Vicar's Sofa - The Deep Pull

One of the strange by products of having a baby has been having a sort of sabbatical from all the normal things that make up my life. As the dust begins to settle, and by dust I mean baby induced chaos, it almost feels like there is a clean slate in front of me. What things that made up life before do I want, even need, to pick up again? And as time is shorter than ever before, what is really important enough to get a slot in my post baby life?

What I have really noticed is that there are some things that are so important, so much a part of who I am, that they have an overwhelmingly deep pull drawing me back to them. I first recognized this feeling, perhaps quite understandably given my job(!), in church. There was something about coming back to those familiar words that I have said so many times before that spoke to something very deep in me. I hadn't even know that I missed it, I hadn't really had time, and yet I felt like something in me that runs deeper than my own thoughts was satisfied. A need I hadn't even articulated to myself was met.

As I mentioned in my last post I am also still very much crafting away post baby. I think I realised within about a week how important getting back to sewing was for me. I wonder if this is to do with sewing being something for me where I lose myself, enter 'flow' I think psychologists call it. Church for me often clarifies things, or challenges me but sewing is the way in which I escape all thoughts except 'this button with that' or 'how to do the maths to make that skirt fit just right'. Suddenly hours have gone by and I still have to drag myself away.

Making clothes might not seem like the most important thing in the world when there is so much else demanding your time. But sometimes I wonder if the really important things might not look like important things from the outside. Babies are great at teaching you how to waste time graciously. How to appreciate that the great big list of accomplishments that we all tote around with us might not be all that important after all. That the most important thing might be just being with someone or doing something creative just because.

I suppose the things with a deep pull are the things that make you whet you are, that draw out something fundamental about you that needs to be expressed. Whether that be your beliefs, your gifts, your passions or a combination of all three and many more besides. I think sometimes what has a deep pull on you might take you by surprise. It might be something that you discovered that you loved almost by chance. Its power might surprise you over and over again in the most wonderful way.

So what things for you have a deep pull?  

Vicar's Sofa - Easter, I'm Just Not Over It

A few years back I tried to buy some mini eggs on Easter Sunday but was told by the shop keeper that 'Easter is over', as if I was some sad hanger on still singing Jingle Bells in January. This particularly drives me a bit crazy with Easter because the run up to Easter has, of course, been Lent. As soon as the moment of celebration and indulgence arrives on Easter Sunday it is pronounced over. How unfair is that? Not least because of the mini egg sitch!

Where have all the Mini Eggs gone?!

Weirdly enough church sort of does that too and I've never really gotten that. We spent forty days, quite rightly, thinking about the journey of Lent and reflecting on some of the tougher points of life as we follow the story of Jesus on his way to the cross. This is all incredibly meaningful and has allowed me to bring all my fears and worries and pains directly to God and without fail receive comfort.

 But the story doesn't end there and the overwhelming story of Christianity is one of hope. Jesus doesn't stay locked in the tomb and we don't have to stay locked in our darkness. There is light, there is life, there is joy, there is hope, there is beauty - and celebrating Easter is all about that.

A pic I took a while back - Let the Light In!

The Easter season actually lasts for forty day but it rarely seems to be marked that much. I get so excited about it and find it such a refreshing time that I wander round with a spring in my step and a big old grin on my face. I think people probably think I'm a bit odd (not least because of the grin!) wandering round in this thoroughly festive mood when everyone else has gotten over it already.

I once read a book by a Bishop who suggested we ought to pop the champagne and have a glass a day throughout this season, it should be such a joyous time. As much as I'd love that my bank balance, nor current condition, don't really lend themselves to that just now. But I have been using this time as space to deliberately enjoy and focus on all the wonderful things of life and to reflect on the meaning of Easter in my own life right now.

And for me Easter really is about that, about life. The story of the resurrection is about the unwavering, unstoppable, unquenchable power of life. And being a person of faith is about seizing that life, loving it, upholding it in all that you do.

I have been reading a set of reflection each morning in this season by Paula Gooder called The Risen Existence – The Spirit of Easter and one that really struck me early on was one in which the question was asked 'How can I bring life in this situation?' That strikes me as the true spirit of Easter and a great way to joy and freedom and life to the full. Seeking life, loving life, growing life wherever we can. This has prompted me to do things that I wouldn't have otherwise like twin my pregnancy with a woman in Malawi with Chasing Zero and take long walks in the park in the sunshine.

So even though the rest of the world might think it is over I still say Happy Easter! And may the season bring life abundant to you.

This Small World

Last time I wrote I mentioned that I had spent most of the Christmas season in hibernation mode. A huge amount happened over Christmas, so many firsts at work as I led service for the first time, preached a Christmas day sermon and sung more carols in the space of a few days than I thought possible.

Working in church means six days weeks in the same community and I find that my life operates around much smaller area than it did before. These few streets and these few places. Learning how the church looks though the seasons, how the sun hits the stained glass at certain times of day and transforms it. I'm home more too. Life now blends into a whole rather than being separated into portions that can be neatly labelled 'work' and 'home'.

Besides this natural drawing inward from a new working life I've also been unwell in January so the hibernation of the Christmas season hasn't really ended yet. As a natural activist I can find this frustrating. What I usually get through in a week (work, blogging, family time, catching up with friends, cooking, sewing etc etc) has become somewhat impossible. I've been good for little more than curling up in a ball and waiting for the next episode on Netflix.

I recently visited a friend though (Hey Clare, if you are reading!) whose words have been so helpful to me in this time. When talking about being limited in the things we can do she said 'Well there are worse things that sitting under a duvet all day watching telly.' as I settled down with a chocolate pud and the latest episode of the Good Wife this week on an exhausted afternoon I remembered her words and they made me smile.

I'd love to say all this drawing inward has made me see the world around me with a new passion. That I appreciate the clarity of the sun on a clear morning with a renewed perspective or something. The reality is that it can be boring to be restricted when you are someone who loves an adventure.

 

But there is some truth in the thought that your world, however small, is what you make it. That half an hour with the sun streaming through the window reading a magazine in bed can be supremely satisfying. And that there is so much to notice, so much to be absorbed in, even in a small world if we have the eyes for it.

So that's my small news this January. Love and greeting from this little corner of the world to yours!

2015 – How was yours?

I love Instagram. The other night as I was snuggled up under a blanket on my aforementioned giant and cosy chair and I was flicking through some of my snaps and saw what a great record it has made of the last year. And not just the big things that we tend to remember but also the little things that really make a day at the time.

Little things like biscotti making. A great day!

2015 saw the founding of the sewing corner!

Things like my ‘Curry Resolution’ last January which has to be one of my only New Year’s Resolutions to be a resounding success. I now wiz up curries like a pro! Or things like my first attempt at baking macarons and biscotti. Little things that you really would forget in the midst of the busyness of life if there weren’t a little record of it to flick back through.

One of my first curries and still one of my favourites

2015 has really been an extraordinary year. A few weeks back I said to my husband, ‘this has been the best and the worst year!’ and it really had been. Insanely tricky at times and very challenging indeed, but absolutely full of the best surprises too. 

A trip to Crete

As I flicked back through my pictures I realised that I have managed to rack up a trip to Paris, Crete and Prague, a graduation, finishing training, moved house, was ordained, learned to dress-make and starting my first church job! Not a bad list really! Starting work at church has had a whole truck load of firsts to add to the list, first baptism, first funerals, first ‘ordained sermon’! I have ended the year in a very different place to where I started but with a sincere sense of gratitude for a year of adventure that will live on its effects for many years to come.

Starting ordained life off right at the summer fair!

In all this I have wondered about the nature of the ‘good year’. That’s what we all hope for as the clock strikes 12, isn’t it? That this year will be better than the one before, that this will be ‘our’ year. There is something nice about that. Always striving to get more out of life, to challenge ourselves and broaden our horizons. 

But the reality is that the good and the bad is so often intertwined. It can be so well laced together that it is impossible to pick apart. The best things rarely come in easy to manage packages. If something is going to make you say ‘Wow, I did that!’ at the end of the year then it is unlikely to come without some struggle and a few tears alone the way. 

Someone I read recently put it like this, in life there is death and is death there is life. As we look back on some of the hardest times in life they can be the place from which new life has sprouted up, the places that have generated real change. Likewise the truly life giving moments are caught up in struggle too.

And ending the year with baubles a plenty!

So perhaps I won’t look for a ‘good’ year this year, as strange as that maybe sounds. Perhaps instead I will look for a year well lived, in whatever comes. And here is wishing you the same for a brand new year about to open up before us. Happy New Year to you all. 

Faith for the Fainthearted - The Church, Part 2.

Last week we spoke about what some of the costs and benefits of being part of a Church might be. The opportunity for community, for spiritual and mental growth, space for you and a place to love and be loved. This, is weighed up against how flippin' annoying church can be sometimes and that, like an human institution, it can get it spectacularly wrong sometimes. You don't need examples, I know you have seen it all before. But for me, the vision of what it could be has tipped the balance and I am committed to it (God help me!) but getting to this place has been no easy journey let me tell you!

Because even if that vision of church as community hub and spiritual watering hole sounds fantastic to you then unfortunately the situation in the church today is such that just wandering in might be a rather difficult thing for you to do. I often joke with a friend of mine who also came to church in later life that being an adult coming into the church rather than being raised in it, is like being an alien landing on Planet Christian. You don't speak the same language, for a good proportion of the time you have no idea what is going on and when you do finally get what is going on you are always the one saying 'Do we have to do it like that?' and that can be an interesting person to be!

The Church, in all generations, has been given the task of making God, faith, the whole shebang, make sense to the people of its time. Sometimes the church is really great at that. Sometimes, and I wonder if we are in one of the times, it is a bit rubbish really and the whole thing can get a bit mysterious. In a bad way.

If you have not been raised going to church and therefore have learned the lingo then you will struggle to even decode the service board to know what on earth you should expect of any of these things let alone knowing when you should stand up or sit down or say something in the service itself. This, I must stress, is entirely not your fault and I think is rather unfair really.

A huge part of the responsibility for rectifying this lies with the Church and I am hugely passionate about that. Because underneath those layers of what at times can seem like impenetrable 'Church Culture' is a two thousand year old heritage full of richness and beauty and wealth. Underneath it all is a place where I have discovered life, hope and been changed for the better and I am not the only one. I really, really, really hope that the Church of this generation will do something about making these riches accessible to people today.

But that doesn't mean that Church is a closed door to those of us who come into it with no prior experience. We have many advantages. Not being raised in a tradition or even in a religion means that we are not wedded to a particular way of doing things. This means that you can try out a whole range of styles without prejudice and preconception. I have been part of churches with a stage and a band up front and ones with incense and hundreds of years old services. I loved them both. Us newbies can be intrepid explorers of the spiritual landscape, going into territory that others find it deeply uncomfortable to go.

And as explorers we are also questioners. The church needs people who ask 'Why?' A LOT. Never be afraid to ask why things are as they are, or what things mean. You may uncover for other people the gaps in their own knowledge which may start them off on their own voyage of discovery. Celebrate your role as a challenger and don't be afraid of what you don't know. A lot of people in Church don't really know either, they have just grown too afraid to ask. Be an Asker!

And I also hope this blog can be a place for the spiritual explorer to find support and companions on the way.In the next post I will do a little decoding for you on what some of the Church lingo you might encounter really mean. And if you do have any questions you can contact me with any questions under the 'Want to Chat?' Button above or through Facebook or Twitter. I'd love to run a retreat one day for all of us explorers to come together and support and learn from one another. So wherever you are on your own spiritual journey, take heart and be bold. It really is well worth it!

Faith for the Fainthearted - The Church, Part 1

Ah, Church..... I say that in a similar tone to how you might say 'Ah, extended family gatherings'. We all (or most of us at any rate!) love our families in all their weird and wonderfulness and have all sat through an afternoon with a particular group of relatives that we wouldn't care to repeat in too much of a hurry. That, after all, is what Christmas is for, right?! And why we are all a little bit grateful that it comes but once a year!

Church, like family, has many good things about it. When you are part of a church if you have a baby you suddenly have twenty additional grandparents to coo over your offspring. There are people to talk to about all sorts of things, people to pray for you and listen to your thoughts and feelings. There is a support network for when things get tough.

Church offer you a space to think about the bigger questions of life, a guaranteed space out from the busyness of life each week to recharge, reset and get ready for a new week ahead. If they are doing it right then Church is a place to challenge you, where you can learn and grow and attend to the whole spectrum of who you are spiritually and mentally. Our church even has a dieting group and yoga so they can sort you out physically as well!!

However Churches, like families, are also occasionally a pain in your neck. They squabble, they fall out, the say annoying things to you, they fail you, the do the wrong thing, they let you down. Being in church is not always easy. It takes up time when you could be enjoying a nice hot chocolate and a muffin in a coffee shop with things like finance meetings. You end up going out on evenings you would rather stay in and getting out of bed when you'd rather have a lie in.

It would be out and out lie for me to say that going being part of a church would make your life easier. It more than likely won't. But, as life goes on, I come more and more to realise that the easy things in life are often the least valuable. Everything worth having takes work and perseverance. Everything that means something has the potential to let you down. There is no love without the possibility of heartbreak. There is no Church without the chance of it going wrong and no community without sacrifice.

Church is a very human institution and it has all the failings you would expect from any organization where a whole group of people attempt to work together. But I do believe that it has the potential to be something rather extraordinary in our lives and communities. There is nothing like standing next to your actual, real neighbour and praying 'Forgive me for I have not loved my neighbour as myself.'

And there is nothing like sitting in a Church building, as I regularly do, and see every sector of the community passing through from the Toddlers group for playtime, to the homeless for a meal, to a group from the Mosque popping in for lunch, to someone popping in to light a candle for a lost loved one. Church can be a hub of life, a place for all people in whatever circumstance. Being part of that means you live and work alongside a vastly bigger cross section of people in your area and that is truly wonderful.

So that's the vision, and is what gets me out of bed in the morning. But how, if that takes your fancy, do you even begin to get involved in these often old and mysterious places? How do you even know which church to go to? And what on earth is going on when you actually do brave it and go along to a service? Never fear I've been there and that is where the next post comes in - my insiders guide on how on earth to get to grips with church for the absolute beginner!

Faith for the Fainthearted - Are you there God? It's Me, Nicola

As I have progressed through this little series thinking a bit about some questions of faith and spirituality it struck me that the one thing I haven't really spoken about is the existence of God. Quite an oversight! Perhaps this is because the belief in God is something that is such a bedrock in my life.
Like the ground beneath your feet you don't think much about it. It is just there.

But I am also one of these strange people who went from not believing in God on the Friday and changing my mind by the Saturday, literally over night. Since then life has been a bit like God on Surround Sound but I still remember what it was like before I thought what I thought now. I know and understand the questions. I've walked the path.

And so the first thing I want to say on this matter is that no one can tell you for sure whether God does or does not exist. Sounds obvious perhaps but I remember when that dawned on me for the first time and how liberating a thought that was. This means that there is nothing you can read that will tell you, definitively, that God is there and there is nothing that you will read that can tell you, for sure that God isn't there either. No one can answer that question for you conclusively, I'm afraid, but that means the journey, the path and the choice is yours. And that is pretty cool, right?

That is not to say that I think we may as well all come up with whatever we fancy and expect others to merrily take on board whatever we have concocted up. For me the case for God is about plausibility. It is about arguments and experiences that ring true. We each have to weigh up all that we see around us, all that we think and experience, pop it in the scales and see how it comes out.

This, I think, involves the insights of the generations that have gone before us and the huge variety of cultures and beliefs in the world today. This choice may be our own but the journey is not a solitary pursuit. It is not enough to sit in a bubble like the 'See No Evil, Hear No Evil' monkeys with your eyes and ears stopped claiming a belief in something that you won't explore and question. That kind of belief is like the house built on sand that washes away when the rains come. And it can be pretty dangerous too.

So what have I got in my scales that has tipped the balance in favour of God? A few things really. Let's start small first. A big factor is people. I find people to be the most fascinating, infuriating and glorious of things. The idea that we are created, that our lives are meaningful and purposeful, that we have the capacity for great good and great evil is all something that just makes an awful lot of sense to me as I look at the world. I believe human life to be infinitely valuable, I know it to be. So it is no great leap for me to see someone, something behind our being here.

The Second things is on a somewhat grander more cosmic scale. When I think about the world, that we are all on this spinning ball of rock, orbiting around a ball of fire, surrounded by other balls of rock in a galaxy amid galaxies more vast that my imagination can hold, then the idea of God suddenly doesn't seem so outlandish.

This might make me sound like a simpleton but I find it hard to believe that we are really all living on that spinning rock in space. I know that my mind struggles anything that isn't right in front of my face. So the idea of 'God', a force so large, something behind it all? Well, that doesn't seem any less plausible or more hard to believe that the things that I know are true about the universe.

On earth itself I also see something in the natural world that hints at God. The way that a drive towards life seems hard wired into how the world is. How, wherever the circumstances allow it, life springs up in its infinite variety. That anywhere, at any time, if the conditions allow it, life will emerge. What is that all about? It is like life itself is an unstoppable force that just pushes on and on. For me, Life = the essence of God. So this powerful impetus towards life in the universe speaks volumes to me.

And then I consider our reaction to all that we see around us. I consider things like beauty. Why do we feel, in the depth of our beings, such a deep contented connection with the natural world? What is this seemingly innate capacity to feel wonder and awe that allows us to say 'Now that is beautiful'?

And while we're at it, where does a sense of love and truth, rightness and justice come from? The way we strive to live our lives, our greatest ideals, makes me believe in God. I know that as I commit to ideals that are often a huge inconvenience to me, like loving others as I love myself and serving without hope of gain, that something inside me is set free and soars. What is that all about?!

And lastly (for this little list at least!) there is experience. There is the comfort I have felt, the steady rock beneath my feet when my whole world has felt like it was crumbling. There are the stirrings in my heart that I have followed, questioning them all the way, that have proved to be exactly the right thing for me to do when I didn't even believe it myself. There is the record of God in my life that now

sits behind me like most whacking great piece of evidence in the world.

 

What can I say except deep down I feel I know God and that in many ways I always have, even when I didn't even think I believed. There is a joy in me and a hope in me that is not of my own making. There is a drive that I did not create. And all that, to me, just spells God.

 

And that is why I believe.

Vicar's Sofa - Curate's First Christmas

Well deck the halls with boughs of holly and shower me with glitter, how exciting is it that Advent is here? I am particularly excited because this is my first ordained Christmas. And I LOVE Christmas. No, seriously, I really, really LOVE Christmas!

There is something about this time of year that is so completely magical. It's not just that spending inordinate amounts of time snuggled up under a blanket with a tub of Celebrations is seen as perfectly normal. Or that such culinary wonderments as mince pies and mulled wine emerge (here is my top recipe for Christmas cake too btw!), but it is also the sheer hopefulness of the season that gets me.

I've written before about how much of my own story is tied to Christmas. It was during Advent that I first explored faith for the first time and it was on Christmas eve that I prayed my first tentative prayer. It really was a time where the world felt different to me. And for that to happen when you are surrounded by glitter and tinsel and outdoor ice rinks, well, it was magical.

 

Over the years Advent has retained this magical feeling for me. It has remained a time where I feel renewed and hopeful. When the world is getting busy and frantic Advent for me has been a time to slow down. It has often been a time of exploration and that exploration has brought new beginnings. It has also been a time, even in difficult years, of finding (as one of my favourite bible readings says) 'that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.'

 

Of course Christmas is the perfect time for a crafter and this year I will be putting my new found sewing skills to use by making the dress I am going to wear to deliver the Christmas Day sermon at Church. I can't tell you how happy this makes me. To be standing up there doing the thing that I love most in the world and doing it wearing a tartan shift dress put together (however dodgily!) by me.

 

So this year is one special Christmas for me. I've got my Knitivity all set up to remind me every day of the reason for the season and I'm shamelessly working my way through that tub of Celebrations. And I am also sending up a prayer for all of you, my lovely blog readers and Twitter friends. May Advent bring you all you hope for and your Christmas be full of joy.

Faith for the Fainthearted - Prayer 101

What are your earliest memories of prayer? For many of us it is sitting cross legged on the cold floor of the school hall, eyes squeezed shut as we mumble out the Lord's prayer. These are my early memories. That and being in a big, dark church and just finding it all a bit creepy really. I was, and have remained, someone who prefers to be 'out there'. Who is much more likely to experience something beyond myself when out and about, looking at the world, feeling that rhythm of life all around me.

So the idea of prayer for me as a boxed up, contained thing that you do with certain words attached to it has always been a bizarre one. No, prayer for me has been more like that moment on a cool crisp morning, when you are walking up the street and fill your lungs with that cool air and say to in your heart 'I am so glad to be alive'. That is a prayer of thankfulness. Or prayer is the moment when bent over the sink doing the dishes I say 'God, what should I do about this situation?' and let the possibilities flow as I stack up the clean plates.

Because God, (surprise, surprise!) is everywhere. I believe and find God to be in my waking, my sleeping, my thinking, my doing, my past, my future and very much in my present. God, I find, in the birds, in the sunshine, in the air I breathe, in the eyes of those around me, in laughter, in joys and in sorrows.

There is God, underneath it all, like a steady heartbeat that I feel and hear in every part of my life. So I makes sense to me that prayer is something to be unleashed onto the whole of life rather than contained in specific moments. Prayer in this way is an attitude, a constant connection, a living of life in the presence and guidance of that God who is everywhere and in everything.

That's not to say that moments where your entire attention are on God and you retreat to just the quiet inside yourself are not important. This is where things get trickier for me. I am such an active person that sitting in silence for any length of time is difficult because I am always thinking about the next thing I want to do. But when I do it, which I schedule in for myself a couple of times a week, I am nearly always surprised and bowled over by what comes to me. A sense of peace, yes, but also many times a feeling of deep conviction about what I ought to do or how I might see my situation in a new way.

And praying for others, well that really is a transformatory thing. Try this one on for size, try asking for as many blessings as you can imagine for someone who annoys you or has upset you. It is incredibly freeing and I've found it shift the dynamic of my relationships many times. Praying for the community and the world is part of life working for a local church and I really treasure it. It remind me every day that my part in the world is so very small, that life is so very fragile and to look outside of myself to the situation of others. It challenged that reflex to be all about me and my world and draws me outside of myself.

For all its benefits, though, perhaps one of the trickiest things we find hard to get to grips with is that prayer is not like a vending machine. You don't pop a prayer in and out comes your tasty treat. I tried that out when I was five asking for a bag of hot chips and I can tell you it doesn't appear to work like that! Logically we know that if every prayer was answered the world would be a very different (and perhaps very odd!) place indeed. It wouldn't even be possible for every individuals prayer to be answered when so many conflicting, and perhaps sometimes unwise, prayers are prayed every day.

Recently as I have been praying about one particular issue in my life I have been struck by the feeling that God may not be answering my prayer because he is answering someone else's and logically I know that these two things can't happen at once. Does that make sense? I don't know, but sometimes I wonder if that is how it is. If I am being told gently and quietly to just hold on because in the chain reaction of events linked to everything that happens there is someone who really needs to be heard and for things to come together in their favour.

The life of prayer can certainly be mysterious. I have had so many prayers answered and yet sometimes it is those big one, those great whopping burdens of life, that never seem to be relieved. In all of that, though, I have found that one prayer never fails to be answer and that is this, 'Be with me, hold me up, be my rock' and its close neighbour 'Guide me, direct me, keep me strong.' That, for me, is the true beauty and wonder of prayer - its ability to keep you going on life's journey, to travel through its difficulties and to fully appreciate its joys.

Faith for the Fainthearted - That Big 'Ol Book

One of the most common things I hear from people when I talk to them about the Bible is the line 'Yes, I tried to read the Bible. I started at Genesis and gave up somewhere amongst the laws about mildew in Leviticus'. A part of me always wants to bang my head on the table at this point and say 'Well of course you gave up, who wouldn't!' and then press a reading plan into the their hand which skips all the mildew bits for now and gets straight to all the cool bits like King David, the prophets and all the amazingly smart things Jesus said.

The Bible is certainly not an easy thing to just dive into, and even less so to just open up and begin reading. Because it is less a single book and more a collection of books. It is like a library held deceptively between two covers. And more than that the books of the Bible span millennia in terms of the time they were written and the events that they tell us about. More than that each of these little books in the library is slightly different.

There are different genres to be found: history books, law books, poetry books, philosophy and biography. To name but a few, the books are influenced by contact with ancient Egypt, ancient Greek philosophy, Roman occupation, experience of exile, rural living in the Middle East and life in the court of the King. No wonder that getting to grips with something like this is somewhat more of a challenge than picking up your average book.

 

But it is also this scope and breadth that makes the Bible so interesting for me. It is fascinating to see how different people in ages well before you own have viewed the world. To see what it is that they have considered to be good or inspiring and compare it to your own time and your own beliefs and values.

 

For me, this is what the Bible is, an account of people's dealings with God down the ages which, though written in many different human voices, has something of a golden thread running through it. There emerges through these different writers a growing sense about who and what God might be and that is fascinating to watch unfold.

 

I don't believe that everything anyone has ever said that has now been recorded in the Bible is a record of what God wants or approves of. Reading the Bible isn't an exercise in blind acceptance of the absurd or what is plainly wrong like the Old Testament land grabs in the name of God. The Bible is an evolving account of a nations quest to understand and make sense of God. Sometimes they reach glorious heights and sometimes dismal lows. It is a book that is at times so plainly human and at other times so intriguingly divine.

 

But this shouldn't surprise us really as the Bible in many ways offers an internal critique of itself. One set of ideas is presented and then another writer comes along who says 'Well, that is all very well but what about this?' or who challenges some of the underlying assumptions of generations gone past. Jesus does this A LOT. When he talks about parts of the Old Testament he says 'You have heard it said, but I tell you...' He is evaluating, critiquing and reframing the teaching of the Old Testament for his day.

 

So I suppose what I am saying in a rather long winded way is not to be afraid of the Bible, to see it as something to tussle with and question as well as learn from and be inspired by. There is a lot to be inspired by. I believe that there is a vision for humanity in those pages that I have never seen bettered anywhere else.

 

I am constantly drawing from the Bible for a huge range of aspect of my life. It is a treasury of hard won wisdom of generations before us. Tussle with it, I say because, that for me has been the a path which uncovers riches in this amazing text that you might never have imagined you would find.

Want to get started?

If you fancy starting out with the Bible then one book I would really recommend is The Book of God by Walter Wangerin. It is basically a novel of the Bible which helps to put all of the details of the books of the Bible in the order in which they happened and make some sense of the historical context. I'd read it with a Bible next to you to read stories that interest you for yourself but having this framework might just be the start of some interesting explorations.

 

This is the second post in the Faith for the Fainthearted series, see the other posts here.

Faint for the Fainthearted: The J Word Part 2

In last weeks post I did that toe curlingly awkward thing in our culture and decided to talk to you about the J Word. Yup, it's Jesus! Because as I mentioned when I set about writing this series on Faith for the Faint-hearted I realised quickly that there was little I could say about life, faith, spirituality, self esteem, the world, the universe and everything without talking about Jesus. And today, buckle up, we are going to get pretty deep. We really are talking life, death and everything!

So here we in Part 2 which, as I alluded to in the last post, is all about some of the loftier claims that Christians make for Jesus. What the story of Jesus can't do, I'm afraid, is give up a nice 'Be positive and everything will be ok' approach to the world because, well, it doesn't portray the world in that way at all. What the story of Jesus doesn't do is make any promises to you that life is going to be ok, that you will have all the things you hope for or even that it will be that comfortable. I'm really selling this aren't I?

 

Because the story of Jesus, though it begins with and is suffused with such joy and hope, ends in death and a pretty violent one at that. It seems to me that we do a pretty good job in our culture of living as if we never die. As I become more and more acquainted with death in my work life I am fast becoming one of those people no on wants at a dinner party, chatting away about whether burial or cremation is more preferable. At which point my companions are like 'Errr....calm down and pass the peas...'

 

But death is a reality, darkness is a reality. Some people are born into such excruciating poverty that any worldview which has nothing to say to that has very little to offer in my view. Jesus' story is one that says, in his own words, you are blessed when you mourn and you will be comforted, the weak will become strong, there is hope in this world that can be so desperate at times. It recognised evil and it recognises good in a dramatic and in you face kind of way but that is really what I like about it.

 

And what of this hope I mention? This perhaps the more radical thing to justify given how the world is. Well it stems from that rather bold claim I dropped in at the end of the last post - that Jesus is God come to be with us. Taking our on our human life so that we can see the way to live, yes, but also to reconcile this broken and hurting world to the source of all goodness, light, health and healing which is God.

For the Christian what we are missing in this world is God. Because where God is there is no darkness, there is only light; there is no death, there is only life. God is the source of life, the creator and sustainer of all that is beautiful and true and good in this world and the point of Jesus' life and death is to bring us into that life of God, so close that it infuses our whole life, everything we are and everything we will be. This transforms life right here, right now and gives us hope whatever the darkness around us.

But yes, this comes through death. Perhaps it might help to think of it like this. In dying on the cross God experiences death. Imagine that, the source of all life experiencing death, just imagine that for a moment. This unthinkable possibility is real, we say, because of God's deep and unwavering love for humanity which is so vast that he would go to these lengths to overcomes death and to bring us into life, fully restored, again.

 

In this way comes a major building block of the way I see the world me. Yes, death and pain and suffering is 100% real, not to be ignored and impossible to avoid, but also that love overcomes all of these things and that love is the greatest power there is. Marcus Braybrooke puts it like this 'Love which through suffering absorbs evil and is completely vulnerable is of its very nature indestructible. Such love cannot be defeated by evil and death, whereas enmity eventually exhausts itself.'

 

I don't have all the answers to why the universe is as it is, why the world is so desperately unfair. But in the story of Jesus I see God's intervention, that he can't stand it either and has stepped in to change it. And I also see something which I know to be true. That in life there is that golden thread of goodness and of light as well as that darkness and death. And that golden thread of goodness and light is so glorious that I can quite easily believe that, after all, love really does win.

So there we go, bit more than you bargained for with your morning brew eh? Don't worry, next time we will be exploring the completely uncontroversial topic of the Bible! ;)

Faith for the Fainthearted - The J Word

'Lorelia: I need to talk to you about the J word...

Rory: Oh no, not Jesus. I'm sick of him and Mel Gibson'

- Gilmore Girls

It is pretty much a fact universally acknowledged in our society today that the way to kill the atmosphere of an evening dead is to start talking about religion or politics. Let's be honest, even worse would be to mention the 'J Word' in any other context than swearing. I wonder if it is because we have been bashed around the head sideways with the name. I have certainly met people who feel that way.

Perhaps it is because when the J Bomb is dropped you can bet the conversation is set to stray into seriously awkward territory. It always seem to begin with a litany of all the failings you didn't even realise you had and end with 'but don't worry Jesus loves you anyway'. My pre-faith experience of conversations like this were one of total bemusement and, where possible, complete avoidance.

 

So I give you this caveat to this piece now. It's not going to get awkward and I'm not going to list all the things Jesus is waggling his finger at you about from his heavenly home. That's just not how I see it. But there is really little I can say about the life of faith without talking about Jesus and I'm not embarrassed to. He is the lynch pin in the whole endeavour for me and nothing in my faith makes much sense without reference to him. Whether it is questions of self esteem, purpose in life, ethics or why the world is as it is there is nothing that I believe that doesn't have some basis in Jesus.

I remember first reading the stories of Jesus in the New Testament convinced that I knew it all and that it was a pointless exercise and being what I can only describe as captivated by this character whose energy seemed to sing off the pages. That feeling hasn't really loosened in the ten years since then. I remember being sceptical about the Bible, who even wrote this stuff anyway? And yet quickly feeling that wherever this came from and whomever put the words to paper (or parchment in those days!) I wanted to know more. A lot more.

One of the greatest things for me about Jesus is that he is bit, well, unlikely. He isn't impressive. A big deal is made of the fact that his mother is young and unmarried and he is born, quite literally, in a barn. Most of the people in authority don't think much of him. He isn't formally educated, he is a tradesman. He liked hanging out with all the dodgy people and went to parties and got called a 'glutton and a drunkard' (perhaps a tad unfairly!).

 

But he was also bloomin' clever and believe it or not, really quite funny. He spoke in a way people understood. He told them stories rather that presented them with a dissertation. When people tried to catch him out he quipped at them and flipped their assumptions upside down. It is like he had a way of looking at people and seeing to the heart of them, what they were really about, and in a seriously brilliant one liner bringing all of that to light.

And when you think about the Christian view of who Jesus was, well, it all starts to get a little bit crazy and a big bit wonderful. Here's the thing, we actually do think that Jesus was God come to us in a human form. I know, I know, call the men in white coats. But the logic is this - imagine there is a flu stuck in a glass jar and you want to help it escape.

 

If you, as a human being, open the jar and yell at the fly it isn't going to get you far and that fly is well and truly stuck, buzzing around like a crazy thing bashing its head against the glass. If, however, you could make yourself a fly too, just for a little bit, then you could fly out of the jar to show the stuck fly how.

 

That, terribly explained, is what the whole Jesus/God thing is about. God showing us the way to find a life of freedom and faith and love by coming to us in a form we can understand. Our own form. You can make of that what you will but you can see how the character of Jesus and the circumstances of his life suddenly take on a radical importance if that is what you believe.

 

Suddenly being weak in the world, or of low status or looked down upon for whatever reason isn't something to be ashamed of, it is something to be transcended. And, frankly, it is pretty darn awesome if God is as funny and compelling and quippy as Jesus is. That idea gives me a happy glow right down to my toes.

 

And then when you add in what we all know happened to Jesus and why as Christians we think that happened, well, then you have this insanely loving God and the transformation of everything it means to be a human and in pain. That's the point where, for me, my world view really flipped on its axis.

 

But that is next week....!



This post is part of the Faith for the Fainthearted Series, the last post was Faith, why Bother?

Vicar's Sofa - Faith, Why bother?

In my last post of this series on Faith for the Fainthearted I suggested that there are many, many things we might prefer to do than drag ourselves out of a warm bed on a cold Sunday and down to our local church or any other place of worship. As I write this I am sitting on a desktop PC at the back of my own cold church at just gone nine in the morning, giving myself a stern telling off for forgetting to bring an oversized cardigan with me to keep warm. And it is only October. Trust me, I know all about the loss of the Sunday lie in!

And of course it isn’t just the Sunday morning thing. What is the point of faith, of religion, of spirituality, of any of it when there are so many other ways to make your life rich and fulfilling. We live in a time where the opportunities really are endless. There are countless ways to be entertained, innumerable ways to bring joy to life and, if we are lucky, a wide range of family and friends to share it all with. The only thing we are perhaps poor on is time. So why, then, bother with one more thing?

 

Way before I considered myself a person of faith I had a conversation with a Christian friend where I asked her, with a heavy dose of scepticism, why she was a Christian. She responded with something that fascinated me, she said 'It makes life better.' This, I felt, was quite a bold claim, to say this so clearly and without qualification. It wasn't about a guilt trip or worrying about where you go when you die, it was about the here and now. This, I thought, was rather interesting.

 

A Christian writer, Richard Rohr, describes the life of faith like this

 

'Get ready for a great adventure, the one you were really born for. If we never get to our little bit of heaven, our life does not make much sense, and we have created our own 'hell'. So get ready for some new freedom, some dangerous permission, some hope from nowhere, some unexpected happiness, some stumbling stones, some radical grace, and some new and pressing responsibility for yourself and our suffering world.'

 

What strikes me here, and something that resonates with my own experience, is the sense of how a life that includes faith and spirituality is an adventure. It takes you in directions you could never have possibly imagined , it uncovers things that live deep down in you that you never thought were even there. Another writer that I love, Margaret Silf, describes our true self as like a deep river running in the core of us. The task of the life of faith is to get down into the deep river, that core of who we are, of who God intended and longs for us to be.

And that is liberating, it is worth it and it is, well, fun! It means your path in life is never sewn up. Your direction is never fixed. Your potential is never fully tapped. There is always more and more that right now you can’t even begin to predict. There have been so many incidents as I have walked this journey of faith where I have been making choices in my life on the basis of what I thought God was calling me to with a very real scepticism in my own heart. Ordination itself was one of those things. I once swore, after a bad experience working in a church, that I would never work for a church again. And yet there I was, with this gut pull towards a whole life working in the church.

 

No matter how many people told me that what I was doing seemed the right thing to them and no matter how many interviews I got through or criteria I ticked off I still found the whole thing extraordinary. I still do. I still marvel at the fact that I am here, in a place I would never, ever have put myself and that gut pull, that path of faith I have followed is being proved a safe and true one. I am becoming things I never thought I could be.

 

So why bother? Well, I suppose it depends what kind of life you are looking for. There really is plenty to do, your life can be meaningful and good without any of this. But if you have that yearning to go deeper, to discover something extraordinary in yourself and in the world. Well, then maybe this is the path for you. Maybe there is more, no matter what stage of life you are at. There is only one way to find out. Maybe it is time for a new adventure.

       

 

 

 

 

   

Vicar's Sofa - Faith for the Faint-hearted

I seem to have found myself in a rather difficult business. What I'm selling, a lot of people just ain't buyin' and I spend an awful lot of time wondering why that is so. Perhaps it is just out of fashion. There are a million and one things to do on a Sunday not to mention the sweet temptation of a lie in with the Sunday papers so why on earth would people go to church?

Perhaps it is the church itself, old fashioned, not for the young, stuck in the past as if we are all still in the 1950s frolicking about the green and pleasant land humming 'Jerusalem' to ourselves. Perhaps God really is dead and we have all moved on to more rational views of the world. That faith is just pie in the sky when you die and we are done with that, thanks very much.

But then moments happen to me like this week as I walked home from work. Someone stopped me, said he had never been into the church but he needed a prayer. More than that, he needed God. Some guidance...or something. And this happens all the time these searching people who do a double take when they see me in a collar or cross the road to ask me a question.

And then I have my own story, the reason that I am wearing a collar in the first place to be sopped in the street. That overwhelming experience that took me from agreeing with all of the above to being not just in church but at the front leading the flippin' thing.

I routinely find myself wondering what on earth I am doing. I haven't lost my desire for a lie in. I haven't become immune to some of the truly naff bits of church. But I have found something, under all that, that has given me life. There isn't really any other way to put it than that. It is like my spiritual heart has started beating, loud and true, right in the centre of me and it is giving life to every part of who I am.

And sometimes I wonder if the naffness and the difficulty and the plain obscurity of a lot of what the church does is part of the problem. The church has thousands of years of tradition and history and my goodness that is truly a wellspring of life if you dig down into it. It is riches beyond measure.

But it means that this is a great hulking ship that takes a long time to turn. Our society is moving on at the rate of knots and the church, quite frankly, is not keeping up. What scares me, deep down, is that people might be missing out on this joyful and life giving spiritual life that I know Christianity has to offer not because they don't want it but simple because the church is failing to explain itself in words that people can understand.

So that's why I want to write a new series for this blog. To do a bit of decoding, a spot of translation, to offer you something of what have been transformatory for me in my own words. And then, well, you can take or leave it. It is yours to reject or cherish. But if you are one of those people wondering about life, the universe and everything, well, I hope you will find something for the way.

Vicar's Sofa - When One Door Closes

Have you ever had one of those moments where you realise with a crashing certainty that life is working out nothing like you thought it would? It can be pretty darn crappy eh? But this week I have been really inspired on this topic by a new book I am reading by Sally Donovan called No Matter What. It has reminded me of this phrase, slightly doctored from the original, but that I very often have running through my mind – 'When one door closes climb through the open window!'

Rather than simply 'When one door closes another one opens' suggesting you climb through the open window means saying 'stuff this!' when things don't go to plan and instead looking, actively looking, for what opportunities this new situation is presenting. And that sometimes what opens up as a result of a door slammed in your face is even better than the thing you were seeking in the first place.

But apologies, I am getting ahead of myself - Sally's book. Ahh, it is just wonderful! It is one of those books that leaves a mark on you long after you have read it. It is autobiographical and tells the story of Sally and her husband learning that they cannot have children and deciding upon the path of adoption. It charts the ups and downs of their journey to parenthood as they take in two children who have lived early lives of such neglect and tragedy that it makes you weep.

Like pretty much all of us they had it all planned out, Of course life would give them what everyone else seemed to acquire so easily and parenthood would occur naturally and easily. Sally charts so well the process of grieving and letting go of what we assume will just be in life and trying to find that open window then the door has slammed well and truly shut.

I just find this hugely inspiring. Their journey, though not what they would have chose, nothing short of saves these children. It gives them a home and a future. What Sally and her husband do is incredibly brave, incredibly generous and incredibly moving. They are ordinary people who climb through that open window and discover that on the other side is the fulfilment they were craving and a life infused with meaning even if it was never what they could have imagined.

You don't have to be thinking about adoption to get a huge amount from this book. It is simply a poignant reminder that life is only as closed off as we make it. I'm reminded again that if a door is closing look for the open window and climb on through it. There might be something wonderful and unexpected on the other side.

Vicar's Sofa – Subversive Wisdom

Random confession time - I love a snarky cross stitch. There is something about sitting down for several hours and stitching something wildly inappropriate that just makes me smile. Something cathartic about reversing what is normally something so twee and wholesome and making it into something that pokes fun at the world and how we live in it.



From http://www.subversivecrossstitch.com/

And that is a little bit like some of the wisdom writings that I love the best, what I call Subversive Wisdom. In previous posts we have looked at finding wisdom in nature and in the every day things of the world. It is an approach that sees the world as ordered, than a result inevitably follows an action, that there are good ways to live that will bring good results.

That, to be sure, has an element of truth in it. We all know that results follow our actions, that to a certain extent we live the life we build and we reap what we sow. But life is also a tricky old *insert swear word here!* at times! We certainly don't always get what we deserve. Children get ill, relationships get derailed, wars break out and life is simply horribly unfair.

That is what Subversive Wisdom is all about. It is about saying 'hang on a minute with your Proverbs and your advice this totally *bleeeeep* thing is happening to me. What do you make of that?' There are two books in the Bible that particularly take this approach, the book of Job and the book of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes is like a long catalogue of the rubbishness of life. 'Everything is meaningless' says the author. Everything ends and all that we work for is handed on to those who come after us whether they have earned it or not. The days are long and life is hard and at time inexplicable. He laments and argues and grumbles and snarks his way through twelve chapters.

Job, on the other hand, is a story of a man who has everything. For a while. Then catastrophe strikes and he loses everything, home, family, livelihood and health. It is the stuff of nightmares. Job is visited by a number of friends with appallingly bad advice but advice that sounds oddly reminiscent of some of the good life wisdom writings. Job, however, is having none of it and simply says 'No, this is rubbish and I've done nothing to deserve it. It is simply unfair and I'll hear nothing else.'

I like this stubborn resistance to glib reassurance and platitudes in Job and Ecclesiastes. I like the complete rejection of easy answers that avoids the reality that life can be bone crushingly hard. And do the authors get anywhere with this approach? Well of sorts. Job is commended by God for continuing to protest his innocence. Ecclesiastes swings between darkness and light, seeing the joy in life as well as the sorrow.

But ultimately they are both books that end with a great big question mark, just like the difficult chapters of our own lives. No reason appears. No safe answer that we can comfortably accept appears. We just struggle on and pass through and keep going hoping against hope that new life that is waiting for us on the other side.

And so I love this side of the wisdom literature, this gritty, dark side. It allows us to get real about the realities of life and death. It challenges any attempt to control or make safe the tempestuous journey of life. For every piece of advice about living life well perhaps we also ought to take a dose of this to heart.

Vicar's Sofa - The Great Benefits of Silliness

Last Saturday night as I was dancing at a friends wedding, sombrero atop my head and bellowing out 21 Seconds by the So Solid Crew it struck me again that at times people must think it is rather funny that I am ordained.



Silliness Abroad

For a while this really perplexed me. It was one of the major things that kept my up at night before ordination. Won't everyone think I'm ridiculous? Won't they look at me and think 'Who on earth does she think she is?' Won't they sit and remember the catalogue of daft things I have said and done, and my goodness it is a catalogue, and wonder why I possibly think I am the right person for this job? It's a scary thought, really, to put yourself out there for public scrutiny, and particularly into a role where people expect you to be, well, so sensible all the time.

Silliness in Rome

I'm pretty sure that I have an unending and deep well of silliness in me. The notes that came back from my interview to train as a Vicar said 'Nicola laughs easily' and it couldn't be more true. I like an awful lot of silly things, it is just how I am. I don't do much that is very worthy in my own time. I am most likely to be watching the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or any other Housewives ITVBe cares to show. I recently sang Taylor Swift Shake it Off at church in the Vestry.

I can't help it. I love them. (from tvweek.com)

But recently I've been thinking about how important it is to retain a sense of silliness and to take ourselves lightly. Silliness, I think, helps us to remember that we are one little person, capable of wonderful things to be sure, but limited nonetheless. At best we are a cog in the machine, a stepping stone on the way, an ingredient in the recipe. But rather than this knowledge squashing us and making us feel insignificant instead I think it can make us feel free.

Silliness in Zambia

 

I wonder if it is when we start to see ourselves as the whole deal, when we are unwilling to be silly and the vulnerable little people that we are, that the fun and potential starts to drain out of things. Suddenly we have to be everything, do everything all on our own rather than accepting that we are just one person, fabulous and flawed, doing the best that we can. When we lose a sense of that we limit others by needing to be everything ourselves. We limit ourselves by not being able to accept that we get some things right and some things wrong, life is for learning, and that is just what it means to be a human being.

In a service at church recently we were praying for healing and wholeness and these beautiful words popped up, 'We have this treasure in earthen vessels to show that the power belongs to God'. What a beautiful reminder of all that it is to be a human being, it is treasure but treasure contained in a fragile and limited thing drawing its source and life from something much bigger than itself. What a liberating idea. We don't have to be everything. We just have to be what we are.

And I think silliness reminds us of that. How can you take yourself so seriously with a sombrero on your head? Silliness is freeing, it is life giving, it reminds us who and what we are. So what are you waiting for? Embrace silliness today!

Vicar's Sofa – Wisdom in YOUR Day

I have a dream one day. A happy little vision of myself as I near the end of my days which, knowing me, is probably dramatically unlikely but makes me smile nonetheless. In my mind I can see myself as a lady of good years, long hair plaited and grey, sitting with hands folded as I rock gently back and forth in an old wooden rocking chair. I'll be peaceful, happy, smiling and....wise. Able to nod sagely in conversation because of all I have picked up over the years. Ahhh...I wish!

 

Woman in A Rocking Chair - Renoir

 

This little image is something of a word picture for another approach to wisdom that you can pick up in the pages of the Bible which has also been the approach of the many, many civilizations around the world where people have turned their hand to wisdom writing. Observation, living, the 'University of Life' as it were - this approach to gaining of wisdom is all about the every day.

I love the book of Proverbs in the Bible because much of it appears to have been drawn from folk traditions, the real people who lived all those years ago in those sun scorched lands. The sayings are about real things. About how you approach work, how you raise your kids, it is a philosophy for life that has a bearing on what your days are like right now.

Proverbs is like one big great collection of wisdom gathered from a nation. It's all the things your Grandma told you that you really wish you had written down. These are a few of my favourites:

'The wise heart is called perspective, and pleasant speech increases persuasiveness' Prov 16:21

'A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity' Proverbs17:17

'Desire without knowledge is not good, and one who moves hurriedly misses the way' Prov 19:2

All this is not to say that you can simply pick up ancient ideas about life and apply then directly to modern life, there are some rather questionable approaches to disciplining children in the book of Proverbs, but there is much that stands the test of time. And the principle remains that wisdom involves learning from one another in our communities as well as listening to the past, drawing down into the deep well of our heritage and history to encourage and inspire our lives today.

The wisdom traditions of the world have quite happily borrowed from each other in this enterprise, swapping ideas as they swapped spices along the trade routes. The wisdom literature of the Bible carries influences and sometimes direct borrowing from Ancient Egypt, Babylon and Ancient Greece to name a few. They took the insights of others and adapted them, seeing them through their own cultural and religious lens, but valuing the insights of others.

What a great example to us today when we have the huge privilege of being part of a world where we have such ready access to other cultures and religions and all the wisdom they contain. Seeking Wisdom is a generous task and wisdom can be the enterprise of anyone and everyone. In fact the view from where someone else is standing may be just the thing we need to enrich our own.

So, there is a huge amount to commend in this approach to gaining wisdom. Observing, wondering, exploring the world and sharing this generously and open heartedly. Sounds great, doesn't it?

To catch up with previous posts in the series on 'What is Wisdom?' and 'Wisdom and the Natural world', get clicking! :)

Vicar's Sofa – Finding Wisdom in the Natural World

One of the defining moments of my life came from an interaction with nature. I was working in South Africa at the time on the whale watching boats researching the marine life of the area. The boat was quiet that afternoon so I managed to get a spot with a friend for a bit of a jolly. We headed out until the shore looked like a thin line and the houses like tiny dots. The sea was perfectly still, like a shimmering silver blanket.

As we cut out our engine something in the air changed, that is the only way I can describe it, and we all fell into a quiet hush on the boat. I looked at the skipper and he mouthed 'it's going to breach'. I felt every muscle in my body tense up. Then, out of that perfectly still sea emerged a Humpback Whale. 16 metres long, sleek grey body mottled with white, sailing through the air swiftly followed by its 3 metre long baby. It takes a lot to shut me up but that moment left me awestruck, silent, for the rest of the afternoon.

The magnificent Humpback whale from animals.nationalgeographic.com

That experience taught me that you can learn a lot from nature. It can bring up in you all sorts of feelings that are hard even to put into words. Studying nature at university, and being privileged to have that amazing moment with one of the world's most spectacular animals, has given me a sense of the beautiful order, the underlying peace and wonder, that is in the world around us.

When I started exploring wisdom literature I was delighted, then to find that many, many people before me have seen the same thing. That looking to nature as a way of understanding the world, of seeking wisdom, is as old as humanity.



Another spectacular African view -  Sunset at a lake in Zambia

In the Old Testament nature is closely associated with the wisdom tradition. Some of my favourite passages of the entire Bible relate to watching the natural world and drawing wisdom from it. This is a personal favourite written at least two and a half thousand years ago:

'Four things on earth are small yet they are extremely wise:

Ants are creatures of little strength yet they store up food in the summer.
Rock badgers are creatures of little power yet they make their home in the crags.
Locusts have no king, yet they advance together in ranks.
A lizard can be caught in the hand, yet it is found in kings' palaces.' 

 Proverbs 30:24-28

That feeling of connecting to something bigger than ourselves and drawing something from nature to help guide us or inspire us in our life is probably something we can all recognize. It is why we travel, or climb mountains, set up bird tables or go for walks in woodlands.

 

As well as this observation of nature Wisdom is also associated with the formation of the world in the Old Testament. You will, of course, have your own ideas about how we got here on this strange spinning rock in the middle of space.

One way of thinking about the Old Testament wisdom literature approach could be this - imagine wisdom to be a principle like gravity, something that is set into the ordering of the world. It is there from the beginning and underpins all things just as evolution underpins the emergence of new species and life on our planet. Proverbs puts it like this:

'The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed before eternity, from the beginning before the world began.'  Proverbs 8:22-3

The ancient Greeks had a similar idea in philosophy the logos which was the word used for the principle of order and knowledge in the world. Wisdom can be understood as something like that then, an order, a principle, a real and tangible thing that underpins everything in the world.

I love these possibilities raised in the wisdom tradition. I love how they chime with my experience of awe and wonder, how they make sense of our human connectedness and draw to the natural world, when we let ourselves feel it. I particularly love that growing in wisdom might be as easy as flopping down on the grass in my back garden and watching the birds overhead. That wonderful things can absolutely be found in the ordinary.

What do you think, is wisdom to be found in the natural world?

 

This is the second post in the Wisdom Series, to see the first post click here.