Advent day 2 - cleaning!

I find myself on a wet windy day and my day off having a good old clean of the house. It is one of those jobs I never want to do but when I have done it I am very satisfied. 

Perhaps Advent is a bit like my day. I look at my diary for the next three and bit weeks and don't want to do so much, but if I enter into each event, prepare well, stay calm, get lots of rest and other stuff in my life like friends and outings and films in between, I will feel satisfied of a job well done as I announce "O come all ye faithful" for the last time about 12 noon on Christmas Day!

Once you sort your dirt out and feel better, you can then begin again. A good start to the weeks ahead. I feel good, anyway.      

Advent Assurance - Advent Day 1

I am being followed by Molly everywhere at the moment since her return from the cattery. She helps me with work, and especially enjoys sitting in front of the computer screen to make life difficult!
She needs to know I am here and I will not be going anywhere. She needs assurance she is loved.

I led Advent Sunday worship this morning surrounded by Christmas lights. My lovely church has found more Christmas lights in a cupboard since last year and we have put them everywhere! Communion was served fighting past a Christmas tree. I said to someone afterwards this year I feel numb about Christmas coming and can't get my head round the rushing and the commercialism and the hype. We decided it is best to centre on the fact it is about the assurance of love, huge love, love that will not go away, love we need to know is still there when life is shit. Molly doesn't want cat prison to happen again any time soon. We don't want to be abandoned or alone or forsaken. We need to know we are loved. There is an Age UK billboard along the road from church which says "no one should be alone at Christmas." Nor any day. I despair that Christmas makes things worse for lonely people.

This assurance is needed so badly, in the world, in our lives. I spent a long time this morning over coffee discussing bombing Syria, I spent time talking with people about Christians Against Poverty. I spent time talking with a fraught husband whose wife has been in hospital for ages. Tonight I am missing our Circuit Service as I need to visit someone in Brighton who is in a bad way who needs me far more than being there.

As Advent begins this picture reminds me of the need to reassure and be reassured of the constant love of God in Christ who comes. As the priest talking to Miss Shepherd in the Lady in the Van says about absolution it is the same with divine love - "it isn''t like a bus pass, it never runs out."

      

Approaching Advent

From tomorrow I will try and post an image of Advent and a meditation up to Christmas Day.

Here we go again. Three weeks and five days of carol services, carol singing, Christmas parties, school nativities, bible studies, dinners, christingles, concerts, messy churches, toddlers parties, nursing home parties and anything else they might throw at me! Of course, it started weeks if not months ago for some people. I was down the town on Friday – not sensible it being Black Friday, murder was nearly committed in Priory Meadow car park – but I had a meeting with the bank – carols and other Christmas delights were blasting out. Very hard to have a serious meeting about your overdraught with I saw Mummy kissing Santa Claus in the background let me tell you. I said to the girl “you gotta put up with this for another month?” She said, knowing what I do, “I bet you are professional in pretending you are enjoying it!”

Tomorrow, I will be surrounded by Christmas trees and Christmas lights in church and Christmas has started for them. Here we go again. We had our Christmas fair yesterday. Santa was at both, motorists outside were blasting their horns at him as he waved to them as they went down the road.

But the bible passages for Advent Sunday aren’t about Christmas at all.

They are not about babies in mangers, or Bethlehem, or Mary and Joseph and so on.Advent literally means “coming” But God has already come in Jesus, and Christmas and preparing for Christmas is yes, about reminding ourselves that God is come every day on earth, in Hastings, already. Fact. Not something that will happen for the first time three weeks on Friday. Christmas Day is a celebration and a reminder of who God is, love incarnate, and it is right we are reminded.

But this is not primarily what we are looking forward to – Advent is about looking forward to and expecting Jesus to come anew, that God’s reign on earth will come soon in all its glory and all its fullness. Most preachers this Sunday will speak of Bethlehem and Christmas in that way coming and that’s fine but I want us to think about this new thing the bible and faith invites us to expect joyfully. As a picture going round social media says anyway “there are twelve days of Christmas and none of them are in November.”

The first Sunday of Advent offers hope that the reign of God will be experienced in its fullness. These next few weeks offer us an opportunity to do some soul searching, as well as helping us prepare for what is to come. It is a season of expectation; which means that we need to be on the alert.

Jesus warns us against being caught up in the things of this world. Focus your attention on what God is about to do.

Here we go again or daren’t we go?

It is about going with God on a journey and an attitude on that journey. It’s like whether you face these weeks with excitement or whether you would rather go to sleep and wake up on Boxing Day.  

  

We’re told before the Son of Man comes on the clouds, there will be chaos and violence. Even the skies will be darkened and the nations will experience distress. Well, there’s a word for this morning. Many people are reflecting on the news whether it be the spending review or an impending vote on whether we are about to drop bombs on Syria. Many people in the aftermath of Paris the other Friday are frightened about going about in big cities. They shut the whole of Belgium down didn’t they. Many people find facing the future hard because of the signs, chaos and violence aroud them. They despair and reject God because what difference will God make – here we go again with pain in the world, and here the Church goes again with its naff sentimentality about caring. 

Chaos and violence while we celebrate detached from reality? Here we go again for us while the world goes mad? Flipping heck, they might shout at me over coffee saying we thought Advent Sunday was meant to be optimistic?

Well, it is. For here we go again with God who has come and will come to save the world. God came as we will remember as a child into poverty, as a displaced person in a strange place and as a refugee seeking shelter. God will come again into chaos and violence, that’s what the Advent Gospel says, and Jesus says “When you see these things… do what? Do what someone said to me the other day switch off the news and worry because you can’t cope? No, Jesus says, he is coming into terrible times, not when it is nice – so stand up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near.”     

What is important to note here is that while this is a reading for Advent, in the context of Jesus’ ministry these words come near the end. He is facing the cross. The days are drawing to a close. Death will lose the battle, for life reigns supreme in the resurrection.

Don’t let the worries of this life keep you from seeing what God is doing. Look for the signs that God is breaking through. That can happen when we are extremely low. I got a phone call on Thursday giving me some information that was not very pleasant to hear. I was pretty fed up.

I had a good shout at God in my prayers. I needed to know I was cared for. I turned on my e-mails, and there was one from the Northumbria Community who pray for all their members through the year and each are sent an e-mail when it is their day. I didn’t know Thursday was my day: Hello Ian, it said. Today you are held in prayer by friends and companions in our community. May the saints and Saviour watch over you and your loved ones. Amen. Someone who shared the news in the phone call said to me don’t lie in bed worrying. I find it hard not to, sometimes, don’t you, when big things happen. I found that simple prayer sent to me transformative. That God’s love comes anew and will come in the pain. Remember God came in Jesus into muck and filth and to very strange people. God comes today through surprise and often when we are needing him most. God will come in his glory again to judge this world and renew it with an overflowing of grace and peace. That’s our belief as Christians, to expect it and work for it.  

             

So what is God saying to us as we begin the Advent journey and as we remember Christmas? As we watch or listen to the news, do we let fear control our decision making or do we trust that God is present in our midst.

When we don’t prepare ourselves properly, fear will take hold. When we aren’t aware of our surroundings and the resources God provides then we put ourselves in a position to be manipulated and used. We shut our hearts and minds to the needs and concerns of others.  We become insular.

But when we’re able to look at the world through the eyes of God we can weather the storms and embrace our calling. So, here we go again, reminding ourselves of how God works, excited about how God might work, and hoping that God has everything under control, that poverty, injustice, terrorism, bombs and anxiety do not have the last word, like my two horrible things this week might have but did not because of that lovely prayer.

The message for Advent 2015 is this: stand up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near.

It is about being confident in our message. It is about saying to the terrorist and the unjust this will not have the last word. It is about being the church that actually puts what it says it believes into practice. It is not about retreating when it is tough, it is about reminding ourselves who we are: loved by God, given potential by God, encouraged by God, and who will be blessed by God.

I want to end by quoting from the letter ministers get from time to time from the Secretary of the Conference, which speaks of our attitude as we begin this season:    

“Lifting our sights a little higher is to trace the promise of God’s love which is always just that little bit further ahead of us than we are sometimes willing to acknowledge. Manger, cross, tomb, bread and wine speak to us of a hope that is very much more then optimism or the vague notion that somehow we can make things better if only we try very hard.  Manger, cross, tomb, bread and wine are one in that they mark the location of love, for where God is love is. 

That is both a simple and a hard message to proclaim, but proclaim is all we can do in the face of terror, hatred and disinterest.

‘Christians, where is your hope?’ Do not sisters and brothers lose heart.  We reply, ‘Here’, because Christ Jesus is our hope and in Christ we have deep wells upon which to draw, living and celebrating the story of redemption and salvation. The reminder of St Augustine of Hippo that ‘Only hope makes us Christians’ is a truth we must hold to.

Even if we hate Christmas, and I know a lot of people do because of the pressure society puts on us this season, we need to remember the real message of these weeks, we need to remember the nature of God who comes into the world, who has come and will come again, to bring us back into relationship with him, and bring us his peace. We need to expect great things.

We go forward looking for the signs that God keeps his promises and that the time of his rule is at hand. Whatever the news. Whatever leaves us reeling. However dark our circumstances. Here we go again – in expectation and with joy. 

Rumours of wars - reflecting on Mark 13: 1 - 8

In the Gospel passage set for this Sunday, we have Jesus saying to his disciples something about the end of this age. The end. Do you think about endings? Do you when you get a book out of the library read the back page first to see how it ends? We watch a drama, a film or a play and we want a good ending. Some of us are hoping the Christmas Day last ever episode of Downton Abbey ends well for everyone – that Lady Edith might find happiness and not just Lady Mary. At the cinema we wait for the end. I went to see Brooklyn on Monday, a lovely film about a young woman in Ireland in the 1950’s leaving home for the first time and going to America, finding love, coming back to Ireland after a death, forgetting love, finding another love, then remembering the first love and working out where her heart lies. The end is so sweet – I sat blubbering at it.

Pastorally, people are concerned about how things will end. Changes in circumstances make us worry about how things will work out – sudden unemployment, health challenges, retirement, bereavement, suddenly being alone.

We even do it in churches – people ask me “how it is going to end?” We have a church in our Circuit, Hollington, merging with another, Park Road, at the moment, some are impatient, whereas others want to tread carefully. We have another, St Helens coming out of their building next year and wanting to stay in their community, but finding a way to do that hard to work out. We don’t know how either situation will end and we have to trust and pray and seek direction.  Sometimes I write my sermons and how to end them is the biggest challenge. Endings have to satisfy. Other times we don’t want something to end or we don’t want to talk about something ending. Ministers will tell you that the last day of an appointment is very hard. And there are painful endings some of which we have listed. 

The reading from Mark chapter 13 is part of the Bible which we call apocalyptic. About the end. Jehovah’s Witnesses will get you about the end. Christianity has beliefs about the end but we rarely share them. Christian faith believes there will be an end – the end of the present age, the return of Christ and a new age inaugurated.  We believe that those who trust in Christ receive now. here, a foretaste of the new life in which they will share in Christ's triumph over death and rise, transformed like him, to perfect life in the presence of God. And that that perfect life will come. The end of this story and the beginning of a new one. Jesus stands with his disciples outside the awesome Temple which the disciples marvel and Jesus says you know, one day this will be gone, there will be destruction…

And Jesus talks about rumours – rumours of war.

And we reflect on events in our world. An attack on Paris by the Islamic State group, what they called “carefully chosen targets” – innocent slaughter. President Hollande called it “an act of war” and President Obama called it “an attack on all humanity.” And my mother said yesterday “dreadful people – why can’t they all live in peace?” Many people will be frightened now how it is all going to end. 

Wars and rumours of war.  

Jesus at first look at his words isn’t very comforting. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, there will be earthquakes in various places,  and famines but then he says something else.

Singing the Faith has an excellent website which suggests hymns you might pick reflecting on the passages you are using in your service. I was intrigued they suggested It came upon a midnight clear for this Sunday. I can see why – man at war with man hears not the love song that they bring – o hush your noise ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing. Rumours of war, yes, but maybe rumours of something different, rumours of angels, the birth pangs of a new age. The new age is coming says Jesus, but it might be hard for a bit. Believe, stay firm, hold on, be the church. You will be rewarded in the end.   Only light drives out dark. Only love drives out dark. In that we trust even when we have no answers even when we do not know what to do – for God is God.

Rumours of angels? Perhaps when situations like Paris and other huge stuff happens we need to up our game putting into practice what it is we say we believe. If we believe a new world is coming, we will be more ready to get involved in redeeming the pain of this one and as this age ends, we herald something else coming. Perhaps we have had experience of going through extreme pain in order to have something greater after the pain. Child birth a pain filled labour is a example. A simpler life after illness when we have realised bad habits led us to be ill, too much drinking or an appalling diet. A bad experience in life which helps us see the good is really good. If every day was sunny we wouldn’t appreciate the sun, would we? We need the hard to rejoice in the good perhaps.  When we hear of killings, threats, fears and rumours of more we continue with renewed determination to work and pray for the coming of God's Kingdom of justice and peace in all the world. We give the world God’s love and a rumour that God will do more. I believe, I think in a spirituality of crisis.

When we are needed to be there, we are there. Food banks are an example but even in the midst of huge international uncertainty the Christian story, the Christian end is there. One church leader wrote yesterday about Paris: “Such assaults are an attack on us all and on the values we cherish. In our divided world the task of peace-making has never been more important.”

We cannot solve the world’s problems this morning but we can start a different rumour where we are, how we live in community, how we speak to one another, how we are seen in the town, create a rumour of angels, the heralding of a new age. I have spent ages this week hearing stories of people having outbursts in church meetings and causing upset. That sort of thing is destructive and negative. We need to live differently, form distinctive communities of love and respect. Then place our trust in God’s love and God’s future which will come.      

How will it end? What is the rumour? Rumours of wars or rumours of angels.  Graham Kendrick wrote a musical called Rumours of Angels:

Rumours of angels visions of light new star appearing piercing the night. Town full of strangers sleeps in the gloom God comes among us there is no room

Rumours of angels songs in the night deep in the danger unquenchable light World full of strangers sleeps in the gloom God comes among us there is no room

And the years of our sorrow have rolled on and on and the wars of our pride never cease. We have ravaged the earth with our envy and greed tell me when will we welcome his peace?

We pray for our world. We trust. We cry out. None of us know how it will end and when we are just called to keep going, boldly, confidently and confronting the wrong when we need to.

I rather like what one of our members wrote to a minister St Helen’s want to invite next year: “our church building is going to be retired on 18th September 2016.  It will have served for a full 150 years which is probably about a hundred more than it should have done. But that’s another story.  The Methodist people of Ore had two places of worship before this one, so moving on from this building will be the end of chapter 3.  Chapter 4 is still to be written, but we are looking forward with the expectation of the church community to continue to serve in the Ore Village area.”

Jesus said the words Mark 13: 1 - 8 has recorded outside the Temple. The Temple was the focal point for worship for Israel.

Yet existence as God’s people did not depend on the Temple; as they had learned in a previous era, so long as they gathered to pray and hear the stories of God’s mighty saving acts recounted in the Torah, so long as they allowed themselves to hear and heed the words of their prophets, so long as they continued to love God and neighbour and even their captors, they could continue even in dire circumstances to serve as agents of and witnesses to God’s faithful, redemptive work in the world. 

Things may well be difficult and confusing for us reflecting on Paris and also similar things in Lebanon and Baghdad recently. Things may be changing, there are rumours and birth pangs… but you know what -  - maybe until the end we are simply to hold on and God will be faithful…       

Remembrance Sunday 2015

In our Methodist hymn book there is this lovely hymn for Remembrance Sunday:

By a monument of marble, or a simple wooden cross, here we gather to remember, sacrifice and tragic loss. Blood red poppy petals flutter, each a symbol for a life, drifting in a crimson curtain, shadow of our constant strife.

Today we gather as a community here in Ore Village to remember. To remember sacrifice, service, bravery, self-abandonment for our freedom. We come to remember lives laid down to enable us to live in freedom today. We remember two world wars, and conflicts since, and war and injustice happening this very day. Sacrifice is not something in a history book only, it is a present reality. We live in a fallen world. In this place today, as we stand by our monument of marble, we shall lay our poppy wreaths and have our silence with the fallen locally in our minds, who are named. We pass by them as we do our shopping or rush to a meeting every day. Today we pause by them to remember.

On Wednesday, I took 16 children from Year 6 in our little Methodist School at Staplecross to London. We went to Wesley’s Chapel and then to Westminster Abbey. We gathered the children round the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, a powerful place to pause and reflect. Remember that so many lives were lost in World War One, many fell and no one knew who they were. Loved ones back home never got any closure or peace as they grieved. There was no goodbye. A body was brought from France to be buried in Westminster Abbey as a symbol that everyone paid a price, and there is a gratitude to everyone we must show. The inscription on the grave is powerful:

BENEATH THIS STONE RESTS THE BODY OF A BRITISH WARRIOR UNKNOWN BY NAME OR RANK BROUGHT FROM FRANCE TO LIE AMONG THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS OF THE LAND AND BURIED HERE ON ARMISTICE DAY 11 NOV: 1920, IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE V

HIS MINISTERS OF STATE THE CHIEFS OF HIS FORCES

AND A VAST CONCOURSE OF THE NATION THUS ARE COMMEMORATED THE MANY MULTITUDES WHO DURING THE GREAT WAR OF 1914-1918 GAVE THE MOST THAT MAN CAN GIVE LIFE ITSELF FOR GOD FOR KING AND COUNTRY FOR LOVED ONES HOME AND EMPIRE FOR THE SACRED CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD

THEY BURIED HIM AMONG THE KINGS BECAUSE HE HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND TOWARD HIS HOUSE.

We remember today with profound gratitude in silence. Lives given for us. Horrific yet heroic. It was powerful that round the tomb were parties of children from all over the world, a large school party from Germany especially, doing writing about it. We remember and we take in and we pause at our monuments today. Between 500,000 and 1 million people paid their respects at the tomb of the unknown warrior in a week.

But we also come to do something else – we resolve to do things differently. We say this every year but one year we might actually do it. The head teacher on Wednesday let me have some time for me while they went off and did a maths trail round the Abbey. Teachers will tell you school trips have to be fun packed with all sorts of subjects covered in them. I walked round the Abbey by myself and I wrote this sermon on my phone. I noticed six stained glass windows, the text of the passage about responsibility for others in Matthew chapter 25. I was hungry. I was thirsty. I was a stranger. I was naked. I was sick. I was in prison.

Jesus uses the vulnerable in society as those who need to receive genuine Christian care. Your Christianity, your neighbourliness, your resolution to build community is judged on how you live. We can do Remembrance Sunday, and remember the fallen, we are less good at resolving to be better people. Jesus in our Gospel promises peace, shalom, wholeness. And we are to give that to others in his name. The fallen of every conflict went out to build a better world, didn’t they?

I don’t want to be controversial this morning, but it was interesting those windows in the Abbey are by statues of former prime ministers of this country. We all need to work for a better world. That is our charge today. We shall hear these words in a moment “when you go home tell them of us and say “for your tomorrow, we gave our today.” We remember them, but how will we be remembered? We are fortunate in Ore in November 2015 to not be living in a time of war. But there are people in need and we are needed to make a difference, and we can all make a difference, give peace, this week, in often really small ways. Who is hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, in prison in your world?

Then finally on my wander in the Abbey I noticed the altar on which it is written “the Kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.” This reminded me of the journey we are on to make the world more like God’s world, God’s Kingdom. Rabbi Hugo Gryn, who survived Auschwitz wrote, ‘the goal of memory is love. To abide in love.’ The pain and pride coexist – weaved together, and we are shaken by the interruption into our comfortable lives.

Love, justice and peace must always be the intentions of Remembrance Sunday, because violence and death will not have the last word. No enemy will destroy love. Meanwhile, we must live with pain and pride, and be shaken by the interruptions into our comfortable lives to use his words.

We remember, we resolve, and we rejoice in God’s promise. In that passage from Isaiah, set for today, God, after a tough time for his people promises peace: “peace peace to the far and the near says the Lord.” Words of comfort and healing. Death, war, carnage, blood, bereavement, pain and loss will not be the end of the story. We live in hope – even if sometimes that is hard. After we left Westminster Abbey on Wednesday at teatime, the area was full of police and horses with riot gear on. The atmosphere was tense. There was a student demonstration coming down Whitehall. Some of our children were frightened, some of them had not been to London.

We got them out of there and on to the Embankment – we might have been kettled if not! As we were walking by the river, one of the children seeing helicopters circling, and hearing police sirens, said “is World War Three about to start?” She was very worried. I understood where she was. It is hard to preach peace when you are surrounded by war. It is hard to preach justice when you are surrounded by tyranny. But we see God’s long term view – those things will come, there is a promise and we are called to work for them, however daft it feels.

It is easy to forget. To do a day and then tomorrow act as though it never happened. I am like that learning anything to do with technology. My brain freezes at the thought of Windows 10 or a new Kindle still in the wrapper that a church enabled me to buy when I finished as their minister in the summer. Someone shows me how to work these things. The next day I haven’t a clue and I haven’t taken what I have been told in. It is worrying that as I put this together I was listening to Pick of the Pops on Radio 2 yesterday and seem to remember all the words from the songs played from the charts this year in 1978! We remember things that aren’t important and not things that are. Today we remember and we will be different. We will never forget.

So our hymn ends with a reminder:

“For the sounds of war still thunder even as we meet to pray. God we need your help and guidance in our constant search for peace, move on us to resolutions as we pray that wars may cease.”

Peace peace to the far and near says the Lord, and I will heal them.

In the name of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Fog

It has been a crazy few days of weather here in Hastings. Yesterday on the sea front, the sun make it feel warmer than it was in August. But driving two miles up the road, there was dense fog. The same today, one minute you could see clearly, the next it was difficult to see. My little church in Ore Village has a wonderful view usually from the top of the town down towards the sea and over to the headland beyond Eastbourne. Not today! Nothing to be seen but the immediate. No sight of the horizon or far away. 

People keep saying to me "I bet you have less to do now you have a full team of ministers!" But actually, the last month or so have been for me incredibly draining, for various reasons. There are lots of big issues going on, some discontent, some misunderstandings, and some churches in the fog. We have one with amazing premises but needing to see how a small group worshipping there now can move things on, or we discern whether a Circuit town centre project is possible; we have another with challenging premises daring though to take risks and do some refurbishing which might lead to new possibilities or it might not; we have two others coming together next September, having a year of courting and getting to know each other, and finding small details need to be properly discussed; we have another (at the top of this road) which has decided to relinquish its building next September as it is beyond repair but in the fog because we don't know which direction will be right for us, a new build, or partnership with someone else. We are praying hard and working together but as yet, the direction isn't clear. 

It takes a lot of energy I am discovering to be in the fog and it is easy to lose your vision. I have been some days overwhelmed with things and I haven't been very effective. People in the fog have sapped my energy because they are struggling with things and it is easy to be as confused as them if you don't keep the direction and the bigger picture in your mind and heart. The fog is all consuming, it is dangerous, it stops us travelling safely, we simply stumble about, or cause each other harm because we don't take care to travel well, groping for direction together but not deciding in the fog to travel more carefully and slowly. We fail to listen to one another so actually the foggy time feels even worse! 

Today I have decided to get out of my fog. I have suffered from depression in the past which for those of us who have been there, and mine was only mild, is a very foggy and dark place to be. For a time you cannot believe there is a way out. It is easy to be so bogged down you actually cannot do anything well. Today I have spent time refocussing, rediscovering my quiet time and space, getting back my daily walk, and proper mealtimes, and I have actually achieved more in the day than I have for several weeks and at the end of the day I don't feel knackered and I have done some pastoral visiting - which people seem to judge "good ministers" by. 

What do we do if we get fog spiritually? Well, I don't always find The Message helpful, but a translation of 1 Corinthians 13 has hit me: "We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!" That, surely, is Christian hope. And I know that the sun is always shining, but sometimes the clouds and the fog hide it from me. It will return and that is good news. The sea is still at the bottom of Clifton Road in this picture in the distance. I cannot see it today, but tomorrow the sky may be blue and I will appreciate it more. 

There is nothing wrong with foggy times in our lives. We need to just admit them, get support in them and move through them carefully. They will pass. And this one, a strange time really, in which I have been okay but have felt directionless and all over the place seems now to be lifting - praise God. 

Blimey, this is a bit honest, isn't it?!?! Blogging through the fog, you could call it :)!