Fabric: the view from here

I had serious trouble taking this photo (because of my laptop being my camera now).

The first time I tried it my keyboard cover fell off.

But what I wanted to say was about a thought that occurred to me, with reference to clothing.

In the normal course of events, trotting about doing stuff, eating meals, sitting chatting to folks at home, writing – I never see my face. I don’t see my expressions, or posture, nothing like that. I see my hands, and my feet sometimes (depends where I am and how cold it is). But what I see most of is my belly and the tops of my thighs.

This can be alarming.

Sometimes when I’ve been thin, the view is not so … er … insistent, if you see what I mean. Not so reproachful. But this doesn’t last. The rest of the time my inner mother shakes its head in sadness, talking about its own self-discipline and smallness and my lack thereof. Hey, so what? But looking down on voluptuous rolls of fat isn’t always great fun. And it’s kind of distracting, in as much as … how can I put this … it makes personhood obtrube into my train of thought, derailing it. Well, not completely. My mind doesn’t crash every time I see my tummy, but it sets faintly humming a different tune from the one I was currently trying to hold.

This is partly why I like clothes that are less body-ish – kind of like robes; flowing, draping. What’s the New Testament word? Katastole?  And I like natural fabrics – the weave, the way they take the dye, that they fade, that they crease.

I like the timelessness. So that when, in the course of the day, my gaze happens to fall on the bit of me I can see, I see the fabric folds of millennia, of times past, of Tudor days and Anglo-Saxon days, of peasants, of nomads, of humanity from many continents.

Frankly, I like that better than rolls of fat.

Shopping without glasses

Half of me thinks I shouldn’t really be eating cereal for breakfast. Sugars and starches trigger your fat-storing hormones and, geez, hasn’t life got enough problems already without that?    

But there is, on the other hand, more to living than the constant losing battle against the bulge. For one thing, carbs eaten sensibly (whole grains, I mean, not white sugar) keep me cheerful and help stave off the Black Dog. And then there’s that other matter – wheat bran helping to, as it were, smooth the way of the otherwise stony path.

So I do eat cereal for breakfast; but we are not talking pop-tarts. I have a bowl with two kinds of cereal in: the sort that has bran flakes with dried fruit and dried coconut (similar, for intestinal purposes, to eating steel wool); and the other sort that old ladies buy. Do you have it in the States? Here it is sold as All Bran:

Well, on Friday, Hebe and I went to get the groceries as usual, diverging and converging on our hunter-gathering expedition round the supermarket, and I went into the cereal aisle and picked up a box of All Bran.

This morning I opened it for breakfast.

You know that story from John’s gospel, how Jesus went to the wedding at Cana-in-Galilee, and changed the water into wine? Well, I thought he must have been interfering with my All Bran in the night. Because – oh, glory hallelujah! – when I opened it, I realised this was chocolate cereal! Oh, man – I love chocolate cereal! I never buy it because it’s sugary and isn’t good for you.

I’d bought this:

I’m going shopping without my glasses again!

Waking up early

I love the early morning.

One of the blessings of growing older is that I almost always see the sunrise.

It is so beautiful.

It makes me happy.

This surprised me.

When I was a girl, I went to church in an English country parish. An old, flint-built church with stained glass windows, lovingly polished pews, set in a big churchyard where roses grew among the lichened headstones.

We worshipped according to the Book of Common Prayer. Almighty God, unto who all hearts be open and from whom no secrets are hid . . . and Lighten our darkness we beseech thee, O Lord . . . and O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy. . .

The worship was quiet, and had about it a quality of ordinariness that fed my soul. It was, if you see what I mean, no big deal. Nothing was done to make it Fun or to Attract The Young. There were no sound systems, worship bands, brightly coloured banners, news sheets, greeters, videos . . . There was the smell of stone and beeswax, the quietness, the strong stone pillars and the tiled floor, the deep warm brown of the old wood, with the colours of stained glass flowing over as the sun moved round. And the peaceful, hidden gladness of the Mystery.

I loved it, and I think it formed my soul.

My faith journey has wandered a twisting trail since then. I’ve been a Roman Catholic and then a Methodist, been in ordained ministry (Methodist) both as a pastor and a chaplain in school and hospice – and briefly in hospital.

I’ve worshipped with Quakers in silence full of light, and with the highest possible high church Anglicans, with the incense rising through the airy spaces up from among the candles and coloured vestments into the nostrils of God.

I’ve loved it all, but in the last few years I’ve had this longing to come home.

I miss the humble, earthy homeliness of Cranmer’s prayers. I miss the peaceful understatedness of the worship when I was a girl.

What has surprised me, is that the nearest thing to it (for me) is not in the Church of England. Even in Cathedral worship, I feel the tug towards innovation among clergy let loose on the intercessions, and a certain self-conscious almost-snobbishness about The Way We Do Things Here. So much to get right, so much to get wrong, so many rules and permissions, such a thick crust of hierarchy and obstinate tradition. Bit chewy.

But just across the valley from me – the nearest church in fact to my kitchen – a Methodist church (I was once its minister), where by some means (and you can’t do this by trying, it happens all by itself) that humble, earthy homeliness is still there. They sing the old songs, and the Local Preachers who lead worship speak with unaffected homely reverence to a God they obviously believe in.

What surprises me is that in this backwater town the Methodist worship is what captures the humility of Cranmer.

Graft in our hearts the love of thy name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of thy great mercy keep us in the same . . .

Dust in the sunlight.

Peace.

Home

So we were away for the weekend at Emmaus house for St Johns parish weekend. I bunked off the scheduled sessions – writing writing (I’ve started another novel) – but made it to prayers in the calm, dim chapel full of peace. Taizé chants, strangely brisk with their electronic accompaniment, but welcome in their beauty and familiarity. A few surprising moments (human beings are odd, aren’t they?) and some delicious meals. Sunshine. A rose garden. A view of a green patchwork of fields and trees, with horses and a traversing afternoon fox.

One of us looked sober and thoughtful but was probably reading Poldark.

One of us was primarily chilling out.

It was good, but I missed this place.

It was nice to come home.

Last night, in the deep dusk of my fox-watch, the two badgers had so vigorous a rough-and-tumble on the verandah that they inadvertently turned the snick on the door and locked me in! I became their captive audience. I wish I could photograph them for you, but it almost dark when they visit, and my laptop is my only camera now. Still, you can see the Audacious Seagull on the roof of Komorebi in the outside photo above. He stands on the waterbutt outside Alice and Hebe's studio, rapping on the window for his tea. We are discouraging him because the Roof Community is shocked and offended that we feed him; they feel betrayed - he is an Interloper. So he comes down to Komorebi and steals the fox's food instead. I keep watch to protect it; he stands on the far side of the pitched roof of the Badger's woodwork shed (my Badger, not the real ones), his baleful eye just visible above the apex of the roof.