A Turn Up

About ten days ago I discovered that I had lost a gold chain that I habitually wear around my neck. More importantly, to me at least, was the fact that I had also lost the gold crucifix that was on the chain and which was my promise to myself about my renewed feelings of faith when I was deep in a crisis of personal despair about four years ago.
I think I had effectively gone into a period of mourning about this loss and was just about over the loss, mainly due to my wife realising how much the chain meant to me and her buying me a replacement as a very early and very welcome Christmas present, when, whilst cleaning up some things in my sons bedroom the cross made a very welcome reappearance.
How it got there I can only speculate - probably I had been cleaning up previously and had lost it - but the fact was that I had got it back again. It felt once again like a promise renewed and the hand of an old and trusted friend was back where it should be. All my other burdens seemed to have been lifted by finding it and putting it back where it belongs both around my neck and in my heart.
I have to say that this episode also reminds me of how I felt when my christian beliefs also became important in my life again and it makes me remember how much the knowledge that I am never truly alone because God is always present with me even when I despair.

Where does your faith come from?

I suppose mine came originally from going to church and sunday school from a very young age at the request of my parents. Typically I rebelled against this in my late teens - being sure of myself and not wanting anything to do with something as staid.
During the intervening years certain aspects of the past came to the fore and my views on organised religion hardened as I could perceive more of the hurt that was done in the name of religion than the good that was being done.
I don't think I ever lost a feeling of spirituality, I just think I channeled it through other things like my love of the moors and mountains of this country and the feeling of oneness and unity that I got from being out there. There was always something there.
This is part of what allowed me to see God in this, that and a hymn, "How Great Thou Art", which speaks movingly of the mountains and forests and how God is in them all. This allowed me to believe again and to see God in them and to feel my faith again.
This is the version I heard that allowed my to feel this again, a wonderful hymn with a true sense of appeal to those of  us who love the great outdoors and all it means to us

Something Missing - Something Found

This week I have been on a course in a nearby City and whilst the course is enjoyable I feel that I will be missing out on something because I won't be able to get to the Wednesday Eucharist service at my local church.

I checked out the local churches to where I was but sadly I could not get to the the lunchtime service due to the timings of the course

This has become the break in my week and to be honest a bit of a high point and it has felt like a part of me is missing.

That being said the train journey to get to the course has let me listen to a couple of Podcasts that I have been meaning to listen to for a while.

One in particular relates to the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible and for what appears on the surface to be a rather dry subject is actually a very interesting discussion which can be found here . So overall the week has been enlightening in a number of ways

Mysterious Ways

"The Lord moves in mysterious ways"

Well that is the saying and he has certainly moved in a mysterious way to me today.

How? Well I find myself being in complete agreement with the Local Government Minister Eric Pickles, a man for whom, in a decidedly un-christian way, I have very little time since I firmly believe that his agenda for changing things in this area is appalling and harmful to say the least and probably being done for deeply spiteful reasons at the worst.

However I find that I am in agreement with his comments over the ruling about Council Prayers bring unlawful.

Eric Pickles in a comment to the radio news I listened to earlier disagreed with the stance that has been taken and from the majority of the comments listed on the story above - so do most of the commentators.

I find myself in agreement on a number of levels in that -what is wrong with something that is a tradition? No one forced this man to participate in the prayers at all - he could quite easily have sat or waited outside whilst those who wanted to pray did so.

The decision to have prayers was democratically voted on - yet has now been overturned by the spiteful anti-democratic opinions of one man and a coterie of "religious" bigots intent on imposing their "non-belief" on the rest of us

What a sad day for democracy!

That being said - it has certainly strengthened my belief in God and and our saviour Jesus Christ because making me take the same side as Eric Pickles is a minor miracle!!

Got That Wednesday Feeling!

Ah Wednesday! The top of the working week hill - it's all down hill from here on in to the weekend and the respite from the demands of the job.

It's all those and until just before Christmas it was just that for me too. About a week, maybe two before Christmas I noticed that a local church was having a Eucharist service on a Wednesday lunchtime. And, because I was wrestling with a resurgent belief I eventually screwed up the courage to go in rather than vacillate outside trying to decide if I really was just pandering to some sort of self delusion. SO in I went and took part in a communion service for the first time in 30 years and found I managed to draw strength from that to actually face the rest of the week.

Actually I don't just face the rest of the week - I actually enjoy the rest of the week and I feel like I have been re-invigorated just because I spend 30 - 40 minutes quiet listening to the spirit within me being nurtured.

It is quite pleasing to see that the number of people who attend on a lunchtime is actually growing as well - you never know we might have to move out from the side chapel into the main body of the church if we are really lucky!

Maybe you could use some of that Wednesday feeling?

Alive Again

I enjoyed reading the Imbolc reflections and rituals at Mystic Christ earlier.

Certainly the signs of new life are everywhere even though the snow and frost might have caused them to pop their heads back down again temporarily.

The music that I most think of when I see this sort of thing is "May Morning" by Runrig - which seems to some it up as well May Morning Video

As the words proclaim "I'm alive again"

Doubts

As I am sort of finding my way back into my beliefs I sometimes find it difficult not to have doubts.

Doubts about my reasons for setting out on this journey, doubts about the outcomes?

Has anyone else out there had / have these type of doubts and if you do / did how were they overcome?

For myself I tend to talk a lot when I am out walking, weighing up the pros and cons and asking God for some guidance for my GPS on this one!

Approaching Lent

As sort of a follow up to the last post I wrote I want to pose this question which I found myself pondering in when I was on my latest walk. Whilst out walking and just turning things over in my mind, I found myself thinking about Lent. No particular reason triggered this but for some reason I find myself looking forward to Lent this year. I find ths a bit strange, looking forward to Easter I can understand, but not necessarily Lent unless it is the anticipation of Easter.

Would anyone care to come back to me with ideas as to why this might be?

Follow Up To Reaching Out

I was quite interested to read this article from the Guardian which I picked up from the feed I installed earlier Guardian Article on Grief and Death

There are echoes of this need to "shoulder the burden alone" which many people feel they have to do even when death is approaching as I alluded to in my earlier post.

These are the times when we need people most and yet by and large we treat people as lepers when they are in both situations. Death and the approach of death are something that we dare not contemplate because it is something we are no longer in close contact with. We have sanitised it to the point where it is the great unspeakable, the elephant in the room.

Yet what are we so afraid of? Death will come to us all great or small, the mightly and the ordinary - it is the great leveller.

The sad truth in most of this, is that the vast majoirty of people today have lost their Faith in this increasingly secular oriented society and with this has come an increasing fear of death and dying. This is not just a Christian phenomonen either, I have a number of Muslim friends who bemoan the lack of faith in their children as they absorb western values.

This week saw the day on which we remember the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, who when his sight was restored is reported to have had the "scales removed from his eyes". Perhaps we need the scales removing from our eyes too - to be able to see that death has been conquered and should no longer be feared and that the dying and those around them need the love and comfort of those they have loved before they set out on the next chapter of their existence.