Autumn.....

I am a little awed by the fact that, almost without me noticing, it is October.
I am not entirely sure how it happened - for not long ago (it feels!) it was August.
Time has a funny way of catching up on us and sometimes we need to take some time to store up those memories or the year will have passed us by.

I have always loved the autumn - its colour, its smell, its taste and the myriad of other things which fill our senses: smoke rising from piles of leaves - gold, red, russet, yellow, brown, ochre; the swish and crunch as we walk through them; the hours spent raking them up only to discover more falling to the ground behind you!! There is a sense of storing up; of setting things right; of tidying away and preparing for the sudden drop in temperature which will hail the start of winter.

Those wondrous days when the sun shines and we can enjoy a misty morning and a walk in the still warm air: autumn the season of bedding down.
It's the time for reflecting and planning too:
What worked well this year?
What new things will next year bring?
How will we end this year?
How best to prepare for the season to come - Winter and Christmas... ahh Christmas!! So many good things to look forward to: log fires and families gathering - the joy of the anticipation lifts the spirits and reminds us, as we know, that life can be predictable and new all at the same time.
The calendar has a comforting cycle which creates a certain security.

October comes: the leaves fall heralding that the cycle continues and all is good
We need a certain amount of stability in these uncertain and difficult days: the world is suffering, debts spiral out of control, but the seasons continue and God blesses us in ways we cannot begin to imagine... Autumn, the season of mellow fruitfulness and giving thanks: Praise God for the Harvest!!

Forgiveness is like toffee!!!

from this morning's sermon: the toffee analogy....


Imagine someone gives you a lovely piece of sweet creamy toffee... you want to save it, to savour it, to fully appreciate it. So you decide to keep for a special occasion – when you really need a lift.
So it goes into your handbag, or your pocket. And there it stays; waiting until you feel the time is right.

But toffee is a funny thing. Store it in a box or a tin away from other substances and you know it starts to get sticky.
Store it in a pocket or your bag and not only does it get sticky- it gets covered in stuff – bits of grit and dust; old hankies and whatever else is lurking down there...

Eventually you try to eat the sweet, sweet confection – but the toffee is no longer the lovely gift you received. It has become dirty, contaminated... not at all nice. Somewhere at the heart the sweetness remains... but toffee needs to be given fresh... just like forgiveness

If we hold onto forgiveness – do not give it out until we feel the time is right (feel it has been fully earned) – it too becomes contaminated – it attracts bitterness, resentment, hostility and it damages a relationship – sometimes beyond repair.

So if someone has offended you – what should you, I, we do?
What would Jesus do?

He would take the brother who caused offence, and gently, firmly bring him home
He would encourage us to forgive, forgive and forget – to taste the sweet, sweet gift of forgiveness.


Given and received!

Disturbed Thoughts

This has been an extraordinary week in Britain; I have watched with increasing horror at the devastation being wrought in our cities by a relatively small number of individuals.
That horror has been mirrored/ commented upon and generally magnified by the variety of comments posted by any number of my FaceBook Friends. Some I have heartily condoned - these have called for prayer, for love and for support. Others have disturbed me - for they contained great violence - not physical obviously - but verbal abuse: using swear words; calling for dire punishments; angry, angry words which I find I cannot support at all.
Which has led me to reflect further about how we apportion blame, and how we respond when we see injustice and conflict, especially when it is on our own doorstep.
I am not ashamed to be British; I am saddened that a few hundreds out of the 65 million inhabitants of our land have managed to tar everyone with the same brush:
it isn't every young person in England;
it isn't every minority group;
it is just a small section of the community who see no hope, no future and have grabbed an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon: there was an interview with a young man in Manchester on the news this morning, his attitude:

"well if I can get free stuff, I'm going to... I don't have a criminal record, what they going to do about it?!"

Like many I remember the 80s, and the 70s and the riots that happened then - there was unemployment, recession, fear and it led to great unrest and disturbance

This morning I once again turned to the wisdom writings and again I read:

"Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before
and God will call the past to account...
God will bring to judgement both the righteous and the wicked,
for there will be a time for every activity
a time for every deed"

(Ecclesiastes 3)

We have seen it before; we will see it again
We will recover
We will prevail
We have seen hundreds of people resonding positively - getting organised to clear up, to work together - to bring hope to the hopeless... concentrate on that and remember the Wise Teacher!

August....

Gosh!! It's August already, and seems like an age since I last wrote; I think I got properly into holiday mode and relaxed into reading and walking and generally being on holiday - which is (of course) what holidays are for.
Today is Wednesday, so I've been home a week and back at work almost the week - today I finally finished unpacking and putting the suitcases away!!

I have been trying to keep hold of the refreshment of holiday relaxation by continuing to read for pleasure... and do a jigsaw... this one is called impossipuzzle - it's one of the double sided ones with a very difficult picture - sweeties!!! One side is all smarties, which really is impossibly difficult; the other side is just lots and lots of sweets: cola bottles; jelly beans; foamy marshmallows; shrimps; jelly babies; snakes; kisses; mini eggs... ah! such sweet treasures! It's difficult, but not impossible, and it got me thinking...

The sweets brought back memories of childhood, and the challenge of making them last; or gobbling them down fast; of eating so many you'd feel sick... sucking on a fruit pastille until all the sugar was gone.... or peeling back the layers of licorice allsorts... sweet memories.

Too much sugar is of course not a good thing; too much of any food group is not good for us - it will have an effect one way or another.
So I got to thinking of the things that we just can't have too much of: the love of friends and family; affirmation and encouragement; kindness and caring - not only can we not have too much - we can never give too much of it away...
take time for those sweet, sweet pleasures of telling someone they are special and that you love them...

sand between the toes

Holiday time; I had a brief discussion with the beloved this week about why I/we holiday in July when neither one of us has small children any more.
At first I really didn't have a reply - habit or conditioning both seemed to be fairly obvious answers.
But the more I thought about it the more I wondered; I may not have small children, and I may not be a teacher who has holidays imposed. However, I do have term-time rsponsibilitites - I'd have hated to go away in June for instance and missed the end of term assemblies and concerts at "my schools"; or the end of term service and party for "my" Sunday School; May was GA and although I wasn't there, staying in the office and watching the live streaming was both fascinating and informative; April - Easter; March - various Lent/ school activities; move the clock forward and you get to September - school starts up again; and so does the round of meetings; maybe November... yes November might not be too bad (so long as it doesn't hit Remembrance of course!)


And then comes the crux of the argument - I am on holiday on the North East Coast of Scotland.... it is refrshing and stimulating in November - but not exactly warm and relaxing!! I'd not get the sand between my toes, nor the opportunity to walk barefoot on the beach... taking photos of the sea and the sunshine in November is not impossible, but you wouldn't do it in your T-shirt!!

who is without sin?

Like many others over the past few days I have looked on in horror and disgust at the depths that so called journalism has sunk to. Hacking into, and deleting voicemails and text messages - of the famous, and the infamous; and then more worryingly the innocents, the victims and the anonymous bystanders.
It seems to be a step way, way too far.
And yet, in all of this, I find I ask myself - who is really to blame?
I do not think I have ever read or looked at the News of the World; I have occasionally (some years ago now) read the Sun, as my "ex-Father-in-law" took it daily. But I do read the Times on a regular basis and that comes from the same stable.
We all are tempted by tabloid titilation - whether we admit it or not; because if no-one was, then the newspaper would not be 160 years old!!!
If so many of the advertisers had not withdrawn their support this morning would things have gone the same way? I doubt it...

But still I ask - have I contributed in any way to this?
I am sure that there is a vast section of the population who really do not care; do not know; do not want to know all of the stories of so called celebrities. But there are enough left who do - who soak it up, and who believe what they read... which is far more worrying.

This hunger for more gossip; for more sensationalisation; for more catastrophes; for the human interest angles seems to be insatiable. And as long as the demand is there, papers like the News of the World will continue to exist.

The blame is not solely with the journalists, the researchers, the snoops and the gossips... the weight of blame is shared between those who write and publish and those who buy and read.

Unless we each can honestly say we have never gossipped; we have never listened in on someone else's story; we have never read a single word that might stretch the truth - unless we can really claim a clean sheet - then who are we to cast the blame?

The writing is in the sand... let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

pass the balloon

What is family?
Family is the people you are related to
Family is the people you relate to
Family is the relationships we value
Family is the relationships with people who matter in our lives
Family is all of the above and much, much more

Our Family gathered yesterday - some were related by invisible ties - and others by visible ones - some were related by association - others by neighbourliness - some had met only rarely - others live together in the same household - but All, ALL were related and part of that bigger, wider, more wondrous family - God's Family

I'm in!
Are you?