Lovely interview with Dee Williams

In this interview, Dee Williams puts into words so succinctly the things I believe, that I wanted to share it with you here.

Two things in particular resonate with me.

First, she says – when asked for advice right at the end – that you only have one little shot, so just go for it.  At fifty-six years old now, my consciousness of that truth is getting sharper by the day.  I don’t want to die without having lived as I dreamed life could be.

Second, she speaks about class issues – a little boy on hearing that she lives in a friend’s back yard: “Oh!  You’re homeless!”  And she speaks of her initial jolt to get started arising from a trip to Guatemala, comparing daily life for the friends she met there with the expectations of middle-class America. 

Well, one among many features that attract me to Hastings is the poverty.  I am sufficiently inadequate in terms of mainstream skills and priorities that I have a very low income.  I feel comfortable with other people who are “poor” too.  I put that in inverted commas because I do not feel poor and have never been impeded in living as I choose, largely because I was raised by a determined and resourceful woman who taught me how to take care of myself and those I love.  But waste,  excess, complacency and snobbery revolt me; I prefer the company of simple and humble folk; the salt of the earth.  They do not look down on me.

Last week I went to buy wool at a shop in a small town inland – a wealthy place, somewhere I could not possibly afford a home.  I got chatting with the lady serving in the shop, and she asked me where I live, so I told her, “Hastings”.  With some distaste she told me how Hastings has changed for the worse in the time she’s known it.  I replied that one of the things I like about Hastings is it resists change – corporate interest has a hard time moulding Hastings into any kind of shape; it just goes back to being what it always was. 

Wishing to clarify, she explained that it all started to go wrong back in the 1960s when the London Overspill people came – this was poor people re-housed from East London (the poorer quarter of London) when they knocked down their homes in slum clearance.   She said they had brought down the quality of life, and now there has developed in Hastings what she could only describe as an Underclass.  She said this a couple of times, with emphasis, winding up by saying she prefers not to go to Hastings nowadays.

I’ve come across this before.  When I used to preach round the Methodist Circuit some years back, a vestry steward in one of the Bexhill chapels mentioned in passing that she would be afraid to go to Hastings shopping or visiting, because it is such a rough and dangerous place.

I have lived in Hastings most of my adult live, never been afraid, not felt the need to lock my home (in past days before I lived in shared accommodation), always been comfortable and at peace here.  

And even if I could afford to live in a wealthy place, it would distress me to do so.  There is very little I can offer people who are struggling, but I can at least not abandon them; live alongside them and be proud to count them among my friends.

I found in Dee Williams’ interview a profound humility and intelligence that rejoice my heart.  It’s twenty-seven minutes long, so you’ll need a cup of tea!

Book 15

I am proud of my new book, The Wilderness Within You, (linked here to US Amazon)  because it is the fifteenth book I have written.

I can remember going to the party of a friend who is a writer, to celebrate the publication of his tenth book – and thinking at the time what an impossible place to reach that seemed; I think I had maybe written one or two then.

I have not had many achievements in my life; I didn’t do well at school, after college I spent a decade either expecting or feeding babies, my years as a minister of religion were sabotaged spectacularly by an avalanche of profound and complex family problems which shipwrecked my life as dramatically as driving a speedboat full-tilt into a concrete harbour wall.  

As a person I am difficult – hard to get to know, socially inept and ridiculously introverted.

But I have written these books, and that feels like an achievement to me.

Number 15, The Wilderness Within You (linked here to UK Amazon) is a Lent book of conversations with Jesus, which may or may not be imaginary – I say that because I am not sure myself, seeing that I do meet with and talk with Jesus.  How can I tell which conversation are made up and which are real?  You’ll have to decide for yourself.

It has come out how I hoped and I am pleased with it, so you will have to take a peek and see for yourself what you think.  There’s a ‘Look Inside’ on Amazon.

It's got Bible readings and then a conversation with Jesus for each day of Lent - a good book to dip into, and handy for if you have to source readings for assemblies or women's meetings or retreats or church services etc.  And a nice book if you like to have something just short to read at the beginning or end of the day - thought-provoking I hope, without being too intellectual or hard to understand.  So, basically a book for people like me, which you probably are if you're reading here (unless you are the Thought Police or a spy from the government monitoring my opposition to the badger cull and my support for the Arctic 30…).

I hope you like it - er, the book, that is!  x

Komorebi and Forgiveness

Thinking today of those people who I have technically and spiritually, but not emotionally, forgiven.  The odd thing is, I do not believe they even are aware there is anything to forgive.  But what they did cut so deep.  It has skinned over, but breaks open every now and then, with all its hidden poison.  I wonder if these wounds will ever heal?

I think of the people kindly and wish them well.  I regard them as being under no karmic obligation to me, and I help them when they need me, and hold their welfare in my heart, their concerns in my prayers.  But I cannot like them, although I do see that they are good people, attractive and vital personalities.  Even the sight of them sends a shiver of aversion right through me.

Years have gone by, and the bitter residue remains, rising up like bile sometimes.  Today I will go back and look at the novel I wrote, The Hardest Thing To Do, which was my first try at resolving some of the knots of pain.

On more cheerful matters, let me tell you about Komorebi.

This is a word I learned from my friend Rebecca Sylvan, a Japanese term for sunlight shining through leaves, the interplay of the light and the leaves.   I came upon it when I was searching for a name for my tiny house, and knew it was right.

So far we have the foundation.  You can see it there as a whitish patch between the Badger’s woodworking shed on the right and our next door neighbour’s shed on the left.

This is the place I always thought it should go, but when we had the garden all filled with veggie beds, it was the only place left to be just natural and simple, and was therefore very precious to us.  Since then, we have made a little orchard where the veggie beds were, and meadow grass and wild flowers grow there (the trees are still little, and hard to see without their leaves; I will show you again in the spring).  So we replaced the essence of what we would lose before filling it up with a tiny house.  The garden is not really big enough even so, but there is nowhere else, and although I long for my tiny house life, I also want to be with and alongside my family, because I love them.

To keep costs right down, and because I have no building skills and am fully occupied exercising what skills I have to earn my living, we did nothing more ethnic or eco-friendly than go to Skinners and order a summerhouse.  This one.  10' x 8' with a 4' verandah.  It will be insulated and lined with matchwood (tongue and groove) inside.  I have a little stove to go in it.  This one.

On December 9^th the men from Skinners are coming to put it up.  A few days later when it has settled, they will come back and clad the interior.  Then near Christmas the HETAS engineer (Hal Kaye, a chimney sweep) will come to take a look and quote to put the woodstove in, but he does not have space in his diary until the end of January to actually do the installation.  So, by Candlemas it will be all done.

In my soul, in my viscera, at my very core, like a fire, like a hunger, is this need for a small and simple space in which to dwell – not for a retreat or for an occasional holiday, but for the everyday.  I want not a vacation but a life. Institutions and social gatherings have become so unbearable to me that I can hardly hold still until such occasions are over.  I long most desperately for the quiet and humble, the earthy and plain.

I am hoping that the things I wrote about at the top of this post will finally be able to melt and undo in Komorebi, that in silence and simplicity, with the door open every day to the smell of grass and the sound of the wind in the trees, my heart will come home again from the distant star from where it has watched these many years.  I am hoping that here I will be able to finish the work by which I may be made whole.  God’s work, yes I know; but I have my part to do, and that is not finished.

Blessed be Komorebi.

Flower-pot heater

Atmospheric dawn light photo of my new winter room heater!

It is made of three nesting flower-pots joined together, with gaps between, by a half-inch-diameter bolt and a series of nuts and washers.  It is supported by two old housebricks sitting on a slate floor tile, and fuelled by two nightlights.

It’s a hybrid of two models I saw on YouTube.  The prototype is here and the advanced version here.  If you check out something like candle-powered space-heater or flower-pot heater on YouTube, there are several demos.

I made mine yesterday and I’m trying it out for the first time today. 

I will have my tiny house by Christmas but may not have a woodstove in until Candlemas, and as Dave King says we will have an unusually hard winter with snow on the ground from Boxing Day through to April, I’m resourcing possibilities . . .

I don't have a bread tin, and I couldn't remember what brackets you had to have when I was in the hardware store, so I'm going to see if what I've made works well.  Back to YouTube if not.  I'll let you know!

The First Slot of the Day

 There is this problem I have never been able to solve.

Every day should begin with prayer, and the right place for it is the first slot of the day – though in this winter season it is too dark to read in the first slot of the day, but if prayer and Bible reading are too long postponed, the reality is they may get pushed out of the day altogether.  So, as near the first slot as light permits.

Everyone should take exercise, and my work is very sedentary.  The best hour for my exercises is the first slot of the day – it makes sense, because I can exercise in my leggings and vest (undershirt not waistcoat), then wash and dress afterwards.  If I wash and dress first, the day tends to take off and I don’t get my exercise done.  It’s important to exercise before breakfast, too.

On the days when the Badger is home (he works away in Oxford half the week), I like to have breakfast with him, because once the day takes off we hardly see each other.  He gets up early, and has his breakfast in that first slot of the day.

On an average day (like today) I need to space out my writing stints, to allow gaps for thoughts to develop and wise reflection to work like yeast through the pieces in hand.  Today I have three writing tasks on the desk – a magazine article, then two Bible studies of a series.  This evening, the Badger and I are travelling to London for the launch of a book he published, for which I acted as outside editor.  We must catch a train mid-afternoon.  So my writing tasks need to be in the bag by mid afternoon.  Any time from 8am onwards, the day is peppered with interruptions.  Today a tradesman is coming to lay a concrete base in the garden (more on that another day), the Abel & Cole veggie box will be delivered, and I must speak with my beautiful mama on the phone about the jaunt we have planned for her tomorrow morning (she is very excited about this).  So it’s really important I get one of the three writing projects completed in the first slot of the day, to leave enough time realistically to complete the other two.

Do you see the problem?