about and watch TV. Though I have had a few nights where I have been functioning after my 6pm deadline – once with a new churchy-style group that we’ve started in my house and a couple of trips to the cinema with hubby. But I’m panicking about these workshops because I will have to be the one who is fully alert.

    It has amazed me how quickly I get distracted. I’m also doing an online writing course which is great but again is making me worry about that old adage of “not having enough time”. How many times have I written about not having enough. Perhaps I need to be reading my writings not just writing them??

    But it also means that, even though I have been reading my Bible meditations and thinking I’ve not been thinking deeply. Not letting things penetrate into my heart.

    This week’s Henri Nouwen thoughts are about Celebrating and how one needs to be in that moment to really celebrate, how lots of what and when we celebrate is a going through the motions rather than actually celebrating. So the event is something that sits between the stress of planning and the anticlimax after the event, but that celebration should be a lifestyle thing. I need to remember that I am to enjoy running these workshops and not just caught up in the preparation and then the feedback.

    So once again I am like Martha [Luke 10:38-42] where Jesus says “Martha you are worried about many thing but the better thing is to sit at my feet like your sister“.

    I was worrying about things. Ok not little things. These things are quite big – running these writing workshops, not being too exhausted because of the time I am doing them, getting the work handed in for the writing workshop I have paid for, and the having enough sleep, time, ability!

    Interestingly the other night I was awake worrying about, of all things, having enough energy and enough time, exasperated by being awake from 3.30-5.30am. I had a full day in front of me and a long list of planning not just for the workshop but other things that I had to do. But, as you’ve probably already guessed, I got everything that needed to be done on the list completed and even managed to stay up till 10pm with my husband watching TV as well has having walked my 10,000+ steps. It was as if God was saying “look you can do it. All will be well”.

    Also I do know I have the ability to run these workshops. I do an amazing job every Tuesday fortnight with my regular group and can pull things from the depths of my brain when needed. I know I can do it but I get distracted and once I get distracted I move away from God and also move away from celebrating the joys of being alive.

    As I’ve said before though, there is an order for how this comes about. To really be able to feel I have enough I need to be at Peace. From that place of Peace comes a deep Joy and only then do I believe I have Enough. And what has gone on this week is that I had to realign my autonomic nervous system back to a place of peace – which does just take a few moments of breathing and looking at the window, of remembering what I have to be grateful for, and forgiving myself and others. For me going through the Lord’s Prayer but an Aramaic translation, helps me.

    https://www.pinterest.com/pin/88875792626618323/

    Only then do I start to remember that deeper joy that is a bedrock not a happy feeling. And it is then that I feel like I have enough. Today it means I can say “I have enough time to do a blog post – with many pictures – before going away for the weekend even though my first workshop is Tuesday”.

    My whole thoughts have been consumed by these workshops to the point where a friend asked me for coffee and I said I was too busy!!! And also nearly didn’t go south with my husband to see his Mum which has now turned out to be a trip to see my Mum too. Goodness me! Fancy me thinking I don’t have enough time to see family or friends! As well as the Lord’s Prayer I did have to have a chat with my covid-bird to be reminded that friends and cups of tea are important.

    Picture first shared on Relearning June 2023

    Categories
    Holy Week pondering

    Thank You For Walking Through Holy Week with me

    Abergwyngregyn Nature Reserve, Gwynedd, North Wales. Photographed 2nd April 2024

    I want to say a huge thank you for journey with me and my random thoughts through Holy Week and beyond. I don’t know about you but I’ve really enjoyed marking this space and looking at things a bit differently. I’m not sure about you but for me, sometimes, to turn things on their side helps deepen my faith, whereas looking at things the same way as I’ve always done can make things a bit stale.

    This morning I cemented my Holy week and beyond thoughts by taking myself for a walk at one of my favourite places. It is a walk of about 3-3 1/2 miles and takes about 90 mins. It is by the sea looking across the Menai Straights but with the sounds of the A55 North Wales Expressway and the main Holyhead to Cardiff railway line running always to the other side. It is a place where my dog can be off the lead for the whole 90 mins which I enjoy for him as much as for myself. Also a 3 min drive from the walk is the most wonderful community cafe where the dog gets a free sausage and I get a wonderful breakfast so very much a win-win!

    I saw one other person on the whole walk and he was standing peacefully looking out to sea and we just exchanged that polite “Morning” before going back to our own thoughts. I have lots of thoughts from it which I will share later on, maybe.

    But I will end these Holy Week and beyond ponderings with a prayer by Walter Brueggemann that Joshua Luke Smith shared on yesterday’s The Main Event email

    On Generosity

    On our own, we conclude:

    there is not enough to go around

    we are going to run short

    of money

    of love

    of grades

    of publications

    of sex

    of beer

    of members

    of years

    of life

    we should seize the day

    seize our goods

    seize our neighbours goods

    because there is not enough to go around

    and in the midst of our perceived deficit

    you come

    you come giving bread in the wilderness

    you come giving children at the 11th hour

    you come giving homes to exiles

    you come giving futures to the shut down

    you come giving easter joy to the dead

    you come – fleshed in Jesus.

    and we watch while

    the blind receive their sight

    the lame walk

    the lepers are cleansed

    the deaf hear

    the dead are raised

    the poor dance and sing

    we watch

    and we take food we did not grow and

    life we did not invent and

    future that is gift and gift and gift and

    families and neighbours who sustain us

    when we did not deserve it.

    It dawns on us – late rather than soon-

    that you “give food in due season

    you open your hand

    and satisfy the desire of every living thing.”

    By your giving, break our cycles of imagined scarcity

    override our presumed deficits

    quiet our anxieties of lack

    transform our perceptual field to see

    the abundance………mercy upon mercy

    blessing upon blessing.

    Sink your generosity deep into our lives

    that your muchness may expose our false lack

    that endlessly receiving we may endlessly give

    so that the world may be made Easter new,

    without greedy lack, but only wonder,

    without coercive need but only love,

    without destructive greed but only praise

    without aggression and invasiveness….

    all things Easter new…..

    all around us, toward us and

    by us

    all things Easter new.

    Finish your creation, in wonder, love and praise.

    Amen.

    Categories
    forgiveness sorry

    Sorry/Forgiveness

    My beautiful dipstick dog stuck under the throw
    My beautiful dog after being released from captivity

    Yes I know one picture is from the other day but I thought you’d like to see the sequence

    I think the dog forgave the throw for capturing him but I’m not sure. As the “kind” dog-mummy I am I did make him wait for his release until I had taken the first photo.

    This is a follow on from my post the other day looking at Sorry. Please, if you haven’t read Beth’s comments about what they get up to at her kindergarten with their children around forgiveness/sorry do go back to read them. They are awesome. I wish I’d done that with my children when they were little

    As I’ve said before there are times when God/The Universe just keep highlighting things and this is what has happened with the Sorry/Forgiveness things. I was watching The Way on BBC iplayer the other day and there is a part towards the end where one character says to the other – “I forgive you” and the response is “But I didn’t say sorry”. [I won’t tell you who says what to who because you might want to watch it. Be warned the link has spoiler alerts!]

    What stuck me in following on from that previous Sorry post is that it is the forgiving that releases us rather than the saying sorry. The forgiver is able to let go, to move on, and to find their own direction. It doesn’t need someone to say “Sorry” for each of us to be able to forgive.

    As happened on the Cross Jesus says “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” Luke 23:34 [which is actually quite similar to the thing the one character does to the other. She thinks she was doing a good thing but he did not see it that way] Jesus didn’t wait until the people who crucified him said they were sorry. And it is possible some of them never were sorry because they did not see what they had done was wrong.

    As with Beth’s children it is not about saying Sorry and moving on but about the child who has been hurt being able to say what they need to make them feel better.

    Within the context of the TV program she had said and done things along the way that had help restore his self-worth, had given him the things that made him feel better for the slight that had been committed.

    As with all things we have to slow down, to understand what our hurts are and what would make us feel better. As I heard on Drew Jackson’s podcast about Poetry as a Spiritual Practice often anger can be the surface emotion to something much deeper. But we do have to slow down to be able to really find that – whether that be through poetry, free writing which is my go-to, prayer, long walks, or whatever – find that thing that helps us explore deeper what we are really feeling and what will make us feel restored.