Finding the Perfect Blend (the final week of Neighbours)

It's a sad week this week. Not only is it the last week of my sabbatical, but it's the end of 37 years of Neighbours. A soap that is almost as old as me, it's been part of my life since I was smaller and has been a key part of my routine in ministry (for someone who works better in the morning but is not a morning person, 1.45pm is a good time for lunch).

Neighbours has everything you need in a soap - lots of different types of people, humour and tragedy, characters who could be your neighbours or your friends, a slight surrealism that reminds you occasionally that it is not actually real life (Bouncer's Dream is as surreal as some of mine) and an intricate weaving of storylines that would make you, on one hand, wonder if you want to ever live on Ramsay Street but on the other hand, be drawn in and buy one of the houses now for sale. 

The Neighbours theme music was one of the first things I remember enjoying playing on my recorder at school. It's simplicity lends itself to an infant playing a recorder, and you can't go that wrong. It tells a perfect and simple story of how if you can get the right group of neighbours together, the right blend of neighbours, the right blend of people in your community, then you might become friends. That theme tune has brought itself to life in the last few weeks as old cast members have returned and they have told their story of their best bits of Ramsay Street. 

The stories are of laughter and joy, of the characters that they lived alongside, of those that they miss and of those with whom relationships have broken. They tell the stories of coming to a peaceful place even though they have gone through difficult times, and how Ramsay Street will always be their home, not because of the location, but because of the people who are there. Alongside this, life continues, and brokenness still happens, people still change, people still argue, and the painful past bites when memories arise. Their lives are intertwined, in their now stories, in their past stories and in stories of connections they didn't know they had. The one thing that keeps them together is their collective story, even though they may have only been part of that story for a short while, their story matters. The perfect blend in the theme song is not about it all being pretty, but about the people who make up the story, it's a blend being changed and renewed time and time again. 

Neighbours tells the story of a community searching for and finding home. It's a story of how we need each other, that life cannot be lived in isolation, however much easier that might seem. Alone time is lovely, but we need togetherness to become fully alive. 

I'm reading a book at the moment called Seven Sacred Spaces. The author, George Lings, identifies the elements of Christian communities, which, with the right blend enable 'a richer expression of discipleship, mission and community'. One of these spaces is 'Cloister' - basically the corridors and the spaces of the monastery where nothing specific is usually planned to happen, but community encounters naturally occur. It's in these places that a lot of the relationship building and conversation happens. These are the joining places - the bits where dots are joined together and we can begin to make sense of the world. Giving time to make sure that encounter can happen in the cloister - that the community can just hang out together is key to making the community healthy.

I think that's what makes Neighbours what it is - it's not a series of rushing from one thing to another with the camera swinging between organised events (although they happen and are important) - it's a story full of encounters in the cloister spaces - Harold's Cafe, The Waterhole, the archway outside of Karl and Susan's, the strange little room in Toadie's house, at doorways and on walkways, by the swimming pool..... Those moments are significant in making the theme tune's perfect blend. If you bump into someone and stop to talk, even if only for a few seconds, you remind them that they matter, that they belong, and that they are welcome here..... and when someone feels at home, they let their barriers down and begin to grow. In Neighbours maybe feeling at home happens quickly, not just because it's a fictional soap, but because the joining places are there, and in those joining places they learn to become the perfect blend. 

If we put spaces in place for chance encounters and semi-planned bumping into one another, it helps us learn to be community better and more beautifully. Lings ends the chapter on Cloister with this: 

"Cloister has a socially challenging function. I suggest it speeds up the formation of honest community. Love, humility, generosity of spirit, good listening and mutual learning, reconciliation across genuine differences - wow, that would be a church community I'd be privileged to join! Cloister puts right in your face the need to grow in all these virtues and to fight the particular temptations to grumbling, bad-mouthing, sheer hatred, judgementalism and pride that can occur when we are with others"

Ramsay Street is not the perfect place to be, and neither are the places, the churches, the worshipping communities, in which we find home and space to grow in Jesus.... but, life amongst others, searching for Christ's blend in amongst the challenges of interacting with other human beings - it's a better, more fulfilling and more fruitful place to be than trying to walk the journey alone. 

Peace Shoes

Some time ago, in the near distant past, not here, but there, I was let down - betrayed perhaps - the ground had shifted underneath my feet and the now, it felt rocky and uncertain. 

I asked God how I was going to keep walking whilst I was hurting and unsure of what the consequences would be, and as I was reading, he distinctly led me to Ephesians 6 and the armour of God. Put on the shoes of the Gospel of Peace, he said. 

It was in that moment that I realised the impact of those shoes. The language of the armour of God suggests war, but when the shoes you put on your feet are ones of peace its a different kind of endeavour that you are preparing for. 

Imagine walking and leaving physical footprints of peace. If you're wearing peace shoes, surely that's what you do? 

In my disappointment, frustration and anger, the action of putting those shoes on turned my angry stomp into a walk where I discovered wholeness again. 

This is the Jesus way. 

A Blessing for your Shoes

May your shoes, in your walking, create footprints of peace.

May their imprints speak gently of the one who restores. 

As you stomp out your anger, may they find softer ground

As you walk off your frustration, may they help you find wholeness

As you walk without direction, may they take you to a safe place. 

As you trip over the changing landscape, may they help you find your feet

And as you walk on beyond, may your footprints bring peace

to the people and the places you encounter on your way

image from https://pixabay.com/photos/shoes-used-worn-cloth-shoes-4059754/

 

Coming Home

I just looked in my diary and realised I came home a week earlier than I meant to. How did that happen? 

I think that maybe I was ready. I think my internal diary shouted over my written diary and told me that home was where I needed to be. I considered avoiding the now red alert furnace in the south. I've loved being able to spend time with family and friends and to feel safe and free to be exactly who I am. I have spent a lot of time over the last two and a half months processing and considering and thinking and waiting and reading and talking...... and being deeply loved. 

I've remembered how to laugh again, just laugh and not stop (that can be a problem, but it's a good problem!) and how good laughter is for us. I saw a photo of some of our church leaders in our new community kitchen garden (which is very exciting) and they were laughing and I wanted to be there to laugh with them. 

May there be so much more laughter. 

I've learnt how to completely rest and switch off. One of the best feelings at the beginning of my sabbatical was sitting down in my little retreat sanctuary and realising I had no demands on me. I could just be. I've struggled with retreating in the past because I haven't found that space, but now I've found it, I am hoping when I go through a season of demand, it won't be too hard to find again. I spent a lot of last week just being, sitting, reading, watching fish, and it was glorious. 

May we all find the time and space to simply be. 

I've been surrounded by people who know me well and have reminded me of who I am. I've been reminded many times that I am me and nobody else. I am the person who God created me to be. The minister that God calls me to be. I lead from who I am not who anybody thinks I am or expects me to be, and its in doing that I can be all I need to be. God chose me because he loves me and knows what is best for me. I am enough, and don't need to be something I am not. God chooses you because he loves you and he knows you better than even you do - he knows what he is doing. 

May we all know that we are enough. 

I've been climbing hills, both in real life (those cliffs on the south west path were steeper than I expected) and in my thinking. Someone said to me that the more you tackle the difficult hills, the quicker the recovery time afterwards and I found that to be true. I've had some difficult stuff to process, but I think I'm nearly there. 

May we all have the courage to face the hills. 

I've sat and asked myself the taxing questions and have had others do that for me. I've spent time with those who can pull even the most entangled stuff out of me and make it into something beautiful, bringing insight and wisdom so simply and straightforwardly into things I've not quite understood. I've discovered more of the kind of minister God is growing me to be. 

May we all be blessed with those who will help us untangle ourselves.

I've known more of what I've always known, that God loves me with an everlasting love. If I can learn to love even a smidgen of how he loves, I'll be getting something right. I've been reminded to seek God's Kingdom first and that's where I will learn how to love more deeply.

May we all know God's everlasting love.

I've been reminded that home is where I am called, it's where I feel pulled to, and whilst for a while I've been pulled away, I wonder if now, as my internal diary shouts louder than the ink of the pen with which I'd written my schedule down the direction of the pull has found its centre again. 

Sometimes you just know, you know.... 

Psalm 126 (The Message)

It seemed like a dream, too good to be true, when God returned Zion's exiles. We laughed, we sang, we couldn't believe our good fortune. We were the talk of the nations - "God was wonderful to them!". God was wonderful to us; we are one happy people. 

And now, God, do it again - bring rains to our drought-stricken lives. So those who planted their crops in despair will shout "Yes!" at the harvest, so those who went off with heavy hearts will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing" 

Consider the Wildflowers

Earlier this week I spent some time in Southwell, and wandered around the Minster Gardens. The gardens are beautiful and time and care has been put into making it a good experience to visit with different things to look at and explore and the most beautiful array of flowers. Towards the edge of the garden is a circle made up of wild flowers - you can walk down the middle of it where a circular bench is placed. Sitting on that bench you are surrounded by all the colour and activity that comes in what, I suppose,  you might describe as a meadow of wild flowers. 

There were poppies and cornflowers and daisies and pink flowers and yellow flowers and bees buzzing and the sounds of birds in the trees around. It's the kind of place where being still is the only option and it soothes the soul. 

As I was sat there I was thinking about the verses in Matthew 6:25-34 that remind us not to be worried - like the birds who get on with the day as it is and the flowers that look beautiful and just grow like that. I'd had a dream the night before which had shaken me a bit and I'd woken up a little anxious - I was reminded of one of my daily readings which had included these verses, and as I looked at the flowers I wondered how considering them might actually help. 

Life over the last few years has felt like a London public transport journey - the kind where the times all match up and you step from tram to train to tube without pausing for a breath. The uncertainties over what's ahead, over the changes in government, over the cost of living, over how much to use the car, over what is coming next..... they have been never ending..... and at times it has been difficult to imagine a time when the movement might stop. 

Reflecting on those verses as I thought about the wildflowers I stopped at the place where the wildflowers stop. We so often read those verses as a whole, which is where they belong, attaching them to an encouragement to not worry or be anxious, but perhaps sometimes we just need to stop and stare before we move on. 

Consider the lilies. Consider the flowers. Consider the wild flowers. 

In the middle of that circle of meadow, everything felt right. That stillness, that time, just to bask in the beauty of the colours and listen to the sounds of the world simply being was a thin place where God's creation made everything well for now. 

We don't need to wonder how considering the flowers might help, we just need to consider the flowers, because those flowers, in that moment, contain everything needed to mean the next words and verses can find a place to be at another time. In that moment, the song that the flowers sing is the only song we need to hear.

Consider the wild flowers - their petals, so neatly shaped and not quite but nearly uniform, their colours so vibrant, bringing diversity as they thrive alongside others so different themselves. Consider the wild flowers, so carefully made by God, intricate, resilient, delicate, full of life. Consider the wild flowers, who tell something of the effort and care God puts into you and your life. Consider the wild flowers, they have a beautiful story to tell. 

Who are they to be..... ?

Who is this person who stands in front of you? You try and read and make sense of them as you form your reply. They disagreed with you and challenged your thoughts and ideas and have raised up all sorts of feelings inside you and you don't know whether to laugh or cry or shout or walk away. They stand in front of you sharing words that divide in a space more public than you'd have liked. 

Who is this person who stands in front of you and irritates you to the core with their very presence? They make you angry and you know they shouldn't but they talk and exhibit an identity you cannot identify with. They make choices that go against your moral code and your shackles are up because you don't understand or tolerate. 

Who is this person who stands in front of you and talks of their own lives with no interest in yours or your thoughts on what they might do. They speak in a language you don't understand and can't engage with but want you to know what they mean. They appear to hate you and choose to confront you on every little thing without letting you speak. 

Who is this person who stands in front of you find really difficult to manage to love? Why do they make you feel this way and why are they the way they are? 

Who is this person who stands in front of you? 

First and foremost a human, with a story, with a life of brokenness and pain. A person with tales of love and of joy, and of sorrow and of loss. A person with a voice who remembers moments where their voice was taken as someone else spoke for them without being asked. 

It's someone who who might have seen something that you haven't noticed and before you shout back their presence is calling you to shift your eyes. If you look beyond your irritation there is something in this person that is good and that connects to you in surprising ways. 

It's someone who has struggled coming to terms with their own identity and is hoping you might not struggle quite as much as they are as they share their story with you. They came to your space as a safe space because they had nowhere else to go. It's someone who is never really listened to and is hoping that you might be the one who hears. 

It's someone who has thought carefully about their choices, who has studied and wrestled and found a settled place for themselves, and is hoping you might just sit with them for a while. Their story is far too difficult to tell and they need sanctuary in a place that feels further from home than far can be. They struggle to articulate themselves and know that it always comes out wrong (but its better than it used to be). 

It's someone who doesn't know how to be loved, so your difficulties are theirs too, and you journey together. As they choose to learn how to react to and receive love, you choose to follow the rocky path of learning how to love. 

It's a someone, a person, a human, a life, a reflection in a mirror, a story of shadow and of light. 

It's someone who reminds you that you're so caught up in the struggle that you've forgotten how to choose love. You've forgotten the love languages of listening and of patience, of kindness and of pausing, of hearing, of being, of taking down of walls. They remind us that we can choose to live in the tension of difference and forget that our opinions only matter as much as theirs.

It's someone who is lovable just like you, with potential, just like you, worth listening to, just like you. 

Just like you. 

"So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them...... God saw all he had made, and it was very good" Genesis 1:27, 31a