Farewell FB, Hello Lent

I've just changed my Facebook settings to stop messages appearing on my phone; updated my profile picture and status... and then  logged out for the last time before Easter Sunday!

I'm really going to miss my old friend FB, although, in a funny kind of way, I'm looking forward to our time apart too. 

I feel hopeful that it'll be a time when I make the effort to connect with people in more personal, meaningful ways. 

I'm hoping to be less distracted by the silly stuff and more focussed on the important stuff.

It's going to be an interesting s p a c e.

Note to self:  Warning - don't become a blogaholic.

This day

This day, Lord, be born in me
This day teach
This day heal
This day win, in death,
Surprising prizes
This day rise, this day rise in me.

Gerard Kelly

Looking Back

I found the space to take a look back at 2011 today - it's been a good year!  My journal-keeping is a bit erratic but thankfully I've used it enough to catch a whiff of the trail I've followed through the past twelve months:

January found me challenged by Jesus' teaching that, as his disciple, I'm called to be 'salt' that brings out all the wonderful flavours in the world around me, to be 'light' that brings warmth and shines in the darkness, illuminating the glorious colour of God's kingdom - right here and now, just waiting to be revealed...  I was in a place of dread!  To be salt and light means taking the decision to face the empty, dry, dark places. I felt in real danger of being overwhelmed, but took a step out into the dark anyway by taking up the challenge of Thursdays in Black http://thursdaysinblack.blogspot.com/ ...without really understanding what difference it might make!

February brought lots of questions around my identity in God.  Who I am as a woman created in God's image. A 'mothering' God who found me in the hurting, desert place and enveloped me with love, wrapped me in light, flooded my life with joy and colour, blessed me with beauty.  I sensed a new place with God lay ahead.

March was seasoned with prayer for boldness and courage, trust and fruitfulness, a willingness to risk making a fool of myself, for ears and heart open to the whisper of the Spirit's voice.. lead me on!

April was a time of prayer for increased understanding of what Jesus has done for me.  'Jesus answered "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me... do you understand what I have done for you?"' I found myself stumbling, stalling at Jesus' challenge to serve others freely and generously.  I read Blue Like Jazz by Don Miller that month and made a note about his idea of two 'conversations' going on when we interact with others - one of words and one of the heart.  I prayed 'Move me Lord, change my heart.  Teach me how to leap off the high places and plunge into the depths of your love... change my heart.  I want to move on.'

The end of April brought me into a low place with the gospel choir... I felt as if I'd plunged into the depths of discouragement and emptiness rather than God's love!

May began with two whole weeks off work and began the journey out of the doldrums ready for my experiment in Living Below the Line (see earlier posts for more).  Life was back in perspective!

June felt like a corner turned. SGC were mostly on board and we were moving on together.  A faithful band of pray-ers from Seaton were building and strengthening our foundations with an underpinning of prayer.  I'd determined to begin a new season of prayer with an early morning start.  Our cat Jimi sitting quietly in the garden, listening, watching, sniffing the air, sensitive to everything around her and in tune with her world, inspired me to pray for that kind of watchfulness, still but alert, and sensitive to what God is doing around me.

July brought more images of hopelessness.  We went to see the film 'Ghosts' about the clam pickers who died at Morecambe Bay in 2004.  I was deeply unsettled and struggled to know how to respond.  I find it so difficult to really look into the face of that kind of hopelessness!  I prayed 'Show me how to respond in ways that bring your goodness in.  Your light.  Your hope... Your Kingdom come!'

It was amazing today in looking back over these months to see the themes criss-crossing and threading their way through my experiences and my prayers!

August was another questioning time... who am I really?  Where is the authentic 'me'?  How can I live in the reality of holiness when I'm angry with the untidy, lazy hoarder that is also me?  Pictures of death, chaos and darkness threatened to overwhelm me again.  Bindweed smothering the garden, cobwebs, heaps of 'stuff' in our home... even packing for our holiday uncovered old, worn clothes and others new and unworn because they don't fit!  Everything a depressing reminder of the battle - our battle - with sinfulness.  'Help me pick my way through the chaos of the world Lord.'

Then a 'hanging on in there' prayer, borrowed from Gerard Kelly's twitturgies:  'May these words hold my heart.  Mark my mind.  Stain my skin: Child of Yahweh.  Servant of Christ.  Lover of the one true Spirit.' 

September and a lovely holiday in France found me with a fresh thankfulness for friends and family.  However I was still battling! I was torn between thankfulness and desperation, deep joy in the goodness of God and deep sadness at the 'lostness' of the world.  I recorded that I was in a halfway place between singing 'Be Still for the Presence of the Lord' and 'There Must be More Than This'!

October was great!  The prayer room was especially lovely and was based around Luke 11 and the Lord's Prayer.  I had an amazingly vivid dream about God taking a pencil from someone's hand and giving them a paint roller to write their prayers on the wall!  A big old door knocker also featured in my dream that weekend.  It was covered in verdigris and I felt hesitant about lifting it to knock on the door.  I woke up and took a look at my bedside clock.  It said 3:16 - a reminder (just in case I hadn't picked up the message yet!) that God loves us and wants us - is desperate for us - to ask our biggest prayers, to shout and cry and sing and knock loudly... to persist in prayer!

I was challenged to think about prayer in the light of:

Sacrifice
Generosity
Abandonment
and Trust

Later that month I prayed for a real, deep, heart-kindness for Mick.  I committed to rejecting subtle criticism in what I say, how I say it, my actions... Once again, looking back across the year I can see that even though I hadn't remembered much of what I'd read back in April with Don Miller, my prayers were revealing God at work across the warp and weft of the year!

November was full of positive stuff!  Great things with SGC and Living Stones.  Excitement and encouragement around the two Women's Breakfasts - lots of networking and good conversation.

December brought us to Follow the Star at the Prayer Room once again with a gathered pace since last year.  More than two hundred people visited our little 'Bethlehem experience' on Sidmouth's late night shopping evening.  Each one heard the Christmas story, added their name to the census, met the shepherds... and then made their way into the stable to meet with Joseph, Mary and little Jesus.  Wonderful!

And as if that wasn't enough, our first Community Christmas Lunch was a huge success!  Every door we pushed flew open and we experienced  amazing blessing as people overwhelmed us with their generosity, their longing to make a difference for others... God really did 'move into the neighbourhood' this Christmas in Sidmouth!

Back to normal... maybe

Yesterday morning we celebrated the end of my week Living Below the Line with a trip to Dart's Farm for breakfast.  £6.95 including coffee.  Flippin' wonderful! 

When we'd finished I could have eaten more - my five days of discipline have left me with a kind of lingering feeling of not being quite full after I've eaten.  If I'm honest, I often eat until my sides are aching a bit.  I'm going to try not to do that in future.

I wonder if it lasts.

It's Friday... but Saturday's coming!

One more sleep and I'll be free to choose what I eat and drink :o)  On my way to work this morning I was pondering what I'd change another time, thinking about what I'd missed the most.  I had to stop before the thought of toast and marmalade drove me nuts!

This has been such an interesting week on so many levels.  I've read about it, seen the photos in the press, seen the TV coverage, heard about poverty first hand from people out there, working amongst the poorest of the poor, but taking this tiny step into someone else's shoes and sharing their experience in a small way, has given me a much better idea of what it must be like to live in poverty through circumstance rather than choice.  It's brought me face to face with my own plenty too.

I'm beginning to love foraged-mint tea!

At the beginning of the year I was particularly challenged by what Gerard Kelly calls Christ's 'Message of the Mountain', the beatitudes. He calls it the heartbeat of Christ. 

In my journal for 8th January I've written "Blessed are the poor, the hungry, the oppressed.  I am none of these by circumstance, but if this is the very heart of Christ's plan for humanity then he calls me to choose these things.  To stand side by side with those who are poor, hungry and oppressed.  I'm afraid to look too closely!" 

I hadn't linked that time with Living Below the Line until just now when I started writing this blog.  Now, looking back through the pages of my journal I can see how God has answered my prayers - like this one "Father, give me courage.  Thank you for the comfort of my life... give me a brave heart that is willing to be open and vulnerable.  Show me how you want to bless the world in and through me."  Amazing. 

Truly, spending £1 a day on food and drink for just five days is not much more than a drop in the ocean of poverty.  But it's changed me.  It's raised over £500 for others (thank you chums).  And from the messages I've had it seems it's changed you too.

Bring it on!

Day 3... on the home strait :o)

Perhaps when you have enough to eat, hunger is a more of a psychological thing.  I don't get twitchy about where people squeeze the toothpaste tube, but I do when I see oranges in the fruit bowl still in their net.  I released five oranges from bondage this morning just after breakfast and suddenly felt 'hungry'.  I wasn't hungry at all, I just wanted (want!) to eat some fruit!



Note the nibbled corner... I couldn't resist it last night!

I was at Exmouth Pavilions all day today at the Salvation Army's Home and Family Rally.  That usually means a couple of coffees from Posh Nosh and lunch with Louise and Helen at the cafe along the seafront.  Not this year, BUT my chick pea pasty was lush and the lovely people at Posh Nosh gave me a cup of boiling water for mint tea. 



Helen's living below the line this week too, she was waving a bread roll around at me over lunch - she bought six of them last night for a crazy knock down price.  It's amazing how excited you can get about cheap food ;o)

Helen and Louise backstage.  Helen budgeted for tea bags!



Another thing about my friend Helen is that she's met the lovely woman in the photo below.  In fact, she's been invited into her home.  Her name is Margaret Banda and she lives in Malawi.  Her life has been turned around by the same charity we're supporting in Live Below the Line.  Good innit?!

  

Margaret Banda

A Salvation Army Rally is hard to describe!  It's a concert-prayerful-sing-along-thinky-bit-get-together kind of event.  Today's was called 'Bargain Hunt' and the guest speaker spoke about real treasure, not the flashy kind that looks good but isn't really worth much, but genuine, lasting treasure.  Some of the guests were invited to bring something of value with them and share its story with us. 

One officer who worked for many years in India brought with her a tray cloth.  She had been given it by a woman who had seen her first three children die within four months of their birth.  Then the Salvation Army arrived in her village and brought the GOBI child health programme with them which encouraged and educated mothers in basic hygiene and nutrition for their families.  The woman brought her toddler with her, dressed in the colours of the Salvation Army (red yellow and blue) to say thank you.  She also brought the tray cloth as a gift which she had made from a piece of rice sack and embroidered with the 'Home League' logo - she had heard that English people like to serve their tea from a tray covered in a small cloth! 

Me, I like my tea made with loose tea in a tea pot and served before it gets too strong and not too milky.  Roll on Saturday - don't worry about the tray cloth!

Day 2... staying strong!

Splashed out on a drop of milk in my porridge this morning.  It's amazing what a difference it made - I guess that's what Live Below the Line is all about - it doesn't take a lot to make a difference.


Chapatis - just flour and water... why do we buy them?!



By lunch time today I was really hungry and my soup and chapatis didn't quite fill the hole.  During the afternoon I developed a 'tea' headache - you know the sort that only a cup of tea will fix?  When I got home I first tried lemon verbena and then nettle tea... very nice, but I still prefer Earl Grey. 



Dinner was good - it almost felt like cheating!  Pasta with chick pea curry and grated carrot, and then this evening I made some pastry (20p's worth) and knocked up an impressive looking pasty made with a bit more of the curry and carrots for tomorrow's lunch.  Being able to cook is a definite advantage in this business.

The rest of the family ate chilli and rice this evening.  I watched some of it go into the recycling bin with a kind of sadness.  Not because I was hungry, just because we do it all the time.  If we got creative with leftovers, or just cooked and ate what we needed, we could give the money we save to someone who could make a real difference with it.  More than just a splash of milk in the porridge.