Resurrection Eggs

Posted on March 29, 2021 by Kath

A friend asked about our Resurrection Eggs on Instagram so here’s the file where I’ve put together what we do. We nicked the idea from countless others but the basic idea is we have some eggs into which go a picture, a bible passage, a reference to the story in the Jesus Story Book Bible and an activity to do. We then read out one each day which tells a different aspect of the Easter story. Generally I’m ok with the aspects we’ve used but today I realised I should have put in the woman anointing Jesus so I think I’ll put that in next year.

We bluetac the pictures and verses up in the house so that we can see them build up over the week before Easter. For full disclosure we don’t have an idylic thoughtful meaningful time as we read these out each morning. Mainly there are fights over who gets to open the egg, who gets to read, who gets to put the pictures up. The boys wander around and insert the word poo regularly into otherwise normal sentences and generally someone cries (just telling it like it is round here…).

BUT.

Each day I look up and am reminded of this story that wraps around us. Each day I am reminded of what our God is like, the God who came to be with us, who washes our feet, whom we expect much of and get disappointed by when our immediate issues are not sorted out by the king who comes on a donkey, the God who entered death and suffered horribly, the God who knows what it’s like to face the darkest loneliest night when your friends fall asleep and all is dark, the God who tore the curtain of separation and welcomes us into a life of love as beloved, the God who knows tears and scars and who in deepest mystery set us all free to live this life in a kingdom that values the brokenhearted, which says love is the bedrock of reality and the God who offers deep inexplicable hope of the day creation itself can stop groaning and a new world will form with no more crying, mourning, pain or death. (what do you mean paragraphs need full stops…)

As much as I don’t understand much of this story and how it works, I cannot escape it. I do not want to forget it and I love the ways it holds me to this world. I don’t know how my boys will react to this story over the years, I am not in control of that, but I do know I want it to be the air they breathe whilst they are with us. I would love this never stopping, never failing, never giving up love to be their core, their bedrock, their security and safe place in this life and so we remember, we live in the midst of this story of love, bound in it, bringing our reality to it and being changed by it.

Resurection-eggsDownload
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On being extraordinarily kind to my soul

Posted on March 12, 2021 by Kath

A good friend told me at the start of this week to make sure it was full of things that were extraordinarily kind to my soul. Which led me to a place where I wanted to write down all those things this week which have been kind to my soul.

Sitting drinking tea in my grey chair
Book in hand
Sun streaming through the windows

Noticing my feelings
Noticing what my body is doing
Noticing the places of tension
The anger, frustration
Noticing what brings peace.

Walking in the hills.
Sun on my face
Big rolling downs
Slopes full of sheep
That made me cry at
All the beauty in this world

Conversations with wonderful friends
Uninterrupted
Enjoying the presence of
Those who know me deep.

Lamenting. Noticing loss
Noticing the gentle touch of
Hope as disrupted narratives
Get altered and reformed
As the Other comes and breathes
On this pain.

Noticing the change
The empty quiet house
The swirl of emotions as I see
Less of my boys
Less of their wonder and more of their pain
Noticing the call to love
And love again.

Noticing my desire to go tender
To quieten the old authoritarian voice
And enter their world
Feel their pain and
Love them through
This fragile world

Being aware that I am loved
That the simple is all I need
I am loved
Held
Known
Seen.

Gazing at big crashing waves
stopping the tv that was bad for my soul
Enjoying fun tv
Enjoying the call of Mary Oliver
To sit and enjoy this beautiful world
To know I don’t have to be good
To love this soft animal of my body

Napping. Reading. Holding in this space.
Singing loud in the car
Grinning big at the sky
More tea, more reading, more sitting still
More being loved.
More peace.

Smiling at my favourite and best
Laughing in the space time off supplies
Sitting in silence together.

All these things and more have brought kindness to my soul this week.

And you?

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Life in Lockdown… the one where the end is in sight.

Posted on March 6, 2021 by Kath

And so here we are, on the edge of putting some normality back into our routines and life again. On the edge of finding the margins once more, of the boys going to another space for 6 hours a day, of learning how to live with space and openness, learning how to order time to enable us to lean into how loved we are so we can love with open arms of expansive love. 

Here we are. 

I breathe in deep. These weeks have not come easy, they have been full of slow walking on, riding the waves of times when I felt I could cope and times when I felt myself sinking low, sobbing into my pillow whilst my eldest stroked my back saying it’s ok, it’s ok, I’ve got you (my words repeated back at me, reassuring me that sometimes we get things right in parenting and that if he knows how to soothe a sad person he’ll be ok in this thing called life). 

We’ve had times where I’ve loved the endless cuddles and love which pours out from my two puppy like beauties. We’ve had times where I have wandered around screaming ‘GO BACK TO SCHOOL’, as if that would help the situation. Times when the endless talk of poo, the fights, the more fighting, the screams of IT’s NOT FAIR have got too much. No it is not fair. Nothing about this is fair and we have it way better than many others and that’s not fair either my son. 

I breathe in deep, stretch my back out each morning, remember to breathe from my stomach not my chest, my stomach not my chest. I breathe in deep through my nose and expel air from my mouth feeling my back get back into some kind of sensible posture as I do so. I breathe in deep. 


And still the days rolled on, walks, lunch, audio books, films. Walks, lunch, audio books, films. And on and on and on we went. Some days brought warm sun and we remembered that we loved being outdoors, bikes and scooters, trampolines. Evenings running up and down the street. Then the cold hit again and we ached for certainty of warmth in our days. 

And still, somehow, time rolled on.  I see the cycles of flowers, so deeply enjoyed this past year start again. Snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils, wild primroses and now the blossom is starting to emerge and I cannot believe it has been a year now, a year of this uncertain strange disconnection keeping me far from those I love feeling. I can’t believe we’ve been in this place for a year. A year. 

We sit on the edge of change.

As we wait it out we find ourselves as containers of huge emotions, sometimes we can’t help but be sponges and end up spiking out on each other. Snapping and hurting in the overwhelm. 

So we sit on the edge and look to hope. 

Hope in the sunrise each morning, in the green carpet beginning to overtake the woods where I walk each morning. In the green shoots coming out of the buds which have been sitting there all winter, reminding me that we are never truly dead. In the sun streaming through windows, the lighter mornings and evenings, the endless swooping starlings swirling at dinner time out our back window. In the cuddles, the repair after the rupture, in the reading of stories, in the lego models adorning the window sills, in the quiet moments when our feet touch in the morning and we remember we are together in this, in the snatched kisses, the coffee in cold parks walking around and around whilst they play away from us for a few moments. 

I look to hope in the here, the today. 

I need it here as I notice and sense and feel the weight in my body at the moment. As I look to a few days time wondering what space will bring, wondering how much of a crash will come. I look to hope now, to tasting now the wonder of this world. To knowing whatever comes on Monday that I am held. Known, seen and loved. Whatever this next stage looks like I am loved. There are loving arms to fall into this coming week, to hold me as I sit on my grey chair and drink tea, to hold me as I walk dazed around our quiet house, as I read books and walk out on my own around our local area. There is a love that will put me back together again, breathe life into my aching bones and give me strength for this. 

We sit on the edge and breathe. We have made it through this stage. I smile wryly, glad of all the mess, joy, pain and wonder of these last few weeks, grateful, thankful and relieved that change will come on Monday morning. 

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Books I’ve read Jan- Feb 2021

Posted on February 13, 2021 by Kath

A Manual for Heartache- Cathy Rentzenbrink

A lovely book, really helpful words on what helps when your world has been devastated or doesn’t look like you ever thought. Practical, earthy, real, hopeful and easy to read. 

The 10,000 doors of January- Alix E Harrow

I adored this novel following a girl called January through doors into other worlds. A story of love, commitment, hope and wonder. It altered how I looked at the world around me and I don’t think there is a much higher compliment I could pay to a novel. So good to immerse yourself in. 

Diary of a Young Naturalist- Dara McAnulty

I loved this journey through a year with Dara, a teenage boy who loves the natural world and who also lives with autitism, as do many other members of his family. It’s such a wonderful read. I really appreciated seeing the strategies he uses to live well in the world. I loved the portraits painted of his family and the love and care his Mum clearly has for him. I love how she’s helped him learn how to experience and live well with the things which overwhelm him. It gave me great hope for my boys, a greater desire to be gentle with them and help them with the situations they find hard. Also it made me ache to be back over in Northern Ireland with our family over there and the Mourne Mountains. Dara loves this beautiful world of ours and it was brilliant to journey with him and his reflections on it. 

Everything is Spiritual – Rob Bell

Oh I wanted to love this a lot. Really good friends described how helpful it was and I wanted to delight in it too. But I just didn’t connect with it. Ah well. Maybe a good lesson in how different we all are and what works for some won’t work for others. 

The Wild Silence – Raynor Winn

This however I adored. I love her writing SO much, she also helps me write better as my internal monologue soaks in her prose. This is the wonderful follow up to The Salt Path and I think I liked it more. It’s the story of how they returned to a stable life, how The Salt Path was written and a journey into learning to trust people again. Essential reading I reckon, (but then people said that about the Rob Bell book so take my words with a pinch of salt…). I also loved how much of the divine I found in the book (not that she would call it that on any level..) but the ending resounded loud of the God I know and love. 

Ask Again Yes- Mary Beth Keane

A beautiful novel following the life of two neighbouring families and the lives of two of their kids who grow up together, stay together and form a life together whilst trying to grapple with an incident which tore the families apart. It’s a tale of redemption, hope and the power of real love. Such a good hopeful book. 

Utopia Avenue- David Mitchell

I love David Mitchell. This is a sprawling tale of the band Utopia Avenue and their journey of recording two albums in the middle of the 60s. It’s full of nods to other bands and artists of the time, full of his usual slightly twisty turney plots, full of the normal and bizarre together and any fans of his will love the story arch which turns up in most of his books. I really want to read them all over again to appreciate the depths and intricacies of the world he has created. No idea what you’d make of it if you’d never read any David Mitchell but I loved it. 

Dear Reader- Cathy Rentzenbrink

Another beautiful memoir (I seem to have read loads over the last couple of months) based around her love of reading, how books have held her and been her companions throughout her life so far and some of her story told through the books she was reading at the time. A book which made me want to keep on reading and reading. Beautifully written as well. 

Lectio Divina- Christine Valters Painter

Really helpful book taking you through the different stages and types of Lectio Divina (sacred reading) . I found it gave me a sense of wanting to sit more with the things I read, to notice and be aware of God in the world around me, in the books I read, in the words of the Bible I read. It helped me want to slow life down and take notice. Really easy to read and absorb and one to come back to again and again. 

Once Upon a River- Diane Setterfield

I didn’t love this as much as I know others have, probably because I read it in a fairly disjointed way on my kindle, it might have been more absorbing in a couple of good deep sessions of reading. A great story though of what happens in a local community on the river Thames when a man enters a pub one night carrying what seems to be a dead girl. A fascinating journey of several people connected to the girl and seeing their interconnected lives play out to a surprising conclusion. 

Rumblestar- Abi Elpinstone

This is my pick of the books the boys have read either with me or on their own this month. She might just be my new favourite author. This is a brilliant book of magical worlds but really it’s about friendship, loyalty, how to make friends and keep them and how to deal with anger and sadness without it spilling out on everyone around you, all in a brilliantly fun adventure story. It has a fair few moments of tension but isn’t that scary. (we leave the super cliff hanger chapters for when we read in the day time!). It might just be better than The Land of Roar which was our book of the year last year.

This month they’ve also loved The Boy who Sang with Dragons by Andy Shepherd (the end of a wonderful series which is great if you want some lovely stories without much tension), Pizazz by Sophy Henn (amazingly sarcastic superhero who does some excellent eye rolling), Oliver and the Seawigs by Philip Reeve (a fun adventure story without any scaries).  Son1 loved the start of The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson but it has some pretty horrid bad guys early on that gave son2 nightmares, he’s decided to save it for a few years time, probably best aged 8/9 and up. They adore The Phoenix comic which arrives on our doorstep every Friday and it’s always a sweet moment when they break off from fighting each other and son1 reads it to son2. 

And you? What good reads have rocked your world this month? 

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Life in Lockdown 2 weeks 3-5

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Kath

We could argue whether this is lockdown 2 or 3 but for us in the world of small children at home it’s lockdown 2 for sure. The weird fake lockdown that happened in November just doesn’t count, I could still sit on my sofa and read without a small boy trying to sit on my face. That aside. Here we are, one more week to go until Half Term (an arbitrary maker point in the sand, nothing will change around here other than our collective guilt at failing to do any school work will go down a notch or two). 

I’m sitting in our shed typing away with the lovely Binface (search for Binface in previous blogposts from the last 15 years if you want to know who she is and why she’s called Binface) in a zoom box in the corner of my screen as I type. We’re doing this thing where we write together and it feels less lonely and more actual writing takes place. I would like to do it again soon. It makes me write rather than search facebook constantly, I mean she probably wouldn’t know if I was searching facebook but then again maybe deep down she would. Maybe. Anyway, it’s reassuring to know she’s there trying to write whilst I sit here trying to write. 

Husbandface sent me this quote the other day from the wonderful Mary Oliver: 

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

Those words felt like a big hello to the writer in me who never quite gets enough time to play on this screen. I read Midnight Library recently by Matt Haig and was struck by how few regrets I think I have so far in life. But if life goes on much further without me having sat down and tried to write more, express what I think I have in me, to give it a go, I think I might have a massive regret in a few years time. So here I am. 

Obviously I’m right now writing a blog post but I think that’s all part of the process, I’ve written other stuff in our time together this afternoon and I think I have a next step in my project to tap into next time I sit down and write. But I also wanted to write without thinking too much about it, which I think is a part of my blog post process. Here lies the writing that comes easy rather than the stuff I dig deep for and refine. Both are good, but the easy stuff feels like a good win for this first foray into actually intentionally sitting down to write, rather than feeling the wave catching me and grabbing a moment to tap on my screen or laptop. 

Self analysis of why I’m in a cold shed on a Saturday afternoon over. 

Lockdown life eh. Well it’s much the same as when I last wrote, except we are more tired, more fed up of this blergh landscape, of the endless grey. The questions of when will this be over loom loud. We know hope is on the horizon, the sun will shine again, the Spring is coming, the great cycle of flowers has begun again with snowdrops all over the place. But still. It’s hard and relentless and a big old slippy walk in the mud on a grey misty day. 

Honestly, that’s about all I’ve got. 

The biggest bright spot in my week is, as usual, my spiritual direction course. Each Wednesday I slump into the shed, lock the door with a huge sigh of relief and sigh. Each Wednesday I am drawn back into the reality of love that will not let me go, into depth and into reminders of the One whose love goes deeper than the deepest crap of this world. 

This week we had to write a poem based around the hinge point of the phrase ‘And Yet…’ To write down our worlds without covering over the cracks but then to write ‘and yet’ and see what came out of that about the reality of God in our lives. I groaned a little inwardly, fearing it would be trite, a forcing of the nice neat bow on the end of the story, especially when I felt more in a Psalm 88 place. Then I grudgingly remembered that more often than not the Psalms end in these places of reminders and hope. They end in the-  but I know this of you God or they remind us of the character of God, or they scream come on and show up already because you love us God. 

For me it turned into a powerful exercise in reminding myself that the reality of God always goes deeper than the darkest deep, that even in the most extreme horrid there is always an ‘and yet’. Even if those are the only words on the page. Even if those are the only words we are able to write. We wait for our ‘and yet’ and maybe in the waiting we are somehow finding it. Psalm 88 doesn’t end with any nice joy at the reality of God but the fact it is expressed to God provides it’s own ‘and yet’. 

Here is my slightly raw edged rant with the ‘And Yet’. 

Weighted heavy thoughts
trudging through the mist.
Scared I’m messing those boys up
Scared at my anger, rage,
frustration at this
relentless long bleak walk

Where is there hope? How can I keep going?
How long will this take?
Will we be able to repair and repair after so much rupture?

Questions I throw at your feet in anger
Questions I sob through the night.
Questions I shout into the resounding dark.
Questions I can’t be bothered to ask any more.

And yet

The relentlessness of this slog
is matched by
your relentless love, perseverance, grace
when all is gone of me again.
Your relentless patient endurance, presence
light, hope,
the bedrock at the bottom
the damp-proof liner in these walls
the safety net, the catch me when I fall,
the hands
the hands
that will not
let me go.

And to some it will still sound trite, but on Wednesday night it made a whole lot of difference and gave me some strength to keep on walking. 

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