Clothing

 What determines your choice of clothing?

Tell me about it; I'm interested.

I think it's different for different people.

For me there are five determinants.

Firstly, my body is hypermobile, so I always wear soft, stretchy clothes. If I wear tailored woven garments, they are stronger than my body is. If I wear heavy clothes — like thick jumpers in cotton or wool — they are too heavy. If I wear shoes in thick leather, they hurt my ankles and give me blisters. So everything has to be soft and elastic, because that's what my body is — my skin, joints, blood vessels, muscles. I'm quite strong but very floppy; I look for the same in clothes. The fabrics have to be soft to the touch, not at all scratchy or rough. I mostly have polyester sweaters/hoodies, either knitted or fleece, and cotton t-shirts (or polo shirts) underneath.

For the same reason I always wear Birkenstock shoes, because my feet and ankles are soft and collapse-y. I buy them secondhand because Birkenstock shoes changed. They became heavier and very unyielding. My feet don't wear shoes in, it's more the other way round. So I look for the old sort on eBay. I have a small collection (three pairs) that I hope will live longer than I do.

Secondly, I like clothes that are modest, that enclose my body and make a kind of shelter to live in, and keep myself private and peaceful living inside the clothes. In consequence I tend to buy tops about 2 sizes larger than what measurements would suggest. I am not ashamed of my body but I don't want people to look at it. I don't want it to catch anyone's attention. I prefer to be a kind of ambulant mind. I always wear long sleeves and high necks, and either long trousers or long skirts.

Thirdly, there are some colours I'm always drawn to. For tops I best like mid-deep blue, or warm orangey/brick reds. I have a couple of beige or grey or black tops, but I don't like them so much. I buy my clothes second-hand on eBay, so I have to choose from what there is available once the essential criteria (soft, stretchy, modest) are satisfied, and that means sometimes having a colour I like less. Bright colours make me feel very tired; I think they must have some kind of vibration or resonance — I'm better with soft/deep colours. The photo below is one of the sorts of red I can wear, almost orange, but I prefer a brownish brick red really. It just depends what there is on eBay.

I like this colour better, but it's thick jacket not a top.

Fourthly, I don't usually wear patterned clothes: solid colours or checks. I do have one floral skirt that I made, and one floral dress. 

Fifthly, I have to consider shoes in buying the bottom half of my clothing. In the winter I wear warm socks and Birkenstock lace-up shoes, and I have massive feet —UK11, EU45 for shoes, UK10, EU44 for sandals. That limits the types of clothes I can wear, unless I want to look unbelievably weird; and I don't like drawing attention to myself.  

I like skirts, but they look dreadful with my shoes and socks, okay with sandals and bare feet in the summer. So through the winter I mostly wear the kind of trousers that are jogging bottoms or sweatpants or whatever you know them as — soft, warm, thick, stretchy, and a relaxed shape. I have several pairs of trousers. One is straight-legged, Lands End in their Serious Sweats range that I got on eBay. Really comfy. Dark blue and very faded, which I like. My other pairs of trousers are from Sainsburys (their Tu clothing), in a barrel leg style. Two black pairs I got from eBay (both being sold together), and a green pair also from eBay. But I have three pairs (one grey, two black) that I bought new because Tu clothes are almost as cheap as eBay prices. That's a lot of trousers. Three of them (black, Tu) are shorter than the others, as is often the case with barrel leg style, but I don't like them as much. I don't like having loads of clothes, so I'll probably send them to the charity shop at some point.

So, in the winter I have Birkis and warm socks, baggy sweatpants, and a long-sleeved cotton t-shirt or polo shirt (all my tops have long sleeves), then with a roll-neck sweater or hoodie on top, then a fleece gilet over that, or a fleece jacket if it's very cold. I don't have any full-length coats except a voluminous packable rain mac, which I almost never wear even if it's raining because the swishy sound gets in my ears and I hate it.

In the summer I mostly wear skirts (I make my skirts, shop ones are always too skimpy) with a polo shirt and sandals.

Standard undies are useless for me, too tight-fitting and uncomfy. Under trousers I wear Patra silk short johns (fab, I love them) and under skirts I wear cropped PJ jersey bottoms. I can't stand proper bras so I wear what are accurately described as comfort bras — stretchy pull-on things that are for modesty, not to create a body shape. I have three vests (underwear) that I occasionally wear when it's really cold, but mostly I add extra outer layers rather than extra under layers.

I wear fingerless gloves in cold weather. I have a couple of knitted hats and quite a lot of kantha cotton ones I made myself (see here and here). I like wearing hats; they kind of enclose my mind and keep it peaceful.

And yes, if you were wondering by now, I am what is known as neurodivergent (not keen on the term). My whole family is.

I always wear earrings, but rarely any other jewellery, not even a wedding ring. My hands change size from moment to moment (because of the hypermobility) so I've had rings fall off when I've been buying frozen peas — there's no point.

How about you? What are your criteria?

Shepherds

 We moved house numerous times when I was a child. My mother had a specific goal in mind. A farmer's daughter, born in 1927, raised in a Yorkshire village, she came of a family that was traditional in its thinking — shrewd, capable, intelligent, but not sophisticated. Her father was what they call a self-made man; born in poverty and determined to get out of it, which he did, with astounding success. Born poor, he died rich. The ladder he climbed was held steady by his wife, my grandmother, the daughter of educated and relatively intellectual people full of political and spiritual ideas — and equally as capable of making something out of nothing and building a life from small beginnings.

Because of the traditional thinking aspect of things, my mother — one of 3 sisters, 2 being married and one unmarried, and also with an older brother — inherited some of this wealth, but a relatively small portion, because my grandfather saw men as the protectors of women, so he left most of what he had to his son, and smaller portions to his married daughters than his unmarried daughter. I could keep you here all day on how that turned out, but maybe better not. Let us just say that the reality of people's lives does not always correspond with our imagined version.

Even so, my mother did inherit some money from her various relatives at various times. She always and only put it towards one thing — no holidays, no expensive celebrations, no treats — property investment.

In consequence, and as her adult life was synchronous with the property boom, she moved our family up the property ladder until we lived in a 13th century cottage with five acres, including a river running through the garden and a protective slope of woodland encircling it. And there, as well as hens, we kept sheep.

My mother had a byre constructed in the field below the wood and across the river, so her sheep would have somewhere to shelter at night and in bad weather. Every night as dusk fell, she would go out after she'd watered the flowers and the vegetables and the greenhouse, across the bridge that we'd built over the river (just a plank when we arrived!) and call to her sheep, "Are you all right, boys?" (They weren't all male, but never mind that). And the sheep would all call back to her.

In the morning, as soon as she was up and dressed, she'd go out to check on the sheep. In the summer, especially when they were in the orchard — because you have to move them from place to place and let the ground rest, so they don't get worms and the grass replenishes — she looked them over carefully for blow-fly, checked how they were walking to make sure none of them had foot-rot. She raised them as orphan lambs under an infra-red lamp in our barn, and if any were especially frail she bedded them down in the kitchen beside the Rayburn stove to keep warm.

They knew her voice, and they followed her when she called them (rattling a bucket of sheep nuts helped as well). She'd bottle-fed them from babyhood, and they trusted her. She was their shepherd.

I am thinking back to those times, because there has never been a time in my life when I wanted a pastor more. Present-day clergy do not know how to pastor the flock. 

When I was a girl growing up, the rector would come once a year to our home for a pastoral visit. But every day he was at the church to say Matins and Evensong, so I could go and join in, just be there alongside, become a friend. It was how he made himself pastorally available.

In the days when I was a church pastor — a Methodist minister — I followed what all my colleagues and predecessors did: the morning for desk work (sermons, correspondence, preparation for meetings etc), the afternoons for visiting, and the evenings for meetings.

I expected to visit everyone in my congregation routinely at least twice a year. Then, if they were sick or in trouble or in hospital, I always went to see them. If they were dying, I was there with them (unless it was sudden and unexpected). I listened to them, knew them, knew their homes and heard their stories. I went to their home groups on a regular basis. And when I preached in church it was as a pastor — understanding that sheep are gathered by the voice of a shepherd they know trust. You cannot build trust without spending time with people, walking alongside them not only as a crowd but as individuals.

This was the norm: not all the ministers did that, but many did; and if you were in trouble they would help you. But it seems to have faded out and disappeared. By about twenty years ago, it had gone. I saw the last remnants of it when my husband Bernard was dying, and there were still true shepherds among the clergy who cared for us and came to find us, and prayed with us.

In my present marriage, my husband has been very ill more than once. Each time, no one came. I was emailed by our then pastor who said he hoped Tony would soon be better. Yes, he had pneumonia too badly for it to be safe to admit him to hospital; I hoped so too! And Tony wasn't an occasional attender, he was a church warden.

In the churches I've tried recently, there was one pastor who actually drove me out, and a couple who did me the courtesy of letting me exist, it being of no concern to them if I was in their church or not. And you know what? It's of no concern to me, either. 

When I was a student at York university in the 1970s, Father Fabian Cowper, an Ampleforth monk, was the Catholic chaplain. Fabian lived in the Catholic chaplaincy alongside a motley crew of Catholic students, and we loved him. He was there. You could talk to him. He was quiet and unobtrusive, but so full of loving-kindness. He took for his study the cupboard under the stairs on the middle floor of the house, so everyone who came and went inevitably passed him as he sat there working at his desk in that little cubbyhole. So it was easy to just pause and say hi. This was how he kept an eye on everyone. He didn't interfere, but he made himself accessible. The theology group he ran at More House (the chaplaincy) was one of the most inspiring and formative things I've ever known. Fabian was a shepherd. He knew how to care for the flock.

It wasn't just Fabian, either. David Watson was the incumbent at St Michael-le-Belfrey in York when we lived there. I never met him, but my (first) husband did. He had some questions he wanted to ask him about the faith, so David invited him round to talk it through. You ever met a present-day clergyman who does that?

Most of my life has been spent solving problems and making the money stretch and looking after people and creating opportunities for people to explore and discover the Gospel.

I have reached a place where I am tired and discouraged and lonely, and most of my human contact is online. I am conserving and watering and feeding the little plant of hope in my soul, but it's looking very sickly. I never needed a pastor more than I do now. But I think they are extinct. All we have now is clergymen. There's a difference.

Amazon thoughts, and book reviews

 Thank you so much to friends who have found their way to my new book St Luke's Little Summer. 

I hope you're enjoying the story. I don't write them like the advice I've occasionally come across from professional writers — about creation of characters and building a narrative and developing a plot and adding a plot twist and all that sort of thing. It's more like what C.S.Lewis talked about, going through the wardrobe into Narnia; finding my inside world and spending time there, and then writing it down. So when I finish a book, I usually can't remember what I've written and I don't know if it's any good. But I just put it where people can find it if they want to, mainly because it's the only thing I have, and all of us are supposed to offer something, aren't we?

So Amazon reviews are helpful to me because it gives me a sense of what people have found/seen in what I have written. It helps me know if the story landed, and where and how.

The other reason Amazon reviews are important is that Amazon... well, it's a good name for it really. The Amazons were pugilistic, strong, muscular, strategic, almost invincible, and not very interested in personal relationship. Not much room for nuance.

My experience has been that Amazon (like traditional publishers) sees a book as product; I would say, not even as a product, just product — grist to a heartless mill. It is — again, like traditional publishers — Mammonesque. The last traditional publisher I worked with developed an approach where the criteria for taking on a book was that it would make £27,000, and they meant quickly not slowly, and that was several years ago (prices have risen; I expect you've noticed). Any lower sales predictions and they weren't interested, no matter what the book said, not even if it was beautiful and wise and opened the imagination to hope. Not that, just the £27k. I concluded their path and mine had diverged, picked up my work and went my own way.

But there has to be a means to make a story available to be read, a mechanism, and of course mechanisms don't have hearts as such. Amazon is good for people like me, because it offers the possibility of people anywhere being able to have the thing you're offering. For instance, every now and then a home-ed program in Colorado asks me to send them 160 books. I'm just a person in England living in a house that looks a lot like like this —

🏠

— and doesn't even have a garage. How the heck would I generate 160 books and send them to Colorado? But Amazon can do this with no trouble at all. And it means that 80 new families (because they ask for 80 copies of the first two titles in the series) get to read about Father Peregrine, and how brave he was and full of faith and willing to do his best because he belonged to Jesus. So the deal is that I have the heart and they have the mechanism. 

Now, you cannot serve God and Mammon, you have to choose. We know this because Jesus said it. So right at the beginning when I started writing stories for publication, I had to give that some thought. What I decided was that I wouldn't do marketing as such. I wouldn't ever try to promote myself. I would only ever just be a person who goes through the wardrobe into Narnia and comes out with the story of whatever was there. So I put into my stories my best hope and what I believe and how I think it all works and what feels like it might help with whatever's happening in the world, and then I just make it available.

Something I like a lot about Amazon is that their publishing program is just a mechanism. I can put what I like through it. That means I can choose the covers. Our book covers are created by Jonathan, who was the covers man for Lion Hudson, he's really good. But the art for the covers is by my daughters Hebe and Alice. Here they are working on another project for a church.

When I worked with a traditional publisher, the covers were considered a marketing exercise, and I had no say in them. They often used stock images or were created by some kind of electronic method.

My covers for the Hawk & the Dove books are hand-drawn by Alice and Hebe to convey what I tell them is at the heart of the book. And the lettering on the front is also hand-drawn by them, because they are calligraphers as well. If you look at the lettering on the front of St Luke's Little Summer you can see that one m is not exactly identical to another m — or one t has a longer tail to the crosspiece than in the adjacent t. That's because they are individually drawn.

Alice and Hebe love the living earth and they love God. Alice is one of few people I know who has seen an angel. They have a cat who is dearly loved and whose wellbeing they set above their own. They have grown and they tend the most beautiful garden, seeking out native plants from organic sources. 

That's why the sketchy flowers on the cover of St Luke's Little Summer look believable, and the cat looks like a real cat.

I couldn't have had that with a traditional publisher. 

So Amazon offers a wonderful mechanism for making true work of the soul available to people. And they let us set the price to make it affordable, and we put the stories onto Kindle Unlimited which works out cheapest of all for people.

Not only that, but with a traditional publisher it goes like this. All their staff have to pay their mortgages and buy their groceries and raise their families and run their cars out of the money the books make. So they give the person who wrote the book a royalty of about 10% from each book sold. And they give massive discounts (typically 60%) to bookshops. So if you buy a book in a bookshop you can estimate the author will have earned 10% of 40% of the cover price — which will be as high as they think you will pay. 

If you buy a book of mine on Amazon, you can know this — the cover artists were only paid anything because I insist; Jonathan works on each book for hours for remuneration that would hardly feed a mouse let alone a whole publishing department; my editor is the man I married after working with him as my publisher for twenty years and he never charges me anything at all; we keep the prices as low as we can; Amazon does take a cut but I earn loads more from each book than with a traditional publisher; half of the profits from my stories in our Humilis Hastings imprint go to the Carthusian brothers in West Sussex (here).

But (there's always a 'but', isn't there) because Amazon is essentially heartless and sees everything sold through it merely as product, their main driver is customer satisfaction.

One of the Hawk & Dove books had lots of reviews in the original edition with the traditional publisher, but when we got the rights back, and republished it under our own Humilis Hastings imprint, it didn't have any new readers for a while, and therefore no reviews to the new edition. Then someone left a one-star review, but with no comment so we didn't know why — didn't they like the story, or did the postie lose the parcel, or what? Amazon pulled the book; took it out of publication. No amount of correspondence with their robots could let us get to the bottom of what the problem was: all we could access was redirection to a page with every possible customer satisfaction problem a book might have. So we just changed the ISBN and republished it, this time sending out a plea to any friends who'd read it to come along and leave a review. And their reviews have kept it safe so it's still available to this day (that was The Hour Before Dawn).

I'm telling you all this so that you know how very important your reviews are on Amazon. If, when you read St Luke's Little Summer, you have anything you'd like to say about it at all, I'll be most thankful if you go and leave an Amazon review. To have a mix of paperback reviews and ebook reviews would be the best of all. 

And be honest in what you say, because honesty is a beautiful thing and because the Lord sees.

Four accessibilities

 At an earlier point in my life I was a Methodist minister.

My first pastorate was a kind of hit-the-ground-running situation while I was still training. At that time I was the free-church chaplain for our hospice, and involved in a prison chaplaincy run by another Methodist minister in our Circuit, and I was a Local Preacher (a prerequisite for training for presbyteral ministry in the Methodist Church). I had a particular interest in inclusive church, and what that might mean. At that time I was also writing books and raising a family — my five children were aged between five and twelve.

During this time, the Methodist Church had a motion brought to Conference (its national governing body) that all people who were 'actively' homosexual, and all people who spoke up for them, should be debarred from lay or ordained office and church membership. Looking back, I think it was good that happened, because it was such an extreme position that it acted as the catalyst for change in the Methodist Church. The President of Conference that year (Revd Brian Beck) prevented antagonism escalating into schism by adroitly channelling it into being a pastoral issue (rather than a matter of governance) and so set the frame for slow and consultative exploration of that whole area of morality and social structure. 

But it didn't look like a good thing at the time. I panicked because. if it had gone through, I — an ordinand and Local Preacher — would have found myself no longer even a church member. I am personally heterosexual, but I certainly wanted to speak up for homosexual brothers and sisters.

I should make clear that I am dismayed by what that area of inclusion has now morphed into — trans life experience morphing into first a tribal identity and then an agenda and then an ideology with downward seepage into the lives of young children, both in terms of conceptual influence and on to puberty blockers and then surgery. It starts even with pre-schoolers and I am not comfortable with any of that. But back in the timeframe I'm talking about, what I wanted to support (still do) was full inclusion on the same basis as heterosexual Christians for homosexuals who were happy to make the same commitment to permanent, stable, faithful, sacramental partnerships. 

So battle royal broke out in our church — it was on the Evangelical end of the spectrum, and the inclusion of homosexual members was unthinkable to many of our people. About a third of the membership left, and the minister found it all too much and moved on, leaving a church membership torn apart and now with no leader. So the Methodist Church let me add being its minister to my list of things to do.

Into the painful gap left by the very able departing members — nearly all our musicians, and several had been church leaders of one kind or another — stepped a posse of profoundly disabled people who attended that church. As I was given the leadership, I was free to preach and teach and promote an emphasis on inclusive church. We looked at ways to make our church family-friendly and disability-friendly, with ramps and a disabled toilet and a hearing loop, and armchairs for those who couldn't sit on a regular pew, and a big area with toys and books and beanbags for kiddies.

The church grew, in a variety of ways I won't go into or it would make this post go on for ever, along the lines of a set of principles I had in mind, that I thought of as the four accessibilities:

• Accessibility of the building
• Accessibility of the worship
• Financial accessibility
• Social accessibility

What that meant was as follows:

Accessibility of the building is familiar to us now (not so much then). We looked at what we could do to make it a welcoming space for people with various disabilities (eg wheelchair-dependent, or hearing impaired), and for children, and people with cognitive disorders (some of our people could only crawl and couldn't sit up straight) — we did what we could to make it a place that felt welcoming and friendly to everyone. Bottom line: people won't come if they can't get in.

Accessibility of the worship meant presenting high-quality theology in a form that all ages and abilities could relate to. Many of our members with disabilities were brought to church by care home staff, who brought sweets to eat and magazines to read, to keep themselves occupied while the church service went on. My goal as preacher Sunday by Sunday was to get to the place where the care workers forgot to not listen, and put down their magazines and stopped eating. We also involved a whole raft of theatre people and musicians from our town who had no church affiliation. They came to help out with the music; they stayed because they felt at home.  We placed a strong emphasis on the music ministry, because in the stories of the Old Testament, at important times like parting the Red Sea or going into battle, the band always went in first. And we placed a strong emphasis on repetition; we stuck to a relatively small repertoire of songs, we would take our time (weeks or months) over developing a spiritual teaching, and we always had a sung form of the Lords Prayer (tradition words not the new form) to embed it by familiarity. We did other things too, like a strong emphasis on story. And I had a belief that if people don't enjoy it they won't come back; so we had a good time.

Financial accessibility meant that both rich and poor could come to church on an equal basis. There were no fundraisers to catch you out or embarrass you. Whoever you were, you could just come. Twice a year we put on a community project of some kind — a pantomime or a  tea dance with strawberries-and-cream teas or the performance (all hands on deck) of a kind of oratorio type thing, with dance as well as songs and readings etc, which I and my children's father had written. We had faith teas (potluck suppers). Everything was free. I believe in the grace/gift economy. We were able to pay our bills. The membership grew. No one was ashamed or embarrassed or left out because they couldn't afford to join in.

Social accessibility meant that we kept everything simple so no one felt left out. Nothing was fancy or pretentious. We had all sorts in that church, from intellectuals and professional people right down to street drinkers still clutching their cans of beer (removed at the door on the way in). In those days I always used to preach in bare feet, and that, too, meant what we did wasn't elegant and out of reach.

It was an exciting and joyous stretch of ministry. I have happy memories of it. We had a wide spectrum of music — everything from Parry's I was glad to old choruses from Youth Praise. I specially remember the Sunday we sang the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah. Our choir was a motley bunch of old ladies, not very good, but we were augmented by a crowd of music theatre performers who had sort of made it their church. It was splendid. It was glorious. And as the last Hallelujah rang out, I caught the eye of one of the old ladies in the choir, just bowled over by being part of something so triumphant and magnificent. And then in the silence at the end of it, one of our learning disabled men said loudly, "Well, ain't that nice!" It certainly  was.

All so long ago now, but I will never forget it, and I still believe in those four accessibilities.

Personal resources in financially challenging times

 Because of how things are rolling at the moment — political ideologies, geo-political tensions, etc — there is a constant undercurrent of uncertainty about food security, energy security and supplies.

When government wants to alter our way of living, the first method is usually to apply financial pressure, mixed in with information pointing us in a particular direction. So I assume we can expect that the cost of living will further increase with a particular squeeze on the more nutritious foods.

This in turn means that we have to adjust downwards to stay solvent.

Since the whole of my life from childhood to the present day has been characterised by having a small disposable income, I thought it might help to share some of the approach I've found useful.

The first thing is to stay out of, or get free of, debt. This is an often overlooked New Testament principle, arising from the teaching of Jesus and of St Paul. The New Testament recognises that freedom is essential in determining, and putting into action, life choices, and recommends believers to protect that freedom by staying free of debt and being cautious about commitments and entanglements. 

After that, the next step is to evaluate one's resources. These broadly fall into three categories — time, energy and money. Most people are not rich in all three, but recognising that they are equally valuable helps in forming a strategy. If an example helps, think of my mother. She chose to be a stay-at-home mother, and my father's income was low. So we were not money-rich. But she had plenty of energy, and because she stayed home to raise her family, she had not sold her time, she still had it. She used her time and energy to grow our food — vegetables, fruit, hens for eggs, and later sheep as well (obtained cheaply by taking on orphaned lambs and growing them on). This may not apply to you in an urban setting, it's just an instance of identifying which of the 3 resources you have, and putting them to good use.

You may not have a garden as we did in my childhood, but if you have time and energy you can learn about wild food and forage it. In the town where I live, there is enough wild fruit (blackberries, and self-seeded apples or unwanted pears/apples dropped on the ground from people who have trees), and greens (dandelions, nettles, ramsens and tri-cornered leek or whitebells), and mushrooms, that if I had the time and the energy I could cover my fruit/veg requirements without money. Plus in the summer people put out on their garden walls unwanted produce from their gardens (zucchini/courgettes especially).

People have started fly-tipping a lot, for reasons I won't go into here, but it's allowed me to scavenge a fair few non-food items like furniture and household items. 

So the triad of time, money and energy is important to consider and evaluate how it applies to you.

The next thing is to recognise that relying on capital is dangerous, in that it creates a false sense of security. It goes faster than you think, and then what? So it's important to place an emphasis on income rather than capital — and reduced expenditure is in a sense a form of income.

A good use of capital at the present time (in my opinion) is to create a bulwark — so, to clear debts, and then to create some prepper resources like solar panels or a power station (eg a Bluetti or Jackery, like people who live in RVs have) or plant a garden, or get in a sensible (not massive, don't go mad) stock of supplements/meds, toiletries, tinned foods etc, so you are covered for power outages and supply disruptions. 

Then there's another important thing — adjustment of expectations.

We have adjusted up to a very consumerist society, where leisure and making a purchase are almost inextricably linked. Gone are the days when all hospitality required was a pack of cards and the makings of a cup of tea, or a piano in the living room. Going for a walk together is not most people's idea of a jaunt.

As the cost of living rises, it's helpful to adjust down our expectations rather than increasing our debts. This adjustment isn't quick to do, because habits are so ingrained we don't notice we have them. The objective is to ensure that income covers outgoings and leaves something over to set aside for inevitable unforeseen costs.

Our decisions (life choices) develop our habits, and our habits develop our expectations, and our expectations drive our costs.

So to adjust down for reduced circumstances, it's imperative to begin noticing our habits (carefully track and review expenditure), and then interrupt this cycle. 

Here are some of my life choices:

YES to 

• certain supplements for protecting and repairing my health
• high quality food
• food sourced from British farms, bought directly as much as possible to protect national food security from our short-sighted government
• church collection, Christmas and birthday gifts for my children and grandchildren, support for my Carthusian friends

NO to

• holidays
• meals out
• subscriptions — gym, journals, online Substack etc

SOMETIMES (monthly financial limit) to

• 2nd-hand clothes from eBay
• books
• a coffee in town
• ticket to a concert where family members are performing

I track all expenditure and we save monthly amounts to cover annual or occasional costs like car servicing, boiler servicing, house insurance, automobile recovery, window-cleaner, etc. I have two separate ledgers, one for my personal expenditure and one for household expenditure. We (me and my husband) put a monthly amount into a household account to cover all outgoings and generate a modest surplus to cover occasional unbudgeted bills as they come up.

So the life choices are made on the basis of how much money is available, on the Mr Micawber principle (see footnote below).

From our life choices our habits develop, so the life choice is our point of intervention/alteration/adjustment. It's normal and human to need some fun, something to cheer us up, something to look forward to.

As consumerism (a life choice) has gradually increased (and become a habit), many of us have developed the expectation/assumption that 'fun' equals 'a purchase'. But it need not. The task is to redefine 'fun'. 

So, if 'fun' means going out somewhere, that can be a walk in the woods or by the sea, or a coffee with a neighbour, or a game of cards or watching a movie on the TV together — rather than a takeaway meal or a cinema trip or a visit to the garden centre (with associated purchases) or a stately home (with entrance fee).

At first, this is hard (and lonely, while others are still taking the money route). The expectations we have developed from our habits mean we reflexively turn to occupations with associated costs. By not joining in with a family meal out this last week, not buying anyone Easter eggs or cards, not going to the garden centre for some plants for the garden, and not renewing my choir membership, I think I have saved at least £150. And that's just one week.

Those were not easy choices and involved some heart-searching and conversation. But it is by making such choices that new habits are formed and affordable expectations developed, keeping one financially safe as costs of living rise.

The choices I made instead, were to visit with different family members with whom I chatted and watched a movie on telly, to just make Easter about going to church not buying chocolate, to get new plants by taking cuttings from friends' established plants, and to sing hymns by myself at home (singing with family round the piano would be even better, and I request that sometimes but they do have busy lives).

There comes a point where a collapsing economy takes us past what our personal strategies can cover. Even so, if we are used to adjusting down, making choices that develop new habits that shape different expectations, then we will have laid down a track to follow in even the toughest times.

I hope all that may be food for thought, and I'd be most interested to read anyone's related observations in the comments. 

________________________________________________________

FOOTNOTE

The Mr. Micawber principle, from Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, defines financial success as spending slightly less than one's income, and misery as spending slightly more. It highlights that living within your means leads to happiness, while debt leads to misery. The principle emphasises that small financial actions have significant consequences over time. 

Core Components of the Micawber Principle: 

• The Formula: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six [19s 6d], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds and six [20s 6d], result misery".
• Significance: It is considered a foundational principle of personal finance, focusing on discipline and managing the gap between income and expenses.
• Source: Named after Wilkins Micawber, a character known for extreme optimism, who often says "something will turn up". 

Key Takeaways: 

• Discipline: The principle warns that if you continually spend more than you earn, you will face financial ruin.
• Proactive Management: It suggests that financial success is built on small, consistent, and positive financial choices.

 

Ben & Rose

 Am I late to the party? Does everyone else already know this darling couple from Lancaster County, Ben and Rose? They are entrancing. The evident love between them, and the honesty and simplicity of how they are — oh, I just love them!

I find them absolutely arresting. Wanting to pursue their music and (I suppose) their online presence, they have come out of the Old Order Amish context where they grew up, but their demeanour and relationship shows me something I have never seen — masculinity and femininity not acculturated to our normal Western culture in which the women are like Barbie and the men are like Shrek. There is a strength and confidence in that young woman, and a gentleness and shyness in her man, that give me hope for humanity

 

  

❤️ 😊

Harmony

 The father of my children was (is) a musician. He is particularly gifted at helping groups of people to sing together — whether that be a class of school children or a choir of mixed ability. 

He's also a superb accompanist and worship leader. He understands the rôle of music in building an integral structure, everyone taking their part to allow it all to work together as a united whole.

Singing in harmony acts like a parable or icon of the common life. You know that psalm (Ps 133 RSV) —

Behold, how good and pleasant it is
    when brothers dwell in unity!

It is like the precious oil upon the head,
    running down upon the beard,
upon the beard of Aaron,
    running down on the collar of his robes!

It is like the dew of Hermon,
    which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
    life for evermore.

And my children's father, before the days when the UK National Curriculum outlawed him from doing it, used to prioritise class singing when he taught is school, because he said it not only taught them music, it also taught them how to be an effective group of people.

In the same way, the skill of a worship accompanist is different from the skill of a concert performer. The accompanist is there to uplift and promote and facilitate the others, the ones who are not him/her. The performer is there to draw attention, to take centre stage.

In music for worship, sung in harmony, the art is to sing loud enough that the person next to you can hear you, and quiet enough that you can hear them. And that is also the art of life — to play your part but also to enable others and allow them to shine.

Very few churches have congregations who sing in harmony, which is a matter of sadness for me, because polyphonic music has a marvellous integrated structure, it's very powerful.

Here's a good example of a hymn sounding as it should, strengthened by its balancing harmonies.

And here's the father of my children singing in harmony with friends at York, fifty years ago. He has the bass line.

St Luke's Little Summer

 St Luke's Little Summer, the next story in the Hawk & the Dove series, is ready for you to read now.

This is the fourth volume in The Hawk & the Dove Series 2, and follows on from A Path of Serious Happiness.

You can find it on Amazon in both Kindle e-book and paperback —

Here on US Amazon (e-book here)

Here on Amazon UK (e-book here)

The paperback's not up on Amazon Australia yet, but it should go through very shortly. The e-book's here on Amazon Australia, and the paperback should come up for you when they've got it through.

If any of the links don't work for you, you'll find it if you go to your region's Amazon and search the store for "St Luke's Little Summer Penelope Wilcock".

— Thank you, thank you, to friends who have already come along and bought a copy. ❤️ Makes me happy. Makes it worthwhile. We keep the prices low because everyone's struggling in these difficult days. This book and the one I'm finishing writing now are written into the particular troubles of our times. They speak to the attitudes that I think will get us through. My life is so small and insignificant, writing these stories is the only gift I have to bring. I love it that you are reading them. 

Come back and let us know how you get on with this new story. 😃

 A hymn of joy because I'm happy.

I'm just now working on the final Hawk & Dove book, so that should be ready by the summer, and will be called The Light of One Lamp.

Blessed feast, friends. Christ is risen.

 Alleluia! Christ is risen!

 

Low in the grave He lay

Jesus my Saviour!

Waiting the coming day

Jesus my Lord!

Refrain:

Up from the grave He arose

With a mighty triumph o'er His foes

He arose a Victor from the dark domain

And He lives forever with His saints to reign

He arose! (He arose)

He arose! (He arose)

Hallelujah! Christ arose!

Vainly they watch His bed

Jesus, my Saviour!

Vainly they seal the dead

Jesus my Lord!

Up from the grave He arose…

 

Death cannot keep his prey

Jesus, my Saviour!

He tore the bars away

Jesus my Lord!

Up from the grave He arose…

Would you be free from the burden of sin?

There's power in the blood, power in the blood.

Would you o'er evil a victory win?

There's wonderful power in the blood.

Refrain:

There is power, power, wonder-working power

in the blood of the Lamb;

there is power, power, wonder-working power

in the precious blood of the Lamb.

Would you be free from your passion and pride?

There's power in the blood, power in the blood.

Come for a cleansing to Calvary's tide.

There's wonderful power in the blood. 

There is power, power, wonder-working power…

Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow?

There's power in the blood, power in the blood.

Sin-stains are lost in its life-giving flow;

there's wonderful power in the blood. 

There is power, power, wonder-working power…

Would you do service for Jesus your King?

There's power in the blood, power in the blood.

Would you live daily His praises to sing?

There's wonderful power in the blood.  

There is power, power, wonder-working power…