MamAmor

Further on 'Walking Into Simplicity' in a day or two - for the moment I seem to have walked so far into it I had a bit of trouble getting back out and onto the computer!

But friends, I had to show you this!

My daughter Grace (Buzzfloyd online), mother of the Wretched Wretch, found the MamAmor dolls, and oh they are so beautiful, delightful - such a wonderful idea.   Of the ones for sale at the moment my favourite's Agnes.  Which one do you like best?

They are for exploring the experience of giving birth, breastfeeding, carrying and loving and caring for babies.  They are big enough to be used in group work - women's groups, children's groups, schools, all sorts - as well as suitable for individual children, who clearly love and relate to them amazingly (see the photos on the website).

It is just such a joy to see something so positive and life-affirming, beautifully and mindfully made.  And I love to see artefacts individually designed and made by creative people in their own homes rather than mass-produced factory products.

God bless MamAmor, may that business prosper and flourish!

Web address: www.MamAmorDolls.com

Walking into Simplicity 2

This is a picture of my father four years ago at his 80^th birthday celebration.

He was a remarkable, unusual man, very intelligent, very private and shy.  He had to be free and was incapable of confinement to others’ agendas.  He didn’t like being  interfered with in any way – had some spectacular crises of illness at various stages in his life because he couldn’t countenance the idea of submitting himself to medical investigation at an earlier stage.   He always cut his own hair, and hated going to the dentist – when one of his teeth fell out he super-glued it to its neighbour; served him well for several years.

He was the soul of kindness but very inaccessible as a person – so I had very little to do with him through my life, but felt his love and concern emanating vaguely my way as from some desert island none of us could reach.

He travelled the world through his working life (he had an extraordinary gift for languages and was fluent in several), and was rarely at home and never for very long.  When he retired and had to live permanently at home with my mother, he moved out into a cottage of his own.  They stayed married, and spoke on the phone several times a day, went on holiday together and did lots of things together – he just wanted to live by himself; and he wanted to live simply.  I felt very at home in his cottage, which was comfortable but plain and unpretentious.  The heart of his home was his little dog, whom he loved, and the birds (and inadvertently, the rats) he fed every day in the garden.

Just over a year ago he died – quickly, neatly, suddenly, without fuss and with no preceding illness, just as he would have wished.  My mother and I found him dead in his cottage the morning after his death when we called by to visit him.

To me and my sister he left his estate: his cottage in the quiet English countryside, and a modest amount of savings.  My sister loved him very much and wanted to keep the cottage that had been his home, so she threw all she had at buying out my share; and his money was divided between us.

This has been a wonderful gift, and a key element in our household’s journey into simplicity.  The money from the sale of his cottage is in the bank ready (it is the exact amount we need) to pay off our mortgage on the house as soon as we can do so without penalty this summer (to do so before would cost more than waiting).  Having mortgage-free accommodation is the crucial thing that allows us to choose our occupation.  It allows me to work as a writer, Hebe as a letter-cutter, the Badger to work as a publisher only because he loves his job not because he is shackled to it, allows Fi the freedom to explore and travel and do a myriad different jobs and keep us all afloat at home in between time, and means that Alice’s bread-and-butter job at the library while she does the things that really speak to her soul – making stained glass windows, writing, textile crafts etc – is something she could walk away from and explore new possibilities if she chose.

The money from the cottage allowed us to pay off the mortgage, and this in turn allowed us to sell the small house we owned, that Hebe, Alice and Fi lived in before we all moved in together, to Grace and Clay and the Wretched Wretch at a price affordable to them on husband’s salary only – a vitally important thing, because it allows Grace to be a stay-at-home mother, and will in turn allow her to home-school the Wretched Wretch (hooray!)

So, a bit like Jesus’s picture of the seed that falls into the ground and dies and yields a rich harvest, in his death my father passed on to us the gift of the freedom he loved – freedom not to accept the ways of the world and the agendas of mainstream society.  It was a wonderful thing he did for us.

I should say as well that the little house Grace and Clay and the Wretched Wretch now live in was bought from money my mother gave us.  She was also a stay-at-home mother, raising sheep and organic fruit and vegetables, working every hour of the day, investing every bit of money that came her way into our home, so that gradually, buying shrewdly, buying low and selling high, she acquired two or three houses.  As she downsized and sold them off, she shared the proceeds with me and my sister.  Her gifts and my father’s legacy have given us both freedom and security – they have been Christ’s Good Shepherd to us whom they loved, allowing us to go out and find pasture, to come in and find rest.

Then of course the Badger has thrown all his resources and energy into the project, adding his savings and working hard to finance a considerable mortgage in the interim.

So our journey into simplicity has long taproots – it flowers out of the lives of parents who lived simply, frugally and thriftily, and have given us the gift of the opportunity to do the same.

But there was more.  In addition to the proceeds from his cottage, my father had his nest-egg of savings.  And this has allowed us to put photo-voltaic panels and tubes that harvest the sunshine to heat our water, on our roof.  They have just been installed, and the day they were connected we switched off the gas boiler that ran the central heating and hot water.  During daylight hours we now have electricity from the sun to fuel our household needs, and enough over to export a steady supply to the national grid.  We have enough hot water for the needs of five people – washing, washing up, washing clothes – all from the sun.

I always dreamed of having access to technology, but never imagined I would be able to generate the funds to do so.

Like my father, I do not fit in well to this world and its ways. I live an odd, shy, retired life, and have never been able to find my way in to any kind of belonging.  I communicate with the world through the books and blog I write, and have found that it’s best kept that way.  So I have never been wealthy; I cannot fit in to the employment structures well enough.  The idea of having solar panels on the roof seemed like a far-off dream that only rich people could have.

All my life I have tried to teach and tell people about caring for the earth and living naturally but, though people have listened to me courteously, the only converts I’ve made have been my own children!  Now, however, I don’t need to try to persuade.  They will buy the green electricity because we are exporting it from our own roof  :0D  Result!

So that’s another step we have made in the direction of simplicity – our washing machine, our computers, our iron, our water heater – the sun runs them now!

And somehow it’s all the more wonderful that this came to us through the mindfulness of my parents’ way of living.  They knew what to do with what they had and, when they passed the baton on to us, we knew what to do with it too.

It also pleases me that instead of waiting to inherit in their turn, because we all share and live together, it is possible for the generation of grandchildren and great-grandchildren to benefit simultaneously with the parents and grandparents – for my mother who was so generous to us benefits in her turn; this morning her bedsheets have been through our washing machine and are hanging out on the washing line in our garden to dry in the sun, for though her apartment has a beautiful view over farmland and woods it has no yard of its own for a washing line, and tumble driers have never been our way.

Walking Into Simplicity - steps in the right direction towards a plain and simple life.

“I’ve got the Wretched Wretch a farm for his birthday.”
“A farm? Geez, mum!  He’s only two!  No wonder we haven’t got any money!”

So went the conversation between me and my youngest daughter, which made me laugh.

But I thought I’d tell y’all about some of the steps we have made in our journey into simplicity (‘we’ as in our household, I mean, not the royal ‘we’!)

As this has involved a number of different things, I thought I’d post about it over a few days (though I’ll be at Spring Harvest in Minehead this next week, so there’ll be a space).

First off, I want to say, this is not me bragging ‘Look at us, we’re doing it right’ holier-than-thou kind of thing.  On this quest into simplicity I find I am continually learning, going one step back for every two steps forward, and having to compromise and wait and keep trying.

For example, there’s the matter of the car.  I’d set up everything to get myself car-free, got rid of the car, resolved never to have one again – and then my 83-year-old mother moved down to Sussex.  The town we live in, and the road we live in, are not her style at all – she would be miserable here; it’s quite a rough and ready kind of place, and my mother is a more refined kind of person.  She likes beautiful and elegant places, and country villages.  So she has moved to live in the ancient town of Battle, where the centrepiece is an abbey, still in good order and now a school, built in the eleventh century by William the Conqueror on the Pope’s orders because William and his men so badly mutilated King Harold’s slain body after the battle in 1066.

The snag with country village life is the public transport is a bit sparse.  At five miles distance along fast and narrow roads in hilly Sussex, getting to Battle on foot or by bike is not going to work.  There are trains, but it means walking 20 minutes to the station, waiting up to 40 minutes for a train, then a 10 minute journey, then another 20 minute walk from the station – and no trains through the night of course.  The buses go once an hour through the peak hours of the day.  At 83, my mother needs me to be able to go, and get there quickly, if she gets into difficulties.  She also needs me for outings into the country to garden centres and all the things that make her happy – because I want her to be happy in the last years of her life.

Like a lot of modern people, my mother is used to adapting circumstances to fit the thing she would like to do, rather than fitting what she would like to do to what circumstances offer – and this is a key factor in the difference between car culture and public transport/walking culture.  Those of us who walk or bus learn to choose the best veggies our greengrocer has to offer.  Those of us with cars maybe drive out to the farmers’ market where the real best veggies can be found.

When we re-fitted our bathroom this year, I asked Joe our builder: “Just get us white tiles and a white bath and basin and toilet, Joe – something basic that doesn’t cost much, whatever you think best.”   I had no plans to go anywhere to a bathroom store.

But when my mother re-fitted the bathroom on moving into her new apartment, she wanted to go to several different industrial estates and stores to see what tiles and bathroom fittings were on offer, to compare them and make an informed choice.   She’s that kind of person, and she gets immensely frustrated and stressed and eventually miserable and defeated if she can’t put her plans into action.

Looking after the people God gave me to care for is one of the things right at the top of the list of what I was sent to earth to do.  And I find it such a wonderful, precious privilege to have in my hands the chance to make people happy.  What an amazing thing to be able to do!  To make someone happy!  I love it!  I am determined that, as far as it lies with me to do so, I want to see to it that my mother’s old age is happy.

So it became very clear to me that my dream of having a car-free life will have to be put on hold for a few years.  Once she is no longer with us, the car can go again.  Meanwhile, being a car owner (though expensive) is no hardship.  It makes many things easier, and driving along the Sussex lanes is a joy.

So that was one of the steps toward simplicity that went awry.  We have tried to preserve as much faithfulness to the simple carpenter of Nazareth in our choices as we can.  The car is small and economical and basic, with no gadgets.  It is shared between all of us here, and while the Badger is away in Oxford through the working week, it is the only car this household has.  And we try to remember not to just drive everywhere, but walk and go by train or bus as well.

We don’t live our dream all the time and often, as with the car, it’s two steps forward one step back.  But we are making slow progress.

One of our simplicity initiatives I am pleased about is the whole matter of birthday and Christmas gifts.

 

We are a big family.  Five of us live in this household, then the Badger has two adult daughters who both have men of their own.  Then there’s Rosie (my eldest daughter) and Jon just 10 minutes walk along the road, and Grace and Clay and the Wretched Wretch (my grandson) 10 minutes walk in the other direction. Then there are the Old Ones – parents-in-law from my first marriage, and my mother.  And of course my sister, and her sons and their partners . . . and our friends . . .

Christmas can turn into an awful present orgy.

We have lived a long time in an age of mass-production now, and we have also seen what problems arise when things accumulate.  No-one in our family really wants or needs any more hats, bags, scarves, earrings, perfume etc, etc.   Book and CDs are usually welcome – ah, but which ones?

We eventually realised, having pussy-footed around the subject for fear of hurting anyone’s feelings, that we were spending too much money buying things nobody needed, wanted, or knew what to do with.

I took note of Ann Voskamp’s creative solutions of celebrating Christmas without gifts (can't find the post on her blog now, but this gives a good general idea), but felt the way that was right for her family was not quite the right fit for ours.

Then we hit on a workable compromise.  Each person would receive a birthday or Christmas gift, from all of us.  The gift might be a parcel of several small things, or one big thing – my mother had a little bag of prettily wrapped items that different ones of us had chosen, each of which would have looked pitiful on its own but together made a good present; my son-in-law had a ticket to a special concert that we all chipped in the money to buy.

That way, we keep down the expenditure and stop special occasions descending into consumer-fests but without the stark austerity of no gifts at all.  And, we try to include items home-made with love – the socks our Alice knits are always received as a special treasure, and my friend Julie Faraway has just sent a wonderful collection of beautiful yarn from her daughter’s amazing yarn workshop.  So socks are in the offing!

Thus it came about that I found a toy farm and purchased it ready for the Wretched Wretch’s birthday in May, populated with a number of beautiful Schleich animals – which can be got on eBay with great economy.  He will receive it as his birthday gift from our whole household.  I hope it is special enough that it will not feel disappointing, and I hope it keeps things simple enough that he does not end up with the materialistic overwhelm associated with a glut of presents.

This is one small step we have taken towards simplicity.  As always, when I write it down it doesn’t sound like much at all, but it’s surprising how long it has taken us to journey towards it, and how much careful thought has gone towards putting it in place.

Another thought about John Wesley - this time his marriage

This may prove to be an ill-considered post, possibly too much of a rant.  But something in me really loves John Wesley, and I felt very very angry when I read this.

It seemed to me to have all the usual feminist unfair bias towards women and incapacity to perceive the plain facts of what lies before us that I have come to associate with the world of psycho-tinkering.

The writer of the article quotes a letter from Wesley to his appalling wife in which he says:
‘Know me and know yourself. Suspect me no more, asperse me no more, provoke me no more: do not any longer contend for mastery…be content to be a private insignificant person, known and loved by God and me.’

The article describes these words as hostile and scathing.
Scathing? Hostile? Is it? To go on steadily telling someone that you love them and that God loves them too, even when they have done their utmost to ruin your reputation and even behaved violently towards you?  Why?

It reads to me like a simple, humble plea.  True he speaks plain, and maybe a person would have to understand plain speech to see where he's coming from.  But what a man!  I honour him.

The article describes with sympathy Molly's cause for disgruntlement:
At first Molly accompanied him but his travel schedule (by any standard through all church history) was relentless, and she, as a newly married 40 year old woman, was clearly hoping for some normal domestic joys.


But, did she not pause to consider whom she would be marrying?  Did she not realise that Christ was his first love and deepest passion?  What did she imagine marriage to John Wesley would be like?

The writer describes the Wesleys' home life as very unhappy, saying that Molly left home on more than one occasion, and John Wesley begged her repeatedly to return - in spite of her violence towards him; the article cites a diarist of the time who entered their home to find Molly dragging John across the floor by his hair.

He did his best.  The article says that when Molly finally walked out on him, John recorded in his diary - 'wryly' the article says, I don't know why:
 ‘I did not forsake her, I did not dismiss her, I will not recall her.’

But what enveloped me in red mist was the paragraph in which the writer concludes:
He should have consulted with Charles. He should have asked for the wisdom of other leaders. He should have been prepared for marriage. He should have considered his wife’s needs more than his own.

And his wife?  Oh yes, poor lamb!  She should have had everything exactly her own way and it was all John's fault, of course!

Tchah!!!!  Spit!!!!

At the end of this piece, the writer suggests that if we, too are experiencing difficulties in our marriage we might like to apply to Holy Trinity Church Marriage Course to be further immersed in more of the same.

You can see it now, can't you... a whole classroom full of whingeing disaffected violent women whose lives are SO unfair because unlike John Wesley their husbands had the temerity to get a haircut and can't be dragged anywhere.

You know what?  I would have married him.  I would have been PROUD to be married to a man who loved the Lord as much as John Wesley did, even if he was just the tiniest bit bonkers.

Rant over.

Endeavouring to wind my bottom around the year - Thinking about John Wesley

John Wesley, who inspired, founded and led the people called Methodists, preached a very practical word and lived a very practical Gospel.  In one of his sermons he goes in detail into his own experiments in maximising the time available to him for the work of God by decreasing his allotment of sleep to the least he could bear and still function – “redeeming the time,” as he said.  John Wesley took his responsibilities as steward of life's blessing with absolute seriousness.  During one patch of his life he tried a mono-diet (I think he went for bread) to decrease the amount of time, thought and expense he spent on food.  Samuel… er… was it Johnson or Pepys… Johnson, I think – it was the one who did the dictionary, the accurist who, when his wife came in and found him doing that which he ought not with the maid and exclaimed in reproach “Sir!  I am surprised at you!” replied in the interests of clear definition: “No, madam.  I am surprised – you are astonished.”  Anyway, him – one of you will know which one I mean – must have been Samuel Johnson: he complained that John Wesley was no fun as a dinner guest because he would never stay to relax and chat – it was just eat the food, bid a courteous goodnight; then boot, saddle, to horse and away on the good works of the Lord.  He had work to do indeed.  Beau Brummel didn’t have much time for him as you can imagine (it was mutual), but historians looking back on the social impact of the preaching of John Wesley and the movement he founded are of the opinion that what he did in the power of the Gospel saved England from civil war as bloody as the revolution they lived through in France.  He showed a better way to take command of one’s own life and rise out of poverty, and God bless him for it.

John Wesley wrote pamphlets about the kingdom of God and the power of the Gospel, and these pamphlets sold very well – so well in fact that without really meaning to he accumulated quite a stash.

He preached on more than one occasion about money.  Wesley’s oft-quoted phrase, “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can,” comes from one of his sermons, and has been hi-jacked in error by more than one economically focused individual who doesn’t understand eighteen-century English.  They take it as the hallowing of the principle of hoarding, but it ain’t.  When Wesley said “save all you can”, he didn’t mean “store up as much as you can”, he meant “do without all you can”.  “Save” in this context is an injunction to restraint, frugality, thrift.  In an age when the fashion was for a man to keep his hair cropped and wear a wig, John Wesley grew his own hair and encouraged his friends to do the same.  Wigs were an extravagance he frowned upon; so were ribbons and bows and lace and abundant ruffles, and all such unseemly feminine frippery in the women of his congregation – as he let them know from the pulpit in no uncertain terms!

As a young man bounding down the stairs from his lodgings one frosty morning, Wesley encountered the chamber maid starving (as they say in Yorkshire where “starving” means not hungry but cold) and shivering in a thin cotton dress, and he urged her to add a warm coat, or at least wear a warmer dress.  Though he was himself one of a large family where they were put to it to make the money go round and his father spent some portion of his life in the debtors’ prison, Wesley was nonetheless both shocked and upset to learn that the girl was wearing the only dress she had.  Wesley’s mother, Susanna Wesley, would have seen to it that her own offspring were warmly clad, I think; this practical man came of a practical mother.  Anyway, his automatic response was to reach into his pocket to give her some money for a shawl, only to find it empty and realise with a pang of shame that he’d spent the last of what he had on books for himself, and was consequently without the means of charity for another’s need – and of this he was deeply ashamed.  And he preached about it: “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can” – earn the money, refrain from spending it, give it away – that was John Wesley.

But because he wrote these excellent pamphlets that sold so well, his critics thought they had something to fasten onto – Mr Wesley, advising frugality in others while raking in the dosh very nicely himself.  So in one of his sermons on the use of money he feels moved to give account of his own management of earnings.  This makes very interesting reading, but when I first came across it some twenty years ago I stopped at his phrase in defense of his financial habits: “I endeavour to wind my bottom round the year.”  What?

I asked here and there among clergy friends what this might mean, and nobody seemed to know.  Oddly it was my second husband Bernard – wild woodsman who hated the church but loved Jesus and His Gospel, and refused to let the Methodist clergy meet in his cottage – who solved the mystery for me one day when he was ruminating about the etymology of the words “dignity” and “gravity”.  I wish I could remember what he said now – probably something he had dug up in the writings of Patrick O’Brien or Robert Louis Stevenson or Rudyard Kipling or other well-travelled and informative mind.  But the connection suddenly clicked into place for me between gravitas, dignitas, substance and bottom.  These were all terms expressive of wealth or influence.  Actually dignitas in its Roman origins was descriptive of non-material substance: I come across it in a modern context when I hear Quakers describe a venerable and venerated member of the Society as “a seasoned and weighty Friend” – a soul of dignitas, gravitas, substance. 

So the word “bottom” implies substance – what you’ve got at the back of you, what you’ve got behind or underneath you (hence its migration to the slang usage of “what you’re sitting on”).

When Wesley said “I endeavour to wind my bottom round the year”, he meant that he did his best to eke out his financial means so that he didn’t incur any kind of debt.  It also (I think) can carry an implication of fundamental provision (hence “fundament”, like “bottom”, expressing “lowest place” then “posterior/sit-upon”) rather than abundance.  So it’s a well-chose word for a sermon on money, heard by the poor and the wealthy alike.  The wealthy man might be considered a man of considerable bottom (substance, got a lot behind him), but the poor man might be down to his bottom dollar – his having reduced to very little.  To both alike the example of “endeavouring to wind my bottom round the year” will speak: to the wealthy man it recommends prudence and thrift, to the poor man it recommends avoidance of debt where at all possible.  Wesley had a keen personal awareness of what it meant to struggle financially, and his advice is heartfelt as well as shrewd.

It's a good pointer to a sensible way of financial simplicity, because it's provident in the widest sense.  The Buddhists say all people are selfish but there are two kinds of selfishness: there are foolish selfish people who only look out for themselves and there are wise selfish people who look out for others as well - because we all belong to one another, so if the umbrella of provision shelters everyone it inevitable shelters thee too.

Wesley's way, with its huge impact on the whole of society, created a framework of stability and responsibility that served his country well in offering a good political base in a time of considerable unrest and inequality, and served his Lord well in the effective communication of an honest and practical preaching of the Gospel and the faithful example of a converted and sanctified daily life

That’s all; just happened to be thinking about it and thought thee might be interested.

Prayer for the journey

Oh living Lord Jesus

I am not doing so well on this journey.

Please may I travel with Thee instead, and go the way Thee is going?  Take me with Thee, dearest of Friends.

Where I would run on ahead, warn me of dangers and be ready to help me up – for Thee knows how I fail to see the rabbit hole, the bramble and the treacherous ice on the road.

Where I am afraid to follow Thee, talk to me gently – reason with me, explain to me, hold my hand. If necessary pick me up and carry me, only for God’s sake do not leave me or let me stray from Thee, for without Thee I have not the smallest atom of hope at all.  Without Thee I am lost and I shall never make it home.  I need Thee.  It is as simple as that.

When I am bored and discontented, be patient with me; call me beyond myself.  Point out to me the beauties of the journey, the flowers and the animals, the glories of the sky and the great trees, the wonders of the landscape.  Please may we go by the places where I can see the sparkle of light on the ocean, and the geese taking flight from the lake, and the tumble of the beck high in the lovely spring woods.  Please may we see these things together, and take delight in them as we go, Thee and I.

When we sit down to eat, oh Lord Jesus remember Thee is wiser than I am.  Teach me, open my eyes, help me to learn what will feed and strengthen my body, and even give stability and serenity to my soul.  Remind me that what we have in our lunch pack is sourced from the whole world, and help me to choose from what there is a selection that will bring blessing to its source as well as to the one who enjoys the fruit.

I would say “When I am lonely”, but I shall not be lonely with Thee.  Still, when there are pastimes and gatherings Thee and I must pass by, for they are not on our Way, remind me where we are going and who we are, so that I harbour neither blame nor regret.

When I am tired, please, please don’t go on without me.  Curl up and rest with me and wake me when it is time we were moving on.

When the Way gets too difficult, too frightening, and I cannot even see the path when Thee points it out to me, oh Lord Jesus then I beg Thee to pick me up and carry me – just do not leave me, whatever betide.

Talk to me as we go, and will Thee also sing to me?  I love the songs of heaven, and the words are harder to remember without the music.

I have asked Thee for so much, and maybe Thee has noticed I have promised Thee nothing.  Maybe Thee was hoping that I might offer something constructive in return for all Thy patient love and faithful Friendship.  I feel ashamed to say it, but there is no point.  My promises are like soap bubbles that last until they hit a thorn and then are forgotten. I’ve known two-year-olds with more resolve than I.  Even my imagination writhes and screams and runs when I think about the cross, the lions, the torture chamber; may I never have to know what I would do faced with the real thing.  No, I have nothing to offer Thee except myself, all of myself – my need of Thee, my longing for Thee, and my certain knowledge that without Thy hand holding mine I am entirely desolate.

Let me go with Thee, oh Lord Jesus, not today only but every day.  Fit Thy pace to mine except when Thee carries me.  Hush me when I prattle and when I complain.  Thee has heard me before; I think Thee knows what I mean.  Oh – and I am hoping Thee knows some good jokes, and some more stories as well as the ones I have heard.  The old ones are good too.  Tell me them again.  They sound different when I hear them in Thy voice.

When we come to the gates of Heaven, I think Thee might find they will not be straining their eyes looking out for me in great excitement.  I am no hero and no saint, and am not even the kind of sinner that people find interesting.  I am lazy and I complain a lot, and am very inclined to criticise.  And I can be cruel.  That’s not the kind of person they will be looking out for, is it? I have not been a credit to Thee, and if Thee had not come searching and found me, I should never have managed to get there by myself at all.  I am pinning my hopes on them opening the gate for Thee, and that they will let me in because I am with Thee.

I have no idea what Heaven is really like.  What people have told me sounds terrible.  I am hoping there might still be grass and trees and flowers, mountains and birds, rocks with moss on them, watermelon and mango and oranges.  And grapes.  I am hoping that I might be able to play with the animals in Heaven – not own them there, or take them about on leads, neutered and separated from their own kind and trained to obey us like they were here – just play with them.  I am hoping there will be guitars and campfires to go with all the singing.

 

But before any of that, I know there is my Judgement.  Lord Jesus, when that comes, will Thee still hold my hand?  There are things I have done in this life I cannot bear to think about, that haunt me still.  Things I am so ashamed of, even though Thee has forgiven me.  I guess there must be lots of other things too, of which I was cheerfully oblivious until we get to that Judgement Day.  Without Thee beside me, I shall not be able to bear it Lord Jesus.  I don’t care what Thee knows about me, what Thee sees that I have done, just don’t leave me is all I ask.

Anyway, we’re not there yet.  Today is just beginning.  When I woke up this morning, I found Thee here with me still.  Let’s make a start then, on this day.  If Thee’s not already wishing I’d shut up finally, there’s about a million things I want to thank Thee for . . .

Cooking dinner

Today is cold and grey.  Relentless rain.  Dismal.  Praise the Lord (that’s what we have to do, innit)!  Cold days make a person hungry, so by half an hour past noon I was feeling peckish and went down from my garret, where I was checking the proofs for The Hardest Thing To Do, to see what we had in the fridge.

Now, when I cook I don’t start with a recipe.  I start with what there is.

We had some cold cooked quinoa from yesterday.  We had some mushrooms that needed using.  We had some oil left from a pot of artichoke hearts marinaded in sunflower oil infused with garlic and thyme.  A few bits of artichoke still there.  So far so good.

We have a frying pan but I don’t cook with that because it’s Teflon coated and I like Teflon scrapings left right outside of my body.  I have a sweet little iron wok but the leftovers were too big for that.  So I took the lid from the blue enamelled cast-iron pot.  It can double as a frying pan.

 

I put in the oil with the last 3 or 4 bits of artichoke heart, and broke the mushrooms up into it – lovely big open field mushrooms, firm and hearty.  Yum.  I fried them gently in the oil for a while, then added the cold quinoa.  The mushrooms had soaked up most of the oil and weren’t giving off any liquid (that pan is very open, so the frying is drier), so I stir-fried the mixture around for a bit, but it was sticking, so I added a little water.  No more oil.  Oil and I are antagonistic companions.  A little is plenty for me – too much and I have agonising heartburn and a bilious white-coated tongue.  Noooo!

Something else was needed now to make this tasty, so I chopped a scallion in and a handful of slivers cut from a ripe red bell pepper I found in the fridge.  I mixed in some concentrated tomato paste from one of those squirty tubes like toothpaste, and to finally make it tasty enough to eat I added a few shakes of tamari.  Done.  Delicious.

As I sat down to eat it, I noticed how substantial and hearty it both looked and tasted.  The mushrooms were as beefy as meat, the colour was deep and inviting and the flavour was savoury and had a good blend.  It had the same feeling to it as eating steak pie.

I’ve met people who puzzled me by saying they disliked vegetables because veggies are so bland and watery and tasteless.  What? Tasteless?  But then I discovered that what they meant by a carrot was not the same as what I meant by a carrot.  I meant a vegetable that had grown in someone’s garden or on an organic farm.  They meant the budget range from the supermarket.  When I ate their vegetables, I could see what they meant at once.  And their mushrooms looked like cunning fake fungi made from spongy polystyrene.

Tell it not in Gath, but my grandson (the Wretched Wretch) eats mud.  As he roves around the garden at the back of his family’s little cottage, he nibbles the grass and the herbs, and the mud.  This is not because he is a mineral-deprived starving vegan.  Don’t confuse their household with ours, please!  His daddy grew up in Georgia and knows how to cook!  It has taken all the might of the Wretched Wretch’s mummy applying her English brakes to slow him down from eating not one type of meat in a casserole but two or three.  The Wretched Wretch snacks on sausages and no block of cheese is safe with his mother.  Vegan they ain’t.  But he still eats mud.

However, before puckering thy face in horror and saying “Ewww!” let me point out we all eat mud.  Mud is the tastiness in vegetables.  If we grow vegetables in sterilised compost or water with chemicals added; then, by gum, that’s what they’ll taste of.  Thee can tell this in Gath, because the Philistines need to know it: mud is what makes veggies tasty – organic mud that the worms and beetles have mixed and enriched, mud that has had plenty of well-rotted poo dug in.  The potatoes and carrots and lettuce that grow in that, loved by sunshine and blessed by rain, are firm and full of flavour, with a good dense texture.

 

Quinoa, artichokes, mushrooms, peppers, scallions – one might say those are just the middle-men.  What I ate really was rainclouds and sunbeams and a hefty spadeful of good earth.  It was delicious.

The way earth grows veggies is clever as clever;

I think I’ll stay vegan for ever and ever.

With apologies to A.A.Milne, God rest him.

.

Disturbing similarities

It would seem . . .

. . . that after adjustments and some months living with headcovering and Plainish dress, I have settled down into a way of doing it that also feels like me.

But the thing is . . .

. . . it would also seem that others 

     . . . have been there before me . . .

St Patrick's Day

I really liked this entry that Nonna Jennifer-Anne Buckley posted on her blog today.

Though this is not normally a "Let's show each other our tattoos" blog (!) I thought I'd show y'all the tatto that I have on my left arm.

This tattoo is not decoration, it's a kind of luggage label.  When I had it done, I was thinking of Paddington Bear, the small brown spectacled bear who was discovered at Paddington Station with his suitcase of marmalade sandwiches and his label put round his neck by his auntie saying "Please look after this bear".

Back at the end of the 1990s a series of terrible events was set in motion in my life.  It has taken us until this year to repair finally and completely the damage that was done in my life and the lives of my children as a result; but now God has restored the years the locust has eaten.

At one time, I guess around March 2002, I reached absolute rock bottom.  I was very suicidal, and only one thing kept me going - the sure knowledge that if I committed suicide the person who would find my body would be the daughter who lived with me - we were all scattered, because we had lost our home.  

At that time, living hand to mouth, working nights as a care assistant with a nurse who wouldn't speak to me because I was not the (young, handsome, male) staff member she had hoped to be teamed with, I descended into a sort of nightmare of exhaustion and semi-illness.  I am not able to describe the events that happened to us, because that would involve giving inappropriate information about the lives of others; but I lost our family home, my job, and my marriage.  Had my mother not given me the money to buy a tiny 2-roomed apartment and take care of our girls (still at school) while I got back on my feet, I don't know what would have become of us.  My marriage and family had been immensely precious to me, and the loss of all this dealt me such a blow that I felt I, myself, had in fact died, and all that was left was a body with a destroyed soul.

It was then that I took the name Ember.  My soul felt like a crater of ashes, everything completely gone.  'Ember' meant the hope that, as I raked through the ashes, eventually I might come across some core of life on which God's breath could blow, and something new and living could begin - which indeed proved to be the case.  Today, a bit like Job, I am married to the most wonderful man in the world, and live in a house that can accommodate all our family - two of my girls are settled in their own homes with their own good men, but if they had not been, there would be room for them here.

Anyway, during the crater-of-ashes time, a number of people asked me about my faith, marvelling that all I had been through had not shaken my faith in God.  But, why would it?  Nothing had changed as far as I knew about God - only my life circumstances had changed.  My faith was founded on Him, not on me.  

But I did have a fear that I would fail or deny him.  I loved Elie Wiesel's prayer (from The Town Beyond The Wall): "O God, be with me when I have need of you, but above all else do not leave me when I deny you."

And so I decided to attach to myself a kind of lost-luggage label - so that if I lost my reason or my faith, nonetheless, indelibly upon my body would be inscribed that I am the property of the living God.

I prayed often at that time Cecil Frances Alexander's version of the Prayer of St Patrick, that is called St Patrick's Breastplate:

I bind unto myself today
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.

I bind this day to me for ever,
by power of faith, Christ's Incarnation;
his baptism in Jordan river;
his death on cross for my salvation;
his bursting from the spicèd tomb;
his riding up the heavenly way;
his coming at the day of doom:
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
of the great love of cherubim;
the sweet "Well done" in judgment hour;
the service of the seraphim;
confessors' faith, apostles' word,
the patriarchs' prayers, the prophets' scrolls;
all good deeds done unto the Lord,
and purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
the virtues of the starlit heaven
the glorious sun's life-giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lightning free,
the whirling wind's tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth, the deep salt sea,
around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
the power of God to hold and lead,
his eye to watch, his might to stay,
his ear to hearken, to my need;
the wisdom of my God to teach,
his hand to guide, his shield to ward;
the word of God to give me speech,
his heavenly host to be my guard.


Christ be with me,
Christ within me,
Christ behind me,
Christ before me,
Christ beside me,
Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort
and restore me.
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ in quiet,
Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of
all that love me,
Christ in mouth of
friend and stranger.


I bind unto myself today
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.
Of whom all nature hath creation,
eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
praise to the Lord of my salvation,
salvation is of Christ the Lord.

And so, on St Patrick's Day 2002, I was tattooed with this sign that, whatever I think or don't think, believe or don't believe, whether I am a credit or an embarrassment to Him, under all circumstances of life and even in death, I am the property of Jesus Christ, Son of the Most High God.  And it will always be so.

A photo from across the water

So.  Peggy, who put her hand up first for the Sockwas, has sent a picture to show that they arrived safely and here they are on her feet!  Peggy likes going barefoot on the Earth, and I hope that the Sockwas will allow her to do that more comprehensively!

Thanks, Peggy  :0)