Category Archives: story

Full of holes

What are those for? This has been a recurring question since I left home to take part in the Easter weekend in Wales with the Lay Community of St Benedict. No, not what are Lay Benedictines for, but what are these wooden trays full of holes for, that I am carrying?
It seems that Communion trays, which is what they are, are not a common sight on public transport in these parts. But they are an interesting talking point, both in the Lay Community and beyond.
I brought the Communion trays from school for the Easter Sunday service which was described on the leaflet as Ecumenical.
I was cheerfully told that the Sunday morning service on these occasions was usually chaotic. And that was before I started.
We did some RB, remembered Bible. We made a table into a tomb with a black cloth. We talked to each other about what it might have been like to go to the tomb early in the morning. Some of the things mentioned were
It was women that went first and we were not surprised;
When the men followed, they had a race;
It was warming up outside but it was cold inside the tomb – this was a physical thing we’d notice;
When we saw the tomb was empty we were surprised, fearful, confused and had ‘other feelings difficult to put into words ‘
We all came to look in the tomb. I’d noticed that LCStB liked to move around in worship so I shouldn’t have been surprised when most got up to look. A little girl called Mary went inside and reported that the cloths she found there folded up were very soft.

Later we had a second bite at RB when we thought about left overs. Could we remember any stories from Jesus’ ministry about left overs? If course we could – loads.
The most common one was feeding the five thousand and the baskets of left overs.
One person suggested the catch of fish. First there were no fish and then the second time there were more fish.
The syrophonecian woman was remembered for her remark about the crumbs under the table; a remark showing the faith of an outsider, or one left over.
Turning the water into wine reminded us that the best had been ‘kept until last’.
The parable of the barns, suggested that rather than keeping lots for ourselves we should give more away in the first place.
In the Passover story we remembered that there were to be no left overs, and in the wilderness the people were not to keep the left over Manna. This was interesting as Jesus’ last supper was about making a new story from the left overs of the old, using the left overs from the Passover meal to make a new meaning of his body and blood.
All this and more came out from our shared RB.
Towards the end we heard that the rejected and left over stone became the new cornerstone: Christ himself. At his Ascension we became the left over people charged with the mission of taking the message to all people. For this the left over people received the left over Holy Spirit: my Spirit I give you.
Our task to be left overs, is to be scattered in our communities where it seems, Jesus thinks left overs are enough to feed the world.
During our sharing many members of the community, young and old, women and men, found their voice and became theologians. Someone asked Is it the homily? Call it what you like, we did it together.
After that we shared the bread we’d made and the small cups from the communion trays. For some this was the first time of celebrating Communion in this way.
The whole thing was fairly chaotic and certainly full of holes, but it seemed to feed us all and send us out with more to share.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Muddled daze

‘The fig tree you cursed has died’

I don’t know about you but this bit of Holy Week is something of a muddled daze. I take my remembered bible along with me and bits pop out of it from time to time: widows with mites, parables and questions from all comers and the whiff of heavy perfume following us everywhere.
I once used the Kenning ‘fig tree curser’ in an RB session, to describe Jesus in Holy Week. The recipient of the card, a computer user, was baffled as it was not a curser he’d heard of. Such can be the fun and chaos of RB that makes it ideal for muddled daze.

Anxious days make me muddled.
Searching for peace neath vine and fig tree
I find the one you cursed has died;
one of the most puzzling events of this whole week.
Setting out on another ordinary day,
not whole, but quite weak,
I can only listen to the stories,
keep time with the footsteps,
and breathe in the wasted scent.

Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy

Walking back……

On my way back from the village (now there’s a fruitful word of RB for you) a child waved to me from the doorway of a house. ‘Hello’, he said: ‘This is my Tigger.’ He held up a faded stuffed orange creature which might once have had stripes. ‘That’s a lovely Tigger,’ I replied and waved back.
And then I realised I’d misplaced my Tigger. If anyone comes across it in these muddled days, please do send it back. ‘Let the children come to me. The kindom of God belongs to them’.

The leftovers

They left the Upper Room, going, I was told, to the Mount of Olives, singing as they went. I stood on the threshold, looking in, waiting. As their voices receded and the air became still it was as if I could rerun the scene in my mind: the talking and arguments, the chaos and then the still point with him in the centre. I stepped into the room and crossed to the table where the left overs were scattered around, abandoned without thought. The other women came panting up the stairs with trays and cloths to help me clear up. They saw me standing by the table and stopped, as I had. ‘What is it?’ one queried from the back of the group. ‘Come in’, I said ‘Come over here’.
They gathered around and I took the left overs and passed them round. Surely he hand’t meant to leave us out. ‘Here, take this. It is his body’ I said, just as I’d heard him say moments earlier. They looked surprised. ‘Eat it’ I urged. ‘Do it to remember him’. Then I took the cup with only the dregs left in it. I lifted it up and said ‘Drink this all of you, it is his blood. Do this to remember him’. They passed the cup round taking a small sip of its bitterness.
‘Every time you eat and drink like this you remember the Lord Jesus, until he comes back again’ I said, and we began to clear the tables.

On getting to the lakeside early

This is not about queuing for the sales at popular shopping venues. It’s about the Lake, the Sea, that wet and watery place in Galilee that was such a focal part of Jesus’ ministry. We are getting to it a bit early, as most are today, still back in Bethlehem sorting through an odd selection of gifts. We, however, have got to the lakeside early…..
That vast expanse of water, it was bound to generate a lot of stories. We who had lived round it all of our lives, and for generations before that, knew only too well that stories abounded on these shores. So when it was all over, and some of us came back here whilst others went on elsewhere it is not surprising that so many stories came back to the surface.
Fishermen tell stories everywhere, and their families do too. Not all are about huge catches and many are about the struggles and challenges encountered in this environment for individuals and communities. Each of us knew of men who had lost a finger or more, had a twisted limb, a limp a scar, from some sort of accident, the story of which might be told aloud or in secret depending on the company. Everyone knew widows or siblings who had lost sailors in storms and wrecking. Just as the lake was full of bounty so it was full or terror.
To tell a story of a storm on the lake then is no big deal. Weather is just one facet of the natural world that kept us in awe and wonder and ensured some level of obedience, in most if not all of us. To be in a boat on the lake in a storm could be terrifying, there’s no doubt about it. Most of us had been through a few by the time we got to adulthood as we’d started young. Some of us had lost fathers and brothers that way.
You couldn’t always tell about the lake, what sort of day it would or wouldn’t turn out to be, what sort of night would follow. But you had to fish and fish you did.
From first meeting him it was clear Jesus loved the lake. He loved to walk the shoreline, to stand on a headland or hill, to let the water at the lakes edge run through his fingers or cover his toes. It was a place of deep communion for him and he returned often, even though his own family were not fishing people. So we spent quite a bit of time with him there, us getting on with fishing, showing him what we did, talking, telling stories and listening, one with the other. It became a bit of a model for what we did later and of course it’s one reason why many of us came back. Equally it’s why many went on, over wider seas to new places.
But for now let’s remember the lake for what it was, a place of community around which stories were told and families grew up. If I remember a story about a storm on this lake then I’m probably adding several of them together, from child to adult, so frequent were they, so terrifying in nature. To have him on board your boat, well that was a joy. He’d be excited, interested, watching, listening. Later, as we came home, he might sleep, less used to the work of the long night than us. If a storm came in then we’d pull all the harder to get back safely, home lights beckoning, a hold full of fish to sell.
We’d all be pulling together, and maybe he’d wake up and see something of what we were grappling with. A storm like a great water monster chasing us down, determined to swallow us all. Each of us soaked and tired, nearly disparing, yet he’d stand up and mock the wind, berate it and send it away, calling down the Father’s love on us and the protection of his arms.
We’d pull into harbour exhausted, but alive. We’d look at each other and store up the memory of having escaped another storm which would certainly never be the last. Life would go on around the lake: work to be done, families to feed. Until the next storm.

Making a quilt

The quilt top that I began earlier in the week is progressing. Like any quilt it tells stories at many levels; in the colours, the patterns, the motivation behind the quilt and in the actual piecing.
This quilt began with the idea of remembering my recent visit to the Battlefields of WW1 with the students, but that idea of using a quilt fir this kind if remembering is not new. Whilst on the trip we saw some quilts made by Canadian women at Vimy and Beaumont-Hammell. We started some fabric work at school last summer, which we may yet complete before 2018.
I had thought to reflect some of the colours that recalled the visit as well using up some fabric from my stash of course. The layout based on different sized squares came from a recent quilting magazine and I’ve adapted it, as most of us probably do.
So that’s something about the background.
In the foreground are some of the traditions of remembering like the poppy and the cornflower with the maple leaf another motif seen on our visit.
As I piece the top together each section currently looks like a small section of the journey; a street, a walk, a crater, a cemetery, a field or wood. Later they will be joined together in one piece. At the moment they continue to occupy a space on the dining room floor.

Imagining the Reformation

Today I’m Katherina von Bora, picking over herrings for my family. When I do this I remember our escape from the monastery in the barrels of fish. The smell was awful. It was hard not to retch. I kept thinking we were not going to be fishers of men but very fishy women.
But of course after our escape the joke was on me. The other women were able to find homes, marriages, families. I was the one left over. I often wondered if the smell had clung to me. There were a few who sniffed around for a while. I rejected them, like the builder rejects the less favoured stones.
After I married Sir Doctor Luther I ran the household efficiently and even the clinic, so he had no worries. Cattle were tended to, beer was brewed, the Bible was read to the children.
They grew up and our lives together became both a pattern for other families and food for gossips. I got up early, read my Bible and kept my opinions to myself, unless he asked me directly which wasn’t that often. There was plenty to do: more children to raise meant building work on the house to make room for us all. There were morning prayers and evening prayers to supervise for the household when he was away or at the university.
After his death I went to pieces. I missed him more than I can express. Mourning is exhausting and much about the household organisation just slipped from my grasp. I didn’t know who to turn to and I made some decisions that didn’t turn out too well. But I never neglected my Bible. Although much about me has been forgotten, I remained true to Christ. I stuck to him like a burr to cloth, or like the smell of herrings sticks to a woman in a barrel of fish.

Ready, steady, create!

Last night a bit of painting in my new Gudrun colouring book.

Also laid this out on the dining room floor. One day it will be a quilt to remember our visit to the Battlefields and the WW1 Centenary.

Below is an old project I found from over a decade ago. I think it started out as Edinburgh. I may get it finished: a city skyline.

Meanwhile this is the kitchen table. Several old projects have come to light. One from as far back as my au-pair days in Paris: that’s 36 years ago. The tulip bulbs also need planting this week at the latest.

On our hearts and on our homes

The blessing of God.

Chapel+BFG=Fun!

We had a return visit from the BFG today. One pupil in year 5 said I thought the BFG would be bigger than that, which is fair enough, although if he was much bigger we might have had trouble fitting him in.

Since his last visit we have all been trying to find him a country in which to live since he doesn’t want to live in Giantland anymore. Each class was assigned a country to research and had to present their findings to the BFG so he could choose a new country. I just wish it was as easy of that for children looking for a new country today.

After all the countries were allocated, Scotland was left over, so I got Scotland which was fine with me because I love Scotland and think it would be a great place for the BFG to live. After all, Scotland was created by the female Giant, Beira, who according to legend created the mountains and lochs and stirs up the whirlpool of Corryvreckan. Scotland has been home to many giants and some still live there, including the Giant Pandas of Edinburgh Zoo and Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster.

Scotland is a place of early memories for me: the rain in Ullapool, the beware of the Adders sign in the Cairngorms. Most of all Scotland is a place of deep spirituality, a cradle for Christianity in Britain at Whithorn and Iona. These have been described as thin places: places where the distance between heaven and earth is narrow and the spiritual domain palpable.

Actually when you have the BFG in your Chapel then it feels like that there too as we had fun together. Not that Chapel is just about fun but on World Mental Health Day it is an important dimension of life worth celebrating for all young people, and a time to remember those still looking for a country to call home.

Giant at the Chapel door

It was wonderful to have the real BFG visit chapel today. It was such fun.

The BFG is looking for another place to live as he’s a bit lonely in Giantland. He got a giant welcome. The children loved interacting with him. At the chapel door they wanted to hold his hand or give him a high 5 (or was that a 4?)

The jokes came thick and fast and the adults enjoyed it as much as the children. It was a Chapel for Juniors but some visiting members of the Sixth Form also enjoyed it.

There was time for a final chorus of Happy Birthday before the BFG was off for a lie down on the cricket pitch. He said he’d come back. We’re already looking forward to it.