Shaking the world

‘In a gentle way, you can shake the world.’  (Gandhi)

Or that’s what I’m hoping.

Those of you who read here from around the world may/not know that here in the UK we had our general election last week, to vote for our government for the next five years.

Here in Hastings I voted for our Green Party candidate, Jake Bowers. I knew that in one sense this was a wasted vote. The only two horses in the race, in terms of any actual hope of becoming the government, were the Conservative (sometimes called ‘Tory’) Party or the Labour Party.

I know many people whose heart was for the Green Party in fact voted tactically, casting their vote for whichever best represented their political outlook of the two parties that stood a chance of winning.

I thought about doing this, but I have a particular belief about miracles. I do believe that the single-mindedness of Jesus is a clue to his power expressed in miracles. That power was not because he was a unique being. Jesus said, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.’ (John 14:12) And I believe Jesus always spoke the truth.

We are made in the image of God, and from God proceeds the reality we call life.

I notice that, in the life of Jesus, nature organizes itself up around him. He stills the storm, he resolves sickness into health, he brings peace to the disordered spirit. Life listens to Jesus. I believe that an important causative component to this is that in Jesus there is no word of a lie. He said that it is the devil who is that father of all lies, who does not abide in truth because the truth is not in him (John 8:44).

Buddhists have a wonderful prayer and precept about refuge. They describe themselves as ‘taking refuge’ spiritually in the Buddha (what I think of as Christ-consciousness), the dharma (the gathered body of wisdom – my equivalent would be the Bible and the Christian tradition) and the sangha (faith community, fellowship of believers). Buddhists say, that in which I take refuge, takes refuge in me. This resonates with that teaching of Jesus about the devil – he takes refuge in lies and lies take refuge in him. Conversely, if you take refuge in truth, truth will take refuge in you. In this resides great (humble) power. It means you become a focus, a lightning conductor for truth. If you take refuge in truth, you also anchor truth where you are. Then that which is dis-eased or dis-ordered returns to its true condition – it is made whole. Jesus, whose being was wholly aligned with truth, whose discipline of life was a conduit of the Father’s love, thus inevitably made whole all he touched.

I don’t in all honesty know if I could do that: but I do know that living authentically is a step towards it. For that reason it is important I vote with my heart, not tactically – tricksyness cannot lead to miracles, cannot invoke the Holy Spirit for the healing of the world. So I voted with my conscience even though I knew my party wouldn’t ‘win’.

The party I voted for, the Green Party, was the only one opposed to fracking. I believe fracking is terribly destructive. Water is inestimably precious. Fracking uses up water, creating drought, and poisons water, as well as land and air. I don’t need to go into this in depth. You can research it very easily online. Terrible stories are emerging of the toxic legacy of fracking. In England, our government sneaked in, at the end of its last term, a law allowing for any waste, including radioactive (nuclear) waste to be dumped anywhere including into fracking holes. It doesn’t take a very bright person to see that if you fracture the substance of the deep earth, creating fissures and instability, then tip radioactive waste into that place, you likely create a big problem. So I used my vote for the only party in the UK opposed to such a course of action.

In the event, the clear winner of the election was the Conservative Party – the one already in government. I will not go into what I think of the Conservative Party, because I don’t want this post to get too long; suffice it to say that those who voted for them did so in the good faith that they stand for social stability and economic strength. I won’t comment on that.

Since the election, the social circles in which I move have been shaken by an outpouring of what it is not too much to call fear and grief.

The Conservative government has put in place many austerity measures that profoundly affect the lives of the poor and disabled. Again, I won’t go into what those measures are, because it would make this post too long, but I will say that it is not without good reason that the anawim are appalled at this election result.

'Anawim' is an Old Testament word. It means ‘little ones’. It refers to all those who are vulnerable and of no account in society; the poor, children, widows, refugees, those who live with sickness and disability.

The context in which I live has been so shaken with these outpourings of honestly felt terror and distress, that I have taken myself apart for a little while to listen to God.

I have many friends among the anawim, and I know numerous people who are now scared that their lives will fall apart, who are frightened for their future. It’s not that they are in a grump because the flavour they voted for was not victorious. It’s not sour grapes. It’s that they honestly fear their future will not now be viable. That they will lose their homes. That such tiny income as they have will be taken away. That they will be left with bills they cannot pay and children they cannot support. They scry into the future and cannot see anything good.

I understand.

But.

I have taken myself a little way apart to focus upon simplicity and humility, to try if I might to make of my being an anchor for the Light, a calling out to God for truth, justice and mercy; for gentleness, kindness and compassion, for the coming of the Kingdom.

I think there are certain wise practical responses. I do believe that every Christian soul is called to practice a discipline of simplicity – paring down possessions, sharing, asking little. What is sometimes called voluntary poverty. I believe that with this election result the Spirit, who has always been asking us to live with simplicity, is saying to His people in the UK: ‘Now. Do it now.’ We shall need to practice simplicity if we are to take care of one another. The safety nets are about to be taken away. The commitment of our love needs to be there ready for our brother, our sister, in need and distress. I’m not mucking about, friends: I think this is true. This is a time to be careful, prudent, frugal – to give and to share. And I think that time may continue from now until the end. How the details of it apply in the life of each one of us will vary – but I think the principle applies across the board.

But underlying the practical responses there is a spiritual law, and we can count on this.

‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.’ (Romans 13:1 KJV)

This doesn’t mean that everyone is subject to the government because the government is God-ordained. It means that everyone, including the government, is subject to the authority of God, whether they know it or not. It means that the only way to live an effective and happy life, whether personally or nationally, is in line with the flow of God’s love and grace, in reverence for His creation, in accordance with His mercy, justice and peace. Anyone who tries to live any other way steps outside the path of blessing and sooner or later will come undone.

‘For there is no power but of God.’

As we still our hearts and minds, focusing into the present moment, listening for the still small voice of God, watching with a quiet eye for what God is doing now so we can join in, this is our watch-word: ‘There is no power but of God.’

It is essential, if we wish our intentions to be fruitful and effective, that we bring our lives into line with those intentions – with our faith. To stand in readiness to help in the coming times, we don’t need to be rich or influential, people of high status. That’s irrelevant. That’s the world’s power; it has all the reliable strength of tinsel. 

What is important is that we begin to live like followers of Jesus, and that we keep our faith firmly fixed on this, living in the light of its truth: ‘There is no power but of God.’

And then I do believe, in a gentle way we can shake the world.

 

Fictional Jesuses

On Sunday morning, with the worship songs at chapel we sang this cheerful chorus from way back.

It takes St Paul’s words – I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 KJV) – the bit that says ‘I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’, and expands that with the joyous assertion, ‘Jesus is alive in me!’

I apologise if I’m about to ruin a happy song with a caveat, but there’s a thing in this making me uneasy.

I can still remember the jarring jolt at my core when, as a young woman in church on a Sunday morning about three decades ago, I heard the missioner reporting to the congregation on the previous evening’s evangelistic meeting: ‘The Lord was really working for us last night.’ 

What? What?

Well, I (as you know) write fiction. Christian fiction, in fact. I write to bring goodness alive in people’s imaginations, to expound the Gospel, to make biblical texts come real, to enable readers to grasp the heart and soul of New Testament teaching.

When I’m writing (this happens to all novelists), my characters somehow take on a life of their own. I sit down knowing what I mean to write today, and before I know it they’re off on some track of their own, developing a preoccupation I didn’t even know they had. They surprise me. I can hardly keep up. I don’t feel like author and creator, far from it, I feel like a fly on the wall. They seem to have personalities quite independent of what I dreamed up. I even wonder if they do, sometimes, so real do they seem – I wonder if, in the creative process, we tap in to the universal unconscious and actually travel in time and place to other lives, meld with the lived reality of people long ago and far away. Like the thing on Star Trek (what’s it called?) where the people in the space ship could bring up before them the person beamed down to the alien planet, to have a quick chat. A kind of cosmic skype, or something.

So, I don’t know quite what happens in writing fiction, but I do know the characters seem to be real. I can’t even quite bring myself to say they’re not. And what about dreams? Where we so vividly encounter strangers and wander in places we’ve never been – but sometimes do later in life discover. What’s with that?

Our minds with their many layers – conscious, sub-conscious, unconscious; our imaginations; our astral bodies roaming the universe – Shakespeare had it about right: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

Because of this, I think one can easily fall prey to a misconception when speaking about the risen Jesus. There’s an inevitable tendency to muddle up the objective reality of Christ with the projections of my own imagination. When I sing ‘Jesus is alive in me’, it’s easy to slide into mistaking the imagined Jesus, Jesus the character in my unfolding internal story, for the real risen Christ.

From this, it’s a short step to the ‘God is really important in my life’ syndrome. ‘My faith is a big part of who I am.’ The little God and the big Me.

I don’t know how it would be possible to avoid this happening. Human beings make up stories, that’s how they’re made. The stories tend to have one facet or another of ‘Me’ as the central protagonist.

But, look. Jesus may be ‘alive in me’, but he’s alive not-in-me too. He is risen, he is real. He’s not a character, a projection, a personification, a Harry Potter patronus or a Jungian animus.

Jesus is objectively, actually, independently risen and alive.

One reason it’s important to get a handle on this (apart from because it’s true) is that the ‘Jesus is alive in me / God is really important in my life’ mentality leads to other displacements and projections. The subjugation of women by men, beating children, exclusivity, religion, hierarchies, fundraising, pre-eminence of buildings and accoutrements, all kinds of power trips and abuses of trust. The manipulation of community for personal ends. And – and oh, dear me, have I not come across this in the upper echelons of church authority – the projection/displacement onto others of egoistic ambitions in oneself. Because, if ‘Jesus is alive in me’, who could possibly challenge any agenda of mine?

Bottom line: do my habits, my life, my emphases, my choices, look like and accurately reflect those of Jesus in the Gospels? No? Then the Jesus that’s alive in me is a character I made up. No cause for despair – because the real actual Jesus is alive and risen and well capable of leading me out of my own deluded fantasy Christianity into something altogether more solid and workmanlike.

About clothes

Clothes. What is it with clothes? I choose things carefully – online, offline. I can buy cheap, I can buy expensive. I think it through. I think it over. I consider, I draft in cunning reasoning, I’m careful, I’m thoughtful. I imagine the circumstances in which I might wear this garment, I bear in mind the colour-me-beautiful shades my friend identified for me, I take into account the kind of fabric it is, the drape, the weight. I check the measurements – twice, three times, metric, imperial. I check my bank account, bills coming up, can I afford this? Is it suitable for my age group, for my activities? Can I walk in it easily – for more than two miles? And run for the bus in it? Will it wash? Will it shrink? Is this colour something I can sustain in real life? Not something that suits me but I won’t really wear?

And then I decide. It comes in the post, and I try it on before accepting it. Or, in a shop, I try it on before buying it. At least once. I keep it at home with the labels on (if it’s a new garment) for a fortnight. I try it on again. Okay: it’s wonderful. This is just what I’ve always been looking for.

Two months passes. A small, insistent, whining voice starts to say ‘I don’t like it.’ And nothing I can do will change its mind.

I have a few things that have stood the test of time. Oh. Quite a lot actually. Here is what they are:

• Four ribbed cotton vests (as in, underwear), two grey, one black, one white.
• A big brown boiled wool winter coat with no buttons and a huge collar
• Two pairs of fingerless mittens our Alice knitted me – one grey, one black
• Several pairs of Brora cashmere socks our Rosie gave me as Christmas presents
• Two pairs of big socks – like slipper-socks or bed-socks – our Alice knitted me; one airforce blue, one green-and-brown striped
• A pair of sheepskin slippers the Badger bought me
• A Howies cotton hoodie cardigan (blue) handed on from our Fi
• Brown Birkenstock sandals
• Black Ask The Missus ‘Jazz’ shoes (men’s)
• Gabor footwear – brown winter boots, black winter boots, grey-brown nubuck slides for summer
• Some big old PJs snitched from my sweetie
• Orvis longsleeved crew-neck t-shirts, in grey, burgundy
• Evans t-shirts, one purple, one green
• Lands End polo necked fleeces, one navy, one black
• Lands End grey fleeces – one quarter-zip, one shawl collar
• A waistcoat in Herdwick wool our Alice knitted me, with amber buttons
• Four pairs of leggings, one brown, one grey, one black, one red.
• Two pairs of black tights
• A black dress for funerals
• A soft, light, big scarf with reindeers on it in grey/green/brown
• An airforce blue big canvas handbag with tin white polka dots that reminds me of snow falling on a sombre day
• A handknitted soft lumpy hat in khaki and grey muddly wool
• Various pairs of earrings made of silver and semiprecious stones – carnelian, labradorite, amethyst, jet, coral, pearl.
• A very special prayer shawl in myriad colours mainly purples and greens that Rebecca made for me. It has prayers in it and poems, thoughts, philosophy, love, also Quaker silence, birdsong and the air of the woods at Hopewell.
• Four essential pairs of glasses, for seeing things near to, far away, and in the dusk.
• Underwear. Obviously.

Right now, I also have three skirts – dark green, charcoal grey, and one in faded browns with a black batik pattern on. I have three trousers – 2 black, one grey. Some grey Gabor loafers. A huge fluffy sweater just returned from a stay with Buzz. A grey fluffy cardigan. 2 black boiled wool jackets I really like and never wear. A blue-green t-shirt I really like, got recently, and so far haven’t worn. A nude/pale apricot scarf that suits me a lot but I’ve never worn. A Harris tweed and leather big handbag. A faux white leather overnight bag. I really hope these will adhere to me and I won’t start the slow commencement of complete aversion.

I also have a quarantine bag of clothes in the attic to raid as an alternative to discontented shopping.

I have a neat and tidy dark grey sweater that looks really nice but I hate it already. And a Lands End polo necked t-shirt that’s very useful but I sort of hate it.

I hope I don’t get fatter or thinner. I hope I manage to keep these things. I hope I don’t drop tinned mackerel in tomato sauce on them, or bleach.

Forever I eschew these stupid paroxysms of desire for florals, for orange, for shorter skirts, for normal blouses.

Let me wrap myself in earth, in moorland, in shadows, in evergreens, in twigs, in clothing of sparrows and doves.

Ooh! I know what else I have! Talking of wrapping. Oh, such a snuggly and easy thing to wear! I have this humungous cardi, a wrap-round woolly about two sizes too big, soft and slightly hairy, in a quiet grey/lilac heathery peaceful colour of fading day. I wear it at night and it keeps me all cosy even when the night is cold.

I have a pair of black Vivobarefoots too. Surely should be a pair of black Vivobarefeet.

Life In a Tiny House ebook by Billy Ulmer

I know some of you who read here are (like me) very interested in small-space and off-grid living.

I can really recommend this book by Billy Ulmer.

It’s an e-book: I don’t know if it will load into a Kindle, but I’ve been reading my copy on my computer because it has lots of photos, so is better on the bigger screen.

The stories are inspiring, full of insight, positivity and hope.

Billy Ulmer (who blogs here) made this book because he noticed that though there are plenty of publications about how to build a tiny house, there aren’t many about actually living in one. There are blogs of course, like Rowdy Kittens, and Dan Price writes about life in his Hobbit Hole. But I certainly welcomed this book by Billy Ulmer; it gave me much food for thought and made me happy.

It costs $20, and you can buy it here.

I should make clear, neither the book nor the author has any connection with me, and I have not been asked to review it; it’s just that I came across it, really liked it, and thought you might too.