I have become more aware lately of so many people struggling with mental ill-heath. In the UK the clocks just went back an hour, which means our evenings have become suddenly much darker sooner. And the colder, wetter weather is setting in. That, along with the big scale strife and structural injustices in the world and people’s own deeply personal struggles, is creating a big challenge. Not for the first time, I wonder whether those who experience mental ill health in the face of all of these challenges aren’t the sanest people among us?
But among the struggles, I want to share some deep joy. Because autumn remains a favourite season of mine, and ever since doing the world trip that made me launch this blog, I have really cherished it (since during that trip I mostly missed it altogether due to being mostly in the Southern hemisphere).
I hope you enjoy these forms and colours I saw this morning…
Grapes… in the North of England! Some are actually sweet enough to eat this year too…
And here is a friend simply standing in the sun in a quiet moment a few weeks ago (zoom in to see her in the distance):
To all of my readers; may you experience warmth and light, love and colour in this season, and may it be deeply real to you, whatever the challenges you are facing. 🙏❤️
There is an ongoing rift in the Church of England that has become something of a running sore. Although our Church « unequivocally decided », through its governing body the General Synod, 30 years ago, that anyone could be ordained priest, regardless of their gender, we are still ordaining men who think that women should not be able to be ordained priest.
Broadly speaking such men fall into two categories; those who are longing for unity between our Church and the Catholic Church, who are waiting until the Pope, leader of the Catholic Church, decides to ordain women too; and those who believe that the Bible says women shouldn’t teach or have authority over men, who don’t ever envisage a time when women should be able to be priests (though I guess for these it would be ok if we led churches with only women and children in them?).
Women have been presiding over Shabbat (sabbath – the day of rest) meal tables for centuries. Even for centuries before Jesus walked this earth. In the Jewish tradition it is the women lighting the candles on the eve of Sabbath, presenting the Shabbat loaf, often baked by their own hands.
For someone to refuse to eat at a table we women are hosting at feels like such a slap in the face to me. After centuries of hosting at tables, shopping, cooking, cleaning, making beds for family, friends and strangers, that each one might find rest. For someone to refuse point blank to sit and eat at the table we have yet again laid, and to refuse because we are a woman, is an unspeakable insult. That’s how I receive it.
I have absolutely no right to bear the weight of generations of women across the world whose service to others has been so much greater than my own. And yet, because I am a woman, it feels like they are all in me, with me. When my table is rejected, so is theirs. When their table is rejected, so is mine. In my mind’s eye we are all – the millions of us stretching beyond where any eye could see – outraged and indignant. And tired and bewildered, too.
After all, this is not only our table, it’s also the Lord’s table. Jesus himself is the real host here. The Creator who made the grape and the grain that the wine and bread are formed of in the first place. Who made the trees that supplied the wood for the table, even. If he is delighted to host at our table and to make the meal we share here sacred, why on earth would anyone who loves and honours him not be delighted to eat at it?
Our table is your table. You are welcome. Come, sit and eat.
Having said that, one needs a certain hospitality of heart to be a guest. And I can’t seem to find it in myself any longer to be a guest at tables hosted by men who think I am not the priest I am, in the full knowledge that they will probably never come and eat and drink at the table I host. Even though it is not I but Jesus who hosts really, which belief was the only way I used to manage to be at their tables before.
Many years ago I went and stayed for a weekend in the communal household of a wonderful Catholic priest in his mid-80’s called Father Peter, who lived in Preston in Lancashire in the UK. He was a man full of the love of God. I was there as a Church of England priest, wanting to learn about living communally with others and to wonder whether God might enable me to inhabit or create a similar kind of household with other people, as part of my priestly ministry.
To understand this story fully you have to grasp that in the Catholic Church you can’t take bread and wine at mass unless you are a practising Catholic. Even other types of Christians are not permitted to share in mass normally in Catholic churches. And women are most definitely not able to be ordained yet in the Catholic Church (though I have met many Catholics who are longing for the day they are).
On the Friday morning, I had a conversation with Father Peter that went pretty much like this:
Father Peter: Now then, so we’ve a Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament later today for an hour 5-6pm so people arrive into the silence as soon as they can after work, and then after an hour of silent prayer we share mass. Will you come? I’d love you to come.
Me: Oooh wonderful yes I’ll come. But I’ll not take the bread and the wine, right?
Fr Peter: You will.
Me: OK…?
Fr Peter: then there’s mass on Sunday morning…
Me: Well of course I’ll come to that too but I’ll not take the bread and wine.
Fr Peter: You will…
Me: Well OK I’ll come and take part but I’ll not wear my clerical collar then…? [The clerical collar is the sign that I am ordained.]
Fr Peter: You will… I hope? And I am going to say mass in your name for a month following your visit, to pray for you. If that’s ok?
Me: ….mmmpfff… Really? Oh wow.
I guess Father Peter figured he was too old for anyone to be able to get too upset with him. His church was rammed on the Sunday morning and full of joyful worship and love.
Unless we can sort this pickle out we will be nowhere with the new wine the Spirit of God is bringing. There are priests in waiting of non binary gender. Their tables will also be hosted by Jesus, who will make the bread and wine they share sacred. I will be honoured to re-member Jesus and to eat and drink at such tables. Because I believe that ultimately the love of God is greater than whatever obstacles we try to put in its way.
I am in a season of exploring a particular kind of silence. It’s a season in a life that appears to be emerging as one longing to be steeped in silence. Perhaps indefinitely.
This short, beautiful film is not silent, but honours the silence that falls at the end of life. The film maker Terence Davies wrote and read this poem, enabling the making of the film (produced by James Dowling and with an award winning score by Florencia Di Concilio), just before he died recently. I think he wrote it in memory of his sister, but it seems a beautiful tribute to him as well.
Passing Time
This is reminding me that, while I follow my odyssey of living silence, true silence will only fall with death. When my friend Jim died suddenly some years ago, I found the reality of his silence – its total finality – one of the hardest things. Jim was a quiet and unassuming man, but also a very gifted bass player. When he died, all the bass lines just disappeared. Our little band never sounded the same again.
I’m not massively into pink as a colour. But I am noticing with delight some really extraordinary pinks naturally occurring in our garden and other places in this beautiful season of autumn. Sharing some with you…
In the garden of a Quaker Meeting HouseAmazing prolific grapes in our garden in the North of England this yearGrape juice from those grapes! 👆🏼 In a public park
I love spending time with artists and creative people of all sorts. I find their work so inspiring. And mostly it’s there to be lived or experienced, which is an extraordinary gift. Experiencing art of any sort always seems to inspire creativity in me, which is often deeply satisfying in a way I can’t quite explain.
This week I had the delight of seeing Matthew Bourne’s Romeo & Juliet, which sparked a lot of wondering and ideas, as well as reminding me of the striking beauty of light and shadow.
Then I’ve been reading about rest and sabbath as I land finally on a very long-awaited day off today. In this moment of stillness, invited by the slowing of a rest day, my eye caught the pattern of shadows on the wall as the trees were being blown about. I decided to film them, suddenly realising in so doing that in our urban location some massive and possibly awful thing is happening (or maybe many awful things), judging by the number of sirens in the background. I notice these, offer my stillness as some kind of prayer, and return to relishing the moment; the wind, the autumn leaves, the unseasonal warmth which invites my sitting outside.
Watching this back reminds me of Walter Brueggeman’s concept of “sabbath as resistance”. The idea that to be still and rest is a form of protest against the drivenness of our culture.
I receive Patrick Shen’s Patreon as I was so struck by his film In Pursuit of Silence (2015) when I saw it at the Sheffield Doc Fest some years ago. I have since rewatched it and shared it with many others.
I recently looked him up and discovered he is trying to find a different way of making his art that is less driven by the capitalist machinery that I think is threatening to suffocate and stifle creativity in all of us now. So I decided to support him with a tiny but regular gift on Patreon. Already this is proving life giving to me, looking at his short film sketches and following links to the things inspiring his creativity. There is a lot of resonance for me. And an invitation to deepen my contemplative practice myself. And to continue exploring my own creativity.
I notice that all these wonderful life giving things occur to me in moments of rest and recreation. Much though I love my work (and recognise the huge privilege of loving what you do), I am reminded that rest and recreation are what restores me and gives me what I need for life. Without this kind of inspiration, the quality of my work would suffer as much as I would. But even if the quality of my work didn’t suffer, I want the fact that I would and those around me would to be enough to remind me to slow, rest, recreate. (Note to self.)
The other day I went for a walk with friends through some beautiful countryside. It was a warm and sunny day, lovely walking weather. At one point the path took us quite steeply down a tiny little valley – just a dip in the landscape really, with a little brook running through the bottom and trees all around. Suddenly the temperature cooled as we dropped down to the water. It was so refreshing!
I have been reading through this big tome bit by bit in my times of contemplation. Currently, it has got me praying for the trees…
Today I am shocked to find that the wonderful forests of British Columbia, which I feel more connected to because of a friend who lives near to them, turned from being a significant carbon sink (good) to being a source of carbon (baaaad) in 2002, due to increased temperatures, which enabled mountain pine beetles to proliferate (fewer of them dying over winter as the winter temperatures have been warmer and there’s been less snowpack). The beetles bore through the bark of trees to lay their eggs, which kill the trees by consuming and blocking the flow of nutrients to the trees. The deadwood caused by this has made the forests more susceptible to wildfires, which emit a LOT of carbon into the atmosphere.
Now the forests in BC are a larger source of carbon than reported emissions from the energy sector in the region, according to a provisional 2021 report.
However, as with all the short articles in this book there is hope…
The hope lies in reducing the frequency of logging (cutting down trees for wood). This has the potential to enable the forest to become a carbon sink again, storing lots of carbon in the ground instead of releasing it into the atmosphere and causing more global warming. Also this means more mature trees for people animals and plants to enjoy for longer. The positive impact of doing this would be the single biggest thing that could be done in this type of region by the look of it. (Harvest reduction means reducing the logging frequency on this chart. Much quicker/more effective than planting new trees.)
For this to work, all of us, and especially those of us in richer countries, need to stop consuming wood. In any which way. To stop buying things made of wood, or living in such a way that we effectively are demanding the current level of wood harvesting, which is driving these companies to harvest wood on this ridiculous scale.
In New Zealand some years ago I remember seeing a lot of lorries transporting long logs (really I saw more of those than any other type of traffic in the more remote areas). And a lot of forest plantations where trees are grown only in order to be chopped down before they are fully mature to be used for wood. These half logged “managed” forests looked like ugly wounds on an otherwise jaw droppingly beautiful landscape. The same thing happens in the UK and all over the world.
So today I am praying for the trees. And wondering how I can consume less, intentionally. I want to be part of the solution not the problem…🙏🌳💕🌲
In the middle of much busy-ness, I am noticing the loss of deep stillness and silence lately, and an invitation to re-engage with it.
Hence yesterday during a glorious morning, when unsettled sleep had woken me too early, I went out. I lay on my back in the garden and saw this:
What glorious blue!
I felt queasy, due to sleep deprivation and not drinking enough water the previous day. But this was glorious. As I lay there for about half an hour, I saw at least 5 different species of birds fly past twittering their spring songs.
I am hoping to drop into this deeper stillness more in the coming time. Even when there is a lot of hubbub and activity around me and lurking in the back of my mind. Perhaps if I practise it, I will be able to lay it aside again as the silence falls…? This is what my brain needs I think.
My friend Sally Livsey recently shared this picture along with a revelation that has come to her while travelling:
« I heard the long beep of a car horn and it sounded like a cello tuning up before a concert. Two different stories arise in my mind from this single experience… Surely we can choose between stories? Perhaps today I will go with the cello; calling out from literal experience to the silent violins of my heart.
« I need the whole orchestra, to walk into this day fully awake; before the mystery that God is infinitely in love with me. »
As soon as I read this, a song popped into my head. I have sung this song to God and heard God singing it to me as well. It’s as though we sing it to one another, over and over. There have been moments in my life where « everything has changed » in this most beautiful of ways. The ordinary is revealed in all its unspeakable miraculousness. And today was a good time for me to be reminded of the miraculous, and of Love, in the midst of difficult and intractable worries relating to what is happening in the world and to the people I love the most.
When someone beeps their horn at us, may we somehow manage to hear the cello…
How come the dying vestiges of autumn look so much like joy? A paean of praise all dressed in yellow. The forest floor littered with a million drifting and dropped forms of gold. Treasure that cannot be earnt, bought, bartered or won but comes each year as gift.
It amazes me how easy (and yet how difficult) it can be to find a still moment in the middle of a busy city. I have made a habit of seeking out stillness and filming it for a minute when I find it. I love it! It makes me receive the gift of the moment; the birds, trees, water, reflections; of just being alive.
If you’re the kind of person who sometimes just needs a minute to stop, be still and reconnect with yourself, and with nature, have a look at this👇🏼 and the other videos on my YouTube channel. I am finding that sometimes just a minute of stillness can make all the difference to my day.
la perle 