And everyone else....

One of the challenges of new year is more often or not the question of 'what shall I do on new years eve?' I try not to think about this question too early as it preoccupies me and I worry I'd make the wrong choice. The answer to this question has led me to a variety of different new year things with different people. I think the last time I didn't enjoy new year was when I had a horrible headache and went to bed at 10 missing celebrating the new year with my then boyfriend and his parents. 

This year I thought about spending new year on my own - just to see if it was ok. I thought about watching my new Miranda DVDs and possibly being really counter cultural and going to bed early. I'm not though, as it feels right to be with people at new year and I am spending it with people who I love a lot.  

One of the best things about the time around Christmas and New Year is time people take to just be with people. For me it is my family who have unspoken traditions of gathering for boxing day tea and going for a walk in the worst weather possible (this year we did it on the day of the storms - amber weather warning - let's walk). Community is important, yet as a single person I am very aware of how easy it is for people to get left isolated where everyone else around you is doing what they want to do. To do what I want to do I sometimes feel like I am invading the space of others. 

Today I read a newly released book I saw on Twitter called 'Cancer and Theology' edited by Jake Bouma and Erik Ullestad. It's a collection of essays exploring what Christian faith has to say about cancer. It struck me in reading it how important community is. For a number of the writers what was important in their experiences and in the experiences of those around them was the community of people who stood with them. Those who didn't just walk away and offer to pray, but asked them what they needed prayer for. Those who didn't just offer to help, but turned up with hot food at the right time. Those who didn't just want to sympathise but who wanted to talk about normal stuff too. Those who didn't say it'll be ok, but acknowledged that cancer is rubbish and sat through the rubbishness with them. 

Life changes, illness, being different and looked over can isolate us from community. Our fear of 'the other' means we sometimes unthinkingly isolate those who need to be welcomed. Our fear of being annoying or rejected means we isolate ourselves from being welcomed. We can't fix everyones problems by making them like us but we can stand with them on their journey and also seek out others to ride the waves with us. 

The challenge is to seek out community and not walk away from those who can stand with us. The challenge is to face the fact we might not always get it right, but accept one another even when we don't. The challenge is that people are sometimes weird and difficult - but that's ok. The challenge is to look, listen and simply be. The challenge is to fully embrace the idea that every person within a community is made in the image of God.

Coming down from the top of the mountain

Last week I climbed up Helvellyn in the Lake District - it's the third highest mountain in England. We went up the steep way, because striding edge is a bit scary and because the steep way is shorter. I haven't climbed a mountain the last few years of being in the Lake District for our annual autumn holiday because I haven't felt fit enough. This year I was fit enough (mainly due to strange dance exercise classes) and was able to climb..... at my own pace... but climb. 

I got to the top and I felt my left knee do that thing where it doesn't want to bend any more.... where it doesn't want to play ball and work in the way it normally does. As we put our coats on as the clouds descended on the top I wondered whether it was going to last on the way down.... and it didn't. The descent was painful, mostly sidewards and accompanied at every step with loud shouts of 'ow' as my knee complained. I even got strange looks from the woman who had stopped near the bottom as her companions went up who said to me 'that's why I haven't gone any further'. 

I'm glad I did go further. I am glad I did get to the top.... but the descent made me question whether it was worth it. With hindsight it is and next year I am going to try and train my knees up to deal with mountain climbing, perhaps buy myself a couple of sticks and maybe try a different mountain. 

When you are at the top of the mountain it is awesome. You can see for miles. You feel like you've achieved something. But, at some point you need to get down as you wouldn't be able to survive up there for a very long time despite the awesome views. 

I'm now over half way through my ministerial training (can you believe it?) and it hit me a few months ago that the feeling of elation and excitement at doing what I am meant to be doing had gone away... that I was beginning to have to face the gritty reality of what this life can be like. I needed to begin to slowly descend that mountain where everything was awesome (I am sure I annoyed everyone by telling them how brilliant it was) to a place of balance where I can survive long term. 

The trouble is, on that descent, the knee problem sets in. It starts with a niggle, a moment of oh this could be difficult and then at times makes you cry out in pain. As you hit the reality of life in the descent there are times of blessing but there are also times of wrestling where you ask 'can I still do this?'. 

When you read testimonies of people in different forms of church leadership and ministry, one that stays at the summit of the mountain sounds glorious, but is it truthful? I've read honest accounts of real wrestling with God from people like Pete Grieg (God on Mute is a brilliant book) and heard stories of and seen people who behind the public face struggle with stress and depression. 

The reality is fantastically awesome on the mountain top (which is why I want to climb another one) but is painfully difficult when you are walking sidewards down a seemingly endless path of rocks.  

I was reminded yesterday of the poem 'If' by Rudyard Kipling where it talks about how if you can keep everything together when everyone else is not that that is the thing to aim for. It talks of being strong in adversity, of not being overcome by weakness. As I thought about it, I couldn't help but question that Kipling got it wrong. I think that a lot of people might see the role of the minister as being that person who holds it together - and perhaps there are times when that is true and only right. But.... 

2 Corinthians 2:19 says: "My grace is all you need, for my power is greatest when you are weak"

Being strong isn't all it's cracked up to be. Admitting you need God is. When we are at our weakest then God's power is at it's greatest. At the moment I can't expand on that further, but as I am descending the mountain and embracing the reality of ministry I need to admit that my knees hurt, and I need to remember that God is beside me, knees hurting too. 

"For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you. Do not fear; I will help you."                      Isaiah 41:13 

Busy, Busy, STOP, Busy.....?

I love my diary. I don't go for the cheap one because it's... well..... cheap any more. I have a moleskin diary. It flops nicely when you open it, it feels nice and it smells good. It has a page for the dates and a page for notes. I love it when it looks full - when each day has something written on it - when I look like I know what I am doing perhaps. 

However, I know that the better weeks are the weeks when I don't have something written down in my diary - when it doesn't look full.... not because I have nothing to do, but it is a sign that I am getting it right... that I am not busy. Busyness is a badge that we are happy to wear - it's become the norm to be busy, to have to consult our diaries, to only be able to book people in 3 months in advance to visit (or wait until last minute just in case something better comes up). We become addicted to doing one thing after the other with no down time - no time just to be..... no time to be with God. 

The problem with busyness is that it distorts our perception on things, it makes us feel self important (I'm too busy for anyone else), it makes you rude, it's an excuse for impatience, it's an excuse for not getting stuff done, it's addictive (you have to keep yourself busy otherwise what else would you do?), it burns you out and it's just lazy (there is no time to think about prioritising what is important if you do everything). And.... it pushes out the things that really matter.... like time with God. 

On Sunday we looked in the service at Mark 1:29-39. Jesus is busy busy busy, being pulled in all directions and as soon as he can he stops........ and he spends time with God..... however much it inconveniences others, however many pressing matters are in hand.... he stops. 

At the first opportunity he has, even at an unearthly hour.... Jesus goes to talk to his Father.... he prioritises space to pray. He knows that he must rely on God for his strength to keep going in a life that his unavoidably busy - otherwise he could get caught up in the moment. Withdrawing to pray is vital. Prayer is recognising that we aren't independent - that we can't do it all ourselves. 

The problem is that when you are busy you can know all there is to know about prayer, but you don't practice it. It's like being knowledgeable about a sport but never seeing it, never playing it. But... when we take time to pray we walk to the rhythm of God's heartbeat. 

Even the saviour of the world needs quiet time, alone... with God. 

I've been challenged in the last couple of weeks about what is important... this story right near the beginning of Jesus ministry shows what is important. I shouldn't have to make time to pray as interacting with God should be integral to my life. Everything else needs time made for it but time with God should always be there. It's OK if stuff falls off the list, it's OK to say no.....  but in prayer we learn how to walk to the rhythm of God's heart beat.... and that is transforming, enabling, and so much more......

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no-one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint".      Isaiah 40:28-31

Taking time over the journey......

When I was learning to teach I quickly learned the art of the three part lesson. Starter, teaching and practising, plenary. Starter gets your brain going, then you do the deep stuff (maths is well deep), then you sum it up. I always felt a bit of a bad teacher when these three parts didn't quite link together. For me the forming of a lesson was a bit of an art form - the flow from one part of the lesson to another meant that the pupils needed to be taken on a journey - whether they liked it or not. 

Sometimes my lessons would not fit nicely into a block of an hour and the three parts would be extended over a series of lessons. These were lessons that generally involved some kind of project - that dreaded group work that I inflict on others but find difficult myself. In these lessons I would be the facilitator and not the teacher, I'd guide and answer the questions, but the learning and teaching would be done by the pupils themselves. These lessons were at their best when I could leave them to it and dream..... Again though, these lessons took the pupils on a journey where from the same base thinking they came up with something beautiful and often very creative, taking the mathematical journey to different stages and arriving at different places. These were the lessons I tended to enjoy most as I watched the learning unfolding before my eyes. 

I've brought a lot of my experience from teaching into ministry. Only a couple of times have I had people say that I sound a bit like a teacher - perhaps when I am getting people to be quiet or when I get people to write stuff down. One of the things that I often have said to me, particularly after a worship service, is 'you put a lot into that' - mostly not in a bad way (like information overload) but in a 'you put a lot of effort into that' kind of way.

I've just finished reading 'The Art of Curating Worship' by Mark Pierson. I wrote a post about it a while ago (it takes me a long time to read any kind of Christian book I'm not reading for college or in preparation for something). What attracted me to this book was the idea of worship leader as curator - it resonated with what I saw as my role in the classroom as more of a facilitator whenever it was possible. Pierson talks of the planning that goes into any worship event, the journey that people are taken on and how the aims of the service should not only be reflected in the preachy bit but throughout the whole event.... and for me.... this feels right. 

So this is why when I am thinking about and planning worship I become absorbed in the event throughout the whole of the week preceding, why it might appear that I put a lot into it (most of the time the ideas are formed when I am doing other stuff, it's just gathering it together). I try and put as much thought into the whole journey (which should continue after the blessing has been said) as I do the sermon. Pierson suggests that planning an act of worship needs to take serious thought and time.... when balancing life sometimes it's difficult to do that... but to honour God, perhaps that time needs to be taken..... the effort is most definitely worth it. 

Interestingly Pierson also says that number 37 of his list of things the church he is part of must be and do is 'party well'. I like that. We should have more parties as church, it's part of our journey of knowing and loving one another (and I love good parties, they are excellent fun). 

People are weird

People are weird. This is my favourite sentence at the moment. It's true. You engage in conversation or you spend time with other people and you quickly come to the conclusion that people are weird. Not in a bad way (most of the time) but in a confusing way, a way that is difficult to understand, a way that means that you need to begin thinking slightly differently to try and understand where other people are coming from. 

I read a quote on facebook yesterday (thanks to one of my dreaming college friends who did this - I've been quoting it to everyone) .... here it is.....

"You are a creative soul. God never intended for you to be “normal”. Your emotions fluctuate because you feel more than people understand. You’re responsible to be prophetic in your art. Don’t sell out. Stop trying to be normal. Avoid the expected. Don’t deliver what is anticipated. Be willing to do some things that may fail. And, in all of this, you will find who God created you to be: a unique, beautiful – sometimes misunderstood – voice of his hope and love to this world." Stephen Brewster

I have no idea where this quote is from... but I love it. I love the use of the word 'normal'. As an occasional statistician, the word normal reminds me of a bell shaped distribution where 95% of people are within 2 standard deviations of the mean of whatever you're testing - these people would be normal - the more we try and be closer to that mean, the bell shape kind of stretches and squeezes, but there will always be 5% of people who are abnormal. We move the boundaries and different people become weird.....

As an occasional non-statistician normality appears to be what we strive for.... whether normality is fitting in with what is expected, doing what people want, walking on the pavement and not the road (if you have ever walked anywhere with me you will know I generally don't do that), buying a house, having a stable job etc etc 

That sounds a bit boring to me...... 

I love the fact that I live in a quirky town where the only train is a steam train and where half way down my road is a field with three sheep living in it. Most of the time I love the fact that in my working life every day is different because I work with people, and with people you never know what to expect. People are unpredictable. Predictability is that job where I did the same thing every day (like when I became an expert photocopier) and where every house looks the same (it's close on my road, but the sheep make it that little bit different). 

God never intended me to be normal. If you want the same thing all the time then I'm not your person. Level headed though I am (most of the time) I can be slightly erratic, off the cuff and frankly a little bit weird. I collect names for my family tree and do maths for fun. I do pub quizzes and don't care about coming last. I can be intensely grumpy and don't want to tell you why. 

That's all OK though.... because I'm not normal.... and I'm proud of it. God created me the way I am..... not like anyone else, but in his image. If I suppress who I am I suppress who God created me to be. 

As a Christian there is no way I can be normal.... Christians are peculiar people. We follow Jesus - who is both human and divine - he was born of a virgin, died on a cross and rose from the dead three days later. If I truly believe that (which I do) there is no way in my life and ministry that I can conform to the world's expectations. I need to avoid the expected behaviour of a religious institution and be creative and surprising in the way I serve God. That's what being a disciple of Jesus does to you.... never expect me to be anything but a little bit peculiar - Jesus gives me freedom to be weird. 

I love 1 Peter 2:9 and discovered today that the King James Version uses the word 'peculiar' in its translation: 

'9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:'

Some ifs and not so many buts.....

When you watch children do things... get places.... discover, often the way they do it seems strange and alien. It doesn't make sense because we have developed our own ways of doing stuff that are simple and on the whole make life that little bit easier. 

Take this morning for example, to get the the raisins held by a 2 year old's Mum involved climbing over a large inflatable bed thing.... we looked and wondered why she didn't just walk round. It doesn't make sense for us to take the difficult route, but for her, it was the most direct route and made the most sense. The inflatable bed thing was climbable, so why not climb it? 

There will come a day when she won't choose the most difficult route, as through trial and error she will learn that walking round the obstacle is easier. It makes sense. To walk round the obstacle means avoiding any difficulty. She won't remember climbing over, but it will be engrained in her subconscious that it is not the best route. She will learn from what happened and then move on..... there's no 'what if I had done it differently, it would have been easier', it's more like when it comes to next time the flow of movement might be different....

Sometimes I'd love to be 2 again - where the decisions we make are immediate, and the 'what ifs' don't even come into play. When you watch a child discover you see their freedom from what has gone.... but as we grow it is easier to care about what others think, about our chosen routes being wrong, about how we might have done things differently. 

When we ask 'what if?' we can't change what's happened. Yeah, we took a difficult route, we can learn from that.... We said the wrong thing, we can apologise and move on..... We did something really stupid... life still maps out in front of us and not behind us....

I spend too much time thinking about the what ifs. I am a deep thinker by nature so will evaluate and analyse every encounter I have had and every thing I say or someone else says. This is great most of the time - makes me a reflective practitioner..... but sometimes I get bogged down in the 'what ifs'. It would be so much easier if I could look at the inflatable bed thing I've climbed over and say, 'well that was really hard and actually hurt' and then work it out differently when I am in that situation again. I might learn to do it differently next time, I might have to deal with the hurt or the consequences of bad decisions, but I'm not going to get hung up on the what ifs.....

We can't change the past, we've got to work with what has happened. Whether it is someone else doing or saying something really stupid, or us doing it ourselves, we can't lie down in the what ifs and dream of a time where the paths might have been different. Past decisions, experiences and mistakes might need to be worked through to take the next step, but perhaps the question should not be 'what if it had been different?', but instead 'what can I do with this now it has happened?'. 

So....my what ifs - they are God's - I give them to him to take them away... and now....I need to trust God that he will help me do what it is right with the things that have happened so I can continue along what is the best path that he lays in front of me. 

Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
    don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;    he’s the one who will keep you on track.                                Proverbs 3:5-6

Logical Thinking

Logic. The tool of a mathematician. When you are learning maths, unless you are some kind of genius, you need to be taught logical ways to work through problems. The cries of 'why do I need to show my working?' are always answered, 'because you need to learn how to set out your work in logical steps to set up for the future hard maths you will do'. 

Logic. I used to teach someone who was better than me at maths. He would do a problem and if he came to the wrong conclusion he would ask me to see if I could work out what he had done wrong. The problem is that most of his logical working was different to my logic. He missed out bits, he did lots in his head, it took me a long time to make sense of his work because the way he thought logically was different to the way I thought logically. 

The problem I have when people come to different conclusions to me is when I am told that what I think or believe has no logic. I admit occasional lapses into illogicalness, and when that happens I do tell myself off for it, or proclaim my fallible humanity that I cannot always be perfect. I have a problem though, when somebody tells me I am illogical, just because they disagree with me and assume I have not thought my deep held beliefs through. I would never believe in anything that I hadn't thought through and didn't make sense - I'm a mathematician. 

I read recently an article in the Independent that is headlined 'Religious People are less intelligent than atheists....'. It can be found here. This hit home with me because I have been basically told I am stupid and illogical for believing in God - that I might as well believe in the flying spaghetti monster for all the sense it makes. When you read through the article you discover that actually the research is quite flawed and subjective - the researchers themselves do not take this as evidence that only 'stupid' people believe in God, but that there is more to it than that. They state the argument for more intelligent people not turning to religion as normally being that '...religious beliefs are irrational, not anchored in science, not testable....', but go on to conclude that there is something with more intelligent people that as they feel more capable in reason, that they do not want to lose control of what they can control - that there is an element of personal control in rejecting what they don't understand. 

Now, I don't know whether that is true, and I am always suspicious when it comes to studies like this because of their subjectivity and the margins for error in statistical testing.... but there may be something in the fact that if we accept God as necessary and rational (which many intelligent people do), then that challenges our own human capabilities and often our perception of reason, and some of us find that a huge challenge because it does mean letting go of control. 

For me it makes sense to believe in God. When I look at the world around me and in a way that is so finely tuned it makes even more sense.  I came across an article by John Polkinghorne about The Anthropic Principle a while ago, which really excited me because it linked the beauty of Physics with the existence of God (worth a read). The more I learn about science, the more God makes sense. 

I believe logic and reason do point to God. I value the work of intelligent Scientists who are also Christians that explain it in much better ways than I can (see The Faraday Institute for examples and more to read). So when I say I'm a Christian, I wish people would think and get to know me before they assume I'm illogical, because for me, it makes sense. Science and Religion are not in conflict and when we put our faith in human intelligence being the be all and end all of everything, I believe we miss out. 

Every time I learn something new about the world, I cannot help myself but glorify God.