Come let us reason together

Or not.

You may well have been subject to name calling over the last couple of weeks. You may well have not even realised that it was happening. I came across it by default because it happened on Twitter and the Twitter/Lent/Giving Up Thing is just about holding. I'm still not sure why I am doing it - no discernable spiritual effect but I've come this far. Anyway, if you have signed up to the petition calling for marriage to remain as a lifetime commitment between one man and one woman you may or may not know that a link went up on Twitter referring to the petition as a "Homophobe List" One word (sort of)
OUT - PIGGING - RAGEOUS

I need to explain my thoughts - few of which will flow in any particularly coherent way and some of which will probably not be file-able under "Christian Heart-Warming Edifying Things" but it's my blog and I want to say them anyway.
The first thing is that you should not lose too much sleep over this. The link was put up by some of the "right-on" slightly snarky writers who earn their living by proving that they know much more than you could ever possibly hope to. Thank you for allowing me the privilege of reading you as you insult me. I'm very humbled.
When I'm insulted, I usually prefer it to be by someone who knows me from a bar of soap - call me old fashioned. There's very little I can hold my head up about in this life but anyone who knows my life circumstances knows that a Homophobe I ain't.
These are very complicated issues. For me, the Christian church has brought a lot of this on itself by a surfeit of superiority when it was in the majority on this issue. I also think that if, as a Christian, anyone can honestly point at me and attach the word "---phobe" to me about anything or anyone, then I have to have a good look at myself. I am in no position to judge anyone.
Some people are referring to this as persecution. I am not so sure. I think if you spent 15 minutes with a Nigerian Christian or an Egyptian Christian you would be able to have a clearer definition of real persecution and would feel like a bit of a soft nelly.
What concerns me is that tolerance seems to be a bit of a one way street. For many people these are deeply held spiritual views (although again - complicated - there is a huge spectrum of opinion in this area within the church) which really transcend some people in the papers writing opinion pieces. But, as the great philosopher Will Young seemed to suggest on Question Time this week - anyone who disagrees with his viewpoint isn't actually entitled to an opinion, so there. (I don't think he actually said that he would scweam and scweam until he was sick but the threat was certainly there)
See how mad it's made me? I will need to go off and eat several scones to calm down.
The worst thing about all this is that it detracts. It detracts from the central truth. That the Son of God, while I had no interest in him whatsoever, came to the earth and died for me so that I could have my life changed and be saved. So that he could call me friend.


Isaiah 1:18

Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. 

La di da

Well the Internet is back, which is nice. I have spent too much time really catching up on reading blogs etc as well as your actual basic being alive stuff so I haven't really sat down and prayed and thought about what to say really. We are off to church to night as part of a highly scientific experiment to try some different meetings to allow Head of House  to attend more because his shifts make things difficult sometimes. So between then and now, I have to make a chicken cobbler, have a shower (new one fitted yesterday - happy but will miss extra time to do stuff while bath is running)and generally sort stuff for working morning tomorrow. So what I am saying is that I sometimes do this a bit on the hoof. Who knew?
I sometimes wish I was more thoughtful. I don't mean thoughtful in that I always remember birthdays and ring people up when I hear that their cat has died. (I don't really - I am rubbish at that sort of stuff. I always think people will think I am poking my nose in so I sit alone and worry about people silently.) No I mean thoughtful in that I think deeply about my faith. Both inside and outside the box as the young people say. I admire people who do this. The blog  Quiet Way is a brilliant example of this. I may not always come to the same conclusions she comes to but I admire the way that she has taken the time to do so.Unfortunately, I am much more of a La Di Da sort of person. If you haven't seen Annie Hall (and if you haven't you can't possibly be my friend so if you love me you will make the effort) you may not know that La Di Da was a phrase that Diane Keaton would use when she kind of ran out of useful things to say or when she didn't know the answer to something. With her it was endearing. With me - maybe less so. I don't expect to have the answers to everything - That way madness and at the very least an attempt at world domination lies. But some things I think are important enough to develop a useful opinion on and need thought.
The problem, of course, is time. I would love to spend more time in the garden under a home crocheted blanket, sipping whisky (OK - possibly not if I am trying to think) and coming up with deep spiritual insights but in practice, it rarely happens. The only way is to simplify things and then to actually do quiet time. And while I am at it I might just learn how to teach a pig to fly. Frustrated? You bet your bippy. Giving up on it? Nah. Old story. Old solution. Think I might ask God to help me

Sensitive natured people - look away now. Have spent morning in raucous laughter. Daughter has monkey suit onesie. HOH hung it on washing line this morning. Monkey suit has curly tail. Curly tail on back on onesie is never noticed. Curly tail peeping out between washing has highly pornographic appearance - borderline frightening. Monkey suit taken off line sharpish before visit from local constabulary. Do you think its like this in Billy Graham's House?

No not Davey Jones as well. Love the Manchester accent here...

Blog Apologies

This is a mini blog because (a) Virgin - in their wisdom have declined the opportunity to provide us with an Internet service this week. Leaves on the cables or something. Am doing this in spare time at work And (b) we have been in York visiting Fruit of Womb One.
Sooo will do proper "thoughts" next time. However, just a conundrum. Did decide to give up Twitter for Lent. This is causing lots of unforeseen problems. Firstly, people are tweeting me and I am ignoring them which is just plain rude and good manners are important to us Northerners. Secondly, when I informed Head of House of my less than momentous decision he gave me incredulous look and following conversation took place.
HOH: But you are a non conformist! You'll be buying plastic Marys next!
MOI: Extreme. No, I thought it would be a good spiritual discipline.
HOH: You are not supposed to need men to tell you when you need spiritual disciplines.
MOI: Well I just sometimes wonder if Spurgeon would be on Twitter
HOH: Are you joking? You get that Spurgeon quote on your phone every morning. It's the same thing.
MOI: Er sort of. But I do follow Caitlin Moran,The Queen etc. Not all of it very spiritual.
HOH: Pah! *Leaves room singing 200 year old hymns about Freedom from Tyranny etc. etc.*

So all I have decided is that I haven't decided if it is a good or a bad thing for me. Understand that it works for many people. Think God would probably have someone who is decisive either way. Onwards and upwards.

Special Subject

...the bloomin' obvious!

This is our dawg. he's called Morecambe (after Eric) He's not called Malcolm. Do you hear me mad man on the park with a carrier bag full of Stellas? Morecambe - not Malcolm! You find him here doing his favourite thing (other than baiting Lucy - our other dog). Sometimes Morecambe is extraordinarily intelligent. If the phone rings when one person is out of the house, Morcs will run to the front door in full on hysterical mode because he is sure that someone will be leaving to taxi the missing person home. (Morcs doesn't like it when people leave Hargreaves Towers. Actually, he doesn't like it when people arrive at Hargreaves Towers. He is very much in favour of the status quo) Sometimes though and it pains me to be so rude - he is incredibly stupid. He must know that getting too close to the fire, although very pleasant for a while,  can often be quite painful. As it is a real, living fire with real wood/coal on it, it does bite back occasionally and spit out a red hot ember. This is not really a problem as long as we are in the room to keep an eye on it or as long as you are not a Jack Russell with your big, black cute nose far too close to the fire. then it makes him yelp. Big time. The thing is, it doesn't seem to matter how many times we warn him, how many times it happens and even the little singe marks he gets on the end of his nose don't seem to make a difference. When he is in full fire mode, all common sense goes out of the window.
*writer moves almost seamlessly to heavy duty Christian point she wishes to make*


Philippians 4:6-7
The Message
Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the centre of your life.

• Even though I know - not suspect - know that worry makes no difference at all to anything that happens to me. I still insist on taking all my life's circumstances and chewing them all over until they have eaten away at all logical faith and thought.
• I have seen enough in my past to know that God listens to and answers prayer - never in my timing and rarely as I expect but I am never ignored.
• Combining these two facts means that I know that a problem given to God will not be forgotten, God has the capability and the heart to deal with anything that life throws at me and that he is therefore far better positioned to deal with everything I worry about.
• I am meant to give these things to God leaving me with peace to get on with my life

Yet, like a little dog who refuses to take note of what is good for him, no matter how obvious past experience may make this, I continue to make life more difficult for myself than it needs to be (and Lord knows, it's difficult enough anyway)

It's a massive blessing - massive I tell you! Yet will I ever be brave or mature enough to take advantage of it? Is it just me? Seriously, I do my own head in sometimes.

Event of the week. I expect when Catherine Middleton writes that she has stuff like "met Elton John" (obligatory for Royalty it seems) or "Tried on tiara". My event was - "I fell over." Big time. I fell on my face and unusually for me, this is not an exaggeration. I would put a photo up but Nightmare on Elm Street probably has the copyright on that face.  Also, hurt shoulder, knees and ruined trousers and just for added value, managed to do it in front of row of ten teenage girls having photo taken before night out. Many were so horrified by my bloody visage that they actually ran away in horror as I staggered to my feet, trying to say comfortingly "I think it looks worse than it is." (It didn't) Head of House is threatening to only allow me out if I am carrying banner saying. "I have not been thumped. I fell over. Outside. There are witnesses." In case anyone cares. It hurt actually. Quite a lot.

This last bit this week isn't big or clever so if you want to ignore it or are more mature than me, then stop reading now. My friend and yours Prof Dawkins went on the Radio this week to announce that a survey had found that many people who profess to be Christians do not believe in many areas of the Christian faith and some couldn't even name the first book of the New Testament. (Is this supposed to be news?) Anyway, using that logic, as the country's leading atheist and evolutionist the Prof would easily be able to remember the full title of Darwin's Origin of the species wouldn't he? Rev Giles Fraser called him out on it. Enjoy first then you can be sorry later. If you want to.

Quiet Courage

Hello all. Full details of photo above later on. I have finished great book this week. "Operation Mincemeat" by Ben Macintyre. To paraphrase the great Claudia Winkleman. Read it, then call me - you'll love it. It's all about the famous wartime operation to fool Hitler into thinking that the Allies Invasion was bigger than it was and that it was not going to be in Sicily. To do this , they took a dead body of an itinerant miner and dressed him up as an important military bod and dropped his body full of "Top Secret Information" (All of which was lies) near the Spanish coast where the Germans would find it and be fooled by it. Read it. It's much better than that synopsis.
The thing was, that a lot of the plan was quite hopeless really and if anyone in Germany had bothered to take a long hard look at the body or that papers, it was unlikely that they would have been fooled. The fact that they were fooled was down to a few reasons - hubris was one and fear of Hitler was another but one of the main reasons that this false intelligence got through was  Baron Alexis Von Roenne.
He was a hero of WW1, a holder of the Iron Cross, the Head of the German Intelligence Service. He was also a Christian. What was was not known about him was that he was appalled by the racial policies of the Nazis and although he saw himself as a loyal German, he secretly began to work against Hitler. Quietly and without fanfare he skewed the figures of the Allied Forces so that the Germans had the wrong ideas about how many troops were on the way. McIntyre says that "From 1943 onwards he deliberately and consistently inflated the Allied order of battle, overstating the strength of the British and American armies in a successful effort to mislead Hitler and his generals. It was his recommendation that saw the papers on the Allies' decoy body fool Hitler's Generals. He was eventually arrested as a conspirator in the plot against Hitler's life - which he was probably almost certainly not involved in - and hanged on a meat hook and left slowly to die.
I was struck by his day to day courage. Quietly and seen by no one he took small decisions day by day because they were right. No big showy fanfares. No tambourines, no conferences with glossy pamphlets to learn from him about how to be courageous. Just doing it. He certainly wasn't an angel. He was a snob, who as much as anything felt that Hitler was ruining the aristocracy and the inheritance that was his. This makes his courage even more admirable to me. Not waiting until he was perfect to start doing the right thing. Just starting quietly, alone, with only God to see him and trusting that it was the right thing. 
The night before his execution he wrote to his wife
"In a moment now, I shall be going home to our Lord, in complete calm and in the certainty of salvation." Amazing. Ever think you are playing at it? Only me then.
Had a bit of a knock back with the blog this week. Someone sort of made it plain that they thought that my writing wasn't quite, well Christian enough, to be a Christian blog. They weren't trying to be unpleasant at all - just their opinion. But it did rock me back a bit. I read lots of blogs and there are a lot more saintly and ...well orthodox blogs out there and I am aware that I don't always hit the Christian PC button. It bothered me enough to think about packing in. Because I know I can't change. This is not to say that I am not a work in progress but I am what I am as they say. Witness the photo at the top. Remember last Valentines Day when I compared photos of our bedside cabinets? I was so appalled at the state of mine, that I vowed to change my ways. The photo above is exhibit 1 to prove that I haven't changed a bit. Got worse if anything. 
So I'm sort of soldiering on. Hoping I don't offend anyone. Am actually hoping to encourage and amuse you. It's unlikely to get very much holier though. Sorry.
Finally, Witney Houston is dead. So very sad. Witney of the lovely voice. Saw her live once. She spent as much time changing her frocks as on stage but you forgave her everything when she sang. Heard her sing with the Winans and remember thinking this is what heaven will sound like.