A different awakening

Lara the dog starts moaning at 5am - J. nobly gets up to let her out - fair enough as he was the one who gave her the large bone that set off her interior grumblings two hour's earlier than usual.

Pickles the cat makes her entry at 5.30am  - following her normal route across the backs of our pillows for maximum effect. Her kneading and purring are replaced by a very loud thump [considering she only weighs 3kg] and then the scratching of the chair begins - always guaranteed to get one of us up and running.

Traffic noise fills the road outside our front door as the city wakes.

I am home.

What a contrast to the last few days.

What a reality for most of us, most of the world, who don't have the luxury of a place of retreat and who have to do the best they can to enable God-awareness to seep into the fabric of the day.

I don't know about you but I am usually okay at taking quality 'God-time' in the morning and I set off into the day well resourced and light of heart. But then - as the day's tasks, conversations, dreams and demands emerge, it's all too easy for the lightness to dissipate. I know I need to stop at regular intervals to re-engage and refresh my connection with the source of all life.

Monastic rules of life recognise  that human beings need this regular connection - and there seems to be an increasing  interest among Christians in adopting or creating a 'little rule of life' that will provide a framework for slowing down and paying  attention to God during the day. If you are interested to take this further,  then you might like to visit the Society of St John the Evangelist website
http://www.ssje.org/ . They are currently offering helpful material on 'Growing a rule of life' including a downloadable workbook.

Regular connection with God is a 'work in progress' for us all - but regularly slowing down does make a difference to our capacity for listening to the Spirit of Jesus, to ourselves and to our communities. Maybe that's something that could be part of your Lenten journey this year?

Eight beautiful days at Kinloch on the shores of Lake Taupo  ... now it's time to pack up and head back to the city, the street noise, and the challenge of keeping hold of some of the treasures of this
stunningly serene part of Aotearoa New Zealand.

I take with me the inner delight of watching everyday life with birds and sky and clouds unimpeded by phone or noise.

I take with me deep thankfulness for insights about my own need to welcome the stranger within  - in my case the part of me that procrastinates ... St Paul spoke poignantly about not doing what he wanted to do and I have some sympathy for his struggles with the 'thorn in the flesh', whatever it was. So, instead of wasting time wrestling, I'm learning simply to  accept the 'little procrastinator' and get on with the next thing that God gives me to do!!

I take with me the joy of my son and daughter-in-law's weekend visit - sharing the everyday delight of shopping and walking and talking and eating together.

I take with me too the memory of a special conversation with my son, whose listening, kindness and wise words brought comfort and healing.

The ordinary things of life?

Not really -  for they shimmer with the Spirit of Jesus and turned into glory before our eyes.

Like an owl in desolate places ...

Morepork -photo by Chris Turner

Twelve  thousand miles from ruru – the ‘morepork’ whose call fades as dawn slips over the hills – we came across another little owl. We were walking along a secluded Norfolk path on a very windy morning and there he was, sitting right in the middle of the lane - fluffed up in the chilly air, bemused rather than wise. My husband scooped him up and carefully set him on a sheltered branch to regain his equilibrium. ‘Light as a feather’, he quipped, but I knew he was chuffed to hold such a treasure in his hands for a moment.

Unlike today when owls in the wild are valued and owls in various forms in jewellery, ceramics and art, enjoy a certain popular appeal, in Jesus’ time owls were considered ‘unclean’. When the psalmist referred to 'the owl in desolate places' he was expressing  desperate isolation, loneliness, separation from those who gave his life meaning. He felt a deep sense of being disconnected.

Spirituality is about connection – with ourselves, with others, with the world around us – but above all with the Loving Presence in and through all things. If you sometimes feel like a ‘little owl’, distant from what brings you life or if solitude brings fear and sadness,  turn to Jesus and invite him to meet you in your place of vulnerability. 

May he scoop you up and hold you in strong, kind hands until you are ready to ‘fly’ again.

Night sky

It is pitch black when I gather my warm dressing gown around me and carefully step down onto the back lawn in the darkness.

There are stars forever - shapes and patterns, skymap's gift of fascinating names, planets tucked below the horizon, the exact location for the South Pole and constellations brought to life.

There is awe - wonder - but no words really touch the vastness of the arcing expanse - the shining beauty of it all.

I think of you Jesus - getting up early to pray - and I wonder if, as part of your prayer, you lay on your back and let the stars sink into your soul, and drank in the joy of knowing them all by name.
And as you lay there, and the birds began to sing before dawn,  maybe these moments of connection with the breadth and height and depth of your Creation helped to strengthen you for the day ahead.

Before I go indoors, I look for - and find  - the Cross and its two pointers. I notice that my inner self settles gently, knowing I've found my familiar place in the sky, my reference point on earth.

early morning

It's been a long time.
A lot has happened.
But here I am and this morning I found myself again at the edge of Lake Taupo, listening to the rhythm of the tiny waves, and the rowdy chorus of plovers down the beach. 
I remembered an earlier morning visit to the lake five years ago  [ they are rare as I'm not a 'get-up-and-go' person in the mornings] but I had prised myself from the warmth of my husband's back and had walked the 3 minutes to the lake edge ... and as I had watched the wake-up routines of ducks and heron, scaub and cormorant and swans-in-the-making, some words began to take shape  - so here they are for you. May they help you picture a classic New Zealand morning and enjoy the blessing of God's gifts in creation.

Beloved  -

I would feed you with

            ease of arising

            lake water washing

            shimmer of poplars

            silence of sunshine

            memory of singing

            blessing of baptism

            kingfisher watching

            snowpeak of mountain

            warm scent of roses

            clamber of clematis

            forget-me-not sweet.

Your night fast is broken,

welcome the day.

The path to the lake

The path to the lake

is bordered by beauty

roses rambling, 

agapanthus blue

the lake before me and mountains rising,

and so I stop.

And then ...

I begin to notice

what I’d not seen in my hurried

earlier walks, my mind busy

unpacking last year and wondering the next.

I see

the deconstructed dandelions,

the wisteria fragrance fled on the wind,

the branches severed haphazardly

by an occasional gardener,

the fledgling sparrow dried out in death.

Beauty and brokenness

are there before me ...

and within me.

When I am overjoyed

When I am overwhelmed

O Lord lift my eyes to

the larger vision :

your loving presence in all of us,

in our rising and falling,

in our birthing and dying,

in the promise of new life to come.

Kinloch January 2015

Sue Pickering

Farewell to Toffee

A month ago we had to have our cat Toffee ‘put to sleep’.

Before you think ‘aaah, what a shame’ I have to be honest and say that there was some sense of relief.

She was hard to love.

Toffee had come to us ‘second-hand’ – but not ‘pre-loved’.

She carried the name ‘Viper’ and, on the day when the

New Testament reading happened to be about Saul/Paul’s Damascus Rd experience, we optimistically re-named her Toffee to reflect both her dark tabby markings and the hoped-for sweetness of personality! But that was not to be.

We did our best to love her:

we appreciated her  penchant for high places and vertical movement: she loved open drawers, the tops of doors, the thinnest branches on our big trees, the top peak of our two-storey roof, the highest ladder even when it was already precariously occupied by a certain fellow in his early 70’s who should have paid for scaffolding while he painted the gable;

we built a little ladder for her in the family room so she could reach the highest bookshelf and settle into her special sheepskin-lined basket ... occasionally;

we offered her special food which she ignored, favouring one variety of biscats day after day;

we protected her from angry mynah birds who screeched and swooped at her when she ran the gauntlet from the house to the garden and back;

we tried to keep our/her house free from other cats who raised her stress levels by coming inside, eating her food, even coming upstairs as if they owned the place;

we tried to ignore the flattened ears,  the competition for every seat in the house that I chose to occupy, the thrashing tail, the sudden sinking of teeth into tender skin, the scratches, the growling and the look that could kill.

When we got back from our walk that Sunday afternoon four weeks ago, we found her upstairs on her master’s chair: she could not weight bear and horrible yowls accompanied every movement. Off we went to the vet : she must have been hit by a car because oneback leg was badly broken, she was in pain and treatment dollars were heading to four figures ... and so, with a mixture of guilt and resignation we made the choice to free her – and ourselves.

When she and I were alone while the paperwork was done and the deadly drug prepared, there was a moment of pure peace, as if she knew she didn’t have to fight anyone anymore.

No longer risking tooth or claw, I gave her a little farewell kiss and sent her home.

Loving when you get little in return is not easy.

But God does it all the time.