Missing the Changing Room? `

Hot feet leaving their memory
Sweated on the cool tiles
White towels discarded
Steam from the showers
Percolating through
To where silence
And speech own the floor

It is here that boys become men
The place of the pubescent
Two-finger cough
To check something unknown
Of early pubes and armpit odour
Voices cracking, showers
Avoided in the uncertainty

Pre-match rituals
Are conceived here
One hangs his knotted tie
On the lower hook
Another sits, unfocussed
As hopes and fears
Take him, like a dream

Older now, the Ralgex owner
Takes his position
Gumshield in
The huddle, the shout
Louder than the opponents
The knee drives
The clatter of hooves on the floor

Finally, the locker room
Can relax, for nigh on an hour
‘Til the animated, injured
Swearing horde
Returns, jubilant or jaded
Weary, but rejuvenated
With a joke or a fierce captain

Finally, the survivors
Of the second-half return
To the steam, to the undressing
To the exaggerated stories
To the towels, the crisp shirt
To the bar, with a black eye
And blooded manhood

Dad-daughter 10K challenge 2024-2025…Post X 21st April 2 weeks + 6 days until Bristol 10K, 11th May, 2025

Since my last report, in which I seem to remember committing to run 10Ks every other day, nine days have passed.

The purpose of this post, therefore, is to maintain personal motivation through public accountability and possible humiliation.

Thus far:

Strawberry Line (South)15th April 10.06 km in 57:22

Strawberry Line (North) 17th April 10.02 km in 62:15

Strawberry Line (North) 20th April 9.02km in 54:04

A commentary

Yes, you needn’t say anything. Again, I’m getting worse the more I plod/run…’training’ is an exaggeration. But hang on, the truth is stranger than the data.

Run 1. After about 3K Strava is sent into the nether world of the Shute Shelve tunnel, and at pre-dawn, it is ink-black and I’m reduced to walking for fear of tripping over and making more of a fool of myself than running through a pitch-black tunnel in the first place. SO…the 57 minutes is as accurate as counting the number of humpback whales in the Atlantic, or predicting the length of a Premiership football match after VAR officials have read through the FA Handbook on handball…

Run 2. Strava is clever. This was ‘moving time’. I stopped, or was stopped, arrested by a tree here and a gate there gorgeously painted by the soft-dawn rays. Photos followed. Actual time was longer. But I’m unlikely to stop to take photos during the Bristol 10K. Am I?

Run 3. Was going well, or so I thought. But I conked out at 9K, having felt weary for the previous one or two kilometres.

‘If I was a betting man’ - I’m restricted to the Grand National and The Masters in some years, and rarely win a penny - I’d think twice before betting on myself to break 60 minutes, but I’ll give it a go.

The Bristol Course looks mean. That ‘orrible hill near the end and city-centre cobbles are designed to inject despondency and despair as the clock speeds up and the feet slow. Maybe that’s all in the mind? Well, maybe. But it’s in my mind.

Rachel…has gone to ground. Her previous recorded 5K at 26:44 equates to approx. 10K pace of 53:30 is far too fast, and my fears that she has peaked too soon…are impossible to verify. The latest press release from the R Training Camp is that her 2025 10K event will not be the Bristol…we await news.

The theory that Dad’s ‘every-other-day’ commitment to running 10Ks has rattled the young pretender is definitely worthy of further investigation.

For now, all I shall do is continue to plod up and down the Strawberry Line in hope that mind and body might talk to each other and cheer each other on.

Podcasts have included: Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail with Sally Philips was excellent…funny and honest. David Pawson’s Unlocking the Bible on John’s gospel was really good. And I quite like listening to Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart as they squirm in the Trump era on The Rest is Politics.

Two weeks and six days.

Oh boy!

Easter Saturday

My early morning routine hasn’t varied a great deal for decades. It is far from remarkable but serves to get body, soul, and spirit unclogged from the inactivity of the night.

It is as follows: wake up with or without alarm, bathroom, exercises, kettle on, Radio 4, tea bag in cup, make cup of tea, pour cereal into bowl, add milk to tea and cereal, and retire to my study, write yesterday’s events and reflections in a journal, open bible and read a chapter, pray, finish breakfast, and attack whatever is top of the TTD list.

And every other day, an early morning run is inserted between exercises and kettle on.

Today it all went off-piste.

I woke up at 4 but thought it was 5. Five o’clock would have been ideal. The intention was to sneak in a 10K and pick up the rest of the routine before getting into the day, getting the house ready for an invasion of daughters and grandchildren. Poked head outside to find it was ridiculously dark, cold, and wet. Realised it was 4 not 5. Decided to postpone run by an hour. Listening to a podcast, I lay down on the settee…and woke up at 7am, too late for the run.

Grumpily, I picked up rest of the routine.

And read Isaiah 61.

Jesus quoted Isaiah 61 at the start of his ministry, having returned from the wilderness temptations and encounter with the devil in the power of the Holy Spirit.

‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me’, He quoted to his home town synagogue congregation in Nazareth, ‘because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted. To proclaim liberty to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.’

It is a prelude to and an explanation of the remarkable miracles of healing and deliverance that accompanied Jesus’ ministry, often to the poorest in Israel’s society.

What struck me today, Easter Saturday, was the contrast between the heady days of large crowds and astounding miracles, and the solitary body of Jesus lying in the grave, alone, the crowds having departed, and the disciples abandoning him through fear of the Romans.

We remember Easter Friday, Christ’s arrest, interrogation the night before, the crucifixion, and burial and we celebrate Easter Day, Sunday, to mark the resurrection, the stone rolled away, the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, the other women, and then Peter and John and the disciples, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and doubting Thomas. Death defeated, Jesus stands amongst them and says ‘Peace’ and eats fish. He is not a ghost, the disciples fearing their own insanity are not imagining the resurrection; he eats fish and struggles with the bones.

But Easter Saturday?

This morning, when I thought about Easter Saturday, my initial thought was of darkness. The sealed tomb, of course, would have been dark, and if not stone cold, then far from warm. A few years ago, I stooped into the tomb in Jerusalem that fits the description and location of Jesus’ burial site. It was a blisteringly hot day, but cool in the tomb.

Dark, and still. The suffering of the cross, at last, was over. It seems there is nothing to say. An inert, deafening silence characterises Easter Saturday.

The disciples, maybe 120 men and women, are in shock, hiding in various locations in Jerusalem, unsure about what to do. It’s the Sabbath, of course, so inactivity deepens as the hours pass. Waves of grief, confusion, and fear, percolate through the minds and bodies of those whose hope had been shattered. Only days before, Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem with the crowds singing ‘Hosannah! The king of Israel’.

He is not a ghost, the disciples fearing their own insanity are not imagining the resurrection; he eats fish and struggles with the bones

As I sat here, with my cup of tea and cereal, reading Isaiah 61 and musing on the contrast between the crowds and a single body alone in a grave, a clue emerged in the final verses of the chapter like a doorway into the divine wisdom. A glimpse of light in the grim reality of the crucifixion and death of an innocent Man.

Like an overstuffed suitcase, Isaiah 61 is crammed with good news. The poor, the broken-hearted, the blind, the trapped…all are blessed individually and the whole nation of Israel is being repaired…imagine that…’they shall repair the ruined cities’ v4. And it seemed as if everything was on track for national renewal, but just at the last moment, the anticipated Isaiah fulfilment seemed to fall apart and go into reverse. One moment Jesus is riding into Jerusalem, the crowds proclaiming Him as the King of Israel - the clash between Jesus and the authorities had long been brewing - but the authorities suddenly get the upper hand, and the dream was dismantled and crushed.

But did they?

The clue is in the final verse:

‘For, as the earth brings forth its bud. As the garden causes the things sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations’

So, the question is ‘how does a garden cause the things sown to spring forth?’ And the answer is simple. It is in the word ‘sown’. A seed falls into the ground.

Now Jesus’ parable makes sense:

‘The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat, a seed, falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much fruit’ John 12 v 23,24

The route to the glory, to the fruitfulness, to the national repair, was not to be Jesus the King of Israel triumphing over Herod, and then Rome, but as a seed, to die…the divine secret revealed all around us in every garden, orchard, vineyard, allotment, veg patch, flowerpot, if we have eyes to see.

It’s a different way to run a kingdom

Easter Saturday. Jesus, dead and buried, not only to be raised as one individual, but just as one apple pip can germinate to create a whole tree, a tree that produces many thousands of apples containing similar pips, or seeds, every year, so Jesus’s death would lead to many thousands, millions in fact, of similar seeds…the life of each believer.

This is true Christianity. This is the Easter hope. Not just that ‘death is not the end’. Not just that the resurrection of Christ is a historical fact, or that Jesus ate fish, but that Jesus is being reproduced in us if we have faith to believe what He has done for us and we abandon our futile attempts to be good…or evil.

To finish.

It’s been a while since I sowed any seeds. The next time I do, I will remember Easter Saturday, and how the whole world is being populated by fruit from one seed. It’s a different way to run a kingdom.

The 5 states of consciousness…in one University lecture

Lecture Hall 2 at 5.15: d-d transitions: Complex Ions Lecturer: KK

It started Oh! So well
Chirpy and animated
Like a chimpanzee on heat
Crisp, narrow-lined A4 note pad
Primed, a new page,
Date written, pen poised
Front row

Thirty minutes in and
Handwriting is punctuated
And decorated with
Unlikely doodles, the margin
A play area for eyes in boxes
Looking back at me
Words on copper complexes
Missed

A stifled jaw-breaking
Face-contorting yawn hidden,
One hopes, from the lecturer,
A mere chalk-throwing distance away
I have dropped my pen, twice
Head propped in the palm
Of my left hand

My recording continues
Never deviating from the voice
All is well, except my eyes closed
Five minutes ago
My copious notes; a diagonal line,
Like an erratic urination
Falling, bottom right

Waking in an in-between state
Blissful in one
Embarrassed in the other
My heavy head collapsing
Into two worlds
I am surely, am I not
Schrödinger’s cat?

How to Eat a Hot Cross Bun

You might contend, with deep conviction, that there is no manual, no dictate, no regulation, or statute that exists to distinguish between those who know how and those who do not know how to eat a hot cross bun.

 But, if you are one of those who know how, then you are compelled by an equally deep conviction to share your knowledge gleaned from those who have gone before with those who do not.

 This distinction is on a par with those whose toes curl if milk is added after the tea is poured or are troubled by fellow travellers who care not to use a fork when with cake, or who’s inner peace is disturbed if male MPs enter the chamber unadorned with a jacket, or worse, lacking a tie.

Here are the twelve members of the Hot Cross Bun jury:

1.        Eat only hot when still springy – they are not fit for use as shot putts or cannonballs

2.        Employ your best blade to slice each bun accurately into two halves – ensuring that both sides are toasted at the same rate. Incongruency is disappointing

3.        Discard the grill in favour of a toaster – the horror of uneven, burnt, or worse, an underdone hot cross bun is more avoidable with using a toaster

4.        Toasted hot cross buns are to be caught mid-air as they are propelled vertically, perfectly toasted, from the toaster

5.        Butter always; other spreads are banished and not even to be mentioned

6.        Generosity is compulsory, especially in the butter department. The added slab of butter has to be thick enough so you can watch it melt. Thin-spread instantly-melted butter is not a thing of beauty

7.        No talking. If you are in the company of others, they must abide by this rule. Eating whilst eyes are closed is worthy of bonus points

8.        Jam is contentious. Applications to use jam should be lodged with the master or mistress of ceremonies well in in advance of entry into the toaster

9.        Never repair the hot cross bun so that it resembles a bun. This is a strictly ‘two-halves’ ritual

10.   The final bite should be savoured whilst there is sufficient heat in the bun to keep the butter melted

11.   The purpose of eating a hot cross bun is to enter into prayer, meditation, peace and stillness. By all means sit in a church pew and do likewise, but once you have permitted yourself hot-cross-bun-time, church can travel with you

12.   Hot cross buns only taste of hot cross buns in the run up to Easter. If you don’t know why, there are no words

If you are looking at the members of the jury, wondering whether the judge will take a majority vote, please be advised that eleven out of twelve simply will not allow you to graduate from the do not know hows to the know hows.

Standards must be maintained.

The 2026 examination season starts, as in previous years, on Ash Wednesday, the day after Shrove Tuesday, otherwise known as Pancake Day. ‘How to Eat a Pancake’ will follow shortly

Dad-daughter 10K challenge 2024-2025…Post IX 12th April 29 Days until Bristol 10K, 11th May, 2025

New home tucked under the picturesque Mendips called for a Google search to locate the nearest Saturday morning Parkrun.

I arrived at Axminster/Cheddar reservoir car park whilst there was still a nip in the air, wearing a woolly hat, soon discarded as the sun did its work. The route, fairly flat, winds its way around the reservoir then diverts along the Starwberry Line – the track of a disused railway line. Twice round, and then a short run across a playing field to the finish.

Trying not to look as exhausted as I feel. Lungs busting. My head tells me the scenery is unbeatable but the perpetual attempt to run at my limit tends to concentrate the mind on the next step, rather than appreciating the natural beauty al around the course.

I did pray. And it was fairly corny. ‘They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength…will run and not be weary’ from Isaiah.

Meanwhile, in London, unbeknownst to me, daughter Rachel was hearing the starting claxon at exactly the same time, 9am, and propelling herself around another Parkrun, Victoria Park, Hackney.

There the similarity ends.

My time: 28:33

Rachel’s: 26:44

So, again, it’s well-done R. An impressive time!

With 29 days to go before the Bristol10K, what should be done? My intention is to shift gears in terms of distance, if not pace, from 5K to 10K two or three times a week. We’ll see.

Encouragement in life is as necessary as turkeys at Christmas. But where do we get encouragement from? It’s all a bit slippery, can’t be timetabled, and it’s not something that can be tamed…but neither is it completely random as if it’s just out of reach and subject to the whims of a capricious Universe or mischievous divine hand.

So, I take encouragement from looking back at my previous three 5K runs and the moderate improvement in times from almost 30’ to 28’30’’ ish - not a trend that should concern R…but I’m pushing!

I haven’t mentioned podcasts in recent posts. And neither can I today. Strava on knocked out my phone’s ambidextrous capabilities: it can’t handle Strava and YouTube videos at the same time. I had planned to listen to Jordan Peterson’s ARC conference speech whilst making my way round the course; doing so would have masked my wheezing at least from me! Alas, I had to wait until the car journey home for JP to let rip in my lug ‘ole.

Encouragement in life is as necessary as turkeys at Christmas. But where do we get encouragement from?

For me, JP is like a skilled physician; he’s taken the pulse of American and Western society and discerned its ills, its malfunctions, and, like a good professional, gives solemn warnings about the inevitable destination of the Western world if it continues to ignore the warnings. He can stare into your soul from the platform and deliver the direst of prognoses and leave you hungry for a cure.

But here is precisely the moment when I depart from JP. Good on diagnosis/prognosis, but I’m off for a second opinion…not about the diagnosis but the cure. The route back to health.

Enough, enough! This is a blog about running and the co-aim of a daughter and a dad to run a 10K in 2025.

But that’s the trouble with runners, especially slower runners like me, it gives you time to think…and when the legs are sending a message to the brain to Stop, to pray.

Dad-daughter 10K challenge 2024-2025…Post VIII 7th April 34 Days until Bristol 10K, 11th May, 2025

Yikes, Bristol 10K is closing in fast.

Since the last post, I have moved house, and this has seriously set back my plans to reach peak performance as we head into the closing stages. Or…maybe this is good. the peak, re-set for the day of the 10K?

If you’re sensing one of those ‘Oh! I seem to be getting slower not faster’ posts, you’d not be wrong.

This morning, just before sunrise, I set off for a swift 5K along the Strawberry Line from Winscombe north towards Yatton, the sun rising to my right. In the pre-dawn light, an illusion of speed took hold. I thought I was going well, especially after a lay-off to grapple with endless cardboard boxes and awkward furniture.

But Strava doesn’t lie.

5K in 29’56”

Meanwhile, daughter Rachel not only is averaging a faster pace, she is restricting herself to running 10Ks which, to me, feels like a marathon at the moment.

Her recent distances/times include:

April 5th 9.42 km 5:29 min/km

March 29th 10.03km 5.34 min/km

In other words, a projected time of 55’ for 10K…with Dad lagging behind, maybe breaking 60’

Of course, this NOT a competition.

Time is not everything. The weather for the past fortnight has been unbelievably sunny, cool, and still – ideal running conditions. And for walks. Yesterday’s hike was a 10K up Shute Hill and back to Winscombe via (posh) Sidcot. The Mendips at its best.

Back to this morning’s run, accompanied by Desert Island Discs with Cindi Lauper of ‘Girls Only Want To Have Fun-damental rights’ and how ‘True Colours’ became the LGBTQ+ anthem and the origin of the 6-coloured rainbow Pride flag first waved at a concert to honour a friend, Gregory who died from AIDS way back when.

For those that know me, you’d fall off your horse if I was to wave a Pride Flag…but…what is important in all these matters is compassion, and True Colours hits the target and some.

Those of a certain vintage, like me, will recall the tragedy of AIDS that ripped through LA initially before devastating the homosexual and heterosexual world. I remember a friend who spent time in Uganda asking why, in the bush villages, there were only children and grandparents. The lady guide pointed at the mounds of earth between the mud-huts. Graves for the parents. AIDS.

It was a great life story and interview interlaced by a great variety of musical choices from Sachmo to Maria Callas, and a great rendition of Hound Dog by Big Mama Thornton.

To conclude.

34 days to go. The ‘no-bread, no booze’ diet is more or less still in place. I suppose I ought to do some running now.

As for Rachel…calm down!

A Waiting

Poetry, that mysterious current, peering

Into the history of a London Brick

The hands that handled it

The swear words that blessed it

The rocks that bore it, is

Reduced to an arid river bed,

A trickle, maybe

Exposing the rounded pebbles, granules and grains

And hereabouts a lack of discarded prams

Or supermarket trolleys

Here, the sky and the earth speak

Kindly to each other as scorching sunbeams

Do their work

And take the riverbed into a sabbath of sorts

A waiting

As am I. Head down function

Has usurped music, art, feeling.

I once walked along the Stour

With no shoes, in and out of reeds and

Left-over shallow pools

From the days of rain

A temporary lapse, that’s all

So, here I am

Standing where the stream was

Looking to the heavens

Waiting for a cloud

The size of man’s fist

That’s all I need, Lord, signs of

A torrent on its way

I Wonder what Abraham Did

What on Earth has moving to Winscombe to do with Abraham of the Old Testament?

In my head, quite a lot.

This is Day 5 of life in Winscombe. At this precise moment I’ve found my way to Lillypool Café, Shipham whilst my Astra is subjected to an MOT. Even that journey, from garage to café, exemplifies the move from city to country, walking as I did along footpaths and fast roads with no pavements, hanging onto sturdy branches as cars swept by. But surrounded by gorgeous frost covered fields, hillocks and birdsong.

Conversation at the garage:

‘How long, roughly?’

‘About 10.30. The café’s in the dip. Not much of a signal. Walk left, along the road.’

Not much of a signal is dead right. And where the new house is sat.

To my right, a bacon sarnie and a flat white, a warm radiator behind me, and good WiFi. Perfect.

Here’s a quick summary of Abram’s, later renamed Abraham, journey of faith. In Genesis 12 we read that ‘God had said ‘Get out of your country, leave your father’s house, and to a land I will show you’. Let’s assume that Abram heard this during his childhood, growing up in the city of Ur, Chaldea, 200 miles south of present day Baghdad, Iraq. Whether he told his parents we don’t know but Terah, his father, decided to emigrate to Canaan but fell short, settling in Haran, in present day Turkey. At some point whilst living in Haran, God spoke to Abram and said ‘Now, Abram, it’s time to go.’

Abram was 75 years old, was probably enjoying family life in Haran, he had a choice, to obey and have faith that God would lead him, step by step into a new land, with Sarai, his 65 year old wife.

If you’re thinking ‘OK, I can see some parallels, but…’ you’d be right. The purpose of this post is not to equate my minuscule adventure 30 miles south with Abraham’s 1200 mile overland emigration.

The point is downsizing. And what that forces you to do.

I suspect that Abram was living quite comfortably in Haran, surrounded by sheep and an extended family, albeit also with the continual grief of his brother, Haran’s premature death, a grief so deep that Terah named the place where they stopped after his son.

In order for Abram to leave he had to (i) tell his mother and father God had told him to leave his father’s house and  (ii) decide what to take and what not to take.

Some camels, perhaps, some belongings strapped to the camels. And how many items from his father’s house would he take?

Leaving doesn’t imply a lack of love or affection. At all. Hearing the voice of God is one thing. Exciting, maybe, but it has to be planted in the real world. I’m sure there was an emotional cost to cutting ties with his father and family.

Even Jesus had to leave his Father’s house to come to be born in a cattle feeding trough.

Abraham, Jesus…me?

Downsizing to a much smaller house has led to almost countless decisions of what to take and what to jettison. Five days in, and this process is nowhere near ended. Trips to Cheddar tip, Cheddar car boot sale, and copious use of black sacks crammed into the bin for this morning’s collection are likely to be repeated until surfaces are clear and cupboard doors can close easily.

That’s the physical.

Even Jesus had to leave his Father’s house to come to be born in a cattle feeding trough

For example, I’ve retained a painted picture-carving made by German P-o-Ws and resented to my father in WWII but reluctantly discarded some other paintings owned by him.

But there’s a spiritual dimension to ‘leave your father’s house’ that has been in place prior to moving geographically.

Abraham learnt everything he knew in his father’s house. Spiritually, I have learnt everything I know from my father’s house – which could be identified as a cocktail of Non-conformist/Charismatic/Evangelical Christianity. I was brought up in the Church of England. Faith was not spoken about, it seemed to be all about conformity to outward ritual. Nevertheless, it gave me a bible literacy of sorts, even if it was a parody of the New Testament, and it was during a Sunday Communion service that, whilst reciting the Creed, I truly believed for the first time and became a truly committed Christian. From that point on, just shy of my 18th birthday, I have experienced Christianity as part of three Charismatic churches, one in Kent, then Exeter, and for the past 36 years, in Bristol.

But I have left my father’s house. The literal geographical move is part of that process but the main action has been going on privately in what the bible calls the ‘inner man’.

Terah, Abraham’s father, fell short of the word to his son and settled in Haran. In a similar way, the temptation confronting what were the radical pioneering charismatic apostolic churches that have sprung up all over the UK in the past 75 years is whether to settle or push on to the Promised Land.

Theologically, there are two battles.

·      The first is a lack of conformity to the word, the word as summed up in Rom 6v6, Gal 2v20, and Col 3v3

·      The second is conformity to the world and permitting in church, those things proscribed as ‘abominations’ in the eyes of God

Culturally, there are signs that what was a movement founded on the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the power of the Spirit, is relying on well-rehearsed, professionally produced worship that all-but prevents any use of the gifts of Spirit as stipulated in scripture. Most churches are led by one leader, not overseen by an eldership; the New Testament norm being plurality of leadership. Spontaneity and the leading of the Spirit has been discarded in favour of organisation. Churches are strangled in red-tape, policies, rotas, and are financially burdened employing staff to keep the whole show on the road. Exhaustion is commonplace. Spiritual aridity is a sign that all’s not well.

The whole edifice is heading for a mid-life crisis and may finish in an end-of-life hospice on life support…unless it wakes up, repents, and walks free of the slavery it has formed around itself, like Gulliver, however unintentionally.

When Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, Jesus expressed surprise, (perhaps tongue in cheek?) that Nicodemus ‘a teacher of Israel’ didn’t know what Jesus was talking about he spoke about being born again by the Spirit as a prerequisite of seeing the kingdom of God. What is less well taught is what Jesus said next:

‘The wind blows where it will…so is everyone born of the Spirit’ John 3v8

There is a liberty here that is immediately under threat if we ‘settle’ and fall asleep.

In the Old Testament, the men were required by the law of Moses to attend three annual feasts: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.

My car, 2009 Vauxhall Astra is undergoing its annual MOT and service. The three feasts were designed very much like an MOT and service, to keep Israel spiritually healthy, and yet they were a prophetic signpost to the fulfilment in Christ, in the New Testament. The letter to Hebrews makes it plain that the Old Testament Temple worship was a ‘shadow’ of the reality of the new covenant/New Testament reality that should be our church reality.

Passover – Christ, the Lamb of God sacrificed for us, not to redeem us from slavery in Egypt but to set us free from slavery to sin, enslaved as we were in Adam to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have been delivered from Adam, we were included in Christ’s death ‘we were crucified with Christ’ Gal 2v20 and placed in Christ so we partake of the tree of life ‘the life we now live in the flesh we live by the faith of the Son of God’ Gal 2v20

Pentecost – Jesus told the apostles and those with them to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit was poured out in power…this is the new normal, and when these ‘wind-blown’ born-again believers meet to worship, there is no power on Earth that can imitate the liberty of the Spirit, or should

Tabernacles – Jews today celebrate Tabernacles meeting under rooves of overlapping branches from four types of woods which are open to the sky. It is to remind the Jews of their voyage through the desert to the Promised Land. For us, in Christ, we are being led by the Spirit…together…and our rooves should be open to the heaven so that as we gather ‘unto Him’ His glory can fill the church, the new normal for church. It is a collective body of Christ experience. Even though each believer is blown by the Spirit, these gatherings are more like murmurations of starlings or the flight of wild geese where one after the other are leading the direction, than a predictable pre-determined experience. As Paul prayed, ‘Unto Him, glory in the church through Christ Jesus throughout all ages’ Eph 3v21

It may be an oversimplification to state that evangelical churches restrict their theology to Passover, that Charismatic churches add Pentecost, and that Tabernacles lies ahead of us, but what is true is that if Israel relied on all three feasts we need to press into all three in their New Testament fulfilment…and not settle for one or two out of three.

Let us, me included, hand ourselves over to God for an MOT and service. Let Him run Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles through us, before we set off on wherever the wind may blow you next, as you leave your father’s house. It’s settling, like Terah, or pushing on and being ‘of the faith of Abraham’.

What has moving to Winscombe to do with Abraham? It is a visual aid.

Late March

Outside
Where the soft, late afternoon light
Bathes the world in stillness
A stillness in which, crows perch
On road signs to clean their beaks
Ready for the next kill
Birds are few and small
Winged insects are waiting
For the cooler air an hour away
Stilled, I breathe the sweet Spring air
Inside

Inside
The house, all are sharp rectangles
Edges of boxes, packed
With a soul’s accumulations
Accretions that speak back to me
Needing reassurance perhaps
Of original love. Will you keep me?
The mug with the broken handle
My father’s sand wedge
Leaning against the shed door
Outside

Outside
The Sun is painting the sky
It is the end
Below the horizon
Out of sight, it does its best work
Like Julian of Norwich
Or Franz Kafka
When all its former glory
Is extinguished and
Stripped away, then I go
Inside

‘This is NOT that’ Purpose: taking a peek beyond the horizon of evangelical/charismatic church culture…and to leave for a Promised Land

My story

You can skip this part if you wish.

The bible, Vicars, CofE church services, including Sundays with my parents, hymn singing, carols, christening, and later, confirmation and receiving communion – all of that formed a mild backdrop to my childhood.

Consciously, from the age of about 6, I was a fan of Jesus. Anyone who could walk on water had my attention. But it was also his fierce opposition to hypocrisy and his love for the outcasts, especially lepers, that put Jesus in top spot above other heroes such as Cassius Clay (later Ali), or William Tell, Robin Hood, or (curiously), the Pied Piper of Hamelin

When I looked around at the Sunday services, however, the emphasis on outward values – dressing correctly, kneeling when told to, prayers for the sick but no miracles, making sure you had some money for the collection, Vicars, vergers, and choir boys dressed up and positioned in the holier parts of the church, nearest the altar beyond, which only the Priest could venture, all of this seemed to be so distant from the Jesus of the New Testament.

As a boy I added this up silently and concluded ‘This is NOT that’. ‘This’ ie everything that seemed to be called ‘church’ was nothing like the Jesus in the New Testament. Jesus wore no fancy clothes, emphasised the heart, performed miracles, and lived a life of zero demarcation between himself and the people…there were no altars.

My ‘This is NOT that’ critique was a peak beyond the church culture that grew up around what was affectionally called ‘nominal’ Christianity. At the time, a survey showed that 80% of Church of England bishops did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. No wonder, then, that the church I experienced did not exhibit the faith of Jesus himself.

Jesus wore no fancy clothes, emphasised the heart, performed miracles, and lived a life of zero demarcation between himself and the people…there were no altars.

For me, the result was full-blown agnosticism.

The church, at least the church I had attended, the general bible reading, hymn singing culture that pervaded schools as well as church, had granted me with a clear view of Jesus, but left me believing that the New Testament was no more than a series of well-intentioned fictions about an ideal figure, not a flesh and bones Messiah of history, let alone resurrection. I was disillusioned. I had so many questions.

One day, I was 15, I was alone pondering on Judgement Day. To say I railed at God would be overstating it but I lodged my complaint, more as a lawyer than an enraged football fan. I presented my argument that ‘to judge me is inherently unfair. I haven’t sufficient evidence to know whether You exist’. I also felt somewhat silly presenting my arguments to an invisible Judge that I did not believe existed.

Looking back, I’d say that God heard.

Less than two years later I met my first true Christian, and all my questions started to pour out. The problem was that she had answers and if she didn’t, she pointed me to books eventually challenging me to study the source material, the New Testament itself. As the evidence piled up my arguments were progressively dismantled.

The moment of ‘conversion’ had an amusing twist. I was attending Holy Communion in the church that I had first felt ‘This is NOT that’. For several years, I had refused to say the Creed as I didn’t truly believe, but on this occasion, as I opened my mouth to say the words ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty…’ I believed. There was no drama, no tears, no rushing to the front of a Billy Graham-style rally…but peace, and a sense of leaving agnosticism behind like the early disciples left their nets.

The churches I have attended since that moment have been full of individuals who are genuine believers. There’s no emphasis on outward show, there are testimonies of miracles and answered prayers, of God being real, no special clothes to demarcate ‘priests’ – everyone is considered to be a priest…because the faith is genuine the ‘outward forms’ are a product, largely, of the ‘heart’ not rules and regulations. It’s more like the Jesus of the NT.

But this is NOT that.

When Peter stood up on the Day of Pentecost to address the crowd, he quoted Joel’s prophecy Acts 2v14-21 and concluded: ‘This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel’ v 16.

Not everything in Joel’s prophecy was fulfilled in those minutes and hours: there were no wonders in the heaven above, the sun was not turned into darkness and so on, nevertheless Peter was able to say ‘This IS that’ in other words, what the crowd were witnessing was the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. It matched.

When we look at the believing church today, we should be able to say This is That, this church experience that you are in matches the New Testament.

Here are a few observations we can make from that first Pentecost:

1. The Holy Spirit was doing the work – Peter was explaining what God was doing

2. Although Peter spoke, he was not the designated leader, he was one of the apostles and there were about 120 disciples, men and women who had flames above their heads, and were speaking in the languages of those who were in Jerusalem for Pentecost

3. The crowd’s reaction. They were divided – some thought it was all bonkers and accused the disciples of being drunk, not true, but it was the best that they could come up with! The others ‘were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles ‘What shall we do?’ Peter’s answer was ‘Repent, be baptised, and you shall receive the Holy Spirit’.

Even at that very young age, in my childhood, I was taking a peak beyond ‘nominal Christianity’ and desiring a Promised Land. Falteringly, after my confession of the Creed and the repentance of agnosticism and new faith in Christ, I was baptised and later received the Holy Spirit. I became a fully signed-up member of what was affectionately called ‘the Charismatic Movement’ which later morphed into a mix of Revival and Restoration movements and gave birth to thousands if not millions of churches built on the three observations as above.

Baptism

In recent years, I have found that much of the charismatic movement can be characterised in one word Terah.

Terah was Abraham’s father. He uprooted the family, including his son Abraham, from Ur to travel to Canaan over 1000 miles. It was a bold move, to leave the security of all he had known to adventure to a new land. But he fell short and settled in Haran, just over halfway.

God, however, had spoken to Abram as a child:

‘Now the Lord had said to Abram: Get out of your country, from your family, from your father’s house to a land that I will show you’ Gen 12v1

At some point, after Terah had settled in Haran, the time had come to leave his father’s house…and he left.

Paul, in his letter to the Romans, writes that we are ‘of the faith of Abraham’ Rom 4v16. Terah’s faith took him so far, but he stopped. What had been a wild adventure, a trek, a pilgrimage, a journey, was over. The pioneer had become a settler. No doubt, Terah carved out a comfortable existence for himself and other family members – but it was characterised by predictable routines rather than the unknown. The faith of Abraham is the faith of a pioneer, not sure where he is going but confident that God knows.

The question is have we settled? Are we comfortable? Has church become routine and predictable, liturgical?

1. Are we explaining what the Holy Spirit is doing when we gather or have we replaced the Holy Spirit with well-rehearsed and efficient man-managed services?

2. Are we led by one designated leader? Even on day one of the church, leadership was a function of the apostles, plural. The crowd asked Peter and the rest of the apostles questions, not just Peter. Throughout Acts and the New Testament letters the apostles appointed elders – never one man – those who were carrying the life of Christ to such an extent that they had food to offer

3. Repent, be baptised, and receive the Holy Spirit is a formula and is not a formula! You cannot mimic true faith. Repentance can only truly occur if you remove your hand from the steering wheel and have put your faith in God to steer you into the future. You don’t become a driverless car, but you hand over to a new driver, God Himself. Baptised. It was a shocking image for Jews to be baptised; that was reserved for Gentiles to become Jews, to wash away their former Gentile identity and become true Jews – a practice still carried out today. Baptism represents leaving behind your former identity (for me agnosticism) and saying to the world, I have a new identity in Christ. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit – if you read the New Testament accounts of those who received the Holy Spirit, beginning with the apostles on the Day of Pentecost, the gift is accompanied by unusual signs such as speaking in other languages, or prophesying. If you widen your study to include the Old Testament you will see a variety of experiences. The real question here is not formulaic but how thirsty are you?

The real question here is…how thirsty are you?

As a participator in Nominal Christianity, I was confirmed in the Church of England aged 14. The bishop laid his hands on my head after I had confessed my faith in Jesus as Lord, and I was supposed to have received the Holy Spirit. It was a sham. I lied about having faith in Jesus as Lord – as did everyone else being confirmed. And none of us received the gift of the Spirit.

Many Evangelical churches to this day refuse to incorporate the baptism of the Holy Spirit in their doctrines and therefore their disciples are limited to two out of the three answers Peter and the apostles gave to those asking ‘What shall we do?’ It is tragic withholding.

If you’re in a Charismatic church – good – at least you have the doctrine (unless you have slipped back into evangelicalism) but if your ministry has become routine your disciples will receive what you have – routine, a replica of the reality. At least the crowd on the Day of Pentecost could see with their own eyes twelve apostles full of the Holy Spirit, as blown away by what God had done, was doing, as they were! ‘This’, Peter said, ‘is that’.

Taking a peek beyond the horizon

The pioneers of the charismatic movement in the UK have all died: Smith Wigglesworth, David Watson, Colin Urquhart, David Pawson, Gerald Coates, Michael Harper, Bryn Jones, Arthur Wallis and others and a host of International preachers such as Yongghi Cho, John Wimber, and David Wilkerson.

They all left, or were rejected by, nominal or evangelical churches to form new expressions of church, mostly as churches beyond historic denominations and a few within established denominations.

Looking ahead:

1. Doctrine: If the rediscovery of the baptism of the Holy Spirit gave birth to the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, getting to grips with Romans 6&7 and Gal 2v20 ‘I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ’ is vital

2. Leadership: elders, not a single leader. The Holy Spirit is in control. Elders and other mature members of a church are examples of individuals who are baptised – wringing wet – with the Holy Spirit and therefore their meetings cannot be routine. Peter hadn’t planned what to say. Worship is as unpredictable as the wind. No one day with Jesus was the same as the day before. One moment he’s interrupted by someone breaking through the roof, the next he’s standing in a boat teaching, or dealing with Peter, or pounding out his Woes to the Pharisees, or in Jerusalem facing crucifixion

3. Parable. If new wine, new wineskins was the parable that spoke in a living way in the pioneering days of the charismatic movement, the parable of the fruitful grain of wheat (John 12 v 20-24) is as poignant now. Unless we are willing, like seeds to be planted in the ground and die, we will not see the reproduction of seeds as in the parable – we will remain alone. In the middle of this parable is the biological knowledge that seeds die. They shrivel up and die. They are used up. They are food for the future plant, unrecognisable in comparison with what has gone before. And that new plant’s purpose is to grow identical seed…which has, in turn, to go into the ground and die and so the parable lives on. The Pentecostal and charismatic pioneers were like seeds that were willing to be taken out of their seed-packet-churches, to be put into the ground to die, but in dying to all that they had known, they germinated and grew into the incredible variety of charismatic churches that have arisen in almost every city across the globe. But now, those charismatic churches have become like seed packets with thousands of members…many of them hearing the word of the Lord to Abraham ‘leave your father’s house’…it’s time to leave the charismatic church model and let God take us to a new promised land. This is not a time to settle.

Prophetically.

• Single leaders will die to single leadership, seeing with fresh conviction that Jesus is Lord, the Holy Spirit leads meetings, and that elders are appointed not to replace the Holy Spirit but as ones who know what it is to be wet through with the Spirit and able to teach and embody, amongst other facets of the gospel, Gal 2v20.

• Worship is in the Spirit; it is as unpredictable as the wind – 1 Cor 14v26

• A Rachel generation – Rachel died in childbirth naming her son Ben-Omi (Son of my sorrow) but Isaac renamed him Benjamin (son of my right hand). Whilst there will be grief for those leaving their father’s house, the charismatic churches, in which they have learnt everything they know, the fruit will be the formation of churches that have a new authority, like a son of my right hand, they will rule but from a position of true intimacy with the Father.

Lastly, Terah continued until he died (Gen 11v32) reproducing his lineage in Haran.

These new ‘Rachel-generation’ churches will emerge, but the ones left behind, New Frontiers, Kingdom Faith, Salt and Light, plus the historic denominations continue. Like reproduces like. The Church of England will stagger on, the Methodists and Baptists likewise.

Dissatisfaction with believers in charismatic churches will force many to retreat into the hands of evangelical churches – at least the word is preached there, even if it’s not fresh out of the oven.

The choice is always present. The faith of Terah or the faith of Abraham?

Pilgrimage to Fratton Park, Portsmouth 8th/9th March 2025

PORTSMOUTH FC v LEEDS Utd

The tug of war between romance and the rational was at play.

First, Paul J, a Leeds United supporter, dreaming of a return to the top-flight and I, a partisan Pompey supporter nervously hoping that the recent return to form will relegate relegation fears this season to the bin.

It was a Sunday fixture, in the sun, at that old stadium that is Fratton Park, now surrounded by a soulless shopping precinct and rows of Victorian terraces that have withstood promotions and demotions, WWII bombs, solvency and insolvency, Harry Redknapp, high hopes and descents into despair.

Such was the romance that caught hold of two balding and greying fellas, one from Whitstable the other from Bristol, to make their journeys to Portsmouth, the day before the match.

Rationality was called for: a car journey for me via Chievely Service station in my faithful 2009 Astra, and trains, first to Victoria then a second down to the South Coast, for Paul.

Plans are one thing.

My story: Friday afternoon and the car won’t start. Jump leads cure the problem, but this is the third time in two weeks I have had to resort to jump leads. A photo sent to Paul from Halfords carpark, jump leads from a new battery to the dud-battery told its own story.

Saturday: Travelling and…

All well. Saturday morning rolled around. Just enough time to do a Severn Beach Parkrun in glorious sunshine before returning home, shower, last minute packing and off, various podcasts and music booming from the speakers, and, sunglasses on, travelling East along the M4.

Paul: A text from Paul informed me that he had successfully boarded the train from Whitstable and then another from Victoria. I can’t remember which part of the journey brought Paul together with four loud ladies, party animals, great friends, dressed similarly, discussion at top volume, and, amongst other topics, their dilation statistics in glorious detail whilst giving birth. Paul kept his head buried in his book.

Me: SatNav took me to a draughty road in between a bunch of modern high-rise buildings, but no sign of the Ibis hotel destination. Pulling over on a double-yellow, I resort to Google and hit directions and follow the voice to Reception…but it turns out to be the sister hotel. Ten minutes later I pull into the correct carpark and impersonate Paul J at reception, get the keys.

Paul: Texts John to say he’s arrived at Portsmouth and Southsea station, can see a Barclay’s Bank but that Google map blue dots seem to be a moving target and, if he’s not lost, he’s ‘temporarily disoriented’. I think I mentioned Winston Churchill to be helpful. Not entirely disconnected with reality as Ibis sits very close to Churchill Way. It seems to help, and Paul arrives less than ten minutes later.

The room: Ah! The on-line booking gave the option for twin beds. That instruction seemed to have been ignored and a well-made up double sat there looking at us. I’ve only shared a bed with one man (!) and he was a prisoner on the run (a story for another time). Hastily, we made our way to reception where polite complaints were made and some haggling over the price for a second room ensued…with success.

Saturday Evening: The weather could not have been better; full sun and still. It wasn’t long before we were sat behind two plates of food and drink at a dockside pub after which we were inexorably drawn to the Spinnaker tower, impressive a rather beautiful addition to the Portsmouth skyline. Conversation varied from Trump to theology, Fratton Park to family life, and navigation by the sun and old buildings to neuropsychology.

Sunday: The day of the Match

A full English and coffee, of course. And discussion about how the past and the present are related in our outlook on life. The most important aspect of this rather in-depth discussion over bacon and eggs was how we arrived at our commitments to Portsmouth FC for me, and Leeds Utd for Paul. Anyone wishing to carry out a full psychological profile should be warned: the minds of football supporters are not complex.

And off to the stadium via a coffee in a shopping precinct with the most depressing muzac I’ve heard since working at Herne Bay Tesco’s in 1975. It was a joy to leave and make our way to the ground. Early attempts to match the ticketed North Stand and Block K with the stadium signs (I do hate the non-word ‘signage’) at Fratton Park proved to be impossible, and we resorted to a human for directions.

Two seats in the corner wedge between the Away End with very vocal Leeds Untd supporters and some unsavoury Portsmouth ‘fans’ whose only enjoyment during the two hours of the match, was to yell insults at the Leeds Utd fans, practice crude hand gestures and the like. Why is probably not even worth asking. Each to their own…but it was as entertaining as unpleasant. Hardly cricket ‘ol bean! Or rugger, what?

Meanwhile, without dragging out a match report, the spectacle was impressive. Leeds, looking assured on the ball as the stylish leaders of the Championship that they are, were pitched against an aggressive Pompey team living off scraps and winning second balls. 0-0 at half time.

Portsmouth, after the resumption, piled pressure down the left wing ‘til worn defences yielded and the Leeds net bulged with the only goal of the match.

Thirty nervous minutes later, after terrible Leeds attacks, corners and free kicks that hit the bar, eluded the posts, but not the goalkeeper, and victory was ‘ours’, by which, I don’t mean Paul’s, but Pompey and her crazy fans.

Happy and heavy hearts poured out of the stadium for the journey home.

First Steps

Fish scales, Galilean glare
Soft feet, unused to walking
And the saline smell of a former life
Like their nets, left, discarded
And a pile of unused nails
A length of half-sawn cedar
The aroma lingering still

One, binding a broken oar, another
Hands black with caulk, and one
Brushing splinters and sawdust away
Mothers’ and fathers’ witness
A carpenter capturing sons
In his kingdom call, their sons,
Taking their first steps

And us? What did we discard,
Our feet now shod with
The gospel of peace?
The stripping began as the
Carpenter, saw and plane
In hand, fashioned us
With dove-tail joints to pilgrims

Walking, parable upon parable
Signs beyond sermons, the blind
Now seeing, seeing nothing
As the Son of Man,
Works his way to the place
Of his penultimate step, everything
Laid down, stripped, discarded

And then? Then
Sore feet planted
On the pressed soil and rock
Of a garden tomb before dawn,
He takes his first new steps,
One word forming in his eyes,
Mary! And, later, your name

The Ills of America

The last time I saw a boy
Dragged by his lug ’ole to
Stand outside
The Headmaster’s Office
Was half-a lifetime ago

Mr Laing caught
The unfortunate Franklyn
With stolen items
From the school tuck-shop
Tucked imperfectly in his
Worn-leather music case

The innocent Franklyn, named
Benjamin, made no sound
He had grown used
To being accused of the ills
Of America, even its creation, by
Sixth Form historian, Carl

The older boys with their muscles
And well-developed acne
Vietnam fatigues and Dylan
Graffiti on their exercise books
Demonstrated their outrage at
Lynchings at Carl’s command

Carl, window pole in hand
Inserted it through Benjamin’s blazer
And hung it, and its sudden owner
By the tall pegs in the
Cricket pavilion
Across the field from the school

It was the ever-watchful Laing
That detected silence
During after-games registration
And searched for the missing voice
…His wrath descending
Upon the culprit, Carl

Now subjected to the truth
Of his participation
In the ills of America
That lie in us all
Apart, that is, from
Innocent B. Franklyn

 

 

 

Are You a Filer or a Piler…or a Lurcher?

March 7th More Than Writer’s blog

Filer or Piler...or Lurcher?

I apologise. This is rather hurried. Something in my early morning foggy brain told me to look at the MTW blog, read, and write comments…and then…’O No! It’s the 6th of the Month and I’m ‘on’ tomorrow! Yikes!’

How has this happened?

In my former life as a Chemistry teacher, I attended umpteen Insets, training sessions and professional development courses. Of the umpteen I suffered; I have fond memories of…erm…two. One dealt with the Men from Mars, Women from Venus thing and was surprisingly helpful to such a dense, analytical type like I, and the other was entitled ‘Filer or Piler?’

As with all categories, I seem to lurch from one extreme to the other, so maybe ‘lurcher’ should be added. I do love a tidy desk, sock drawer, feng shui arrangement of cups in a cupboard etc, but I find I can’t sustain this organised approach to living for more than, I dunno, a few days?

And now I am on a strict regime: no bread, no booze for 10 weeks whilst I haul my 67-year-old body towards running the Bristol 10K with a much younger daughter who will bounce round whilst I…lurch.

What has this got to do with the MTW blog, you ask?

Simply this; I have prided myself on writing 7th of the month blogs well in advance, leaving enough time to fuss over the uploaded draft before the predetermined 6am or 7am launch. It seems that lurching has come to infect even this relatively well-organised portion of my existence.

Some excuses: Apart from the self-imposed strictures in the run up to the 10K, I’m negotiating a house move AND I’m trying to write a novel, for goodness’s sake!

Worry not, I will break it to haul out someone’s donkey stuck in a Sabbath ditch

The truth is that I’ve added a ‘1 hour a day minimum’ novel writing rule to my Pharisaical ‘no bread no booze’ discipline. Thus far I have slipped twice in a week. Nevertheless, I feel the wind is with me thanks to having that ‘1 hour a day minimum’ rule, lodged somewhere in my lurch-like interior, calling me onwards. It seems to be helping.

Back to the diet. Worry not, I will break it to haul out someone’s donkey stuck in a Sabbath ditch (or at a forthcoming writers’ gathering in April) and I will break the 1-hour-a-day rule in the opposite direction and indulge in a few binge-writing days where the pen virtually sings as it flies across the paper as fast as those creative thoughts arrive from Who knows where? Well one can hope.

So, in short, to summarise…are you a filer or a piler, or, like me, a lurcher?

And how does this affect your writing? Your desk?

Dad-daughter 10K challenge 2024-2025…Post VII 26.02.25 79 Days until Bristol 10K, 11th May, 2025

Progress of sorts.

Since the last update, I decided to follow my sporting hero’s strategy and abscond to a faraway Training Camp to put in some serious prep.

Ali’s training camp in Deer Lake had some features absent from my lowly cottage in Cornwall: Ali had numerous personal trainers, an entourage of friends and well-wishers plus media attention…whereas my version is splendid for isolation. Good for writers.

The weather forecast for today at Deer Lake is, perhaps surprisingly, very similar to many of my days in deepest Cornwall: overcast, 9oC but with a westerly breeze, feels like 3oC. Ali (just like me…ahem!) wasn’t put off by wintry conditions.

Ali’s training camp in Deer Lake had some features absent from my lowly cottage in Cornwall

Cornwall weather: Day one and two bathed in glorious sunshine. Days three to seven were bitterly cold, submerged in freezing fog, and high winds. Suffice to say more attention was paid to dialling up the heating towards the end of the week and writing than running.

When the weather permitted, I ran my first 10K since taking on this challenge and found a fantastic running track in Par, near St Austell to slog round 12.5 laps ie 5K.

Are times relevant?

There is a certain joy attached to running. Honestly.

Level One is simply finishing! Keeping going to the finish line whatever the time, brings an intoxicating sense of achievement however grim the ordeal may have been.

Level Two is achieving a good time in the conditions – weather, terrain, route, other runners. It doesn’t have to be a PB. But a PB is Level 2.5.

Level Three joy is, for me, a rare feeling. It’s when you ‘feel’ you are ‘running’ not plodding. More akin to flying. It’s more than jogging or straining to work hard at each stride. You feel light and strong as if you could carry on at speed all day. I rarely – very rarely – experience Level 3. And didn’t on either occasion in Cornwall!

Pentewan Trail 10K time: 61:00  i.e. 6.08 min/km

Par Track 5K time: 28:35 i.e. 5:40 min/km

For the past week or so, Dad and daughter have had some interruptions. For me it was partly the inhospitable weather in Cornwall, then distractions back home and, for Rachel, an inopportune encounter with a virus. So we’re both on yet another recovery road.

A couple of days ago I puffed round local roads for not quite a 5K and yesterday did a run-walk 10K across the Severn Bridge on a chilly but gloriously sunny morning…and stopped everysooften to take some photos.

Reflections.

Personally, Level 1 joy was in abundance managing not to stop on the 10K Pentewan trail. The final 2K were tough, legs felt like stilts. But it’s a start. Hopefully, I’ll do one 10K per week from this point on.

For some, pounding out laps on a running track is about as exciting as sorting out a sock drawer, but I hadn’t run on a track since…erm…1975… fifty years ago! I paid a mere £5.00 online and had the beautiful red track all to myself. Temp 5oC, felt like -2oC, and a 21km/hr easterly may have put off more sensible athletes.

Looking ahead

77 days to go to the Bristol 10K. My hopes are (i) to enjoy the day, the crowds, and complete the course, get home, sink into a hot bath, and enjoy a cool beer to celebrate (ii) to beat my age ie sub-67 mins. (iii) but my true ambition is to run sub-60. I’m hoping Rachel might be there at the finish line to cheer her ‘ol man across the line!

Before that, lies 10 weeks of training after this weekend. It’s a no bread, no alcohol diet for me. This is getting serious. I may have to practice my frown, get in touch with my American side, and say ugly things like ‘You’ve got this’ or ‘You’re the man’, or ‘You can do this’ and put my fist over my heart & growl into the mirror?

Hmm…maybe not. No, definitely not.

I’ll let Ali have the last word:

“Don't count the days; make the days count.”

Bolt Hole for Writers – an ideal Writer’s Retreat?

Although, as writers we could be classed as a Collective, I imagine what works as a writer’s retreat for one would fail miserably for another. Utopia is not universal.

Facebook, the blogosphere, and various writerly magazines, are replete with enticing offers of Writer’s Retreats in mountainous areas, wilderness zones far away from traffic, or impossibly beautiful houses overlooking ocean waves with cliff walks thrown in. I’m always tempted.

As yet, the cost has been a large factor in deciding not to succumb…but I might in the future.

So, if one doesn’t attend an organised Writer’s Retreat but is fed up with looking at the same four walls at home, what does one do?

Well, this one has done the following over the past few years:

1 x Hilfield Friary, Dorset
2 x Air BnBs in UK
2 x Air BnB abroad: one in Crete and one in Portugal
1x Sykes Cottages
Bristol Central Library
Various Coffee#1s and other brands

I’ve just returned from a week in Penwithick, Cornwall, holed up in a delightful cottage, and want to share some of the features that I look for as clues that might make discovering that sweet spot of creativity all the more likely.

In order, I look for:

1. A good table and chair close to a window…by far and above the most important and not that easy to find!
2. WiFi
3. Remote…I can work in a city/town/busy coffee shop setting…but, if I’m swapping my four walls, I’d prefer to look out on a garden, a beach, a mountain, or a lake.
4. Heating – joy for me is a log burner
5. Furniture and general décor…I know it when I see it. A comfortable sofa is a must
6. Kitchen – a fridge. Got to chill the white somewhere
7. Free parking by the cottage is preferable

In terms of concentration, I’m 10x better in the morning. The afternoon often is a mush, and I revive later in the evening. If I do any exercise, it’ll usually be a run early in the morning, back for a shower, breakfast, then down to it by 9 if possible. Maybe an afternoon walk/hike.

But writing, I find, will not be confined to a well-organised routine; inspiration is as unpredictable as catching trout.

A few days into this latest retreat, conditions 1-7 all met, and inspiration itself decided to evaporate. Grumpily I gave up slogging a dead horse and drove to Mevagissey for a bracing walk round the harbour, along the Coastal path, and to mouche around the town’s quaint alleyways and shops. Foolishly I donned a thin jacket, and, despite wrapping my neck in a thick scarf, the bitter cold quickly penetrated my bones, and I was forced to retreat to a warm coffee shop overlooking the harbour.

I ordered my standard flat white and a slice of sommit and sat down only to find there was no WiFi available. Grumpier now. But I’d brought an old, battered exercise pad and a pen, not sure why, dug it out, and sat there gazing stupidly at the harbour.

At that point of uselessness and redundancy, inspiration struck, and a poem began to form, or rather, I began to see the harbour at low tide as a metaphor and words began to wrap themselves around the metaphor.

Would that have happened if I had stayed at home in Bristol? No. Or would it have occurred if I’d switched on the tv and stayed in the cottage to watch another episode of For All Mankind? No. But did I need to be reduced to nothing, with no WiFi in a coffee shop? That’s a question that will keep spiritual gurus and philosophers in business all day long.

The Universe, and life in it, does seem to run best on a diet of enriched paradoxes.

Be still and know that I am God – is this the necessary prelude for whatever comes next? Psalm 23 carries the same thought, ‘The Lord is My shepherd, I’ll not want. He makes me lie down…’ everything else in that well-known Psalm follows on, but first, inaction is called for: ‘lie down’.

This is not easy for us Westerners caught up in our futile attempts at meritocracy and external achievement, rather than switching to the better way: grace.

At that point of uselessness and redundancy…a poem began to form

So, there it is. My recipe for a writer’s getaway. But even the recipe is subject to the whims of the human condition and the starting point of stillness whether achieved through personality, prayer, meditation, or, as in my case, failure.

Song of Songs

Unless you are convinced that you live in a mechanical universe, driven by chance and logic, where every action and thought and feeling is predetermined and you have eliminated from your soul all notions of love, reading Song of Songs will take your breath away.

It is too sensuous, surely, for the Bible. Too racy for a theologian. Too poetic to be true. Too exasperating to satisfy. Too rooted in history to be allegorical.

Solomon, in all his riches and might is overcome with love for a swarthy young Lebanese woman, who is self-conscious about her tanned skin having been mistreated by her brothers and forced to spend too long in the sun tending the sheep. Nevertheless, Solomon is love-struck, and there’s no turning back. Equally, the Shulamite is overcome with desire and love for her beloved, King Solomon. And she is not the only woman after Solomon.

The language is excessive and relentless and, if you’ve read SoS before, you’ll know that periodically throughout its eight chapters, the two lovers seem to be at the point of consummating their love when one or the other disappears leaving the other bereft with longing. A repeated phrase ‘do not stir up, nor awaken love, until it pleases’ is the book’s standard response.

Song of Songs has many interpretations, all of which can be true because this is a study of love. Therefore it can be applied to God’s relationship with Israel, or Christ’s relationship with the church, called His bride in the New Testament, or simply the nature of romantic love itself.

But I want to look at two passages in SoS and contrast the Shulamite’s explorations of the city after sunset – chapter 3 v1-4 and chapter 5 v 2-8

On my bed by night
I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him, but found him not.
I will rise now and go about the city,
in the streets and in the squares;
I will seek him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but found him not.
The watchmen found me
as they went about in the city.
“Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”
Scarcely had I passed them
when I found him whom my soul loves.
I held him, and would not let him go

Ch 3 v 1-4

I slept, but my heart was awake.
A sound! My beloved is knocking.
My beloved put his hand to the latch,
and my heart was thrilled within me.
I arose to open to my beloved,
but my beloved had turned and gone.
I sought him, but found him not;
I called to him, but he gave no answer.
The watchmen found me
as they went about in the city;
they beat me, they bruised me,
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
that you tell him; I am sick with love.

Ch 5 v 2-8

Despite the consistent theme of love between Solomon and the Shulamite, there are some obvious differences. In chapter three, the Shulamite is on her bed but awake, whereas in chapter five, she is asleep and dreaming. In chapter 3 she ventures out after dark into the city to find the king, encounters the watchmen who don’t bother her, then finds the king, and won’t let him go. In chapter 5, however, she is mistreated by the watchmen who wound her, and, despite her best efforts, she fails to find him.

My argument is this: love may be ecstatic, but it is not static.

For the sake of this interpretation, King Solomon is the Son of David and therefore a ‘type’ of Christ, and the Shulamite woman is either the church or any individual who finds Christ so attractive, and the love of God so overwhelming that all resistance is relinquished and true Christianity, true spirituality, has been birthed in the life of the believer.

As is often said, true Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship.

If we’re familiar with the New Testament, the term usually employed to describe followers of Christ is disciple’ meaning ‘apprentice’ rather than ‘student’.

Apprentice

The point is this: disciples learn. They become like their master, ending up thinking and living and operating like Him. If we translate this discipleship model into the love dimension of Song of Songs we see a similar progression, particularly from chapter 3 to chapter 5.

By the time we reach chapter 3, the Shulamite has left Lebanon and is living in Jerusalem. The King comes and goes and on this particular night, the Shulamite has retired for the night but can’t sleep ‘At night, on my bed, I sought the one I love, I sought him, but I did not find him’. She has loved him from a distance and has even moved from Lebanon, but the time has come to find him. This is often the state of mind of a person who has heard of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Christ, and is profoundly moved, and drawn to Him, but no personal relationship has begun.

The critical point is whether she will continue in that state of dissatisfaction or do something about it. Such is her love for Solomon that she breaks through the social mores of the day (not too different from now) and goes out into the dark streets to look for him. It takes time ‘I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets, and in the squares’; she doesn’t give up.

Finally, she finds him ‘I found the one I love, I held him and would not let him go’. The unbeliever who is attracted to Christ has crossed a line and left everything familiar to find Him; nothing else will do.

In terms of this argument, the relationship has truly begun.

But later, we read chapter five and wonder at the contrast with chapter three. The sweet violins and love described in chapter three are displaced by the suffering and separation of chapter five. How is this part of our discipleship as believers?

First, we see that the Shulamite has fallen asleep. In the Bible, sleep is synonymous with death.

In sleep or death we cannot love or live, we are rendered inert. Mystics may use the phrase ‘the dark night of the soul’ as a common experience for believers who love the Lord and yet hit the buffers and everything seems to vanish, be absent, withdrawn, including the felt love of the Christ. Doctrinally, the believer comes to a new point of revelation that when Christ died so did they. Paul puts it like this: ‘I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me’ Gal 2v20

In the middle of receiving this revelation, the disciple may feel like he or she may need to go back and repeat the same ‘conversion experience’ of chapter 3 i.e. to rise up and go about the city in the dark looking for the King. But this time it all goes terribly wrong. The watchmen, who were previously indifferent, are now aggressive: ‘The watchmen who went about the city found me, struck me, they wounded me…took my veil away’. Like the Shulamite, we cry out, often to friends, ‘If you find my beloved tell him I am lovesick’.

We may not use such romantic language but, in essence, all we feel is the absence of Christ who seemed so close. We are wounded, stripped of everything that once seemed to be created by our love for the King, for Christ.

What is this? It is a test. A test of faith, of love, and the combination of love and faith: faithfulness.

‘The watchmen who went about the city found me, struck me, they wounded me…took my veil away’

How will the Shulamite respond? She is asleep, inert. She has failed in her attempts to find the King, her beloved. All seems to be lost. At the point of her greatest weakness, she turns a corner and understands that her love for the King cannot be sustained by her own love. Her love failed to find him. She has come to a new realisation, that the love that sustains their relationship; the faith, the love, and the faithfulness, all that is needed, is found in Solomon.

In terms of Galatians 2v20 ‘the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God’. The relationship between believer and Christ is not dependent even on the faith of the believer, but His faith; the One who loved him in the first place.

She cries out, this time not from seeing the sun in all its glory but at night, knowing that although she cannot make the sun move to her, the sun is still shining beyond her horizons. She confesses, ‘My beloved is…chief amongst ten thousand…he is altogether lovely…my beloved has gone to his garden’

The Shulamite has reached a new juncture in her relationship with her beloved, Solomon, the king. She doesn’t have to strive. She has learnt to trust. Whether Solomon is away in his garden, close by her side, or sharing her bed (yes, Song of Songs is surprisingly intimate), his love for her is constant and immeasurable. And so, when she trusts in this, she finds that his love has so filled her, that she has found a new buoyancy. A new source of buoyancy may be more accurate.

Finally, to root this in the New Testament, Paul’s letters to Romans, Galatians, and Colossians make the same progression.

• Romans chapters 1-5 deal with our new-found relationship with God through Christ - the ‘justification by faith’ chapters. But then we hit chapters 6 and 7.

‘Do you not know that as many of us as were baptised into Christ were baptised into His death?...knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Christ…’ ch 6v3,6

• Galatians chapter 1 and most of 2 deal with the start of our relationship with Christ but then we read the verse above Gal 2v20.

• In Colossians, the opening two chapters deal with conversion to Christ, then we read ‘For you died and your life is hidden in Christ in God and when Christ who is our life…’ Col 3v3,4

Jesus taught the same progression.

In the early days of the disciples’ faith and following of Christ Jesus said, ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him may not perish but have everlasting love’ John 3v16

In passing, SO loved. Just like Solomon’s love for the Shulamite woman. And just like the Shulamite woman, self-conscious of her dark skin. the effect on her of being in the fields too long, so, as lovers of Christ, we are painfully aware of our imperfections and cannot quite believe that God should even have a passing interest in us let alone SO love us. And yet that is what Jesus taught. You and I are SO loved by God.

We may, at this point believe that our relationship to God, our lover, depends on our faith to believe, or our ability to love. And that is our experience. The disciples, like the Shulamite, rose up and followed Christ. The fishermen left their nets. Matthew left his money-changing table. Simon the Zealot, a terrorist dedicated to the military overthrow of the Romans, stopped attending weapons training camps, and so on.

But then, shortly before Jesus’s arrest, he teaches the disciples the lesson they are about to learn by bitter experience.

‘I am the vine, you are the branches…the branch cannot bear fruit by itself…without Me you can do nothing…you did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should bear fruit; fruit that remains’ John 15 v 1-16

This is a terrible blow to our pride and ego if we think for one moment that it is our faith, our love, our dedication, or our passion that is required to be a Christian, to follow Christ. Everything in us cries out ‘No, Lord. I chose you. You are so wonderful, I left everything to follow you!’ But less than a few days later, after Jesus was arrested, they all ran away, failures. Peter tries to follow but ends up denying Christ three times before the cock crows, and weeps bitter tears when Jesus turns to look at him.

If you are a Christian believer, you may have faced this switch and realised that even the relationship you thought you had with God through your love for Christ is an apparition. The woman, the Shulamite, is convinced it was her love that found the king. But it turns out that after she fell asleep her love was insufficient and she was injured in her failed attempt to find the king, just as Peter’s failed attempt to be faithful to Christ caused him such bitter tears.

The true gospel is this: that we needed to die so that all that self-generated love and faith could be crucified with Christ. To be biblical, our connection with Adam and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil could be forever severed, and we could be transferred to the source of true life, love, and faith – the tree of life i.e. Christ Himself.

Now, at last, we have reached the Sabbath. No more work. No self-generated Christianity.

Any and all of the fruit we may bear springs from One source.

The wonderful news of the Good News, or gospel, for Peter who wept and the disciples who all failed, is that the other side of our failure is His love. The woman was right. Even though all seemed lost, even though the king may be in his garden, His love is better than wine.

The final two verses in the Song of Solomon are like two texts, short and yet convey everything.

Solomon first:

‘You who are in your garden, I have told my companions to listen for your voice…but let ME hear it!’

The woman replies:

‘Flee to me, my beloved, be like a gazelle, or a young stag, on the mountains of spices.’

Transfiguration transfigured

If we are, as is often argued, created in the image of God, then embodied in this creation is an potential to experience all that God is.

In essence, when God became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, everything that He was in Himself, and displayed to the world, is in-built in us. And that includes transfiguration.

If we have viewed the transfiguration as recorded in the gospels as a ‘one-off’, abnormal, unique experience not only in time and space, but restricted to the Son of Man, perhaps we should re-assess transfiguration?

To begin, we must realise that as much as the three disciples permitted to be with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, were not transfigured, it was not Jesus alone whose clothes appeared to be whiter than white, but those belonging to Moses and Elijah also.

Could, therefore, anyone be transfigured? The answer surely is Yes, but it is not in our power to transfigure ourselves. The more recent misuse of the word ‘manifest’ has caused disarray among limited, broken, frail men and women who cannot accept the limitations of their own humanity.

The point is not whether we can switch transfiguration on or off as if we’re in control of our destiny – destiny measured in these next few minutes or as in life’s destiny in fulfilment of dreams or the grave. The point is that we carry in our ‘in-the-image-of-God-nature’ the normality of transfiguration in the same way that gentle poppy plants explode their seed pods, or Rousseau’s philosophy allowed him to moralize about children yet abuse his own, or that atheistic communism led to the rivers of blood of all who dared to oppose their dictatorships, or that the telescope led to Neil Armstrong’s ‘One small step for man…’ quote in 1969.

we carry in our ‘in-the-image-of-God-nature’ the normality of transfiguration in the same way that gentle poppy plants explode their seed pods

My contention is that we human spirit-mud-pies encounter transfiguration in the mundane. We have an unquenchable ability to glorify even the most cruel and tragic events in our history. Somehow, we recreate suffering as poetry, art, sculpture, song, and literature…in ways that please us to the core. Money changes hands and queues form at art galleries, theatres, or the daubed walls of the next Banksy.

This is as disturbing as it is it is not.

What is disturbing is, surely, that disturbance is displaced by beauty or pleasure, even exultant feelings and emotions and love. This morning, for example, the sun streamed through a twisted array of light brown branches stripped clean of buds, flowers, and fruits by winter. Somehow, my mind saw the twisted branches illuminated so beautifully as the crown of thorns pressed into the scalp of Jesus by Pilate’s aggressive guards during his arrest and interrogation. Even though the sun and the branches transported me to those terrible moments of pain, the sight itself was unexpectedly beautiful, and its beauty displaced the abhorrent cruelty.

I feel this has something to do with transfiguration – at least from our very human end of the telescope.

A similar example – and one well-worn argument – is decorative silver, platinum, gold, or wooden crosses worn as a necklace. A crucifix, of course, is an instrument of terrible public shame and grotesque torture…and yet we seem able to transform its evil, barbaric reality into an attractive object sold by the million.

There are limits to this innate transfiguration. It would be repellent and shocking if we wore models of silver or gold gas ovens of the Third Reich as mere trinkets.

Somehow, we have ‘unseen’ the equivalent cruelty of crucifixes.

When the two jets slammed into the Twin Towers on September 11th 2001 at 8.46 and 9.03 killing 2753 persons in New York, I watched a tv screen, like millions of others as the tragedy unfolded. I was teaching at the time and word rapidly spread amongst the staff. At break, we gathered in the staff room. No one spoke a word. And yet, I couldn’t remove the blue sky, the sunshine and the Manhattan skyline. A beautiful morning. I have never spoken about this. Why? Shame? Yes, a little. Did these feelings of beauty diminish my sense of the horror? Not at all. But when I remember 9/11 I cannot separate the colours from the killing.

_______________________

Perhaps we can make sense of this as we return to the New Testament accounts of the Transfiguration in Matthew 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9.

Whereas Matthew and Mark’s account infer the nature of the conversation between Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Luke’s states it plainly:

‘Two men talked with Him, Moses and Elijah who appeared in glory and spoke of His departure which He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.’

In Matthew and Mark, Jesus speaks to Peter, John, and James – the disciples he took with Him to the mountain:

‘The Son of Man is…about to suffer at their hands’

We are presented with a juxtaposition of glory and suffering. The whiter-than-white glory and the utter defeat of death itself in resurrection rammed up against the impending cruel death on a cross at the hands of the Romans. The New Testament does not permit us to separate the glory of the Transfiguration from the nails hammered through the wrists and feet of the Son of Man.

Anglicans recite these words every Sunday:

‘I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ…who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven…and was made man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, He suffered and was buried and the third day he rose again…and ascended into heaven’

What God did in the Transfiguration of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah and the resurrection and ascension of Jesus none of us can ‘manifest’ by an act of our will. Nevertheless precisely because God did, it follows that there are at least some echoes of Transfiguration in our human make-up, created as we are in the image of God.

The New Testament does not permit us to separate the glory of the Transfiguration from the nails hammered through the wrists and feet of the Son of Man

So we should not be surprised to find suffering and glory closely related. Nor should we dismiss their co-existence by resorting to condemnation or guilt. That desire to convert a crucifix into jewellery is perhaps a mirror image of God’s willingness to transfigure Jesus prior to His suffering and the death He was destined to accomplish…His ‘departure’.

Lastly, perhaps another important lesson from all three accounts is to come to terms with the contrast between the Transfigured Jesus, Moses, and Elijah and the stumbling, awkward reactions of the other trio – Peter, John, and James.

This side of death, moments of transfiguration will always – it seems - take us by surprise.

Ecclesiastes – not for the faint-hearted

I’m reading through Ecclesiastes…it’s better read with a Monty Python smirk and a smile, as if humour itself is the only comfort blanket remaining that can disguise the relentless realism and gloom: ‘Looking on the Bright Side of Life, it is not.

This morning I read a verse that halted me in its tracks, and I suppose I’m using this post as a first attempt to grapple with its stark simplicity, to put it into a test-tube and analyse the death out of it.  

‘If you see the oppression of the poor, and the violent perversion of justice, and righteousness in a province, do not marvel at the matter, for high official watches over high official, and higher officials are over them’ 6 v 8 

Tradition points the finger at Solomon as the author. Whether he was or was not is inconsequential; the Hebrew title suggests that the author was a speaker who had the authority to call a congregation together to listen to him droning on about vanity and how life ends the same for everyone, rich or poor, and that if you think differently, you’re ‘grasping for the wind’.

It is not the cheeriest book in the bible.

At first sight, this appears to support indifference

But the phrase in the verse about the oppression of the poor that struck me was ‘do not marvel at the matter’. At first sight, this appears to support indifference, as if nothing can or should be done to rescue the poor and the weak from the hands of the rich, powerful, well-healed thugs that run society.

If that were true it would be shocking.

No, that way is defeatist, and I have no doubt that Solomon – once the truth had emerged of the depth of the corruption ruining the poor in a particular province - would have acted decisively.

This happens today. In every society. As the author of Ecclesiastes in the ninth verse of his opening chapter: ‘There is nothing new under the sun’.

Sir William Macpherson used the memorable phrase ‘Institutional Racism’ in his report on the grossly inadequate investigation carried out by the Met into Stephen Lawrence’s murder: "The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour that amount to discrimination through prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.”

Whole provinces, Police forces, or…any hierarchical institution, can sink into corruption aided and abetted by the hierarchical power structures designed to lift up the least and the weakest, but rotten to the core.

Deep breath…let’s attempt to apply this verse to Israel-Gaza-Washington.

Hamas, in my opinion, has long since forfeited its legitimacy as a governing body. It did so by authorising and carrying out the despicable attack on unarmed citizens of Israel on October 7th 2023 at the Supernova Music Festival and kibbutzim, murdering over 1000 and kidnapping 250 taking them hostage; men, women, and children.

The only acceptable recourse for Hamas was to hang their heads in shame, return the hostages, and leave Gaza. Instead, they brought untold misery to the ordinary citizens under their control and the poor under their care, promising to repeat their attacks on Israelis inside and outside of Gaza, and continuing to war against the inevitable military response from the IDF.

But I am humbled by this verse in Ecclesiastes ‘Do not marvel at the matter’. What happened on October 7th should not surprise us. So deep has run the sense of injustice in the veins of ordinary Palestinians following the events in 1948 and the creation of the State of Israel that, I fear, so many have succumbed to an ever-narrowing set of options to resolve their grievances.

In the aftermath of World War II there were those in Britain that, due to their direct and indirect suffering, could not overcome their hatred for Germans and could no longer differentiate between the Nazis and Germans or Germany…after all, it was ordinary Germans that donned the uniform of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the German Navy and the SS. Those, however, who lost the ability to make that distinction, died with bitterness running through their veins. Thankfully, most who opposed Nazi Germany were able to hate the Nazis but not all Germans and relations between GB and Germany were quickly restored, and the wound healed.

That, surely, is the only path ahead for Israel and Gaza.

Whether the Metropolitan Police Force has put its own house in order only time will tell. The world waits to see what can be done to rebuild Gaza and to build trust between Jews and Palestinians.

I don’t know whether it can be achieved. Hard-line Palestinians - and those chanting ‘From the River to the Sea’ on our streets - are calling for a One State solution – the replacement of Israel with a Palestinian State i.e. Jews out!

And hard-line Ultra-Orthodox Jews are calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank which they wish to rename as Judea and Samaria.

So entrenched are both sides with their respective hierarchical power structures firmly embedded by democratic elections

President Trump has waded in with customary bluster and shaken the world, seemingly adding Gaza to his shopping list of Greenland and Panama.

So entrenched are both sides with their respective hierarchical power structures firmly embedded by democratic elections (44% of Gazans voted for Hamas; 23% voted for Likud – Netanyahu’s party who formed a coalition government) that we must be as realistic as the writer of Ecclesiastes and ‘do not marvel’ if this stalemate continues with further outbreaks of devastating violence.

Is there any hope? Any light?

The following verse, chapter 5 verse 9, offers not only a relief from the apparent inevitability of v8 but presents a vision for the future:

‘The profit of the land is for all, even the king is served from the land’

We watch, maybe with more or less hope, as these cease-fire days build. Much depends on who is in charge and not only who but what sort of administration: one that does everything for the sake of ‘all’ Gazans and ‘all’ Israelis, or one that cares not a jot about the poor, preferring to line its own pockets, disguising its true intent by attempting once again to stir the devotion and sacrifice of its people through blood-lust, coercion and oppression.

Am I referring to Hamas, or Washington, or Jerusalem? I have my views. And it’s not from a journalistic perspective, or historical, or political perspective that I have had a go at putting these two verses from Ecclesiastes in my analytical test tube. If I lean close to that test tube, I can hear the sound of the reaction…the heavy sighs of lament.

In another place, St Paul wrote these words:

‘We do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered’

That seems to be an appropriate note to end on. God, the Holy Spirit, is not indifferent and through our inarticulate prayers perhaps we are more on course than we realise. Groanings, sighs, pursed lips, tears even – Jesus wept – maybe this is our vital contribution and may help to shift the whole picture from verse 8 to verse 9.

‘We do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered’

I hope so.

As I said at the start, Ecclesiastes is not for the faint-hearted. It tells the truth even if the truth is a hard pill to swallow.