A new way of thinking (Easter thoughts)

In my adult life I have changed the way I think about and look at things in an immense way, I am constantly growing and changing and I'm all good with that. It means that at points in my life I have been totally adrift in my thinking, at times nothing is certain or sure. Previously I used to hate these times, I would be so upset with myself and chastise myself for not being able to 'get it together' or 'be more certain' Once I was ordained, the pressure I felt on me to have answers to be sure of myself at all times felt immeasurable. But slowly over time I came to understand that these were not times of knowing nothing, but times of emptying out in order to be filled again with something new. I wouldn't say I'm comfortable with them, but instead I have come to understand these times differently and I accept them. 

So this morning I was thinking about the Easter story (not exactly surprising given it is Easter day) and my brain became full of thoughts that needed to come out. I have been in one of those periods of emptiness lately, so the thoughts were very welcome and I felt the need to share them here.  

Before I thought dump on the page there are two fundamental things that need to be established about the way I am thinking. Firstly, although this blog is particularly about the Bible and the accounts of Easter, most of my thinking can be generally applied to life, or at least the way I think generally can apply to many areas of life, not just the religious ones. Secondly, the Biblical issue of fact or fiction, true or not is fairly irrelevant to me. In this particular case, whether the death and resurrection of Jesus is a historical event in history is not important to this specific set of thoughts. (At this point I feel the need to clarify for some of my readers that this does not mean that I do not believe that is did happen, but that I simply feel there are deeper truths to be found in the narrative that go beyond the questions of fact or fiction). 

That long introduction was really saying that I feel that behind the narratives of the Easter story there are some amazing truths to be found in the fleeting and often overlooked moments and for me it boils down choices and transformations. I want to look at four main themes that come out of the narrative. 

The first of these is disconnectedness to connectedness. One of my favourite moments in the Easter story is the moment that the temple curtain is torn in two. The curtain in the temple was to protect the Holy of Holy places within the temple walls, the place where God was contained and where no one but the high priest could go, once a year, with a rope around his leg in case he dropped dead and had to be dragged out!! Access to God was purchased with sacrifices and limited depending on your race, financial status etc. Jesus was not a fan of this practice as evidenced by the turning over of the money lenders tables. At the point that the temple curtain is torn in two there is no longer a barrier between us and God, but just as importantly as we are now allowed in, is that God is released, not held, not contained. This is so important to a deeper understanding of our relationship with something that cannot be contained or qualified. 

Outside of the Christian context, connectedness to something no longer contained, universal and fluid is so important for so many, that connectedness can be found in nature, families, friends, experiences. Movement from disconnectedness to connectedness is something wonderful. 

The second, possibly more obvious one is going from hate to love. But really it doesn't have to be that extreme or specific. Indifference to love, self doubt to love, pain to love, mistrust to openness. I read a blog post by Rev Dawn Hutchings, called "Maundy Thursday – When you don’t believe that Jesus was a sacrifice for sin!" In it she writes, "I believe that Jesus wanted more than anything else for his followers to be so open to the power of LOVE that is God so that they too would live their lives fully without fear." Love, true love, if chosen is capable of driving out fear, doubt, pain and indifference. Not an easy choice to be made, but each time we choose love we are one step closer to the next two things. Jesus demonstrated a life lived choosing love over anything else and whoever we are and whatever we believe that is a fantastic way to live. 

Thirdly, blindness to recognition. Another of my favourite moments in the Easter story is found in the Gospel of John in the beautiful surroundings of the garden when Mary encounters the Risen Jesus, she does not recognise him. Through her tears, begging this man to tell her where his body has been taken and he simply calls her name, "Mary" and instantly there is recognition of this man that she has loved so deeply. This pattern is repeated several times with Jesus appearing to people who do not recognise him in body, but instead by his words and actions, breaking of bread, sharing of breakfast, the chance to touch and hold him. Sometimes it is the most unexpected things that bring moments of recognition and growth in our lives, and it is often not the things that you would expect. I believe that the God set free by the temple curtain can be part of each person and all the things around us. We go through life often blinded by situations and emotions and then suddenly a touch from someone, a word, an experience of nature, most anything can suddenly bring about these moments of recognition, of something deeper and more wonderful than we imagined. 

And lastly the culmination, preservation to transformation. Most of the time it is more comfortable to keep things the same, exactly the way they have always been. Jesus broke every rule there is, even, as in this particular story, the fact that dead people stay dead! Which, up until then had been a fairly universal truth for people. But he challenged and broke down so many things that had been taken for granted. He ate with tax collectors and loved prostitutes, he challenged the religious leaders and their ways of thinking, he didn't simply teach, he lived his teaching, 

Whatever you believe about Jesus, God or the Bible, there are universal truths that are as powerful today as they were then. Our lives are a constant movement of growth and change, connectedness, love, new recognition and transformation that can spill over into every aspect of our existence. 

May this Easter for you mark a fresh time of transformative, connected, challenging, and life changing love. 

Stay blessed

 

 

My reflection in the mirror

James 1: 23-24 says: Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at their face in a mirror  and, after looking at themselves, goes away and immediately forgets what they looks like.

My partner and I are ordained ministers and we are regularly asked to lead worship in various settings. Neither one of us wears a clergy collar unless we are doing something specifically related to work. Even as a hospice chaplain, my partner only wears her collar when she is going in to interact with patients and families. This is not, in my mind, a statement of superiority but merely a reflection of the role that we are playing at that moment. If you like, as much of a reminder to myself of my calling and what I am doing there. 
We also have a young daughter who is, like most toddlers, active and time consuming. So this morning when I was getting myself ready for church I took my time a little doing the things that I am not always able to do daily due to life circumstances. Things like choosing jewellery to wear and spending time putting my shoulder length hair up in a more imaginative way than the 'mum bun'. I put a little make up on and then put my collar into my clergy shirt. I got out the shoes that have become my 'church shoes' simply by virtue of the fact that the rest of the time I can't be bothered to put anything on but trainers and I looked at myself in the mirror. 

I thought this morning about the image that looked back at me and what others must think or feel when they look at me. I am not yet 40, I am not thin, average body weight, 5ft 7inches with shoulder length hair. I put a small piece of plastic in my shirt collar and whatever anyone saw before says something suddenly very different. I know that many people, consciously or subconsciously will react to what they are seeing when I wear a dog collar, for some the reaction is negative, for others it is positive. What amuses me most is those times I go out and completely forget I look like a vicar and I do something everyday. Today was one of those days, I went to a large supermarket, just to grab some carrots for dinner (no I'm not the 'shopping on Sunday is a sin' kind of Christian) and I got what we needed and went to the checkout. It was pretty mundane really but I notice that people look at me differently, react to me differently. I've had folk apologise for swearing or using profanities, mostly people talk to me less when out and about even though I chat to people a lot, many seem less keen to engage when I am wearing my collar, more wary I guess. And yet others feel the need to tell me they are Christians too and what church they attend and what parish am I with? "I am an independent, Progressive minister", "Oh right, what is that?" I have no idea what they make of my explanation most of the time but this doesn't trouble me. 

This day got me thinking about that verse that I opened with, anyone who listens to the word and then does nothing with it is like when I look at myself in the mirror, knowing what I look like to others and go out and immediately forget what I look like to those around me. Who I am when I wear my collar is not something that I can turn on and off, it is part of who I am, but it does change how other people react and engage with me and comes with an extra responsibility to those people, especially those who have been hurt or damaged by the often abusive nature of supposedly Christian folk. 

For me, hearing the word means being true to what I feel God has spoken into my life. To love others without exception, to care for those in need, to do all I can to make my community better, to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves and to try to find a way to make God accessible to people in new and challenging ways. Just as importantly though, to make sure of that for myself, that I am constantly reminded of these things and that God makes God's self apparent in my life in new and exciting ways, always growing me, always changing how I think about and view the world so that when I look at myself in the mirror I always see myself in new ways with new challenges. 

How often do you look in the mirror and think about the reflection that is looking back at you? How often do we consider what we put on affects what we do with our day? Perhaps you are in a role that involves a uniform? A nurse or a fire-fighter? A janitor or a supermarket operative? But perhaps you are not in a job with a specific uniform, a teacher perhaps or a carer. Perhaps you have a disability and your role is getting through each day, or like me, a parent too. 
Our jewellery, tattoos, everything about us tells a small part of our story and we cannot help how people look at and react to us, but we can try and remember how it was when we looked in the mirror, when we were called to be who we are in this world and make the best of it. 

Sacred narratives and the way we hear them

Many years ago I learned about the different ways in which we absorb and learn information and how we remember specific events. I remember the lecturer at the time saying to all of us, try and recall one of your very first cuddly toys. It did not have to be your very first but one that you remember first and then tell everyone something about that toy. I told everyone about my knitted toy clown and how I remember my mother telling me about how my grandmother (Gogo) had made it for me and how the toy was bigger than I was when I was born. I still have that clown and it is now sitting in my daughter's cot as it did in my son's, who is now 17. Other people in the class described what their toy looked like, the size, shape and colours, and yet others, although not as many, described how their toy had made them feel. ie. sad when they lost it, or how they loved playing with it endlessly. The whole point of the exercise was to see how we all recall and learn things differently. So those who had described how the toy made them feel were experiential learners, they needed to do something, feel something or touch it in order to learn best. Those who spoke about the looks of their toy were likely visual learners, they needed to see things written down, or pictures in order to best absorb information and I was in the auditory learners bracket, those who recalled best by what they heard. I have dyslexia so it was no surprise that I had developed my auditory recall so vividly to help me compensate for not being able to write things down so easily.

I am thinking about that time now, I remember so clearly all that was said, but I am a kinaesthetic learner too, I remember easily how I felt about things and need to feel something in order for it to be real to me. So it makes sense to me that as I grew up learning about the Bible that I chose, instead of reading the Bible, to learn about it by listening to others and by relying on how each story I heard made me feel. The thing is though that I accepted as absolutely accurate and true all that was told to me. I felt at home and comfortable in the church I was in and so as I grew up I felt no reason to question what I was told or even to suspect that what I was told was not absolute truth. The problems began to arise, like it does with many young people who grow up in certain church environments, when I went to university and had to study for myself things that the Bible actually said. Suddenly I found that the Bible had become a complicated mass of contradictions that had previously been unquestionable truths*. I could clearly see that things within its pages did not add up but I felt that I had been brought up within an environment of unmovable 'truths'. So instead of looking closely at the Bible, engaging with the God within its pages, I had blindly accepted the translations of Scripture that were told to me.

The first thing I noticed when I first started looking at the Bible more closely was that many of the stories that I knew were put together with a mixture of accounts from various bits of the Bible, and often the accounts that had been mixed together contradicted themselves in places. We also looked at how the original translations of words had been mistranslated and interpreted to suit a specific agenda of the translator.  I remember one lesson in particular when our lecturer put us all into small groups and set us the challenge to back up a particular argument by using individual verses of the Bible, He (the lecturer) would set the subject. Our little group was given the subject of the Holocaust, not exactly an insignificant event, other groups were given a range of subjects from positive to negative and each group set about finding verses that backed up that specific idea. Our group was convinced that we could not justify the holocaust using Scripture, but to our horror we discovered that by taking certain verses, without thought to the historical context, original translations or the surrounding verses we were easily able to justify each and every subject given. We could supposedly justify the murder of millions of people simply using a handful of verses out of context. At the end of the lecture, our teacher reminded us that forming an argument this way is not only weak, but easily refuted and said that we could not simply go through our lives making statements that we could only back up without thought or reason.

For that time, the Bible was only one of many books I used for research, study, learning and growing. I realised that like many things, in isolation, it isn't much good. The Bible, for me, only makes sense in relation to my life, my understanding of God, other people, my community. The stories within it's pages make little sense and have very little relevance to me now in the 21st century but it is far from irrelevant. Like many things, I knew the Bible was not something I could simply set aside, it had played an important role in my life and upbringing. But it is also something that, kept in isolation and revered above all else, becomes irrelevant. There is, I believe, within it's pages, the God story of a living, interacting, extraordinary God who was, long before the stories were told and is now still writing a Sacred narrative. I feel absolutely overwhelmed to be another story in that Sacred tapestry and to have my 'God narrative' woven alongside the narratives of others. I am so glad that I grew up and didn't simply believe unquestioningly those things I had heard as a child, I felt there was more to be found. At first I thought that the 'more to be found' was inside the pages of the Bible, but the more I have learned and grown I understand that the Bible is part of a Sacred narrative far greater than anything I am able to imagine. It is a text that helps me to tie in part of a larger story that is still being written today and will continue to be written a very long time after I am gone. May your Sacred narrative be as precious to you as the narratives in the holy writings of your faith and may you see the Sacred tapestry of others as you learn, in your own unique way.

Stay blessed
Rev R xx

*truth, in my opinion, is not the same as fact, something for me can contain truth without being exactly the same for the next person nor historically accurate. 

Water, water everywhere...creation at its best

"Don't they know who I am? I've hydrated Einstein, washed Cleopatra and some of my best friends were turned into wine by Jesus himself!! Now I'm stuck here playing with children"

This blog post comes under several headings, random thoughts, amazing facts, I'm not an artist and what has this got to do with God? 

My family and I have been to Disney in Florida twice now and each time we went on a ride at Epcot Disney, presented by Ellen Degeneres, about energy. During the very slow ride (the only sort I do) you learn about various ways of producing energy, about how our world's energy resources are running out and what our options are, in terms of renewable energy, to start preparing for the time, in the near future, when those resources run out. One of the facts that we were told during the ride really stuck with me. There is no 'new' water on earth than there was when the earth first existed, the water you use in your coffee, bath, toilet, at some point, likely went through the bladder of a dinosaur! Mind blowing! Hence the other day I found myself thinking about the water that my daughter and I were playing with in the garden, and I thought I wonder what the water drops that are coming out of our hosepipe have done in their existence? (see, random thoughts) Had those particular drops of water quenched the thirst of a dinosaur? Had they been in the bathtub with Socrates? Or perhaps were part of a glacier that is now melting?

Now I'm not one to tell people what to think, I only try and tell people what I'm thinking and perhaps what I think, no matter how random, might make sense to you too. 

So this got me thinking about the creation story of Genesis, although there are other similar creation stories from around the world and in different cultures. One of the most common and the one that we find in Genesis is creation ex nihilo, creation from nothing. Similar ideas of creation our of nothing can be found in articles from ancient Egypt, the Quran, the Rig Veda (ancient Indian Sacred text), and in many African, Asian cultures just to name a few. The ultimate reason that any creation stories exist is that for almost as long as people have existed they have all had the same questions. Why do we exist? How did we come to exist? Why something rather than nothing? 

Like many of these things I grew up with the stories of Genesis and for much of my life I believed them to be literally true, that God literally created the earth and all in it in 6 sections of 24 hours and then rested for the 7th section of a week. In that time God created, among other things, water. 

Now that I am older and I have learned so much more about the world, the Sacred texts, the stories of other cultures I have come to understand God stories tell me as much about the people who wrote them as they tell me about God and therefore they endow a Sacred quality that I thought had been lost when I decided they were not literally true. I thought that the easiest thing to do was simply to discount them,  because if they are not true then they cannot hold truth. Well off course I now know that this isn't right and I have learned that there is truth and Sacred understanding to be found in most everything if I choose to find it there. For me, thinking about those drops of water, I realised how difficult it is to comprehend millions and millions of years and how much easier it is to understand 7 days. Yet I found that I 'got' God more in that Ellen ride than in the creation story. In that ride I could see the enormity of the earth, the universe, the passage of millions of years, the responsibility we have if the earth is to support life for millions of years to come. In that, I understood how God fits into the constant process of creation and re-creation within our world.

Is there a point to all this? Probably several and feel free to continue thinking about it for yourself after the end of this post and find something completely different for you. Perhaps a simple message about looking after our world and it's finite resources. Or perhaps a challenge to look again at Sacred stories you know well alongside those you have not heard of and see how something Sacred has permeated other cultures and lives too. Maybe just a new piece of information about water, or a cartoon, not very well drawn, from a slightly random mind. Whatever it is you get from this isn't as important as what you do with it. Stay blessed whatever you day brings.  

you are worth hearing

You, yes you!! 

Jonathan born 16th July 1998

The one who let that comment from someone stop you from saying what you really felt. 

The one who took to heart the negativity that people who do not really matter threw at you. 

The one who was told they could not do something and so you let it stop you from trying. 

The one who tried shouting but felt that the words got lost in the echo of an empty hall.

When you were in the womb your lungs began to develop, when you entered the world they were 

filled with fluid and flat, if all went well then within seconds of entering the world the sudden change of temperature caused you to breathe in for the first time, those lungs filled with air and out came your voice in the only way it could - you cried. Since the first babies were born, that has been one of the sounds of life, long before we could listen into the womb and hear the heartbeat, long before we could take pictures of an unborn child. Inside you moved and wriggled and kicked but from the moment you came into the world you used your voice, you took breath and you cried, "I'm here and I'm alive". Your voice is a sound of reassurance to parents who waited many weeks to meet their child that all is well and you are alive, it is a sound that brings joy, relief, and happiness to almost every parent.
I remember when my son was born 8 weeks early, nearly 17 years ago, he was born not able to breathe without help and for several moments after he arrived the doctors worked to help him take his first breath. minutes seemed to take forever as we all strained our ears for that first cry to tell us he was here and all right, and eventually it came. The feeling of joy and relief that it brought was immeasurable. Next week he turns 17 years old and is 6ft2 and his voice has blessed me time and again. Do not let something so important, so vital be silenced by the words and actions of others. When you choose to use your voice, use it to create, build up, care and love and in my case (as with many others) to sing.

Please keep shouting, please keep speaking, please keep singing and please keep reaching out. Because your voice is worth hearing, it does not need to be heard by everyone, just the right people at the right moment.

I have had the privilege of hearing many people's stories about their families, parents, siblings and friends and too often the stories are not filled with love and care, but rejection and hatred and abuse. I am lucky, I come from a strong and loving family, I was wanted (although a surprise addition) and deeply loved by my parents and sisters. I grew up in a close knit wonderful church family who taught me a lot about God and community and I think time and time again how lucky I am to have had that.

So this is to tell all those who have ever, from the moment of birth until this moment now, been led to believe otherwise - your voice is precious and wonderful, it speaks of life, it is capable of some most pow
erful things, good things, miraculous things, little kindness type things. Use it well, use it as loudly or as quietly as need be. But please, use it, because it is a gift that not everyone has and you are worth hearing.  

tree

I am a tree, 
a tree with no roots. 
What you see above is tall and proud and beautiful, 
Yet one strong wind could topple me, 
One storm strip away all my leaves
and leave me vulnerable and bare, and yet.....
I open my mouth to sing, 
I turn my face upwards and breathe deeply.
And gently from a place deep within, a sound unlike any other comes fourth. 
The trees around me gather close and offer their protection while my roots grow deeper, reaching for the living water and nutrients that will help me to grow again. 
And soon, before you know, I will be standing tall again. 
Do not write me off because right now I am bare. 
Because soon,very soon, I will be strong.




Photo by Christine Cook

a new experience?

My God outside the Bible, I have been on a journey of discovery and intrigue since I began to discover the God outside the Bible. Turned out that God was to be found in everything and everyone and I have learned far more about myself and God and grown so immensely in my faith journey. Last week I met with a wonderful group of progressive Christians who meet together to talk about their shared and varied faith journeys. I was so blessed by them and being able to share with them together, we did not all agree on everything and it was OK. No one was put out or offended if I did not agree with what they said, it was very refreshing. I love hearing people's stories and faith journeys and learning their perspective on the Sacred. Letting our God out of the Bible......it's a Rev Ruth thing!! Stay blessed x

Photo by Christine Cook