Kept by God even when laid aside: a reaction to Covenant Sunday

I have always thought the greatest treasure of Methodism is the annual Covenant Service, the new year reminder of God’s faithfulness and the challenge to respond no matter what we face. John Wesley pinched the service from the Puritans and he referred to it as a commitment to “an abandonment to divine providence.” I always count it a huge privilege to lead the people I care for pastorally in the words of the Covenant in which we pledge to do our best and express our content that Christ appoint us our work and our reward. 

I’ve led this prayer every January for the last 22 years. Today for the first time since 1997, I stood and said the prayer not from the front, but in a congregation, not as a minister, but as a struggling disciple unsure of the future. I had a tear as I said the words “let me be employed for you or laid aside for you.” Being laid aside is painful and unwelcome but it is where I am at the beginning of 2019. 

I’ve been struggling with this for many weeks and months now but today in worship there came a peace. I said the prayer amongst a former congregation in Oakham. I slipped in at the back and not many recognised me being there (until afterwards!) I had a very happy ministry in Oakham - it’s 13 years since I was their minister - and as we were in the area this weekend for other things I felt led to be in a former church today to do the Covenant prayer. 

I cannot do active ministry at the moment, today I’ve hardly been able to speak, I’ve felt vulnerable and unsure for some time now.  But powerfully as I shared the service today and did the prayer and was still there came in me a different feeling. I yearn for diagnosis and to feel better but what if I need to rethink ministry? What if I have to adapt to weakness and just do the things I can do rather than mourn the things I can’t? What if feeling sorry for myself I’ve missed what God might be saying and doing in this time? 

I’m so grateful to the current minister at Oakham, Leo Osborn, who is a lovely man and a deeply pastoral preacher, for reminding me in his sermon of a simple truth. In the context of the Covenant, employed or laid aside, exalted or brought low, full or empty, God makes a promise. Leo preached on Psalm 121: “The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and for evermore.” He reminded us in the Psalm where the person who prays seeks help, God tells us five times we are kept by him. In the uncertainty of going out and coming in, when we look at the mountains above us and are exhilarated or need to climb them and it feels hard, we are kept. 

God does not throw us away, incarnation should not be forgotten now decorations are taken down, we are kept always. We may be disregarded by others around us, the future may be unbearably uncertain but we are kept. Maybe in this divine keeping there may be a new direction. 

Circumstances mean adapting to new things often in life’s passage. I want to return to what I was doing four months ago, but what if my health and other unresolved stuff thrown at me means I cannot for now? One of my friends reminded me God has not laid me aside, life has and even then, there are new things to do. I’m moved to get messages people find my honest writing helpful. Perhaps that’s my call at the moment. I am kept. I am of value. I didn’t want to be here, but here I am. I need to learn to stop trying to do what I can’t. 

We went to evening prayer at the cathedral this afternoon. One of the readings spoke to me from Baruch: 

 Baruch 4:36-5:9

36 Look towards the east, O Jerusalem,

   and see the joy that is coming to you from God. 

37 Look, your children are coming, whom you sent away;

   they are coming, gathered from east and west,

at the word of the Holy One,

   rejoicing in the glory of God. 

5Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem   and put on for ever the beauty of the glory from God. 

2 Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God;

   put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting; 

3 for God will show your splendour everywhere under heaven. 

4 For God will give you evermore the name,

   ‘Righteous Peace, Godly Glory’. 

5 Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height;

   look towards the east,

and see your children gathered from west and east

   at the word of the Holy One,

   rejoicing that God has remembered them. 

Lovely words. I also found the hymn we ended the Covenant Service with this morning a reminder when much feels unsure. Can we move forward safe in the knowledge we are kept and held? 

Safe in the shadow of the Lord,

beneath his hand and power,

I trust in him,

I trust in him,

my fortress and my tower.

My hope is set on God alone,

though Satan spreads his snare,

I trust in him,

I trust in him,

to keep me in his care.

From fears and phantoms of the night,

from foes about my way,

I trust in him,

I trust in him,

by darkness as by day.

His holy angels keep my feet

secure from every stone;

I trust in him,

I trust in him,

and unafraid go on.

Strong in the everlasting Name,

and in my Father's care,

I trust in him,

I trust in him,

who hears and answers prayer.

Safe in the shadow of the Lord,

possessed by love divine,

I trust in him,

I trust in him,

and meet his love with mine.

‪An Epiphany #Niteblessing‬ is where I end and where I go back to Hailsham tomorrow, to face more medical appointments, another move somewhere in a few months and my tax form!! 

‪Find your journey’s end in Christ. He is hope for your weary soul, strength for your battered spirit and rest for your tired heart. May He be your deepest satisfaction and your greatest joy. He has found you in your searching - in Him you have come home‬.

If you begin 2019 vulnerable, simply tonight remember the Lord keeps you. It will help. I promise you. 

New year uncertainty

We stand on the edge of another year. Some may be glad this one is nearly over. It’s been a hard one for many of us with things happening to us we did not expect and a journey we had to take that was not very happy. 

The road into 2019 lies ahead of us. We travel on it expectantly. For me the early part of the year will bring continued uncertainty with health and well being not as yet bringing much peace. I had longed to return to work this week. That is looking highly unlikely and I’m having to be told I’m nowhere near strong enough. I feel I’m letting so many people down and I’m just very sorry that others are having to do so much because I’m not doing what I’m meant to be doing. 

We place ourselves at the turn of the year into the God who goes ahead of us. I don’t know what 2019 will hold. I’m quite scared to enter it. But we journey slowly, honestly and in quiet confidence that there is nothing we will face we cannot with the divine carrying us not get through. God’s time is not ours. Someone said to me the other day perhaps what I’m enduring at the moment is a sign. I’m not sure what it is a sign of yet! I plod on taking a breathless day at a time. And I look for God every day in something small and count my blessings. 

The world is uncertain tonight and the place of the believer in hope and in light is to be amongst that uncertainty. The Celtic Daily Prayer book for today has this lovely thought. We need to be here to help the world cope with what it cannot understand. Be that sudden illness or Brexit or migrants frightened in the Channel. 

Happy 2019 everyone. I hope and pray we will find peace and joy in it. Or if not, the courage to hold on. I shall be thinking of Thomas Merton’s words as the clock strikes midnight later. They are a comfort as I have far too little answers to my questions. 

My Lord God, 

I have no idea where I am going. 

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end. 

Nor do I really know myself, 

and the fact that I think that I am following 

your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. 

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. 

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. 

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, 

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. 

God in the face of the other

A very happy Christmas to all those who are walking this journey with me at the moment. 

I’ve been to Christmas Eve communion and to service this morning. The services were all about relationship. God comes in vulnerability to share our vulnerability. I tried so hard to sing some carols. I nearly choked last night during O Little Town of Bethlehem. Why are carols so high? We sang it again this morning with a verse I’ve never ever sung before:

“Where children pure and happy, pray to the blessed Child, where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the Mother mild; where Charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door, the dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.”

Phillips Brooks, who wrote the hymn, had it when the hymn was first performed in 1868, according to my internet research. (My Wife is watching some rubbish on Pick and I’m bored!) It never then appeared in any hymn book. Goodness only knows then why it was on our hymn sheet this morning? 

If today is about relationships and people will either be together partying and eating or feeling acutely lonely yearning for relationship or mourning one - then we are called into relationship with others as a priority. 

The leader of the services included this story last night from the Jewish Talmud as a challenge. A rabbi sits with his students. 

“How do we know,” the rabbi asks, “when the night is over and the day has arrived?”

One student replies: Rabbi, night is over and day arrives, when you can see a house in the distance and determine if that’s your house or the house of your neighbour.

Another student responds: Night is over and day arrives when you can see an animal in the field and determine if it belongs to you or to your neighbour.

Yet a third says: Night is over and day has arrived when you can see a flower in the garden and distinguish its colour.

“No, no, no” thunders the Rabbi, “Why must you see only in separations, only in distinctions, and disjunctions. No. Night is over and day arrives when you can look into the face of the person beside you and you can see that he is your brother, she is your sister. Night is over when you can see that you belong to each other. That you are one. Night has ended and day has arrived when you can see God in the face of the other.” 

 May today bring a new commitment to care. May we be better people, less selfish and self obsessed. Let’s think about others round us a bit more. It’s not 3 yet but I think the Queen is going to say this too. I’m grateful to those who care for me today. 

I’m grateful for the person who led the services we have shared in. I told him my story on the church step last night (well, at 1am this morning) and he told me to relax! This morning he grasped my hand and said, with no prompting, “I hope your recovery is quick.” He sent me on my way feeling I mattered. That’s the message of Christmas too.  

We both wish all our friends who read my stuff a happy Christmas and a blessed and for many, a much better 2019. 

Promises

I should have been in this room at Ore Community Centre this afternoon leading a carol service. I was glad to see this picture posted by Steve Stewart but it also reminded me of what I am missing this season and I’m finding it so hard. I hope my churches are all okay and I really thank those who today and tomorrow and Tuesday will be taking all my services. I really miss you.  

I’ve not been good this week breathing wise and then I managed to get the bug that has been going round - it came on as I was driving. I now know what the hard shoulder you can pull onto is for! I slept for 36 hours solidly after I got into bed. Lis now has it, and is sleeping upstairs as I write. 

I managed to drag myself to church tonight. I am trying to listen for God’s promise over the next few days. I’m still very unclear what God is saying through this time of uncertainty and hard going to me. 

This Christmas people need some comfort and joy; they need the men of strife to hush their noise and they need to hear an angel sing. It’s been a year of wondering where we are going. Perhaps that’s why a song about a sausage roll has reached number 1: a bit of light relief but also doing some good as it has raised timely monies for food banks. There seem to be more houses with lights on them this year and the season feels longer.

 People need something better than what they face in the everyday. But not just artificial temporary “it’s all okay” but something to hold on to. January and February can be bleak because you really believe in the words of that trite song because it is Christmas “from now on your troubles will be out of sight.” We need some comfort to help in a bad time. That often needs to be gentle. I’ve just managed my first food since Thursday evening: a very slow eating of parsnip, apple and thyme soup (yummy from Morrison’s) and it feels good! 

I heard three divine promises tonight: they don’t take my trouble away nor do they make me feel suddenly better, but they give me something to hold on to.

1. The Psalm for tonight was Psalm 25. There were only three of us in the service and we read the Psalm slowly. I owe a lot to the Anglican dot on the page as it makes you pause and take the words in better. The 15th verse stood out for me: “Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.” So many people are caught in a net tonight. They want escape, freedom, to be rid of what is holding them back, often people! The promise here is if we keep our eye ever towards God he will pluck our feet out. I’ve been very honest in my writing recently and I know some find that hard who read this but while I’m struggling with much, my writing and thinking are somehow a strength. I still believe God has a plan, even if I haven’t a clue what that is yet. In July I was going along quite nicely...

2. Tonight’s Gospel was the lovely “other” reading of Jesus’ birth from Matthew chapter 1 where Joseph is reminded of the ancient prophecy that God will come as Emmanuel, which means, God is with us. With us, that’s the point, with us. To be with someone is to sit with them where they are. When someone is in pain or mental anguish or just uncertain, the thing that they need is to know they are not alone. But too often we don’t stay with people, we dare not face their reality or we make excuses why we can’t be there. I remember when my Dad died and my Mum was widowed at a ridiculously young age of 48, people would cross the street to avoid interacting with her, because they didn’t know what to say. But the more they stayed away, the more detached she became. If God is with us, then the church that says it worships him has to be with people wherever they are and whatever they face. The huge promise of Christmas is that, surely?

3. We shared the Magnificat tonight. I’ve shared these words over and over many times but tonight as in the Psalm another verse hit me perhaps for the first time: “He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.” I’m tired of people, as I think we all are, who think they can lord it over others and can push us about and who never make mistakes and never are accountable to anyone. President Trump seems to be imploding but he doesn’t notice; the Brexit thing is out of control; so many examples. To be “excessively proud of oneself” is a disease of 2018. “Look at me!” celebrity culture cries; “I’m very important” shouts the man in a responsible post in an office,  yet does not do that post justly or honestly. The promise is these types will be scattered! And one day a new world will come. And we need to live it now and work for it now. I think learned folk call it “realised eschatology” - look it up! Jasper the cat sits on the bedroom window sill of the Hailsham manse. The cats love the bedroom window sill because it is a sun trap. He’s looking in my picture at the tree in the front garden. It’s full of blossom. It thinks it is spring. A sign of better days to come. 

So I guess this unusual Christmas for me is God saying to me “hold on with me, there are no answers, but I’m still with you, stick with me.” I was grateful to the President of Conference who posted this prayer the other day. In all my writing I’m yearning for honesty as we search for the promises and its brilliant to see some of that in her leadership of us. I’ll listen for what Christmas Eve and Christmas Day say to me and come back with more. If you are bored, you don’t have to read it!

Here is the President’s prayer:

“Praying for all who are finding this season a challenge. May light break into darkness and may those dazzled by too much light find safe dark spaces in which to heal.”

Amen to that! 

Doing what we can do

I dragged myself on Sunday to a carol service at the local Methodist church here in Hailsham. I’m really struggling with church at the moment and feel very outside of it because I’ve been away from it so long. I’m not engaging with Christmas at all and so I needed to hear the story and at least sing a few carols before it’s all over. 

I sat and thought about all the characters in the story as the passages from the bible were read. God came into the world in human form helped by people who said yes to him. They offered what they could to be part of the drama. 

I’ve been very good at focussing over the last four months I’ve been unwell at what I can’t do. I fret I cannot superintend my Circuit; I cry when my lungs ache so much because I’ve done too much. Tonight I’ve only changed the fillings in five cat toilets and made the dinner and I haven’t stopped coughing and I’ve gone violently hot. When I do too much which at the time doesn’t feel too much, I get frustrated. 

But maybe I need to refocus on what I can do, not what I can’t. There is much I can’t do at the moment. I need to rejoice in little steps. I thought about Mary as the service progressed on Sunday morning. She was frightened, she didn’t understand, but she said “let it be to me according to your will.” And then through that act of obedience, giving what she could, even in uncertainty, remember her fiancée in law could well lead her to death for playing away - she enables potential revolution.

One of my favourite writers, Rachel Held Evans, talks in a blog post about belief being hard this year. In her yearning and her offering to God she concludes “ And so I’m waiting with the angst of the prophets, with the restlessness of the psalmist who cried “How long, oh Lord, will You hide your face forever?” and with the stubborn, unsentimental hope of a woman so convinced the baby inside her would change everything, she proclaimed in present tense that the great reversal has already arrived.”

 

We can make a difference even if we can only do a little. My phrase I say a lot when I collapse is “this is so ridiculous!” I can’t see I’ve done well doing something as pathetic as servicing cat toilets! 

We had to be in Chichester today and slipped into the cathedral for a few moments. Above the nave is a star created using two laser projectors, set high up in the cathedral roof, directing light onto a transparent mesh to form its image. “The Star of Bethlehem” appears as a morphing geometric shape, moving slowly and gracefully across the space.

Visitors to the Cathedral can interact with the artwork by operating an iPad to change the star's appearance and colour. The idea is to see the vibrance of light always ahead of you with endless surprises and colour. When we went outside in the dark, we passed the statue of St Richard, floodlit, but more powerful was the reflection of the light from him in the wall opposite. (Even if it does look like the late Bruce Forsyth). It spoke to me about when we choose to obey, do, share with someone, the light spreads. We don’t know what the little we can do, will do. 

So I’m trying not to beat myself up when my body says enough. I’m trying to be content with doing what I can. Incarnation is for me about small acts making a difference. God comes quietly and in a tiny child rather than with power. That child changes the world! 

I was glad the minister at Hailsham, Roger Leslie used an old bidding prayer for Christmas in the service on Sunday. This season if we take it seriously challenges us to make a difference rather than focus on what is beyond us. It also challenges us to sit alongside, be with those who feel they are worthless and don’t matter or who feel outside of love today. Your visit or card or call, just letting the person in pain know you walk with them, can be Christmas come. Let the words of this prayer challenge us all to do what we can in response: 

In the name of God, who has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and made a place for us in the kingdom of his beloved Son, we welcome you: grace to you and peace.

As we meet to celebrate anew the coming of God's Kingdom, we hear revealed the mystery of God's loving purpose for us -- how that when we were far off, he met us in his Son and brought us home; how he humbled himself to take our human nature, that we might share his divine glory.

Let us then so celebrate this coming with our carols and hymns of praise, that our lives may be charged with his life; that we may bear witness to his glory and so bring light to those who sit in darkness. So first we pray for those among whom the Christ was born: the poor and helpless, the aged and young children; the cold, the hungry, and the homeless; the victims of poverty, injustice and oppression, the sick and those who mourn, the lonely and the unloved; those in despair or in the shadow of death.

Then, as we hear again the message of peace on earth and goodwill among all his people, we pray for the leaders of the nations, that all may be inspired to work together for the establishment of justice, freedom and peace the world over.

And that we may bear true witness to this hope in a divided world, we pray for the peace and unity of Christ's body, the Church universal, that the whole earth may live to praise his name.

Finally, as we rejoice with the saints in heaven and on earth, we remember all who have gone before us with the sign of faith, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we offer up our prayers for the coming of his Kingdom.

And may the Lord when he comes find us watching and waiting, now and at all times. Amen.

 

 

And so I’m waiting with the angst of the prophets, with the restlessness of the psalmist who cried “How long, oh Lord, will You hide your face forever?” and with the stubborn, unsentimental hope of a woman so convinced the baby inside her would change everything, she proclaimed in present tense that the great reversal has already arrived—

Waiting

My car is in for its service and MOT this afternoon so I’ve time to kill. I’ve never written a blog in a garage before! Several of us sit here waiting. The coverage of Mrs May’s confidence vote is on the television. My beloved MP Ms Rudd is on as I write. She’s supporting the PM later she says. She just called today’s events “shenanigans” - gosh, I agree with her on something!! 

Waiting, life is full of waiting... 

I don’t know how parents manage a month of Christmas these days when Santa appears in November and children need to be kept calm as the number of sleeps until the actual big day seem endless.

We are naturally impatient. I was in a building the other night wanting to get out of its door. Hundreds of people were trying to get in. They didn’t want to wait for me to pass through them! Go on an underground train in London. People don’t wait for the next one coming in two minutes time even though there is no more room on this one. Why do we have to wait two minutes? We want to go now. 

I am not a great fan of our Prime Minister but I think today she has been treated appallingly. She’s always had a poisoned chalice after the former PM who I hold responsible for this whole Brexit mess by calling a referendum in the first place and is now in his shed writing his memoirs, did a runner. Mrs May has some steel, at least in public, although in private she must be suffering. Tonight, she waits for the verdict on her leadership and her future. I can only compare it to ministerial invitations. Waiting to hear from the Circuit Stewards after a process of consultation whether you should be invited is a desparate wait. 

People wait in uncertainty all around us. I’m in the middle of endless medical tests and appointments. I wait for the results anxiously. I’m now under the care of two consultants, one thoracic and one neurological. Both will have news in the new year for me. One in particular after telling me with no warning what might be going on, will either reassure me or scare me when I see her next. What she told me I was not expecting. I only missed some of those dots in an eye test at Specsavers! I am getting more and more anxious to be back at work but I have to wait. It’s been a hard thing to come to terms with. 

People wait for news. Silence is unbearable. We all need to know what is happening even if others who have the power over us haven’t any answers yet. I often think of those relatives of soldiers in world wars pre social media or texting. They waited not knowing if their loved ones were okay or would ever return. 

I’m not doing the Christmas story normally this year. I’ve not yet sung a carol nor have I been to church very much. I’m trying to get into the characters a bit by simply reading their story and imagining what their experience of divine encounter was. Three people, often overlooked in the narrative, speak to me deeply about waiting. 

Joseph, well he has a bit of a nightmare waiting! None of this baby coming business was to do with him. But he decided to be faithful and make the journey. Waiting in anxiousness for birth, waiting as a hard journey to exile has to happen, waiting for it to be safe to return. 

Simeon and Anna are my favourite participants in incarnation. They waited patiently for the consolation of Israel. They never left the temple and believed one day they would see God come in a new and dynamic way. They prayed and they waited and people who did religion every day in that temple probably laughed at their stupidity but they kept at it believing it would be. And in one of the loveliest prayers of the church we use now, the elderly Simeon says, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; to be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.” Certainty and peace in the waiting. 

When I was a child I was made to wait. We had one holiday a year and you waited for it. You had one birthday a year and you waited for it. Christmas was one day. You bought things when you had saved up to buy them. The joy of having was after the waiting. The instant world means we take a lot for granted and maybe we need to take waiting as a spiritual discipline much more seriously. 

If life was sugary sweet and fluffy bunny then we’d have everything we want when we want, and we’d never know that yearning we have to go through so often in life. I don’t know how I can sit here and just write but two pieces of writing come to me surrounded by elderly men getting frustrated their cars aren’t ready NOW! 

One is by the fabulous writer Kahlil Gibran

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. 

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. 

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

And how to be sustained in the waiting when as Gibran says there is, for today, more sorrow than joy, well, what’s the message of Christmas? You don’t need the church to just glibly tell you this wrapped in tinsel as though it suddenly makes all your problems disappear, you need to hear the story lived out in people’s lives: I turn finally to the writer Shane Claiborne: 

“A few years ago I remember a pastor friend telling me they tried something a little different for their Christmas services. Instead of the usual holiday décor and clutter of the sanctuary, they brought in a bunch of manure and hay and scattered it under the pews so the place would really smell like the stank manger where it all began. I laughed hysterically as he described everyone coming in, in all their best Christmas attire, only to sit in the rank smell of a barn.

They even brought a donkey in during the opening of the service that dropped a special gift as it moseyed down the aisle. Folks looked awkwardly at each other. Some were offended, some snickered, and some left. But for those who stayed… it was something like they’d never seen before. It was one of the most memorable services they’ve ever had.

They were reminded of the real meaning of Christmas — God entered the crap.”

In a world that today waits, as Mrs May waits, as we wait for Brexit or not, as we wait for test results, as people wait for cars to be fixed, as we wait in the uncertainty for certainty perhaps the only certainty we have is that God is with us in the crap. Crap is a great word! I’m not doing worship at the moment but I can write it! 

Maybe the not yet is a divine gift in this time and maybe as one poet put it the meaning is in the waiting...

Beckoning

We left Holy Island yesterday. This visit has not had much sun. But yesterday as we prepared to journey back south, the sun came out. 

People find crossing the sands at low tide by these posts showing the way from Beal at the end of St Cuthberts Way a powerful end to a pilgrimage. But yesterday I thought about the posts beckoning me the other way. The brightness being ahead of us, the challenge of the mainland having light in it to illuminate the darknesses we face. Leaving the causeway is always hard for us, but always on leaving there is a message given. Yesterday while going home felt hard, and today I’m paying for a long drive and can hardly move or speak my lungs have been overworked, there is a hope amongst the barrage of medical appointments and scans and lung function tests ahead, and feeling out of control of life in so many ways. The message of this season is that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not put it out. So while I’m sad as ever to leave the island, there is enough spiritual strength in me if not physical to face each day. I think! 

This season is all about journeying and also journeying back different. Shepherds return glorifying and praising God for all they see, magi return by another road. This season is also about light. That’s why I guess trees go up so early and houses are bedecked with stuff to make the darkness bearable. We seem to have a month of Christmas now. I even heard the Wombles at breakfast this morning! We wish you a wombling merry Christmas is a classic, let’s be honest about it! 

On my first visit to the island to stay on sabbatical in 2009, I found a poem which said I didn’t come to stay however wonderful the experience, I came to go back. The challenge is how we remember the God moments in the rubbish of everyday. I guess as I keep writing that God incarnate is in the shit. And a lot of people today are having a lot of that. A group on Facebook called Nite Blessings had an honest prayer the other night I share here: 

Naughtily I yearn for this sort of prayer to be in our church. People struggling going back to stuff need to be allowed to voice what they face. 

‪May fear’s threats be silenced by Hope’s promises. May the terror of darkness be destroyed by the Presence of Light. May the nausea of uncertainty be settled by the Giver of Faith. Fragility is not weakness. Honesty is not failure. Hope requires no pretence.‬