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

My God beyond the Bible

My God is not contained within the pages of a book, no matter how big or comprehensive. Even if you took every word ever said or written about God from whatever time or whatever background or faith this would not even come close to describing all that God is. My God teaches me through a life lived fully in God's presence, a life aware and moving and changing.
My God is visible! My God can be seen in the face of my children and the blossom on a tree at the beginning of Spring. My God can be seen in the hands of the people reaching out to those in the midst of disaster, in the eye of a storm or the brightness of a summer day. The God that I know can be seen in the face of another person, a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew or someone with no faith at all. My God is visible.
My God is not silent! My God can be heard in laughter and tears, In the hurting, angry words coming from someone's mouth or from the words of joy and praise of another. My God is not only to be heard and understood in the words of certain people. My God is not silent.
My God is tangible! My God can be felt in the arms of those around me, in the tugging of a little hand in mine. My God is there in the midst of hardships and happiness, my God is in hands and lips and all that I can feel. My God is tangible.
My God tastes wonderful! My God makes food through the talents of others and shares it. My God is in the raising of a glass or the eating of egg on toast. My God tastes wonderful.

MY GOD, I cannot prove to you that my God exists, and nor would I choose to try, but My God is visible, can be heard and touched and tasted and cannot be contained! My God.

What about yours?

Stay Blessed
Rev Ruth xx

The God of our Emmaus Road

As many of you who read my blog posts know, I do not take the Bible literally. I don't know for sure what is historically accurate, what parts are accurately quoted or indeed what is actually poetic licence. I suspect that a lot more of the Bible than we would like to think is actually not very similar to what actually happened. However, that doesn't mean that I do not believe that there is truth to be found in the pages of that book. In fact, especially in the life and teachings of Jesus, I find a message of truth about God which speaks directly into my life and my ongoing relationship with God. That truth, for me, may be different from the truth that you or anyone else may find in it's pages but it is nevertheless truth as I understand it. So when I speak of the Bible and what it says to me, I am not telling you what to think or feel, but instead I am inviting you to hear what it is that I feel God is saying to me through the words on the page of a book written so many years ago.

So today I have been looking again at the stories following Jesus' resurrection: How he met with so many people who at first had no idea who he was until he did or said something. I love how Jesus, unrecognised in the garden by Mary herself, a woman who had been by his side, followed him, listening to him. After his death she washed his broken body, anointed him with oil and wrapped him lovingly to be put in the tomb. Anyone who has been through grief knows how this feels; doing everything through the haze of tears that seemingly fall uninvited. And still in this state she just sees a man in the garden. Who knows whether she even raised her head, or whether she simply looked at him but could not tell who he was?  Either way she did not recognise him. She pleads with him, and yet one word stops her in her tracks, "Mary". For me this is one of the most tender, loving and intimate moments of the Jesus narratives. I can feel the joy that wells up within her and overflows as she realises that the man standing before her is indeed the man she loves so deeply.

And these wonderful moments of recognition happen over and over again throughout the stories in the Gospels. Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room; again they do not know him, do not recognise him. I don't blame Thomas for not believing them when they told him what he missed: the disciples evidently had not believed the witnesses at the tomb either until they saw it with their own eyes. There are other accounts of people 'seeing' the Risen Lord outside of the Gospels but I am only looking at some of the Gospel accounts.

However, there is one more main encounter that I really like and that is the meeting on the road to Emmaus. Two men are walking down the road, only one is actually named, the other is assumed to be a part of his household. Suddenly a stranger joins them from out of nowhere and starts to walk with them. They walk and talk together on the road and when the men arrive at their house they invite the stranger in to eat with them. Just like Mary in the garden, it isn't until Jesus does something that they recognise that they realise who it was that was with them, and then the moment is brief and Jesus is gone. Now to the point of this blog....

I do not know for sure what really happened at the time that Jesus lived. I do not know whether or not everything that is accounted in the Gospels is 100% accurate or not. What I do know is that, in the midst of these stories I find a truth about God. One that has born out again and again throughout my long and varied faith journey. And that is this: I do not know how and when I will see God; I do not know what God looks like but I know that God is revealed to me in the most unexpected of places and ways, and almost never where I expect God to show up. Like Mary who was not expecting to see Jesus in the garden until she heard her name, like Thomas who doubted until he touched the wounds, like the people on the Emmaus road who did not expect the encounter they had: God shows up for me in the most unexpected of places and in the most unusual ways. But more and more I am finding that in order to really encounter God I must stop looking where I think God should be and instead allow God to surprise me again. I must stop restricting God and thinking, "Oh God could not possibly be found there, or in that person" and instead simply be open to The Divine, allowing God to once again jump into my life and show up where I least expect it. Remain open to God and hopefully we too will encounter the God of the Emmaus Road.

Stay Blessed
Rev R xx

Did Jesus need to suffer so much?

I confuse a lot of people because I tell them I do not watch films that are rated 15 or above. 12A is my limit with Harry Potter probably being the most violent film I have watched in many years; I will choose a Disney film over a thriller any day of the week, and yet I love watching Criminal Minds, CSI, NCIS and all kinds of murder and crime related television viewing. I read Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwall, both writers of violent crimes and the Tony Hill series by Val McDermid which centres around a criminal psychologist who looks into the most depraved serial killers. Criminal Minds is currently in its ?? series and the original CSI is in its 17th, I have watched most of the episodes from both series. As technology has progressed and filming techniques improve, I have noticed that sets and murders became more graphic and realistic, the story lines have, over time, become more involved and have had to go to some extreme lengths in order to keep the viewer ratings. No longer are we simply satisfied with seeing a knife being plunged into someone who is out of shot and then seeing the body, now we are captivated as we watch an actor or actress portray the horror of the realisation that they are about to die and the life draining from their body. In order to keep us entertained the violence is graphic, detailed, realistic and depraved.

Each Good Friday I heard the same account of the death of Jesus on the cross. As I got older the leaders of our youth group felt we could handle the 'reality' of a death by crucifixion. So we were taken vividly, step by step through the horrible, gory details of the death of Jesus Christ, from arrest and beating, to the hill, the nails and the slow suffocation brought mercifully to an end by a spear in the side. And why the need to do this? To make me more grateful for what Jesus did for me? To make the sacrifice he made more significant? The price greater for the reward to be appropriate? Perhaps all of those things. What would we have thought if Jesus had come claiming to be the Messiah and had died of a heart attack? Or cancer? Things that we count as 'just one of those things', 'Not the person's fault'? Was it the way he died or the fact that he rose again that matters?

I don't think it would have meant enough if Christ had not suffered when he died. I don't believe that anyone today would take seriously any lesser sacrifice. But the question remains: Could God have achieved the same ends for our salvation had Jesus simply keeled over from a heart attack? Well the obvious answer is yes. If God is truly God then God can really do anything, including the salvation of all people through a simple, relatively painless sacrifice. So the real question is, is the problem with God or with us? Why do we need the violence and the pain to be so horrific that it feels like it rivals some of the most horrifically depicted violence that our technology mixed (with some of the ideas inspired by some of the most heinous of crimes that our world) can conceive? Why do we feel the need to, generation after generation, pull apart in tiny detail the suffering of Jesus?

When I was at university we studied a book by Elie Wiesel called Night. He was a survivor of Auschwitz and had seen the worst of the depravity of humankind, in the process losing his whole family. Some of the scenes in that book were awful, I went through one chapter with a box of tissues; the same when I watched the videos; went to museums which told me story after story like that. Why? Because I do not want to forget what we are capable of, I do not want my children or my children's children to forget what can happen when one person decides that the answer is violence on such a scale to anyone 'other' than their view of perfection. People like us killed Jesus. People like us thought that public execution and torture were acceptable. People like us denied and betrayed Jesus. People like us mourned him and grieved his loss. People like us touched his risen body, heard his words of love, promise and hope.

These are the things that are important to me. Not the level to which Jesus suffered, but the fact that he lived at all, that he brought a radically new way of understanding God and having a relationship with God. He taught a whole new way to love, to include, to touch and to heal. Yes it is important that we never forget what we were, what we were once capable of, because that is important in healing and growing and never repeating the same mistakes. But we must also remember that we are all a product of love. We were created by and for love, to love ourselves and others. Jesus may have died violently and in pain, but we proclaim a risen Christ: not just for Easter day but now, today and for eternity. Let the Jesus who lives and not the Jesus who died, be your guide and your reason for love.

Does the Church need a new resurrection?

I didn't want to watch the new series of Rev which aired last year on BBC1, so when it started I didn't press record. Only after it finished did I see some folk on Facebook raving about it and its theological mastery. So I downloaded it on Demand and watched all six episodes over a couple of days.

For those who have never seen the show, it follows an inner city Vicar in London who has a large church building with a small and dwindling congregation made up of oddballs and misfits. His wife does not really share his faith but supports him, and his board is a homeless man with dodgy morals, a Holier-than-thou middle aged woman who is supportive while he is doing what she wants and a 'stickler for the rules', passive aggressive, deacon who is so far in the closet as a gay man that he has made up a girlfriend who he Photoshops into pictures and whose underwear he hides in his bed. (Do any of these characters sound familiar to you?)

For the best part of episodes three and four I didn't think I could continue to watch, it made me very uncomfortable to watch. Then just as I was about to stop watching, I realised that they were reflecting the Easter story and episode five culminated in Rev Alan carrying a large cross through the streets and up a hillside. But the details are fairly irrelevant, I realised that aside from the Easter aspect, the thing that was making me feel so uncomfortable was how very close to the truth it often was.
How the individual people within the congregation represented groups that are all too often found in our communities of Christians. Most ministers I have met have those very exuberant and outwardly Christian members who are supportive as long as they have their own way within the Church, often holding the leadership to ransom until their demands are met and vocally and publicly withdrawing their support when those needs are not met.  Those who know every letter of Church law in your denomination and quote it at every turn, any attempt at variation on this, or a small demonstration of your humanity and inevitable fallibility is usually met with a lecture and a threatened or real complaint made above your head. And the well meaning group who in reality actually make things harder than easier, usually vocal and often saying things that just make you want to put your head in your hands and weep.

But even more than this was the portrayal of a Church that no longer had anything to do with God or the Holy Spirit. So the question is, for your Church (not for you as an individual) if God or the Holy Spirit no longer existed, what would actually change in your Church? Someone asked this very question and his answer was that if this happened, 90% of what went on in our churches would go unchanged. I have to say though, that apart from the motive for us doing things in our Churches there are a lot of things that are fantastic. Our Church does a lot in the local community which is of value regardless of our faith. From the most elderly in the community as well as the youngest find a safe place in our building in a range of opportunities and activities. But in our worship, how much has become routine, set in it's ways? How much of our sitting here and standing there, the words we use each week, the rituals and the way we think? How much would go unchanged if God just quietly slipped away from us?

It would be great if the answer were "All of it!!" but it is highly unlikely, perhaps our individual practices might be affected but maybe little else. This is not meant to be a prescriptive blog post, not meant to tell anyone how to think or feel, what is right or wrong. But hopefully if these questions were asked honestly and openly in our Churches we may be able to see where growth are most badly needed. Because that is what a Church that is fully in engaged with God and the Holy Spirit is like, as with our individual lives of faith. The God relationship challenges us to keep growing and changing, re-envisioning ourselves, constantly questioning and examining ourselves, so that the transformative work of the Sacred can be an everyday part of our lives and community. Maybe then we would notice if God tried to creep quietly out the door.

Stay blessed

the time for superiority is over

I said in a previous blog that I was done with the God of fear, done with using God's name to scare people into belief and 'right' behaviour. I also said that at some point I would follow this up with some other thoughts and this is one of them.

This week has been filled with interesting instances and conversations that I have found difficult, things that I have not agreed with. But to be honest I love that in life because it makes me think, question and most of the time ultimately to grow in my understanding of myself, others and God. So when I tell you these instances please do not think that I am particularly criticizing, rather I am grateful for the chance to think something though. Here are the instances...

The first incident occurred last week when I had a conversation with someone who was very grateful for the generosity of one particular friend. She implied that the reason the friend had been so generous was because they are Christian. It was also implied that non Christians do not understand that level of generosity. This may well be the experience of this person so I am not questioning the truth of this statement simply using the conversation as an example.
The second incident was listening to prayers in Church, mention was made of the difficulties going on around the world in places like Syria and Ukraine and the prayers asked that Christians would pray to God for peace. Again nothing wrong in that.
The message talked about joy and implied that joy as it is understood by non Christians is nothing compared to the joy found in Jesus Christ, that Christian joy is different, better than non Christian joy.

All this got me thinking, are we not called to be a part of this world instead of aside from it? Surely Jesus came to be fully a part of us and not to separate us one from another? Was the joy he felt different to the joy that everyone feels? How about the pain, was that pain different? The simple answer is no. Generosity, love, a yearning for peace, joy, pain and so much more are no different, no better and no worse simply for being a Christian or a non Christian. There are generous Jews, Atheists, Agnostics, Sikhs, and Buddhists*, these same people feel joy and pain, love and hate, they pray for and work for peace, care for their neighbours and their planet. So why is it that we continually try and set ourselves apart from others simply based on the names they use for God, the understanding they might have of the world?

For me, my faith in God, which makes most sense for me through the story of Jesus, makes me want to be better than I was before, do better than I did before but it doesn't make me better than the next person who may or may not have a faith at all. The God/Jesus story is what I grew up with, it is a story that makes sense for me of many of the questions I have about life and the world and the way I relate to other people and the world around me. But we as Christians are not alone in our lofty Church buildings holding the monopoly on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness or goodness. Our faith should make us understand better than anyone that no one is perfect, let alone us. Our faith should make us see and celebrate the similarities in others, not the differences.

So may the God of your understanding, however you understand God to be, speak the words of love, joy and peace to your heart. For each person who chooses violence and hatred may there be ten others who are shouting loudly for love and peace. For each person who uses the name of God to justify hate and killing may there be one hundred more who choose to stand against it and call out the name of the God of peace. May we who profess a faith in Christ step out from our self appointed superiority and grasp the hands of others around us, asking not what it is that sets us apart, or makes us better than the other, but instead seeking out those whose hearts are singing the same song as ours. A song of love and joy that has but one source, a source that makes all things freely available to any who would choose it. Let us stand together.

*Not an exhaustive list

like a child

Nearly two years ago our lives were turned upside down and blessed in equal measure with the arrival of our beautiful daughter. We decided a while back that the time was right to try for a baby. We chose a sperm donor who was also a friend because we wanted the baby to know their routes and several months of preparation later we began the process of actively trying for a child. 
However, as with all the best laid plans, things did not go according to plan as in the same week we began trying for a baby we discovered that my partner had AML (Acute Myloid Leukaemia) It had been coming on for a while but we had no idea that either she was sick or in fact that I was already pregnant! 
She beat the leukaemia once after four rounds of chemo and whilst I was pregnant. Some days I would take her into hospital for her treatment and then run down the corridor to be sick in the loo. Two weeks before the baby arrived we were told the leukaemia was back again and this time needed a bone marrow transplant. They gave us 2 weeks grace on the start of treatment to give her the chance of being at the birth and thankfully she was there and able to be at home for a week before going into hospital for her next treatment. Three rounds of chemo and then the transplant, during which Debbie nearly died, and we had a 10 month old baby and a massive battle ahead of us. 
I tell you all this because I need you to understand what a miracle our baby felt like, she survived the early stages of pregnancy despite all the stress, she was a light of beauty and hope in a very dark time, and she arrived against the odds. I'm not saying it was easy, but one look at her beautiful face each day and we all felt like we could do it, like we could face anything. I learn so much from her despite the fact she is yet unable to even put a basic sentence together, and I want to share two things that she showed me just the other day. 

Each day when we get up we go downstairs and we feed the cats, Emily (the toddler) helps me to give vegetable treats to the guinea pigs that live in our conservatory. Then every morning  she runs to the large cat scratching post and 'hides' in between the posts and every day I pretend that I can't see her and try and find her. Then with great glee she comes out from her hidey hole and shouts 'boo' and I pretend to be all shocked. It doesn't matter how many times we do this she believes me when I say I can't see her and she loves playing this game. She has an unquestioning trust in me and our game that we play. 

The second thing that day came when we were playing with her new set of bricks she got for Christmas. They have horses and fairy princesses in the set and she discovered the joys of building with them rather than knocking things down. The thing is what she built, to her it seemed completely plausible that brick on brick on horse on brick on unicorn with a baby horse on top was a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to happen. 
Oh if only our relationship with God could be so, unquestioning trust and not restricted by the limitations of our mind. The time in our lives when we learned the most was before the age of five, not just because there is so much to learn but also because we explore and question and try things with abandon and trusted our care givers without question. Our minds were sponges and we took in every detail and just found the world to be a wonderful place. 
I know this is simplistic and that life is far more complicated than this, that we have all been shaped by our experiences, damaged by life's twists and turns. But maybe when Jesus said you must become like children in order to enter the New Realm of God I think he may have had something. As I believe that the Realm of God is in fact here and present and is available to us, approaching being a part of it like a child makes complete sense. That sense of openness and trust, a sense of adventure and experimentation, the more I learn from the way our little girl looks at the world, the more I feel I am growing and deepening my relationship with God. I fully believe that children can see things that we cannot and that over time we shut down and see less and less of the Sacred in the world around us. But let us take a leaf out of the book of a lively toddler, stack unicorns on horses on bricks, hide in full sight yet believe we cannot be seen, I am sure that we will see so much more of God if we do. 

I may be teaching Emily colours and numbers but the truth is that she is teaching me far more about life and the world than I am teaching her and I am loving every moment of this new and exciting perspective. 
Stay blessed
Rev R x 

Why? Why? Why?

Why are you arrogant when you talk of a God who is humble?
Why do you exclude me and the speak of a God of unconditional love?
Why is only one Holy book important when the God story spans eternity?
Why won't you reach out and touch me, when God loved the leper and the lame?
Why would you think God won't love me, when She knows me and calls me by name?
#rethinkingourgod

Better because of you

I have to say that New Year means very little to me. The most it affects me is that I will spend the next four months or so trying to remember to write 2015 rather than 2014 whenever I need to write the date down. I don't do New Year's resolutions; I have never stuck to them and since having children I have not stayed up late to celebrate in any way, because children do not conveniently sleep in the next morning just because I'm tired. Please understand that this is no hum bug story. If any of these things work for you, then wonderful and I rejoice with you. But New Year is the subject of this blog because it is significant for most people and does mark a divide in time between the last and the present year.

Over the past three years I have had a similar conversation with one particular friend, well I say conversation, it is more like:
Me: "Well next year has to be better than last year! Nothing could be worse than that!"
My Friend: "Absolutely! Here's to a better year than last year. "
And yet, each year we said that, things seemed to get progressively worse for our little and damaged group. We have been through the loss of our community, followed by leukaemia (twice) and then the death of a wonderful woman to secondary breast cancer. Year after year we wondered how we kept going, how we survived, although battered and weary. But as I was reflecting on all that had happened I found myself not wondering how we got through but knowing how.
We LOVED each other, we HELPED each other, we HELD each other's hands. We called each other on the phone, sent little notes of care and hope, we cooked food for each other, offered lifts to those who needed it, we used social media to update, to ask for prayer, we lit candles and just generally did whatever we were able to no matter where we were!! We wore funny hats to cheer people up and held Christmas in August for someone who would not see this Christmas gone. No one asked us to, no one scripted it, we just did the little we could, in anyway that we could, and this is what made the difference!!

So this year you will not hear me say, "Next year has to be better" Instead I will make a promise I intend to keep and I ask you also to make this promise too....

No matter what the next year brings, in times of joy or times of sadness, through rejoicing and difficulties, I will do my best to be there with you. You may be close by or farther away, I may not know you yet, this may be the year that our stories collide. You may not even meet me or even know my name, I might be a friend of a friend who somehow touches you in a way I do not know, but I will do all I can to hold you, sing for you, touch you, pray for you....if that is what you need. For I know now, thanks to those who have done so for me, that the tick of a clock from one year to the next means nothing. It is given meaning by the sharing of ourselves, our love and our care! This is my promise to you!

With much love in this moment!
Rev R xx

The kissing stone

Bend at the waist and turn of the head, eyes aligned with horizon’s bend.

Stone in the hand, smooth and flat, perfectly rounded and carefully picked.

The mist that rests upon the water like glass, so still and clear you could see your face.

Then arm pulled back and the eyes narrow as stone, propelled towards the lake,

gently kisses the water….again….and again…until its flight dips below the surface

as gravity pulls it down.

Yet hidden from sight, still the ripples it makes, spread out from each kiss

making ripples and patterns that overlay and mingle together.

Sacred One, makes ripples in our settled soul, disturb our stayed and set out ways.

As the skimming stone flies across the water stir us up to gather together,

to collect our carefully chosen stones and throw them again into the water.