Current reading.

It's been a phase for allegorical books recently. (Just had to check whether 'allegory 'was the right term, never let it be said my BA(Hons) in English was a waste of time!)

Our team book this term was The Shack which has been touted as a modern classic and called a modern day pilgrims progress. It seems a slightly odd premise for a story about the nature of God and to be honest I would normally give Christian literature a wide birth but this book was strangely compelling.

The story goes...

Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness.
Four years later in the midst of his great sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against Mackenzie Allen Philips' better judgement he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare.

The author does an incredible job of exploring the characteristics of God, putting that into words has to be a real challenge, after all it's often untangible and I guess different for all of us. But here there is something so familiar and beautiful, it really is heart warming but also incredibly challenging. How can you forgive the unforgivable, what kind of life change needs to happen to make that possible?

It leaves you feeling as if you've glimpsed a deeper meaning about this old thing called life. It also debunks a lot of the rubbish that comes with religion and get's straight to the heart of what it's liked to be loved.

I wanted to hate it, I now want to re-read it!

The second book I started last night was called Hind's feet in High Places and was a leaving gift from lovely Gingerkidjoe. Written in the 50's by a palestinian Nun it is the journey of Much-Afraid to find herself as God see's her and to freedom. I haven't got very far and it seems quite old fashioned stylistically, which is taking some getting used to but there's already been some wonderful passages.

This is my favourite to date...

"many a quiet, ordinary, and hidden life, unknown to the world, is a veritable garden in which Love's flowers and fruits have come to such perfection that it is a place of delight where the King of Love Himself walks and rejoices with his friends."

You

You are unique.
There is no one else like you anywhere in the world.
No one can replace you.
Simply because you exist, you are special.

Chew on that.

September's post...or should have been!

I was really excited to come back to work in September and no one was more surprised about that than me. Though I love the project with all my heart have found the last year really tough and have not found answers to questions about my role here.

But I was very excited and so much so I was in early to prepare for the new term and our first meeting as a new team. I'd planned a meeting to start with a prayer exercise about our feelings towards this term, as we were all in very different places, and it made me laugh as I sat at my desk untangling a pile of pipe-cleaners that were to become our mode of expression.

How typical of work at LCET and how lucky am I to be able to 'work' in such a playful way?! It seemed comforting to be sorting out and ordering as my first task, I hope this years experience will be much more like the finished pile, as last years seemed a bit like the former and we're still straightening out the tangle.