Tulip Me Up!

It's a good job I am not religious about Mothers' Day because something has gone terribly wrong in here. I have seen all the lovely stuff in the magazines about Mums having breakfast in bed or lolling about all day in their dressing gowns. This has NOT happened here. Firstly - we have a severe shortage of offspring today. Some nonsense about University. So I am building up an intimate relationship with Moonpig. For those who don't know - Moonpig is an Internet card sending company which allows people to order and send cards without mauling about in Clintons or picking up a biro. They also guarantee next day delivery for those who despite numerous subtle texts, wake up in a cold sweat 24 hours before deadline day and no way of getting to Town to slam a card in the post box. Moonpig is blessed by all children who live away from home.

Secondly, the NHS insisted on calling staff into work today so the only other person who could spend the day serving my every need is at the hospital for the morning serving lots of other people's needs. Fair enough - they do pay him (a bit) and he left some flowers by proxy before he went.

So, in the absence of anyone to call me Mother - it is my turn to call someone else Mother so Aged Parent - who has had a chest infection and could probably live without a partaay is forced to come and eat Sunday lunch with us (I have to say - for someone with a post infection appetite - she did very well.) So that was all very nice. 

I appreciate all the lovely thoughts and messages, I really do and some of the things I have read on Facebook are equally edifying. However (and it's only a small however) I am sometimes a little disturbed by this Mother's Day juggernaut. I love my kids more than life itself and I don't say that lightly but I am aware that today is also full of people who have lost their children (Aged Parent being a case in point) and those who have never had children - sometimes longed for - sometimes not. Also there are those for whom the term "Mother" means only sadness and maybe even abuse. There are also those who have lost a much loved Mother. Today is a really painful day for lots of people. I am not saying that I want to rain on all the happy mothers' parades. We don't have to apologise for being who we are and Motherhood is a fantastic thing.  Just, a bit of sensitivity, you know and also remember that the fact that we are mothers doesn't make us any better than anyone else. Women, sometimes get to feel bad about themselves if don't fit cultural norms (whatever one of them is) and Christian women sometimes seem to suffer more than most but we are loved - as we are  - whether we have given birth or not. We are whole and complete in the God who loves us. We have nothing to prove and no Hallmark Card to live up to. 

And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power (Col 2)

What to do about Brexit?

So have you decided? Do we stay or do we go? I think I know which way I will go but I don't think I have anyone else to that for that. I mean no-one seems to have the faintest idea do they? Not the news, not the newspapers (all of whom have taken the stance that their owners have taken and are the writing the news accordingly, which is what they usually do) So then you look at the personalities involved. Who do I trust? You see, for me, it doesn't help that the initial gang looked like what my Grandad used to call "The End of the Pier Show."

See what I mean? Hello! - normal people out here trying to make an informed decision. Then when we look at the politics. There's Michael Gove who makes every teacher I know make a sort of involuntary noise like a balloon being let down. And Priti Patel who seems unable to make a full sentence on Question Time. And that woman who never blinks. Then there's Ian Duncan Smith. A man whose plan for reducing the benefits bill seems to involve making a lot of sick people work until they die. We haven't even got to George Galloway - singlehandedly adding to the gaiety of the nation with that hat and pronouncements about "No" not always meaning "No". But then it's not as if anyone on the other side is any better. George Osborne says leaving will harm the economy. But he doesn't know. How can he know? One - because we have never done it and Two because The Economy seems to do what it flamin well wants most of the time which accounts for Osborne's permanently surprised expression I suppose.
Then there's  Immigration. Europe is making such a cock up of the whole thing and we are one of the few countries who can pull up the drawbridge and back off from it. But it doesn't feel right to do that does it? While these poor people are fleeing from these homicidal maniacs,  just silently thanking God for the English Channel and then going about our own jolly business seems a bit off to me.
Also there's security. Apparently, if we withdraw, Interpol will take their ball home and not tell us about possible terrorist attacks and will laugh behind their hands when it happens. Seems a bit selfish. So much to think about. 
And finally and it's not finally because there is ages to go yet - Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that if we leave Scotland will be demanding another Independence Referendum. No. Please Lord No. Not again.

The Introverted Charismatic

I have read his and enjoyed it - indeed I have but I have been thinking about why I liked it. I'm basically your go-to person for introversion. I like people but sometimes I find them a bit intimidating. Most of the time I would rather be pootling around at home and doing a bit of reading. However, I have attended a charismatic church since I was fifteen. This is despite the fact that some of the most terrifying words in the English Language for me are "Turn to the person next to you and..." or "Tonight we are going to do something a bit different." 

When I was a bit younger, it used to bother me that people who were more comfortable with some of the more energetic expressions of worship would sometimes look down on me. I have lost track of how many people have come over to me during times of worship and offer to pray for my release. It used to make me feel so bad about myself I would sometimes toy with offering to help these people release their heads from their shoulders. Those days are long gone and I am who I am much more often now. (For the record the most profound God-like prayer that anyone ever prayed for me came in the middle of a meeting when a lady came up and said "Can I pray for you please? I promise I won't go mad.")

 

So why would I choose to be in a church  where there will always be a possibility that things might become a bit - er jolly? Well first of all, I do have to qualify things a bit. I have been in charismatic meetings where the Bible is a foreign land because we are just going to groove along and see what happens. Ain't going to work for me I'm afraid. I need a certain amount of structure and I am there to learn - from other people and from the Bible. If there doesn't come a point when you put your flag down, it is unlikely that you are my kind of church. That being said though, why would a shy retiring sort like myself be here at all? Firstly, just because I don't always like it does that mean it is wrong? Sometimes I think I need to ask myself - do I need to respond to God here? Is it in a public way? Do I need to support someone else as they respond? And sometimes the answer God wants from me is "Yes". 

Secondly, I think I have to be where the action is. By that I mean where God is speaking to people - today. Where people are prayed for and healed. Where people see miracles. I tend not to get intimidated these days if my worship doesn't fit your worship and graciously I would say that before you tell me that I need to be a bit more like you,  you perhaps need to be working on your own eye speck while I work on this whacking great log that is blocking my vision. Mark Tanner, the author of this book says that people like me are a gift to the church. I think I am probably more the sort of gift like bath cubes or a vase that doesn't fit anywhere that you think you can probably do without. But God says not. He says that us quiet ones have our place and it is with you - worshiping him out of my truth. Now put your maracas down and lets get on as equals.

Trying to get hold of it

So I'm casting my mind back to the mid seventies. I'm in church on Sunday nights wrestling manfully with a tambourine that has taken against me and a floppy hat that keeps going wonky. And we are singing. This was pre Hillsong, pre Matt Redman and this was considered quite funky. 

 "The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.

 The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, is mighty, is miiiiiiiighteeee!"

(Thanks very much - I'm here all week)

It's from Zephaniah 3. How does it feel? Thinking that God "Joys Over You With Singing?" Most of the time I don't think the God looks at me and thinks - "There's someone I would like to Joy Over." It's the age old challenge - learning to see ourselves through God tinted glasses. I need to remind myself - I don't deserve this yet there it is. The mightiest mighty God - rejoices and joys - over me and over you. Just because he is who he is. It helps I think, to get a hold of that. Just thought we needed reminding. Dunno why.

Thank you

Hello, just a small shout out to says thanks for all your good wishes etc. I am feeling much better now but it was really horrible for a while - even my knees hurt. I am not one of those people who bangs on the doctor's door demanding antibiotics all the time but I gave it some thought this time tbh. Anyway much better now and hopefully will get back to a bit of writing this week. Am leaving you with photo of my handsome son playing in Battle of The Bands in York. The music isn't exactly my kind of thing, if I am being totally frank but the young people seem to like it. Also this is on it's way. Hurrah! Just loving these books.

Unwell

Chest infection
Can't eat
Can't sleep
Feeling very sorry for myself.
Unable to write
Struggling with will to live.
Hopefully back if survival proves possible (seeming unlikely at the moment)
Dog unconcerned

All the Films

Just a couple of films I thought I might tell you about. I think there is some decent stuff out there at the moment, even without considering the best film franchise ever made (Star Wars - disappointed that you had to ask) The Force Awakens is an excellent addition to the franchise but that is just really my personal happy place and I don't expect everyone to live there.

In a slightly more adult vein we also went to see "The Big Short". This is a film about the world banking crash which kind of started as a housing crash in the USA. There were fiendishly clever people around at the same time who saw the crash coming and bet huge sums of money on it happening - therefore profiting from the misery that was heaped upon innocent people who lost their houses and their jobs. I am not sure that I am selling this that well at the moment but it's an excellent, quirky and even funny film. It's quite complicated (well very complicated) but it doesn't treat you like an idiot and tries to explain what is happening - not always successfully in my case. It also has a heart, there is a great moment when suddenly the speculators know that the crash is going to make them very rich and the Brad Pitt character who has helped them get this far stops them celebrating and reminds them what is happening. By the end you will want to damage a politician, which is a bit sweeping but none of the people behind the mess has ever been jailed for any of it you know.

I took quite a lot of talking into Room as I had started the book and found it too distressing and had to ditch it. It charts the relationship between a mother and her son as they live through almost unthinkable circumstances. The son has been born to a girl who has been kidnapped held as a slave in a shed in a back garden for seven years. She has protected him for five years from the reality of their situation by telling him that his reality is the only reality and there are no other people in the world except for him, her and "Old Nick". He is protected from what Nick comes and does to his mother every night by the wardrobe she keeps him in as he sleeps. But as he begins to grow, she realises that he is in danger and things will have to change. I can't recommend this enough. It doesn't sound too promising I know but it really is - as so many others have said - life affirming. If you can go, you probably should.

There was a lot of fuss about Grandma but I found it a bit thin really. It was ok I suppose but a bit too right-on for me. Lily Tomlin is a cool lesbian nana who is also a poet (why are the people in these films always poets? No one ever works on a fish counter) I think it was supposed to be about love and mourning but I thought it was more about just whinging a lot. 

Bit Busy

This has been a quite busy few days. Work is a bit bonkers. People are taking the last of their holidays and then people are off sick so we are doubly short staffed. It is a bit wild as they say in France. All HOH and I are managing to do at the moment is work, eat, sleep and go to the flicks. (well there's good stuff out and there is nothing on the telly) 
HOH is a bit worked up this week because they are making him go on his least favourite course. This is called "Breakaway" and it is to make sure that if NHS workers get pinned down by patients, they know how to safely...er Break-away. HOH hates this for two reasons. Firstly, although it is a very necessary course for some areas of the NHS, his area is rehab - mainly of elderly people who have had falls. If any of his patients made a lunge for him, they would fall over again and need another hip replaced and the waiting list is very long as we all know. This makes this scenario unlikely and therefore a waste of time. Also, for some strange (yet, to me, highly amusing) reason, the course leader always puts HOH with some one who is a bit TOO enthusiastic. (Probably as a punishment for being so stroppy) Last time, in the role play bit, HOH found himself being squared up to by someone taking it all way too seriously and trying to drag him to the floor. All the family have asked if we can buy tickets to the course just to watch HOH shout "What DO you think you are doing?" to some poor man who is only trying to make it all a bit more realistic.
I have had a better time of it however because I got to go to a meeting at the National Marine Aquarium. Now the meeting was boring (even though it was ESSENTIAL - if my Board of Trustees are reading) but the free tour at the end was brilliant. I learnt loads. I was running from tank to tank like a five year old. Fish are spooky, I think yet somehow likeable. Anyway, this is what I found out.

• There are some new sharks there called lemon sharks which sounds a bit wussy, until you see them swim above your head and see that they are the size of small outhouses. I could have sworn that I heard the dum-dum Jaws music at one point. Apparently in the 20 years that the Aquarium has been opened, the sharks have never bitten the divers on their weekly tank cleaning. The same cannot be said for the unlucky one eyed barracuda who bumped into one of the sharks and annoyed her when she was felling a bit peckish. Fortunately it happened overnight, so no children were traumatised. 
• Also, the only hard part of an octopus is the beak so they can get through very small holes, which another aquarium discovered to their cost when their octopus managed to get into the next tank and munch on all the pretty fish. 
• There is also a 30 year old turtle in there whose epilepsy is controlled by dog medicine. 
• Did you know sea horses mate for life? And when they wake every morning, they do a little love dance to say hello to their partners? Suggest it to your partner. See if goes down as well as it did to mine. Especially if he is on his way to the Breakaway course.

January. Pah!

Psalm 31 v 15
"You are my God. My times are in your hands"

In the words of the old Pilot song. "January - sick and tired..you've been..." Sorry can't remember the rest. ( I think it was released in about 1975 - no wonder I can't remember it. I'm sure it's on YouTube if you want to hear it) Is it just me or has January been particularly bleaugh? Firstly all these celebrities keeling over. David Bowie for one. I'm not front of the queue when it comes to loving Bowie. I never find myself at a loose end on a Friday night and think - let's put a bit of Bowie on. But I do know that he meant an awful lot to a lot of (admittedly sometimes quite strange) people. Then Alan Rickman. This made me sad because no one seemed to have any kind of bad word for him. Everyone said how lovely he was, which somehow makes it sadder. Then there was Glen Frey from the Eagles, who I don't hold a particular candle for but was part of America's musical royalty. And then today, Terry Wogan. Again, a man who everyone has said was exactly like he appeared on the telly. Funny, generous, open. I have very fond memories of his morning radio programme. At a time in my early twenties, when my life was in a bit of low level turmoil, when I had to decide if I wanted to move house with my family and church life was a bit of a struggle, I would switch the radio on and Terry Wogan used to make me smile and put things into perspective. It's a rare skill. 
And, on top of all this desperate people are still getting into tiny boats and placing their precious babies on their knees while being pushed out to sea, only to find, sometimes within  half an hour that the boats are useless and a terrible fate is rising up to meet them.
I have nothing to say of any worth here, except perhaps to the lady who sat next to me in the hairdressers and announced to the room that if we took any more in, this country would sink. I think you will find that we have hardly actually taken anyone as yet so I don't think our buoyancy is in any doubt at the moment. Also to those who considered boycotting peace talks about Syria for quite understandable reasons. I am so glad to see them change their minds. However unpalatable it may be, talking to monsters, may be the only hope at the moment. 
January has been a very sobering month for one reason or another. The verse at the top of the blog is one that I have loved since I was a young slip of a thing - to the point of making a little notice with it on with a printing set. I then covered it with sellotape to protect it and stuck it on my dressing table mirror - simpler times. It helped me then and it helps me now. It's there to help you if you want. No pressure if not.

Leaving Kindness

Sunday morning, getting ready and I usually listen to Garry Richardson on Sportsweek. (I considered saying that Sunday mornings are spent in prayer and prep but I listen to Garry Richardson on Sportsweek - do you want the truth or not? ) This week he was paying tribute to his friend - Gerald Williams the tennis commentator who had died that week. Richardson told the story of how, when he was starting out as a commentator, Williams gave up his own trip to America to give Richardson his first chance. Billie Jean King shared about how when she was a seventeen year old visiting Wimbledon for the first time, Williams sneaked her on to Centre Court for a clandestine first look. Henry Winter, the sports journalist spoke of his legendary generosity of spirit. All of them spoke of the same thing - his kindness. In fact Garry Richardson was so overcome when speaking about his friend, he lost it for a few brief moments and struggled to carry on. This is highly unusual for this battle-hardened sports reporter and I was quite startled for a second.  
Gerald Williams was also a Christian - Billie Jean called it being "very religious" and his Christianity informed everything he did. He wasn't soft - just generous and thoughtful. I just think that that would be such a terrific legacy - to be remembered for your amazing kindness. It's a challenge that left me quite emotional to be honest.

Anyway just to finish with a photo of Aged Parent celebrating her birthday on Sunday. We booked a meal in a nice place but she wanted to go to the local Wetherspoons because she got to go into the charity shops on the Barbican, thus ensuring the perfect day - shopping followed by a fish and chip dinner. Do not bother me with your namby pamby meals - it is my birthday and I am going to boogie.
Happy Birthday AP!

Turning The Tide

Do you ever feel that it is too late? That you are too old and that you have neither the strength or just the general wherewithal to change things. 
A friend (with a medical qualification I'll have you know), once told me that after a certain age it becomes harder to lose any extra weight that you have been carrying. Doctors aren't sure why - possibly a slowing down of metabolism. Possibly, we just go past a tipping point. 

I think we can think that about our lives and our circumstances.That there is just too much happening, that we don't have enough in us to change anything. Things are just too big, they are just happening to you and you don't have enough strength to change anything.

Well good news my faithful companion!! We may not be able to turn things around but......

“The hand of God has turned the tide!
        The hand of God is raised in victory!
        The hand of God has turned the tide!”

I'll tell you, if I have anything that I still NEED to get hold of it's that God is God and he can do stuff - God type stuff. Things that God can do and wants to do. All of which I cannot do. Anyway this is a happy thing and it does your faith good. It's all in Psalm 118 and there's lots there. Go and have a look. Fill your boots.