Smoke and Mirrors

Well I liked the title, wikipedia that most reliable of sources describes it as

"Something that is described as smoke and mirrors is intended to make you believe that something is being done or is true, when it is not" 

which has been a bit like my weekend. I've finally realised that large hyped up conferences are not for me.  You'd think I would have discovered that sooner, but sometimes it's complicated and it takes years to see that I will never "encounter God" in a place like that. Smoke machine - why?? What did they think they were doing?  I have let them know what that does to anyone with breathing issues.  As for God, I guess he knows I spent the worship time thoroughly enjoying the blue and green looping patterns projected onto the ceiling, the green and red glow wash of colour and the pink and white swirl dance of  initial welcome lighting. Glorious: they made my day along with a cross picked out in tiny  golden fairy lights.  Shallow Sal? No, I think that noticing beauty is a good thing.  Too much emotion - I'm so poor at processing it, feels like a chunk of rock: showing video of slum kids yearning for education and sponsors while people talk and I tot up my account in my head and sit tight on my money because I have a new boiler and too much sense! Other people can do the responding for me, I think.

So here's the thing, I took my heart to Barrington Court and picked up my love of photography.  It's a blustery day, the sun slanted on the honey stone, whitening with age spots.  The lovely herringbone brick paths were slippery with green moss lining the cracks where the gardeners haven't tidied up yet.  Not much is out yet - a few brave colour splashes of yellow or purple pansies, some rebellious snowdrops and a few windblown daffs. I adore Barrington Court - the emptiness of it, the echo, the clump of my boots on the boards of the long gallery floors.  

And the beauty of details - the panels and tiles, imported, rescued, redeemed, repurposed to live again in the ultimate post war restoration project.  Man and house, slowly recuperated after the horrors of being a first world war survivor. Not much furniture, holograms of barn owl and the eerie projected sound of the wind with the all too real red buckets catching the impact of the weather on this creaky building whose roof will be repaired, they say, in 2020.

It repaired me. Sort of. I suspect God weeps when we force him into a box.  The conference speaker called forward the "prophets, the apostles, the intercessors, the pastors" for prayer.  She didn't, I noted, call out the teachers - that would have been biblical - but neither did she call out the bloggers, the artists, the sculptors, those who serve, those who only stand and wait.  And all of the above have mediated God's love to me, far more than the smoke and mirrors