I saw this earlier in the week. It made me laugh out loud. For me it is the wrong message for this place. I love the message, it is one of my favourite passages, but that’s not a place where I want to be thinking about being strong and courageous.
I wonder if we ever share the wrong message in the wrong place. We spend quite a bit of time saying to characters on the television “You can’t say that” particularly to something like “I know how you feel” or imply everything will be okay. But it’s not always helpful to say nothing because we don’t know what to say. I found a card the other day which said “I don’t know what to say, but I didn’t want the fear of saying the wrong thing to stop me saying anything at all.”
What message do you want or need to communicate today?
I read this prayer by Tess Ward yesterday, it feels like a prayer for everyday at the moment as I look to have a little more grace with my broken shoulder!
O Great Spirit who knows the routes of all, walk the unknown path with me this day. Past the maps edge, where all landmarks cease, here be dragons: give me courage to meet them. Embolden my vision that I may deeply see. Embolden my steps where I fear to tread. Strengthen my resolve when overwhelm threatens. Equip my soul when I face them head-on, that my love may know because it has dared. Fill me with compassion to befriend all that frightens. Inspire my faith that through brave adventure, I may trust you more as I set out beyond the signs. Stoke the fire in my belly that I may live my light passionately and see things more off-road as I continue my journey this day. Amen.
I know I need grace to learn what this season holds for me and prayers like this help frame it.
“Dreaming requires courage. The courage to believe you know where you’re going. When really it would be more accurate to say you know that you are going toward your dream…without the dream having precise or recognizable shape. The closer we get, the easier it is to recognize the dream.” Mary Anne Radmacher
Courage is my word for the year and this last couple of weeks I have been revisiting it in different ways. I even thought about a long ago dream and wondered. I have the opportunity to dream a little at the moment as I explore possibilities and review the last eighteen months and think about what has brought me life, what twists and turns my vocational journey has taken. I also am coming to a season where I will have a bit of space to dream a little more as a couple of my significant longer term pieces of work come to an end.
What dreams are you moving towards? Is it requiring courage?
On my quiet day a week or so ago I read this paragraph and it has stayed with me so I am sharing it here as it may resonate with others. It is from the book If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie which has some fascinating stories in it and while I don’t resonate with all of it, these thoughts articulate something I have felt for a long time but haven’t quite had the words for:
I have always been drawn to the edges of things, the places where two things collide. Where bog borders riverbank, where meadow merges to forest.
Where you stand in the margins of what is behind you and look out across the threshold of the future. The brink of possibilities – will you cross?
Edges are transitional places; they are also the best places from which to create something new.
Ecologists call it the ‘edge effect’: at the convergence, where contrasting ecological systems meet and mingle, life blooms – life, diverse and various, unexpected, abundant and unique.
I crossed over into a land of new possibilities in September 2020, unexpectedly, unwanted at the time but the possibilities begun and have continued to emerge.
I am able to draw on so much of my past training, experiences, passions in what I am doing now and have a freedom and a choice to invest where I feel God is leading me and in ways in which resonate with my values and hopes in what will be the last phase of my working life. I don’t envisage being employed again, freelance life works for me although is not without its scary moments!
I am also still waiting to see what other new emerges. I think this quotation has relevance beyond our individual lives and what life and church will look like moving forward is something to grapple with and to hope for the ‘unexpected, abundant and unique’.
Sharon Blackie If Women Rose Rooted. September Publishing, 2019, p68.
I had forgotten I had bought this box when I chose courage as my word for this year. I bought it in an RNLI (lifeboats) shop – they are people who know about courage!
What I am intending to do is over the year write down each time I think I act courageously so that when I need encouragement to do so again I can read and remember.
If you have a word for the year, how do you live it out?
The first day of a new year and the picture is one of my favourite signs. Definitely a way I will follow at least occasionally as I choose to buy local, buy from a small business and eat great bread!
I am reflecting on what other ‘this ways’ I want to follow this year.
This way to self care. Yesterday I saw how beautiful the weather was and opted for a walk after lunch rather than my to do list. In the scheme of things being in nature and exercising is a better way to spend an hour.
This way to grace and kindness. I usually try to be both kind and gracious but don’t always apply it to myself. In a season of change and energy depletion I need to be kind with myself and not get frustrated on the days I suffer from brain fog, for example.
This way to mindful choices. I am trying to work out what freelance looks like and want to get a good balance of different sorts of work. I still love so many things – 1-1 work supporting people in different ways, academic supervision, teaching and researching. I am trying to reflect on opportunities offered and say no if it is not a good fit. I am also keen to work with others, I am very used to team.
This way to courage. My word for the year is courage, to take up opportunities that will stretch and challenge me, to do things outside of my comfort zone, to believe what others say of me.
(Paul writes) When we look back on historical oppression and prejudice: slavery, apartheid, treatment of children, women, disabled, unmarried pregnant women, segregation etc, we can be judgmental and incredulous as to how people thought such things were acceptable or even Godly.
I regularly reflect upon what future generations will think about the conduct, normalisation of my generation such as abusing natural resources, materialism, consumerism, neglect of the disadvantaged, unbalanced life work balance, rushing around, greed etc
Might this be an even longer list of we include things of which we are complicit, turned a blind eye, did not challenge, do anything about, protest etc
Perhaps I will look back and think I should have come closer to being seen as an agitator, arrested, counter cultural, viewed with suspicion with who I associated with, or not associated with.
When teaching about such matters, I read and get students to contextualise “First they came for the….” Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany. There are several versions, but this is one of the most popular.
First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
For the past 15 years I have speculated with students that I expect the UK could name immigrants in this list. Who or what else should be on this list? Planet Earth?
My hopes for what I hope we are wrong about now for the future; a more effective system for real democracy, less consumerism, at least the questioning of capitalism as a given, refing rates of pay for professional sports players, community and individual responsibilities exercised as much as rights.
They say hindsight is a wonderful thing. But we have right now the Biblical principles and values of justice, mercy, compassion, love, care for the marginalised to address these now with current sight and courage.
These beautiful glass pebbles were made by the wonderfully creative Michelle Gillam Hull. I ordered them for the hospital where Paul works. They will be offered to patients for their treasure boxes, staff in support sessions and families who need a little encouragement. These are just a selection of the words and today I will choose to take courage with me. It is a complex time for me and today I am taking part in a conference on shame and that can take courage to share about as I talk about things which are deeply personal. Which wors would you choose?
Ever since I started school my new year has begun in September so January tends to be a time when I scribble down some resolutions that I don’t really look at – not a particularly useful habit. However, a new decade awaits, and probably one with the most personal changes since the 80s and that is both exciting and scary. I am likely to retire at some point, I may well become the oldest person in my family and I will explore what pursuing my vocation looks like in a new phase of life. I have no idea yet when these things will happen but I am aware I need to both prepare and trust God. Isaiah 43 has been important to me for over 40 years and I do better when I remember to fear not and to see glimpses of the new thing God is doing. I read the poem Continue yesterday by Maya Angelou who wrote it for Oprah, a couple of the verses stood out as things I want to continue to try to live out. The importance of equality was brought home to me studying my A levels and I struggle with a society that seems to live by the Orwellian notion that some are more equal than others. As someone who spent too many years trying to feel comfortable in her own skin and to live out the reality that I am a beloved child of God these words are ones I needed to hear many years ago. I go into a new decade with trust, faith, hope and courage knowing that both sadness and joy will be a part of it and wondering what I might write in ten years time.
Continue
My wish for you Is that you continue
To be who and how you are To astonish a mean world With your acts of kindness
To remind the people that Each is as good as the other And that no one is beneath Nor above you
Marker Posts and Shelters 