Love…?
(inspired by a misty beach and conversation with the excellent Mandy Taylor)
On pondering love and a Grace filled community: When we love someone we aren’t waiting for them to be perfect, we aren’t even waiting for them to be nice to us. We are holding out love, peace, patience and more to someone who is undeserving of that. We aren’t to wait for them to become deserving of that love. We aren’t in a cosmic game of give and take, that way love just becomes karma. I love you with conditions. The conditions are just not meant to be there.
The thought that none of us deserve love is beating a drum in my head, could it be true, how could it be true? And what does it mean that we are loved anyway? What freedom might this mean if I accept I don’t deserve love and yet the love remains? What freedom could be found if I accept my family and friends act in ways that mean they don’t deserve love and yet I give it anyway? What freedom can be found in this kind of reckless, unself seeking love? The consequences of love like that leave me breathless.
I write that and somewhere in me I know it’s true, it’s what I long for, but it seems so ridiculously hard to make my emotions catch up with this way of thinking. If someone hurts me unconsciously or consciously, with a look, a word or more, I withdraw, I turn away, I pull back. It seems like crazy ass thinking to move closer, to give more of myself, to enter. It’s not an instant reaction. My instant reaction is to pull away, to leave.
That would be fine if there wasn’t this slight problem called- ‘the kind of love we are called to’. We’re not alone in this world. It’s not ours. We belong to someone who made us to love like He does. To learn from the love He has. To be embraced by that love and respond in kind.
How has He loved me? How has He loved his creation? The first thing He did when we turned our back way back in the garden was to come looking. No withdrawal, no running away, no tit for tat in relationship. He came looking. “Where are you?” was his question and He’s been asking it ever since. He came for us when we were his enemies. Not just when we’d made a face, or said the wrong word at the wrong time without realising. But when we were His enemies. When we were actively against Him, He came to us. Sought us out.
I long, I ache to not run away from the people who hurt me, consciously or unconsciously. I long to not hold things against them. I ache to be able to respond with grace and love and not demanding they respond to my every wish. I long to see things from their point of view. I long to be free of thinking that if I let go of my way of doing things I’ll end up alone and sad. I want to believe with my whole heart that I am not the centre of this world. I long to be free.
Posted in From the basement
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Thoughts eh.
“Thoughts jostle at the back, fighting each other to come forward to be heard
Tangles strings weave in and out of each other.
Seeking connection,
Independence,
Clamouring to be heard, unravelled and put to bed.”
Posted in From the basement
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Long term living…
Since I was a Relay worker, way way back many years ago (gulping to realise that I am at the conclusion of the where will you be in 10 years time talk, quick where is Nigel Pollock to ask scarily penetrating questions of the next 10 years?) I’ve been trying to kick the short termism that lies lurking in the core of my being. The giving up easily, the ‘I don’t like this so I’m going to stop’. (yes this does relate back to traumas growing up, no this isn’t a confessional so I’ll leave it there).
Back on Relay my excellent Staff Worker told me time and again that Relay is a marathon, not a sprint. I took this to heart, and starting doing things that required a bit more stickablity. Weirdly swimming was part of the answer, making myself swim 40 lengths of a pool each week, pushing through the voice that said, ‘stop, get out, what are you doing?’. Marathon, not a sprint. That phrase hasn’t gone away and in the intervening years I’ve learnt more about what that means in a myriad of ways. (I love the word myriad).
Throughout years of ‘paidfulltimechristianworkministrythingthatdoesn’tmeanministryis restrictedtowhatpeopledowhodon’thaveaproper job’ I experienced more of this way of thinking, change in peoples lives happens gradually, Jesus is with us for the long term, He opens peoples eyes slowly sometimes to the genius reality of Him in this world. I talked about this way of patience in ministry, of God’s timing and repeated the phrase, ‘It’s a marathon, not a sprint’.
Deep down I was still sprinting.
I was going from one thing to the other, enjoying the buzz of student work, if something didn’t work, it was easy to switch to something that does. People came and went, if you didn’t get on with a committee member you knew that they’d be off in a years time anyway.
I found this sprinting mentality affected my friendships as well. It was easy to drop in and out of others lives, dressing myself up for the occasion, hiding the bits of me I didn’t want them to see. Choosing how honest to be about my brokenness, discovering that being honest about my weaknesses somehow gained me more respect, more friendships.
But deep down I was still sprinting, not being around for a long time in any one place. Choosing who I spent time with at church, just hanging out with the people I liked and who liked me, not seeing many people consistently in and out, day to day.
And then I stopped.
Life now feels like a marathon, admittedly there has been more change in my life in the last 2 years than the previous 10 put together, there are sprinting moments, people change and move on but more and more I feel like I’m running a marathon and the cracks beneath the surface are beginning to show. I’m around people day in and day out, there isn’t really anywhere to hide. My colleagues see me on grumpy days as well as days when I’m joyful. It pains me to realise the grumpy days seem to be around more than the joyful ones. (before different people got to see different points of my grumpiness, now it’s the same people who see the same Kath time and time again). It’s painful to realise that I’m not the nice, kind, always encouraging person that I’d started to believe I was.
Church is loads harder because, again, I’m not in ‘encouraging’ mode when I’m there all the time, there isn’t a sense of – right, I’m here for this purpose, this is why I get paid, this is my role. It’s strange beyond words to go from ministry as a job, to realising that you were doing it as a job. Without that role, it turns out I’m not so great. I still want to encourage, to love, to recognise the people around me and love them, it’s just that I don’t much of the time. I take people for granted, it’s harder to embrace the call to love and be loved. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
I’m not sure of the point of this post, other than to recognise that life is a lot longer than I think, that sticking in one job, in one place, with one family (in the wider fat God creating us for community sense) has always been my passion. But the reality of that is far from my idealistic dreaming when I planned to change the world back on Relay. It’s hard to stay, it’s hard to love, not because of others, but because I’m brought face to face with my shortcomings, sin and failings.
I’d like to end this with a tidy bow of ‘but God’s grace is enough, I’m saved, He can help me, He forgives me’ and with all my heart I believe those things. Right now though, I’m in the slog of the marathon. It doesn’t feel like that. Part of me wants to go back to sprints again, but part of me knows and longs for the depth that is found in the marathon. I long to be patient, to have strength and courage, to know the deeper wells of grace which work even for this ongoing sin that I see right now. God loves me so stubbornly and I long to see Him at work in Brighton, in the mess of lives shared together and in the day to day slog that this life can feel like sometimes.
(Really it would be great to end this with the announcement that I’m about to run an actual marathon. Sadly not, I have signed up for a 10k run though…which feels like a marathon right now…)
Posted in Life on the journey
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I *heart* Brighton
I don’t think I got through more than an hour this weekend without declaring in a loud voice, “I love Brighton”, or, “no no, you don’t get it, I really LOVE Brighton”. It’s true, and it’s in months like May that I realise it all over again. It’s not as if it’s enough just to have an amazing city, the sea and the downs all in one place, no no, Brighton always takes it one step further. The festival is such a time.
I’ve only really lived in Brighton for the last few months, outer Hove and Hollingbury just don’t count, now I live close enough to walk into town without hiking boots and a thermos flask for sustenance along the way. All of which makes doing festival things a whole lot easier, no need to search aimlessly for the elusive parking space, no need to pay out the salary on bus fares, just us and some feet.
We started the weekend with walking down to the Children’s Parade, mainly because Husbandface’s school appeared, but really because we got to see these things:
Pretty cool eh?
Next stop on our Festival opening day was the opening night of our friends art being displayed in a local cafe for the month (I don’t know how to make that sentence sound less clunky…). Excellent art and free wine.
Sunday I went to my first lot of Open Houses. I’m not really sure how to describe the impact of wandering around strangers houses looking at amazing things their hands have created, not sure how to capture the diversity on offer, the joy at seeing so many interesting things and the wonder at so much beauty expressed in so many different forms. And that was only seeing 2 roads worth of houses. Leaving aside the house envy that comes with such an experience I could quite happily spend a couple of hours each weekend in such activity, something in my soul breathed a happy sigh and pondered getting creative one day.
The evening brought about one of those “only in Brighton” moments. We went to see an Argentinian guitarist play pretty songs in Spanish whilst a cartoonist/artist drew funny/wistful/entertaining pictures of the songs projected for us all to see. Strangely beautiful, and strangely sleep inducing at times.
So there we go. I want more. More experiences of pretty randomness. More excitement at how crazily creative us humans can get at times. More sunshine and more wonder at the Author of such diversity. I love Brighton, I love this city in all it’s crazy beauty, shame, joy, pain, delight, loneliness, need and hunger.
Posted in From the basement
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The Long Walk Home 