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(This image is off his blog- I hope he doesn’t mind)

The blogs I like don’t really do ‘doctrine’: long angry paragraphs of text without humour or hinterland. I like blogs about faith, but not in the ‘language of Zion’: ones that make me think in ways I might not always want to, ones that have humour and are ‘real’- earthed in a context of real life.

On and off for over a year I have been following http://thisfragiletent.wordpress.com/ for precisely those reasons. Plus it is not written by a full time paid Christian.

A chance comment on his blog about a holiday in Whitby and we arranged to meet. As he sagely noted, we teach our children the perils of arranging to meet strange men off the internet in isolated pubs on the moors.

And his family and I had a couple of hours of connected conversation about life, faith, love/hate relationship with church, music (he is not as distressingly into folk music as his blog indicates …..) cricket and general ’stuff’….made me regret due to pressure of time that my family could not make it- I think we would all have got on…

And I loved it….and yet again I did not feel alone with my thoughts- there are more of us. And I want to say what my Kenyan friends say: ‘God is good’…a lovely mellow evening.

And the challenge as we left: I will blog this first. And I have. And I hope for more contact.

…and strangely enough…we already knew each other from years ago…he was one of those training my wife for ‘approved social worker’ status in what seems like another lifetime, 15 years ago and in fact bought us a present on her leaving work and us moving to Wales….

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I finally gave in on Saturday. After stalling for many months, and blaming hayfever, artificial lighting, tiredness and poor printing I went for an eye test. My first eye test for 35 years.

The diagnosis came back: I need glasses for reading due to normal sight degeneration for a person of my age (I’m 44 and rising). I fear it may not be long until the ‘Father Christmas’ point is reached (the point where a male is first asked to be Father Christmas).

And now: I have to procrastinate for a few months more before I actually buy some, maybe do some arm stretching exercises (a member of one congregation watching me on Sunday reading a small print Bible observed sagely ‘It won’t be long before you run out of arm’) and then find a small fortune to buy glasses. I am inducted into a strange new world of varifocals, bifocals and reading glasses; the parameters of which I do not fully understand…

I think it was Carl Jung who said that someone needed a different theology for each different decade. I’m not ready for this…. still, as someone said- growing old beats dying young.

Uncategorized, prayer, praying »

I ripped this from somewhere and I can’t quite remember where but I used it yesterday.

I have never been one to ‘do’ written liturgy but as I get older and realise that there are so many words, words, words that can be used sometimes I need someone else’s words: my speech is verbose. I have to be bought to a full stop.

It’s a confession prayer. Again, as I get older I think that is the purest form: I am aware ‘through ignorance, weakness and my own deliberate fault’ I sell God and others short. I used to think that God was obsessed with petty sins- I now think he is more upset when I have failed to live openly and graciously. This prayer says that. Mea culpa

For all those occasions when we choose to get by so that we will not be challenged beyond familiar comforts, when we use money without thought so as not to take responsibility for its power, when we fill time so that we will not hear the call to intimacy,
forgive us, O God, and have mercy.

When we indulge in negativity so as not to acknowledge that we have choice,
when we listen continuously to others without sharing of ourselves,
when we pray from a distance so as not to risk involvement,
forgive us, O God, and have mercy.

When we opt for ordinariness so that we will not have to lead, when we acquiesce to fear so that we do not have to realise our potential, when we live focused on self so as to avoid commitment to community,
forgive us, O God, and have mercy.

When we do not deal with conflict so that we do not have to learn, when we are ungrateful or demanding and forget that all is gift, when we never relinquish control so as not to admit where we are broken,
forgive us, O God, and have mercy.

When we live as driven people and excuse our lack of peace, when we snap with anger because we did not attend to the body’s need for sleep, when we forget that our bodies are temples and not dumping grounds for waste,
forgive us, O God, and have mercy.

When we spread or listen to gossip so that we can manipulate to our advantage,
when we couldn’t be bothered getting involved but criticise those who do,
when we make no space for prayer yet have time for other things,
forgive us, O God, and have mercy. Amen.

quotations »

‘I wish to do something Great and Wonderful, but I must start by doing the little things like they were great and wonderful’

thoughts »

(I am tempted, unreasonably tempted by stilton….)

A few weeks back I was sitting in a friend’s house in the village where I live. I was talking through a dilemma and he interupted me with ‘I am glad I am an athiest: it makes things easier’. He was right. Having faith and aspiring to follow Jesus can make things harder.

Of all places, I was reading a story in that noted theological tome ‘The Methodist Recorder’ a week or so back. There was an interview with a hospital consultant from India. He had trained in Britain and was working as a doctor there and planning to leave to go back to India. 

When having a meal with colleagues he mentioned how much he would miss cheese when he returned to India. He had grown to love it. The director of his unit, who wanted him to stay, said ‘Why are you leaving Britain then?’ He replied:

‘At the end of my life, I’ll be asked what I did with my life. I will either say ‘I ate a lot of cheese’ or ‘I utilised it for others’.

The guy being interviewed said that his answer seemed flippant but that he had come to reflect on that and his belief that we all have to give our lives to our king.

That is why I still stumble, sometimes wearily, on the road of following Jesus. It would be so easy just to focus life on eating ‘cheese’ (and I’m no saint, I’m tempted a lot), sorting yourself and your nearest and dearest out, after all ‘I’m worth it’ and give a little when you can. I want to live in the light of a bigger picture and be measured not by accumulation but how I have blessed others.

And yes, my friend is right: that does make life harder….