Joy to the world, Christmas is over !!!

Beth Anne, over at Heir to Blair wrote the following on December 19th:

I hate that for the past six years, the holidays had become a burden because of my previous employment. We pulled out dusty Christmas trees & bins of ornaments, thousands to take inventory. A week later, my day was spent decorating three, four, sometimes five Christmas trees & hanging garland until I trudged home exhausted & filthy. Then I would stand in my living room, staring at my fresh tree & wonder how I could muster another string of lights. I felt dull putting the pieces of my beloved nativity up, a present from Doug, because I had already set up two similar stables around my office. I wondered how I could bake cookies with my child when the sight of the piles of sweets, gifts from other companies, made my blood sugar & pressure rise. Last year, I did not plan or throw my traditional tacky sweater party because after two company gatherings & three resident parties, I was partied out. (& not in the exhilerated way we all remember from our twenties.)

I know the feeling. Christmas this year has been hectic, and at my 10th Christmas service in one week (all followed by socialising and answering the same dumb questions by total strangers), I thought my mind was going to explode. I'm sad to say that this has become a real drudge. We're so Chritmassed out we haven't even bothered to open our presents yet, or the kid's. I can't ever be with my family again at this time of the year because then my husband would have to be on his own. Must find a way to keep it real next year.

Quand l'enfant viendra

Moi je ferai le tour de mon quartier
Pour annoncer son arrivée
Mon enfant est né
Mon enfant est là

Et je brûlerai la nuit une dernière fois
Et les amis des jours d'éclat
Boiront à tomber
Quand l'enfant viendra

Mais j'irai dire aux hommes du monde entier
Laissez grandir en liberté
Laissez le courir à nos genoux
Laissez le partir au bout de nous

Que jamais la guerre ne touche à lui
La drogue et le fer la peur aussi
Quand l'enfant viendra poser sa vie
Dans ce lit de bois que j'ai fait pour lui

Et devant ce bonhomme de rien du tout
Serrant ses poings contre ses joues
Je dirai merci à ma femme aussi

Mais tous les chants d'amour toutes les chansons
Chanteront toujours à l'unisson
Laissez le grandir en liberté
Laissez le choisir sa vérité

Que jamais la guerre ne touche à lui
La drogue et le fer la peur aussi
Quand l'enfant viendra poser sa vie
Dans ce monde là qui n'est pas fini

Laissez le grandir en liberté
Laissez le choisir sa vérité

Que jamais la guerre ne touche à lui
La drogue et le fer la peur aussi
Quand l'enfant viendra poser sa vie
Dans ce monde là qui n'est pas fini

Another advent pic while you're all waiting...

"Story behind this? Her dad was leaving on a 2 year deployment. She was crying, and wouldn’t let go of her dad’s hand, even when he stood in line, saluting. No one had the heart to break them apart."

Source: http://beautifulwhatsyourhurry.tumblr.com/
Click for larger picture

Faithful to the wind, the hills, the olive groves...

There is an image that is often in my head. Unfortunately I can't seem to locate who first put it there. Something I read somewhere and can't remember where.

The idea is that the gospel isn't full of cities, grand buildings, red, gold, crowns, judges, priests, kings... It is full of domestic homes, gardens, green, dirt, fields, sheep, sparrows, mustard, fishermen, labourers.

I first got a tangible feel for it when camping out in Corsica years ago. We camped out in an olive grove with a friend, and because we were not lugging a fridge along, we carried food that didn't go off in the heat. Mostly dried cheese, dried meats bread and oil-based pesto. Each night we opened a bottle of red wine or two.

There was nothing to do but to look at the rolling landscape and daydream. That and find some respite from the heat under the not very efficient shade of the olive trees. I sat there one afternoon and I've rarely been this happy.

On some level, I thought that it was incredibly poetic. It felt like we were living in Virgil's bucolics, or in the early gospel narratives, out in Gallilea. On another level the heat dulled my thoughts and the hilly landscape opened my mind. I was operating on another level. Far removed from the petty moment-to-moment rattle which is my usual mental fare.

It all felt bigger. It all felt freer. Sitting under an olive tree with some bread and some cheese, and not even a book to read, I was happy. I could read the wind, read the hills, read the song of the cicadas, read the smell of warm scorched dirt, of pine trees in the distance.

Since then, I've always loved green as a liturgical color. Green like the hills, green like the fields, green grass where the newborn foals first learn to stand hesitantly and where sheep graze safely.

And when my thoughts get too oppressive and my life gets too small, I pause for a moment asking: is it faithfull to the hills? Not faithful to this or that bit of the Bible, just faithful to the rolling hills, to the smell of wild lilies and of thyme, to the clumsy new lambs, to the wind.

Clergy wife 201

After the spectacular debacle of the introduction course, we did make it to year two. What I've learnt this week:

I must be some congenial easy-to-access type of gal. I have never managed to scare anyone off. Hell, some days I can even pat the wildlife: squirels, birds, wild cats and field mice. I am just non-threatening in the best sort of way.

A lot of people who I am tempted to dismiss as not my type of Christian have huge pastoral issues. I should probably cut them some slack and be careful before saying no to their invitation to paddle in their indoor swimming pool.

I should be careful who (and when) I ask about what is going on on the community service front. If I ask the overworked busybody who is desperate for help, she would sign me up this minute while I was just enquiring and giving myself a week or two to see what I would indeed like to sign up for.

What happened to the wedding dress?

Well, I am on my way towards donating the cost of a real wedding dress to a charity that digs wells in Tanzania.

Meanwhile, I caught up with my old Arts teacher. She had been clinically depressed for years but her teannaged pupils called her out. They knew she had run a theatre club in the past and they wanted a theatre group too so they kept asking until she gave in and ran it once gain. This year they will be playing some Moliere. That's as fabulous a future as I could dream for my wedding dress, so there happily it goes, along with a couple of over-the-top formal dresses I bought in England.

At the same time, I was visiting someone at the nursing home, where my three months old baby was the star of the show among residents and staff alike and was getting lots of cuddles. One afternoon, some sinapses connected in my busybody brain and I called my arts teacher once more. Any way she could bring her theatre club to play Moliere at the nursing home too?

I know that in the grand scheme of things, these are tiny little gestures. I call them "cosmetic gestures". They take no effort and they don't change the world. Compared to some of the other things we might be trying to be as Christians, these are easy, fun and almost relaxing.

They remind me of the wisdom of the guy who was leading the marriage preparation weekend we went to. He said "Sure, you go set up charities and go change the world, but in the meantime remember that nobody can love YOUR family and YOUR friends better than YOU can".

L'amour en héritage

J'ai reçu l'amour en héritage
Un matin au pays des cigales
La folie et le génie voyagent
Bien au-delà du temps
Bien par dessus des océans
J'en ai lu j'en ai tourné des pages
Pendant mes années folles ou sages
Pour quelqu'un qu'on met pas en cage
C'est un beau cadeau
L'amour en héritage.

Et si ma vie se traduit en je t'aime
Si mes chemins ont croisé des torrents
On est toujours un oiseau de bohème
Une enfant de printemps.

J'ai reçu l'amour en héritage
Un matin au pays des cigales
La folie et le génie voyagent
Bien au delà du temps
Bien par dessus des océans
J'en ai lu j'en ai écrit des pages
Avant de poser mes bagages
J'en ai vu tomber des pluies d'orage
Avant de trouver
L'amour en héritage

Et si ma vie se traduit en je t'aime
Si mes chemins ont croisé des torrents
On est toujours un oiseau de bohème
Une enfant de printemps.

Omer Wells are us

I'm living my own version of the Cider House Rules these days. The going back part. The part where Omer puts his steps in those in those of his "father" while the father figure has just died and will never again hold his hand. This Sunday will be my last in the only church I knew while growing up in Alsace. The Sunday after that will be my first in H.'s parish, somewhere in rural Australia.

Unreservedly your servant

I remember my reaction when I first came across a sco-ld's bridle. This was a medieval device used to punish goss-ips, a metal contraption that fits inside someone's mouth to prevent them from talking. My thoughts were: oh God I need one of those, I wish someone fitted that in my mouth until all I was ever able to utter was praise for you. I meant it too. It scared me to think this and I didn't tell anyone. Gosh I'm weird, I thought, who thinks things like that? Am I sick?

Then one day we took a friend to visit the ruins of a Scottish castle, and again my thoughts scared me. God, I'm so disempowered that I wish someone locked me up inside some damp medieval cell until, through tears and shivering and sickness, I was able to promise to do nothing but serve you forever. I meant it too.

No chance of that happening either... Instead, I would always fail and no one would help me, no one would discipline me, and my life would be spent sliding further and further away from my heart's deepest desire, because they are too weird for the time I live in.

It didn't go away. I wondered what it was that had got its nasty grip on me and was disempowering me? Why was I so in despair that shivering in a medieval castle would be the only thing that could rid me of this shapeless thing? I felt like a seabird caught in a oil spill, my wings and entire body caught into a tarry black stuff that was asphyxiating me, with nothing but spiritual death to look forward to.

The only way out I could see was to embrace the weirdness. My thoughts might be weird but I meant them. However, procuring a sco-ld's bridle or being shut away in some damp dungeon was not a very realistic option. So I thought up a 21st century variant. I put a soft hairband on my wrist and spent all of my free time and lunchtimes sitting on the floor with my wrists joined together in it. I'd refuse to read a book or watch a movie. I'd say nothing and think nothing except ask God for mercy.

The only time off was when I was at work, or volunteering, or spending time with my fiancé. At the jail where I was volunteering, I served tea and coffee while trying to remain humbler than my clients and serve them with deference. It might have been a tad artificial, but I didn't know any better.

A year and a half went by and the disempowering back tar did not go away. I just didn't know what to do. I was starting to see sense in some of the op-us dei self harm stuff but my intelligence drew the line. Barely. And only because I was pregnant. I kept doing what I was doing on the volunteering front. I kept begging God for help.

Bit by bit, the right things began to happen through me. All the stuff I'd felt disempowered to do. These occasions were brilliant and almost flawless. I could hardly believe that these were occuring through my body. All I knew is that I still wanted to be God's servant. And I was terrified that they'd stop.

I think that I have an inkling about what the guys at Emmaus meant when they said: were not our hearts burning within us while he was with us? A lot of my weirdest thoughts and decisions boil down to the fact that this foggy inkling is also my most valued possession. Whithout it I would feel like jumping into the next river and filling my lungs with water.

First follower

I've thought a lot about this little video since coming across it. I'm not sure if I fit in as the initial nutcase, or the first follower of the initial nutcase. It depends on the occasion I suppose, but I'm often early to join in the nutcasery.

Something pretty huge is happening to me these days that I'm not even at liberty to write about. It doesn't involve only me and it would feel wrong to weave a story out of it. In fact, this is pretty strange, but I don't even feel like I should think about it.

It isn't my story, it's yours. I'm a quasi stranger parachuted into more intimacy than I have been explicitely given, it isn't my place to be there. But if I'm honest it's all I can think about. So I'm just going to jot down my feelings in a semi-structured way and see what comes of it.

Fear

I fear that I'm not good enough, that I haven't got the heart qualities I need. By these heart qualities I mean knowing what to do, how to be and whom to call upon. I'm spending hours upon hours second-guessing myself about what the best course of action is, but I'm playing by ear entirely and I wish I was someone with a better habitus for this. I fear that I'll do too much, or not enough, or not the right things.

I fear that I'm almost abusing you in some way, that you didn't choose me to be with you in this vulnerability. That I came across it at a time when you couldn't hide it and it isn't fair because you might not have desired to show it.

Shame

I'm vaguely ashamed that I can't just take this in my stride. That it's taking so much of my mental energy just to process it.

I'm ashamed that it's your story not mine and that I have no right to make it such a huge part of my mental landscape, because we don't have that level of friendship and you might not have wanted that if you knew.

Anger

I'm angry at the local subculture which is allowing this to happen with noone lifting a finger to reach out.

I'm angry at your hierarchy for not taking into account the incredible loneliness of this occupation and I'm angry at their choices and at their indifference.

Sadness

I'm so incredibly sad that I could cry my bodyweight in tears. And mostly, when nobody is watching, that's just what I do.

Pride

I'm proud that I've been able to break free of conventions and come and visit you anyway. I'm proud I put my son in your arms. I'm proud to extend joy, tenderness and laughter. I'm proud of my imperfect best attempts. I'm proud of my genuine desire to acquire more heart "for next time". And despite all the awkwardness, I think you would have been proud of me too.

Love

I hadn't realised how much I loved you until now, and if this hadn't occured I probably never would have done. I feel like the kid in The Mission who picks up the monstrance from the floor when the priest gets killed and holds it high again. And it's true that kid hasn't got the full habitus, but he's got the seed of things to be, that seed which time and time again prevents the whole mission from failing.

Watching life win

Becoming a parent really messes with my brain... Every moment is a mixture of extreme thankfulness and extreme hatred. I'm pathetically thankful for every bottle my son drinks and extremely hateful towards anything or anyone that keeps food away from anyone else's child. To me, buying food as part of the Red Cross' Horn of Africa Appeal is as essential as buying milk for my little one. And, somewhere, to an extent, life is winning.

As my son fights off the weakened germs of all the diseases he's being inoculated against, he's hot and he smells different. Something smells off. The smell of lots of diseases that are going to lose their battle. And I hate them. Meanwhile, they're being wiped off away from my son's body and off the surface of the planet. Right here, life is winning.



you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be

Charles Bukowski

Starting the kiddo on baroque music...

Sheep May Safely Graze by Bach/Petri (BWV 208)

Corelli: Pastorale, op. 6 no. 8 (from Christmas Concerto)

My two months old only cries... when that music stops! Still, like probably the entire population of the Western world, his favourite work is Pachelbel's bloody Cannon in D. he's also partial to a bit of Haendel. I wonder why.

Our accepted codified culture is getting real dodgy

Somedays I wish more people were actually familiar with the catechism of the catholic church. Stand where you will on contraception and gay marriage, that document's got a lot of good things in there too.

There is a huge watering down of morals and people are engaging in their own reasoning about what they think is moral. I'm appaled by what's out in print these days:

So it's no longer that killing is always wrong, it's not even that killing that is always wrong unless absolutely necessary in very exceptional circumstances, it's not even that you can't kill without a due process of law, but apparently the new moral standard is that people deserve some privacy in death.

Forget all life is sacred; forget that abortion should be safe, legal and rare; forget abortion for medical reasons; now you can just let a twin pregnancy develop long enough for a doctor to reduce it to a singleton pregnancy (by aiming a needle into the chest of a 14 weeks old viable fetus) because you only want one kid.

It's no longer that all people are of equal and infinite value. It's not even that you should try in public to pay lip service to the belief that people are of equal value. In the new DIY moral, life has a pecking order and you should spend your formative years fighting your way up its ranks.

Seriously, my son is going to know that little black book like the back of his hand by the time he is twelve.

Just don't trust me.

In this post a few weeks ago, I wondered what humility was. My brand of it, it struck me, was just a brand of reverse snubbery. I feel so rich and so loved that I don't even need any pride. Too bad for those of us who do need pride (and need it desperately at times).

On the other hand I've been confronted again and again with my own mediocrity and a few spectacular failures on the relational front. I've tried to be better than I am and I could not sustain it. I've now come to the conclusion that I simply cannot be trusted. The spirit might be willing, but my motives are flawed, my determination is flaky, I harbour massive doubts about God and heaps of formless resentment about I don't even know what.

I've tried to rise above all of those dozens and dozens of times, only to fall desperately short almost every time. Like 99% of the time. Given this rate of failure, I've concluded that I simply cannot be trusted. It's amazing that this realisation should have taken me that long.

This changes nothing to my reverse snubbery though. In itself this reverse subbery is not a bad thing. I still feel rich and beloved without bounds. There is a form of prayer which I invented years ago which I used to call the car boot sale. If you've been to car boot sales you realised that people's crap gets exposed in the morning sun, in the hope to be loved again. So I would expose all of my own crap, for hours on end or until I got tired, to see if I could still get loved by God. God loved me with all of my crap, all of the time. So like a lizzard enjoys the rays of the sun, I would sometime come out of the darkness from time to time to sunbathe in God's love.

But back to my topic. I cannot be trusted to deliver what I wish I could deliver. Whether I like it or not it's a fact. It's taken me ten years to look it in the face but I cannot rely on my own character, and I cannot even rely on God sorting out my character and turning me into someone who does not fail so much. I know. I've tried. I give up.

My friend Dan, in his comment to my original post, made the following contribution:

Basically, I've come to the conclusion that humility is the deeply-rooted realization of one's absolute and total insignificance and the utter futility and meaninglessness of pretty much everything one does.



And still, a few sayings float around in my mind, which beg to bear on this state of affair:

They are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit (Matt 15)

Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me (John 15)

Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread (D.T. Niles)

A saint is someone the light shines through (source unknown)

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3)

What these sayings have in common, it strikes me, is the relative absence of self-reliance they imply.

The first one seems targetted at self-reliant teachers. The second one is possibly an attack on the very notion of the individual as individual, the third one seems to want to circumvent any cult of personality and questions the importance of person-to-person relationships when it takes up the space of the God-to-person relationship. The fourth one shifts the onus of sainthood to "the light" who shines where the heck it wants, as the fifth saying makes clear.

What I'm really coming at, and what gave me enough hope to write this post, is an intuition that if I can't trust myself, maybe I can trust something else instead.

This is hardly a scoop. Christians are no supposed to trust themselves but God. We know. Thing is, I've tried several understandings of that. I oscillated between the two extremes of calling in God's support in my projects, or getting completely despondent and doing nothing at all of my own accord. Still all about me me me.

But I'm getting rambly, let's cut to the core. My conclusion is don't trust me. I can't be trusted. Don't rely on me, I can't be relied on. Seriously, I'll fail. I failed before, and I'll fail again, we'll all get hurt. Maybe the kingdom of God is just more fluid. Sainthood is fluid too. It doesn't attach itself to a person but to a people. There is a thing called grace and it works, but we don't know where and we don't know how. By rubbing shoulders with God's family you'll come across some of it some of the time. Not a whole lot. Sometime in you, sometime in others. There is no rule. But if you are going to trust anything, trust in the dynamics of the Kingdom of God.

Now this really cracked me up...

From the B movie catechism.

Towards a theology of disaster

It's Monday morning and I'm reading blogs in bed. I can't believe that this gorgeous baby is sleeping next to me in his Moses basket, making baby snuffles. His life is so right! So fundamentally good! The love that engulfs new parents is so pure that it must be close to heaven's.

If I had been born 150 years ago, or in this day and age in a place where state-of-the-art obstetrics is not available, I would have been very likely to die in childbirth together with my baby. The pregnancy went overdue with no signs of labour. Given the size of my bump on my decidedly petite frame, doctors suspected cephalopelvic disproportion and booked me in for an elective C-section. Our child weighted in at 9lbs 10 oz.

By the time the operation was performed, he was swimming in grade III meconium-stained amniotic fluid. His AGPAR score the first minute was just 3 out of 10 and he needed heavy-handed intrusive resuscitation.

So now, theologically speaking, how does one handle this kind of information? Is it a case of simply thanking God for a fabulous outcome to what looked like a very hairy birth? Do we give thanks for modern medicine and the skills acquired by men and women over centuries which now regularly turn potential disasters into routine non-disasters?

If I'm being honest, I'm not very good at giving thanks. I've always got survivor's guilt because I can't help thinking of others who are not so lucky. In this instance, the 350 000 women who die in childbirth each year around the world. And I get incredibly angry with God. You're telling me that I and these hundreds of thousands of women were "intelligently designed" to die in childbirth? If nature was left to run its course without intervention our beautiful babies would never even have taken their first breath.

What kind of God designs such a f*cked up plan? A plan that could have killed me and my unborn baby? I'm not a bad person. I do my best to love my neighbours in all the ways I can. And my baby is surely the most innocent being in the entire universe. What kind of a f*cked up intelligent design is that?

I can't help myself. I'm no good at blocking out the negative. If we give thanks to God for nice things that happen to us why don't we blame God for the bad things? As this was unfolding in the last days of my pregnancy, I googled like a maniac about the whys of unqualified evils. Why cancer? Why AIDS? Why all this s**t?

I'm sad to say that the only answer that gave me any solace was someone typing in that either God is a sick b*stard, or there is no God. I knew I'd have to move on from this eventually, but right then cognitively this is where I was, and I was not prepared to pretend that this wasn't how I genuinely felt.

Now I'm thinking that we need a theology of disaster. And a good one at that. Not the usual lame-a**ed theodicies you come across. Christianity strikes me as one of the only religions that can handle disaster, although I don't yet know how. The cross is the ultimate disaste.

I must say that I do tremendously respect those authors who try to provide the best theology and pastoral care they can come up with. Even if they still don't convince me, I find their attempts incredibly moving. Harold Kushner's is case in point. I wish I had the inspiration to write the most pastoral book ever. Nowhere is good theology more needed. And good theology starts with the truth, all the truth and nothing but the truth, no matter how unpalatable.

And I'm starting to think that good theology also starts with the wonderful smell of my baby's hair. ´

I used to think that if you had not experienced disaster, you had no right to talk about it. But then disaster has a tendency to stun you and destroy your better faculties. So it might be that a new division of labour means that those who are still able to connect to the smell of heaven have a role to play. It takes joy, it takes ecstasy, to delve that deep. And I've got both of them lying in a Moses basket next to me.

New arrival!

We love this little guy so much it hurts! Needless to say, I'm an emotional mess of crazy postpartum hormones but it feels awesome. More soon!

Assuming I'm okay

It happens all the time...

Assuming someone's doing fine is so much easier than genuinely finding out if they are.

In the eyes of friends, families and colleagues, I'm always doing great, even if I try to say that this is not the case. If we're being honest, it's just laziness on their part. Because if I'm "doing fine" they don't have to be there.

Or worse, they can use my disclosed vulnerability to load me up with their own drama. So if I make the mistake of sharing some of my concerns for five minutes, they share theirs for two hours and expect me to make space for them forever after.

It's true I'm happy, strong and resilient. I've got lots of resources to make myself okay and to help others too... But on rare occasions*, the entire system breaks down, I don't want to be there for anybody and I wish someone was there for me.

*[Like when I'm 40 weeks pregnant, have been throwing up day and night for nine months, sleeping on a recline to try to ward off the heartburn and holding down a job that's a two hour commute from my home. Like when I face the delivery of a 4kg+ baby and countless trips to the French consulate in London only days after the birth to try to get a baby passport while orchestrating a move to Australia via France to keep the grandparents happy].

If you speak Italian...

You may now go and read the transcripts of a beautiful series of talks given by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini on the Miserere psalm.

Seriously, some prayers just sound a whole lot better in Italian, no matter which language they were initally written in. I also suspect that the Italian language, and the beautiful phrases and habits of the heart which are associated with it, has the ability to convey a joyful, hopeful and sunny quality to theological reflections which could sound almost grim in other languages.

Furthermore, I am getting increasingly concerned about the lack of curiosity of the English speaking world towards thinkers whom the whole of continental Europe holds in very high esteem. Martini's works have been translated in French, Spanish, German, Polish and many other languages, but very few of these works are available in English!

English is NOT the only game in town, though many think it is. Meanwhile, people who speak nothing but English deprive themselves of some of the best theological thinking there is. Anyway, and just for the record, here is a beautiful (though not very precise) translation of psalm 51 in Italian:

Pietà di me, o Dio, secondo la tua misericordia;
nel tuo grande amore cancella il mio peccato.

Lavami da tutte le mie colpe,
mondami dal mio peccato.
Riconosco la mia colpa,
il mio peccato mi sta sempre dinanzi.

Contro di te, contro te solo ho peccato,
quello che è male ai tuoi occhi, io l'ho fatto;
perciò sei giusto quando parli,
retto nel tuo giudizio.

Ecco, nella colpa sono stato generato,
nel peccato mi ha concepito mia madre.
Ma tu vuoi la sincerità del cuore
e nell'intimo m'insegni la sapienza.

Purificami con issòpo e sarò mondato;
lavami e sarò più bianco della neve.
Fammi sentire gioia e letizia,
esulteranno le ossa che hai spezzato.

Distogli lo sguardo dai miei peccati,
cancella tutte le mie colpe.
Crea in me, o Dio, un cuore puro,
rinnova in me uno spirito saldo.

Non respingermi dalla tua presenza
e non privarmi del tuo santo spirito.
Rendimi la gioia di essere salvato;
sostieni in me un animo generoso.

Insegnerò agli erranti le tue vie
e i peccatori a te ritorneranno.
Liberami dal sangue, Dio, Dio mia salvezza,
la mia lingua esalterà la tua giustizia.

Signore, apri le mie labbra
e la mia bocca proclami la tua lode;
poiché non gradisci il sacrificio
e se offro olocausti, non li accetti.

Uno spirito contrito è sacrificio a Dio,
un cuore affranto e umiliato
tu, o Dio, non disprezzi.

Nel tuo amore fa' grazia a Sion,
rialza le mura di Gerusalemme.

Allora gradirai i sacrifici prescritti,
l'olocausto e l'intera oblazione,
allora immoleranno vittime sopra il tuo altare.

House cats and wild cats

While I liked going to church as a kid, my family didn't. Neither did a lot of my friends or their families. They'd turn up for baptisms, weddings, funerals, and at times of major life crises. I know that a lot of people disapprove of that approach but it never bothered me.

The way I see it, in God's household there are house cats and there are wild cats. The house cats wouldn't even think of foraging for food in the open countryside when they are being so wonderfully cared for in-house. The wild cats sometimes tip-toe around the house and grab themselves the meal that is being laid out for them.

I know this well because I'm a recovering wild cat.

At some point, I did make the conscious decision to start behaving like a house cat. My reason for doing so is that the house cats have a duty to keep the house looking good and welcoming so it can be there and visible for when the wild cats are starving.

And yes, it's daunting. I'd rather not have that responsibility. But I also don't feel like I have a choice. It's like being dragged into a sports team when you're useless at that sport but you keep getting asked because without you there, there wouldn't be enough people for a team, and nobody would be able play. I feel I've been recruited to be on the house cats team and that I can't say no.

As grieved as I've ever felt that I did not have a sense of "calling", this is as close as it gets. I'd rather not have to be the face of the church because I wish the church looked better than me, but there you have it...

Unsurprisingly, the thing I'm best at is outreach to the wild-cats. Quite a few times I've amazed myself providing exceptionally good pastoral "answers" that I'd never even thought of before and didn't even know I had in me.

I've seen faith, hope and joy burst forth from chance conversations which people have initiated with me because of my notorious status as the "religious one". In most cases, the questions seemed to have been harboured for years but nobody "religious" was approachable enough for the people to explore them.

Let's face it, if you're a wild cat, you're not going to bare your soul to a formal religious figure whom you've never met before (although this can happen of course, usually at times of great crisis). Still a lot of the real pastoral stuff is done by the average house cats on the train, in the pub or after a late dinner.

Hence, the duty of the average house cats is at once incredibly simple and incredibly daunting. Just be who you are, go to church and don't be ashamed of it. No need to talk about it, just don't hide your faith. You're going to get saddled with some of the most deeply meaningful conversations ever.

And if the church hierarchy wants good outreach to occur, they'd better make sure you're the most beloved, well nourished and tenderly cared-for house cat you can be. One of their key jobs is to fill the house cats' heart with song.

So, on a more practical level, how do you ensure that the wild cats get some sustenance when they need it?

By being there, by being visible and by laying out the cat food at a place where the wild cats might find it. I mean even Simone Weil, the queen of all wild cats, was drawn in by Portuguese hymns sung in the street...

That's something Portugal, Spain and Italy do quite well. Church people are visible, their churches are open, and they often provide a table at the entrance of the church with some really good black-and-white flyers and small aterfacts such as holy cards and plastic rosary beads.

All of these fulfill the purpose of keeping the rumour of God alive in the world, and it's the wild cats who most eagerly pick them up.

I've picked up some seriously good, incrediby pastoral flyers in my time backpacking around in these countries. Some of them were nothing short of life-changing, the work of local priests explaining in 15 lines that God loves you and that you're not "going to hell", how to make a confession, how to pray for someone who is sick, how to pray when you're not even sure that there is a God.

So I wonder if one of my next endeavours will be to retrieve some of them, translate them into English, get them printed on some gritty A4 paper, and see if the parish council wants to let me put them on a small wooden table near the entrance.

Somebody tell me just what is humility?

Oh God, I think that all my understandings of humility are all very very wrong.

It's one of those areas of theology in which I definitely feel less than inspired and have zero inklings about where the life-giving truth might be hidden. This bugs me, because on many questions, I can usually find a good seam to explore. But on the topic of humility, I simply have no idea!

For a while, I thought that humility was a luxury. Basically, if you are secure in the things that matter, you don't need recognition all that much, you're free not to seek it and you can be as humble as you want because you're loved quite independently of any outward achievements. You don't waste any time seeking glory and you don't give a rats about what people think.

Now this strikes me as a very flawed answer. It's reverse snubbery I'm talking about here rather than humility. And I don't even know where to start...

Poverty, precariousness and livelihoods

Okay, I'm on shaky ground here, but I've been thinking about those three concepts for a while... Some forms of poverty are not at all precarious, while some form of intense precariousness do not (yet) amount to poverty.

So for example a monk or a retiree on a meagre state pension can live in objective "poverty" but their situation does not lack stability or security. If they are prepared to be frugal, they can be fine forever and still be very generous towards others.

Precariousness on the other hand implies that all could be lost at the drop of a hat with little prospects for support. To various extents, precariousness can force individuals into increasingly selfish behaviour patterns. Therefore, I wonder if precariousness is among the great social evils of our time.

There was a bit of thinking done about this in Italy at the end of the last decade. It was a fascinating movement really. Individuals who found themselves living in precariousness availed themselves of a made-up patron saint, San Precario.

San Precario informally became the patron saint of precarious workers, the unemployed, the underemployed, people made redundant, the uninsured, illegal immigrants, the physically and financially dependent and those isolated from formal and informal circuits of solidarity. He is invoked against neoliberalism, evil goverment decisions and the precariousness that ensues. That's a pretty cool idea.

People began to print holy cards (seriously!) and to give them out at demonstrations. They look like this:





I like using the concept of precariousness because I wonder if people need a modicum of security in order to feel empowered to be generous. Or whether security itself is a false god that should be relinquished entirely. Big debate here...

I've seen lots of fairly secure (though by no means wealthy) people launch into great ventures. On the other hand, my generation is often accused of not being very generous. But then they are saddled with student debt, have no job security, no savings, no retirement plan, and no prospect of being able to buy their own homes.

Should Christians aim to design forms of moderate material security that do not depend on the functionning of the capitalist system, like most pension funds do, like the church too often does?

I feel for the people of Greece because I sense that it is precariousness, not necessarily enforced frugality, that is killing them.

I often dream of a green and hilly land where people and households are simply able to have a somewhat ethical livelihood that enables them to feed their family and enjoy creation. Is that a crazy dream to have? To work towards?

Must be time for a Blaise Pascal quote...

"Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason"
Blaise Pascal

What might distract the author of this blog from thinking of nothing except her unborn baby's little kicks

An intervention by Rowan Williams on our government and its "Big Society", that's what!

I must admit that I do enjoy reading the man's thoughts on mostly everything, even if I'm not particularly fond of him sitting on the fence for nearly a decade in the evil fundamentalists vs. cuddly liberals stalemate. In particular, I was massively impressed with his thoughts on 9/11 which are still incredibly relevant today and well worth a read.

So now let's hear the key points from his New Stateman's piece (read the full text by clicking on my first link above):

'An idea whose roots are firmly in a particular strand of associational socialism has been adopted enthusiastically by the Conservatives'.

'Managerial politics [is] attempting with shrinking success to negotiate life in the shadow of big finance.'

'With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted.'

'While grass-roots initiatives and local mutualism are to be found flourishing in a great many places, they have been weakened by several decades of cultural fragmentation. The old syndicalist and co-operative traditions cannot be reinvented overnight and, in some areas, they have to be invented for the first time.'

'[There is] a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, nor by the steady pressure to increase what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system.'

'There is [a] theological strand to be retrieved that is not about "the poor" as objects of kindness but about the nature of sustainable community, seeing it as one in which what circulates - like the flow of blood - is the mutual creation of capacity, building the ability of the other person or group to become, in turn, a giver of life and responsibility. Perhaps surprisingly, this is what is at the heart of St Paul's ideas about community at its fullest; community, in his terms, as God wants to see it.'

Feminist and Queer theology: here I come!

Over the last few months, if there is one thing that really got me fuming it is stupid pregancy books written by men. I don't care how many pregnant women they've talked to and how many babies they've delivered, I still resent pontifying discourses written by men. Every atom of my body is crying: get the heck out of our field, talk about whatever you want, but growing babies is women's stuff.

And I must admit that this primal womynist anger is spreading quickly to a lot of other fields as well. I find myself longing for a women's bible, that isn't all about "the seed of men" but the "eggs of women" and all that kind of stuff. I'm sure I could find that on Amazon somewhere. I long for entire passages in the bible that would be love letters to women. It annoys me that we know so little about key female characters because men couldn't be bothered to write them in fully.

I'm not alone in this... Every once in a while my female theologian friends end up exclaiming, quite despite themselves "Will there ever be any bounds to the mysogyny of the [catholic] church?" The same is valid for extraordinarily gifted gay theologians such as James Alison who are having, like the rest of us, to reimagine a God that wouldn't treat women and gays as any less interesting than straight men.

So right now, a male-centric bible doesn't talk to me, and a male saviour doesn't talk to me all that much either. I don't know if this is right or wrong, all I know is that I'm feeling it quite intensely and that denying isn't very helpful. It's far more interesting to explore why this is and what insights into the creative genius of the Shekinah this might shed light upon. Making honey from a lot of flowers, you bet!

"The body was put in a plastic bag" by Ian M Fraser

Expecting a child was the best thing to ever happen to me, Christian-wise. While stories like the one I'm citing below used to upset me before, I now positively can't bear them.

It might be linked to the low blood sugar in the morning. It makes me wake up every day with a ravenous hunger which I am fortunate to be able to alleviate by walking down to the kitchen. Before, I never even felt hunger except as a mild annoyance which I could ignore for half a day if I wanted. I once did a good job of keeping Ramadan with a friend for a little while and found it quite easy. Now it often feels like I'm going to pass out if I don't eat some carbs quickly. I am so pathetically thankful for a sweetened cup of tea, especially because, as an added bonus, it makes the baby kick!

Also, it's incredible how protective I feel towards the little creature in my belly. I can't imagine what it must be like to be unable to feed your child or to provide them with essential medicines. Just the thought of it evokes a raw, incredibly powerful anger. So I'm fully in line with all the feminist theologians who conceive of the Wrath of God as something akin to the rage of a mother bear whose cubs are being threatened (by reference to Hosea 13:8). It is scary as all f*** and you don't want to be in its path.

So on with the account by Ian Fraser. It dates back to 1982 and in a way I hope to God that this sort of thing isn't going on so much anymore as a result of international scrutiny, but I wouldn't put it past public authorities even now.

"In 1982, Margaret accompanied me to the Philipines. It was her first visit. We saw one of the effects of holding the South East Asian Games in that country at that time. We were in an area which was deemed to be an eyesore by the authorities. It would disgrace the country if competitors from many nations saw it. So although the tenants had a legal right to their property and could not be faulted on payments of dues, bulldozers were sent in and their shacks demolished.

Residents were dumped on the outskirts of Manila, including a husband, wife and five children. They had no resources, no work was to be found. They drifted back. The husband, worn out by malnutrition and worry coughed up his lifeblood. There was no money to bury him. The body was put in a plastic bag and lay around for two weeks. Neighours at last sacrificially raised enough to secure his burial.

The neighbours then built a lean-to against a wall and covered the framework with plastic (from the bag used for the body) to provide minimal accommodation for the widow and children. Its total extent was about 10' by 4'. A low platform kept the family off the mud and had to serve for beds. Five plastic bags acted as wardrobes for the chidren clothes. That had to be home."

Extract out of This Isthe Day. Readings and meditations from the Iona Community. Month 2, day 2.

Voices from the past

From as far as I can remember, I was out trying to invent new devices and new solutions to the problems I saw around me. I'd spend a weekend thinking my stuff through and then I'd expound it to my parents. I only ever got one answer: "if it was that easy, everybody would be doing it". I must have heard that sentence more than a thousand times.

On another occasion, I was happily butchering a Tracy Chapman song on a cheap guitar I'd bought at a car boot sale. I actually quite liked the sound I was making and was quite proud of myself. Until my father told to stop because it didn't sound good and I was just annoying everybody.

I resisted that one after a while, and a few years later I would lock myslelf somewhere really remote and sing Mozart's Arie der Koenigin der Nacht and Haendel's I know that my redeemer liveth to my heart's content, thinking that the important thing was that I enjoyed it, and it didn't matter if it sounded bad. Once somebody walked by, stopped and told me that it sounded really good.

To this day, I abort most of my ideas, thinking that there must be a catch somewhere and that "if it was that easy, everybody would be doing it". I also very rarely take pleasure in singing or making music any more. Indeed my singing has gotten a lot worse over the past ten years. The Germans are on to something with their concept of Erfolgerlebnis (meaning: a structuring experience of success). I wonder how cool it would be, just to create whatever I feel like creating and to sing whatever I feel like singing without these voices from the past?

Around me, people go on creating things that I'm convinced I could have created. One of our acquaintances decided that the water in village he visited in Tanzania wasn't safe to drink. He raised funds among his friends and contracted a company to build a deep well that goes right into the phreatic table.

Along these lines, I think I'd really like to create links of solidarity between a church where I live and a church in the developing world because the later have got a hell of a lot of work trying to alleviate the plight of those people whom capitalism forgets.

I keep thinking: in this day and age how hard can this be? We need two bank accounts, a reliable supply of funds on our side and a reliable team of people to administer them on the other side. It really isn't rocket science and it sure doesn't take a Geography Ph.D. to set it up.

I can't belive I still feel disempowered and this is begginning to really anger me. A good kind of anger. A good bellowing of the Arie der Koenigin der Nacht is fully in order.

Let me not forget by Rabindranath Tagore

This poem is a bit at odds with the liturgical season, but it is oh-so-beautiful it would fit in any season:

If it is not my portion to meet thee in this life
then let me ever feel that I have missed thy sight
---let me not forget for a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours.

As my days pass in the crowded market of this world
and my hands grow full with the daily profits,
let me ever feel that I have gained nothing
---let me not forget for a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours.

When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting,
when I spread my bed low in the dust,
let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me
---let me not forget a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours.

When my rooms have been decked out and the flutes sound
and the laughter there is loud,
let me ever feel that I have not invited thee to my house
---let me not forget for a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours

Read the full of Tagore's Gitanjali (meaning: 'Song Offerings') here.

A beautiful quotation

It would be downright embarassing to reveal just how much of my existence and how many of my better choices have been motivated by that single quotation by Henri David Thoreau:

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

Fragment of a love letter

Like a ten months old baby who wants to walk, I pull up on anything and anyone that’s remotely stable in order to get on my feet and to either walk or die trying.

Like an adolescent who’s got a crush on someone five years older, I spend hours upon hours trying to find out everything about them in order to quietly emulate all I can, every music track they listen to and the brand of deodorant they use. I despair of ever being this cool.

The mark keeps moving and I keep reaching for it, weeping with frustration, but with an ever more dogged determination. Life is meaningless without you.

Volunteers in the Big Society

I really wasn't in the zone yesterday on my volunteering shift. Term is off so all the students are gone. In addition, quite a few paid staff have been permanently axed by funding cuts within the last two weeks... So the remaining volunteers are asked to do more and more by a management team that seems increasingly stressed out and desperate.

I moderately enjoyed being asked to be there during my maternity leave "if I'm feeling well". I'm already in the third trimester as it is, and I wasn't feeling particularly well on that day. I also sense that compassion fatigue is starting to kick in. It does affect me when little kids are visibly hungry and Eastern Europeans are so skint they can't afford a 50pence cup of coffee. Some days I'm just not in a place to brush it off and I want it all to go away. It seems to me that I might be in need of some TLC. I'd better ditch Barbara for a while, dig out my copies of Regena and Debrena, buy some posh make-up and get into a pink bubble bath.

The reason I'm letting myself be so uninspired in here is that there is no point in pretending that I don't sometimes operate according to common cultural standards that are miles away from what I would like to be about...

So hang on a minute... I don't have to be there and I'm not at all interested in propping up the a**holes we've got in government, especially when the people whose job it was to do what I'm doing for free are now at risk of losing their homes. I still cannot believe that those millionaire b**tards would so shamelessly highjack the goodwill of lefty idealists while doing no amount of volunteering themselves.

On another level, I'm only just realising that I do like to feel valued. Even though I should know better than feel entitled and expect others to do the emotional work of patting me on the back all the time. I don't enjoy new expectations being placed on my shoulders when not a moment of attention is being paid to how I'm feeling or to my physical wellbeing. If management doesn't provide the warm atmosphere we need to thrive in, maybe I could find the resources to help.

Everyone can have bad days. It's just bad luck when we have bad days at the same time but it's nothing to worry about for the long term.

So I'm typing this here, not because I'm right, but because I want to keep it in mind that we can't always function as if we've just gotten drunk on communion wine. Some days the assumptions of the culture we grew up with will get the best of us. When this happens, it's not such a terrible idea to get into a pink bath, or browse the Book of Common Prayer, or both.

Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us, and to all men. We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all, for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And, we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory, world without end.

The Book of Common Prayer, "A General Thanksgiving".

The grey book

One of my work colleagues is my all-time hero. She's got a fantastic attitude when it comes to making the voluntary sector great and she sets up charities left, right and centre whenever she sees a need. The last one she set up was for dads who, through false allegations made by a former partner, were prevented from seeing their children grow up. In three months she had them organised and had supervised Saturdays set up. This means that, provided someone else is with them (unobstrusively), the dads can be with their kids. Julie is A-MA-ZING.

Once, she told me something along the lines of: "Look Dany, it's our job, we're getting paid for it, we're knowledgeable and we have great networks. If we can't do it, then tell me who the hell can."

Let's not kid ourselves though. She is also very much the exception and most third sector professionals, while reasonably efficient, are nowhere near displaying this level of enthusiasm and hard-headedness. But some are, I'd say maybe one in ten, one in five if I'm optimistic... By working in this sector, you do end up meeting them.

An interesting thing to note is that Julie is not great at everything she does. She sometimes "signposts" people to complete dead end services that may not be all that useful to them. Her signposting drives me crazy. Still, if she were perfect she'd be unimitable. As it is she's not perfect, she makes mistakes, she sometimes lacks reflexivity, but she get things done like there is no tomorrow.

Her signposting is not such a bad idea though, if it worked. It acknowledge the fact that one person or organisation cannot do everything and that the service user might need to be signposted to another person or agency which can be trusted to do a great job. For a while, I've been thinking that the medical first aid training I received should be complemented by some form of social first aid training. I received a tiny bit of it as a Niteliner, mostly to to with exam stress, HIV, suicide and bereavement.

I'm thinking that I need a "grey book", with a couple of paragraphs of best practices under each heading, and the best people or agencies that people could be signposted to if I or the people around me do not have the capacity to help. This is becoming quite pressing now as it's only a few month until H. has to be the visible face ot the Church in a middle size town. My thinking is, if you're going to walk around in a dog collar, then you'd better put on a damn good show and not ignore the needs around you, especially when approached directly. He agrees.

So now grey book will have to be compiled and fast. Fortunately, I've just spent two years as a third sector professional, I love collecting information and I enjoy networking with cool people. Here are the possible headings:

Advice and information

Animal welfare

Armed services

Arts and Community Arts

Bereavement

Carers and Carer respite care

Careers and worklessness

Childcare

Clothing

Counselling

Crime prevention

Education (adults)

Education (children)

Environment and conservation

Ethnic minorities

Families

Finances (personal and family)

Foodbanks

LGBT

Health promotion

History

Hospital visits

Housing and homelessness

Libraries

Listening services

Learning disabilities

Loneliness and isolation

Lone parents

Marriage

Meals-on-wheels

Mental health

Mediation

Older people

Overseas aid projects

Perinatal support and young children

Physical disabilities

Politics, democracy and campaigning

Poverty (hidden)

Prisoners and past offenders

Prisoners' families

Recreation and leisure

Refugees and asylum seekers

Road safety

Safety in the community

Substance abuse

Toy libraries / toy buses

Transport issues

Women and girls

Young people

The work of trusting again

Appointment with the midwife today. Twenty five weeks and a textbook perfect pregnancy so far. Our son is the right size, has no detectable anomalies whatsoever, a regular heartbeat and he energetically kicks around all the bloody time. I've got no complications apart from an oddly reassuring nausea (hormones pumping and all...).

I'm starting to think that it's time I started to trust again, that I can, again, just rejoice in the fact that I'm alive, healthy and happy. But I can't help thinking that I'll believe it when I see it. I wonder if I'm on to something here...

What exactly is the process of beginning to trust again? I wonder if again we need to liftour understanding of the Gospel a bit beyond Sunday school level... Does "men of little faith" mean: "you clearly haven't got a lot of faith and you'd better find a way to muster up some". Or does it imply a question along the lines of "what hurt is killing your trust? How can it flow again?".

It strikes me me that Jesus does not condemn Thomas' "lack of belief", but provides the experience that enables Thomas to start trusting again after the trauma that he has been through. Same with the Emmaus guys...

Now this raises some issues as well. I'm not saying you can only "trust" or "have faith" when things are going well for you. Instead, as I've stated before, I believe that one can have a terminal illness and have this trust. To some extent we all have it, it's just a matter of tuning into it.

Simone Weil and the "self"

Alright, I did not intend to pick up Gravity and Grace when I was kept awake by a mighty heartburn from hell last night. "How to raise a happy baby" was more like what I was after. But right now all of my twenty seven baby books are in Durham and I'm in Alsace.

The books I've got left at my mum's are so dense that I never even fancied taking them to Durham to try and read them. Gravity and Grace is sitting right on top of Bonheoffer's impossibly dense Ethik (in the original German, which is so freaking dense that even my German friends read the English translation first). So anyway, 3am on a Thursday and a raging heartburn was a good a set of conditions as any to revisit my love-hate relationship with Simone Weil's oeuvre. The notes I scribbled in the book tell it all, ranging from "pure unadulterated genius!" to "you f***ing sicko".

I'm convinced that I'm not doing justice to her chapter on "self" and superimposing some thoughts of my own, so I do recommend getting the original text if you can. I'd love to link to the full text but I can't find it online. It's a short text which not disappoint those Christians who find themselves dwelling in the absence of God more often than they would want to.

Right at the begining of the book, Weil asks a fantastic question: "How come people never seem to have nearly enough energy to do the right spiritual things but have plenty of energy for immediate self-seeking priorities"? The former energy she calls "grace", while the latter is "gravity". The objective: more grace, less gravity. That is bound to get me interested.

Her chapter on "self" turns out to be suprisingly practical (or maybe it's just my reading of it). Weil posits that all human start out with quite a high level of "self" which in itself is neither really good nor really bad. The self can be -externally- destroyed by evil (she's thinking war crimes and extreme exploitation and alienation) or the self can be -internally- given to God by the creature. Because of her first hand experience of the Spanish Civil War, she has plenty of experience of the total collapse of the selves of people who have suffered intensely under evil powers and also a fair deal of experience of the ineptitude of those ideqlistic types who would have liked to "help" them.

She reckons that there are stages in the -external- destroying of selves by evil powers:

1. At the first stage, individuals suffer intensely from the humiliation and feels extreme revolt "like a fighting animal".

2. At the second stage, when the self is "half dead", it can be woken up by pure love. And yet the experience is incredibly painful for the individual who frequently lashes back at the dogooder. At this point she says it is our duty to absorb some of the anger.

3. In most extreme cases the self has been fully killed by evil forces. The person enjoys receiving streams of love and attention from a variety of sources but s/he is not nourished by it and does not fully re-emerges.

On the other hand, she reckons that your "self" is the only offering you can ever give to God.

When you do, some of the space formerly occupied by your "self" is occupied by the presence of God, which alone has the resources of love which does not harm. Bit by bit the presence of God (in what was formerly you) can at times restore the selves that have been destroyed. It's a bit like St Paul saying that he does not live any more, but Christ lives in him, although Weil herself does not use this specific example.

But that's not easy to do, and surrendering your "self" is not something you can do in five minutes, or in five years either. You can kid yourself that you did, but that has the potential to make you dangerous if you engage with people who are vulnerable. Weil cautions against the danger of love that isn't pure love.

Weil says that this offering of your self to God takes supplication. Now if you supplicate a human being, she says, you are trying to make them see things like you do so they will change their mind. But suplicating God involves forgetting about yourself and what you think and begging God to "rewire" you so you can see and operate in God's way and God changes you. [And in my opinion that can take a hell of a lot of time].

I'm going to leave this post here for now. The stuff I'd like to write about next, while directly related, is not found in Weil's material but in other things I've got from various sources. So it seems fairer to start another post later. I haven't fully digested the chapter yet, and there are some ideas I'm not entirely comfortable with but I can't pinpoint why. Mostly to do with my unconditional allegiance to Carl Rogers I suspect. Weil is way too pessimistic.

On baby clothes and trash bags...

Part 1

I just met a woman who was storing her baby stuff in trash bags in the dampest part of her attic right before the birth of her daughter. She did not have a nappy in the house. When she was almost due, her partner went to the attic and retrieved a couple of vests which they washed and stuffed in the maternity bag at the last minute.

What this woman and I have in common, besides storing our baby stuff in trash bags, is that we both lost our first pregnancies. Not the current one in case you wonder, but the one that came before that...

H. and I actually fell pregnant on our honeymoon a few days after the wedding. We did not expect things to work out so quickly but they did. H. was completely shocked and stared at the thin blue line for ages. Then he suggested praying, and that thought in particular still hurts like hell each time I think of it.

Now H. and I are both pretty jaded Christians who don't believe in miracles. Or who stopped believing in them early on as we were confronted with realities that called for miracles. They did not happen and God seemed to not give a monkeys. So we deduced that God does not work like that. On the scale of providence theology, we're as far removed from faith healing woodoo as you can get.

Also, prayer-wise we're pretty formal catholic types. Somehow we benefit from liturgy more than what we can come up with "off the cuff". But that evening it all changed. H. was so delirious with joy that he wanted to kneel down and pray straight away, something I've never seen him do at any other time before that time or since.

Soon enough, we were the type of expectant parents who don't store baby stuff in trash bags. We had a moses basket and a teddy bear, and like most first time parents we spent hours upon hours talking about our "little alien". I got lots of books and started keeping a journal.

Part 2

Then one day I started bleeding a bit, and then more and we ended up in A&E. To cut a long story short, I ended up losing the baby on my own at 1am in a dimly lit hospital room. I pretty much discharched myself and physically ran away from the bloody place a few seconds after they'd finally taken off the catether they'd put into my arms at about 8 in the morning.

I was a mess for about a week afterwards, thinking that I was doing the right thing by grieving as much as I could and "getting it all out". We deliberately ignored medical recommendations regarding when you can start again, and about three weeks later, my period was late.

But there was no home-test kit this time around. At some point I told H. that I thought we were back on and all he said was "mmm, let's wait".

But we were back on. My period was one and a half month late and it was time to start getting some antenatal care. So a few days before I was supposed to see a midwife for the first time (around week seven) I did a cheap test, which was very clearly positive. I held on for it for a few days and then tossed it in the bin.

I found it easier to assume that I would lose this pregancy too. I convinced myself that there was something wrong with me and that this one would go bad as well. Like everyone I've met who suffered a miscarriage, I was only interested in "beating" the date at which I had lost the first pregnancy.

No sweet baby talk this time around, no cute name, no stroking my tummy, no journaling, no baby shopping, no nothing...

Then my midwife decided I needed a dating scan because she could not calculate a due date given that there had been no period. At eight weeks, we got to see a healthy little punter happily kicking about on screen. H. asked if we should wait until 12 weeks to tell people, but the sonographer reckoned that this one looked like a stayer and that we could tell our families and friends straight away.

All were massively thrilled for us, especially the few who knew about the miscarriage. So I piggybacked on their enthusiasm and started trying to get into things a little bit.

Part 3

But I could never find the quiet trust and giddy excitement I had experienced the first time around. I had no desire to daydream about what the future held, I opened pregnancy books only when I needed some specific information, and found that I could not "talk" to my growing baby as I had before, even after I could feel it move.

I was getting worried about how detached I was. Every time I felt like enjoying the pregnancy something in me felt stuck. I was still happy at all the milestones. I started talking about "the baby" a little bit more, but that was it.

I'd read in a church bulletin that a service of rememberance and thanksgiving for babies who have died before or around the time of birth was being held by the hospital chaplaincy. I hated to think of my 5 cm long "little alien" being unsupported by its own parents so I went to it. I was surprised to see how I ended up needing my whole stash of tissues within the first 5 minutes.

And yet I soon had to forget about myself and try to tune in to the other participants a little bit. I noticed a couple of starrs aimed at my middle-sized bump. I really did not mean to hurt anybody else, to parade my bumb about or to be a voyeur, although I readily admit that I might have wanted to feel that I was not alone in this.

Refreshments were offered after the service and an old lady ushered me to a table with three other women who seemed to be a little bit less upset than the rest. It turns out that they have been coming every year since 2005 or 2007 and that their loss was less recent.

I shared that I did not know why I was still so upset, since I fell pregnant again right away and everything's been going perfectly fine with this pregnancy.

That is when the other woman told me about the baby things she initally stored in her damp attic. It struck me that my own baby things are currently stored out of sight in trashy supermarket bags under the desk and not lovingly folded away in a wooden piece of furniture.

And curiously, I found that while I had nothing to "say" to the baby growing inside me, I had lots and lots to say to the deceased little alien. There were unstopable streams of affect flowing in that direction. I felt that I could talk to it for days. This is precisely what I'm not able to do with the new baby.

So I don't know where this is going. I'm hoping that I'll work through this to find a fondness for the baby whose mother I will soon be. I make myself look at pictures of newborns, thinking that there's every chance that I'll soon be the mother of a screaming live baby, not an incredibly fragile-looking dead embryo.

The other woman said she was really quick to get her stuff out of the trash bags, wash it all up a couple of times and decorate the nusery when her daughter was with her. I'm hoping I don't have to wait quite that long to feel less hurt and less terror. But I'll never again enjoy an innocently happy pregnancy.

The baby is kicking right now, by the way...

Art & Faith Top 100 movies

It's hard not to be excited about this wonderful list of films because I promise you, it's not all Ben Hur and the Ten Commandments.

I am thrilled thrilled thrilled that the Dardenne brothers are making the top ten with The Son and make another appearance with The Child. And Yay for Wim Wenders' Paris Texas. Crowd pleaser Babette's Feast is fully expected here but always nice.

In my not-so-humble opinion, the list misses out on Moodysson's unbearably raw Lilja Forever and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi's very honest It's easier for a camel (I really love that film!). And maybe Nadie hablara de nosotras. And where has The Hawks and the Sparrows disappeared to? And The Little World of Don Camillo for crying out loud... As far as mainstream movies go I suppose I could live with The Mission and the spookily catholic Brideshead Revisited.

So in short:

Anything Dardenne or (early) Moodysson: unmissable.
Anything Wim Wenders: should be very watchable.
The Art & Faith's Top 100: not bad at all!

But obvioulsy I suggest they start reading my blog more...

Mildly supernatural

I don't do supernatural. I'm highly suspicious of all miracle stories, mostly because I can't make sense of them not happening when they should. So I tend to block them out entirely as a made up pile of fairy stories laced with wishful thinking and the occasional coincidence.

But in the name of intellectual honesty I probably should admit that there is one supernatural phenomenon I experientially believe in. That is that if you ask God in prayer to help you out in serving God and neighbour, God will more often than not carry you there. Not all the time, and not necessarily the first time you ask, but when it works it really works.

The first time I experienced this I was about fourteen. I was one of the most enthusiastic go-to-church types and I always had all the right answers in church. I was seriously coasting and finding it incredibly easy to know exactly what to say and what to do (those were the days). At some point the church was really short of children's catechists and my mum encouraged me to put myself forward. Needless to say I was the youngest catechist by an average of about 40 years.

I crumbled under the responsibility. I sort of realised that I was not entirely sorted-out myself. I was not the most charismatic or popular person, and I was scared that the kids wouldn't get it. I used to pray like a madperson that it would work. Every week I was terrified and begged God to help.

And it just so happened that it worked like nobody's business. The kids' blossoming faith was absolutely beautiful, they wrote the most amazing prayers and nearly all wanted to be altar servers for the forseable future.

The following year I had gained some confidence and I was much less desperate. The catechism classes were also a lot less good. I didn't quite find them boring, I was still very much looking forward to them but it didn't work as well.

And so years later, I began to understand that attitude was everything, and that humility and dependence on God were eminently desirable while superficial confidence was not. I enjoyed being "carried" by God and fell into the other extreme of completely giving up on my own intelligence and willpower and waiting to see if God would carry me. It did not happen a lot.

So in conclusion I deducted that I needed to re-harness my brainwaves and willpower to do what I thought was best, but without losing the humility and prayerfulness of this first year as a catechist.

Sometimes it meant acting off my own bat to the best of my ability with no cognitive awareness of the presence of God (and it's not for want of asking!). At other times it meant being supernaturally lifted right out of a funk when I'd started to completely despair and wasn't even being that prayerful anymore.

What it feels like? Mighty strange. I'd go from months of being hugely uninspired, living by the standards of the world, wanting to be selfish, to not do my works of mercy but instead go shopping and read books under my duvet for all eternity... To the other minute having my synapse connections completely reworked for me with no effort on my part and leaving me in tears because I'd yearned for God for so long and had been once again in the process of giving up.

I've got a few other examples, but not a lot of time to spell them out today. So I'll leave you with one of my favourite quotes ever by Paul Ricoeur: "Beyond the desert of criticism, we wish to be called again".

The next generation

13 weeks and doing just fine!