Making connections

I love the connection the internet has brought me, but inevitably it leaves me feeling brow-beaten at times.

My friends are a very moral, ideology-driven bunch – that’s why I love them – and many of the sites and groups I have ferreted out are dedicated to living simply and responsibly, following a humble path of faith and kindness. This is all fab and beautiful.

Sometimes, though, I do feel a bit backs-to-the-wall.

There have been some wars and earthquakes. A hyper-passionate blogger has been to visit women and kids fleeing in terror from ISIS in Iraq. Some personal friends have been in trouble. All these situations can do with financial help. I don’t do much, but I believe if we all chip in our little bit we can make a difference, so I do what I can.

Meanwhile at home, the media tell me food prices have dropped. Say again? Whose?

Then, my frugal, simple-living, ecologically responsible gang of good friends often post about living on little money (or none!) and buying nothing new. Clothes from Goodwill, food from dumpsters, books from the library.

And my various connections also get in touch asking me to sponsor their walks for charity, or give what I can for the trees, for the badgers, for the persecuted, for the food banks, for clean water in Africa, for individuals to keep the home they may be losing or to adopt a child in dire need or to feed homeless people.

I love the love.

BUT (isn’t there always . . .)

I feel moved to say a word about closing the loop.

Some of the lovely people I’ve met online make modest dresses for a living – beautifully. They work from home, caring for their families, promoting ethical lifestyle. No sweatshop, happy working conditions, the freedom to care for their own children but earn a living at the same time. Likewise, some make headcoverings – for those who wear such for religious reasons or because they are graceful, and for those left bald by chemotherapy.  The women who make these dresses and headcoverings are loving, responsible types – the sort who will give sacrificially of their income to rescue and support others.

Sooooo . . . if I buy nothing new, what about their business? How will they feed their families? What will happen to their charitable giving? Uh-oh.

And then, here am I writing books and my husband working as hard and fast as he can every single day to get Christian books into the world. The publishing firm he works for does a grand job, but publishers work with narrow margins – er . . . I mean, financially. We put our money to helping along a number of individuals who struggle, among them a family in Africa. My husband supported Claudine in Africa through school, then through university, and now he helps support her new-born son. She called her son after my husband, with her husband’s blessing. Without the money my husband sent, you see, she – like her classmates – would have had to supplement her income by prostitution to get through college.

If we buy nothing new, if when we want to read a book we get it from the library – just the one copy, that one reader after another can pass around, what do you think will happen? Where will the new books come from, that the library gets in? What writer or publisher will stay in business selling a copy per library? What will happen to Claudine and her new-born son if we sell no books?

It’s not realistic to buy nothing new, live as cheaply as you can, and at the same time hope that the people whose goods you didn’t buy will go on giving to support your good cause. Can’t be done.

As Jesus so succinctly put it, ‘The poor, you will always have with you.’ Quite so. For one reason and another, I know rather a lot of poor people. I don’t know if they are unusual in this (I suspect not), but though I don’t always agree with their personal choices, I notice that every single one of them always does her or his best, gives life all they’ve got, tries their darnedest to survive and keep paying the bills. I am always glad to help those friends out when I can, and I regard their strategies of frugality as inspiring and heroic.

But, if you are one of those who can and does earn a good income, if you have enough for those you love and a bit left over, then I beg you, for God’s sake, don’t just keep it in the bank, don’t just give it to charity, and don’t stop buying new. Please don’t dam the river we all depend on; keep it flowing.

If you don’t approve of cutting down trees to make paper books, buy e-books. If you don’t approve of growing cotton, buy up-cycled clothing. If you don’t approve of commodities, buy the services of someone to clean your house or work in your yard. But buy something, if and when you can. There will always be more dignity, and more people helped, by trade than by aid.

Ascensiontide

It’s Ascensiontide. Some of you will already know that, to others it may come as a complete surprise.

In July I will have a new book out that tracks the round of the church year, as well as exploring other themes of life and faith.

It’s in the format of scenarios involving Sid and Rosie, a couple in late middle age – their conversations and life together.

I thought you might enjoy to read the chapter for Ascensiontide (Chapter 18), seeing as that’s where we are right now. It has a reading part, then a questions to play with part, then a prayer.

18 – Living the Ascension

“The Ascension – ” Sid swirls his wine thoughtfully in his glass, gazing moodily into its dark ruby depths – “Jeepers! I mean, what are we meant to do with it? Where do we go with that?”

“What?” Rosie, sitting beside him on the garden bench, her feet up on its matching table, eats another olive from the glazed terracotta bowl on the tray between them. “D’you mean, what use is the concept for practical purposes?”

She turns her head to see his reaction, squinting against the rays of the low evening sun. Sid nods. “Yes,” he says. He hears the eagerness steal into her body, her voice, her mind, as she starts, “Oh! Well – ”

Her enthusiasm brings a smile into his eyes.

“Ascension is ever so practical! It’s just the best thing!” Sid knows he has the dish of olives all to himself for now.

“One of the most destructive things in life is, surely, clinging,” she says. “If we cling to what’s tried and true it feels safe, but we miss so much – it stops us growing and changing, developing. If we cling to the past in nostalgia we become discontented and ill-adjusted, unable to embrace the here and now. Goodness me, the number of churches I’ve had to do with that simply could not let go of the past! Not useful things of the past, I mean, like wisdom heritage – a fine preaching tradition or a body of theological scholarship – no, just types of seating or old buildings past their use-by date, or old artefacts of indifferent quality. Nostalgia – oh, it’s a killer! Like the cobwebs that tangle the unwary butterfly.

“Of course, it’s just as easy to get mired in bad memories of the past – like Aunt Ada Doom[1] and her ‘I saw something nasty in the woodshed’; making things that befell us long ago our excuse for settling for less ever afterward.

“Life only becomes possible in any real sense if we’re willing to move on. And that can cost everything. Think of a caterpillar. It has to dissolve – actually become liquid inside the chrysalis if it ever wants to become a butterfly. You have to let go of the past, of what you know, of the comfortable familiar. It’s the only way.

“If you want to make any progress in any kind of spiritual discipline whatsoever, you also have to let go of physical stuff – what you own and even your body. All of us get sick, all of us will die one day – and so will everyone we love. Clinging is pointless, because impermanence is part of the human condition. We have to learn to let go.

“And things – our possessions – people think they’re inert, lifeless, but it isn’t so. I kid you not, every mortal thing you own, it has an agenda, needs, it calls to you, claims you. The only way truly to be free is to get rid of it – cut free, travel light, walk through life like a pilgrim. Clutter, memorabilia – all our hoards; they are not neutral, they interfere with our freedom, weigh us down. I promise you, this is true.

“Some of our clutter can’t be itemized materially – it’s status, achievement, snobbery; or a cluttered schedule, a crammed diary. These are all forms of clinging, Sid. Neediness gone mad.

“And then there’s clinging relationships – whether that’s in terms of manipulation or toxic codependency or bearing grudges or just being unwilling to move on. Situations where people drained of love trudge resentfully along together, unwilling to do the soul work to get to understanding and tenderness, or forgive and cut loose.

“God is Spirit, and in his presence is fullness of joy. Where his reign begins, it brings liberty – lightness. Clinging is probably the closest thing to Hell imaginable.

“So, there you have Jesus, fresh out of the tomb, recently crucified. Betrayed and abandoned by his friends and fellow Israelites, let down by his government, tortured. What’s not to resent? Blame, recrimination, offended hurt, would seem to be the order of the day. And it was no light thing, that suffering. It passed into his very identity. Even in his risen body, the scars of the nails and spear became his badge, what made him recognizable. But he left that behind, somehow; he knew how to let it go. He didn’t come back snarling, all ready for red-hot revenge; he was able to move on.

“Not everyone felt the same. Mary, wanting to cling to the man she loved, in the garden; Thomas wanting to put his fingers into the nail-prints, the spear-scar. They had no vision for anything bigger – they just longed for the same old same old; our Jesus, back again just like before.

“But he said, don’t cling to me – I am not yet ascended to the Father. I doubt they could make much sense of that, and nor can most people who don’t appreciate the lethal drug of clinging, that deadens the spirit and binds us into the material realm.

“When he left, when he ascended, you’d have thought that was simply the end. Finito, Benito; gone. Turned out, it was just the beginning. It showed what he meant about the seed falling into the ground and dying to allow the harvest to come. That wasn’t about his physical death and resurrection only, it included letting go of everything – relationships, the concentration of the Spirit in his own person, the whole lot. As it turned out, the incarnation of God in Jesus was a stage in an unfolding process, the creation of an open way linking earth to heaven for all time.

“The Ascension must have seemed like a loss, a disaster – a second whammy after they lost him at the crucifixion. How could they have predicted it would open the floodgates for Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on humankind once way had been opened?

“And what is true of Jesus is always true of us too, because he was as human as we are. If we can find courage and love and hope – just like he did – to let the old stuff go; everything, the relationships, the achievements, the loves and the wounds, the betrayals and the friendships, all the ground we gained, even life itself – then way opens to blessings unimagined. We make space for the Spirit to pour through.

“I mean, how can anyone say that isn’t practical? Living the Ascension is the most useful, realistic, life-affirming path it is possible for anyone to take. Plus it cultivates trust, in life and in God; it says ‘I believe’, unwaveringly, through whatever circumstances conspire to throw at you.”

Sid looks at the last olive in the dish, hesitates, then pops it in his mouth. He sets his emptied wine glass down on the tray. “I thought you’d know, if I asked,” he says, glad he married this rather odd but very articulate woman.

He gets to his feet slowly, conscious of being more creaky than once he was.

“I’ll put the pasta on,” he says, looking down at her, loving her. “The sauce is all ready. We can eat out here.”

He moves to go, then pauses, thinking. “This business of living the Ascension,” he says: “it’s not all for the ultimate and the life hereafter, is it? If you can let go of all the clutter and clinging, let go of the past – well, it makes space for life and loving here and now, too, doesn’t it? It makes room for today.”

“Well, I’ve always thought so,” she says. “Bring some more olives out with the pasta, would you, my darling?”

For sharing and wondering

• Do you enjoy eating outdoors? Or does the sun get in your eyes, the sand in your sandwiches and every mosquito in the neighbourhood try to join in?
• Make a list of your possessions that you regard as essential, and a list of reasons why you keep the things that are not.
• What things – happy or sad, physical or invisible – might it be time for you to let go of now, after carrying them with you a long time?

Into the Mystery

Help us to travel light on this pilgrimage with you, walking Jesus, ascending Jesus. You were born under a star, you slept many a night under the stars, and you ascended to the stars in the end. May the freedom and mystery of the cosmic scale on which you live illuminate the ordinary fabric of our day-to-day detail of our lives.

[1] From Stella Gibbons 1932 comedic novel, Cold Comfort Farm.

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Writerly

It’s time to finish the novel I’m writing: it’s almost done.

Working through, section by section, each afternoon>evening>night I plan the next day’s work. Each morning, early, I write what I planned in the hours before.

Last night I planned what I would write today. This morning, as I did the first-thing chores, I got it ready.

Except today, I have no power. I can’t put it there, outside me and onto the page.

I have a modest output target: a thousand words. What I have planned will be around that.

The space between the worlds I keep at my visceral centre has flatlined, leaving only something peevish and ineffectual.

I can’t even read.

I have lit the fire. The flames are lifegiving. The house is quiet. The silence is lifegiving, too.

I am hoping later on I will find that immense stand-in-the-whirlwind thingummy that brings the words.

I read, sometimes, professional writers saying that waiting for the muse is nonsense; that if you want to do this for a job, there’s only one way – begin. Actually, I’ve said it myself. But today I can’t even begin; only wait. Into the peace, if I make it broad enough, wise enough, I do believe words will come forth like woodland animals as the night falls. I must make a dusk of myself, and then the words will come out.

Ah, wait! There is a feeling in me, that today – like a subterranean stream, a current of intense yearning, I need the company of someone who understands me. You know, with writing fiction, that can be a good place to begin. I will start there. A thousand words for the hunger inside me that all of humanity shares too.

Minimalism, Disruption and Prayer

My friend Julie recommended this book to me.

I am a slow reader.

Not only do I stop and think at every page and paragraph, turning over in my mind what I have read, but I probe the substance of the text (fiction or non-fiction), matching it against reality, bringing a bristling army of question marks to dismantle every nuance and assertion. It takes a while.

For this reason (“Therefore”, as St Paul used to say), I’ve read only the foreword and the first chapter so far. But that’s good – what it says is good, I mean, not that I haven’t read much is good.

The book is about making times (fifteen minutes x four) in every day to stop and pray.

The book will go on, I believe, to explore different traditions of prayer that may act as aids to staying in the “now” of praying for the durations of those fifteen minuteses.

Well, now.

This is great, I thought. This is good. I’m going to do this!

So I assembled the printed sheets I have worked out as my own personal aids to exactly this practice.

For the morning, I have the meditation I’ve written for myself (two pages), plus a chant, and time for intercession and songs.

For the noon prayer, I have a long psalm to chant and Advices & Queries to read from.

For the evening, I have a liturgy for the healing of the world I made when I was a Methodist minister.

For the end of the day, I have a copy, beloved and treasured since the 1970s, of a Compline sheet filched from the Ampleforth Benedictines. Well – they let us have some copies, in fact, for the community we lived in then. They aren’t mean.

So far, so good. These will do fine, thought I. These are the perfect focus.

Yes, they are, but then I hit problems – two. Possibly three. Well, two-and-a-half, then.

Starting with the night prayer.

In Komorebi I don’t have lights. I like it that way. Part of the point of Komorebi is to live within the turning of the world, the rhythms of day and night and changing weathers and seasons. I go to bed early because I get up early, so I’m often not sleepy when I go to bed, I am awake a long time. Because they either don’t know I’m there or don’t care, the nocturnal animals come. On the veranda I put out food, and a pair of badgers visit at late dusk. I can lie on my bed, my face a foot from the glazed doors, and watch the badgers eat and sniff about and quarrel and argue, just a foot the other side of the door. It’s magical. It’s delightful. And the magpie comes, the fox and the crow. I doubt any of them would come as close as they do if I had lights on.

But then, of course, it’s impossible to see to read. 

At this time of year through to perhaps late July, if I make sure to go to bed by eight, there is (on a fine day) enough light to read the Compline liturgy, seeing as I know it so well and am using it just as a crib sheet: but backed in there among the trees, any time after that or any other time of year – too dark.

Then, I get up really early – about five-thirty – to write and think and bathe and enjoy the solitude in advance of the household rising.

The cats and the crow and the seagull are up and hungry at five-thirty, so I feed them first and do the necessary first-thing chores.

At this time of year, it is light at five-thirty – and again, will be so through to late July. Otherwise it’s still dark.

I go into the big house then, where I’ll be working, and that’s the moment I want to pray. Why not work in Komorebi? Because I need constant internet access to research as I go, and my laptop battery doesn’t last the length of time I’m working. And because I’m the main duty person for tradesmen and posties (for our house and several neighbours who go out to work) and phone, seeing as I’m based at home.

(Most of) the members of my household are hyper-sensitive. You have to be very very quiet in our house. They aren’t irritable or demanding, but the slightest noise disturbs them. They sleep on the floor, and like Indians listening for the enemy they can hear the smallest thing. I draw back the curtains to let the light in as delicately and skillfully as I know how, because drawing the curtains can wake up the person in the room above. I swear they can even hear me thinking. It’s a wonder and a privilege living in a household of such keenly attuned beings, but you do have to be quiet, very quiet.

So chanting and singing would be a problem, or reading aloud. There is no room which is not below where someone is sleeping except rooms that have sleeping people in. Apart from the kitchen, but the oddities of my body make sitting in the kitchen problematic. But I could try that – I hadn’t thought of it until I wrote this.

Then there’s the issue of carting the folder of papers around. I have a bag with my phone, keys, hanky, wallet, Kindle and fold-down-tiny nylon shopper in, because my life is (in a small-space way) distinctly peripatetic and continually disrupted. I run do errands in the car, I work in a room near the door (because of being on door and phone duty) – kind of like an extern nun. My things are disposed between Komorebi at the bottom of the garden (that’s where my bed is) and the Badger’s attic at the top of the house (where my clothes are books are, so they don’t go mouldy in Komorebi). I sleep where I want to, in different places.  So if the 15 x 4 relies on documents, that’s one more thing to make sure is not in the wrong place at any given time. Part of my work on earth is to love the people God has given me, and part of loving is to be available, and being available means being where people are, which imports the possibility of interruption. Sometimes when I’m writing fiction I get wildly anguished about this (hence the early rising); aside of that, it’s what I’ve chosen.

Therefore (St Paul again), the assembled liturgy sheets I thought would be a breeze and make everything possible began to take on a distinctly doomed aspect. This isn’t going to work. Nor is singing or any other thing involving lights or noise. Even down in Komorebi I feel unsure about singing, because I feel shy of the men who live either side of our home, who make frequent appearances in the garden as late as ten at night and as early as six in the morning – we’re an active lot in our road! And the gardens are narrow. Komorebi sits between a shed with a tumble-drier on one side and a chicken emporium on the other – both needing attention first and last thing, in the rhythms of a family day. My neighbours both sides are kind and lovely people, but still I don’t like to advertise my presence in Komorebi even if I know they know I’m there. The basic truth is, I have never evolved past the sea anemone stage. So I don’t sing. I abide in silence.

Thinking all this through in company with the Lord Jesus this morning, it dawned on me – this is yet another area of my life minimalism is infiltrating and expanding into: expansive minimalism! Ha!

I need to learn the pray the fifteen minutes in minimalist style: silent and still as a Quaker, holding the light like an anchoress, abiding in the presence of God like Isaiah. Prayer that needs no accoutrements; no papers, no crib sheets, no songs or readings. Prayer that is only itself – primal, original, formless. The extreme minimalism of prayer.

Okay. I will experiment with possibilities. St Teresa of Avila set the Carmelites off on talking to God as a friend (and, like all good friends, listening too). It may just have to be that.

Right, then. I’ll think about this for another day or two, then I might be ready for Chapter Two.