Sabbath

So there I was sitting in bed this sunday morning trying to work out in what order to complete my lengthy list of tasks when I was reminded of two passages I'd looked at this week.

Poet, Kathleen Jamie's book Findings was a gift (in many ways) and is the most incredible book. It makes you feel as though you walk around with your eyes closed and only ever see a fraction of what the world has to offer, let alone find any meaning or purpose in it. It's like she holds a perfectly focused pair of binoculars up to life.

In one chapter, on a visit to Stornoway, she muses about the Sabbath...

A friend said to me - we were talking about our stage in life, when we
suddenly discover we are the grown-ups, with children and parents,
even grand-parents to tend to, not to mention pupils, patients, or
clients or employers - that we spend so much time dealing with it all
that there is scarsely time to feel. I walked up the silent road
wondering is I couldn't reconcile myself again to the idea of the
Sabbath, to the day of dreary silence and mutton broth I'd known as
a child, if we couldn't close the shops and still the traffic and institute a
modern, churchless day of contemplation and rest; and if it wouldn't
help us all.

And in The Godbearing Life the authors pose that we would do well to remember the Sabbath and that the question is 'how' not 'should' we find these spaces in ways appropriate to our time and context.

Godbearers intentionally interupt the scedule with time for
reflection, renewal, and prayer in order to refresh their souls
and reorient themselves Godward .... Sabbath means quit. Stop.
Take a break. Cool it. The word itself has nothing devout or holy
in it. It is a word about time, denoting our nonuse of it; what we
usually call 'wasting time'....As urgently and pasionately as Jesus
preached and lived the kingdom of God, scripture suggests he
honoured the spirit of the sabbath ... often we read about him
going to a quiet place to pray, claiming mini sabbaths along the
arduous road he travelled.

For the authors 'sabbaths' can come in many forms and at many times and have more to do with rythmn breaking and God facing than one day set aside (and definitely not one day set aside for legalities). They are not only silent and still, they include games, noise and fun, above all they are sacred spaces amongst the hustle and bustle of life. Spaces that can 'help frame ordinary places and times and transform them' to refresh our souls.

Lent poem

Left (by definition) to our own devices but never alone.
As a parent holds it's breath at a childs first steps -knowing at some
point it must fall - so you are Father.
Ready to reach out, pull us into your arms, soothe our injured pride
and give us courage to try again.

Alone (He was) hung on the cross for our faults, not His.
The pain was not removed by His being God - though angels
begged to attend - this was His death.
But it was for our weakness, frustration, failure and despair that
He chose such a way of love.


Picture of Jesus by Luc Freymanc, see www.freymanc.com

We're a strange race.

Ok so Gingerkidjoe was commenting about how hard it is to just have a conversation about God...I mused that it was because God had His own specific language and it was hard to segue from "how's the Mrs?" into " Verily, I say unto thee..." (Ok it's not quite that accute). We weren't sure about this but if so, agreed we needed to find new words...I also said it was because it required being honest and maybe vulnerably so but Joe reminded me that wouldn't be talking about God, that would be talking about 'me' and God.

It's wierd because we can so easily sit and go on about, say, how amazing Ben Folds Five are (were?!) and that doesn't seem so hard but how amazing God is ? Just doesn't seem to happen. Maybe it's because we understand so much of God by what he does in our lives and therefore, it becomes hard to seperate the two (the result of a consumerist society? It's all about what God did for me?). Hmmn, who knows? I love GKJ for making us think about these things though...he gave us some great sacred space over retreat too, a time for some 'holy hanging' with the boss...if you read this kid thanks for being brave!

Coming back to an empty house (am widow to a stag weekend!) had me turning to the blogs to feed my people-need and it struck me - on a similar theme- that we just don't ever seem to have 'wider' conversations these days. Perhaps it's just me and those days of sitting up into the wee small hours debating...well, this, that and the other are a distant memory. Perhaps that was part of youthful identity formation that is becoming obsolete as life goes by. Or maybe it's that we're so busy we barely stop for long enough to have the sort of conversations that do much more than scratch the surface.

The wierd thing is that we obviously all want those deeper places reached or we wouldn't baring and sharing our souls on blogs and it's not that we don't want to know what others think because the sheer heart-leaping joy when someone leaves a comment is undeniable.

So one of our challenges on retreat this time was to make space for more sacred moments (and to notice them when they rear their mystical little heads) and perhaps that means more time for real conversation...(us being made in the image of God and all) not heavy, not prying, not a desire for the gory details but just finding out who the people we talk to REALLY are and what they think about. I guess that's going to take practice and maybe even some new language? But who knows what we could learn, we may even get onto God!

It's all downhill after thrity!

So it was my birthday last week and I'm well and truly into my thirities now...which may explain why my birthday presents included a pair of wellington boots and the fact that I'm just about to receive a jumper knitted by ny Mum (pass the vodka!)...This year hasn't started too well, my husband is, as I write, jetting off to Copenhagen without me! This see's the start of us playing ten days of fish feeding tag (like telephone tag but taking turns to be at home keeping the little critters alive!).

Funnily enough it seems God has been speaking to me about balance in my life at the moment. Not least through the brilliant 'Godbearing Life' - our team book this term. And this period of marriage-stretching-craziness seems no exception. The Eddi Reader song 'Simple Soul' seems to have real resonance too. As does a work on 'new monasticism' we're reading as a schools team. But despite best intensions I don't seem to be very good at getting that all illusive rythmn to life.

However, the same message seems to be coming on all fronts (God's used to me being both stubborn and thick!) so maybe I might give it a go. Why is it the things we long for so much are somehow hardest to embrace...take this afternoon for instance, hubby's gone, cash flow is short, the perfect setting for some silence, scripture and solitude but somehow I feel more drawn to taking the telephone and working my way through my address book! Feelings are fickle things.

I even scoured the cinema listing and gig venue programmes but there's nothing doing, perhaps I should take the hint, go light a candle and see...after all with those birthday presents and advancing years maybe cultivating inner beauty IS the way to go!!