A Tough Fruit

Galatians 5:22New International Version (NIV)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

These things are known as the Fruit of the Spirit or as the Message calls them - the things that happen when we live God's way. There are some big groovy concepts here. LOVE! JOY! PEACE! These are all huge things that you can spend a lifetime trying to attain and then die having failed miserably. (Joke) (Bad Joke) I got to thinking about one of the fruits which is a bit unassuming looking but may be the most muscular of them all. 

It takes courage to be kind. 

This morning I was absorbed in the newspaper and my other half was staring out of the window. "I'm just going to see Stan - he's just standing in the street." Then HOH disappears out the front door. Stan is our elderly neighbour. He hasn't had a good year health wise but is doing ok now. HOH was just concerned that he might have come over a bit peculiar and wanted to know if he needed help.  HOH is very good at this sort of thing. He just sees something and reacts kindly. As it turned out, Stan was just a bit puffed and didn't need HOH. 
I'm not sure I would have reacted as quickly, not because I don't care but because I lack courage. I think before I put my head over the parapet. What if Stan doesn't want help? What if I'm embarrassed? What if he reacts angrily? (I have never heard Stan react angrily to anything - I didn't say that it was logical did I?)
It takes courage to be kind because kindness can sometimes be perceived as weakness. Choosing not to wipe the floor with someone and giving them another chance can mark you out as someone who can't hack it or someone who is scared of confrontation. 
At the other end of the scale, it takes courage to join an aid convoy to take much needed relief to a war torn country. Kindness there may actually lose you your life in the most horrific of ways.

I suppose like most fruits it grows when it is cultivated. You do it again and again and it becomes easier. It becomes a way of thinking to say the kind, inclusive thing rather than shrink back and agree with the unkind majority.  You begin to learn that it is ok to see if someone needs you or not. These worst thing that can happen is that they can tell you to sling your hook. A while back I came across an elderly lady who was sitting among the dog biscuits in Sainsbury's. After a fair bit of prevaricating I asked if she felt unwell. She said that she was fine thank you and to leave her alone (with added F words to covey to me how strongly she felt) So I did. No harm done. 
And kindness is a Fruit of the Spirit - so God helps us to do it by giving us the desire to help. The Message translates kindness as

a sense of compassion in the heart 

which is really good. Just not always that easy to do. 

Learning

I have been to London. Yes I have and I have learnt things. I went to the Association of Christian Writers Writers' Day about Christian Fiction. It was truly interesting and I took notes and everything. Some of what I learnt was less than interesting except to me, but, since when have I ever applied that filter to the things that appear here?

1. I have learnt that I cannot "network" or make polite conversation with people that I don't know. Can I just apologise to all those lovely people who tried to come and chat to me. It's not that I am completely self obsessed. It's just that I was so terrified while you were speaking to me that I couldn't remember anything that you said and therefore had to fall back on talking about myself.
2. I learnt that when I am having a bit of a flush and someone moves your chair from the back of the room by the door with a slight breeze to the front of the room so that we can all be closer or something, it is not terribly Christian to curse under my breath and it was just as easy to do what I eventually did and quietly move the chair back.
3. Lots of people are cleverer and a lot further on than I am.
4. Writing "properly" takes a great deal of organisation  and time  - both to write and to imagine the world that you are going to write about. (I also think that this is true of non fiction writing as well)
5. CS Lewis was really very, very good at what he did.
6. When the lady leading the seminar informs a room full of Christians that she would like them all to get up and dance to Mud's Tiger Feet to illustrate her point that writing needs a brain and a brain is a part of the body and therefore responds well to physcical activity, a good proprtion of the room would have rather scooped their own eyes out with a spoon. (I did better than I would usually do at this sort of thing. Firstly because I was at the back and secondly, it is a little known fact that when I was twelve in the early seventies, I loved Mud and was actually engaged to Ray Stiles their bass gutarist. This was so little known that Ray Stiles was unaware of it as well but it was a nice nostalgic three minutes for me.)

Anyway, many thanks to Penelope Wilcock and Tony Collins for their kindness and for a thought provoking day and to everyone else who put the whole thing together. There is a possibility - however small, that this may have been quite an important day for me.

Tres, Tres Occupe

What a weekend. All go. This is me and my colleague Debbie at the British Transport Awards (or something) Never heard of them? No, me neither till we got a nomination. Didn't win but we got a trip to London, a lovely meal and then a photo with JEREMY VINE!! Actually very lovely man and a good after dinner speaker which is more than I can say for some under Secretary of Transport who also spoke and needs some lessons on how to work a room. (Am quite shocked at how short my hair is. You never imagine yourself to look the way you do in photos do you?)

Also we went to the flicks again.

This is completely fine. If you like Outnumbered then you will like this. There is a lot of kiddy improvisation going on which the adults handle very well.
Rosamund Pike is yummy. David Tennant is yummy. Billy Connolly looks slightly bemused yet yummy. Amelia Bullimore completely steals the whole thing with a fantastic YouTube video that had the cinema I was in shrieking with laughter.
Scotland is impossibly beautiful. It's really funny and I suspect nothing like Gone Girl will be which is Rosamund Pike's next big movie. Gone Girl is an 18 certificate. Nothing gets an 18 certificate these days. What on earth do you suppose is going on there? I shan't be troubling it I don't think.

Lastly, just a little thank you. A couple of posts ago I mentioned how much I was enjoying the Shardlake novels and that I wished I had bought them in paper form. Well a friend saw the post and has given me all his copies! How generous is that? So thanks very much David and (probably more relevant) thanks as well to your Mrs who is insisting on you decluttering a bit (well a lot)

Right, I am off to try Grantchester on catch up. Dunno anything about it. Will give it a go.

A New Venture

The weather is changing here in Devon, a bit misty in the mornings now and a bit chilly until the sun comes out. Probably about time, if only to kill off some of the alien size spiders that have taken up residence in our garden. I heard someone on the radio say that all the house spiders we see are male and that we would know if we saw a female, because apparently they are THREE TIMES THE SIZE OF A MALE SPIDER! How can that be possible? I have been out and given the garden spiders a strict talking to about the rules. "Stay out here and you live, Enter my house and I cannot be held responsible for the consequences - especially if you are thinking about bringing the lady wife with you." Time will tell if they take the wise course of action.

I am looking into starting a new group at church. It's a group for young adults. Too old for youth but not part of the student community - at least not yet. Most of the ideas are still forming in my head but I will get there. The idea is that they spend one night fortnightly at our house - your basic time honoured Bible Study vibe and then, on alternate weeks, go and do something social without me. This way, I get more recovery time from young people and they get time to build community without an old fart in tow. It's a win win I think you will find.

The only slightly jarring note so far is that someone suggested that I might like to think of a name for the group. You see I don't really hold with all this modern naming stuff - you know - ZOOM!, DYNAMIC! or THRUST! you get the idea. Or worse still things that are almost acronyms. IYBIHWC! (If You Build It He Will Come - in case you were wondering) At the moment, I am thinking of going with "Young Adults". I think it has a ring to it.

That's what my heart yearns for now...

...Love and Pride

Off to the pictures AGAIN...what are we like?? We went to see the film "Pride" as a sort of celebration of my brother's life. Four years on 25th September since he died. We thought it was a film he would have loved - there's a good disco bit! Anyway - we loved it too. It's about the 1985 Miners' Strike and a group of gay activists who decide to support them whether they want them to or not. There is a lot of mistrust on both sides but...well you can probably guess how it goes. It is quite formulaic but surprisingly moving. The music is great - especially the way Billy Bragg's Power in a Union is used. It came as a surprise to me that some of the people in the film were real people. You get the titles at the end to tell you what happened to them in real life. Again very moving - don't forget this was as AIDS was just emerging. We cried about four times for various reasons. I'm not I would watch it with a maiden aunt or The Rev Ian Paisley were he still with us. Oh and it's a really good laugh as well