Act 1 - Circles

It feels like I've only had a moment to catch my breath since finishing the Advent/Christmas blogathon and now Lent has arrived. This year that means not only countdown to Easter but the countdown to Easter school (a big chunk of my final few months of formal ordination training), which begins the day before Palm Sunday. Between now and then there's quite a bit of work to do.

This year for Lent, after three years of Love Life Live Lent, it felt like time for a new challenge so I've signed up for 40 Acts: "40 days of giving back, doing good and living generously"

Every day a new act pops into my in-box with a short, medium and longer suggestion of something to do. Today was all about thinking about the circles of people you belong to, their interconnectedness, praying for them and thinking how your generosity could benefit them in Lent - I made a doodle as you can see!

I took part in the Ash Wednesday service at St Michael's this evening. It's a quiet, penitential service, which some folk might hate the idea of, but we're all broken, imperfect beings and sometimes we mess up. It's good sometimes to reflect back on some of the not-so-great things we've done and said, or things about ourselves or in our lives that may be harmful to us or others. Lent should be about flipping that stuff around and 40 Acts helps by giving us ways to make the world a bit lovelier.

Faith, my daughter blew me away when I got home from church. As part of today's act she's made a WhatsApp group of her best friends and will be telling them each day's act, letting them know what she's doing and encouraging them to join her. It's prompted her friends to ask questions about what Lent is and why we do stuff. I appear to have a little evangelist!

“He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’” 

 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”  

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10:27-29)

12

When I was 12 one of my favourite things was to go to my local library and check out music. I'd record (copyright infringement!) what I borrowed on my double cassette player and through this I ended up with a rather interesting and eclectic taste in music. The most important thing I ever borrowed was the David Bowie greatest hits double album ChangesOneBowie. I fell in love with Bowie. By the time I was off to uni I had pretty much his entire back catalogue on cassette, plus a couple of choice vinyls. Most of this I picked up at the Manchester Corn Exhange but I also benefitted from the reissuing and remastering of a lot of his stuff in the 90s.

12 was a really important age for me, as well as Bowie I discovered other loves that would last a lifetime such as Fry and Laurie and Sean Bean (Sharpie!). I saw A Room With A View and When Harry Met Sally, still two of my favourite films, one of which began my love of Forster, both showed me cinema and film could be something other than the blockbuster or action movies I was used to. In short when I was 12 I began to really be the person I would become.

Yesterday two extraordinary yet ordinary things happened. A man died. David Bowie died. It chokes me to even write that- it's still so raw. He died on Sunday night and the news broke early yesterday. A world without Bowie has been unthinkable - not least because he's five days younger than my dad, who is still so vibrant and full of life. We'd just celebrated his 69th birthday. That's younger than a lot of the patients I'm looking after. Younger than half of the people I attend church with. Nothing. The international outpouring of emotion and the wonder that he even existed is unprecedented, yet inside I'm screaming "he was MY Bowie", as I try to stay rational and pray for his family- wife Iman, Children Duncan and Lexie (still only 15) and daughter in law Rodene (herself recently recovered from breast cancer).

The other thing that happened was my beautiful, quirky, creative daughter turned 12. My daughter who's just got into Manga, Studio Ghibli, loves to draw and create, adores animals and rock music (especially The Cure and Foo Fighters). My daughter is becoming the person she will be. She woke up to an upset mum and we watched Labyrinth again last night whilst munching on pizza and a pug shaped birthday cake.

Another thing that happened when I was 12 was an evangelical christian group came to our school one evening and I went along to see what it was all about. They used tactics I'm sure we'd all recognise and at one point asked us to stand if we wanted to give our lives to Christ. I felt overwhelmingly that I wanted to, but that this was not the time, or the place, or the way for me to do it.
I fell away from the church as I became a teenager, coming back in my early 20s, not long after having been married, but the feeling from that night never left me. I felt sure that eventually, even though I very very agnostic at that point, I would find my way to God.

So I've looked forward to my daughter turning 12, half excited and half dreading it. Who will she be? What will she become? Who will she love? Who will the heroes be who it will break her heart to lose? Will she turn from faith or find faith? Her name's Faith, the reason being my journey to faith had been the hardest yet most wonderful thing I'd experienced- until she was born!

On the twelfth day of Christmas...

...I slept

The twelfth day of Christmas happened whilst I was sleeping between night shifts, although being on a night shift meant I was there in those last few moments, as Christmas became Epiphany. The decs are down, the food has all been eaten and baby Jesus is wrapped in tissue paper, waiting for Advent to come round again. But we still have Jesus the man, our incarnate God who shared table fellowship with the despised, who spoke to women when is wasn't socially acceptable, who stood alongside the outcasts and marginalised, who showed anger at hipocracy, and cried at the death of a friend. He revealed to us, as far as is possible for us to comprehend, what God is like and how much we're loved. I am so, so thankful for that.

On the eleventh day of christmas...

...calm returned. Sort of.

One child back at school, the other back tomorrow, a husband back at work, me studying and then working 2 night shifts. The normal patterns of life are returning,  but we are still in the Christmas season, although when the normal things return it gets easier to let go of it. Today I thank God for the ordinary, the every day, because it's there in the ordinary that we daily encounter God.

On the tenth day of Christmas...

...I had an epiphany

A couple of days early for an epiphany I know, but today we celebrated epiphany in both our main Sunday service and our family service. My personal epiphany came when my 9 year old son, holding my hand, asked me why my hands are so rough. I explained that it's because of my work as a nurse- I have to wash my hands before and after everything I do and there's little time for hand cream between jobs. One of the assignments I've undertaken as part of my course was designing an act of worship, for which I designed a thanksgiving for caregivers. This included a blessing of hands. Today I thank God for my hands, as a symbol of being a caregiver.

On the ninth day of Christmas...

...I hung out with friends

Christmas has been a crazy mix of work, church and family that there's been very little time for friends. Tonight some of our friends came round with their children and we ate, drank, laughed and made merry. Tonight I thank God that I am blessed with true friendship.

On the eighth day of Christmas...

...I drew a line

A new year a new start, that's what people say, but the ticking of the clock and the hands moving to midnight don't magic your worries away. It doesn't cure your illness, solve financial troubles or mend broken relationships. Yet our lives and indeed our world is arranged in cyles- days, weeks, months and seasons. This is the start of a new cycle, one where we can't magic our problems away and forget what's gone before, but we can draw a line under it and do our best to move forward. Today I thank God for the way our world is ordered. Things have their beginning and their end.