In these times
Go out. Find a tree
Sit on a branch
And let it tell you it’s story
Feel the gentle sway
Above you
Talk to the birds also finding refuge.
Notice the new life
Slowly emerging from
The shadows of winter past
In these times. Go out.
Find your tree
And let it tell you it’s story.
I forget what day we are now on. It’s the second week anyway. The second week of trying to navigate this new normal, to process the changes taking places in our society and world. To find new patterns of living as a family, new ways to connect to each other as friends and, for us, new ways to live as church together.
There has been a whole lot of new. Which is exhausting. A whole lot of change. Which is exhausting. A whole lot of grief as future plans are laid to the side. Which again is exhausting. It is no wonder that most people I talk to are tired, finding it hard to concentrate, experiencing their emotions much nearer to the surface. Change on this level takes a long time to slowly adjust to.
This week I met with my small group from my Spiritual Direction course over Zoom (how else do we do anything these days..?) we talked about what we were noticing in our bodies, our prayer lives, our experience each day and where we might be finding God at the moment. It was such a helpful time to remember and focus in again on the unseen realities of this world. I was reminded that there is more going on than my immediate emotions and felt the desire again to sit with my Maker and remember the ground underneath my feet.
Mainly what I am noticing this week is a deep return to my childhood and the things I experienced around the age of 8 to 11. I have found more and more as I have hit my 40s that I am returning to threads and themes which have stuck with me throughout the path life has taken me on. One of these threads is a strong love of nature. I remember deeply loving the outdoors, searching out the names of the natural world around me, craving a pond to find newts in and spending lots of time outside.
Across the road from the house I grew up in was a patch of wasteland. When we first moved in this land was covered in brambles but held hidden delights for a 8 year old. There was an old shed containing various random rusty tools, a fallen down tree which became a spaceship or army tank depending on what games we played on it with the boys from up the road. There was a stream running through it and best of all, around a corner, an old orchard (rather glamorous name for a patch of land with some fruit trees on it). I can still remember it now, the green grass, the apple tree we climbed in and the secret path through to another part of our cul-de-sac road. I spent lots of time over in that land, knowing it, exploring, becoming familiar with its landscape.
One of the only photos we have of the waste ground…slightly flooded…
Me, bright eyes, full heart, outside.
And then the developers came and flattened it, tore up the trees, put the stream in a pipe and eventually built houses on it. I was fairly devastated. Our playground had gone. I ached for its return.
Back to the present: In these last couple of weeks we have spent part of each day walking up to the woods at the top of the estate we live in. These woods are little more than a narrow patch of trees between a main road into Brighton and the start of the housing but they contain untold delights for us. The trees are budding, the floor is carpeted in green with some kind of vegetation which name I have yet to discover, primroses and wood anemones splash colour all around. We walk through the woods to a clearing at the end, put our picnic blanket down by an old den we want to improve and I read to the boys. This rhythm connects me deeply with a world I grew up in. Going to the same place day in and day out is doing something deep in our souls. Son1 said that he knew every inch of the woods yesterday. I’m not sure he does yet but both of them are discovering the geography of where they live in a fascinating way.
This week we finished reading The Tanglewoods Secret by Patricia St John. This was written in 1948 and has taken us back in time to a place where children did play in woods all day long. It’s a book I remember loving as a child, a gentle book with lots of very low key normal references to Jesus. It’s fairly moralistic at times, as you might expect from a 1940s book with lots of talk of how naughty the main character feels and her longings to be ‘good’. (I definitely over identified with her as a child.) But it’s a book that also oozes the grace and love of Jesus our Shepherd coming for us, seeking us out and loving us whatever we are like. Reading it again brought me back to some of the simple bedrock realities of faith in Jesus and how Jesus can make a difference in our day to day choices in life. I was in tears for lots of it as I sensed again my Shepherd holding me and my boys in these confusing troubling times. It was also a lovely reminder for the boys that Jesus can be their Shepherd too and loves them deeply. It was a book which has led me to pray more, to ask for forgiveness when I notice my ego getting in the way of life and to remember that there is more to this world which can transform the immediate circumstances of the day.
However odd, unsettling, exhausting and confusing these times are (and it’s good to acknowledge that they are) I am also deeply grateful for this time to slow and pay attention to where we live. I am grateful for these gentle rhythms to our days. It gives me hope that in this world, where I mooch around with my 7 and 5 year old boys all day, they too might find depth and meaning in this simple strangeness we now inhabit.
It is Day 4 of lockdown. Day 8 since we took the kids off school because of a cough. About 2 -3 weeks since I started looking at the news an unhealthy amount, mainlined sugar again and gave up all my vague lent practices.
We’ve been in a strange new world for about a week, a world that has got smaller and smaller each day. A slow squeeze into the immediate world in front of our eyes. Gradually each day the restrictions on our lives have progressed, the today of a few days ago was different to now. We are learning new normals and it’s a rocky process trying to figure that all out.
Tonight though I sit on a sofa in our spare room and discover that the weather howling in my brain has calmed down a little. I find that the writer at the back of my mind has woken up and is tentatively offering her services to start to try and process thoughts.
So here we are.
We have two boys adjusting to full time life at home. They have told me it is not the same as school holiday’s because we aren’t going to different fun places each day. They’ve said school is better than this, but maybe homeschooling like the cousins with actual groups and seeing people would be a good idea.
We have slowly formed a very loose routine, fun exercise in the morning (sorry Joe Wicks you do not have fans in our house, we prefer super movers) followed by a bit of the work sent in from their school when they are at their most alert. Then we slowly move to baking, garden fun, ‘educational’ screen time (online maths games etc), drawing, colouring or playing. Then lunch followed by quiet time (genius idea of my sister in law) where they listen to audio books or read in rooms on their own and I mumble to God and then fall asleep for a bit. Then we are out for our walk of the day, up to the woods near our house where we do some den building, forest bathing (they manage about 20seconds of quiet staring before fighting again) and reading out loud on picnic blankets, after which we go home for more playing, power rangers and dinner. It takes effort to get them outside lots of the time but bribery and corruption seem to be working for now.
My routine revolves around their own but differs slightly, I get my exercise time and alone time first thing around 7. I also get some focused work done a couple of mornings in the shed whilst husbandface helps with their morning ‘school’ and play before lunch. I also work a bit around their screen times, checking in with people in and around the flow of the day. My course is still carrying on in a new way on a Tuesday evening over zoom and our church small group meets on a Wednesday, again on zoom. The rest of the evenings we talk to friends online or mainly just watch Friday Night Lights. I’m kind of confused that I’ve watch a season and a half of this drama about a small town American High School Football team and I still have NO idea what American football is all about.
Weekends we chuck most of this routine out of the window and I’m hoping we’ll do a big walk on Saturday mornings, Sunday morning is church online and then films/play/gardening in the afternoons.
The boys have mainly (I say very tentatively, hoping it won’t all change tomorrow) transitioned into this now after a fairly turbulent week of adjusting. They still fight, still have big emotions but are slightly less explosive than earlier in the week. I’m still a shouty mess some of the time but have also settled down a bit. I’m reading the news a whole lot less and morning exercise is helping my brain. I want to get into a reading groove again and then most of my self care strategies will be back in place.
It’s taken time to even feel like settling into this could be possible. I’ve been in various states of numbness, overwhelm, tears, exhaustion and anxiety. I’ve compared myself too much to other people’s lovely routines and amazing school work and how easy they have made it all look, whilst also holding down jobs and being incredibly intentional in their communities. I’ve felt like I’m barely surviving, barely hanging on, being battered by the waves of emotion which knock me down again just after I’ve got back on my feet. Yet somehow the waves are growing calmer and I’m starting to ease into our new normal.
(I would talk about husbandface’s routine but it hasn’t really changed much. He has to tag out a couple of mornings a week to do fun with the boys whilst I work but he’s still working from his shed, still doing cool stuff online, still a bit ill. He’s been prepping for this for the last few months of home working and is frankly finding all this desire for more online connection a bit tiring. He likes his quiet shed…)
I find it fairly ironic that my word of the year was ‘Here’, that I wanted to live more in the present each day. This new world of global lockdown certainly has dragged me kicking and screaming into the present of life. I can’t live in my plans for the future anymore. All holidays are off for the foreseeable future. I am faced with this today being enough. Obviously I can still be taken away from the present of my boys and husband by the online world but I want to try and find the new normal in online noise. I want to find better spaces to check my phone and actively engage with others, in ways that are helpful and that fuel connection. One step at a time eh.
So, here I am.
Wrapping my head around this new normal. Wondering what good this will bring. Hoping against hope.
For me writing and processing are the start of accepting this world. I’m glad the writer lady is back and I’m looking forward to what she might produce in these coming days and weeks.
March is upon us, the daffodils are out, buds are emerging, lighter mornings and evenings are upon us, all around rumours of Spring abound. In this sensing of a new season it feels fairly fitting to round up the books I’ve read so far this year.
Anatomy of Dreams- Chloe Benjamin.
Not as good as the last one I read by her but still a fairly intriguing novel looking at themes around whether we can control our dreams, what is real and people pushing the edges of research boundaries.
The Hidden Life of Trees- Peter Wohlleben
I so desperately wanted to like this book, it’s all about trees, how they interact with each other and how they fit in with the world around them. It has some pretty cool tree facts in there, I didn’t know trees feed each other and rely on each other in quite the way they do in a healthy forest environment. Sadly though the writing was fairly dull and it could have been half the size or a quarter of the size and still have had the same impact. Ah well.
Miss Jane- Brad Watson.
A beautiful novel about a woman in rural America growing up without normal sex organs, how she grows to manage her condition and interact with the world around her. I really enjoyed reading this It has beautiful descriptions of the natural world and is incredibly tender. Worth sitting down with.
Home Fire- Kamila Shamsie
Such a good book. I find it hard to describe but it’s all about the tensions within a family whose father died on the way to Guantánamo, the brother has left to join the media arm of Isis and whose sisters are fighting about the responses they have to the situation. All against the backdrop of being observed by the Home Office and living in worlds where much is assumed but little is heard. It’s heartbreaking, tense and fairly disturbing.
How to Own the Room- Viv Groskop.
A romp (she’s really funny) through a whole load of women speakers and how they own the rooms they are talking to. So helpful to reflect on how different women do it and a massive encouragement to keep on believing I have a right to speak and be heard in whatever room I am in.
View from the No12 Bus- Sandi Toskvig
Sandi’s take on a memoir offers reflections inspired by stops on her regular bus journey and the memories sparked by them. She’s funny and it kind of works. My big take away was a load of sadness and rage because of how much homophobia and sexism she has had to face in her life. I forget how rare openly out families existed in the public eye during the 80s and 90s, and maybe the 00’s. Brighton is such an echo chamber bubble at times that it’s easy to forget how far we’ve come in accepting and loving people as they are, and how the challenge will always remain to not treat people as ‘other’.
Unfollow – Megan Phelps-Roper.
This one pretty much blew my mind. It’s Megan’s story of growing up in the Westboro Baptist community and how she found herself leaving it a few years ago. It’s a very disturbing read (especially if you’ve ever been in a fairly full on religious community). It was a book that challenged my perceptions of these people who have picketed around the world with their message of hate for gay people. They don’t come across as cartoon villains, stupid people to be dismissed. They are a group of intelligent lawyers who back in the 1970s/80s fought for the civil rights movement. It seems strange that such love and such hate can coexist together. Megan describes a full bodied picture of a family bound by love, care and fun. She doesn’t shy away from talking about the tight family rules and the iron fist of control as well, but it seems within that controlled environment there were many moments of joy and delight.
I found it fascinating that this wasn’t a family who tried to protect their people from the world around but their confidence was in having what they saw as a better story, they had a deeper, stronger pull of familial ties. They also had a load of fairly controlling behaviour to ensure that everyone thought along the same lines and was clear about their own particular interpretation of the Bible. Group discussion and open leadership only led to the family line becoming more clear and more convincing for her. Interestingly she only started to think about leaving when the leadership structures changed, the community became less loving, women were kept out of the main elders meetings and there was less openness within the decision making process. This lack of love within the community eventually convinced her that this wasn’t a group following the Bible anymore. A relationship with someone on Twitter, who she had interesting and fun chats with, also helped to change her mind about the community she was part of. There are so many fascinating insights into how kindness and care from people outside the community (the ones she had been taught to see as outside the kingdom of God) helped to convince her that there was another, potentially better way to live. Read it, be disturbed and ponder how we can be better humans.
Shadow Doctor- The Past Awaits- Adrian Plass
Oh I love this man and his writing. This one is a follow up to last year’s Shadow Doctor book. It’s a great companion because it answers all the questions I had at the end of the last book which ended way too soon for my liking. It follows a man and his apprentice style friend who drop into people’s lives in fairly unusual ways and are often used to bring hope and freedom to them. It was a book that made me ache to be in deeper communion with God again. I have no idea if you would feel that or if the close connections between my understanding of God and Adrian Plass’s writing about God over the years have made this book quite so helpful for me. I’d love to know what you would make of this series.
The Flatshare- Beth O’Leary
It’s rare for me to read any kind of vaguely romantic fiction but I quite enjoyed this one. The concept is that Leon and Tiffy share a one bedroom flat but never see each other because Leon works nights and is away at weekends. They take different sides of the bed and start to get to know each other based on the various possessions they have, the details of what they’ve left in the flat before they go to work and post it note communication. Throw in a gaslighting ex for Tiffy and a brother in jail for Leon and it’s a fairly good read of how they eventually meet and their lives become intwined.
And there you have it, over to you, what have you enjoyed reading recently?
If you’ve chatted to me or husbandface for longer than a few hours about our lives you’ll probably be aware of this American family we have. I can’t quite believe they’ve never had official blog post recognition before but better late than never. They are amazing and it’s hard to know how to express our gratitude for them in meaningful ways.
The story starts around 25 years ago when husbandface was 12. He participated in an exchange programme which took Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants over to America for 6 weeks. Presumably to help the Irish realise they had far more in common with each other than these crazy Americans they were encountering. It’s fairly chancy that husbandface got on the programme, he really wasn’t the target demographic at all.
On the other side of the pond a lovely lady called Deb happened to see a newspaper advert for hosts wanted on this programme. She tells the story well, saying she just somehow knew that they should do this programme, she had no idea why or what would result but they signed up to be a host family.
That first summer husbandface wasn’t actually placed with them but struck up a beautiful geek friendship with their son. So much so that in the next couple of years when they came over to Ireland to visit they hung out loads and when he returned to America, aged 15, husbandface was nabbed by them to stay at theirs for the summer. They’ve never let go since.
Every year they’ve seen him, took him on holiday with them, kept in touch with him and claimed him as their third child. They have consistently poured out love and grace on him and they’ve been a massive part of the rock underneath his feet. They demonstrate to me what being part of this body of Jesus thing is about on earth. They’ve been constant examples of generosity and unconditional love.
If God is the foundation we build life on then these guys have been outward physical signs of that foundation for husbandface. The story of how husbandface has been wrapped into this family is another one of those inexplicable maybe-there-is-a-God stories that we carry around with us for when the universe seems too dark and random to contain a loving, present, real, Maker involved in our lives.
I’ve had the privilege of hanging out with these guys for 10 years now. When we first met I had heard of them but hadn’t quite clocked the significance of them coming over to England a few weeks before our wedding to hang out with us and presumably check me out. (They returned for the wedding and read some lovely Revelation passages for us so I think I passed the test) As the first meal I had with them unfolded I suddenly realised I was meeting my other in-laws and still remember the weeping moments we shared as we told stories and enjoyed husbandface together. I loved meeting some more people who adored this man, had known him for years and really got him.
Since then they have welcomed me, and now our boys into the family. I loved the confused looks on some faces as they introduced us to people at their daughter’s wedding a few years ago, ‘here’s our son and daughter in law’ (cue slight double take when the English and Irish accents came out).
They have poured out more and more love upon us over the years, enabling husbandface to retrain after he had to give up teaching and providing wise counsel in the process. They’ve been an incredible safety net, a source of wisdom and grace. We’ve loved the moments of sharing life with them through the changing circumstances of our lives in this last stormy decade.
We are currently enjoying their wonderful hospitality in Arizona and being looked after in another season of husbandface not doing that great. We know better how to cope with these times but it’s still so lovely to be taken care of and be in a safe place away from normal life. I’m soaking up some much needed sun and blue skies and the boys are loving messing about in a swimming pool and learning lots of cactus facts.
It’s refreshing being loved.
I am so grateful for how God does this, how ordinary everyday life has been infused with the presence of God and lives have been changed. I feel constantly inspired to follow this example of unconditional love and covenantal care which Keith and Deb have shown us. We are reading Ruth as a church this month and, like with that story, I reckon this God working in the ordinary to transform peoples lives is a good story to tell over and over again.
Here’s to more and more years of family and friendship. Raise your glasses to the excellent Keith and Deb.
The Long Walk Home 