Lent

 Lent, purple on altar cloth and priest's scarf and some people give up chocolate

That's all I knew about Lent!  Not a lot really, because I don't come from traditional Christian stock.

Seems there is a whole lot more - it's a time to pray, to give, to fast.  Not sure about the fasting, so I did a bit of reading.  Some people limit what they eat, some go veggie for the 40 days.  Me, I have just been a heroic failure, because I have had a cold and currently am feeling blue and down, which is standard April/post cold fare for me.  Breakfast of chocolate orange hot cross buns probably isn't in the spirit is it?

There is a great passage in Isaiah the prophet on what the real point of fasting is - to do justice, to be generous, to treat your workers well.  That's a passage I like a lot! And Jesus just assumes we'll fast.

Very countercultural to me.

This morning, not sleeping I listened to Asian Network radio programmes called "Not even water" by young muslim men and women talking about their Ramadan practice.  How it's a chance to be kind, to be generous, to concentrate on their faith.  There seems to be this massive cultural, family based support network of food and fasting culture.  I guess that makes it easier.  Quite frankly, we seem to have massively lost out here!

I was very impressed.  Though they did make me laugh - seems that eating heavy food after sundown means you end up putting on weight.  I think what strikes me as a reasonable hack through this, is to learn to appreciate what you eat, to listen to what your body actually needs rather than as they say "feeding your anxiety" and to learn to eat seasonal healthy food.  Oh, and on Sundays, Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, so any rules are off - and Easter is a 40 day festival with joy and white or gold on the altar decorations

It's a whole different world in a slightly more traditional expression of Christian faith.  I feel I am learning which when you have been as intellectually arrogant as me, is always fun!

Escape

Yesterday evening everything was soaked, after a night of heavy rain. Shining puddles dance with concentric rain circles.  A burnt orange jeep, foursquare and cheery, sits perfectly parked bettween carpark lines.  I've escaped Exeter for a quick break - sore eyed from computers and too many books as well I think.  

It's not the nicest of Premier Inns.  It looks shabby and the signposting from the road is terrible - I overshoot and find a tight lane, which promises an evening walk.  There's an open Toby carvery and suddenly, after a queasy headachey day I feel HUNGRY.  So I succumb to a roast.  Turkey, lots of veg, mac&cheese, all in restrained quantities. Oh, did I mention half of Guinness (painkiller) and profiteroles? Hmm, I can never resist profiteroles in any format, but these were a bit sticky sweet but they did the job.

A bit of middle age TV - gardeners world and a programme on John Denver.  My mum loved him, had his records - she's an Anne, and he wrote "Annie's song" for his first wife.  I sadly seem to have been born singing the songs and know most of them, to my surprise, off by heart.  He had terrible, dreadful taste in shirts and should never ever have danced with 70s dance group Pans people - awful, embarrasing,  I guess that's what I remember - parents taste in music and embarrassment - but actually I really like his songs! 

With the help of radio 4 I slept like a happy log.  Good job it was only a small beer as the breakfast room has plastic grey stools with stripy fabric tops, battered, flaky paint chairs and a floor of wood laminate chevrons in green, brown and duck egg blue.  It's a bit vibrant for the morning but hash browns, bacon and the other nice Premier Inn bits and pieces make up for feeling slightly queasy.

I shot off to Montacute and spent an hour walking in the parkland, to catch the early sun. Picked up a decent coffee after the worst cup I have ever had with breakfast.

only to find this large, furry robber drinking my water.  He would have had the coffee too, if I hadn't booted him off the table.  

Montacute is so good.  It makes me feel slightly awed, knowing that in Queen Elizabeth's day, people were walking round this house, pacing up and down the massive long gallery, admiring their new tapestries, watching the cheery plaster friezes drying, slowly.  It is that old. The honey colour Ham stone glows in sunlight, it is beautiful.  This time, a different selection of National Gallery portraits on loan - last time the gallery was full of them, this time only a few.

I enjoy looking at the faces - some look unnervingly modern - one military man, minus the silly Elizabethan beard and dressed in khaki with red tabs could be a twenty first century brigadier. One woman looks like Sonia, who was one of the characters I worked with in Transplant mastertrain, I wonder if her Elizabethan counterpart was equally miserable and grumpy in the mornings!

I finished off with a couple hours of weeding for friends - 3 barrow loads of weeds and leaves for the bonfire and my half price goretex trainers are now suitably worn in and muddy.

Blackbird O'Clock?

 Friday morning I just couldn't stay in bed.  It's been a trying sort of week.  Parents needing care, lots of frustration at work, the awful, miserable angst invoking news....and so I crept out, early to grab a coffee, when I should have stayed in and done useful things or read a book at home.  But then..I would have missed the waking blackbirds, singing and warbling in the trees, by the health centre as I walked over to pick up the car.  Such a beautiful sound and the light was still "proper dimpsy" as good Devonians say.

This morning, after a swim, I sorted life for the parents - mum had a minor foot operation and poor dad needed a slightly more competent cook so I organised lunch for them, drank a glass of their sherry and weeded out the patio and pots of daffodils.  Mum supervised- which means she whinged that I was a little rough on the weeds.  At least she was getting fresh air and must have been feeling a bit better!

My own garden has a mini riot of small daffs, whose beautiful egg yolk yellow peeps above a variety of bought and donated terracotta pots.  Checking them today in a brief respite from weekend chores, I see they have been joined by rhubarb and custard striped mini tulips.  Only a few and more to come, looking at their emerging leaves. It makes life feel worthwhile and I find my energy picking up.

This evening I had a brief stroll to deliver a nearly overdue birthday card.  The street is lined with magnolia trees and around this week in March, every year, they start to emerge.  It brought back a quick flash of memory - two years ago, just pre-pandemic I went to Hidecote gardens and the memory I have is of staring into blue sky, photographing vividly pink magnolias against that standout sky.

The next year, I was walking the same street at Magnolia time, unable to meet friends, worship, work or indeed go out for more than an hour.  Memory is a weird thing.

As I turned the corner into my friends road, I was stopped by the severe pollarding of the trees - they looked like a hammer beam roof - like the ribs of the Mary Rose which I visited a few years ago.  Give them another month or so and they will be clothed in beautiful fresh lime spring green.

Lights and prophetic smoke

 Pre-pandemic, I went to the Women of God conference, Yeovil and wrote a little blog called "smoke and mirrors" about the experience. I found it difficult.  Said I wouldn't go back.  So this year I went back.  I'm not entirely sure how/why- I like going because my friend Sandy goes.  But this year I didn't buy a ticket, but one of her friends dropped out - so I went along with Sandy's friend Jen as my chaffeur/taxi.

I really don't find large gatherings easy, so this blog is a small exploration of the day, the why and wherefore of how an introvert copes in such an atmosphere.  I always get excited/nervous beforehand, but what I really enjoy is the lights.  I'm not a band going person, but coloured lights, beamed onto the ceiling in swirling spirograph colours of blue, pink and orange, chrysthamums of white and spring green stage lights make me feel happy! Not so happy with stage smoke - how does that help anyone worship?  It just makes me dry throated, dry eyed and hoarse. My friend Sandy said "what lights" - she sings with her eyes closed.  I have given up trying to sense God's presence and closeness through singing worship songs - when I can feel the band through the soles of my feet, and into the pit of my stomach, then I know it is even less likely.  I am not good at visualising things or imaging scenes but I took my imagination on a little trip to the beach at Lee Abbey during the worship and watched the sea, creaming and foaming.  As the lights went to circles of orange I imagined the sunrise there.  I sat on a bench and looked at the rocks from my favourite viewpoint and glanced across to where the light hits the trees' varigated colours in Autumn.  I am even less competent at imagining bible scenes, but I went to the last supper with Jesus, and looked at him washing feet and serving his disciples with bread and wine.  Then I just got bored, overwhelmed and noised out!

The speakers were equally loud and passionate - I know my friend loved them! It seems to me that extraverts like Jesus to be the King, the sovereign risen Lord, which he is, but people like me find they want to go meet him on the beach and have breakfast, or ask him loads of questions and are baffled by his answers.  I literally cannot follow someone who shouts at me.  I hear the tone, not the words.  And it makes me shut down.  If I could have heard from God I would happily have done so - as it was, I did retail therapy and bought my manager a journal with a beautiful tree and leaves and a prayer from Ephesians on its pages.

I am wired differently.  And that is ok.  God, who I love, through photographs, blogs, books and his outstanding creation artistry probably just shakes his head and smiles because he knows that Love prompted me to take a ticket to an event that doesn't fit the shape God made me.

Battered Feet

 Battered fish sounds more fun than battered feet. I'd even settle for a battered mars bar...if forced.  But I AM forced to admit that walking from Lands End to John O Groats - even virtually, in a pair of old, wrecked and comfortable boots has damaged my feet. I don't know why I didn't listen to friends when they told me I needed new boots.

I have plantar fascitis - along, it seems, with at least half of those who walk.  It seems everyone gets it - a bit like Covid...and it doesn't help much but at least it isn't sciatica.  Exercises, and yes I will keep walking.

So I have bought slippers.  I never wear the things, I far prefer bare or socked feet, but apparently, according to my nurse friend (who, guess what, has PF) it's the thing I must do. Who knew?

New boots, well, I will get there.  At about £150, they will need to wait for pay day.  Limping is something I can do, physio exercises are something I can do.  Complaining isn't an option - I am not in the pain I was with sciatica and maybe I will just get a plastic parrot for my shoulder and dignify the limp a bit!  I am grateful in the extreme to be 56, healthy, on nothing but asthma drugs and otherwise healthy.  Who worries about a slightly weakened left leg and hip (the legacy of the sciatica apparently)

It hasn't stopped me signing up to walk the Great Wall of China - or 2000 miles of it, over 2 years.  At the moment I am seriously behind, according to the nagging walk app, which tells me to "get a move on" I wish.

But the sun is out and the weather is crispy.  I am sure that is a good thing.

Borders and Belonging

 I'm reading a slim book by Irish poet Padraig O Tuama (and Glenn Jordan) called "Borders and Belonging" .  It's a study on the Bible book of Ruth, but to call it a Bible study is maybe not quite what it is. The book started as a series of reflections and workshops on Brexit and how the Irish communities Padraig worked with could find some kind of Christian take on it, using the book of Ruth as a mediating lens to view it through.

Before, I've loved Ruth for the study of Naomi, a middle aged lady deep in loss and depression - the book read me well at one point in my life.  But this study asks deep, penetrating questions of the text and of us.  In a world of "others" - migrants, economic and assylum seekers, poverty and female vulnerability in a male dominated world.

They certainly aren't "conservative" scholars and they draw on Jewish texts and Bible scholarship - the book is just peppered with contemporary questions and I found it asked me some awkward questions too.

Particularly, it gave me an angle on the horrible passages in Nehemiah and Ezra, where the returning exiles who have married "the people of the land" are forced to divorce them.  Sitting in the rain, listening to the law.  And it always felt to me such a negation of love.

There is a suggestion that Ruth was written down, finally, as a counterpoint, a theology of grace and kindness through story to counter this thread, this stream in the return from exile.  Never thought of that.  Never even knew that it was a possibility.

I just know that if it had been me, sitting in that rain, knowing I was a forbidden person, someone who had wrongfully married a man from the land, I would not have thought much of Israel's God. 

I haven't finished the book yet, but when I do, I think I will go straight back to the beginning and read it again.

Talking in parables

 Talking to a friend last week I explained I have a love/hate relationship with Jesus' parables.  Maybe that's because of the "stories with a single point" explanation - in which case I would rather the single point was made big and clear!  Or because it all seems so utterly totally irrelevant to a 21st century city dweller.

That kicked off a little journey which is ongoing with me reading the excellent Paula Gooders book on parables.  She has helped me understand the context a little more - for example, explaining that in Galilee landlords are mostly a "boo/hiss" type of character - not her words - they are mostly absentee landlords which I guess makes things even more complex - God is not an absentee landlord.

Another option I have found - from a different friend, is that Jesus likes to make us "wonder", as in "I wonder if" .  That's had me "I wondering" about the supremely unfair story of the landlord and the workers in Matthew's gospel, which was Friday's passage to read.

If he's not an absentee landlord, maybe he's a small landholder - and why is he going to rustle up workers for his fields?  Hasn't he got staff to do that for him? What sort of parallel is there today to that highly rural story - maybe an insurance company who pays the teaser rate to it's existing customers? (unheard of!) or - for me, Gregory Distribution, who paid me and my team a large pay rise 2 months into probation - a colleague had been there 5 years. Maybe she felt like the day workers who had slaved all day when the late comers got equally rewarded?

I wonder - about the persistence in sitting and waiting in the hot sun, of the un-hired workers.  Maybe that's all they could do - wait. Show up. Waiting for someone to notice them.

The kicker from Jesus is that the landlord is generous.  And the simple answer is God is generous. And maybe that's what has frustrated me, as you can say that in one sentence but perhaps Jesus likes me to wonder and ponder and ask others and tell him I haven't a clue why his frustrating stories are peppered throughout the gospels.