Just one step at a time

Thanks, everyone, for all your supportive and encouraging comments. I’m actually feeling OK at the moment. I think I might be a little high - the pills can make you a bit hyper at first. But I think also, it’s the relief of finally, after years of struggling, holding my hands up and saying “I can’t cope!”

And the doctor has validated it. Which now gives me permission to say to people that I’m depressed, sometimes I just can’t cope and need to take a time out, or talk it through. Why it took burning myself to do that, I don’t know! Putting safety nets in after you’ve fallen off is great for when you get back up again, but would have helped if they’d been in place the first time. Still, at least they’re being set up now.

I’m also high I think from passing some of the burden over to others. The doctor is taking control of some of this. Friends are praying and being supportive. I don’t have to fight it all on my own. In fact, I don’t have to fight it at all: I just have to face it and deal with it. And with counselling, I will deal with the issues. How I get past the feeling that I’m not worthy of anything, and hence why it’s taken me so long to get help. Why I think I’m unattractive and undesirable, and that the only way to get a guy is to sleep with him. Why I beat myself up everytime I “fail” at something, or make a mistake. Why I worry endlessly about things that might never happen.

Someone asked in one of the comments what has been happening with my spiritual direction. Honestly - nothing dramatic. Just little things that help me to realise that even if I might struggle to believe (and I think I need father’s prayer of Mark 9:24 “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”), God is still there.

Need to try and sleep now, otherwise if I can’t, after a few nights I’m going to need to crack open my emergency diazepam. Which I’m keeping for emergencies only. Which will hopefully mean I’ll never need them!

How would you answer this guy?

Jim Wallis was over here in the UK, and I’m very grateful a friend let me know he would be talking a church.co.uk about his new book Seven Ways to Change the World.

A few nuggets. He didn’t tell us the 7 ways, and although I bought the book, I’ve not got that far, having found a bunch of friends there too, so went to the pub after.

• When asked what had been the things that had got him most into trouble: Going the places you’re not supposed to go, particularly as a white, middle class Christian. Walking past those invisible ‘No Trespassing!’ signs.
• The 2 big hungers in this world are for spirituality and social action. And the movement that combines both of this will set the world on fire.
• People will get excited about this different kind of faith.
• We’re not to just ignore bad news. Revival is the good news for bad news.
• Politics is broken.
• The most effective social movements - Great Awakenings - have happened when politics has failed to address a major social injustice, and have always had a spiritual foundation.
• Faith is what moves the mountains that are the seemingly impossible social injustices: poverty, trafficking, climate change, racial injustice, and so on.
• Social change requires commitment from each one of us. We need to start in our own lives, lead in our communities and that will make a difference on a bigger scale.
• It takes time. Wilberforce put his first Bill forward 9 times, and it took another 30 years before the slave trade itself was made illegal.
• Charles Finney ‘invented’ the altar call; and got each new Christian to sign up to the anti-slavery movement there and then.
• God needs to be real and personal to sustain the commitment and faith that moves mountains.
• Hope is a choice. Cynicism comes from unsuccessful attempts to bring about a change, but instead of persisting, cynicism gives up and declares nothing can ever change.
• Hope means believing in spite of the evidence. Then watching the evidence change.
• Bad religion calls out of us our bad stuff. We’ve seen a lot of bad religion. We want to see more good religion, which calls out of us our good stuff: compassion, action and so on..

Oh, and I didn’t realise he was married to the REAL Vicar of Dibley, one of the first women to be ordained in the UK, who went on to advise Richard Curtis and Dawn French on the show.

Is was talking about religion over lunch with a colleague. I don’t do this often and I don’t jump in there, evangelistic guns a-blazing. Rather, I listen, try to get where they’re coming from, then pray for them. And for me in my relationship with them. Sounds like a cop-out, I know. But we’re not all born evangelists and apologists.

But the discussion -well, not really a discussion, more a diatribe (have I used that correctly?) of what he thought. Which was along the lines of if he was to follow a religion, it would probably be Islam, because at least their book was written by one guy, and they at least have rules which make sense and are good to live by. And has a huge focus on family and community.

Which made me think… the rules are what I find deeply UNattractive about Islam (well that and the suicide-bombing jihadists and the women-suppressing male leaders. But let’s not talk about the Crusades, that’s not what this post is about). The same with Judaism. But Islam has been hijacked too much for his liking - the true, original Islam is what he’d like. And he’s right. It has. In many areas, Islam has been hijacked by the prevailng culture. So much greatness came out of the early Islamic/Ottoman Empire: culture, science, the works.

Of course, Christianity’s not been hijacked, has it?! I (gently) put that point across. The incorporation of pagan/Roman/Greek ideals - the fact that in the West we celebrate Easter on a pagan feast day, not around Passover, which is when it actually happened. Christmas is another hijacked pagan feast day. Has it assimilated so much of other rituals and superstitions that Christianity has lost its own saltiness?

But there’s often an inner resistance to Christianity in the West. Apparently it’s downfall was the incorporation of materialism, individualism and capitalism, according to my colleague. You don’t say?! That and excommunication - I can’t believe people actually had the gall to do that! Because only a few centuries ago, to excommunicate someone was to say they no longer belonged to society; because society was Christendom, was the church, and to be no longer part of the church meant you had no place. You became a non-person in the eyes of society. I’m glad we’ve moved on from that.

But getting back to my point about rules: we have 2 as Christians.

1. Love God
2. Love others

Everything we do is a part of that (even though we f**k it up so often). It’s about the heart of what believe, the motivation. Not because we’re told to do so. And that’s what makes Christianity so freeing. But also, I guess, makes it look so woolly and wishy-washy. There’re no hard and fast do’s and don’t’s (other than the 10 Commandments, and we all get hung up over our neighbours ass when we talk about them) that you see in Islam. There’s been a certain amount of rhetoric over the last few years about why young men become attracted to Islam, become fundamentalistic suicide bombers. And there’s a lot to be said for an element of certainty in a world that can appear rootless, drifting and excluding to young men of a certain age and race. It can offer that family support in an age of broken families. It can offer a set of rules and codes of behaviour in a society that looks out only for Number One, and that thinks as long as you feel good about it, it’s OK.

But then there are my friends who believe in God. But that’s it. Jesus? Probably not, because He’s harder to get your head - and heart - around.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. There’s a ‘why?’, I guess. Why do you or I believe? And a ‘what?’: what do we believe?

What & Why. What a merry pair of bedfellows they make. I think they snuggle up with Faith, because without her, they don’t make sense on her own. And that’s what people so often miss or haven’t experience.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5

Warning: this post shares a bit too much. Particularly for boys.

Read more »

Too often we divorce the why we do something from the what we do. Why do we do what we do to help others? Why are we Christians any different from the socially-conscious person who gives money, and time, and campaigns for a better life for others? What do we have that they don’t? What can we give that they can’t?

We do because we love. Because we love God. The two greatest commandments are to love God and love others as ourselves. In helping, we are loving others as we would wish to be loved. And we do it because of grace and love: God gives us so much that we want to redress the balance, right injustices, give to others that which was given to us as a gift.

And we do it because of Jesus.

But that doesn’t mean that we use doing as a means of evangelising. There should be no bargaining, no ‘if I help you, you must come to church’. We cannot bribe people into the Kingdom of God. But we should be ready with our answers to the question: “Why are you doing this for me?” Too often, social action is used to piggy-back evangelism onto it. As St. Francis of Assisi said, we should “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”

When we do out of love, God will honour that and open ears and eyes to hear about Him.

Hat tip to Honest Faith for posting this video, showing how can can mess people up when we tell them about Jesus.

I came across a moving post on The Little Tortoise. When asking her son why he was sad, she received the reply “Because I’m not happy any more.”From the mouths of babes often come such profound words.

How often are we not happy, and can’t necessarily put our finger on why? Sadness is the absence of happiness. And happiness if fleeting.

In Christian circles it’s often talked about how we should not aim for happiness: but for joy. A joy that exists even in the bad times, even when we’re sad because we’re not happy any more.

It’s a joy that is born from hope. Hope in knowing that there’s more to life than what is happening to us right here, right now. It’s not easy, because we’re programmed to crave happiness. A joy, though more solid, is frowned upon. Because joy is not about us. It’s about something - Someone - bigger than our lives. Joy is about others, about giving, about receiving, about hoping, about loving.

We can be sad even in our joy. Because our happiness is not important.

But our joy is.

What’s the difference between death and sacrifice?

death
–noun

1. the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism.
2. an instance of this: a death in the family; letters published after his death.
3. the state of being dead: to lie still in death.
4. extinction; destruction: It will mean the death of our hopes.
5. Also called spiritual death. loss or absence of spiritual life.

—Idioms

1. put to death, to kill; execute.

sacrifice
–noun

1. the offering of animal, plant, or human life or of some material possession to a deity, as in propitiation or homage.
2. the person, animal, or thing so offered.
3. the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.
4. the thing so surrendered or devoted.

–verb (used with object)

1. to make a sacrifice or offering of.
2. to surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else.

–verb (used without object)

1. to offer or make a sacrifice.

Sacrifice, more often than not, is a choice.

Death, usually isn’t. And often when it is, it’s a sacrifice, a martyrdom (which nowadays has become more associated with terrorism).

In spiritual terms, sacrifice is something we give up in order to ‘better’ ourselves, to develop our spiritual lives, our relationship with God. It is our choice.

In spiritual terms, death of something is out of our hands. God will end something, whether we want it to end or not. As sacrifice is painful, death can be more painful.

Death is obscene. It rips life apart, intruding on vitality and decaying it. Death is not glamorous - it is painful, noisy, messy.

But… Read more »

‘FOCUS(ING ON)…LOOKING FORWARD.’
PHILIPPIANS 3:13

One day in an orchard, seven-year-old Walter noticed an owl sleeping on a branch. Thinking it would make a wonderful pet he approached quietly and grabbed its leg. In a flurry of beating wings, wild eyes and frightened cries, the bird struggled so the boy threw it down and stamped it to death. Horrified by his actions, he fled. When he returned later to bury it, each shovelful of earth was mixed with tears of regret. The incident haunted him and he told no one about it - till years later when it had awakened in him a fresh appreciation for life. All the promises in the world couldn’t bring back that one owl, but through its death a world of animals was born. The boy’s gone, but his legacy lives on in the drawings of Walter Elias, also known as Walt Disney. Charles Dickens said, ‘Reflect on your blessings of which every man has plenty, not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some.’ Learn from your past, then ‘Focus on…looking forward.’ Paul Harvey writes: ‘The relationships we entered, stayed in, or ended, taught us important lessons. Some of us have emerged from painful circumstances with strong insights about who we are and what we want. Our mistakes necessary! Our frustrations, failures…stumbling attempts at growth and progress; necessary too! Each step of the way we learned. We went through exactly what we needed to become who we are today. Is your past a mistake? No. Your mistake is mistaking that for the truth.’ God can ‘reframe’ your past in the light of the grace and mercy that brought you to where you are today. So learn from it and move on.