Advent's second week

These first two Sundays in Advent, hope and peace, I know that they should lead on to each other, the first enabling the second. But these last weeks have been difficult where we are, and I spend a lot of time trying to still myself at all. There is such beauty in the November skies, such colour some evenings this week. There is such stark loveliness in the seed heads in the garden. There is such comfort in home and the lights and the warmth. There is such startling vitality in the skin's reaction to the Lough's now burningly cold waters! But hope and peace? I'm finding the word "faith" to be my focus this year.

Our church has folk reading a sort of advent calendar every day. (Not at all like The Christmas Mystery though!) A major character from the narrative of the Bible from Adam all the way to Christmas. Prince Charming read on 2nd December: Noah and his big boat. It was such a comforting account of the story. Noah gathering his family safely aboard and out of the way of the mean people around. If only we could do exactly that. Sail forty days and forty nights on dark waters, and send out our hope to the skies at the end. Maybe that's what this time will be this year. Battening our doors against the dangers outside, a microcosm of all we are and all we have. (A noisy and smelly microcosm - with two teenage boys this is probably accurate enough.)

Here's PC and Noah, if you need a bedtime story! And the link to all the rest is here, if you'd like to catch up x

Lilies for Gretchen

 Dear Gretchen,

How many years is it since we shared an interest in Kirkegaard? I was working two evenings a week in the library of the university close to where we live. Every now and again I would borrow books myself that jumped, not physically, off the shelves when I was doing my night's shelving. This was how I discovered Barbara Pym, and this was how I came face to face with a name I'd only ever seen quoted in devotional or theological books - Kirkegaard.

So the book that I borrowed at that stage was a biography, because I thought that I would understand his actual works better if I knew his story. I suppose, in retrospect, that was an avoidance tactic, but I certainly didn't expect to find myself still embroiled in avoidance most of ten years later! You however, with the genteel erudition that I adore in you, got straight down to the words themselves. Certainly a lot straighter than my circuitous meandering has been.

I know that we decided to read this one together, relatively recently, and I really did start off with great gusto. But as soon as I met the Poet my reading became slower and slower and that first attempt struggled to get even close to the end of the first section! So this is what I've decided:

Every Sunday (though it's technically Monday here now...) I'll tell you what I've read thus far.

This is the perfect book for Lockdowns, and right now we are into Lockdown: the Sequel in Northern Ireland. Kirkegaard promises that we will learn what we need to be human, and this will be something impossible to learn or be remembered in the throng. We need silence, obedience, and joy. All three of these have already been topics for consideration since March for me, as has the command not to worry about having what we need. So, the opening of the book has been very exciting, twice.

The Poet floored me. On my first reading I began to feel that Lockdown (or perhaps Menopause, or indeed both) had robbed me of all ability to read intelligent prose.This time I have been reading the book out loud to myself, deliberately imagining myself reading a story like a mother to a child. Taking the words slowly has helped, as has the implication to myself that this story is rich and worth following. 

And so I found myself finding myself in the Poet at exactly the same time as I found him deplorable. This self-pitying person who nonetheless took pleasure and attention from their self-pitying. This believer who believed for a glorious moment but not in any way sustainable enough for the belief to be allowed to make a change. This professed seeker who fooled the earnest, but found nothing.

I want very much to be like the child, but I want my wanting not to be the transitory wanting of the Poet. I want honestly to be like the child who wastes no time in doubt or disobedience, but who accepts what is presented to them, and can then move on having all other time "for play, for enjoyment, and the like". There are issues just now that are frightening to me, and I want my faith not to be the self-pitying, attention-seeking, short-lived faith of the Poet, but the trusting, simple faith of the child who accepts, moves on, and enjoys.

So, Gretchen, I've got as far as the urgent exhortation that I should believe this fully and act now. This is earnest. This acceptance of God's imperative to consider the lilies and the birds is earnest. This Gospel is earnest. Our "most irresistible invention does not cause it to smile". Lord, help my unbelief, and teach me to play joyfully and sustainably in your lily field.

Home in a time of Covid

I'm trying to work out how many months I'd need to go back to get to a time when I wouldn't believe that I'd come home from school one day to pick up the mask cut-outs and get them all sewn up, like some bizarre pandemic version of the Elves and the Shoemaker. Except that there's only me, as presumably the elves would be not very good at self-isolating. This time last year I was also thinking about The Elves and the Shoemaker, but we're definitely into Grimm days now, and not the Ladybird book version. I think it would be only three or four months ago. Back when I thought hoped that Lockdown could last forever! 

I'm using the rest of the Black Watch material to make more masks. My father was very pleased with his yesterday, although he's unlikely to be going anywhere to need it! The fabric looks quite light in today's afternoon sun, but it's actually extremely dark and thus acceptable to the men of my house. Aren't we all very particular about the masks we'll wear, or indeed not wear? They really do seem to be this year's latest fashion accessory. Fat quarters are taking on a whole new role!

Having the big table turned into a mask production line made me think about what home is like now, especially with three of us back in our two schools. Shoes and blazers stay strictly at the front door where we're greeted by a little tomte of hope that a friend made for my birthday in the summer. He tries to be a cheerful little soul. I wonder what conversations he has with the plague doctor though. Do they argue? I do hope not. I bought the little mask many many years ago in Venice. I was on a three city tour of Italy with my brother, zipping between destinations in first class train carriages and glorious heat. It all seems so long ago, not just because it was in fact decades ago, but also it seems now something from The Olden Days when people got on planes and went places! 

Admittedly we did enjoy five days canoeing on and swimming in Lough Erne, in Northern's Ireland's lake county of Fermanagh, in July; and a week walking and climbing in our Mourne mountains in August. So, there are no complaints here about staying home. It is just interesting, isn't it, how quickly life, and our expectations of it, have changed? I know we'll all have either subtly or even dramatically different opinions about that, but here in the Meadowplace, we're happy to keep it small.

I follow a local potter on farcebook - Rachel Julca. During Lockdown she made batches of these pendants. I bought a few for friends who had Lockdown birthdays and for the women with whom I was, and still am, messaging and calling to extend mutual love and support. Two of us were saying just this week, as we discussed whether or not we'd be going physically back to church this month, that we have never once felt devoid of teaching or fellowship over the last six months, and that indeed we have felt more a part of the body of the church in these last few months than in these last few years. I think we have made more of an effort to cleave to each other, as we have cleaved to the faithful loving kindness of God. I'm keeping my pendant up in the kitchen until the Christmas tree goes up, and then it can hang there with all the other keepsake memories that come out to tell their stories at each year's end. 

And really, apart from these few things, inside the house there's not much changed. It is wonderful to come home from school in the afternoon to decontaminate and decompress. Maybe that's the biggest difference now: school clothes come off, masks go into the washing machine, everyone gets scrubbed, and we gather round a table for tea and tales. We are definitely taking more deliberate time to be together and breathe - breathe easily and breathe healthily. I do most sincerely hope that we will all be able to do the same through the next months of These Strange Times, esteemed blogging friends. Thus far has the Lord helped us, Blogland; thus far x

Stables and trees

 

I've been thinking about books this morning. This is a fairly common diversionary tactic for me, but now more than ever is there need for good books! I was listing in my head, as I ate my porridge, the books that were precious to me. I was thinking about Wendy Erskine's Sweet Home with all its illustrations of East Belfast life that manage to be illustrations of lots of life. She signed my copy at the book launch. And she used to be my head of department when I worked in her school. So lots of precious between the covers of that one.

And then I thought of Jostein Gaardner's not quite yet seasonal A Christmas Mystery. Definitely a book I'd want to throw in a bag of books to be saved in the event of a house disaster but obviously after my children (and Prince Charming) were safely out! I was trying to remember the end, and don't read on if it will be a spoiler, but Elisabet wonders what she'll do when all the others' roles are fulfilled and she decides that she'll bow her head under the lintel of the stable door, and she goes in to meet the Christ-child for herself. (Doesn't she?)

It strikes me today how very easy it was for Elisabet and the shepherds and the kings and the everybody to meet Jesus. They didn't have to book their place in advance, worry about how many of them would be inside or about how many households they represented, make sure everybody had a mask, that all hands were sanitised, and that there was enough ventilation. I'm very confident there was enough ventilation.

And what I think about all that is that today it is still very easy to meet Jesus. In fact, God is all over the Internet in these days of online church. Our local church is taking a return to the building very slowly and carefully, but my goodness, what an array of creativity has emerged. From services to a reading of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and amazing resources for all age groups. Prince Charming's Live Worship is there too from our mostly tidy book room! Have a look here, if you have any more time in the day!

We are less than two weeks from the return of schools here in Northern Ireland, and plans are still coming through from our Department of Education. One leading city school has this just this morning announced that face masks will be mandatory to protect staff. We'll all have different opinions of this, but I'll confess this house reassured by any strategies that acknowledge the need to manage fear as much as the virus.

I'm so grateful in These Strange Times that it is still easy to meet God. Easy to lift up His Name. Easy to call on His Name. And so worthwhile, since I do fully believe that history, even covid history, hinges exactly there.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 

But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.

An end to ordinary time

 The Ophelia tree-gauge is now well and truly bare. I see her every day through the kitchen window, and she makes me think. I was watching her today as I listened to the devotional app I use quite often. Today, as I'm sure all of you already knew, was the Feast of Christ the King. Now this immediately made me smile, as we loved and adored, and loved and adored in, the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King when we were in Liverpool at half-term. So, I decided I needed to know about Christ the King, because we Presbyterians from the frozen North are not entirely renowned for our mutual understanding, and there it was.


The Feast of Christ the King- and I am going with the very rudimentary research I did this afternoon, based on the broadest interpretation I could find- marks the end of Ordinary Time. Now, my app usually talks about such and such a week of ordinary Time, but to be honest I have been hitherto just far too lazy to look it up. When I did today, I was entranced. The first period of Ordinary Time begins just after Epiphany and lasts until the start of Lent. The church then celebrates the whole of the Easter season- right up until Pentecost, when it enters the second period of Ordinary Time, which ends- well, today was the last Sunday of Ordinary Time because next week we will begin our Advent journey.


How wonderful! We live the seasons of ordinary time between Christmas and Easter. Then we live Christ's birth, the Spirit's arriving, Christ's death and His glorious resurrection. We live them every day. I know this. I live this. But today, in this strange last week before It All Begins, I found it profoundly God-full to mark the last Sunday of my year's Ordinary Time. To give thanks for all that I could think of, and to acknowledge that my year is dying as quietly and as darkly as the days. To allow the advent of Advent to stir my soul.


Jo and I studded some past their best clementines with the rest of the jar of cloves. They are hiding at the back of the hotpress now, waiting quietly and darkly to share the perfume of their thoughts when the time is right. I am very excited!

Raising Ebenezers

I have blogged about this little sculpture before. It is "Community" by Sonja Landweer, and it is my very favourite piece in the whole of the wonderfully wonderful Ulster Museum. I have always loved the diverse mounds and pillars and surfaces, all of us in all our shapes and sizes, how we look and how we feel.

 We spent an evening in the Museum one Friday night last month. Such a hoot. It was open for one of Belfast's Real Sketchy events, where you roll in and wander, with a drink in your hand, live music in your ears, and sketching any of their treasures as you go!

 It was planned to coincide with the Museum's hosting of the Lines of Thought exhibition- sketches of masters from Michaelangelo (in whose fat belly this middle-aged and spreading woman found much solace) to Picasso. The Barbara Hepworth is all ours, but it was gorgeously intimate to be there after hours, able to look and consider, though still not touch!

 Some people took it very seriously. This is Colin Murphy, a Northern Irish comedian we laugh over when we watch the Blame Game on BBC1. He really didn't want to be disturbed. I'm afraid I did. Couldn't resist. I don't get out much.

This is our friend, the prof, who doesn't wear shoes inside. Ever. Anywhere. When we first met him, and his fabulous wife, in church, we presumed it was a standing on holy ground thing. It's not. He just doesn't do shoes unless absolutely necessary. Darlings! It was just his sort of night.

Other people didn't take it quite so seriously. However, what I have since appreciated about Prince Charming's artistic output has become something very significant. PC downloaded an app that allows you to photograph something, and then turn it into your own piece of art. Very David Hockney. Very now. Darlings.

And so here is Landweer's community re-imagined a la PC. (That's a very PC word- apparently re-imagined is an old hymn given a modern twist.) And what I keep thinking about now, is how perfectly it illustrates what is increasingly for me a very, very fundamental truth. I Samuel 7:12. "Thus far has the Lord helped us." It's the story of Samuel experiencing the loud thunder of the Lord's deliverance, and setting up a stone, raising an Ebenezer, as a visual reminder that time and time again God deals with the details of our lives, the fights, the struggles, the worries, the times. I know that we know this, but I am not good at remembering this. I love the notion of having visual reminders in the landscape that say to this generation and the next- thus far has the Lord helped us.

So, until I can get some big rocks into the garden, I'm sticking with PC's Landweer!

Advent Ending

My Advent began with a huge sense of expectation. What did I want God to do for me? Do for me this Advent? That turned into a greater sense of chastising challenge when the nothing transpired within the usual time-frame from an application that I had made. Was God my Father Christmas to deliver a list? I could only offer myself, like Mary, as a servant. Still believing that nothing is impossible for God, but thinking not this time. Then mid-week mid-Advent, an email came, followed by an interview, following by an offer.So, my Advent ending is a happy one, full of wonder that actually God heard the deepest desire of my heart, and blessed me.

This is Prince Charming's favourite Christmas song to sing, and he does sing it beautifully. There is a short burst of him on farcebook! (His band is called North.) I have been crocheting a snowflake for every day in December: some I give away, some I use on present wrapping, the rest are yarnbombing my Jacob's ladder- shall try to get it looking respectable enough to post! Snow is a bit of a theme- all wishful thinking thus far, with crisp frost giving way to cold rain this afternoon!

Meanwhile- may your Advent ending be a happy one, full of wonder and blessing.