All is calm...

Christmas wrapped up!  New Year approaches....nothing like stepping outside to observe, in the greyness of the morning that the daffodils are shooting tiny green barbs into the light of day.  That makes me happy.  Currently they fight their way through the greenery of the last of the winter pansies, which were a pretty mixed effort.  Some pots flourished, some languished and it was the same for the ones planted at work.  I guess it's light or water or maybe just a poor batch - Somewhat lacking green fingers, I like to watch them emerge blinking into day sleepy faces on a ruff of colour.

Walking home from town I pass my favourite beech hedge.  It's been fairly brutally pruned lately and the curls of crunchy bronze leaves cling to the clean chopped edges.  I love the soft cotton, silk feel of the new growth as it pushes out the old dead leaves in spring and can't resist stroking the leaves!

There are left over leaves to sweep this afternoon and the Christmas tree to put to bed for another year.  Yes I know it's not 12th night but the coloured lights and nativity scene will stay in their fireplace places. Our "over Christmas shutdown" list from our manager included the instruction to take down the tatty tacky and thoroughly illegal lights and tinsel.  Don't tell the management of the NHS apparently as the lights haven't been checked for a while.

Clearing the clutter in the bookshelves is booked in too.  Setting a reading target on Goodreads of 50 books will give me an aim.  It's an aim I usually achieve and getting the mix of books right depends on the library and charity shops as well as the spiritually more deep and chewy books of church and lee abbey. I know someone at church who reads in a disciplined fashion - biography, spiritual book, novel, non fiction.  Truly impressive! Far too orderly for me: my friends know that planned spontaneity suits me better!

Turkey and Tinsel

I can't say I am a fan of roast dinner.  I usually think and am told that I am a reasonable cook but producing a turkey dinner complete with pigs in blankets, veg and good roasties is a bit challenging with a smallish oven whilst trying to play host.  It's usually at Christmas that I feel the lack of a partner.  Or maybe a butler? Someone to do the social stuff while I cook - or cook while I talk?

This Christmas, my dripping past it's sell by date kitchen tap decided to go on strike, necessitating running upstairs to get a bucket of cold water to cool the washing up water.  My lovely, elderly, very very deaf dad tries to "help" and I give him the tea towel.  I usually spend a while trying to figure out where he's put things, so he gets to pile them on the kitchen table.

Rather deaf and equally lovely mum has forgotten not only her medication (overnight stay) but her hearing aid.  I didn't know the television could go up to 42 - or do subtitles!  Strictly is not my favourite but hey, they enjoyed it.  And that's the point.  I wanted them to have a good, warm hearted Christmas and a nice premier inn breakfast with me the next day.  Because otherwise I sleep under the Christmas tree, which is not fun. It took me a while to explain the complexities of the premier inn breakfast system but pain chocolate and a full breakfast with coffee refills? Lovely way to start Boxing Day.

They are so tottery.  It's tough to watch.  I wish I was a more compassionate and gentle person; I can only take so much before I need a break, a book, and another couple of friends with similiar-ish older parents to smirk and swap stories with.  It's our way of coping.

Buying stuff

My manager has a yearly cull of clothes.  I think if I did that I would walk around rather chilly! I treat buying clothes as the same sort of chore as buying car tyres - I know the car needs to be kept in good order so I "love" it with an MOT, service and maintenance - and the occasional proper wash which has to be better than the one I give it!  So with clothes.

I'm not always a lot better with gift buying.  I think shops are a bit overwhelming!  I would like to be thoughtful so I want to give something that will "fit"and that's a bit stressful somehow?

Back in early December, the bit I remember of the very visual advent weekend teaching, was the thought that the wise men gave their gifts but not their hearts.  I watched a programme about the "real" Noah's ark last night - nothing like a good history programme after a week at work.  And it drew on Babylonian culture and boat building.  Fascinating stuff.  I started thinking about the song "I would walk 500 miles" by the Proclaimers. Yet another sermon scrap - and song link - it was about 500 miles from Jerusalem to Babylon. I remember hearing that!

So, I  thought it would be good to be like the wise men.  They prepared for a very long, arduous journey.  Thorough. They were intelligent, searching men.  Looking into records and stars.  And then following, keenly, as envoys, to go seek out the new king they saw foretold.  And they recognised him as prophet, priest and king.  Thoughtful gifts.  They did worship him as best they could.

Thoughtful.  That is something I very much would like to be.

Facebook

I've spent nearly a month off facebook.  It's been a useful Advent practice in making life feel less cluttered.  I have had chats with people whose commitment to friendship and the genuineness of one on one interactions makes me question my sanity in being part of facebook. I like to talk, I like to listen.  I also quite like social media - I'm no hermit.  But - I get drawn into the "likes" circus and some of what appears, I really don't "like" or want to fill my brain with.

I choose to select my own level of brain cluttered rubbish! After all, I am very happy watching trash on TV when tired and I love a good box set and feel they are necessary to winter.  So I will be sharing my photos and blogs, taking time to talk to friends and not feeling left out or in any way over ordinary if my life doesn't have the level of social glamour of some friends.  After all, I am someone who haunts costa and reads several books at once and regards parties as a hellish practice.

And if you know me too well, I have just done that ridiculous time saving thing called buying two shirts in different colours!  It's hot in our office, and a pink and a blue polo shirt will sit alongside their navy counterpart quite nicely. I guess that we exhibit our values in our clothes: I cannot be bothered and just like to look neat, groomed and clean: cotton suits me rather than stretchy anything and I've spent 11 years wearing corporate polo shirts so I quite miss them.  I promise to have a more considered approach in the New Year.....

Bleary days

It's the bleary pre Christmas week, when the light is short and the mornings dark and the duvet is cosy.  An ideal time to plan a walking holiday I thought, having spent lots of the summer trawling the Ramblers holidays website.  I seem to have a growing fondness for ditch or wall walks - having done Hadrian's wall, I'm planning to walk Offa's dyke, all the way down the length of Wales

It's in three sections so that should keep my next few holiday plans nice and simple!  I think it will link together many of the individual walks I have done - walks in the black mountains, bits of the Wye valley trails.  I am hoping that June will be stable and warm-ish and not the monsoon season we seem to be having now. A friend asked me why I don't drive to holidays if I can help it, knowing how simply I have to pack travelling by train, but I quite like the excitement of trains even if the current reality is crowded, fraught and fairly frantic at times!  I can switch off and read even if my legs get cramped being clamped around my rucksack.

Flint sounds a tough station.  Flint headed, I think that's in Jeremiah, where the prophet has to set his face "like flint" or maybe it's gospel?  I don't know!  I imagine a grey, shiny polished little town.  Or maybe it's a town where one of our leadership team's husband hails from?  Who knows?  I find I need some plans on grey soggy days.

I made a discovery about sprouts this weekend at our works Christmas meal. Where have the hydrogen sulphide, volcanic hot springs tasting stinking bullets gone?  Genetic engineering is a good thing in the case of the sprout I think.  They were small, sweet, dinky little things.  Having spent a lifetime dutifully eating two or three at Christmas, under sufference, I had seconds.  Unheard of!

It was a lovely festive, relaxed meal, despite having to shout over the disco and large corporate party in the same room.  I feel so very privileged to be working with people I actually quite like to talk to!

Waiting

Advent is for waiting.  I went to Lee Abbey last weekend and came back with a piece of straw to remind me that laying down everything you have and receiving Jesus is gain.  A big prayer in an atmosphere of God's love.  Not sure if it feels so easy or straightforward in ordinary life where these things happen a bit at a time. But I liked the idea and the straw!

I've always been a bit ambivalent about Christmas.  It's always seemed a game of two halves to me.  Secular Christmas - which in my childhood family was relatives, trifle, turkey traumas and the circus.  And Christian Christmas, which was magical. I treasure a fondness for fairy lights and lanterns in church which days of health and safety seem to have banned.

So it's oh so appropriate that this weeks' reading has been Jesus in full turn the tables pre Palm Sunday confrontational mode.  I wonder what he'd make of Christmas?  I am sure he would be truly appalled and angry that his birthday makes debtors of the poorest and embarrases the faith with such crass commercialism.

So I wrote a little rant.

Christmas is to come
And I wait. Today it's still advent.
The time for a second red candle to flare into flame.

This year, I want to honour Jesus
Walking in the city speaks of the hollow, shallow extravagance
that Christmas can become

An empty shell of Christmas wrap.

This year I hope that hearts will search
Including mine.

This season I hope I reflect the hunger of the shepherds to see glory
This season I hope I give more than the wise men, who only gave what they could afford

May I not be a choreographed religious show
But may I have a genuine, generous heart
of welcome.

40 Days Mark

I've been working my way through Mark's gospel using a journal format book by Scripture Union. It has blank pages - for stick men drawings, lines for text and space around the scripture passage.  I love it.  More importantly, I've loved discovering the compassionate, questioning, thoughtful, exasperating Jesus in its pages.

So many very human encounters.  The disciples have an argument.  Why were they afraid to ask Jesus about his teaching?  The most considerate, thoughtful, direct and compassionate of men?

Maybe they didn't want to admit to being bewildered by what he'd said?
In over their heads?
To look like the second rate scholars they so obviously were.
Not deep thinkers, but men of work and action.

And maybe they didn't want their shabby, competitive me-first, Alpha male powergames revealed.
Each wanting to be top dog.
Not trusting like a little child - someone bathed, dressed and fed by another.

What had they to lose?
Power, independence.
They might not have liked Jesus' answers. 
But hiding from him?  Secrets fester.