Rachel and her sparrows

I’m wondering if you have come across the work of Rachel Phifer?

I’m kind of hoping not, because then you will have heard about it first from me and be incredibly grateful to me for alerting you to it – kudos, kudos!!

She’s just had her first novel published in July – called The Language of Sparrows.  Already she has more reviews on Amazon than you can shake a stick at, all basically saying you have to read this book.  I suspect that if you take a few minutes to read the ‘Look Inside’ pages on Amazon, you will agree with them.  One of those writers who know how to do that thing they always used to say about crossing the road: STOP LOOK LISTEN. 

This is Rachel in her garden:

She’s written a thing specially for us, about the prayer of St Francis, and I just loved it.  

This is what she wrote:

There were times that “Help!” was the only prayer I could come up with. Sometimes for months at a time. It’s not such a bad prayer, really. It’s honest. It’s direct. But that little word didn’t begin to address the depth of need I felt. 

About twenty years ago, in the midst of unemployment, broken friendships and a long period of blue days, I stumbled across a book with The Prayer of St. Francis written in the back. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, it began, where there is hatred, let me sow love. 

I didn’t have to read very far into the prayer to know it had the words I’d been searching for. So in the mornings, I would make my way out of bed half an hour earlier, and curl up in my hand-me-down gold chair. I’d say the prayer slowly, trying to concentrate on each word. I’d say it twice more, and in the end, I’d whisper the words at the end of each line: peace, love, pardon, faith, hope, light, joy, console, understand, love, pardoning, giving, eternal life. 

It was a bit odd for me. I was raised in a Baptist family and I’d never heard anyone reciting a prayer. There was even a niggling worry that repeating a prayer was the “babbling of many useless words” from Matthew 6.  

But it wasn’t just a recitation, and it certainly wasn’t useless.  It was a prayer spoken to God, with words I hadn’t known I wanted to say. And to tell you the truth, my old chair seemed like a temple for a while. 

It was such a relief to come to God with words I hadn’t known I wanted to say, asking to be something nobler and deeper than I would ever have known I wanted to be. I’m not saying that I became a walking prayer of St. Francis. The truth is, I still had blue days. I was still a sinner. But I began to sense God inhabiting my days.  

I’d like to say that I’ve kept the practice of praying the prayer over a lifetime. But I can’t. I’m not that disciplined. Still, when I can’t find the words I need, it’s an anchor to come back to.  

I’m a working mom and a writer. So there have been quite a few times, when I’ve been too exhausted even to pray those two stanzas of the St. Francis prayer. But the practice itself of saying words that aren’t my own still sustains me.  

One minister thrown into a communist prison and tortured said he forgot every prayer he’d ever learned, but he remembered to pray, “Jesus!” I’m not that hard pressed. No matter how exhausted I am, I can always recite something like, “In You I live and move and have my being” (Acts 17) or “This is the day You have made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118)  

There are always words to fill the dark spaces with light and the empty spaces with God’s presence. 

  

 Thank you, Rachel, so much. 

Publishing Schedules. Symbiosis.

Marrying my publisher made a number of things clear to me I might never otherwise have understood.  As well as being very professional in his approach to his work, he is a kind man, always one to go the second mile.  Where he can help, or listen, or share the weight of someone else’s burden, he always will.

As he talks to me about how his day has gone, I gain insights into the publisher’s point of view, and of nothing is this more true than publishing schedules.

Book publishing is certainly about words, but it’s also a numbers game.  If the projected sales figures don’t stack up, the project isn’t viable – and this doesn’t always mean the book isn’t good or the commissioning editor doesn’t like it.   Sometimes even fine work has no market.

But once a proposal has made it through ordeal-by-committee, and shown itself capable of leaping the series of hurdles standing between the germ of an idea and publication, a publishing schedule is set in place.  The author is always, always consulted about this.   No publisher would accept a book for publication without checking that the author felt confident of honouring the contract in the agreed time frame.

It is staggering to me how many writers do dishonour that contract and agreement.

Some of the excuses fit squarely into the category of emotional blackmail – ‘My niece was ill,’ etc.    The publisher is a human being, and the relationship with the author a sort of quasi-friendship.  What sort of person could say, ‘So?  Your niece isn’t writing the book’?

Sometimes there is no excuse offered, and no manuscript either for a very long time.   

But why does it matter if a book comes in late?

Well, because there is a symbiosis, not always apparent to the author, between authors and publishers and also between authors and authors.

A book may come in late, which has been scheduled to be out in time for a big conference.  It may have been promised as one of the conference books, or the projected sales figures may absolutely rely on that conference – perhaps the writer may be a speaker there.  Often in Christian publishing, the writer has the contract on the basis of their edifying life/work/story – not because they can write exceptionally well.  The text needs extensive in-depth work before it will do justice to the story it tells.

In that case, there is no wiggle room.  The work on the text has to be done in time.  Bottom line; the staff at the publishing house, and the freelancers working on the text, have to take up the slack.  But anyone who knows anything about the world of publishing grasps that there is no slack in a publishing schedule.  The world of publishing isn’t full of gentle old coves in corduroys puffing on their pipes as they sit in the window-seat reading sonnets – it goes like an express train.

The freelancer waiting for the late book to come in, having kept the slot open, is marking time and unable to take on other work until it arrives, then has to sit up late, sometimes working through the night if the text is seriously dodgy, to get it back onto schedule. 

The manuscript misses its slot in the schedule of those who have to copy-edit, format, work on the electronic processes, produce and check proofs etc – so it bumps into the slots scheduled for other books.   The effect is disastrous.  Publishing house staff already working as hard and fast as they can go have to try to get more done in less time to accommodate the work on the manuscript.

This is not mildly annoying, it causes melt-down – stressed-out people in tears, senior staff having to stop their own work to help out junior staff now struggling with impossible workloads in a crashed schedule.

And it doesn’t just stop at the publishing house.  The symbiosis connecting authors extends to create a support network for all concerned.  Many, many books never erode their royalty advance – they make a loss.  Publishing is a gamble, always; sometimes you lose.   But the spectrum of books published creates the interest and variety of a good list; and somehow new authors have to get started, and few hit the big-time with a first book.  The many that fail are balanced by the few that succeed impressively.

If a book misses its slot in the publishing schedule, it just leaves a gap.  If the author had been realistic and aimed for six months or a year later – and honoured that – another book could have been commissioned to fill the gap, perhaps one of the best-sellers that keep the many less successful writers afloat.  Even if not a best-seller, at least one of the many, many hopeful authors submitting manuscripts would have been in with a chance.

The book that misses the schedule and, despite the best efforts of publishing house staff and freelancers to get it back on track, must be postponed, takes up the publishing opportunities of two writers.

I write books and I also work on other authors’ manuscripts.  My dear Badger has taken a long-postponed sabbatical this autumn, and gone on an exciting pilgrimage – he is walking the 500 miles from St Jean Pied de Port in France, across the Pyrenees, through Galicia, to the Spanish coast and Santiago de Compostela (the place with the mahoosive swingy incense thingy).  I cancelled just about everything I do, so that while he is away I’d have the chance to write a novel, Book 8 of my Hawk & Dove series.

And then, guess what?  The book I had been asked to edit for early October, leaving me a month to six weeks in which to write my own book, came in a month late.  So in the precious, rare slot of empty time, that’s what I’m doing; editing someone’s late manuscript.  Sure, I’ll get to my own book by some means – but it will take me twice as long to write it in a house with a husband in it, and the effort and struggle of keeping focus will be twice as hard.

If there are any writers reading this – friends, please remember, we are all in this together; your book is not the only water lily on the surface of the pond.  Please, please, be realistic, be disciplined, be methodical and professional when you undertake to write a book.  If you haven’t got time to do it, have the restraint to pass up the opportunity.  If you take the work and sign the contract, stick to the agreement you made.  Submitting your script within the agreed time frame is one of the ways you, as a writer, keep faith with your publishers and your fellow-writers, including people like me whose name you don’t know and whom you may never meet. 

Self-discipline is a beautiful characteristic.

This was the psalm for today. It makes me happy.

Young herring gull

Here in the garret where I spend time chilling out with Jesus before the day kicks off, this morning there came a seagull – a brown dappled teenager herring gull – just above my head, scavenging moss from the rim of the skylight.

I watched him, three feet above me.  In between the peckings and nibblings, we looked at each other, eye to eye.

And in the bird’s eye, I saw intelligence, and a quality that lifted my heart – call it gladness, contentment, happiness, something benign, something at peace with life and itself.  I do not think of seagulls as kind birds – fairly heartless, really – but in this bird’s eye, something that in a human eye always means kindness was there.

If a bird can be good, this bird was good.  And it can, of course, because God saw all that he had made, and pronounced it good.

Threshold

I may be mistaken, but I think in England we are on the brink of doing something really bad, from which there will be no way back.

If you live in England you will probably know that fracking sites are proposed for well over half the country.  The first one, at Balcombe in West Sussex, should be starting drilling soon.  This is at present being delayed by staunch and substantial anti-fracking protest at Balcombe; it reminds me strongly of the protest at Greenham Common.

Fracking, whether for gas or oil, is short for 'fracturing'.  There's a good explanation of it here.

The basic deal is that, to release the gas or oil deposits, chemicalised water is forced into places deep in the earth.  This involves poisoning the waters in the aquifers, which means water we could have accessed for drinking will become poisonous.

When I wrote to members of our Hastings council about this matter, I was assured that no fracking sites have been identified for 'our area'.  But when it comes to the aquifers, the air, the rivers, Balcombe in West Sussex is our area.  Airborne gas respects no county or borough boundaries.  Even so, if this is the only means of communicating to the UK civic authorities that we care about this, adding our voices to the protest here is the least we can do.

Here in the South East of England we have just received a leaflet from our water authority, explaining that we are still in serious water shortage - semi-drought - conditions.  All of us soon will be having metered water to encourage us to use less, and the leaflet reminds us of a number of ways we can all use water responsibly, to make it go further and alleviate drought.

Fracking is a very thirsty process.  Not only does it necessitate poisoning (not for a brief temporary period but long-term) water we could have accessed for drinking, but it also requires millions of gallons of water to run the heavy machinery.

They have a fracking plant in Texas, in an area already challenged by extremely arid conditions.  Here's  the result.

Of course fracking, whether for oil or gas, and also oil extracted from tar sands and piped away, will affect the air and the land as well as the water.  Read here about some of the implications for rural America.    You'll notice that ExxonMobil is one of the firms behind fracking in America. Exxon have been extracting oil from tar sands too.  Read about the effects of their work here.

Of course, at least initially fracking will be done in the countryside.  There would be too much of an outcry if towns and roads were spoiled to dig up the area and drill for gas.  So there will be a need to cut down more woodland.  And of course, one of the many benefits of trees is that they slow down the movement of water through the landscape, protecting us against both drought and floods.

Fracking is what's called a 'dirty technology'.  The benefits are not great and the pollution and damage is massive.  The cost in terms of the wellbeing of the Earth is huge for the commodity we produce.

It shouldn't need much explaining for it to be clear to you that the consequences of all this are sombre indeed.  But the urgency and importance of it is made clear in this article about Earth Overshoot Day.

Our life is good.  Our family runs a car, we have a gas boiler for the winter months (our summertime water is heated by solar tubes on the roof).   But I would be more than willing to have our government insist we stop using gas and oil forever and just do without it, rather than seek fresh supplies this way.  I look at the people walking around our neighbourhood, ordinary people, parents with little kids in tow, old folks struggling along slowly with walking frames, many immigrants, many who are very poor.  And I try to imagine what will happen if, just as the government is cutting assistance to people living with disability, fracking in West Sussex gives us here in East Sussex breathing difficulties nausea, asthma.  I try to imagine us turning on the tap to find the water is gone, ordered to let our gardens die because the fracking machinery needs the water, watching our dairy cattle and sheep in the meadows sicken and die because the rivers are poisoned, seeing our orchards perish because the land had been sucked dry and a secret cocktail of lethal chemicals blasted into the deep earth.

Our Prime Minister, David Cameron, is firmly in favour of fracking, saying it will make only a tiny difference to the English countryside.   He says "We must make the case that fracking is safe. International evidence shows there is no evidence why fracking should cause contamination of water supplies or other environmental damage, if properly regulated."  Hmm.

Once this Pandora's Box has been opened, there will be no stuffing back inside what we have unleashed.   In my soul, to the very depths, is such a dread of the future we are creating, such a grieving for the Earth, for the rivers, the hills, the wild creatures, the trees.   This is not the road of blessing.

Three Wise Things

In our house, one of us is called Hebe, and she is very wise.

At first I had only Two Wise Things to tell you about today (Beauty Cream and the Frankincense Tree), but two always wants to be three in lore and storytelling, so I am going to add a third one and tell you Three Wise Things about Hebe.

First Wise Thing:

Hebe is a Maker, and she has many magical and intriguing things in her room.

When I went in there looking for the First Wise Thing to photograph it, I couldn’t find it at all.  With Hebe, sometimes things are Apparent and Sometimes they are Hidden, because she is a friend of Mystery and can’t help picking up enigmatic ways.  Now you see it, now you don’t; that’s how it is with Hebe.  But while I was searching vainly for the First Wise Thing, I did see some other Things, and I photographed them with my camera Lumix, so you would not be disappointed by having no picture to see when I tell you about the First Wise Thing.

So, here you are.  Look – this is the corner of Hebe’s shelf.  The baton that holds it up is made of a small branch that fell from the ash tree at the bottom of our garden.  That makes me happy.

And these are some of the Magical Things I saw while I was in her room; the tiniest giraffe possible, two handmade wooden spoons, and a strange bottle obviously for some Magical and Mysterious Use.

That’s how it is in Hebe’s room.  But the Thing I searched for and couldn’t find is a button badge she wears sometimes, that says:

“It’s always the quiet ones”

 This small and modest statement contains an inherent wisdom that unfolds like a flower as you hold it in mind.  “It’s always the quiet ones”.  It is too.  So that was the First Wise Thing.

The Second Wise Thing came about for two reasons (two to keep it company in its second place on the list, you see); because Hebe loves Healing Herbs and Wildflowers, and because she is an Explorer and Finder.  She moves at the speed of love around the garden.  The speed of love, unlike the speed of light, is very, very slow.  Nobody knows the speed of love; sometimes it is quite still.  Another Wise Person I know, Martin Baddeley who was once my Teacher, said: “Jesus walked, and He stopped.  What is the speed of love?”  This has only ever been a question; never an answer – it has this in common with many Life’s in-sights.  While Hebe is in the garden she is Looking.  Not looking, you see; Looking.  Insects, flowers, toadstools, raindrops, spider webs, bark, pebbles, toads, ferns, moss; she really Looks, so she really sees.   This is how she puts her Quietness to good use.

A plant she didn’t find in our garden but often includes in the Healing Salves she makes for us, is Frankincense.  Sometimes, quietly, like a Sniffing Animal, Hebe takes her time poking and rootling in the moonlight on the World Wide Web, balancing precariously along its many strands until she finds out things and can weave them into her own Wisdom, much as she includes herbs in her Healing Salves.  On the World Wide Web one dark night, Hebe discovered that the Frankincense Trees of the Earth (and as far as we know there are none anywhere else) are In Danger.  Human Beings in their Ignorance and Sin have been greedy and impatient with the precious resin of the Frankincense Trees, and taken too much.  

The Frankincense Trees did what they could, climbing to the Rocky Outcrops of High Mountains and standing there on tiptoe clinging on by the Barest Root in the hope they could never be reached, but even there Human Beings came with their cutting knives for the healing sap of the tree that has the fragrance of all beauty and can make people well again.

So the Frankincense Trees upped the ante and decided to have no more children.

When Frankincense Merchants in Wales heard of this pass, they decided to Do What They Could.  It takes patience to germinate a Frankincense Tree.  Only three in every hundred seeds germinate at all.  And Frankincense Trees grow at the speed of love.  But the Frankincense Merchants in Wales persevered.  A year ago Hebe added her name to the Waiting List and at last the tiny trees the Merchants had been able to germinate were ready to go out (at considerable expense, mark you) to their new homes.

When the Quiet Ones advise, you listen; so when Hebe suggested we incorporate into our household a Frankincense Tree,  we said "Yes; of course," because that was the Right Answer.  

The postman brought it here from Wales.   Royal Mail!  Very fitting.

First it must live in the bathroom, where it will like (we hope) the diffused light and the cool mountain air with its mists and fogs.  

Here it is.  God bless you, little tree of hope and promise.  May you grow and prosper!  May you rise from strength to strength!

So the Second Wise Thing concerned the finding, considering, advising and acquiring of a Frankincense Tree – a privilege and a responsibility.

Then the Third Wise Thing, Hebe gave to me on my birthday this year, when she made especially for me a pot of wonderfully fragrant Beauty Cream.  It came with a Sheet of Advice:

And if that’s not Wisdom, I don’t know what is.

Hysterical delight

Oh, man, I am SO PLEASED with myself!!!

I've spent HOURS today patiently learning how to do stuff on a Mac, and figuring out how to make montages and graphic layouts in the absence of Microsoft Paint.

I wanted to be able to upload things to our church Facebook page, to make it a) relevant and b) pretty.

And FINALLY I managed to make this:

Hooray!  I am just so pleased that I did that  :0D

Habitat. Home.

This week my heart is heavy to hear of two homes lost under the soul-less administration of UK government.

One is Oaken Wood near Maidstone in Kent.

Despite lobbying by local people who love the woodland, and the best efforts of the Woodland Trust, permission has been given to cut down the trees to quarry for stone.

Here is Oaken Wood photographed for the Daily Telegraph newspaper:

It will soon look like this:

  

That’s Kent.  Meanwhile, in Pembrokeshire (Wales), the owners of an earth-friendly turf-roofed straw and wood round house who failed to seek planning permission to build their home, have been told to tear it down on the basis that it harms the character and appearance of the countryside.

Charlie Hague and Megan Williams built their little house for £15,000 on William’s parents’ land, in time for the birth of their first child. 

This is the house:

Charlie and Meg are fighting to save it.

I feel heartsick when I read about these things.

I have done what I can.

I signed the petition to save Meg and Charlie’s home – there is no reason why Pembrokeshire County Council cannot grant them retrospective planning permission.  Perhaps you might like to sign it, too?

And I sent some money to the Woodland Trust towards their campaign to buy Fingle Wood in England’s West Country.  Only 2% of England’s ancient woodland remains, now.  98% gone.   

This is Fingle Wood:

The trees are our guardians against drought and flood, for they slow down the movement of water through the landscape.  They purify the air and stabilise the land.  They shade us against fierce heat in summer and temper the winter winds.  They are home and shelter to countless species.  They are the lungs of the earth.

Do what you can to speak up for the trees, for your life is in their hands just as their life is in yours.

My favourite picture.

I want to show you my favourite picture ever.  

I have stacks of images saved on memory sticks – of nature, the countryside, people, sunsets, waterfalls, flowers, inspirational quotes, cats, elephants, rabbits for Julie – but this is my very favourite picture of all time.

There’s a page I go to on Facebook, Advocates For Spalding Dogs – where you can donate to pay release fees for lost dogs in the pound at Spalding County.

Sometimes they have a rescue opportunity – if not, or if no-one pays their release fees, their lives are brought to an abrupt halt with a lethal injection.  So the people who are the Advocates For Spalding Dogs work tirelessly to find the opportunities and finance that will save their lives and find them forever homes.

If you have the emotional stamina for it, you can watch while donations gradually come in for dogs sometimes overdue for euthanasia.

Once there was a little dog who – if my memory of this is correct – had no donations.  Time was running out.  The lethal injection was the next stop.

And then, this photo:

. . . the little dog as the sole passenger in a private jet, winging away to a most luxurious forever home.

I’m a preacher.  I could think of all kinds of things to say about the Saviour who lifted me from hopelessness, the good Shepherd who found me and took me home when I was lost, the Lord who supplies my every need and by whose grace I am sustained.

But for now just let me say – that photo of a little dog being airlifted out of the pound is, in my opinion, the best pic ever.