Monthly Archives: September 2013

Changing Values

Alison-Christian

 

This weekend I was told that I could choose three books out of nine to keep for my own. My two sisters would share the other six books. The books were all written by my great grandfather who in his time was a well known and popular author but with the passing of the years his books are really only read by students studying the minor Victorian novelists. I looked at the books. At first glance it was not easy to choose. There were none of the better and more famous novels amongst the group and none appeared to be of any financial value. And then I saw a handwritten inscription in one of the books that was repeated in two others. It said, “To my beloved son, Dudley, from Mother 1909.” Those were the books I chose and my heart was deeply touched.

 

Dudley was the grandfather I never knew; the father my father barely remembered. In 1914 Dudley, aged 21, signed up for the army. He died shortly after the end of the war as a result of wounds and TB from being in the trenches. 1909 was the year his father, my great grandfather died. I imagined my great grandmother giving the books to Dudley in the year of his father’s death as a remembrance, a keepsake – something of his father.

 

Thinking about my initial disappointment about none of the books being of any real cultural or material value later, I realised that I am much more pleased with this sense of being in touch with my never seen ancestors; literally in touch as I can run my finger over the signature of my great grandmother. Just as recollection in prayer at the end of the day often makes us wake up to something lovely in our day which we had not seen at the time, so this meditating on what was of value in these books makes me realise how much more special they are to me because they are, in their way, about relationship, the fundamental reason for being alive.

 

I come from a family of writers. The new books will go on the shelf alongside books by my mother and her mother and my father and his grandfather. These people are part of me and I am part of them and their simply being makes them of eternal value to me.

 

 

Where do the House Martins go in winter?

Alison-Christian

 

Suddenly they have gone – the Swallows and House Martins who have lived cheek by jowl with us all summer. Four weeks ago there was still a nest full of young birds right under the eaves in our courtyard. Delighted visitors drank their coffee and watched as the fearless parents flew in and out to feed their young. A week later they were fledged and went into heavy flying training. They were everywhere, swooping low on the ground, turning in the air, building and consolidating their strength and seeming to fill the Abbey grounds with their presence. It was as though the air was alive with a kind of wild but graceful energy and I thought to myself, heaven must be full of such delight.

 

And then they were gone; but not all at once. The majority left five days ago but it is only today that I have noticed they are nowhere to be seen. The Swallows have left for Cuba and South America and the House Martins will go to Africa and Asia – no one knows quite where, and we are left quieter and a bit bereft.

 

But they will return next year. These birds mate for life and are creatures of habit. So, hopefully, most of them will return if they do not die in their long and perilous journeys. In their lives we see the rhythm of the seasons. We see the mysterious, compelling and urgent need to leave their birthplace and travel far, far away to a distant land. But we also see continuity, intuition, faithfulness and perseverance undergirding everything, holding everything.

 

We are not so different. Watching our sons grow up and leave home, my husband and I are now aware of them turning to home again; not to re-turn to where they once were –life is still full of exploration ‘out there’, but to take their place in the pattern and rhythm of life alongside us, the older generation. Every young person must journey away from the place of birth in order to become his or herself – sometimes right away to a very distant land (as Jesus’ story of The Prodigal Son so keenly illustrates.) This time can be very hard on parents. Where has the child gone, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well? Sometimes it all goes “pear shaped” but generally speaking most of us respond to life’s inherent pattern of childhood dependency, journey outwards, journey home whilst still exploring and then the final discovery of the latter part of life that not only is “home where you start from” but that “the end of all our exploration is to arrive where we started and to know it for the first time.” We look forward to welcoming back our Swallows and House Martins in the Spring.

 

The day lies open before us

Alison-Christian

“The day lies open before us”

 

“The day lies open before us.” Every day these words are spoken by thousands of clergy and lay people who say Morning Prayer throughout the world.

“The day lies open before us”

There is such a beautiful invitation in those words. It is like looking at a canvas just before you put on the first stroke of paint, or those moments at school when you were given a new exercise book and you opened it at the first page: how neatly you tried to write! It is like waking up and knowing it is the holidays and you don’t have an agenda you have to fulfil or being up early in the morning when even the birds have not woken. “The day lies open before us,” full of potential, full of promise, full of hope.

 

Yet, how often do we get to the end of the day, or even the middle of the day, and find ourselves feeling grey, exhausted and trapped. Then the lines that come to mind are more likely to be

“Shades of the prison house begin to close

Upon the growing boy” Wordsworth

 

Why is life like this? Why are the good intentions of the morning to be open to all that God wants to give us in our day, so quickly undermined by what that same day throws at us?

 

It is, of course, not what comes at us but how we respond to it that changes our perception of our day and there are all sorts of self-help books that are aimed at empowering us and giving us a sense of control over our lives, and some of them are useful. But where most of them fall down for me is that they leave God out of the picture altogether. They are quick fix techniques aimed at problem solving. They leave out the big questions that underlie so much of our dismay but are also there for our growth, healing and understanding if only we could see it.

The bible is very clear:

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10

 

We need the God dimension to makes sense of ourselves and our world. Human wisdom is not enough. We will always have good days and bad days. Things will get on top of us; we will feel stressed, angry, overwhelmed and resentful at times; but as we come daily to the source of wisdom, God, insight will grow, we will become like deeply rooted trees, full of life and movement but not tossed about by every passing wind. And we will find there are more days than not that we feel hope and anticipation as we say, “The day lies open before us.”