Category Archives: lost

Loosing The Way

A room full of silence. Each one of us lost in some way, with our own thoughts and emotions. Fifty days may seem a long time to some but actually 49 of them had passed very quickly and most of us were still raw. There was denial, shock and anger still gangling about inside and between us and no one really knew what to say.
I sat down on the floor, my back against the wall looking toward the small window. Outside the sunset had just got to that point when it seems the sky is on fire. I watched the fire rage and then burn down low as the sun finally sank below the horizon.
What next? He had said we should wait and wait we had. We were still waiting, not all of us graciously. Arguments flared up, things were said or not said: it was a mess. Only Mary his mother looked at all calm. She was waiting as he said and we did our best to wait like her.
There was plenty of time, plenty of time for thoughts to weave back and forth. It was impossible not to relive the past. There was the trauma of his death of course, but I could slip back beyond that sometimes to the green hills and valleys, the blue lake, even the dusty road. There had been good times as we’d listened and learnt and travelled together. He had shown us a way. It had been extraordinary. Not religious in the confined sense of obligations but in a joyous sense of freedom and new discoveries. Each view of the landscape linked to a thought or action, each meeting together a crucible of anticipation. Change had travelled with us, welcomed and exciting. The call to justice was strong; to live in peace, to be merciful. We all wanted those things and he had awakened that longing in us, with his stories, the prayers and most of all the silence.
‘Wait’ he had said and in a few hours the sun would come up on the fiftieth day. Would it be different to the previous 49? Would we, feeling that we had been loosing it all this time, finally rediscover The Way?

In our life and our believing
The Love of God

For churches in Yorkshire and beyond, who are struggling to find The Way again: Pentecost 2017

December 23rd, O Emmanuel, with us God

O God, we who are not with it, need you with us.
We’ve got lost in a maze of our own making;
Preferring trivia and ephemera, we’ve lost our focus.
We think Justice means when we get what we want;
Mercy we confuse with people being kind to us
And humility has fallen out of the dictionary,
To be trodden underfoot as irrelevant.
We need you with us to restore us to a fuller understanding
Of the way of Justice, Mercy and Humility.

Come and be with us, not temporarily,
But on permanent loan, as a native,
Knowing what being human means from the inside.
That way, maybe we stand a chance
Of doing justice, loving mercy and travelling humbly [1].

In our life and our believing
The Love of God

[1] Micah 6:8

Advent and Solstice: a contemplation

As we slip gently into darkness again;
the street lights caste their halo,
the park gates close early
and the last of the unhelpful leaves clog the gutter.

Far off, someone starts a spark:
a beacon on the beach,
lit with imagination for the suffering
of a distant besieged city .¹

We have reached that season again,
when light and dark tussle
for the lives and souls of the population
of a small island groping for good news.

So bring in the yule log,
strike up the band,
sit a merry Santa on a sleigh
and keep future uncertainty at bay.

Because, we who age, limp and scar,
who look down the tunnel of our own existence
to a mean spot with confining walls
and machines that bleep out the beat;
We, who seek to preserve yesterday
because we cannot hope in tomorrow,
who have put the ‘f’ into prophets,
so they are reassuringly fat;
We who shun addictions and abuse,
yet indulge our socially destructive habits;
We who wall ourselves up against the world
and yet demand rights to global markets;
We who hover between life and death,
who have every choice for last rites;
how can we embrace the dark-light way,
and live as winter people today?

Last night, in darkness,
I traveled a high street ²
with its seasonal cheer hung out
and crowded pubs and bars.
For each shop front garlanded
others were boarded up,
still bearing the marks
of a relentless river in spate
that came and went almost a year ago:
the two economies of cheer and grief
existing side by side.

This then is a way to navigate the season;
where darkness drapes itself around
and we search for quick fix lighting
to lift our plunging spirits.

Hold them both then,
one in each hand,
balancing concerns;
weave the two paths together
with honest acknowledgement
of the place of both
in your life and community.

To the Solstice say welcome dark night,
grey day, heavenly movement.
To Advent say welcome small spark,
weak flame, heavenly moment;
for dark and light are both the same
in the heart of heaven, ³
where we are called only to live honestly,
not off of the backs of one another,
but with open hearts and doors
to welcome all who appear in this season.

In our life and our believing

The love of God

Advent Sunday 2016

¹ Aleppo of course #StandWithAleppo

² In Calderdale,West Yorkshire, which was flooded on 26.12.2016

³ Psalm 139, verse 12

Lost (again)

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Almost as soon as we stepped into the park at Flamingo Land yesterday, Dad and I were lost. I was pushing the wheelchair and he was holding the map, but the map didn’t seem to bare much relationship to what we saw in front of us. So we muddled along, which is what a lot of people do when they are lost.

All around us there were other people who were either lost, trying not to look lost or not lost. These three states of lostness are common in any group of people. The not lost ones are confident and feel at home. The trying not to look lost ones are doing just that. Feeling judged already, trying not to look lost is about keeping up appearances with the not lost. The lost are usually obvious: they the look at the map a lot, they enquire, they pause a lot.

Once we found the rhinos we were OK. We stayed there watching these large lumbering mammals for a bit. Although we had not been looking for them we were glad to find them. If anyone asked where we were we now knew we were ‘at the rhinos’. We admired them for quite a while in a calm and companionable way. We had moved on from being lost to being not lost. Now we just had the rest of the day to negotiate.

Today was Sunday, and with that in mind I set off on a walk around Marsh in Huddersfield. I couldn’t be lost there because I live there and have done for eight years. But I rarely go off my usual routes and most of Marsh is a mystery to me. I was making for the Co-op in a roundabout way. I decided to try to make it last and followed up any likely looking side roads or paths. The back streets of Marsh are a maze of ginnels which are a particularly Yorkshire way of helping a person in any of the three states of lostness  negotiate their way around an area. They are small passageways between houses. Some lead somewhere, some don’t. In Marsh there’s plenty of both. Two and a half miles later, a tour of the Co-op and a certain amount of time divided up between the three states of lostness and I was home again.

There was a moment when my exploring had taken me through a small wooded patch to a drop down onto the main Halifax road from a height of about four feet. Even I call tell this was proper lost. Unless you are proper lost it’s not wise to take such a leap. I retraced my steps and sure enough another path appeared that lead me out onto the same road by a safer route. See, I wasn’t lost after all.

The three states of lostness are about identity. What has been happening to me for the last two years has been about identity. When I work with the children and young people, they are often exploring their identity. It’s not all about ‘who am I?’ Sometimes it’s about ‘am I lost?’

On the Cleveland Way this summer, I was rarely lost (once on a housing estate in Skelton, but soon found again by someone who recognised my lostness and helped me to repair it). It was a well marked route, even if remote, and marked by bold, brazen signposts. There were signposts in Flamingo Land, orange ones, and sometimes they helped. Marsh is a familiar place, but it’s still possible to find yourself four foot above a busy road wondering if you are lost.

So, am I lost then?. Sometimes and it is a common state. This week young people came back to Chaplaincy to talk about matters of life and all sorts of lostness. I didn’t offer them a map or show them a ginnel. I listened and said I’d be there again if they wanted to come back. In any of the three states of lostness, companionship is usually all you can offer.

Lost?

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Alfie lost Bub while he was picking blackberries. Alfie, about, three, looked in his pocket and Bub, a rather worn comfort creature with spots on wasn’t there. I overhead this as I walked by on my way up the lane.
A few yards further on there on the path was Bub looking lonely. I picked him up and shouted to Alfie and his mum. Alfie and Bub were reunited. So was there much rejoicing? Well it’s a bit difficult to rejoice with your mouth full of blackberries. I think Bub was pleased though as he snuggled into Alfie’s pocket.
That familiar story of lost and found is familiar. It’s in our remembered bibles. As a result it crops up often and can be miss used or over used. The church often uses it to guilt trip folks back to church. The interpretation goes like this: you don’t go to church because you have lost your faith in God so come back and God will find you there and you’ll be welcomed home.
Now as one rethinking her faith identity who doesn’t currently go to church in the traditional understanding, I struggle with that. I have not lost faith in God. Jesus is still with me as promised.
As for the church; I am angry, sad and disappointed. I am not the first. Many people I meet tell me their stories and they resonate with me. But they do not always express loss of faith in God and whilst they too may be reconsidering their faith identity, many say they are Christian.
Unlike Bub these folks are not lost. But the church has lost out on their participation. There’s long been an argument that ‘you can’t be a Christian without going to church’. Now, not for the first time I am one. After all, if I had been in church I might not have found Bub.