Plain dress November - 'an excellent thing in woman'

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected European folk tales in the nineteenth century. Here’s an excerpt from their story The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids:

It was not long before someone knocked at the door and called out, "Open the door, children dear, your mother is here, and has brought something for each one of you."


But the little kids knew from the rough voice that it was the wolf.


"We will not open the door," they cried out. "You are not our mother. She has a soft and gentle voice, but your voice is rough. You are the wolf."


So the wolf went to a shopkeeper and bought himself a large piece of chalk, which he ate, making his voice soft. Then he came back and knocked at the door, calling out, "Open the door, children dear. Your mother is here and has brought something for each one of you."

The dual nature of motherhood implicit in this intrigued me, and my children became used to having me say on occasion: ‘I am not your mother. I am the wolf.’

What’s brought it back to mind is quoting Bill Coleman here a day or two ago : '…did you ever hear an Amish adult raise his voice?’   And in the same post, quoting another, forgotten. source:  'Speak softly, the world will listen.'   You may have forgotten it, but it stayed with me.  Talking to myself developed to an art form!

So I’ve been thinking about the way people speak – to each other, about each other, and just anyway – and about the way I speak.

In Shakespeare’s play of King Lear, the king says this of his daughter Cordelia: ‘Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.’

To be gently and quietly spoken is something I aspire to. I am a long way off.

Not so very long ago, my beloved Badger drove across, at the end of the working day, from his office in Oxford to my mother’s home near Cambridge, to pick me up and drive us back to Hastings in East Sussex. That’s two stints of driving each roughly two and a half hours long on the end of a day’s work. My mother expressed concern lest he fall asleep. He made light of this, saying: ‘Oh, don’t you worry – Ember will talk to me all the way home.’ Regrettably this is probably the case, whether he’s tired or not!

Quick to improve any occasion with my usual sparkling wit, I made some remark about this being a dubious remedy, given that in my preaching days those in my congregation remarked often on my soothing – even soporific – voice.

‘Your voice? Soporific?’ (insert derisive laughter here) responded my mother.

My first husband used to remark on occasion that my voice is (like my mother’s, he said) hard and rather masculine. Sigh. It shouldn’t be, should it? It should be ever gentle, soft and low, as if I had been eating chalk specially purchased for the purpose, an excellent thing in woman. I am not your wife, chum. I am the wolf.

But that’s all going to change. I have decided to approach 2011 with heart and mind prepared, and get ready with my New Year’s Resolutions in time for the actual New Year, rather than creating a retrospective list in February, or Second Month as I shall have to learn to say.

And Resolution 1 is going to be to learn to speak gently. Not too softly or I shall drive all the old folks crazy. (‘Eh? You what?’) Not too low either, for the same reason.  But gently anyway - and a bit more soft and low than is my wont.  I usually start off OK, but then I kind of warm to my subject, and before I know it am holding forth with all the dulcet tones of a politician at a public rally. This has to change.

But there is a Resolution 2. What I actually say. On the train to Lewes today, Hebe and I amused ourselves listening to two sets of old ladies, one behind us, one in front of us, conversing. Those behind us whiled away the journey complaining about their family for three quarters of an hour. ‘And you’ll never guess what, but he phoned her at that hour of the night! Yes, he did! And as soon as she picked up, “Where’s Sharon?” he said. Well, what could she say? So she told him she didn’t know and next thing he slammed the phone down on her! Yes!’

Neither lethal nor interesting, just the usual drivel designed to blacken the character of absent friends and strengthen the impression of great virtue and integrity in our noble speaker. Righteous indignation. Yawn.

In front of us creaked the aged voice of another venerable friend also discussing an absent companion: ‘Well that was a nasty thing to say! That was very nasty. She can be very nasty sometimes, can’t she!’
Aye, and she’s not the only one.

God save me from descending into such an old age. There is only one hope of avoiding it. Start now.

So 2011 is to be the year that I meditate on what I say and how I say it.

Note to self: First day first month 2011 – eat chalk.

Plain dress November - Lasst Licht Hinin

In 1909, a book of Carl Larsson’s pictures was published. He was a Swedish artist who painted beautiful interiors and portraits – a record of his family life at home and on his farm. He was a remarkable artist.

The book was entitled Lasst Licht Hinin – which means ‘let the light come in’.

I have seen pictures from the book, but never held a copy; it is our of print now. But though I like the pictures, and admire his work very much, what has stayed with me particularly is that title.

Lasst Licht Hinin.

This morning, now that Badger is on two weeks holiday from work, we were able to spend time lying in bed and just chatting at the beginning of the day – and we were talking about his own spiritual journey in connection with Franciscan spirituality. He said that something about the Franciscans he finds very helpful is their emphasis on practice rather than doctrine. The first objective of the Anglican Third Order of St Francis is ‘to make Jesus known and loved everywhere’. They go about fulfilling that by gentleness and kindness and understanding, and by living a discipline of humble simplicity and faithful prayer.

Unlike many of the Christian groups we have come across, their minds are not taken up with orthodoxy and heresy, rectitude and error, but with the outliving of a way of simple obedience to Jesus’ command to love one another. They are Christian believers, but it is upon the lifestyle rather than the creed that they lay emphasis.

Our conversation then rambled on to the Quakers. It is with the Quakers that I feel most at home. I have one place where my thoughts do not wholly concur with Quaker beliefs, and that is regarding the Eucharist. I believe the Eucharist has great power. However, I do not believe that the Eucharist needs to be celebrated by a special priestly caste, or even restricted in its expression to a ritualized liturgical meal. I believe the Eucharist happens wherever a human life touches what Jesus was doing at the Last Supper – gathering, breaking, sharing; and making connections between his torn and broken body, the torn and broken body that is His church, the vulnerability of human life as events tear and break it, and the redemptive transformation we find as we gather in our vulnerability, and consent to touch Christ risen in the sharing, the breaking and the Peace. Gosh, that was a long sentence.

I could keep you here all day telling you things I love about the Quakers, but to pick out a couple of things: I love it that they believe there is ‘that of God in everyone.’ I love it that they look to find in the silence ‘evil weakened and the good raised up.’ And I love it that they refer to the Divine presence in terms of the Light – so describing God experientially rather than analytically.

I love their testimonies – to peace, simplicity, truth and integrity, equality and community and the wellbeing of the Earth. I love their understanding that God’s voice is heard in silence. It rests my soul that no-one speaks because they are scheduled or ordained or employed to do so – but only because they have something to say; and, most of the time, when they’ve said it, they stop.

It was in reading the website of Quaker Jane that I first came across the phrase (George Fox I think) that ‘Christ has come to teach His people Himself’. And that speaks to me so powerfully that it sets my soul alight. The whole of my life I have been thinking about the way of faith; and having been on Earth for 53 years now, I have concluded that the touchstone of abundant life is a living personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Without it, even the most beautiful form of religion is basically window-dressing. With it, hierarchies and dogmas and institutions become optional paraphernalia.

Lasst Licht Hinin. Let the light come in.

Today, that is what the Spirit is saying to me.

Plain dress November - where God hides in Plain sight

Two places in the tumbled wild world of Creation

Where God dresses Plain, where His mystery makes itself clear;

One is water, and the other is silence –

The first for the eye, the second for the ear.



Folk think that God is far away in Heaven,

And must be channeled to us through the Bible, the priest or the seer:

But if thee longs to touch God for thyself, wait with water and silence;

Then thee will glimpse Him, then thee will finally hear.


.

Plain dress November - Die Stille im Lande

‘Speak softly, the world will listen. Go slowly, the world will wait’.

I can’t remember who gave me those words, or who first said them, but they have blessed me over many years, and I think they are true.

Thinking of them now, they also recall to my mind the words of my teacher Martin Baddeley, who said, with reference to the story of the Canaanite woman: ‘Jesus walked, and He stopped. What is the speed of love?’

Slow… soft-spoken… humble… gentle… quiet… kind… These adjectives all belong to the Plain way: and a person is not Plain, no matter how she or he may be dressed, unless these words describe his or her life and character.

Die Stille im Lande is how the Amish are sometimes described: the quiet folk of the Earth.

In his breathtakingly lovely book of photographs, Amish Odyssey, Bill Coleman tells of a conversation he had with an Amish school teacher:

One day during recess I said to her, ‘I have never ever heard these children raise their voices, at any hour of school. In or schools you can hear the kids from a mile away. Why not here? They’re playing games, but they’re quiet.’ She said, ‘Well, did you ever hear an Amish adult raise his voice?’

Recently I came across two contrasting examples of teaching the Gospel.  One, to my mind, sits easy with the Plain way, the other does not.

I find that teaching lingers with me, like a taste in my mouth. A favourite treat of mine – a luxury because they’re expensive – is a Bendicks Bittermint. Mmmmm… If I have one, I like to enjoy the taste lingering on in my mouth for a while after the sweet is all gone.

By contrast, back in the summer, we bought some Chinese baby pinenuts. Normally I love pinenuts, but eating only a few of this sort can give a bitter, metallic after-taste that lingers for days – or even weeks for some people. Apparently Chinese people like the taste. I must be made differently! I gave the remains of the packet to the wild birds, and never bought any again.

These two examples of teaching I came across were, for me, like Bendicks Bittermints and Chinese baby pinenuts.

To take the Bittermints first.

I followed a link a friend posted on Facebook that led me to discover this beautiful soul, Elder Paisios, and his wise and gentle teaching. Here’s another page of his – the one my friend originally linked to.

Elder Paisios drinks from the same well as the Plain Christian. He walks with a love for all creatures and a reverence for the living Earth. He is humble and gentle in his attitudes, forbearing and respectful towards his fellow human beings. His quietness and simplicity hold up for us a kindly lantern drawing us to Christ’s Peaceable Kingdom. His words and life and example are a blessing to me, and the taste and fragrance of them lingered on long after I left his web pages behind.

The very same day, another friend on Facebook posted links to a teaching series about headcovering. I followed one of them. I’ll tell you about it first, and you can decide whether or not you are curious to hear it – it’s a YouTube video.

I was attracted to the link because the opening screen picture showed a choir of women (Old Order Mennonites maybe?) singing. It’s title was Chrsitian Headcovering. I thought it would be a lovely video, with singing, and maybe teaching from gentle and peaceful women (like Anna Cory or Mercy Hoyt), so I started the video.

It turned out to be a series of photographs accompanying a soundtrack of a male teacher talking about – well, Satan mostly.

Satan was what he started with. The first word on the video was 'Satan'.  The preacher spoke a lot about Satan and demons, much more than he said about God.  He spoke about the point of view of demons and of Satan.  He said that Satan opposes the headcovering and Satan will attack the headcovering and spoke of demons lashing out at headcoverings. He spoke about Godly men in his church trying to 'work with a sister' in deliverance, trying to put a covering on her head, and said the demons in the woman would lash out in anger and try to throw the covering away. He explained that this is because the headcovering supports God’s order but, listening to him, I did wonder if he had been dealing with some very angry ladies and not with demons at all.. He went on to say that destructive forces in the Western church are attributable to three things: women ‘getting out from under’ the authority of their husbands, women teaching and preaching in church, and women abandoning the practice of headcovering.   I don't think he meant me to form this impression, but I came away with the feeling that he thought women were responsible for everything that had gone wrong. And his recommendation to correct this state of affairs was naturally enough, that women should ‘get back under’ the authority of their husbands, stop teaching and preaching in church and cover their heads.

But actually, that wasn’t enough. He said – and repeated, and I think he enjoyed it – that if the women did go back to headcovering, then they would become ‘sitting ducks’. Satan was going to attack them, and they would be sitting ducks. The reason? Firstly because Satan hated them and their headcoverings, secondly because covering their heads and refraining from teaching in church and ‘getting back under’ the authority of their husbands because that was their upbringing and culture, or because they were following the example of their mothers or obeying what they had been told, was not good enough. The only thing that would protect them from Satan who hated them and would be attacking them was if they did these things out of their own strong personal conviction.  You can listen to the video here if you'd like to.

Well, you reading this may be saying ‘Hallelujah! Sock it to ’em! Go, preacher!’

Me? I hid from my newsfeed the friend who is posting the series of videos.

His words lingered with a bitter, metallic aftertaste like those Chinese baby pinenuts. His hard, strident voice and talk of Satan and demons and attacking and lashing out spoke to me, indeed they did; but what I heard was ‘Satan’ and ‘women’ linked strongly together: whether he meant it or not, the impression I formed was that this man hates women. I found him disturbing, and I will never intentionally listen to anything he has to say again.

Plain women cover their heads, and they are gentle and humble. But the same can be said of Plain men.

Plain women have a servant heart; so do Plain men.

And as for teaching and preaching in church, well – the more I hear and see of the possible ways to take, the more attractive I find the Quaker way, in which nobody is exalted as a preacher or teacher, but the meeting gathers in silence and it is the Spirit who speaks; through anybody.

At around the same time I came across these two examples of teaching, I also came across a headcovering Christian lady on Facebook. As she was friends with 15 of my friends, I went to have a look at her profile to see who she was. I find people’s photos can tell you a lot about them. This lady had photos, but not many. Prominently featured among the ones she had were pictures of her car, and of a piece of cardboard. Both the cardboard and the windows of her car bore huge messages – the cardboard one was homemade but I think she must have gone to the trouble of having the stick-on sheets for the car windows printed. What do you think they said? ‘Smile, God loves you’? ‘God sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that through Him the world might be saved’? No, nothing like that. They were messages to say that every person who has married a divorced person is an adulterer. What kind of a woman wants to drive around with that, above every other thing in the world or the Bible she might have chosen, plastered all over her car?

It is my faith that we are sent here to help Christ build His Peaceable Kingdom; and every word or action of gentleness and humility puts another part of that great dream into place. Words of hate and attack and blame and Satan and condemnation do not build the Peaceable Kingdom. They hurt people, they foster fear and distrust, they hinder the formation of love. They are like the disciples in their anxiety and over-zealousness, who tried to stop the little children from reaching Jesus. People are only little children inside, even the worst of them. It is men like Elder Paisios who have what it takes to lead them home.

Strident, loud, harsh, insistent – these adjectives do not belong to the Plain way.

What you would like to see in the world – speak about that. Speak about lovingkindness and goodness, speak about faith and healing, speak about forgiveness and friendship and trust and peace. Let the rest fall away. Let it go. It doesn’t belong to you, it’s not the Plain Way.

Be a Bendicks Bittermint, and leave the Chinese baby pinenuts out for the wild birds.

I wondered whether I ought simply not to post this, if it is my belief that we should speak what is gentle and kind and refrain from the rest.  I have made some judgements and criticisms here, after all. In the end I decided I would.  Friends and relatives of mine see what appears on my Facebook wall, and they may believe that I associate myself with all the ideas other friends or even other women who practice Christian headcovering have posted.  So I wanted to say here that, for me, the Plain way is not a statement about gender relationship, and it has nothing at all to do with Satan or demons or lashing out; it is about building the Peaceable Kingdom, and walking in paths of humility, quietness, understanding and prayer and goodness.  It is about approaching the world with love.  This takes strength, and it is not accomplished without trouble.  But it is neither angry nor strident; it is a quiet way.

Plain dress November - finding the flow of what is natural

There is a collection of thoughtful philosophical reflections, written by Lao Tsu, who kept the imperal archives in the Honan province of China in the sixth century BC. The collection is known as the ‘Tao Te Ching’ (‘Tao’ meaning ‘Way’, ‘Te’ meaning ‘Virtue’ and ‘Ching’ meaning ‘Classic’).


Aside of the Bible, I think it has been the source of deepest inspiration for me of anything I have ever read, and it was probably the book that started me on the path of Plain Christianity (as well as the Fioretti – the Little Flowers of St Francis).


Lao Tsu looked at nature: at water and hills, clouds and streams, and he thought about what approaches to life make a success of it. The conclusions he reached are almost identical with those of Plain Christians (provided you bear in mind he is writing six centuries before the birth of Jesus! I'm talking about lifestyle here, not theology!)


It would be possible to produce a translation of the Tao Te Ching side by side with Bill Coleman’s photographs of the Amish, and the result would be perfect harmony.


Here is a taster of the kind of things Lao Tsu said in his prose-poems:

‘If I am humble, I can never be overcome’


‘Be newborn – be free of yourself, be humble, be earthy, be a valley for the whole world.’


‘The sage rules from the purest motives
Relying wholly on quiet and inner peace.
He watches the seasons rise and fall
And if he knows how things grow, he knows they are fed by their roots
And they return to their roots
To grow and flower and flow.’ 

‘The sage wears rough clothing and holds the jewel in his heart.’

 Somewhere during this last week, reading very late at night, I came across these words:

 'Let your natural life be spiritual, and your spiritual life be natural'

But I apologise to whoever wrote them – I can’t remember who it was, or even whether I read it in a book or online. A Google search returns nothing. Sorry.


The way of peace and simplicity, that I have learned from thirty-five years of search and study and discipleship, looks for and espouses what is natural. It is unforced, It allows things to be as they are, to find their natural order in Christ’s Peaceable Kingdom of life made whole.


It is a Plain way, characterized by what is humble, gentle, quiet and natural.


The Plain way is not only about dress. It is not even primarily about externals; but what we choose and put into the world, the homes we weave around ourselves, the garments in which we clothes ourselves – these are indicators of the soul path we are choosing.


In a Plain home, everything is kept simple and natural. Once a home is cluttered and dirty, the bones, the forms, the character of the house are lost. When we keep our homes clear and simple, the dignity of the architecture can appear; it is as though the house becomes a person. The textures and forms of things – wooden floorboards, skirting boards, cornices, architraves, the shape of windows and the workmanship of paint and putty and small repairs, these become visible; the story the house is whispering, the song the house is humming, are quietly revealed.


When this happens, we find that the house is not talking about itself at all. The house is wanting to show us the beautiful light that slants in through simple, unadorned windows, and draw our attention to the movement of the trees in the autumn winds outside. Our house is inviting us to wonder at the colours of the dawn framed in the plain square of the window, without the competition to distract us, of jazzy wallpapers and many pictures and confused piles of possessions.


When you climb the stairs in our house, as you reach the top, if Hebe’s door is open, you look straight into her room to the window opposite.


The carpet in Hebe’s room is the palest brown peach. The walls are very very pale, subtle pinkish greys and whites. Her curtains are oyster coloured. Her furnishings are very few and simple, natural wood and wood painted in soft matt ivory shades. The walls have no pictures. Nothing clamours, nothing shouts. The bedlinen is cream and beige and vague shades of peace. There is only one thing to catch and hold the eye: the view through the window of ash trees tossing in the wildness of November weather. The room is speaking to the light, and the light is speaking to the room. It is not arguing with nature. Hebe has allowed it to be a gentle sanctuary which opens its eyes and says: ‘Look’. That is what a Plain room is like.


It is the same with Plain dress, and this is the reason for solid colour and for simple, loose shapes. They do not shout SEX or FASHION or STATUS or MONEY or COOOOL! or STYLE. They do not shout at all. The clothes are simple and earthy and peaceful, and all they say is:
‘This is a human being.’



[All quotations from the Tao Te Ching taken from the transaltion by Man Ho Kwok, Martin Plamer and Jay Ramsay, published by Element, except the last quotation, taken from the translation by Gia Fu Feng and Jane English, eited by Toinette Lippe and published by Wildwood House.]

Chip MacGregor

I wanted to tell you about my literary agent.


The first thing I should tell you is I have never met him, because he lives in America, and I have never been there. There aren’t any literary agents for Christian writers in England. Well – I did have one but he went bankrupt; UK Christians aren’t that great at buying books it seems.


My agent is called Chip. Nobody in England is called Chip. It has that exotic American snap to it. Chip. That’s his name. And MacGregor - which I had associated only with Peter Rabbit before.


My agent – Chip – seems sharp and pointy in his mind to me. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He works very hard. He is a very self disciplined man. His agency is flourishing and doing really well (I think – it has increased its staff anyway and that’s surely a good sign). He has a list of authors who seem mostly highly successful and talented people. Chip sends us emails making sure we know about the Google register and being Brutally Honest with us about Marketing – which is to say he tells us that’s our responsibility and if we don’t do it nobody will. He goes into patient detail about what we have to do for Targets and Platforms and Goals and Priorities and things. I read all his emails.


I have this bad feeling about my agent. Well, no – not about Chip, because he's a sweetie; about me actually. The thing is, I don’t market anything, because I couldn’t sell a bottle of water to a man dying of thirst; obviously – you’d just give him it, wouldn’t you?


When I write a book, publishers ask me to send a list of famous people (speakers, preachers, writers – you know, people with a Ministry) so they can be approached for commendations and endorsements for the book cover. And they send me a pile of books to give to famous people to help with the marketing. I don’t know any famous people. I either give the books to the church for raising money to fix the roof, or to people coming by to pick up things I advertised on Freecycle.


My books do OK. My Hawk & Dove trilogy has been jogging along for 20 years now, quietly selling. My Spiritual Care book found its way into most hospices. But marketing is not my forte. I can only write.


And the reason I have this bad feeling about my agent is I think I let him down. I am not a success, not really, or savvy. I don’t have targets – at least, only three: to make Jesus known and loved everywhere and to help build the Peaceable Kingdom and to make sure that anything that passes through my hands is blessed before it goes on its way. I do no marketing. I can’t get my head round target audiences or techniques. I’m just not made that way.


I don’t give my agent enough work either. I just take a book along to a publisher and say ‘Will you publish that?’ and they say ‘OK then is this enough money?’ and I say ‘Sure’. Chip places some things for me, and I’m grateful for that, and grateful to know that I have a literary agent. It’s not the thing that makes me feel like a proper writer – only writing does that; but it kind of feels like someone’s on my side. But I feel bad that I don’t do my side of the business all that well.


But there is one thing especially I wanted to tell you that I really really love about my literary agent. There are subsidiary things – I love that he prays for me; I love that he is faithful and patient, and that in a quiet way his faith in God is as humble as it is tough. Chip hasn’t had life easy. But the thing I really really love is this photo I have of him with his granddaughter Maelie just after she was born.


Any man who has the soul within him to allow such tenderness to shine from his face also has my friendship, and my trust. When I look at this picture, I believe in Chip. Nothing to do with his sophistication or his sharp mind and the way he knows the market. I just know that such vulnerable tenderness as that takes you all the way home.

A paean of praise to Thee

I praise Thee because my heart lifts up in gratitude for so many and so great blessings

I praise Thee because the nicest man ever is curled up all snuggly and peaceful and comfortable here in the bed beside me as the sun slowly rises in the chill of the morning this October day

I praise Thee because the house is so quiet you can hear the clock ticking

I praise Thee because it is the Lords Day and I am looking forward to the singing as our worship arises in joy before Thy throne

I praise Thee because just now we have some money in the bank and food in the cupboard and there is nothing to worry over

I praise Thee because though the roof still leaks the fireplaces are in and everything else broken is fixed Almost

I praise Thee because Thou art fair and mighty and surpassing glorious but Thy sense of humour is apparent in every creature Thou hast created especially ducks

I praise Thee because my book is two-thirds written and coming along well and Thou hast had Thy hand upon it for it is the story of how Thou workest with us with such extraordinary kindness

I praise Thee because my beloved had the sense to wheedle me into one last push yesterday so the fridge is well-stocked with enough food for lunch and supper today, we shall not be hungry nor need to break the Sabbath with shopping for more

I praise Thee for the soup Hebe made yesterday, sitting on the stove waiting to be heated up for lunch

I praise Thee for the rosemary bush with her spikes of fragrant green, two of which are going to metamorphose into a hot cup of tea any moment now

I praise Thee for Thy unsurpassable kindness which has blessed my life from the moment I was born

I praise Thee for the wildness of the storms and the sharpness of the frost and the clean air of the morning and the beauty and wonder beyond describing of the rising day

I praise Thee because I have no aches and pains and I feel completely well and I am happy and at peace

I praise Thee that I have Plain dresses to wear and aprons and nightgowns and petticoats and caps of my own sewing and the industry of sisters who love Thee and serve Thee – for Thou knowest right well that these things matter to a woman, for it is Thou that hast made her so to be

I praise Thee because the breath of Thy Spirit is in every living thing, and therefore as I watch the flight of starlings in flock around the pier, as I hear the cry of geese overhead, as I look into the golden green eyes of our black cat and hear the rattle of her purr, as I hear the heave and crash and thunder of the surf on the shingle, I see Thee and know Thee and that Thou art with me, most dear and glorious, beloved in all the earth

I praise Thee for that I had the chance to look with human eyes on this wondrous earth and gaze with astonishment on vermilion clouds against clear turquoise sky at sundown and infant frogs the size of my fingernail clinging to blades of grass in the garden in the spring

I praise Thee for firelight and starlight, for sunlight and candlelight and moonlight and I suppose I praise Thee for electric light in spite of itself because it is almighty useful that’s for sure

I praise Thee for barettes and Kirby grips and hot water bottles and can openers and penknives and every other astonishing contraption that ingenuity has fashioned from the idle wondering of men who were free to lie on the downland and chew a stalk of grass and gaze absently at the sky thinking wouldn’t it be good if

I praise Thee for muesli and apple juice topped with a chopped banana which is delicious whatever anyone thinks and for spirulina that fills me with zing – how didst Thou know to make spirulina

I praise Thee and I bless Thee, I glorify Thee and I adore Thee, and I exalt Thy holy Name in all the world

"The children are coming!".... Hallowe'en.

During the years my children were growing up, I objected strenuously to Hallowe’en festivities of any kind. My children did not dress up as ghosts and vampires, we did not festoon the house with fake cobwebs and death’s heads, or carve ghoulish faces into pumpkins for lanterns.

We did make pumpkin lanterns – a bit, not much, because I found it not very easy to do and nobody liked pumpkin very much – carving patterns into the sides, or just a cheerful smiley face.

On Hallowe’en itself we used to spend the evening in the back of the house, so there were no lights shining at the front. That way, we didn’t have to turn anyone away when they came for trick or treat: we were simply ‘out’.

We continued with the same approach once they reached adulthood. Just as I never preached on Remembrance Sunday with its glorification of war, so I was never ‘at home’ on Hallowe’en.

Then something happened that made me see things differently. Somewhere in America there is an autistic lady whose case study has been published by Oliver Sacks, and who has become something of a celebrity because of the work she has done to make cattle slaughter more gentle and merciful for the animals. A few years ago, UK television showed a documentary about her.

The television people arrived to film her and interview her just before Hallowe’en, and so she happened to mention, with excitement and delight, that she had a drawerful of goodies ready for the children who she knew would be coming to her home for ‘trick or treat’.

This severely autistic lady, known for her compassion and kindness, was focusing not at all on the ghoulies and ghosties, nor yet on the dubious practice of children threatening to do something bad to you if you didn’t come through with the candy. She had one thought in her mind: ‘The children will be coming!’ It filled her with anticipation and delight. All she was thinking about was that they would come to her house in hopes of some treats and candy, and she had lots prepared, because she delighted in them, she welcomed them.

And she put me to shame. She made me see things differently.

Shortly after that I married Badger and moved to Aylesbury. He hated Hallowe’en and ‘trick or treat’. He had moved to Aylesbury from a neighbourhood where teenagers came round trick-or-treating, and pelted his house with eggs. He felt defensive and anxious about what might happen, and was ready to see off any comers to obvert any possibility of anti-social behavior.

Because I was no Hallowe’en enthusiast and had always withdrawn from it in the past, I had nothing prepared that year, and had given no particular thought to it – except that the lady I’d seen on the TV had shunted my attitude to a different place.

The children came. Badger surged forward to see them off. I felt really sad about it. Another set of children came. This time I nipped in quick. I shot through the door saying, ‘Let me get this,’ and whispered to them: ‘I’m so sorry children. We haven’t any sweeties – we have someone really, really ill indoors. I’m so sorry. Do you think you could just go very, very quietly?’
And they nodded, and tip-toed away. It wasn’t quite a lie. We did have someone really, really ill indoors. Our cat.

But I felt sad about it. What we were doing seemed not very life-affirming. I thought next year we would do things differently.

So, when Hallowe’en came round again, I got ready. I made bags of mixed sweeties, and in each bag I put some stickers saying ‘God loves you’ and badges saying ‘Jesus loves me’. On the computer I designed and printed a small manga cartoon with characters giving a message that though the children were out to have fun, sometimes the dark and the ghosts could be frightening – and whenever were were afraid, we could pray to Jesus, because the Name of Jesus is our shelter from every evil, the most powerful thing in the world, more powerful than any kind of magic; and Jesus always hears us when we call out to Him.

And that’s what I’ve done the last two years. We left on the porch lights and put the bags out in a basket for the children to help themselves when they came round.

This year our family has children again. My daughter Grace has a young son Michael (a toddler), and her friend Donna has two daughters, a four-year-old and a two-year-old. We anticipate that as they grow up Hallowe’en might become an evening when they can call at our home and at the home of their other auntie, and find a welcome. We will float votive lights on the pond in our front garden, and light the candles on the celtic cross that hangs in our porch. We’ll make a smiley-face pumpkin lantern to stand under the Bible quotation from Philippians 4 that is carved in stone and fastened to the front wall of our house by the front door. And when these children who are part of our tribe come round, there will be no ‘trick or treat’, just a developing tradition that this is a night to go visiting in the dark, and be given some candy and a loving welcome, and sing some hymns around the fire.

I guess ‘For all the saints’, and ‘Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return’, and ‘When the saints go marching in’ should be suitable.

Origin of All Hallows in the context of the Christian Year

I know nothing about helicopters, but I once heard, in a lecture by a man who does, that there is a nut on a helicopter, situated I think above the bit you ride in and under the propeller, that holds the whole thing together; it’s called the ‘Jesus nut’.

As Grace said when we were talking about this at housegroup, ‘That’s because it’s the crux of the machine’.

‘Crux’, that we use in common speech as we say ‘the crux of the matter’ – the real heart of a thing – is the latin word for ‘cross’.

I think in that usage in common speech, ‘cross/crux’ is referencing not the cross of Jesus, but a place where things intersect, the place where everything holds together. And that’s what the cross of Jesus is. It is literally ‘the crux of the matter’. God was in Christ reconciling all things to himself (see Colossians 1:15-20). The cross of Jesus sits at the heart of creation, holding everything together, reconciling all things to God and to each other: it is the place of integration/integrity, where all things are made whole/holy.

It is no accident that Jesus died on a cross of wood, and that the cross is therefore often referred to as the ‘tree’, because trees are also crossing-places.

If you imagine in your mind a winter tree – the trunk and branches and twigs standing against the sky – then add to the picture the part you know is there but cannot see, the branching rootball going down into the earth, then you have a picture of something that is in both form and function similar to a pair of lungs. Trees are the lungs of the earth. Our words for breathing are inspiration and expiration – and the ‘spir’ part of the word comes from the latin word ‘spiritus’ (spirit). When we say someone expires, we mean they die. When we say someone is inspired, we mean they are illumined in a visionary way. The Hebrew word ‘ruach’ from the Old Testament means equally spirit,wind/breath, and that comes through to the way we use the latin root counterpart, spirit. We say someone is ‘spirited away’ when it is as though the wind snatched them.

A tree, however, does not inspire or expire, it transpires. The breathing of a tree creates chemical stability as it shuttles water, oxygen and carbon between the two different worlds in which it lives – the dark world of the earth where its roots are, and the light world of air where its branches are. To us, creatures of light and air, the dark earthy world means death, the light airy world means life.

Trees create stability, slowing down the movement of water through landscape to prevent drought and flood, drawing water from the earth and evaporating it into the sky; and holding the rain, as it falls from the sky, in the earth by its root system.

So a tree both creates stability and security, and also facilitates exchange between the worlds of darkness and light, death and life, earth and air. A tree is a cross, a crossing-place, holding things together as the Jesus nut does. And Jesus died on a tree, won life for us on a tree.

In his dying he entered the dark world and opened a way back to the light. He entered death and opened a way back to life. So in the cross we find a place of exchange or interchange, an alchemical place of transformation, where a way through is made between death and life. The cross, tree of death and tree of life, becomes the instrument of resurrection. It is the place of transpiration of the breathing of Holy Spirit.

When Christianity came to the ancient Celtic world of these isles, the spirituality in place followed the rhythm of the seasons in the agricultural year. Very wisely those early missionaries – Ced, Chad, Columba etc – did not attempt to sweep away the devotional observance of the Celtic people, but instead they enlarged the meaning of holy days already in place to embrace the new understanding that came with the Gospel.

The Christian Celtic year went in a circle that followed the rising and falling of darkness and light.

Imagine a circle (like a clock) subdivided into 4. At 12 o’clock is high summer, the zenith of the year, the summer solstice when day is longest and night is shortest. At six o’clock is the deep dark of the winter solstice. At three and nine o’clock are the spring and autumn equinoxes, when the length of day and night balance equally. Holding that picture in your mind, let’s go round the clock, starting at the bottom at 6 o’clock.

In the depths of the winter, at the time of the longest night of the year, when all is cold and dark and dead, the ancient Celts celebrated Yul, a Nordic word that means ‘the Turn’. They called it that because from that day onward the light would begin to grow as the days lengthened. So they saw it as a time of the coming of the Infant Light – when the light was at its smallest and weakest but would begin now to grow. So it was that the Christian Church settled at Yul the Feast Of The Incarnation, Christmas, when we celebrate the coming of the Infant Light to a dark world as Jesus is born. The year turns, ie begins again, at this point. Everything turns on the coming of Christ.

Halfway between six oclock (the winter solstice) and nine o’clock (the spring equinox) comes Imbolc, at the beginning of February. This was a time for spring-cleaning, getting rid of clutter, sweeping through the house and shaking everything out. Upon this festival the early Christians settled the feast of Candlemas, the time of the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary after childbirth – so focussing on the same theme of ritual purification.

At nine o’clock, the spring equinox is Easter – which actually historically happened around then. The spring equinox used to be the festival of the goddess Oestre (hence the name Easter), where we also get the word ‘oestrogen’. She was the personification of feminine being, and was represented as a pregnant woman giving birth. The ancient Celts saw the earth as like a fertile woman – wells and water sources were seen as the openings of her womb, from which the water of birth heralded the coming of life, so that places that grew up around wells were called names like ‘Marywell’, ‘Osmotherly’, ‘Ladywell’, ‘Motherwell’ etc – expressing both the ancient traditional belief and the Christian Gospel it embraced. Jesus, son of Mary, burst forth from the dark tomb into the light at Easter; he is the risen light bringing the hope of new life, and this observance harmonises with the coming forth of new life from the wombs of the farm animals at this season of the year.

Halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice comes the Celtic festival of Beltaine, the Mayday festival of the return of the sun – the releasing of the spirit of the summer. This was a time for blessing flocks and fields as the days lengthened, the warmth returned, and everything began to grow and strengthen. ‘Beltaine’ meant something like ‘bright fire’, and it was upon this festival that the early Christians settled the festival of Pentecost (it also fitted here historically with Easter), when the Spirit came in tongues of fire to rest on the heads of the faithful and inspire them with new life and energy and hope.
Moving on up to twelve o’clock and the summer solstice, we come to the feast of St John the Baptist. This festival sits at the crown of the year when the days are longest and the sun is at its height and the light is greatest. John the Baptist is the herald. He points down the year to the coming of Christ at Yul, in the darkest deepest time, and thus connects and balances the darkness and the light.

Halfway between the summer solstice at twelve o’clock and the autumn equinox at three o’clock comes the Celtic festival of Lughnasadh, harvest-time, which the early Christians re-designated as Loaf-mass, that came to be called Lammas. This was a time of hand-fasting (betrothal) and all the obvious harvest celebrations.

At three o’clock, the autumn equinox, the Church placed the feast of St Michael and all angels. Michael is a warrior and the protector of the people, and as part of his protection of us he brings a reminder and a warning. He stands at the gateway between summer and winter, reminding the faithful that dark days are coming and that they must make ready. This has a simple agricultural application but also a spiritual application: that for each of us death is coming, and in the summer of life we must make our souls ready, so that when death comes it does not find us unprepared.

Halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice comes the Celtic feast of Samhain, the Celtic Day of the Dead, upon which the Church settled the feast of All Saints (All Hallows), when we remember the whole great cloud of witnesses including those who have passed on to greater life.
The Day of the Dead was the last festival of the dying year, when the Old Year was laid to rest with thanksgiving for all that was past, and it also had a function similar to the Jewish Yom Kippur, of laying to rest any old feuds or grudges, and getting rid of the spiritual baggage that holds us back – relinquishing that which is spiritually dead and no longer serves us. It balances against the spring-cleaning purification of Candlemas, when the house was swept clean. At All Hallows the house of the spirit is swept clean.
The Day of the Dead was also a time of giving thanks for those who have added joy and meaning to our lives, who have now passed on: a time of Remembrance and gratitude. It is interesting that we have (UK) Remembrance Day at this time of year because it ‘coincidentally happens to be’ the time of D-Day, the ending of the War.
Samhain was thought to be a dangerous time spiritually as people’s minds turned to consider the dead and the veil between the worlds of death and life grew thin. All Hallows affirms the strength, unity, security and safety we have in Christ our salvation.
For the early Celts, the day did not start at sunrise as it does for most us, but at sunset – which is also when the Jewish day stars, hence lighting the Sabbath candles on Friday evening. The ancient Celts therefore believed that dreams were not the processing of the old day, but visions for the new day.
Because the day began at sunrise, Halloe’en is the starting of the Feast of All Hallows – it is the beginning of the Day of the Dead.
Samhain, like all these Celtic fire festivals, was not one day only but spread over about three days. Samhain was the last festival of the year, so in most traditions it was considered that the new year began at the close of Samhain.
However, in some traditions, a period called No-Time passed before the new year began. The length of No-Time varied between one tradition and another. For some, No-Time lasted only a few days: but others believed we were in No-Time right the way through until Yul, the turn, when the seed of the light arrived and the year began again.
I believe that the early Church were working with the concept of No-Time in establishing at that point in the year the season of Advent, a time for inward reflection and preparation for judgement.
Advent was not, in the early church, a time to prepare for Christmas; it was a time to think about the second coming of Christ, an austere period of self-examination balancing the Lenten fast of early spring. It was also a time of longing for the return of Christ. This fits well with No-Time, the season of inwardness and reflection at the deepest darkest point of the year, the time of cold waiting before the seeds could germinate, when the next season’s lambs and calves were hidden deep in the bellies of their mothers.

So it is that Hallowe’en is not at all ‘Satan’s Day’ as many Christians say. It is not a time to be wary and suspicious of – it is a Christian feast and is also a part of the Celtic observance of the spiritual heartbeat that underlies the rhythm of life in the agricultural year.

There is no need to be afraid of Hallowe’en, or anti-Hallowe’en. We are numbered among the saints: let us not be afraid of our own shadows! Of course as Christians we don’t want to be pursuing silly nonsense of skeletons, or dressing as witches or ghosts. And absolutely we do not want to tangle with Ouija boards or any other foolish dabbling in and among forces we cannot see and do not fully understand. But Hallowe’en itself is a good thing.

It is the time for us to look back over the year that has gone, embrace its lessons and release its dross. It’s an opportunity to hold in remembrance those we have loved and have with us no longer, and a time to review our own practice and habits of life, resolving that the ‘evil be weakened in me and the good raised up’.

Hallowe’en is a quiet time, quite introspective, for considering what we need to let go of, what no longer works for us now. And then we enter No-Time, going down into the still and silent weeks of the year, experiencing a micro-version of the watching and waiting to which Christ called all of us.

'The world turns but the cross stands' is the motto of the Carthusian order. So in this rhythm of darkness and light in the turning of the year, the darkness and light wax and wane, ebb and flow, the seasons change and we reflect those changes in our fasts and feasts by which we enter and explore meaning in the seasons of the year and the seasons of our lives. Meanwhile, like the Jesus nut holding everything together, the cross stands at the heart of all creation, drawing all things into one and reconciling all things to God, holding open the way through between death and life, darkness and light, maintaining the spiritual realm of teh Making in a condition of stability, balance and peace.

Taking The Tide Of Love

A couple of years ago, I wrote a story which I posted in episodes on the blog I had at St Pixels online church.

It's a love story of the Plain people, in this case a community of trolls known as the Old Order Forest Kindred Of Believers.

I enjoyed writing it, and thought it was worth posting as an online novella, so I've given it a blog of its own. As most blogs of course you have to read from the end back to the beginning, because the most recent post appears first, I posted it in reverse order so that you can start at the the begining and read it through without having to find your way to an earlier post.

Personally, I like stories with pictures, so I thought I'd have a go at making illustrations, but my drawing is only so-so and not all that great.

What I did was do buy some of those 1970s trolls from eBay - if you aren't fussy about highly collectable ones, you can still get them cheaply. I made Plain dress outfits for them, and then photographed them going about their daily business in illustration of the story.

Later on, when St Pixels church was raising money for a Water Aid project, I auctioned off my Plain community of trolls, so they were dispersed throughout the world in the end!

It was a lot of fun to do, and when I read it through again recently I still loved the characters and liked the story, and I hope you do, too.

You can find it here.

Hope you enjoy it!