Finding God in ‘Come From Away’

Posted on June 27, 2019 by Kath

Life is hard. For many of us. Life is a long hard slog. Recently I’ve felt like I’ve been drowning in the dark, just surviving until the end of each day. There has, however, been a thread of light which is getting me through these times. Without fail, I think I have listened to the soundtrack from the musical ‘Come From Away’ everyday in the last four weeks since we saw it. This musical tells of the 38 planes which were grounded in Gander, Newfoundland, in the week following 9/11. It tells so many stories from that week of how the locals cared for the ‘come from aways’ and many incredible stories from people on those flights and how they coped with life against the backdrop of such a hideous moment in history. I am in love with this musical because it is so full of human hope and dignity. In a time where the worst of humanity was on display, the best was also able to shine.

I can’t stop listening to the lives of the people caught up in these events. One song is dedicated to telling the story of the first female American Airline Captain who just happened to be flying one of the planes. The real life pilot has watched the musical over 60 times in awe of the way her part in history has been honoured night after night. I’ve watched everything I can on YouTube about this musical and been astounded by the way it’s brought together the actors and their real counterparts.

I love that this story has been told again and again and again. I love that hope is being shouted loud from the rooftops and that hospitality is being honoured as a way of bringing light in this world.

I love the powerful sense of identity that comes across in the community of Newfoundlanders. The refrain ‘I am an islander’ plays loud and strong in the opening song ‘Welcome to the Rock’. The rest of the musical unfolds and expands on what it means to be an islander, to welcome the ones who have come from away, to always keep the light burning for those who have left and to let all know that the door is open and the kettle is on.

To the ones who’ve left
You’re never truly gone
A candle’s in the window
And the kettle’s always on

When the sun is coming up
And the world has come ashore
If you’re hoping for a harbour
Then you’ll find an open door

(From ‘Welcome to the Rock’)

It’s here that I choke up the most. Because. You know. You have to know where I’m going with this. It is not a hard leap to see that this story of hospitality and harbour echoes loud and long the story of the hospitality and harbour of the Maker of this world.

I love this musical because it has become, for me, a profound symbol of God in this world, a profound statement of the God who always leaves the light burning. Who always welcomes the ones who have come from away, who always has a fireplace to come and sit around.

The other week we sat in church and Dave our pastor asked us to imagine God with us, to imagine enjoying God. I wasn’t really in a place where I wanted to enjoy anything but I closed my eyes and tried. Something new came to mind. I’m pretty sure it was influenced by this musical entrenched in my soul. It was of an old fisherman’s cottage on the shore of an island. It was an image of a darkening sky, an open door full of light, a fireplace glowing, 4 chairs around it, three figures in the room.  They were the ones, the ones who’ve walked this life with me, a couple of them turned to me in welcome, the other put the kettle on and all smiled that knowing smile of ‘Kath, dearheart, we’ve been waiting for you, come and sit with us a while.’

God in their personhood. God in their welcome. God in their trinity relationship dance of knowing warmth. God whom I could enjoy. God my harbour and open door. God my friend, my counsel, my smile of knowing, my safety.

There is hope. Walking around with us. My soul may be storm battered and bruised but I will always have a harbour. There is hope. There is a presence with us in the storm, a light that will not go out and an unseen reality I can no more deny than the air I breathe.

Now to figure out how I can preach on this in a few weeks time when I’ve been given free rein of talking about anything 🙂

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What makes a ‘safe place’?

Posted on June 20, 2019 by Kath

I’ve been wondering recently what we mean by a ‘safe place’. I’ve heard this applied to places either online, our church and various other communities. These spaces are described as ‘safe’ and I’m wondering what is meant by that. 

This train of thought was sparked when I went to L’abri for a weekend with a friend back in May. For those of you who don’t know what L’abri is, it’s hard to explain. Their website is here. That might help. Briefly, they are an intentional community set up to help people explore the nature of truth and to find their creator God as they question what the heck this life is about. 

There is a monastic quality to life in the community with space set aside for work, study, creativity, prayer, play, tea drinking and discussion of big questions about life the universe and everything. They run on a termly basis with students coming for either whole terms or a few weeks/days. Onsite live a host of workers who help with the day to day running of the place and help to guide the students through their thoughts. It’s an interesting place to hang out. 

I hung out there a fair bit back in my days of working as a student worker for UCCF. Back then it felt like a super ‘safe place’ to explore my huge doubts and questions about this faith thing. I learnt there to enjoy the vast complicated space between the question and the answer and to soak in the wonderful creativity of our Maker. 

I hadn’t been back since the arrival of small people in my world and stepping back into the Manor House,where L’abri England is based, felt like returning home. I breathed in deep of the air of community life.

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(Small geek moment: It might sound odd but the place I love most at L’abri is the rota board, the clear rhythm of days laid out, who is doing what obvious for all to see. I love a sense of peaceful order. Anyways. It was good to be back.)

As I walked around through, I noticed some jarring elements. The library was full of books of my past. Books that triggered fears of exclusion, of being judged for my lack of exact theological framework, books that I feared because their counterparts weren’t there. The well argued other side of debates felt missing. I worried that my greater ease with the expansive nature of faith wouldn’t be welcome. 

I started wondering whether friends would find this a safe space and then started questioning what on earth was a safe space anyway. The next 24 hours gave me some ideas.

I chatted with one of the workers, still there from when I last came. As we chatted I had the profound sense that here was someone who wanted to know me beyond where my theological framework (whatever on earth that means) was at that moment. Here was someone who was interested in me as a person. What I believed was fairly secondary to the connection as human beings. I found this again in the lunchtime discussions, with 10 or so people around a table chatting about a big idea. As the hours unfolded I felt again that this was a different kind of safe space. A space between question and answer. A space where firstly it matters that you are a human being rather than a set of ideas. A place where disagreement can happen and there are always more questions and space for questions rather than a shutting down with the ‘correct’ answer. 

L’abri is a place that is searching for Truth so it’s going to lean more towards finding some answers, but, it seemed to me, a safe place to explore and be ok with disagreement because of this constant desire to treat people with dignity and worth. It isn’t a space where everyone agrees all the time and I wonder if this kind of  safe space is more realistic than my desire to have a safe space sprung from things we all have in common. Those kind of safe spaces, the ones born out of the rush of finding people who seem to agree with you on everything, can very easily can disintegrate into an ‘unsafe place’ when you change your mind and think things outside the tribal norms. 

(Should safe place have quote marks around it? I can’t decide…)

Anyway.

Maybe in our tribal world we should seek these kind of wider safe spaces, ones where different ideas aren’t stamped on. Places where we can treat each other as humans, before treating each other based on our set of ideas about a subject. I think it’s a bit like Brene Brown’s vision in Braving the Wilderness (Well worth a read). She argues for listening, for not devaluing people, for not forgetting that all those around us are just that, people to try to understand and love. 

Maybe it’s about not seeing people as ‘other’ but to seek to see each other as image bearers of the divine. To ask questions. To love through the differences. To be safe spaces for each other because we treat each other carefully and with kindness in the differences. 

Here’s hoping you can treat me like that and I can treat you like that. That we can push through the instant buzz of seemingly connecting with people who think exactly the same as us to the deeper work of understanding why we think differently and finding a deeper connection born of love. 

In any chat about what we think and believe let’s edge closely to the patience, kindness, gentleness, compassion, mercy and grace of our Creator in their insanely patient dealing with humans throughout the mess of history. (It comforts me immensely to know no one has ever in the whole of time got this God thing totally figured out) 

Let me know what you reckon. Is any of this achievable? 

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The yearly post remembering why I carry on blogging…

Posted on June 14, 2019 by Kath

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I keep saying internally and externally that I’m a writer, that writing is part of my DNA. Whilst talking to a friend at the weekend we agreed that maybe it was time to do a bit of old fashioned blogging, the kind of riffing off a subject to get it straight in your head or to note it down for a future self or just to have fun expressing yourself. Often we get caught in the trappings of what will people think? Am I writing anything important or significant enough? Those thoughts often crush the creative process in me. I write for the joy of writing and to know I am not alone. That’s why I connect to other people’s writing, this sense and spark of connection, to know I am not alone.

That’s what good music does, that’s what a well articulated thought does, that’s what words telling it slant through poetry do, that’s what communal expressions of human experience do. They reach through the things which divide us and dive deep to find the stuff we have in common, the reassurance that in life we are not alone. With enough voices out here getting to the heart of the stuff which makes us human, we might just be able to reach the deep connection points that raise our souls to wonder and rejoicing in this world.

At this point I wonder if it’s an impossible goal. The stuff that divides us seems much stronger than the commonality of being on this earth with skin and bones. As one of those God botherer types I can see some way through this mess to the wonder of us all being different, and then that difference being a cause of celebration, not something to put us in trenches far away from each other. We bear the divine mark, we are image bearers. We have incredible dignity and worth and there is SO much that we can celebrate in each other before we express our different takes on the world.

Celebrating the divine image in each other might also lead to listening and learning from each other, from not treating each other with shame when we change our views on things, from asking questions and discovering the wonder of the person in front of us. Celebrating the divine image in each other might just lead us in the ways of love.

Er. I have no idea how we got there from the desire to blog again. But anyways.

My conclusion is,

I still want to write.

I want to create and express my thoughts, and then maybe have a chat about them, and then maybe come to a different point of view.

Scrap that, I want to blog because then people might adore me and think I’m a fantastic writer.

Scrap that, I must blog because it helps me process my thoughts.

Whatever the motivation, I want to write, to plough through the fears of what people will think and work this muscle which helps me so much in ordering and processing life. Glad you could be along for the ride…

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What I’ve been reading: Feb-April

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Kath

I really thought this year would be different and I’d manage to maintain my excellent January rate of reading. Lots of things have got in the way and I find myself once more out of the reading habit. I’m hoping that by writing these notes down I’ll remember that I love reading and just do it some more. Here, as ever, in no particular order are the books I’ve read over the last 3 months.

Michelle Obama- Becoming. 

This is definitely one of those which is going to be high on the best reads of the year. I loved reading about this very driven compassionate woman and her journey through life. As much as I hate to admit it, I did get more interested once she and Barak got into the White House (it’s just so fascinating seeing how people deal with living at that high level of being known and watched all the time). I read it whilst we were in America for a week and felt fairly overwhelmed by the need to live a good life, to make a difference in the place we live in, to care about the systems around us. Being me I haven’t really translated that into much action but it did stir me to want to make more of a mark on this world and get involved in making life better for the people around me. It also made me pretty proud of the projects our church runs seeking to do just that.

Let Me Lie- Claire Mackintosh

Another one of those suspense novels, pretty good for a flight and engaging enough to wonder what’s going on and being marginally surprised at the ending.

Shadow Doctor- Adrian Plass. 

This is one of the most opaque books I’ve ever read by him. It felt like a story about the agonies of ministry, of pastoral work, of the complexities of actually being Jesus to people in their lives. I think I need to read it again to really understand what’s going on it. It felt incomplete and I think that was the point. Anyone fancy reading it with me and chatting about it over a pint?

The Sin of Certainty- Peter Enns

This book felt like a breath of fresh air. His basic premise seems to be that God desires our trust rather than our ‘correct’ beliefs. I loved it. Having joined, and now working for, a church from a very different tribe of Christian faith than I’ve been used to, I’ve become really aware of the shibboleths we all hold, regardless of the tribes we belong to. I’m tired of people talking about the right answers to massive complex issues as if we all have to ascribe to the right set of beliefs before we are ok in God’s eyes. Peter Enns points out that God is much more mysterious than we give God credit for, that we are called to trust rather than working everything out. After all no-one in 2000 and more years has really got this God thing all tied up and sorted. God seems to be ok with that (or the narrow road really is incredibly narrow). I would rather spend the rest of my life living in relationship with God, learning to trust rather than learning all the ‘right’ answers to all the issues surrounding this faith thing. That’s just me though. A book which made me breathe deep and love God all over again. I’m not sure you can argue with that too much…

The Bible Tells Me So- Peter Enns. 

Another one along a similar vein as above (yep he’s one of those writers that really only has one idea and says it in a very eloquent way) and made me want to read the Bible again. Another win.

(It should be noted that these are two books about God written by a man. I’m not sure I’ve read many of those in the last 6 or so years, but he’s pretty good. I realised I love him because he writes like the women authors that I love, like a person who is wrestling with this stuff and who has a personality, not like a dry person who has figured everything out and has no personality.)

Uncommon Type- Tom Hanks

Some short stories by the lovely Tom Hanks, all with some mention of a typewriter (I had to be told that by a review I read). Some were good, some I skipped over. It’s probably on the whole worth a read.

Shameless- Nadia Bolz-Weber

OOoooo I loved this. It’s billed as a radical book on sex but actually doesn’t offer much in the way of a new sexual ethic which I was a bit sad about. BUT what it does offer is honesty about a topic, all too often, not talked about in churches at all. We have to start talking about these things. I had a brilliant chat about it with some lovely women I know, it was unbelievably refreshing to talk about all the things raised in the book. It’s worth reading to start the conversations, to bring reality into any chat about sex, to start to wrestle with what on earth the Bible says about sex, to enjoy her love of the Bible and God, to maybe not even necessarily come to similar conclusions but to at least start the honest chat. And it’s most of all worth it for the grace and love that drip through it.

The Immortalists- Chloe Benjamin 

Best novel I’ve read this year. Four siblings get told their date of death by a medium style lady. The book follows them one by one until their deaths and shows how their stories are shaped by the knowledge they have been given. The characters are really interesting and it was wonderfully written.

Becoming Friends of Time – John Swinton. 

A beautiful book that I want to read again. An exploration of time God’s way, of the slowness of God, of the beauty of the discipleship of people who have no words or memories to express how we usually understand what ‘Christians’ look like. A wonderful book to help us all think through how we express our lives together as the community of God’s people and how we wrap everyone into that regardless of how they express themselves, their circumstances, illnesses or disabilities. It made me realise how much I have been given and also how utterly different being a child of God looks for each one of us. It broadened my awareness of the scope of God’s work and made me want to slow down so I can pay attention to what God is up to and not just plough on with my own agenda.

 

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Shuffling back to blogging

Posted on April 26, 2019 by Kath

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I’m not sure what it is about life in the hard times that makes me turn once more to writing, maybe the good times just need to be enjoyed whilst the hard ones need to be processed, maybe it’s a cry for help, to be seen and know I’m not alone. Maybe it’s all of those things rolled into one.

Whatever, it’s Friday lunchtime and I’m feeling that need again to reflect on our week, to put thoughts in order and dust down the corners of this blog.

There’s a good prayer from Brian McClaren which is incredibly simple and rests on our front door. It says. Here am I Lord, Here you are Lord. Here we are together. It’s a reminder that whatever we are going through there is Another who we can turn to and who is present in the midst of it all. It also provides a helpful structure to work out what’s going on in our lives, if we are the kind of people who live life in reference to the Maker of us and our world.

So…

Here am I Lord.

After 3 months of pretty good health and some helpful times of refocusing our life, fun in America, me having space to crash for a bit and a month of being able to interact with more people socially, we are back in the lands of husbandface being in a fairly bad state. Sorry you didn’t get to hear much about the good stuff. It was pretty good. Especially taking the small ones to America. Especially getting them to invite people around for Sunday lunches and enjoying deeper friendships developing. It was pretty sweet.  The last three weeks have been less sweet. We have had some good times in the mix- we went to Northern Ireland and although travel etc took it’s toll it was, as well, full of lovely interactions with family and enjoying seeing the boys delight in life over there. Mostly though I have been scared, numb, unable to process the transition back into this world of unknown uncertainties.  Easter weekend brought much sunshine but also much terror as I wrestled with where our world seemed to be going. The good bits were sitting with others in silence on Good Friday, the silence of suffering shared helped me remember we are not alone, that we walk with others in the pain and we are not unique. This life is hard and long for most of us. The bad bits I shall skate over. Numbness ruled.

Here you are Lord?

When things don’t go my way I generally throw my toys out of the pram and act like my wonderful 4 year old son. I scream and shout and glare (boy does he have a good glare..). I rant and rave or I sullenly mooch away, scrolling endlessly through the screens in my life to prevent my brain from thinking anything. I fear silence, I run from any kind of stillness. Weirdly I avoid the thing I most know will help. In a conversation this week I realised I was acting like a person thirsty, knowing they need water and yet not drinking the clear fresh water right in front of their face.

Thankfully we have a God who takes initiative in reminding us of reality, who pours water into the glass and puts it into our hands.

In another conversation I talked again of being back with the disciples in the storm, desperately wondering if Jesus cared. I was asked what I wanted from Jesus in this storm. I broke down in tears as I answered. I just want a hug. I want to know he’s there and has got us.

Here you are Lord.

Here is the One who is present. That moment switched my brain away from being numb and back into being able to live and be present in the world again.

Here we are together. 

It’s together we can journey on. Together with the One who loves me most. Together back in the land of not knowing how long this particular blip will last. Knowing that there are moments where it’s all ok and remembering to go slower, learning to adjust the pace again. Trusting that this isn’t a forever space, just the one we are in now.  Trusting in the One who is my enough, the One who holds my hand as I walk on. Trusting that there will be a one day forever end to this pain. Trusting that living well in this pain is possible and that we stumble on with others who know how to walk with heavy burdens themselves. Trusting in the arms of love that will not let us go. Thankful that my Maker knows how to look after us and wondering at initiative taking love which doesn’t wait for us to come but comes looking for us.

There you go. We are back in a strange land for a bit. It won’t last forever, it may only last another week or so. But. Thankfully. I feel a bit like I’ve been given some Lion’s strength (we are reading Narnia to the boys at the moment, full of small boys asking if they are happy tears as I weep my way through incredible descriptions of Aslan and delight in the similarities between his interactions with the children and us with God) to reform, to refocus and go back to my self care strategies. Writing, exercise, reading, journalling and getting outside are making their way back into my days in a more intentional way. I’m putting on the Oxygen mask and hoping a slow weekend and some gentle weeks ahead may help us flourish in this world.

Your correspondent, just been reminded by a friend to look for the stars in the dark night. Hope is lurking. That’s a good place to be.

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