Category: random thoughts

Love Life Live Lent Week 2 – Thursday – awe and wonder!

Love Life Live Lent, random thoughts

Today’s action was probably my favourite so far.

The 1960s Roman Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, theorised that human beings are created with an innate longing for that which is just beyond our reach – we strive (intellectually and spiritually) for something that is always just over the horizon, so that our existence is a constantly dynamic journey towards what turns out to be God – the ultimate ‘beyond the horizon’ and yet the creator who made us with the very yearning that makes us seek him….

Apologies to those who know far more about Rahner than I do for that rather brief generalisation. It’s rather hard to read Rahner, but at its simplest his God-centred anthropology and his view of life as a continuous journey rings true to many people.

Today’s action in Love Life Live Lent invites us to embrace that innate longing, to follow that desire for more understanding and for more questions.  It invites us to become more child-like, opening our eyes to see the universe afresh, it’s vastness, complexity, and beauty, and to expand our knowledge, our experience, or just our capacity to stop and stare at something amazing.

I did today’s action together with Holly, who is preparing for confirmation, and Daniel, my ever-curious son.  We looked at the very wonderful website www.scaleofuniverse.com to find out what the biggest and smallest things in the universe really are. We discovered some units of measurement that we didn’t even know existed, and we saw numbers with too many zeros to count (hence needed new units of measurement!). We learned why no matter how big a telescope we build, we’ll never be able to perceive the whole universe. And we contemplated the idea of a Planck Length – the smallest thing that makes any physical sense. We marvelled at both how big and how small we are, somewhere in the middle, as human beings.

Later I read Psalm 8 and was awed all over again.

I remember writing an essay in my finals Old Testament exam which asked about the relationship between maternal imagery for God and the development of monotheism. The best answer I could come up with then or now is that when you really need to affirm the idea that there is only one God and that God not only cares for you and your own nation, but created the entire universe in all its splendour and majesty and vastness, you also need to affirm that that same God is not so big and so mighty that she can’t also love you like a mother. It so happens that the Creator-God imagery brings both sides of this together.

And yes, when I think of that it does make me stop and think and wonder…

Love Life Live Lent Wednesday week 2: Tell someone you love them

Love Life Live Lent, random thoughts, wisdom of daniel

I have a six year old son who tells me a gazillion times a day how much he loves me. And he means it. He is a child who feels things deeply, and wears his heart on his sleeve, and emotions for him are often played out in the world of the senses: “Here’s a strawberry for you mummy – I thought of you as I picked it so it’s got my love in it – eat it mummy and taste the love…”  Not surprisingly, Daniel loves the tactile prayers that we do in messy church, using cushions, blankets, soft things… the love of God can be felt in these, and is very real to him.

So, when he forgets to say please and thank you to me, and does what most six year olds do, which is to treat their mother like an omnipresent servant, I try and explain to him the loving someone also means treating them with respect, and that he can show me he loves me, as well as telling me, by treating me less like a slave and more like a fellow human being.

I am fairly confident that I’m not alone, as a mother, in this experience.  And yes, the please and thank you habits are important. And yes, treating others with respect is an important manifestation of our awareness that they are in fact human beings, let alone human beings for whom we have significant feelings.

But I’d be sorry for my son’s expressions of love to be reduced to politeness.  And I’d hate his declarations of undying love for me to become mere rote repetitions without the intensity of feeling behind them.

‘I love you’ is just three short words but it’s what they look like in real life that matters. I often get wedding couples to reflect on this. I show them the declarations and the vows and ask them,’what do these words look  like in your life? And how has the way that these words look in real life chanced over the course of your time as a couple?  And in particular, what does ‘cherishing’ look like in your lives?

Cherishing must be the part of the marriage vows that’s easiest to let slip; life gets in the way, busyness creeps in, there is no time and energy for cherishing any more, except perhaps for birthdays, anniversaries and Valentine’s day…  But cherishing can be not only the finishing touch of love lived out, it can also be part of the foundation of that love lived out.

If C S Lewis was right that we can become more generous by giving more, then we can probably become more loving by consciously cherishing those around us, particularly those who have been given to us to love.

So, do I wish that my son always remembered to say please and thank you? Of course I do.  I also wish I always remembered, too!  But I can also look at all the little ways that his love for me is expressed through small acts of cherishing that assure me that love isn’t just a word to him. As long as love is truly lived out in his life, and practiced every day it never will be just a word, for either of us.

Love Life Live Lent Monday of Week 2: Be more creative

Love Life Live Lent, random thoughts

When I searched for the #livelent hashtag today to see what creative things everyone had been doing, the first tweet I read was from someone who was finding the call to be creative a real challenge, and I wondered for a moment whether there might actually be a whole bunch of people for whom “being more creative” would feel far more challenging than many of the other challenges posed by the Love Life Live Lent actions.

And, I wondered, if that were the case, why?  Why do so many people find the idea of being creative intimidating, or difficult?

Now, I consider myself to be a pretty creative person: I draw, I paint, I make things, I sing, I write music…   none of them remarkably well, but but well enough for my own enjoyment and that of others (or so they tell me!) and well enough to be ‘useful’ as part of what I bring to priestly ministry here.

It pains me to hear so many people telling me that they are “not creative” or that they “can’t sing” or “can’t draw”.  Especially if they shy away from having a go because they feel that others are “better”.  Or if they’ve been told (as so many of us were at school) that they are no good at music, or drawing, or whatever it is, so they no longer have the confidence to try.  If my own competence has ever prevented anyone from trying, then I repent of it here and now!

Because creativity isn’t about perfection, it’s about process. Someone quoted to me the other day (and I’ve no idea who originally said it) that “there is no such thing as a finished poem, only an abandoned poem.” In other words, works of art are not ever finished to perfection, but are merely taken as far as we can take them.  How they are completed is very much up to the person who hears them or sees them.  We may not take a brush to an Old Master, or tinker with the words of a Shakespeare play, but through our own hearing and looking, we help to continue the creative process that the painter or sculptor or writer began. There comes a moment when the artist or writer sets their work free, relinquishes control over it and lets it come of age, making its own way in the world, to be read, or studied, or glanced at, or peered at, or touched and examined and enjoyed or hated by anyone who chooses to engage with it.

That moment is a hard one.  But it is one that all who create things share with our creator God, who, after all, made a universe not to keep under his own control, but to set free.  What a risk.  But, while the earth is still not “finished”, it has not, unlike in the quotation about the poem, been “abandoned”.  God did not publish this world and then sit back, lamenting the way in which we have failed to understand his masterwork, and ruined his perfect artistry.  Rather, the author has stepped back into the work of art time and time again, in smaller ways or in larger ways, shaping the creative process from within, and inviting us to do the same.  God’s creativity is dynamic and participatory and collaborative,  risky, and generous.

We may marvel at God’s creative power expressed in the beauty of a sunset, or a humming bird in flight, or sunlight on water.  We may shake our head in amazement at the extraordinary risk of the Big Bang at the beginning of time, and the movement of tectonic plates shifting continents and oceans.  But we may equally take issue with God’s chosen process for creating and recreating the world: can it be right that the same process that brought the shape of land and ocean into being and made it possible for life to flourish on this earth are also responsible for the devastating power of earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and droughts?

How can our own creativity possibly mirror this, and would we want it to?

For me, and I speak of someone who others call “creative”, there is great comfort and consolation in the notion that what I make and write and draw do not have to be finished products.  My least favourite moment in the booklets that I’ve written for publication is that moment (and I know there has to be one) when I say to the publisher, “here it is, it’s finished”.  Perhaps that’s why I enjoy the fact that a blog is inherently temporary, dynamic and provisional.

When I create, I create not for all time, but for this particular time.  My hymns aren’t for posterity, they’re for now.  My paintings aren’t for all time, they’re capturing a moment, and will last as long as people think they’re worth looking at.  The soft toys I make for my children are not designed to last a lifetime, but to satisfy an urge to cuddle right now (the latest was a soft toy maggot made out of a sock, which, although well loved at the moment, will probably have a shortish shelf life, and that’s OK).

We may not all be creating things that are designed to last, but we genuinely can create things which are of the moment, which are about the process rather than the end product, which value the time and the emotional energy involved and stop short of judging what we have done against some external aesthetic criteria.

Blobfish

And if you’re still not convinced that what you make isn’t beautiful enough to be worthy of our creator God, have a good look at this.  It’s a blobfish.

 

Love Life Live Lent – day five – Plant some seeds

Love Life Live Lent, random thoughts

Oddly, I’m going to be doing this action on Easter Sunday.  Why? Because as part of our Family Communion service in Offord, we’re going to plant some autumn-flowering crocuses in the old font that has been sitting, unloved, in the churchyard for as long as anyone can remember.

At the moment the old font is full of stones and scrubby dirt, but by Easter Day it will be refilled with fresh, dark, fertile soil, and we shall all plant a bulb in it – come Autumn, our Easter planting will remind us that although the days are drawing in, the light of Christ never goes out.

We’re planting the bulbs in the old font partly because it’s there – we wanted to brighten up that part of the churchyard (it’s beside the path from the carpark to the church, so lots of people walk past it). But it’s also because at Easter we renew our baptism promises, reaffirming our belief that life is stronger than death, that love is stronger than hatred, and that light is stronger than darkness.

We’ll be renewing our actual baptism promises inside, around the new font, but it feels right that we also visit and bring new life to the old font, too – and to enable it to be a witness to the light and life and love of God not just to those inside church, but to everyone who passes by.

Love life live Lent – day four: Watch the news and pray…

Love Life Live Lent, random thoughts

Sometimes when we look at the news it feels like all we can do is pray. The situation is too dire, the problem too big, for anything we can do to have any effect. Sometimes it may even feel as if our prayers are too small.

But today, people will be praying for what’s on the news like never before, because today, the Love Life Live Lent action is to watch the news and pray about it.  There will have been prayers arising with the breakfast news, there will be more with the lunchtime news, and still more with the evening bulletins.  And thanks to 24 news services, news websites and twitter, I imagine that today’s prayer vigil for all that’s going on in the world is pretty much non-stop.

But even today, it’s not the size or the quality of our prayers that makes the difference, it’s the fact that God is always more ready to listen than we are to pray. And that he knows the deepest truth and hurt of every situation better than we ever can.  Even if it seems that nothing is happening, God is already at work, answering our prayers – and responding to all the things we should have prayed about but didn’t – in ways that we can’t even imagine.  And he’s at work in us, ensuring that our praying changes not only those things that are external to us, but also that which is inside us, so that we ourselves can become ways for God to answer our own prayers and those of others.

Prayer is a mysterious process.  It’s something we do in faith and in hope and in love as well as out of duty and habit. And sometimes it’s the only thing we can do.  But if you’re struggling with today’s action, to pray for what’s on the news, then why not try some of these ideas to help your prayers feel more real:

1. When you near about a news story, write down a list of all the people affected by it (our you could even draw them) – include not only those who appear to be the victims, but also those who seem to be causing the hurt. Pray for them all.

2. As you sit down to watch the news, set out a row of small candles. For each news story, think about were the darkness is, and how it comes to be. Who is bringing the darkness into that situation? Are you part of what makes that place dark, or sad, or scary?  Ask God to be with those people for whom the world is a dark place. Then light one of the candles, and think about all the people who are able to bring light into that situation, and thank God for them. Ask yourself if you are one of those people.

3. If you read the news online, pick a story that has moved you, or challenged you, and share it on facebook or twitter, inviting those you’re in contact with online to spare a moment to pray, with you, for the people involved.

4. If you’re reading the news in a newspaper, cut out the articles that you’ve chosen to pray about, and put the clippings in a safe place, where you can revisit them each day.  If a news story develops, keep subsequent articles too, so that you can update your prayers, and even start to give thanks if things look as if they are getting better. You could even start a prayer scrapbook.

There are lots of other ways to make prayers for what’s on the news feel real. Why not share your ideas on twitter using the #livelent hashtag, or leave a comment here?