Paris ‘24 - 29th January 2023

It’s a Sunday. January 29th to be precise and the start of a new week. A week in which I will fail once again to escape this game of physiological snakes and ladders.

My hopes that a return to 10K running have been dashed into a new dismalness and gloom.

A visit to the doc resulted in swift action (thank you NHS) of a telephone consultation with (another) physiotherapist and an X-ray…of my right knee; a new injury I had been attempting to ignore whilst the others had released their uninvited grip.

So…here I sit and stand and stroll with a walking pole, trying not to wince in public with one of those stabbing pains that leaves you helpless and unable to move forward.

Verdict pending, I am reduced to walking…for now.

No running for the past two weeks.

Progress towards Paris ’24 must be faced with a dollop of Gallic Shrug, a smidgen of hope, and a full tank of thankfulness for all the previous running injuries and recoveries, a miracle of healing thrown in, and a generous ladle of faith in God.

We press on.

Knocked down but not knocked out.

Daddy, where do tears come from?

Floored and reduced
Once more
My ignorance on show
Knowing, yet not knowing
Wondering about my words

I look at my child
With a sigh

Through eyes
Like dams holding back
The knowing
The deep waters
Surge tides of grief
Thunderstorms of love
And of the last straws
Before the breaking

Bent double with pain
Stomach cramping
Unbreathing sobs
Forehead pressed into the floor
Fist-pounding sorrow
Loss poured out

With a deep breath
I am ready to say little

But she is after facts
That’s all
Like lego pieces
To click together, or collect
Like sweets in a jar
Or the funny words inside her head
She’s after Daddy
To help her with the lego
That’s all

But we know different:

Tears are manufactured:
An instant recipe
A dash of salt, some oils
Antiseptic mucins
Lacrimal glands responding
Double time
Desperately crying ‘Yes Chef!’
To the voice cursing and urging
Defeated by beauty or rage
Or touch;
Gentleness breaking every man

Plated up. Poured.

That’s where tears come from

I look at my child
She’s two now
Will be three in the summer
So I tell her everything
She likes ‘lacrimal’
And ‘Yes Chef!’
And shouts Yes Chef!
All through the day
Not a tear in sight.

A Flayed Crow in the Hall of Judgement

A Ted Hughes poem…he seemed to have an affinity with crows…A Flayed Crow has foothills, then up, then the summit

All darkness comes together, rounding an egg.
Darkness in which there is now nothing.

A blot has knocked me down. It clogs me.
A globe of blot, a drop of unbeing.

Nothingness came close and breathed on me – a frost
A shawl of annihilation curls me up like a shrimpsfish foetus

Am I the self of some spore?

I rise beyond height -I fall past falling
I float on a nowhere
As mist-balls float, and as stars

A condensation, a gleam simplification
Of all that pertained
This cry alone struggles in its tissues.

Where am I going? What will come of me here?
Is this everlasting? Is it
Stoppage and the start of nothing?

Or am I under attention?
Do purposeful cares incubate me?
Am I the self of some spore?

What feathers shall I have?

Is this the white of death blackness,
This yoke of afterlife?
What feathers shall I have? What is my weakness

Good for? Great fear
Rests on the thing I am, as a feather on a hand.

I shall not fight
Against whatever is allotted to me.

My soul skinned, ad my soul-skin pinned out
A mat for my judges.

 Ted Hughes, Cave Birds

‘Whenever’ - a powerful word that!

At the time of writing, I’m enjoying watching Totems, a Cold War spy series on Amazon Prime. It’s in French with English subtitles. Without the subtitles, I might have been able to follow the gist of the storyline, but the subtitles bring the whole thing together.

If I was writing in sub-titles to this post, it would be this: to evangelical churches – do you believe the bible is the word of God? Good. It is. To charismatic stream churches – do you believe the bible is the word of God? Good.

But do we obey it?

The apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth wrote these verses:

‘Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation. Let all things be done for edification’ 1 Cor 14 v 26

This verse was written after quite a long run-up, Paul teaching how the Holy Spirit is the ‘operating system’ in the life of individual believers and churches and how the Holy Spirit coordinates the various spiritual ‘software’ bits or ‘apps’ downloaded in each believer, known biblically as the variety of the gifts (e.g. prophecy) and ministries of the Spirit (e.g. prophet), the charismata, hence charismatic churches.

The first mention in the letter by Paul of the Spirit sets the scene:

‘I was with you in weakness, in fear, in much trembling. My speech and preaching was not with persuasive words of human wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power that our faith should not be in the wisdom of men but the power of God’ 1 Coir 2 v 4,5

If you’re interested in theology, or psychology, or team leadership, or business…or philosophy, or you’re a great musician, that’s great. Plunge yourself in, enjoy. But none of these things are of any use to the body of Christ unless you have learnt how to rely on the new operating system of the Holy Spirit. Zero use.

Look back at the last time you ‘came together’ as a church. Was it like 1 Cor 14 v 26?

If not, why not? Intriguing, isn’t it? History? Tradition? Faulty teaching?

Don’t be an evangelical oxymoron…

I’ve benefited hugely from good leaders, good preachers, and good ministers. I could listen to some all day long. But the CofE church I grew up in didn’t obey 1 Cor 14 v 26, the Baptist church I went to was moving in that direction, the Charismatic church I went to in Exeter, more so, and others since then…but all had a ‘backstop’ of a leader, often paid, as an essential ingredient of what’s required for the body of Christ to operate. Just look at the Job Section ads in various Christian magazines.

It's subtle. If that leader is a true bible-believing leader he or she will not rest until 1 Cor 14 v 26 is considered as the ‘Normal’ in their congregation. Anything else is…well, off-beam. Isn’t it?

‘Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation. Let all things be done for edification’ 1 Cor 14 v 26

If that’s not ‘Normal’ in your experience the church has slipped back into relying on man’s wisdom – often, literally, one man’s wisdom:

‘I was with you in weakness, in fear, in much trembling. My speech and preaching was not with persuasive words of human wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power that our faith should not be in the wisdom of men but the power of God’ 1 Coir 2 v 4,5

If this was true for the apostle Paul how much more so for us! Come back to your true operating system, the Holy Spirit. Like the disciples who left their nets to follow Christ, leave your cleverness or natural abilities behind and switch to the Holy Spirit. Paul was a well-educated trilingual man, versed in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. A confident leader co-ordinating the arrest of Christian believers as part of the thought police of his day – the Pharisees. But when it came to his ‘ministry’ he left that all behind and switched to the Spirit of Christ.

…don’t be a Triumph Herald 13/60 running on reserve

Church meetings should never be predictable. Congregations are not passive. ‘Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be’. Who knows what the Spirit will bring that day? And ‘whenever’ isn’t restricted to Sunday meetings. ‘Whenever’ means just what it says. If, for example, a deacons meeting might have to decide about any number of practical ventures but even that is approached from the Spirit, not your practical or planning abilities. The first deacons were selected on the basis of whether they were filled with the Spirit and faith…individuals who had switched operating systems.

Two illustrations to close. A Triumph Herald 13/60 and a Jazz/Blues band.

My old Triumph Herald 13/60, a wonder car, had a metal lever in the boot. If you were running low on petrol you could push the lever over – the car had a spare tank. But many churches today are running on their spare tanks, their natural abilities. They are well led, well organised, have methods and programs, lively worship bands, and impressive ministries to the poor and youth, and worldwide mission. But the truth is, it’s so easy to drift from the church as a living organism – the body of Christ filled with the life of God - to a man-made organisation with a CEO pastor. Better to switch to the main tank and keep the main tank full. ‘Be filled with the Holy Spirit’ Paul wrote to the Ephesians…and us if we’re evangelical/charismatic believers.

Jazz and Blues bands can play for hours without a note of music in front of them, not because they have memorised every note but because all the music they need is inside them. In New Orleans, the bars are full of musicians who play all day long. As one leaves another joins in. Every so often one might go crazy and blow the roof off with an extemporary solo they have never played before or had been heard by anyone else. All full of enough music to keep it going but willing to let someone ‘speak’.

That’s how church should be. All full of the Spirit and every so often it might be you who brings a revelation or a song, a prophecy, or a miracle of healing…fresh bread.

A good eldership overseeing a congregation will be modelling this to the congregation but not seeking to dominate the meeting otherwise they’re not elders, they’re evangelical oxymorons.

Don’t be an evangelical oxymoron or a passive pew warmer.

And don’t be a Triumph Herald 13/60 running on reserve, switch to the main tank.

And pastors…start trembling like the Apostle Paul who learnt to rely on the presence of the Holy Spirit.

‘To Him be glory in the church through Christ Jesus to all generation’ Eph 3 v 21

Grace, mercy, and peace.

Epiphany

Old enough, they said
To wear shorts to school
Scant protection from
Arctic blasts, gnats, and grazes
Old enough though. Six.

Old enough too
To be weighed down:
Fears of the Foad gang
And dislike of Gypsy Tart
Or four-syllable words

That curious cigarette paper
On which lay black
Hymns, Psalms, and prayers
And ‘Epiphany’
I’d just learnt ph = eff

So, in secret
I sounded out my first
Four syllable
Uninterested in its meaning
Eee-piph-phanee
Eee-piph-anee

Later, years piling on
It became a date
The Magi have come
But somehow still
Shrouded in mystery

Later still, shaving
And loving,
Weighed down once more
I climbed inside the word
And the word inside me

In a moment
Extended for minutes
Standing in the dark
Face upended to the stars
The shroud fell away…

Paris 24 - January 8th 2023 Blog 11

Paris ’24 Blog 11

Time has come to get serious…

December was a write off. A nasty anti-runner virus came my way as soon as the ice had melted and wiped this would-be Olympian out. Recovery consisted of 48 hour straight dedication to the sofa and uncountable episodes of Netflix and – oddly (?) ITVX.

Ugh…

Despite the post-viral patheticness, Christmas jolliness took priority and was enjoyed by all. After four straight days of family fun, chat, food and medicinal measures of this and that I was ready.

Ready, that is for a post-convivial conversations further relapse. The sofa beckoned for another day of TV and zero energy.

BUT…Paris ’24 was never forgotten. Another temporary set-back number ? (I’ve lost count now).

January has arrived. Bitingly cold mornings. And chilling rain. The discipline of run/walk/Pilates/stretching and shoulder exercises is upon me once more.

Today’s early morning jog. Only the 5K Harbourside flat-ish run, nevertheless I was encouraged. The first half was sluggish. My aim: 25’ for 5K. Today 28.30’. But the last 2.5K was 26.30’.

Two aims really for January 2023:

• 5K in less than 27’ maybe on Parkruns

• 10K as near to 55’ as possible

And then progressing to make 10K runs the norm with 5Ks as slow and fast runs. I told you I was serious. Don’t laugh.

Yes I know, the body and mind of a 64yr old, well, this 64yr old, may well not always be the same thing, but…the word NEVERTHELESS is sometimes the most important word in the Universe.

Some of you might be thinking ‘why not make Common Sense your watchword Mr Stevens?’ There’s little hope of that. For Christmas, daughter 4 bought me a wonderful small t-pot. The sort where you put the tea leaves in a small cage, then pour the boiling water over the leaves into the pot, leave and pour without tea-leaves entering your cup. That’s great IF you remember to put the leaves in the cage. If not, all is not lost. Simply pour through a tea-strainer.

NEVERTHELESS is sometimes the most important word in the Universe

Excuse me whilst I use my teeth the filter the leaves once more, having forgotten to execute either of these steps. It’s a good thing I haven’t got my finger on the Nuclear Button or you might not have had the joy of reading this post.

Happy New Year! May God bless all your attempts to run faster than me!

Which End of the Pencil - Part 3 of 3

Part III Spirituality and Sharpeners

A quick reminder from Part I: I have found the following interacting model the most useful in differentiating between body, soul, and spirit:

Body – the five senses that inform us about our environment, what we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch, and the various organs that maintain our organic and physical life

Soul – is part mind (our ability to think and have thoughts), emotions (how we feel), and will (our ability to make decisions). M.E.W. for short.

Spirit – a deeper part of the person designed to have communion with God, ourselves, and others

We are all a combination of all of these parts working together. Think of anyone you know, and you’ll probably be able to identify their centre of gravity. The analytical thinker, the one who is more emotionally driven, another who is ruled by their senses, or the spontaneously wilful. And then there are those who seem to be spiritual.

Why a picture about running? Read on…

Here’s what the Bible says about spirituality:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you
I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh
And give you heart of flesh
I will put My Spirit within you
And cause you to walk in My statutes’ Ezekiel 36v26

Jeremiah prophesied much the same in his passage foreseeing a ‘new covenant’ - in fact the term ‘New Testament’ refers to this ‘new covenant’ that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper: ‘After supper, he took the cup and said ‘This is the New Covenant in my blood’. The passage sheds a great deal of light on the details of this ‘new covenant’.

So…we all have a spirit. But it may be poor condition - stony and not ‘alive’ in the sense that God has made it for – communion with God. But Ezekiel promises us some sort of heart transplant, and to give us a new spirit, and the Holy Spirit.

That is true spirituality. Christianity properly understood is a spirit-Spirit operation.

It is a divine-human relationship not a set of moral or ecclesiastical rules. It’s not how any prayers you say, or worship music, or bible verses, or baptism, or ‘ministry’, helping others, or church attendance. You might do all of these things but doing these things won’t make you a Christian. The only question is whether you have opened your heart to His heart operation.

That is true spirituality. Christianity properly understood is a spirit-Spirit operation.

Back to unsharpened pencils. Imagine a new pencil lying on the desk in front of you. There is no end and no beginning. They are inseparable. But to make the pencil fulfil its function you must take a blade to one end and sharpen it.

The Bible speaks as much about God coming to us as about us seeking God. It’s like that in any friendship and relationship, it’s difficult to pinpoint who starts a friendship, it often seems to be simultaneous.

If we think of God coming to us, we might think of God seeking Adam and Eve in the garden. He didn’t stay away ‘in heaven’ disapproving of their sin, He came looking for them. Or we might think of Jesus named ‘Emmanuel’ God with us who said things like ‘It’s not the well who need a physician but the sick. I did not come for the righteous but the sinners’. But if we think of man seeking God, we might remember Moses at the burning bush, or the disciples leaving their nets to follow Christ, or Blind Bartimaeus crying out ‘Son of David have mercy on me’.

The deepest form of meditation then is between you and God, between God and you.

My heart was grieved
And I was vexed in my mind.
I was so foolish and ignorant
I was like a beast before You
Nevertheless, I am continually with You
You hold me by my right hand
You will guide me with Your counsel

Some pointers from my meditations on these verses.

You might have noticed this starts with my/our condition. You can’t commune with God unless you open your heart with all its griefs, sorrows, longings, hopes and dreams. It’s difficult not to feel foolish and vulnerable. But true meditation will bring you to the point where there’s only one word in the universe that matters ‘Nevertheless’.

That’s the turning point, the hinge.

It sounds close to madness to say God has spoken to me. Decidedly un-British!

We don’t mind being called ‘children of God’ but here the picture is us becoming like a little child and offering up our right hand. If you’re meditating you might act this sort of thing out, put some flesh on the bones. And then we reach the summit. It’s the true place, the true destination which is, in fact the true starting point – my spirit communing with His Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit as I not only hear His counsel but yield to it knowing it is from God who is love.

Now you have started.

It sounds close to madness to say God has spoken to me. Decidedly un-British! Un-CofE! But what else is spirituality if not that? The interaction between His Spirit and mine?

In my limited experience, what often happens is a deep sense of peace arrives, sometimes unexpectedly. Or it may be a conviction to put something right. Or to contact someone. Or a fresh attitude is formed inside. Or something finally makes sense. Or we’re reminded that Christ took all our griefs and sins on the cross, that we’re forgiven. Very occasionally it is something very specific.

I will share one such experience.

I had injured my right knee quite badly. If I ran for a hundred yards or so the pain would be unbearable. Sometimes walking in the hills, the same pain would reduce me to limping and very short strides. My early morning routine for many years has included reading the bible and prayer. One morning, I was praying but not specifically about my knee. All I can say is that I heard a voice (not audibly, but inside, like a strong thought, it’s hard to describe) that said just one word ‘Run!’ I think it was repeated twice. It was said with authority, like a command, but not threateningly. A day or so later I found a path to try running. I ran for about a quarter of a mile, free from pain. Then two miles. Then five miles, ten, and, in the end, half-marathons. I’m still running twenty-five years later.

The Psalmist’s heart was full of grief. His mind was vexed. But, in the end, He was trusting God to guide him with His counsel. Whatever our hearts are full of, meditation (slightly different to prayer, which is mostly to do with asking) can lead us to a place of trust: that all we have is freely given, including God’s counsel.

Which End of the Pencil - Part 2 of 3

Breathe Deeply

Before dealing with breathing head on, let me fire one warning shot across the bows.

Whilst I have no doubt that meditation can have many benefits for ‘you’, that is not, I believe, the ultimate purpose of meditation. In the West we have arrived at a highly developed sense of values that uphold freedom of the individual, the rights of man. At the extreme end lies ‘it’s my life and I’ll do with it what I want’, the cult of personality, and self-centred, ‘self-for-self’ framework within which we expect to experience happiness and an integrated personality. I am as much part of and affected by this cultural scene that would manipulate everything ‘for me’ as if I always need something more. If this article feeds into the idea that meditation is about gaining something purely for ourselves, I will have yielded to the all-pervading consumerist culture that inevitably leaves us dissatisfied with our lot, always needing more, but, If I can, somehow, tilt us away from a ‘striving’ mentality and more towards ‘grace’ an understanding that all we have is freely given - it will have been worth writing.

When Jesus challenged an educated man, a lawyer, about the commandments, he replied ‘First….love the Lord your God with all your heart…and, second, love your neighbour as yourself’ Mat 22 v 34-39

Here’s my very amateur starting point on meditation: everyone does it. It’s a universal human experience.

Imagine you’re in a cinema: before you know it, you become completely unaware of those around you, unaware, really of yourself, you have been absorbed into the film. It’s difficult to know if you’re in the film or if the film is inside you. Or you find yourself daydreaming. One moment you’re engaged in a conversation and the next your mind has wandered and landed on something quite unrelated. Like in the cinema you find yourself transported somewhere else.

Of course, where you go can often seem to be trivial, just a series of jumbled-up gibberish tumbling through your mind but sometimes we are gripped by a thought so that we become deeply quiet, our heart rate slows, and we become aware of a peace that has eluded us for maybe weeks, months, years even. We leave these times refreshed and renewed, ready to face whatever circumstances we are in, with the love of God in us and a new capacity to love ourselves and our neighbours.

Are not these experiences meditation?

Meditation is daydreaming with a purpose.

The question is, can we meditate deliberately? Routinely? Can we include meditation in our daily routines just as much as getting dressed, having coffee, or brushing our teeth?

The second question is what to meditate on.

The answer to Q1. Is a definite ‘Yes’ we can include meditation as part of our daily routine.

The answer to Q2 is more open-ended: a criminal might find meditation very useful in planning a bank-robbery or a preacher a sermon, or a surgeon before an operation. Meditation is not in essence morally good any more than weightlifting, it’s a means to an end.

But if we have Jesus’ vision of a humanity restored to its true purpose and fulness, we’re unlikely to indulge in using meditation for nefarious purposes…in fact, it can be a good antidote when our emotions take us places normally reserved for violent and illegal rage…like if someone puts just a little too much milk in your tea…Arghhh! Count to ten!

Meditation is daydreaming with a purpose

If the image of meditation is more East than West, more Buddhist than Christian we might be surprised to find that the Bible often speaks about meditation and what to meditate on: Isaac went out to meditate into the field; the Lord spoke to Joshua ‘…meditate in the Book of the Law day and night’; meditate on God, meditate on creation, in God’s word, ‘whatever things are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtue, praiseworthy…meditate on these things’.

I should also mention Peter on the roof ‘…he fell into a trance and saw heaven opened…’. St Paul, also, whilst praying, ‘fell into a trance’. The Greek word translated ‘trance’ is ‘ekstasis’ from where we get ecstasy. But this is misleading, ek-stasis, translated ‘trance’ really means ‘to stand outside oneself’, this may or may not be associated with an emotional reaction whereas we understand ‘ecstasy’ to be an experience of sheer pleasure. I would argue when you are lost in a film or lost in your thoughts you are in some sense in a ‘trance’ – standing outside yourself - and are meditating. The word trance is too closely associated with handing over the control of one’s mind to hypnosis…that’s another subject!

OK breathing. And deliberate meditation.

Step One: find somewhere without undue distraction. Sit comfortably or lie on the floor, prostrate or on your back. Some like calming music in the background. (NB sometimes a very noisy environment can work just as well).

Step Two: slow your breathing down, breathe deeply, in out…not too deeply to feel lightheaded.

Step Three: meditate on something; daydream with purpose. the biblical list is a good hunting ground. I’m currently meditating on the following verse from Psalm 73. I’m on day three. I can see this lasting a few more days.

My heart was grieved
And I was vexed in my mind.
I was so foolish and ignorant
I was like a beast before You
Nevertheless, I am continually with You
You hold me by my right hand
You will guide me with Your counsel

Step Four: stopping. Sometimes meditation can take more than an hour – think back to watching a film or reading a good book. My experience is that generally, the deliberate form can finish quite naturally after a few minutes. No need to berate yourself, better to trust that you can meditate for longer, and may well do at times. Think coffee and biscuits v. three-course meals…you can do both.

Next I want to double back to ‘spirituality’…Part III.

Which End of the Pencil? Part 1 of 3

A mini-series on meditation, spirituality, and sharpeners

Part I – Human Beings?

In the space of maybe 72 hours over Christmas, I had three, no four, conversations about Meditation.

The odd thing was that three of these exchanges were not initiated by me, one of the four was a follow-up. Odder still I had written a potential blog titled ‘A Meditation on Time’ which I was sitting on – still am.

Meditation – it seems – is in the air.

Current images associated with meditation do include the Yogic levitator or at least sitting cross-legged in an Eastern meditative tradition, collectively or individually, repeating a rhythmic mantra. Or, maybe, a Christian mystic. A Franciscan brother, perhaps. But things have moved on. Or should I say, ‘gone mainstream’? Now, ‘spirituality’ is a word that is used as an all-encompassing paradigm within which meditation is a subset, a practice rather than the thing itself.

There’s no shortage of self-help books and podcasts that advocate meditation as an antidote to the frenetic lives that erode any sense of calm. Mindfulness speaks so powerfully to a generation that has learned to take mental health seriously - even if the catch-all phrase ‘mental health’ is ill-defined.

Equally, a more detached Western form, clinging on, some might say, to the wreckage of The Enlightenment, Rationality, and Empiricism, you have the evidence-based research and medico-scientific version espoused by Dr Mosely in his Just One Thing series on Radio 4:

In the Meditate episode of his Radio 4 podcast Just One Thing, Michael Mosley explores how an ancient and seemingly simple practice can have such big benefits:

How meditation can help your mood, memory and immune system

If you’re short on time and struggling to unwind, meditation could be the solution.

Just a little bit of practice a day has been shown to improve sleep, mood, boost your immune system, and even physically rewire your response to stress and pain.

This more ‘spiritual’ approach to living presupposes we know what we mean by using the term ‘spiritual’.

Many moons ago I asked a Year 10 tutor group ‘What is a human being?’ After much lively discussion, the consensus was that we have an outer life – our bodies - and an inner life, but no label for the inner life was agreed. It was more that we ‘live inside’ our bodies.

St Paul wrote these words:

‘We do not lose heart even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is renewed day by day’ 2 Cor 4 v 16

Some might say ‘soul’ others might say ‘spirit’ some might say something like ‘inner man’. The bible uses a range of terms to describe the inner life, soul and spirit are well known, but heart, liver, and bowels also get a mention!

The simplest biblical breakdown is spirit, soul, and body. The Buddhist version is similar: Form (body), Sensation, Perception, Thoughts, and Consciousness.

The problem we have in the West is that we use ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ interchangeably

The problem we have in the West is that we use ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ interchangeably and generally without too much idea of what either really consists or means. An alternative word is ‘self’, the idea that we are individuals, defined by our ‘self’ as distinct from others.

I have found the following model useful:

Body – the five senses that inform us about our environment, what we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch and the various organs that maintain our organic and physical life

Soul – is part mind (our ability to think and have thoughts), part emotions (how we feel), and part will (our ability to make decisions)

Spirit – a deeper part of the person designed to have communion with God, ourselves, and others – unhurried communication

All three work together, potentially, to form our ‘consciousness’ of what is the true state of things, a deeper knowing and sensitivity to the world and people around us…and God.

Why call this a mini-series on Spirituality and Sharpeners?

A true pencil is sold unsharpened. It has no beginning and no end. In fact, both co-exist…until you decide which end to sharpen. That is a clue to the title. More to be revealed in Part III after an excursion in Part II Breathe Deeply.

If we are to understand meditation it is useful to know who is meditating. The answer is…an intriguing combination of body, soul, and spirit, a living human being.

Grief - a personal perspective

I thought I knew what grief was.

My father ‘Daddy’ died when I was just 12 years old. I didn’t have any notion in my mind that he was dying. My mind denying me the thought? Divine protection?

The decline was traceable. He had diabetes and eventually it affected his balance. I remember him sitting behind the wheel of the car before getting out and walking back into the house. Somehow, I knew that was the last time he would drive. Then he slipped into a coma. And, in retrospect, I know the look of death in someone’s eyes, the life disappearing, and the laboured breathing, but at the time it never occurred to me that he was dying.

I remember him being taken out of the house by two burly ambulance men and taken to the hospital from where he would not return.

I remember my sister or my mother telling me he had died. I was fiddling with the coal fire in the lounge. I collapsed into grief as it overwhelmed me engulfing me in its tidal wave power. And yet some part of my mind could not accept the truth…the American Colonel had surely been taken to some intelligence facility and would return. But really I knew. At the funeral, it was the sight of the Stars and Stripes’ draped coffin passing through the curtain that broke me.

I knew grief. It is stronger than us. We are helpless in its grip. It does a thorough work. Later it lifts, even if we struggle with the guilt that it should. At some point the sun shines again, food tastes like food, and maybe you want to listen to music or laugh at a joke or get angry over something trivial. It’s subsided. It’s over.

That’s grief.

But. But it’s only in recent days that I have discovered a different form of grief.

You are living a life ‘without __________ in the world’ and it’s hard.

St Paul paints a stark picture of the position of the Gentiles in Ephesus:

‘…at that time, you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world’

If you can replace ‘God’ with someone else’s name ‘…having no hope and without __________ in the world’ then you know this form of grief: it’s the absence of someone who is still alive.

You are living a life ‘without __________ in the world’ and it’s hard. So hard.

There seems to be no relief. No one can take their place. And, whatever the reason for the absence, the only thing you can do is yield the pain to God who knows all things. Knowing Christ carried this grief in His body on the cross, that He wipes our tears, however many weeks or years we must endure these feelings, as we become, like Him, ‘a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’.

My heart was grieved
And I was vexed in my mind.
I was so foolish and ignorant
I was like a beast before You
Nevertheless, I am continually with You
You hold me by my right hand
You will guide me with Your counsel

Ps 73 v 21-24

There is an important distinction between the first and second kind of grief. The first is disabling. It leaves you unable to function normally and in its early stages, if you are not weeping uncontrollably, you are silent and stunned. I didn’t experience anger, though I understand that is common, just deep sadness and disorientation. The second kind of grief can be distinguished from the first in that there must have been some function of the will in arriving at the position of absence: my father didn’t choose to make himself absent i.e. die. At times you are fine but simple things crack, a place, a song, a place open your heart and the absence is all there is.

Finally, Jesus said it is ‘blessed are you when your mourn; you shall be comforted’. Whatever else this means, suppressing mourning, trying to ignore it, or avoid it, or worse, looking for some form of comfort to numb the pain may seem to make sense at the time, but all we are achieving is delaying the day when we face the reality that our heart is grieved and our mind vexed. Only then can we move further on through the verses in Psalm 73 and allow ourselves, as much as we did to grieve, to be held by our right hand and guided by His counsel.

The Pilates Instructor

Unclipping vertebrae, one at a time
A slow, continuous curve
A staircase really, not a wave
Bones and shock-absorbers
Worn from life and living
Unclipping, one at a time

To fold like a rag doll
My low red face restraining,
Like a dam, my innermost,
From tumbling to the floor
Ten whole, lovely long seconds.
An interlude. Hanging there.

Winding down, I lie still
Letting a train of ladybirds
Crawl under my taut abs.
Or is it my glutes?
I flap like a fish, a hundred times.
Only wingless ladybirds remain

Unaligned body meets
Unaligned soul
They rarely talk, but today
With deepening breaths
Their awkward exchanges
Match my graceless moves

Sweeping the floor now
With my extended ballet foot
Drawing anything but smooth
Supple or serene circles…
But, to my surprise,
My soul looks on gently amused

Smiling, in fact, eyes laughing,
A random collision
A friend found inside a moment
Someone, it seems
You’ve always known:
Someone, plugged into Peace

And now, a new voice speaks,
Unclipping sore and stiff spines
And your tension-twisted torso
And your long-neglected heart
Enfin, you’ve become your own
Instructor. Peace.

Six Counties Wide

Normally some wretched
Inner engine-room coughs and splutters its
Rhymeless blood, the national pulse,
Evicting its poetic tenants
Long before dawn. Not today.
Amnesia? No. Whispers of anxiety
‘Not qualified’. Humbled by six counties,
Defeat hangs heavy on my Yuletide shoulders

Sore Afraid

the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid

Don’t open your lips, please
Don’t extend your hand
Nor even end my fear
I’m clinging on
Can’t you see?
To my staff, to this world

No, don’t sing
Don’t bring the glory down
Heaven can’t fit inside me
I am lost now
Shorn like my sheep
Naked to your
All baptising love

I cannot fully return
To the world
Of tousled sheep
And scraggy babes
Surrounded as I am
By this thin disguise

My staff a reminder:
Then a conductor’s baton
Of heavenly choirs.
More than wood
Infused as I am with
Joy inexpressible

A Sense of England

I’m unsure I can feel you, England
So many winds have blown
And waters brought us ashore
Do we find ourselves
Still, in Ælfred’s skirts?

What is your scent? Your signal?
A dysentery rotting
Army in Azincourt,
A weak autumnal leaf
Certain to die?

But we are a miracle nation
With two fingers thrust to the sky
And knees bent, battle breath
Exhaling ‘We few, we happy few,
We band of brothers’

What is your sound? Your voice?
It is not the matchless
Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau
Or the fearsome Tartan drone
Of kilts and pipes

No, it is simply the crack
Of a hard-red-ball on willow
Of stumps and white boundaries
The sigh of a pig’s bladder
And the boot of a mob

Foreigner. What do you see?
Is it not a small place
An island
Armed to the teeth
With Trident and tea and scones at four?

It is an uncertain people
Tentatively sharing their King
With the neighbours
Who may soon be blown
And washed away

And yet, there is that
Unmistakable taste of history
The suppurating wounds
Of wars to make peace
And foreign fayre on the menu

Beef Wellington, Sir?
Served with irony:
Pâté de foie gras
As English as Spotted Dick
À l’Alexis Benoît Sayer

Winds will blow
And waters threaten
The house Ælfred
But her rivers may yet
Run deeper than blood

Rogue Heroes

9.8 million of us watch Rogue Heroes.

Until yesterday my reaction to Rogue Heroes was probably typical: so much appealed, the sense of adventure into the unknown, the hostile environment of the desert, the danger of the wilderness quite apart from the Nazis, the escape from ponderous, misguided, and unimaginative authority structure bogged down in Cairo to actually achieve something out of all proportion to their numbers…the stuff of legends and heroes. It has a certain visceral appeal.

And then yesterday happened: it started to speak to me, as if it wanted to teach me something, make me see something. It almost switched from being a TV adaptation of history to being a parable of sorts.

Victory forged in the desert.

The biblical examples poured in, with a twist.

Moses, a murderer had escaped to the wilderness, the desert. Once a prince living in luxury in Pharoah’s palace was exiled to herding a flock of sheep in the desert for forty years. But it was in the desert that he encountered the burning bush. God. The Exodus was forged in the desert long before the Jews caught sight of Moses with his stick, or Pharoah refused to let the Jews depart.

David, again used to a palace existence playing music for Saul the king, was chased out of the palace into the desert, the wilderness, ending up in the cave of Adullam with those in debt and trouble. But in this nomadic stage, a new Israel was born to replace Saul’s kingdom.

Victory forged in the desert

And Jesus. If we charismatic Christians had written the script it would have read something like ‘And Jesus came to John to baptised in the Jordan. As He came up out of the water, the dove fell on Him as the Holy Spirit anointed Him with the power to be the Messiah. The next day he went to preach at Nazareth and a man with a withered hand came in and Jesus healed him. The next day a thousand more came and by the end of the month, he was walking into Jerusalem as King’. But we know that the first work of the Spirit in Jesus was to drive (the Greek word ‘balo’ is the same word used for driving out demons) Jesus into the desert to face the devil. After the wilderness came the ministry AND the discipling of the twelve and the others.

We should not be surprised if we find ourselves in a desert, a dry place, a wilderness. It is here we get our specialist training. That’s the first point.

The second is this. The twist. It’s not a solitary hero that emerges from the desert. The Hollywood Jesus is handsome, taller than the disciples, and dressed in white, while the women and the apostles wear duller clothing. He has a perfectly groomed beard and walks and talks like a refined John Wayne; his six-shooter replaced with resurrection power, and he’s quick on the draw. I love this Jesus, of course!

Man of sorrows acquainted with grief

But the Jesus of the New Testament had nowhere to lay his head. His family thought he was insane. He suffered constant opposition. Many who followed him for the miracles turned away at the cost. He was as Isaiah had prophesied ‘A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief’. And all the time it was with others who shared the same existence and faced the same foes. This ‘band of brothers’ could only function due to the constant giving and support from the women in His travelling band. Christianity was born as a mobile Adullam cave!

If you’re in a desert, maybe you need to ‘see’ Rogue heroes differently. It’s dry and hot, and relentless. It’s a wilderness with little comfort. But there’s a divine purpose hidden from view.

the gospel isn’t just for impressive people, it’s for everyone

I sit on my settee watching. So impressed. Thinking I’d like to be that courageous, that skilled, that resilient, that purposeful…knowing I’m not! I’ll always be impressed by impressive people. But the gospel isn’t just for impressive people, it’s for everyone.

So, watching Rogue Heroes with different eyes, whatever the past may have been to land us in the desert, in the wilderness, I know Someone who seems to meet His people there and join us to others…see this verse from Jeremiah. Note it’s not singular, it’s plural.

‘The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness’ Jeremiah 31 v 2

Salmo Salar

The Moon lying large
Its milky disc of light
Drawing down
Into the blush of dawn
Its last beams crossing
Shallow bends of the Tay
Into the shadow of Schiehallion

Somehow a cold sun
Rises without noise,
Pomp or ceremony
Glinting from surface ice
Swelling with the
Hidden waters writhing
Below, unknowing the night

And, caught in an unlit pool
An eye looks up
Salmo Salar,
Lying in wait
Patient to kill, to spawn
Encased in ice
Not yet undone

The journey home
Like the prodigal
Its ungrateful sins washed
In the oceans
And here, bedraggled
Wounded, and glorious
Lies Scotland, unfinished

This is no grave
This spawning ground
So easily misunderstood
This place of death
This tomb, a womb…
My eyes met her eye
I looked away

© John Stevens

The Ceilidh House

The peat fire crackles and burns with stories;
footsteps scurry through mist and mountain
to warm a Hebridean hearth with stories.

A figure crosses turf where St Columba
knelt long ago beside the Snizort;
the crofter’s creel is laden with stories.

He pauses to watch the snow-stars drifting
on the loch, with its kelp and pebbles;
hares in the lazy-bed leap with stories.

The crofter enters his neighbour’s parlour,
rests on the settle while divots smoulder;
a plaintive skirl fills the room with stories.

Shadows dance round the doleful piper,
whose music makes the embers tremble;
the single oil lamp flickers with stories.

A mother stirs her three-legged cauldron;
sisters spin, or weave at the handloom,
infusing a homemade plaid with stories.

Hailstone tears pound the snow-flecked Cuillin,
recalling the Clearances, emigration:
the Ceilidh House overflows with stories.

© Caroline Gill

www.carolinegillpoetry.com

From: Driftwood by Starlight (The Seventh Quarry Press, 2021)

Caroline’s MacDonald grandfather and great-grandfather were born in Sydney. Her 3x great-grandfather had been a shepherd crofter in the Highlands. The poem was written after visits to the Skye Museum of Island Life and the Clan Donald Archives in Armadale. The poem is a Tercet Ghazal, a form developed by Robert Bly (d.2021) from the traditional Persian Ghazal, a complex form written in couplets and involving a pattern of refrain- and rhyme-words

The Last Supper - Jesus’ Last Will and Testament

‘Likewise, after supper, He took the cup and, when He had given thanks, He gave it to them saying, ‘Drink ye all of this; for this is the blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins. Do this as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of Me’

If, like me, you were taken Holy Communion Services as a child, you may recognise these words from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, 1549. The rhythm of the words is forever written into my bones.

Printed at the time of William Shakespeare, the old Elizabethan language is matchless and strangely hypnotic.

That’s a good thing and a bad thing. Good because the words become so attached to your person they can be recalled at any time, with their associated reverence and the mood that falls as they are recalled; a certain peace that seems to be within the words as they are spoken. But a bad thing because hypnosis removes all conscious participation in the drama of the Last Supper. Detached from history it can become almost ‘a nothing’, a pointless ritual of repetition, a sleep-inducing drug.

The Last Supper was many things, one of which was the reading of Jesus’ Last Will and Testament, just hours before His arrest and crucifixion…in a code that the disciples could only break after the Resurrection.

‘This is the blood of the New Testament, in My blood’

The prophets of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel had all prophesied two main events to come to pass sometime in the future:

• One day the Anointed One (translated as ‘Messiah’ in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and ‘Christ’ in the Greek of the New Testament) would be born

• A new covenant or testament – the words are synonymous – would replace the Old Testament

The terms of the Last Will and Testament, the ‘New Testament’ that Jesus announced and would come into effect upon His death just a few hours after the Supper had ended, are not shrouded in mystery:

‘Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah – not according to the covenant I made with their fathers when I…led them out from the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbour saying, ‘Know the Lord’ – they shall all know Me from the least to the greatest.’ Jeremiah 31 v 31 – 34

‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes…’ Ez 36 v 27

The prophets of the Old Testament called the people back to (i) believe the promises in the Old Covenant and to (ii) obey the Law. The Old Covenant promises are written in Genesis 12,15, and 17, given through Abraham, and the Law was added later through Moses. But Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel looked beyond the Old Testament to the inauguration of a New Testament - which Jesus as the Messiah announced at the Last Supper.

It’s a Spirit joined to my spirit operation now

As beneficiaries of that Last Will and Testament, as New Testament believers or ‘Christians’, we should, at least be aware of the terms of the New Testament, or New Covenant. How odd it would be if a rich person was to die, and you were informed that you were a beneficiary, for you not to be keenly interested in the contents of the Will. Not only does self-interest kick in, but it is also your ‘right’ to receive the benefits of the Will as directed by the person who had died. It is, after all, what he or she wanted you to receive.

How odd, then that New Testament believers often have never read the terms of the New Testament inaugurated when the King of Glory died.

Leaving aside for the moment – that the New Testament is made with the House of Israel and Judah…which, at first sight, excludes all Gentiles, let’s look at the promises contained in the New Testament:

1. The Law is written on our hearts not on tablets of stone. It’s internal not an external set of commandments

2. Everyone in the New Testament ‘knows the Lord’ – it is no longer God up there, remote and beyond knowing, in heaven whilst we live our lives on the Earth

The heart operation alluded to in Jeremiah 31 is spelled out in more detail in Ezekiel 36. There’s a heart transplant:

3. Our hearts of stone, which were incapable of living the life of Christ, are replaced by hearts of flesh.

4. We are given a new spirit

5. And the Holy Spirit

6. The result is that we walk in His statutes…like Christ

The challenge of prophets is first to redirect us back to the promises of the New Covenant. To believe and have faith in God that He has done what He promised He would do.

And then to obey. But this obedience is not a dutiful conformation to a set of external commandments – specifically the Ten Commandments inscribed on stone tablets – but to trust that as God is writes His laws on our hearts our lives are transformed from the inside out.

We mustn’t turn back to the Old Testament, where we attempt with everything in us to obey the Law, be determined to be good, pray, go to church, read out bibles, and love our neighbour. A new way has been opened to us. He comes. His Spirit is joined with our deepest part, our new spirit, our new hearts of flesh. It’s a Spirit joined to my spirit operation now. We must have faith that God has done what He has promised.

All because Jesus was willing to go to the cross, for us.

I don’t know How God does what He does but the challenge is to believe that He has. And that this work goes on all day, every day, 24/7. I can’t stop it. I can’t stop God! That’s a ridiculous statement but one I continually need to acknowledge.

We mustn’t turn back to the Old Testament

He has given me a new heart, a new spirit, he has placed His Spirit in Me. He is writing His law in my heart. Against all the odds, His life leaks out of me.

Do we fail? Do we struggle? Do we need to return to the covenant? Of course. That’s why taking Holy Communion regularly isn’t a bad idea…it serves to remind us that the Will, the New Testament, has been read, that we are its recipients, and before long we are on our knees thanking God for His grace and undeserved love poured out, to Christ, for His willingness to suffer on our behalf.

What can we say?

Defeated we find victory in Him.

The Last Supper sustains us for all time.

As New Testament beneficiaries we: ‘take and eat, this is My body, which is given for you, do this in remembrance of Me. ‘Likewise, after supper, He took the cup and, when He had given thanks, He gave it to them saying, ‘Drink ye all of this; for this is the blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins. Do this as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of Me’

The Bothy - Grwyne Fawr

Four by eight I suppose
And folded in fraying paper
Lying spread like a body
On the floor
Peered over, not by surgeons
But would be explorers
Unfamiliar with its world
Laid bare

Sinkholes, abandoned quarries
Ridges and sheepfolds
And contours and grid-lines
Point the way…but today
A small black ink square,
Silent, like a mistake,
Pulled and pulled again until
Laces tied, my boots were on

Descending a narrow path
The bothy took shape
A bothy of ones:
One door, one window,
One small log burner
One table, one old chair,
One candle, and one mezzanine
Space for one or for two

Home. A heaven of sorts.
At least for the night
Graffiti illuminated by a candle
Names of lovers, and dates
And a shelf of generosity
A tin of baked beans, firelighters,
Wood left by the burner
A spade, quite clean, and a rusty saw.

And a blessing, in brass, nailed
In honour of a Clive Roberts
Mwynhewch y fangre, hon, fel y Gwnaeth Yntau
‘May you enjoy this place as he did’
With the trickle of Gwyne Fawr,
The unsteady light of the moon,
Flickering flames of a candle and the fire:
The night is yours.

Running Blog - November 29th 2022

Fog

Cumberland Basin, Hotwells 7 am

An aborted early morning training attempt, following the Bristol 10K route.

Perhaps the main story isn’t the 64-year-old, inappropriately dressed all in black running in the dark, early morning, pre-dawn dense fog, but the fog itself.

I do like a good fog. None more so than when the pools of light cascading down from the street lighting catches a sort of avant-garde, jazz-like, Parisienne cum Whitechapel murders feel - difficult, isn’t it to quite put your finger on it.

I do like a good fog

Car headlamps and bike flashing lights loom from a distance like blurred candles and somehow the sound of traffic is dulled and, maybe, moving slower. I certainly was.

Sadly, another part of my athletic frame decided it wanted to get home early for a hot shower. Perhaps in years gone by I would have ploughed on to achieve my aim…to make 10Ks my usual training run and 5Ks more of a speed thing. Ha! One thing after another vies to be the preeminent cause of setbacks. This time it was the right hip that put in its protest in triplicate, and I bowed to its demands.

Cumberland Basin, Hotwells…towards Avonmouth

One day soon though, it’ll be a 10K Champagne Day, and we’ll see, scientifically, statistically, and psychologically just how close I am to ‘the line of improvement’ homing-in, as I am, on the qualifying time for Paris ’24.

In the meantime, is it not time for St George to slay a Dragon in Qatar?

Showdown 7pm.

Reluctant Leaders and Wounded Healers - Part III Name Changing

I’ve known three people who have elected to change their names. Maybe four.

Firstly, a friend who had been away from school for a few weeks, I presumed either on holiday or ill, returned with a new surname. I knew him as Anthony (Tony) Nurse. On return he explained it wasn’t working for his dad, a doctor, to be called ‘Doctor Nurse’. The second was a man who had a sex-change operation. I can’t remember his first name, but maybe Bernard had become Barbara. And, lastly, a lady who needed a fresh start after a troubled past, changed her name, twice.

Biblically, God changes the name of Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, Jacob to Israel, and Simon to Peter. Also, in Isaiah 62 God says of Israel ‘You shall be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord shall give’ and in Revelation ‘To him who overcomes…I will give…a new name’ Rev 2v17

This post is not a study on the meanings of the new names or explore why they were given. We may know for example that ‘Peter’ means ‘a rock’, but the point of the post is to try and imagine the day after Abram was re-named Abraham, or Sarai, or Jacob, or Simon:

‘Abram, would you mind moving your sheep?’
‘It’s Abraham now, not Abram.’
‘Oh? Who says?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Tell me later. But get those sheep…’

Hard enough for the recipient, Abram in this instance, to tell family, friends, and on. Hard for those around to take it seriously for a while. Over time, of course, everyone adjusts.

Biblically, the name is more than simply a name, and more than a humorous nickname. Names carried meaning and growing into the new meaning was what was at stake.

‘When Abram was ninety-nine years old the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations…’ Gen 17 v 1-27

Abram means ‘honoured’ or ‘exalted father’ but Abraham means ‘father of a multitude’ to reflect the covenant promises God made with Abram – see Gen 12/15/17. Abram and his wife, Sarai, were too old to have children, so for Abram and Sarai to use those names for themselves privately, but more so publicly, was to invite derision:

Then God said to Abraham, ‘As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.’ – Genesis 17:15-16

Making that transition requires a deep change of mind, of identity, and of faith for a future that is certain and yet unseen. Abram’s previous history is not obliterated, or untrue, or forgotten, or denied, but the new name represents a new identity. The previous identifiers are no longer at work. The future is defined by the new name. It takes time to fully adjust, and there may be crises that test one’s resolve and faith in the new name, but the new name is a reality that cannot be shaken.

One of Jesus’ disciples was a ‘zealot’, a ‘terrorist’ or a ‘freedom fighter’, depending on your conviction, but he laid this identity at the feet of Jesus who transformed him into an apostle of the gospel of grace

So it is for anyone who places their faith in Christ.

You could explain this bluntly: Jesus is Lord and you have realised this. He is risen from the dead and all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him. It follows then that your ‘identity’ is not something that you control anymore, He is Lord, and you are His servant. All our identifiers lie at His feet. We kneel before Him.

The problem with stating Christianity like this is not that it isn’t true, but that it presents ‘Lordship’ in the same vein as the autocratic dictators we roundly condemn in the world.

Following on from Reluctant Leaders and Wounded Healers Part II we see that, in fact, the person who places their faith and trust in Christ, does so because they see God’s love in action, principally in the cross, the crucifixion. That on the cross Jesus took all our sins and us as a substitutionary and inclusive sacrifice, and we have been raised ‘in Christ’.

To extend the picture with one further sentence: we were ‘in Adam’ and inherited our sinful nature from Adam, as if we had eaten the fruit in the garden. But now we are ‘in Christ’ and inherit everything that is in Him. Our previous identity is dead and buried. Our new identity, in Christ, is our true identity.

Our previous identifiers might include our nationality, or sexuality, or political affiliations, our occupations and so on. Just as Abram’s history was not obliterated, untrue, forgotten, or denied, the same is true for us.

But the critical transition is into the new name, the new identity. We leave our previous identifiers behind, Christ defines our life, indeed, He is our life (see Part II). That is partly why to say ‘I am a sinner saved by grace’ is incompatible with the gospel, and a contradiction in terms.

It is, of course, factually correct to say you were ‘in Adam’ and therefore a sinner, but now you are ‘in Christ’ and have become a ‘son of God’ in Him. That identity redefines our – to use the list above – our nationality, our sexuality, our political affiliations, and our occupations.

…we are citizens of heaven…

In very broad terms our nationality is redefined – we are citizens of heaven and our allegiance to the nation in which we have been born, and benefited from, is not forgotten, but is laid at His feet, for Him to use in our lives as He decides. My experience of this is limited. I was born in England, but my father was American, and my mother was English. During my childhood and teenage years, I alternated between wanting to be American or adopt dual citizenship, I spelt certain words like ‘centre’ as ‘center’ and so on. I became a Christian three weeks before my eighteenth birthday. I cannot explain it but receiving Christ changed my heart and my attitude and I have remained British. I love my links to America, but my first allegiance is to the Crown not the Stars and Stripes. Christ redefined my nationality.

Our sexuality is redefined by Christ. As in all other areas of life, He defines our sexuality. Our sexuality is no longer based on our opinions, preferences, or social norms. The Spirit of God ‘writes His laws on our hearts and causes us to walk in His ways’.

Political affiliations also are laid at His feet. He may return you to a life in politics, of course. But He will shape not only our intellectual persuasions but also our attitudes. We may oppose a particular policy but the way we garner support is radically altered. We find the means do not justify the ends, and our revolutionary zeal will not justify oppression as it once might have done. One of Jesus’ disciples was a ‘zealot’, a ‘terrorist’ or a ‘freedom fighter’, depending on your conviction, but he laid this identity at the feet of Jesus who transformed him into an apostle of the gospel of grace.

Lastly, our occupations. You’re introduced to someone you haven’t met, and you start talking. It won’t be long before you are asked ‘And what do you do?’ Of course, you may well answer this as ‘I’m an optician’, ‘actor’, ‘IT consultant, and so on. But inside you know your eternal occupation/identity is as ‘a son of God’. And, like Jesus, you say ‘I only do what my father in heaven is doing’. You are not defined by your 9-5.

It is from this community of redefined disciples, each of whom is adjusting to life ‘in the Name of Jesus’, that some emerge as leaders. Any one of them carries with them a history, their personal history, which is now placed in His hands. Saul/Paul laid down his defining pathway as a militant Pharisee at Jesus’ feet and was redefined as the apostle to the Gentiles, Peter, also, the rough fisherman from Galilee, grew into his new identity in Christ…not without some reversals at times (an encouragement to us all!), Mary Magdalene, who’s life had been devastated with seven demons, now released…the list is long and extends through the centuries to this day. All wounded in some way by sin, failure, weakness…all wounded healers in Christ.

Reluctant? Maybe due to a residual sense of unworthiness, but more likely a knowing that you are inadequate for the task, have no aptitude…and yet, inside, somehow you know that this is the next step and that the key is, like everything else, to trust God for the adequacy and the ability.

Remember Abram and Sarai, all hopes of having children long since evaporated. Physically incapable. And completely inadequate to be a ‘father’ and ‘mother’ of a multitude of nations. Your calling may not be as dramatic, but it will have features that, to you, are of the same order.

That’s it. My thanks to Rob Bell for his podcast that mentioned ‘Reluctant Leaders’ and to N.T. Wright for his phrase ‘Wounded Healers’. It’s entirely your doing that I felt compelled to write these three posts!

And if you are teetering on the edge - whether to take that step towards a leadership role, lay it all at Jesus’ feet. It’s not a bad place to start.