Deep-sea trawler at work

Today, time is flying!!

I realised that my commitment to simplicity has encountered a grave hiccup in the area of electronic filing, and I have begun a trawl through of my memory sticks to organise and de-clutter.  Blimey.  What can I say?  It’s like the bit in The Mummy where the librarian knocks over every single bookcase in the reference library and has to tidy it all up again.

It is, to say the least, time-consuming.  And I have other tasks waiting.

But in my scramblings among the foothills of electronic storage systems, I came upon this photo of a page from the little book Hebe made me; and today, as when I first saw it, I found those words, and the simple artistry of their presentation, were heart-stopping:

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365 366 Day 52 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here) 

We had two of these.  This, in case you aren’t sure, is a Modest Cat Bathroom.   The reason we had two is that our rescue kittens proved lively little chaps, and in one of their death-defying stunts when they were a couple of months old, one of them very nearly didn’t defy death, and ended up needing surgery and four week’s isolation from his brother indoors shut in one room.  Watching him shin up the apple tree yesterday I had to marvel at our vet’s good work: and my, were we grateful for the insurance that came with the rescue package!

Anyway our furry purries are all grown-up, savvy and completely in charge of themselves now.  Unlike ignorant Western humans they know better than to attend to their personal needs indoors.  So the Modest Cat Bathrooms were Freecycled.

Pinheaded me

365 366 Day 51

Nobody has that much hair, right?

When I was wearing Plain dress and had long hair, I had a whole big pot of hairpins (still have them, not quite sure what to do with them; these ones were still new enough to go to the charity shop), both to do up my hair and to keep my kapps in place.  

I liked the appearance of Plain dress, its beautiful modesty and gracefulness, but I found it not simple.  The dresses, aprons, kapps and petticoats all needed ironing and took up a lot of space to store (and bag space when travelling).  The outer garments (cloaks, appropriate woollies etc) were relatively bulky.    

Washing and drying my hair (which is very thick) had to be planned and considered, especially if it all had to be pinned up again by the time I went out.  In short, I found Plain occupied more space in my life than I felt it should.  And it attracted attention constantly – everywhere I went people stared at me in the street.  

The way I dress now follows the same principles of modesty, humility, quietness, plainness, utility and simplicity; but more effectively (for me; others may find differently).  My short hair is quick and easy to wash and dry.  My clothes are fewer and occupy a small space.  I no longer own an ironing board and rarely use an iron.  Travelling is easy and light.  I’ve got rid of the big mirror for checking all was well.  I can walk through the world with the invisibility that comes naturally to me; no-one sees me any more. 

And, which is important to me, how I dress now doesn’t take up any head-space.  I was startled, dressing Plain, to discover how much time I and other ladies devoted to thinking about headgear and underwear, skirt length and fabric composition, sourcing bobby pins and sewing modesty panels on petticoats, Quaker styles and Amish styles and Mennonite styles &c.  I felt it was not really what I came here to do.  I also didn’t enjoy the put-downs and value judgements among modest-dressing women regarding other ladies dressing differently (in short skirts, short hair, leggings, skimpy tops and high heels).  Personally I don’t mind if people walk the world naked – I really do believe it is the heart that is the issue and the seat of holiness, and that dress codes do not reveal it. 

Having said that, if I had not dressed Plain awhile I would not be where I am now because this is where the path led me, and I would not have met some dear and interesting and in some cases admirable people.  I’m not anti-Plain now; I still find it attractive and still find it speaks to me.  I miss the way it admonished me every day, reminding me of gentleness, the teachable and submissive spirit, especially in relation to my husband.  I love the other aspects of Plain life - the candour, the frugality, the prayer, the implicit unity, the closeness to the land, the gelassenheit, kindness and humility, faith as the determining principle in all decisions, the rootedness in the holy Bible.  I think too, if someone is raised Plain it’s obvious and natural they dress to fit in.  And if someone feels called Plain, it’s right they submit to the heart’s call.   

Be all that as it may, obviously I no longer need the hairpins.

"Right" said Fred

I think I managed to put my finger on what’s been wrong.

The last few weeks I’ve been so touchy and snarky and difficult, and arguments have sprung like weeds.

Being without a kitchen since Jan 1^st has ploughed up all our domestic routines.

Washing up, doing the laundry, cooking, all have been affected.  Working round some of us being vegan and some not, in a house of five adults, with one hotplate, for most of two months has been trying.  Had it been summertime we’d have cooked in the garden happily, but it’s been raining or snowing a lot of the time.  Also vegan food requires more preparation and combining.  And economical foods include things like pasta (needs draining – no sink), porridge (pans difficult to wash up, need rinsing and serial washing – means going outdoors to tip out each lot of water), soaking pulses (need draining – no sink).  The choice for washing up has been either squatting on the bathroom floor upstairs, carefully carrying all crocks and saucepans etc upstairs and back down again, or boiling a kettle and combining with water from the bucket (which spills a lot) downstairs.  Plus our multi-sockets haven’t got quite long enough leads so constantly threaten to pull the kettle base off the make-shift counter every time you lift up the kettle.  And of course there’s no draining board.  And the garden’s been dug up and mostly covered with snow, which has made it harder to get the firewood in and take the compost scraps down the garden, and we’ve had no washing line to dry the clothes . . .

Reflecting on this at church today, it occurred to me how important routine is for maintaining harmony in community – in monasteries and schools and prisons and hospitals, everything depends on routine.  One can rest in a routine and the rhythm of the day means one’s responses to others have a quality of preparedness.  You know when you’ll be left in peace and when expected to be more outgoing, you can be geared up for certain chores and carry them out in a peaceful state of mind without constant challenge and frustration, because there’s a system in place.

In an extended condition of disruption, nerves become frayed.  It seems to have become the norm for tradesmen to say “I’ll come Monday . . . or Tuesday . . .” and assume you will stay home for them to arrive both Monday and Tuesday – and then they don’t show up until Friday and expect you to be really pleased because they plan to work right through until 7 o’clock at night intermittently turning off the electricity with no warning.

Our kitchen man, God bless him, is designing and building 3 items: a cupboard with a counter (like a Welsh dresser but built in); a small high-up cupboard in an alcove, and a sink unit with a counter under which the washing machine will go.  He measured the last one incorrectly.  To compensate for this he thought the best thing would be to cut the skirting board off half-way along the kitchen, and omit the bracket to support the counter – that way he could still fit the washing machine in.  Provided he built the unit around the washing machine as we would never be able to get it out again without deconstructing the unit.  It took 3 visits and 4 phone-calls to convince him that we really didn’t want him to do that.   He glared and scowled and muttered a great deal, remaining adamant that, having now made the incorrectly measured unit, unless we paid him more money he wasn’t about to alter it because, as he kept telling us, "It's bespoke!  You know what bespoke means, don'cha?".  As a ‘compromise’, Joe our regular builder suggested we could take the unit right up to the doorway, cutting off the architrave that surrounds the door.  We said we’d be okay with that.  There then followed a long tussle about the construction of the plumbing and whether to box it in so we could never get at it again, or have access to the joints.

Then it snowed.  Guess what?  Our kitchen man lives in a trailer, against which his workshop is built.  He has no heating in his workshop, only a woodstove in the trailer.  Though he had this going full blast, it did not warm the workshop enough to paint (the now constructed units). 

“I will bring you a heater,” said I, through gritted teeth – he was by now a month over-schedule, and we had been kitchenless for 6 weeks.

“No,” saith he: “my meter is already spinning round, I don’t want an electric heater.”

“Then,” quoth I, “bring the units here and paint them in situ.”

“No,” says he: “you haven’t seen our yard.   Our field's all full of snow, I can’t get the truck out.”


And he calls me "Penny".  I hate that.

Sigh.

Then the weather brightened up.  He could paint.

So he painted the units but now he couldn’t bring them because it rained next and he has an open truck so they’d get wet – he’d have to wait for a sunny day.

Tarpaulins?  Heard of tarpaulins, anybody?  Yes?  Not him, apparently!

Meanwhile, instead of coming out with the rest of us, Alice stayed in her entire day off waiting for the guy who had promised to come that day and sort out her light fitting.  Did he come?  No.  Why am I not surprised?

We could have Freecycled our old oven, except someone said he would love to have it.  Has he collected it?  No.  Is it still sitting on top of the washing machine?  Yes. Are Alice and Hebe both having to squash into half the space in their studio making a stained glass commission and cutting a headstone (because the masonry workshop has been too cold to work in) in one small room, with the corner for the stone bench occupied by a washing machine with an oven on top of it?  Yes. 

Meanwhile, the extended periods without electricity have caused the pressure to drop in the solar array necessitating it being turned off.  The engineer (eventually) said he would call last week to arrange to fix it this week.  Did he?  Of course not.

Patience, friends, in this house, is wearing thin.  Threadbare.  The residents are surly.  None more so than me.

Tuesday I have to officiate at a funeral.  Tomorrow therefore I have to write it.  Writing a non-standard funeral and associated eulogy requires careful attention and concentration.

Can’t you just guess who’ll turn up tomorrow with a view to working all day both days wanting endless cups of tea and attention, turning off the electricity, needing access to Alice’s room while she’s out at work, wanting to know how and where to position the light fitting, trying to saw off the skirting board as well as the door architrave, attempting to build the unit around the washing machine to avoid checking if it slides in and out okay, needing to be reminded to take the oven, requiring supervision to ensure the correct batch of tiles is used.  Oh, and did I mention?  The garden centre guys are delivering five huge lumps of stone tomorrow.

One day – one day – this household will manage to settle down to something we can recognise as routine.  Still; there’s no need for me to be so grumpy in the meantime, is there?

P.S.  You do know the song "Right," said Fred, don't you? 

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365 366 Day 50  (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here) 

Now this is the kind of thing I have a hard time moving on.  Nobody else wanted it and it was just part of some packaging.  Both those characteristics endear it to me in a Franciscan kind of way.   It was even semi-useful; it could act as a tray or a dumping ground for small items with not obvious purpose in life, and it was handy to put scrap paper in with a view to being so organised that I’d be in the right place at the right time to write useful Lists on the paper.

But eventually I came to my senses. I didn’t want the small dumped items, more scrap paper or another tray.  We do, on the other hand, always have room for some extra firewood . . .

The Many, the Less and the One

 The Innermost House Facebook page is a favourite haunt of mine, a wonderful place for discussions and meetings of minds.

Recently, someone had asked about Diana Lorence’s culinary habits (she has just one cast-iron pot in which all the hot meals for Michael and herself are cooked).

This gave rise to the following narrative by Diana’s friends who look after the Facebook page:

Diana says she can't cook. Never could. She couldn't stand recipes for meals or patterns for sewing or anything else like that when she was growing up, and she always got frustrated trying to do the step-by-step things that came easily to others. She did choose to prepare their meals through all the years before IH [Innermost House], but she says it always felt like an interruption.
She says when they first moved to IH her cooking got WORSE. I don't mean it didn't taste good or anything like that, I mean it FRUSTRATED her more. HAVING to simplify made it HARDER. 
So Michael just quietly took over, and replaced the FEW things she was trying to do in place of the MANY things she used to do, and just did ONE thing instead. ONE pot. ONE bowl. ONE beautiful piece of fruit, or whatever. Well Diana wasn't going to stand that for long, so she took over the cooking again. But she was able to stay with the ONE idea, and she has truly enjoyed "cooking" ever since.

This account stopped me in my tracks, and sent a shaft of light shining through into what had hitherto been an area of confusion.

“Less is more,” they say, but it’s a question of breaking through.

To have many things is burdensome but is a solution of sorts.  A mother’s approach to the challenge of accommodating a growing family with all their toys and hobby gear and sports equipment and kitchen paraphernalia and electronic gizmos and books and clothes and shoes etc etc might quite understandably be to move to a bigger house.  To do that the family gets a bigger mortgage and to finance this the mother needs to take a job.  In order to go out to work she needs a car, a child-minder, formal clothes and shoes, a briefcase, and an inexhaustible supply of tights.  Tired at the end of the office day and after carrying out her second career as a taxi-driver to take the children to and from all the activities that either allow her to be out at work or that simply seemed a good idea now she has a car, she turns to ready-meals and take-out pizzas because there is no time to cook from simple basic ingredients, or even shop for them.  She has to join Weight-Watchers and a gym because she has put on so much weight spending her entire life behind a desk or the wheel of a car eating principally pizza.  There is certainly no time to clean at home, so she employs a cleaner, and begins to offer financial incentives to the children to tidy their rooms and meet school achievement goals, since there seems no other way to motivate them.  She gets more and more tired and always lives out of credit cards and an overdraft.

The Many has swollen into a tyranny.

She looks at the possibility of Less.  Cut back on take-out meals and stop the cleaner, to save some money.  Wear one pair of tights over another when both are laddered.  Less is not more.  Less is exhausting and horrendously complicated.  Now she has to cook like a chef as well as run a taxi-service and manage a business and juggle the childcare.  Oh, and sex!  Marriage!  Remember that?

But if Less makes life so difficult, surely the solution is striving for More – achieving by some means the Many.

And then she decides, on what looks at first like a dangerous whim, to choose the One.  To just be a home-maker.  She does the arithmetic and it dawns on her that her entire salary went on the car, the smart clothes, the activities compensating for a parent with no time to play in the woods or by the sea, the expensive take-out meals, Weight-watchers and the gym, child-care and the cleaner, and bribing her children.

Opting for the One, she discovers a world of freedom and creativity.  She discovers it is entirely possible to house their family comfortably in a much smaller house, provided they don’t try to house a load of clutter as well.  She finds to her surprise that the occupation of a home-maker on one income requires all the ingenuity, strategy, intelligence, planning and intellectual activity her office job ever did, and more.  Far from being intellectually deadening, it requires every brain-cell she can bring to the task – and faith and prayer as well.

This is not an anti-feminism rant.  It’s just an example from modern life of the Many, the Few and the One.  I'm not saying every woman is called to be a home-maker, I'm saying feel along the threads until your fingers find what is the One for you, and let the others go.  The Many is a modern solution proving unsustainable; it’s destroying the Earth and eating human souls away from the core.  The Many is the solution of Mammon.

The Less feels like deprivation – trying to do too much with too little.  But if, instead of back-tracking from the Less and reverting to the Many we push on through to the One – at that point we find peace; we learn how to make the singing bowl sing.

The teachings of Jesus are often taken to be primarily doctrinal points, where I think He meant them on a more practical level than we have commonly applied them.

For example, when He says: “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things! But one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her,” He is sometimes represented as meaning “paying attention to religious teaching is better than doing housework”.  But I think it’s a teaching about the Many, the Less and the One.    Martha has opted for the Many; she wants Mary at least to get off her backside and engage with the Less.  But Jesus knows the value of the One; it is the pearl of great price.

The parable of the Pearl of Great Price is indeed another example of the same principle, a man who traded in the Many (“all he had”) not for the Less (“goodly pearls”), but for the One (“the pearl of great price”) that can satisfy.

“If thine eye be single,” Jesus says, “thy whole body shall be full of light.” (here and here)

Beleaguered by the exigiencies of debts, commitments, physical ailments, wrecked relationships, impossible demands of budget and schedule, and ecological doom-scenarios, the modern world concedes that in the Many it has bitten off more than it can chew.  It looks hopefully to the Less for workable compromise – consumerism, yes, but eco-consumerism; or ready-meals, yes, but from the budget store not the high-end.  But the Less is often a no-mans-land of drudgery and deprivation.

The vision of simplicity is about pushing on through the Less to the One.  That’s why I find Innermost House so exciting; because I have come across very, very few people with the clear sight to discern the way let alone make the journey: but Michael and Diana Lorence have.

In choosing the One, we do not (have to) become sadhus and reject the material world, or choose ugly utilitarianism over beauty, far from it.  It’s not about asceticism, not the Skellig Rock Party.

Choosing the One is about looking deeply into our circumstances until we discern the melody of possibility within them, the fountainhead of grace and effectiveness. 

The ancient Greeks had two understandings of time.  One is Chronos (the god who ate his own children), the relentless face of time – “doing time”, packed schedules, over-commitment, harried and hurried, pushed from pillar to post time.  Kairos is the other kind of time, wu-wei time, being in the right place at the right moment doing the right thing – effective time.  In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tsu says, “In action, watch the timing”.  It’s about finding our place in the dance of creation, learning the steps of life’s pattern and choreographing something beautiful in the everyday.

A favourite passage of the Tao for me and lots of other people is Chapter 11:

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.

Finding the way to the One involves giving permission for space and emptiness to arise – leaving room for the light to shine in.

At the Laundromat, the assistant often urges customers, “Don’t pack the machine so full; you have to leave room for the water.”

Choosing the One leaves room for flow in a life.

All men will come to him who keeps to the one,

For there lie rest and happiness and peace.

Passers by may stop for music and good food,

But a description of the Tao seems without substance or flavor.

It cannot be seen, it cannot be heard,

And yet it cannot be exhausted.

(Tao Te Ching Ch.35, tr. Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)

 Sigh.  This idea is so big, and so dominates my life, I am painfully aware I have expressed it badly.  It is my One Sky, but how to put the sky into a box so I can make it my gift to you?  Look at the blue is all I can say.  The blue will  maybe teach you; it did me.

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365 366 Day 49 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here) 

I don’t really like throwing things like this away, because wise thrift finds a use for such odds and ends.  There’s a Victorian rhyme my memory has now lost the threads of about someone heedlessly chucking out a heel of dry bread, and then at some later point descending into poverty and living to recall with regret the crust they threw away; an approach to daily life that shaped my upbringing and remains powerful as an inner motivation.

But prudent provision slides all too easily into hoarding clutter -  a heaving tide of flotsam and jetsam retained “just in case”.

Wishing neither to keep nor throw away such debris as is pictured here, I packed them up together with fellow bits and pieces into a large parcel and Freecycled them as a craft kit for bored children to make things with in the holidays.  Unlikely I know, but some harassed parent was actually grateful for these and the rest of the oddments in the bag.

  

Sweeping the steps

 Li Erh grew up in China around six hundred years before Jesus was born in Palestine.  He worked for the King of Zhou in Louyang as the keeper of the imperial archives, and spent a lifetime immersing himself in study of the ancient and sacred texts, becoming both knowledgeable and wise (two different things occasionally confused).   The great Chinese philosopher Confucius travelled across China to meet him when Li Erh was an old man, and they entered a conversation that went on for several months and considerably influenced some aspects of Confucian thinking.

By the time he got to eighty years of age, Li Erh found the ways of the world failed to grip.  He saw that most people had no interest in forging lives of simple goodness, and the resulting coarseness and shallowness left him cold.  There came a point where he’d had enough, and made the decision to find his way clear, make his home in the quietness and loneliness of the desert, the wilderness, for his remaining years on Earth.  He set off for Tibet.

When he reached the border of Ch’in, one of the guards begged that before he left them he write down and leave behind the legacy of his wisdom; for it was apparent to the guard that they would never see him again.   Accordingly, Li Erh took three days sabbatical from the pilgrimage that would return his soul to the wild and set it free, in which he wrote down his perspective on life.  He wrote on bamboo scrolls, which he gave to the guard; then he continued on his journey, and that was the last meeting with Li Erh recorded in Chinese history.

But they did keep his book.  Treasured it, copied it; in due course translated it into many, many languages.  Its calm wisdom, quiet like deep pools, has steadied and directed souls all this long time.

Li Erh earned many titles and descriptions that grew into titles, but he is best remembered by China’s favourite name for him – in English, The Old Master; in Chinese, Lao Tsu.

His short book, conceived over a lifetime’s thought and study, written down in the span of three days, took its title from the opening words of the two sections into which it falls; together they form a brilliantly terse summary, irreducible minimum description, of its subject matter and contents.  Chapter One, opening the first part of the work, starts with the word Tao (meaning street/path/road/way).  Chapter 38, opening part two, begins with the word Te (meaning innate or natural goodness – virtue).  The people of China recognised this short and precious text as a wisdom classic; so they added to this succinct enscription the word Ching – meaning classic.

Thus came about Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching, meaning loosely “Classic Text of the Way of Goodness”.

Why I am telling you all this is because this book has been very important in the development of my own thinking and understanding, and I want to write something here making reference to its thought (but I’ll do that tomorrow or this post would become far too long). 

I wanted you to be clear about what the Tao Te Ching is, because many of my readers are Christian, and some Christians are suspicious of the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching, fearing that its philosophy may be a rival to the Christian creeds, and fearing that reference to the Tao Te Ching may imply disloyalty to the sacred text of the Bible.

In England we have a radio show called Desert Island discs, where people in the public eye come as guest on the show to share which favourite pieces of music they would take with them to their desert island, should they ever be thus exiled.  They are also allowed to choose one item or object to take with them (Enoch Powell, for some reason I remember, said he would take a fish kettle – very practical!) and in addition to the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, one book of their choice.

In such circumstances, I would take the Tao Te Ching.

But I want you to grasp, it’s not like the Koran or the Book of Mormon; it’s not a rival Bible.

When I was training for the ordained ministry, we were assessed on our reading (list, I mean, not reading aloud), our preaching, and some other aspects of our “performance” I’ve now forgotten, marked on a simple ABC system.  I got straight As for all of it except preaching.  My preaching was marked down to a B because of one particular trial sermon I had preached.   In it, I made reference to a recent (then – back in the 1990s) article published by the Evangelical Alliance, in which they demonstrated the lordship of Jesus by announcing that the Buddha is dead, the prophet Mohammed is dead, but Jesus is alive!

I got into trouble for saying in the sermon that this pronouncement showed merely an ignorance about Buddhism and Islam.  It wasn’t a resurrection contest.  So far as I know Jesus is the only one supposed to be the Messiah, supposed to be the Son of David, supposed to rise from the dead.  No-one else has ever claimed to be Lord of Creation, the Way the Truth and the Life.  There are no other candidates for the post of Cosmic Logos of God.   Suspicion and denigration of the faith path of others, mocking their leaders, shows merely a blinkered, small-minded view of life that betrays embarrassing lack of intellectual sophistication.

So I got a B for my sermon for being rude about the Evangelical Alliance.

This then clears the path for what I want to write tomorrow – about the Many, the Few and the One.

Backson.

(You do know about Backson?)

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365 366 Day 48 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here) 

Oh look.  Another small jug.  What can I say?

  

Salt - of the sea not the earth.

There are some things in life that create a particular kind of pleasure – a quiet, deep satisfaction.  Something at the very centre says, “Oh, good.”

This happens even to God (you can read about it in the first chapter of Genesis).

The most recent time it happened to me was when Hebe came home from Plenty excited about her New Find.   They have started stocking sea salt from our own sea – here, in St Leonards!   How local, how natural, how sensible – how entirely, spot-on perfectly appropriate – is that?!

They sell it in a dear little glass jar.  Or, if you want more than one, dear little glass jars.

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365 366 Day 47 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here) 

Well yes, that's what you thought: a small jug.  Very pretty.  Bought on an impulse.  Went to charity shop.

  

Day 46

This week has been full of Tangled Snarl, but oh I have a plan.  I’m going to bottle it, all of it, and when that bleep bleep asterisk asterisk individual FINALLY makes it here to fit our kitchen, when he’s not looking I’m going to uncork the whole f-ing bottle of Tangled Snarl and silently insert it in the kitchen right there beside him.  And shut the door.  So, ner!

Meanwhile, whose idea was it to dig up the clothes line at the same time we had no washing machine?  Gah.  The bleep dang fandangled fleeces are dripping dismally from the banisters into the hall because the airer over the bath is already full of washing.

She throws in the towel.

Dreary.

Urgh.

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365 366 Day 46 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here) 

Well, I’m impressed by this!  Two shelves of the bookcase, more than 60 books, cleared in one go!  Back in December we had a book launch party for The Hardest Thing To Do.  We go to a big church, and advertised the party there, as well as inviting just about everyone we knew.  We imagined about a hundred and fifty people would come, and everyone would buy a book – except maybe couples would buy just one for their household.  Accordingly we got in enough food for a hundred and fifty people, and bought a lot of books.  And then only thirty-five people came, and we sold only fifteen books!!  That was okay because we had a good time dressed up as medieval people and enjoying our funky medieval music and generally having fun.  Some of our friends and family did a brilliant job convincing folk to take home extra-large doggy-bags of food – so then we were just left with all these books.  I’ve sold a few and given lots away, but even so we had plenty left.  So the Badger has taken them away to sell in Christian bookshops.  May they be blessed and find happy homes!

February . . . cold . . .

I have hit the February Slump.  I have become a Grumbling Slug, succumbing to over-use of electricity and over-consumption of fat.  This very day all that has to stop!!!

I took a funeral years and years ago for a woman whose family, so her next of kin told me, spent their summers in England but over-wintered in Italy in the sun.

One of the best ideas I ever heard.

I have had a number of vague dreams along the lines of “If I could do everything differently . . .”

In one of these scenarios I live in a trailer under a huge tree, in a woodland holiday trailer park.  The capital outlay on housing is tiny, there are site fees but no council tax; and the requirement (as it’s a holiday home) of living in it only ten months of the year, moving out for January and February, obliges me to also keep a time-share apartment in the hottest most exotic holiday destination I can find – palm trees, silver sand, azure skies, glorious seas . . . I can see it all . . .

Meanwhile, deep in the English drear it is almost morning.  Sitting in bed in my flannel pyjamas and vest (English vest – underwear – not a waistcoat!) with a fur as well as a fleece blanket on top of the very warm down quilt Mama gave us in the nick of time this cold winter, blowing my nose (or should I say "blowig by dose"), I have opened this card that has been waiting.   Here it is on the nightstand by our bed in the still-dark morning, in front of the Gruffalo calendar that lets you know just how childish I am.  

The Badger left it on our bed when he went back to Oxford yesterday.

Must be a honey-badger.

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365 366 Day 45 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here) 

I got this to improve myself.  Along with some inspirational CDs that I could play while I fell asleep, so I would go on improving long into the night.  I thought they hadn’t worked as I seem to be just as selfish and crabby as ever, but maybe the CDs had a subtle influence, subliminally causing me to be altruistically generous and that’s what made me give this away. 

Thought kitchen. Still cooking.

Oh.  In the kitchen of my mind several pots are boiling and there are thought-pies and dream desserts everywhere half-constructed or at least begun – but I cannot see even a snack in a sufficiently finished state to put on a plate and serve up to you.  Gah.  I am caught on the hop. I’m still thinking.

What about you?

What are you thinking about today?

Any spare thoughts left over to share here?

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365 366 Day 44 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here) 

This book was borrowed, so technically it should have been leaving the house anyway.  But its owner lent it to me about four years ago, when we lived in a completely different part of the country, and it just came along on the voyage somehow.  Part of the 365 clear-out has been to round up the various book, CDs, DVDs etc I have borrowed and get them back to their rightful owners.  It frees up more space than I expected!

When I returned it I did also add a book of my own as a gift, and I have been trying to do that in general with the Exodus of Borrowed Items.

The little stone on it is just there so the label with my friend's name and address is not displayed far and wide on the internet.

   

From space

 Yesterday and the eve of yesterday, were bedevilled with snarky, touchy conversations and correspondence . . . jealousy . . . touchiness . . . intransigence.  Glad to have left those hours behind.

When I was a church pastor I encouraged my church council members to ask themselves periodically, “How much does this matter on the Earth as viewed from Space?”

Years before that, as a young mother of a brood of children, I’d come across the words of Sigmund Jähn, speaking passionately about our beautiful blue planet, its fragility and the marvel of its uniqueness: in all our solar system, all our universe, the only one:

Before I flew I was already aware of how small and vulnerable our planet is; but only when I saw it from space, in all its ineffable beauty and fragility, did I realize that human kind's most urgent task is to cherish and preserve it for future generations.- Sigmund Jähn 

And it has been entrusted by God to our care.  In the book of Genesis the story relates how God gave us dominion over the Earth – made us lords of creation.  And so we are, even if we would rather not be; how the earth fares is in our hands.

But in the Bible, authority is seen not as exploitation but as accountability.  To be the lords of creation and have dominion over the Earth doesn’t mean we can do what we like with the Earth; it means we are answerable to God for what we did with the Earth, how we carried out the trust He gave us.  Uh-oh.

This matters.  Not many other things do.

So when I have a day like yesterday, reeking of Mammon’s aggressiveness and pseudo-sophistication, I recall in my mind’s eye this picture from the space shuttle Voyager 1:

This was the picture it took as it looked back, before it turned and left our solar system for the last time.

The Earth is that blue dot, caught in the sunbeam there.

There are some things I do that are part of that radiance, that heartbreaking beauty.  Nothing else is very important.

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365 366 Day 43 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here) 

Oh, this is an excellent book!  Old now, coming out of Sheila Cassidy’s pioneering work at St Luke’s Hospice back in the 1980s.  Full of wisdom.  I have found it helpful and inspiring, and taken to heart the teaching it imparts, enlarging my own window on reality to include its point of view.