Not sure what to think

 For some while now we — Tony (my husband) and me — have been in search of a place we both wanted to worship.

I was very happy in Methodism, and Tony gave it a really good go but never felt quite at home there. That wasn't why I left, but the reasons for that make a story best left to sink to the bottom of the sea.

For a while we worshipped in a very high Anglican Church — all incense and processions. Again it wasn't Tony's thing (at all) but he was willing to go there if that was what I wanted. I liked it, but after I got ill, and wasn't well enough to drive for a long time, the bus times were wrong so I tried a nearer church (Methodist, and had to leave, see paragraph above).

For a couple of years, of course, we ran our own expression of church on Facebook — The Campfire Church that we started when the UK went into Covid lockdown, and it just kept going until more or less everyone had found physical communities to join again.

More recently we went to a low Anglican church — the old-fashioned kind of Evangelical rather than the charismatic sort. Tony felt comfortable enough with that, but I didn't really fit in. At all. There was a darling couple whose house group we went to, really dear people, and I did like the music in the church, though it was all on a karaoke machine, they didn't have any musicians. But it was okay.

Tony wanted to go to church with me rather than finding separate places to go, and I was running out of ideas.

In an ideal world what I'd like is either cathedral worship or to tack onto the worship of a monastery, but neither of those options present where I live. I went once to an Eastern Orthodox service, and found it very beautiful, but I think I'm a bit more informal than that.

I worshipped with the Quakers for a year or so when I first moved back to Hastings, but though I loved the silence I missed the music — and for me Jesus is central, where I think for Quakers these days it's more a meditative political kind of thing. Beautiful in its way, but not really me.

So in the last few weeks we've been going to a church where Tony is really happy — he absolutely loves it, says it feels like coming home.

It's very hip and trendy. Very ethnically diverse. A loud band — the whole place thumps like it was having a heart attack as we approach on a Sunday morning. There are lots of kiddies. The pastor is a very good preacher — the best we've come across in recent years by a long way. Women are allowed to preach as well, which is refreshing. They stick to a spiritual message and don't turn it into a party political broadcast of sorts, which comes as a relief.

The shape of the liturgy is interesting. At the beginning everyone stands up and there is a long time of singing, very repetitive songs with indeterminate tunes in the modern idiom. At some point there's an offering (with card machines!) while the singing goes on and on. Sometimes there will be a prayer put up on the screens for us all to say together. Then there's always a sermon, quite long, usually good. Then there's more singing and an altar call for people who want to be prayed with individually.

At some point there are detailed notices about the life of the church.

Now then — this rocked me back a bit. Last Sunday we went to church and it was the week of the Hastings Half Marathon, so the service was ending early in order for the congregation to go and cheer on the runners as they passed along the nearby sea road.

So there were lengthy and interesting notices about big things coming up to do with a huge programme for restoring the building, and the church had found a goodnatured and cheerful way of encouraging the wild posse of children who attend to walk in church rather than racing round like the Gadarene swine, so that was in the notices too.

There was long long long long singing as usual. Not songs I knew and hard to distinguish one from the other, but hey, that's fine. 

There was a competent (not brilliant) sermon about principles of prayer, based on the passage about Abraham's servant choosing Rebekah as a wife for Isaac.

Some more singing and an opportunity for those who wanted prayer. At that point, as they were about to all clatter off to the sea road and cheer on the runners, I went and got a bus home because I'm not good at long standing (one reason why Orthodox worship doesn't work for me).

So that was all okay except... well... hello? Hadn't they missed something out? Like, any mention whatsoever that it was Passion Sunday.

I still can't get my head around that really.

The week before was Mothering Sunday, and that was marked — nothing about Jerusalem or that it was Laetare Sunday and how it fits into Lent, but daffs for the kiddies to give out to all the women. Women! "Uh-oh," I said to Tone, "let's see how this goes." I mean we live in a world where even our illustrious leaders can't commit to any certainty of what a woman is. Sure enough, one of the kiddies gave Tony a bunch of daffs. "Told you so," I said.

Anyway that was all well and good, but for Passion Sunday to come and go without even a passing glance? Seriously?

I'm not too sure what I think about that.

At Wild Church we thought about spring and nature and new beginnings and the equinox, but that was fair enough — the folk at Wild Church are barely clinging onto Christianity by their fingernails, more into politics really.

But the C of E on Passion Sunday and no sign at all they even knew? Am I in the right place? 

I'm tired of leaving things, I'd love to find somewhere to belong. That was why I started writing stories of course — the community my heart was looking for. So I can still do that.

This is what I would have wanted to sing, on Sunday morning.

Or this (the words of the song are given under the video).

Wild church

 Today we had our Wild Church meeting, thinking about the spring equinox, about (as our group leader put it) "facing what is new in our lives".

I was interested in that, because often what is new is regarded as exciting and refreshing. Having it worded as "facing what is new" brought out the other aspect of newness, that it can be daunting. Anything unfamiliar presents a challenge.

We had some new people in the group too, including a young baby — so everything in the whole world was new to her!

And the sun shone. We thought it would be cold, and wore our hats and took blankets to wrap round us, but no — it was actually warm.

This was our circle, the photo taken during the bit of the meeting where we all wander off for a contemplative peregrination to absorb the beauty of the natural world.

We were by the ruins of the old 12th century St Helens Church (there's a newer Victorian version not far away from it). Some parts of it even go back to the 11th century.

If you stand further back from where our chairs were, it looks like this.

There's also a spring nearby it. I know about the spring, but I have never looked for it to see it myself. Here it is — pictures from someone who has been there.

Now I know how to get to the site of the old church (before, I knew only roughly where it is), I'll go back one day when I'm feeling sprightly, and look for the spring. It has all the hallmarks of a holy well, don't you think? Anyway, all springs are holy.

So that was a good day.

My new story is very nearly ready. We've had the proofs and read them, and sent back the corrections to Jonathan. As soon as he's amended the formatted text, Tony will upload it to Amazon and — voilà! — it'll be good to go. If Jonathan's not busy on other things, tat should be in a week or so. I'll let you know.

Meanwhile I'm about halfway through writing what will be the very last one of the Hawk and Dove books. What a long and happy journey that's been.

Some songs for our time

 Songs often speak for me when talking cannot express what's in my heart. 

All my life until recently, the hymnody of church and the songs learned as they were written through the years spoke for the faith I feel, carried the light I bear inside. But the church has moved away from those songs. When I go to worship now, I don't know the songs they are singing. I expect I can learn the new ones — I mean, why not? But it feels as though a lifelong pilgrimage has been erased. The songs were what said it for me.

Today I was online sorting out some financial transactions, and went on to YouTube to see what was happening there. Much to my surprise, I landed there just as a livestream was starting for the funeral of a friend from long ago — a woman I knew at the time my children were being born, back in the days of the Ashburnham Stable Family. It was forty years ago, but she comes back to my mind from time to time, because she was very unusual, a complete original with dauntless faith, full on hope, her life centred on Jesus. 

I needed to put through the things I was engaged on, but at the same time I was listening to the prayers and tributes from her funeral. And at one point near to the end, they sang this song that I love. 

I've listened to it over and over through this afternoon.

Yesterday, a different song was on my mind. Back in 1972, when I first gave my heart to Jesus, an LP — a vinyl disc — came out, called God's People Give Thanks. I see it's still possible to buy it on eBay, though I no longer have a record player that would allow me to listen to it. At the time I borrowed it from a friend, and the record player I had then was borrowed from another friend. There was one particular song on that album I'd never heard before. I listened to it over and over. I loved it so much. It was William Featherstone's hymn, My Jesus, I love Thee. This one.

And that was what I listened to for much of yesterday.

But then online today I came across this song by Josh Groban, and it struck me as remarkably apposite for the way many of us are feeling as we try to hold our light steady and keep walking forward.

But, honest and real though that is, for me the hymns and songs we sing are not so much to express how we feel, but more to strengthen us, to steady us. And there are few songs I know better than this one, for achieving that. 

It was put out for the time of the Covid pandemic, but I think it might be what I want to say for all times, forever.

May his presence go before you

And behind you, and beside you,

All around you and within you,

He is with you, he is with you

In the morning, in the evening,

In your coming, in your going,

In your weeping, and rejoicing,

He is for you, he is for you,

He is for you, he is for you,

He is for you, he is for you,

Amen! Amen! Amen!

And one more.

Amazon reviews

 Friends, if you have read any of my stories, I'd be most grateful if you can find time to write an honest review on Amazon.

This can make a material difference to the availability of the books.

A while ago, Amazon blocked — removed from publication — my book The Hour Before Dawn, with 'customer disappointment' given as the reason.

The Amazon publishing platform seems to be run mainly by robots; correspondence proved frustrating because we were unable to determine the basis for the customer's disappointment. At all. The only thing forthcoming, no matter how we framed the question, was redirection to a page stating in general all the possible bases for customer disappointment. 

So we were not able to get it reinstated. We did manage to circumvent the problem by re-publishing the same book with a different ISBN, even though we couldn't include its position in the series. If we'd indicated that it belonged to the Hawk & Dove series, on republication it would have come up not as Volume 5 (which it is) but as Volume 13. So a minor annoyance, but hey.

When we republished it, I put out a plea to anyone who had read it to come and review it, and several people kindly did. I didn't ask for positive reviews, nor would I ever, only for honest reviews.

The first of my Hawk & Dove books was written in 1989 and published in 1990, so it's been around a while! In the course of time it's garnered hundreds of reviews on Amazon. But it's been less than two years since I got back the rights to all my books so we could publish them ourselves under our own Humilis Hastings imprint. Series 2 was always and only under that imprint, but until a couple of years ago Lion Hudson was the most recent publisher to have all the books in Series 1.

The reason I had more than one publisher was because the life span of the series is so long. The first publisher of The Hawk & the Dove and The Wounds of God and The Long Fall was Kingsway in the UK, under their Monarch imprint, started by Tony Collins (my husband) as part of his vision for promoting Christian fiction in the UK. In the US, Crossway took those books, and they were the publishers who did the one-volume book of that trilogy, first in 2000, and then in a new edition in 2012.

But Kingsway stopped publishing books, and became only a music publishing business, so Tony moved to Angus Hudson, taking his Monarch imprint with him, and Angus Hudson merged with Lion to create Lion Hudson. During that time of transition, Crossway was the only publisher for my Hawk & Dove books.

Then, to celebrate that trilogy having been in print for 20 years continuously, I asked Crossway if they'd be interested in a 4th book in the series. They were, so I wrote The Hardest Thing to Do. At the time I was writing mainly non-fiction, but once I re-entered the world of St Alcuins, I just kept writing.

After more stories had been added — The Hardest Thing to Do, The Hour Before Dawn and Remember Me — it seemed like a good idea to seek a UK publisher again, in addition to Crossway in the US. Lion Hudson wanted to take on the whole series, so we did that. Not long afterward, Crossway closed down its fiction department, so at that point all the books were with Lion Hudson, and I wrote three more — The Breath of Peace, The Beautiful Thread and A Day and a Life — all published by Lion Hudson.

Then Lion Hudson went bust, and their publishing programme was amalgamated into SPCK, so all my books, both fiction and non-fiction, more than twenty titles, were now with SPCK.

Then we decided to have a go at establishing our own imprint on the Amazon publishing platform. Years ago, self-publishing was not very satisfactory; the actual paperbacks were not very well-made, not pleasing products, but that has all changed. Nowadays, the books themselves, as objects, are really nice, and because Amazon operates internationally it's easy to get the books to most places around the world. My sales are, for the most part in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia.

While we were waiting (it took a while) to get the rights back from SPCK, I'd added some more stories, and that's why there's a Series 2. SPCK could have refused to return the rights, and I thought it wouldn't be quite ethical to appear to be continuing a series for which they were the publisher. Hence the 2nd series, which has This Brother of Yours, Brother Cyril's Book, A Path of Serious Happiness, and will shortly also have St Luke's Little Summer. After that, there will be one more book in Series 2, which I've started but am a way off finishing.

Because of this long and winding road through different publishers over the course of 35 years, some of these books have a shedload of reviews, while the more recent ones have fewer — or even none (in terms of actual comments). So, for instance, the Lion Hudson edition of The Hawk & the Dove has 347 reviews, the 2000 Crossway edition of the trilogy has 204 reviews and their 2012 edition of the trilogy has 173 reviews.

Meanwhile, the books in Series 2, that were always published by us for Humilis Hastings, each have a healthy amount of reviews. 

But the ones that were published with Lion Hudson then republished by us have few reviews (or none) in the new imprint. For instance, where The Hardest Thing To Do has 196 reviews of the Lion Hudson edition, it has only 4 reviews for our Humilis Hastings imprint edition. And of course, some of the reviews are just stars given, rather than a comment left.

When I started writing, I made a pact with myself and with God that my job would be to write the story and just leave it there. I would never chase sales or promotion, I would do no marketing and build no platform. I believe in the power of the hidden life, and I wanted to offer my work to God rather than to a marketplace as such. So I spend very little time looking at the numbers — I've only looked these things up now for the purposes of telling you about them.

Why it matters to have Amazon reviews divides into two reasons. The first is the simple one that, as happened with The Hardest Thing to Do, there's a risk that Amazon will simply take the book out of publication if it's not protected by good reviews. So if, for example, someone's left an unhappy review because the delivery man left their order on their porch and their dog ate it, and they left that as a product review — one star and bitterly disappointed — that could get the book pulled if there are no good reviews to mitigate their misery. And while I don't want to direct my energy to blowing my own trumpet, I do want people to at least have the chance to read what I've written, because I think it will be helpful for the development of their faith.

The second reason is that comments left by reviewers help people make up their mind if they want to read that book. I always read the reviews before I buy anything on Amazon. That's what helps me decide what to purchase.

So, if you have read any of my books, and feel inclined to leave a review on any of the ones in our Humilis Hastings imprint, that will help to keep them in print and help others to decide if they'd like to read them or not. If you're not sure which ones are our edition, you can see the covers of the Humilis Hastings editions in the side-bar to the right of this post.

Waving to you from England where it has finally stopped raining!

Private and public

 During my teenage years, most girls grew their hair long, but nearly all the adult women had perms (permanent waves) and short hair. I do recall one woman in our church who had long hair swept up in a bun, and another who had what was then called an Eton Crop (a short bob), but most women, everywhere you went, had short hair in big loose curls — which went a bit flat and frizzy over time unless you carefully put it up in rollers overnight, as my mother did.

Church for us was a very social event. People were keenly aware of one another — what a person was would be noticed in every respect, their demeanour seen and assessed in detail. 

Our congregation included a woman who I'll call Margaret Reilly, a pleasant, friendly person with a round, soft face and glasses. She maintained her hairstyle very successfully in the loose curls everyone was aiming for. 

Then one Sunday morning she came to Parish Communion having had a haircut. Evidently she'd decided to try something new. The perm had gone. Now she had completely straight hair in a short bob, that definitely bucked the trend and looked startlingly severe by comparison with her usual style.

On our return home, as lunch preparation was underway, my mother said, "Do you think Margaret Reilly was doing penance for something?"

To which my father responded, "Well, it must have been something very bad."

That made us laugh. But a crucial element was that Margaret Reilly wasn't there. Yes, the joke was at her expense, but it was only within our own home, in the private conversation of our family. Neither of my parents would ever have passed comment on her appearance to other members of the church congregation, or in any other context beyond our family home. Certainly not to the woman herself. To have done any of these things would have been considered tasteless and discourteous. 

Social media has exploded these social boundaries. Because my husband is a borough councillor, I occasionally (but carefully) read the comments on posts by or about the council, and I am every time shocked and disappointed by the ignorance, negativity and sour discourtesy there blatantly — even eagerly — displayed.

A confusion seems to have arisen about what is and is not private — or public. On one occasion a few years ago on a Facebook page for a Christian writers' group, I remonstrated with someone for posting something extremely rude and churlish about a Christian leader, saying I thought it better not to express such an opinion in public. As you might imagine, I got a very rude reply, to the effect that this (context) wasn't public, it was a private group. Yes, but a private group with 5000 members. 

There's a political voice I may have mentioned before, Carl Benjamin, whose videos on YouTube I used to enjoy until I became weary of his relentless discourtesy and contempt toward women. 

Today I noticed him online posting this: 

Julie Bindel is a journalist whose work focuses on human rights abuses toward women and girls, campaigning against male violence. She has written two books on this topic. I haven't read her work but she is described online as a radical feminist. She has contributed pieces and been interviewed about the complexities arising from integrating people transitioning from male to female into shared facilities, and also about the rape gangs in English cities (I have read that she was one of the first to draw attention to these crimes).

Note Carl's comment at the top, as well as the image he is sharing.

I wondered how his followers might be responding.

Many were joking that they had taken the image to be of a man. 

Here's a sample of some of the others:

As a heterosexual white man I can safely say no loss.

Clearly been given the blank all her life, and she's now double bitter lol

On behalf of all men, everywhere 'phew'!

The " one" who after 10 beers you still say no thanks to 

Because non of them are interested in her?

Und so weite.

There were, because Carl Benjamin is an intelligent person and has some serious-minded followers, other comments not stooping to these depths, either making jokes that weren't about sex or appearances, or added something actually thoughtful:

In the last few years she seemed to have moved over to the middle ground, I was actually interested in her opinions , shock horror !! It seemed the liberal line had moved too far and she saw it.

Misandry is on trend at the moment..

Finally, proper journalism.

This article is almost 20 years old. It would be interesting to see if her perspective has changed.

But what intrigued me was this blurring of public and private. 

The original post was meant to be funny — and it was — but it was the same kind of funny as my parents' conversation about Margaret Reilly's hair; something you would say only at home. And why would you keep it private, say it only at home? Because to say such a thing publicly, encouraging ridicule, would mainly serve to put your own indiscretion and lack of refinement on display. It would reveal the deficiencies of your own upbringing; it would make your vulgarity very obvious. And it would be cruel.

Sometimes it's not the content of what you say, but the context of how and to whom you say it that makes all the difference.

English society is very, very classist. It is immediately clear to some English people what kind of upbringing and education a person has received who would put into the public sphere, for everyone to read, such implied mockery of an older woman, a dangled invitation to denigrate her as no longer sexually attractive. 

The headline itself, of course, was not a quotation. It may or may not have fairly represented Julie Bindel's views. But if she does indeed hate men, that is yet another instance of a private opinion best kept that way. I imagine it is more likely a Guardian editor's summarised impression. I do think, incidentally, that it wouldn't be hard to gather sufficient evident to write a similar column called "Carl Benjamin hates women", and mount a similarly unprepossessing photograph of him at the top. I wonder if it would garner comments of similar tone? I think maybe not.

To digress a little, I remember when it became known in a congregation I was pastoring that I would be marrying my present husband. This was just under two years after the death of my second husband. A man in the congregation asked me, "Where are you finding all these men?" It was meant as a joke, and I found it funny — but I also noticed that he evidently didn't think they were finding me. 

Now, to get back to the central point about what it is appropriate to say in public, I'm not sure that the lack of discretion (in Carl's post) is a moral issue as such. I think it may be more about manners — more an issue about being a gentleman than about being a saint, if you see what I mean.

Personally, I can well see why such a headline alongside such a photo would catch a man's eye and make him laugh. I can see why he might show it to his wife, and she would find the juxtaposition funny too.

But I think less of the man who shares it publicly, and invites all comers to laugh with him. That's not the way of an English gentleman, is it?

By contrast, this last week, I have listened at some length to Connor Tomlinson, a friend of Carl Benjamin, but one whom I have never known to denigrate women. I spent a while yesterday listening to him here, talking about the hideous phenomenon of the rape gangs disfiguring English towns and cities (that Julie Bindel has striven to bring to our attention), his fury and disgust and distress at what has been done to children and young women very apparent. That, by contrast, is a worthy use of the public space.

Knowing what to say in public and what to keep in the confines of your own trusted circle is a form of discernment that could only improve social media.

Dusty

 Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

This is the day when, if you are at the more liturgical end of expressions of Christianity, you probably go to church and the priest has some ashes made from burning the palm crosses given out on last year's Palm Sunday, and makes the mark of the cross on your brow with those ashes, with the words "dust you are, and to dust you shall return" — a reminder of our mortality.

It was thinking about those words, and about the process of returning to dust.

The other day someone was talking to me about visiting friends in the same age group as she and I are (65-80yr ish), who are both unwell — that's why she was visiting them. One has cancer and the other has an unusual form of dementia giving clarity of mind but profound physical disability. The one with cancer needed surgery, but is the sole carer for the one with dementia. So friends rallied round and provided a round-the-clock care rota for both of them, and that all went very well. But then the surgical scar gave some issues and further treatment was needed, requiring further care support. The couple decided they'd imposed too much on friends, and chose for the one with dementia to go into a care home for a few days while the one with cancer underwent the extra treatment. The care home cost £1800.00 a week (that's about $2500 US).

So the one with cancer was a day patient, not staying in the hospital, and therefore was able to visit their spouse in the care home. The one in the care home had found a rapport with two other residents of the same sex on arrival, and a request had been made for them to sit together at meals. On visiting, it turned out the request had been ignored, that for all meals our person had been sat with much older residents of the opposite sex, whose minds had gone. The meals were served not on dinner plates but tea plates — tiny portions, a fraction of what our person would normally have. In addition, our person was routinely sat in a little tub chair, slumped over for lack of support, while a suitable wing chair stood empty nearby. They were also found with their shirt buttons done up all wrong (not by them since their condition made buttons too difficult) and on once occasion wearing nothing but underpants and a sock. 

The spouse with cancer decided this was not value for money at £1800 a week, and discharged them.

Instead, a waking carer was employed for the nights, at £345 a night ($465ish US).

The first waking carer, a woman, was found fast asleep in the morning, having gathered all the sofa cushions to make herself pillows allowing her to go to sleep. Hmm.

The second waking carer was a man, who arrived on an earsplitting Harley Davidson and started by playing loud music in the living room. His first question was "Where's the sofa?" There wasn't one, because the reception room in the couple's small retirement home had been re-purposed as a bedroom since both were sick and the cancer treatment precluded them sleeping together. So the 'waking' carer was disappointed to discover he couldn't just go to sleep. As things turned out, having been booked to stay through to 9am, he left at 7am because something had cropped up for him and he needed to go home. So he just left. The spouse then discovered this carer had turned off the baby monitor allowing him to hear the person he was meant to be looking after, with the result that the person he'd been employed to care for had not been able to make themselves heard, and wet the bed (for the first time ever). 

For £345. Not good, eh?

A while ago, a friend of mine died from liver cancer. Durning her phase of terminal illness, Class A drugs (her morphine) were stolen by the daily care people she employed to feed her and give personal care, and her doctor refused to replace the drugs (leaving her with no pain relief) until a mutual friend made a huge fuss; and a fake 'nurse' called at the house and obtained the key code from a sitter covering the time between on friend on watch and the next.  

Our friend had made an agreement to go into hospice care for the last stretch, but that never happened because the hospice refused to take her until it could be said that she would die within three days. When she reached that point, the hospice refused to take her because they said she was now too ill to move.

When she eventually died and her friend called the surgery, the doctor asked her to strip our friend who'd died and video her so that the doctor could verify she was in fact dead.

All of this gives me a certain amount of concern as to how we — me and my husband — go about safely landing our own plane, as it were. I am not in favour of euthanasia (though I do understand why people opt for it) because I think our lives are in the hand of God. 

Both I and my husband are chronically ill, he from Parkinsons and me from a mystery ailment defying diagnosis that causes relentless strong pain. I think I may have oxalate poisoning, and am working from that supposition for now. 

What I notice is that it's as if there are four of us, not two. Each of us is the person we always were, with our habits of mind and personality, but each of us now has this old person to look after. He is the man he always was, but in addition he has an old man with a draggy foot to take care of. I am me, as I always was, but I also have to create strategies and diet plans for this old woman attached to me, and try and make her eat what she should and cheer her up and take her for walks, and maximise her health so she and I will be able to get it together to care for the old man that is the exterior shell sitting around my husband. At the moment he's doing very well and has a full and busy life, but I want to be the best version of myself I can be, in case my help is needed in the future.

It is extremely important that we educate ourselves and strategise intelligently, because what I have seen of the care provision available convinces me that even if we could afford £1800 a week or £345 a night, nobody in their right mind would want what that buys.

Dust you are, and to dust you shall return. Yeah, tell me about it! 

I conclude that the only realistic option is to trust steadily in God and do our best. What will be will be.

And I haven't been to the ashing service, because I don't need the reminder. We're getting dustier with very passing year!

I think of friends I've known, and family members, and people whose funerals I've taken, who lived calmly and peacefully, then with no warning died quietly in their own armchair or bed, in the course of an ordinary day; and I pray, quite often, "Father, please may I have that, too."

Early morning

 It's early in the morning and still dark.

This is just me sitting chatting with you, because I'm awake.

Furry purry Clarence was up well before first light, full of love and affection. Then for a while he sat on the windowsill, just a pointy silhouette against the moonlight and the light from the far-off streetlights, watching the garden. Then he was ready to start the day. It begins (for him) with a small plate of food on the back doorstep, the terms on which he agrees to leave the house in cold damp February. He's more willing to go out now he's confident he can call this home and he'll be allowed back in. Later on, when I make my bed and get dressed, he'll have returned to the back doorstep, to come in for a BIG plate of food then a long sleep, curled up on the chair in my bedroom.

Meanwhile, I've made a cup of tea and gone back to bed. It's half-past five, very dark outside.

Later this morning my friend Carole is coming to see me. She and I have known each other since I first moved to Hastings in my early 20s — we met through the National Childbirth Trust, back in the day when it was challenging hospital practice and revolutionising women's experience of birth and breastfeeding. We were all reading Ina May Gaskin and Michel Odent, Frederick Leboyer and Sheila Kitzinger. Ground-breaking times. I was expecting my first baby and Carole her second. Those babies are in their forties now, very capable people, friends on Facebook, holding together the connections made even before they were born.

There's something about those relationships that go back a long way. When you meet up, it's within a context of shared memory, and what you used to be when you were young is still present in the conversation; no need to mention it or reminisce, it's just there, understood. We remember.

Even thinking about it sets off memories. Going up to London on the train to hear Sheila Kitzinger speak, when our Grace was a new baby. Instead of carrying her in the sling I took her in a Moses basket, with spare nappies and wipes and muslins, so she had somewhere to lie down and sleep because it would be a whole day. I still think that was a good idea. I remember being in the hospital (for a whole month!) before our Rosie was born, where I met Nan (in the next bed). Nan had a dream one night that the obstetrician tried to burgle her house but she wouldn't let him in. When they tried to induce the birth of her baby, Nan's body absolutely refused. Nope. 

That month was a good one — we women in the ante-natal ward got on like a house on fire; the nurses used to come and tell us off for laughing, sternly reminding us we were there to rest. The woman who was there before Nan arrived was on her 17th pregnancy, desperately hoping for her first live birth. 😭 So very sad. Then there was a fragile (looking) little lass with great big eyes and dark curly hair, petite and quietly spoken. But she was fiery. Her husband came to visit her, big and brawny and tattooed. We all sat in our beds quietly and looked at him, because we'd heard she pushed him down the stairs 😲. 

At the time I was reading a book by Rudolf Steiner — his book Occult Science which sounds creepy but isn't. One of the midwives came by and saw it by my bed. "D'you think that's going to help you?" she asked, somewhat aggressively. "With what?" I said. "Well . . . childbirth," she replied. But that's not what it was about. My horizons hadn't shrunk that much!

When my baby was born, another woman who had been in the ante-natal ward got very scared, because I went off to the delivery suite and shortly after she heard someone screaming, and thought it was me and that birth must be terrible because I looked so calm when I left. It wasn't me, and I continued calm. 

That baby — Rosie — was born on a beautiful March morning, so clear and bright. An induced birth, as they mostly were in those days. My understanding was that the midwives were there to take care of the physical aspects of birth, and my job was to hold the spiritual energies, to maintain it as a sacred space, a holy event. I'm not so sure they did their part so very well — I had a midline episiotomy that extended and altered my physical structure ever since — but yes, it was holy and quiet, and Rosie looked like a little buddha when she was born, a peaceful, perfect face, soft and pink.

In the post-natal ward the obstetrician came round and said, "What did you have?" I resisted the temptation to say, "a baby," and politely said, "A girl".

"Ah!" said he. "Another one to argue and fight with the doctors." So I just said, "Yes."

I met him one more time when I was expecting Grace, my second child — Mr Alaili of "one more Caesarian and I get my Mercedes" cocktail party fame. After the first go round I resolved I'd rather have a baby in a ditch than an obstetric department; I wanted a home birth but my doctor at the time didn't do that. So I settled for what was called the GP unit — with births assisted by community midwives with family doctors as back-up. When I went for an ante-natal check-up, the obstetrician was doing his rounds. He wanted to see me. He sent the midwives out and spent several minutes lecturing me on why I should choose the obstetric unit over the GP unit. When he'd finally finished I said, "Thank you. I'll bear that in mind," and off he went in a puff of green smoke. The midwives came back into my cubicle chortling " 'I'll bear that in mind!' " They thought it was hilarious. I was quite surprised, not grasping that it was expected I should treat him like God. I suppose I might have done if he'd reminded me of God, but he didn't.

Then there was the woman — Ajax's mother, was her name Letitia? I can't remember — who painted a face on her pregnant belly. You know how the umbilicus protrudes when you're pregnant? She made that the nose and did eyes and a smiley mouth to go with it. Mr Alaili examined her with no comment at all. Jeepers.

Later, when my twins were born, I'd changed my GP to Dr Mitchell, who was happy to do a home birth; but the community midwives were worried about it. So my twins were also born in hospital, on the proviso that I would come straight home afterward, not go to the postnatal ward where they'd be put in a nursery and fed cow milk. There was an argument about that, too. Our Hebe was born with chin presenting, and came into the world very bruised, and they were born a month early. So when I said I was going home, they refused to let me get dressed, and I had to walk down our street where the ambulance dropped me off, holding my babies and still wearing a nighty. 

My midwife for that birth was the lovely Amy Noakes, such a superb midwife. It was the first time I met her. My labours would slow right down when I went into hospital, because I deeply distrusted the environment — the same happens to a goat (or any other animal I suppose) if you disturb her in labour. When I finally got my home birth on my fifth baby, it was all done and dusted in four hours. But with our twins we were up all night, doctor very weary, husband very weary, me sustained by that spiritual energy that powers through you when you give birth. And at six in the morning the shift changed and Amy Noakes walked through the door and I could tell it would all be all right. Some junior doctors wanted to come in and see twins born and she told them to clear off. She said to my doctor, "Haven't you got a morning surgery? Yes? Well, go and do it, then." And she turned and looked at me and said, "Right. Let's get these babies born." And that's what we did.

So many memories from so long ago. There's another memory, too, from that time, of a friend carrying twins at the same time as I was, but hers came too early and she lost them. So desperately sad. Very, very bravely, she came to see my twins in the first few days of their life, and looked at them, and held them, and quietly went her way.

And also a memory of my aunt (who was my godmother), married to an abusive and controlling man who kept her as a virtual prisoner. But every year he came down from Yorkshire to the south coast for a trade union conference, and she asked if she could come with him to see my babies. He allowed her just twenty minutes to come in to my home (where she'd never been ) and see them. She looked at them very carefully, and held them, and she had tears in her eyes. I didn't know at that time that she'd been pregnant but he made her have an abortion, said she'd be an unfit mother. Nobody would have made a better mother than my auntie Jessie. Lord, the world is full of sadness, isn't it?

Well, now it's an hour later. I hope your day is going well. Did it bring back your own memories, all this talk of babies being born?

Later on Carole will come by, and we'll have a cup of tea together, and we won't talk about these times that are gone, but the silken web of them is what wove and carried our friendship clear through almost fifty years.

Writing thoughts

This is — for me — the waiting time, when I've written my story and now it's gone to my editor to read through. I am very blessed that my editor is my husband too. He was my editor long before he was my husband, the best editor I've ever worked with by a country mile. He asks the right questions, and he has the unusual ability of being able to both see the bigger picture and notice detail. Most people can't do that. Either they get what you're saying and lose themselves in the story and miss repetitions and inconsistencies, or the other way round. And there are many editors who are really frustrated writers and want to wrench your text into the image of what they'd have written if they'd been you. But my husband starts out with the approach that it's not his book; he's just there to help it be the best version of itself that it could be. Which is exactly what you want, isn't it?

So he has St Luke's Little Summer to read through, and then to edit and copy-edit. 

Since I got free of traditional publishers and have been able to write more according to what's in my own head, I think my stories have got odder. They come from the realm of weird; I just feel into it, through the membrane that separates us, and find what I can and bring it back here into the normal, organise it and write it down. 

At the beginning of a story, I don't even see where it's going or what it wants to do. When I began St Luke's Little Summer, there was just an image.

So I get all the bits and arrange them on the ground and look at them and see how they fit together, and write that down. Then I go back for some more bits and look at those and piece them in until it's done.

When I read it through at the end, it's more like reading someone else's book. I was surprised and relieved, reading through St Luke's Little Summer, to come to the end and think, yes, I do believe that's worked. I think it is an actual story. Because my idea in writing isn't entertainment or prowess, it's more like ministry — I'm aiming for the transfer from my soul into your soul of a way of being, a way of looking at things, that makes life more possible and helps us chart a way through this terrifying mess we've all been born into, left here trying to do the best we can. But I know there is the invisible realm in which there is the help we need, a place of grace and wisdom very close to us; and in writing I'm trying to make little holes in the membrane that separates us, so that some of its peace and kindness can leak through like liquid gold into our wilderness here, for hope and transformation.

I think I've managed what I set out to do in my new story, but I always get a bit nervous at this stage. Generally speaking, novels are meant to have plots — with twists — and action, and some kind of shape and direction; and I can see that mine . . . er . . . don't. All they do is let you go to the place where my mind and soul live, and walk around in it for a while. 

St Luke's Little Summer is about coming home (to oneself and to one another), and about understanding how to hold a vision by strengthening practice, which is achieved through habit; and it's about how the small circles and rhythms that characterise our life are part of a larger whole. 

So just now I'm waiting to see what my editor thinks, and waiting to see what my artists come up with for the cover. A limbo time.

Ha! Done!

 Sat up late last night, started again early this morning. Finished writing my story. 

Next is to read through and make any necessary adjustments, then it goes to Tony for editing and copy-editing.

Alice and Hebe are already working on the cover art, and Tony will write the back cover copy.

Then it'll all go to Jonathan for the text and cover to be formatted — it sometimes takes a few goes to get that exactly right.

After that it'll come back to Tony and me for proof-reading.

Then Tony uploads to Amazon and it'll take them a few days to publish. 

All this can take a while.

I'm hoping we'll have it to you by the end of March.

"St Luke's Little Summer."

How to deal with dark times | Tim Keller

It's not often I'd share a whole sermon on here, but what a humdinger this video is!

Worth getting yourself a cup of coffee and settling down with your knitting to listen. Wisdom and grace. I love it.