4 November 2009 3 Comments

A kind of back to work/post flu/current flu day. On all days light appears, grace shows itself- most times my eyes are turned the other way.

Yesterday in a 10 minute period, 3 things hit me- humdrum things maybe…. but grace I think is like that- ordinary. I don’t claim any great holiness but it strikes me as a mistake to equate grace all the time with great huge, angel trumpets blaring moments. In my experience it is rarely like that. In fact, to associate ’spiritual experience’ (yeuck…hate that phrase) purely with those moments is part of the horrible duality that sometimes afflicts western Christianity ie…. spiritual= pure, matter= impure/tainted.

Sorry- went off and philosophised there….where was I…..

My 3 moments…..randomly bumping into a youthworker at a church in the next town whilst I was walking around this village. Seeing the light and joy in her eyes as she spoke about what she was doing. Talking about valuing the church kids she was sent to work with……. but being passionate about ‘going beyond’ and being with kids nowhere near church and who may never come near ‘cos I think that is what Jesus did’. And I was feeling ‘I am not so strange after all- I get most excited about this too’. Mostly just getting excited at meeting someone fulfilled and real…

…further on down the road…. meeting an 85 year old woman who had been featured in the local rag about her days in the Land Army. She began to speak spontaneously and suprisingly about God in her life and her gratefulness to Him in real words and not the ‘language of Zion’. Again, getting excited at meeting someone so excited and real…

…getting home…. the sound of a letter box flipping open and a card coming through. Opened it to find a home produced ‘Thinking of You’ card sent by the Parish Church (I was not well on Sunday night and could not make the service) and signed by a number of people there including some very suprising names who could easily have not signed it…(I don’t dish the dirt on this blog…you fill in the blanks)………bowled over.

As the great Van Morrison intoned:-

‘You must remember; there will be days like this’