Called to Motherhood

I was reading a magazine article a few months ago, about someone who keeps images of Christ around them to remind them of how they should live. The idea being that the more you look at Christ the easier it is to become Christlike. I have to confess that this is the main reason I wear a crucifix, it makes me stop and think at that those vulnerable times about how I should behave. It does not always work, which is the most shameful part. Sometimes I am wholly and totally selfish.

Then finding myself returning to the presence of Christ it is hard to look him in the eye, so to speak. I know his forgiveness is without reservation, but somehow my repeated transgressions do not seem worthy of such complete love. The revelation of such a divine love was the catalyst behind my journey of Faith. 

It was an understanding that revealed itself the first time I held a child of my own. When I looked at this vulnerable miracle, I knew I would defend his life with mine, no matter what his transgressions.  It is a totally overwhelming love, it consumed my very being. I have now experienced this three times. With each and every child it is just as powerful, yet the capacity to love the others is in no way diminished. If you had asked me twelve years ago if I had the ability to love to that capacity I would have said "NO". Yet here I am. Sometimes the love is pushed to its' very limits but I do not think love is meant to be easy. Love and joy are words so closely associated with the Christ. They are words that go hand in hand with hate and sorrow, which are words that are also associated with Christ. The call to love one another is a painful sacrificial call but also one which brings so much love and joy into our own lives and those with whom we share it.
These common themes are also the theme of Motherhood. Motherhood can in and of itself be a calling and vocation. It is not the one I would have said would have been mine whilst I was growing up. However God had other plans and thrust in my path a love from which I could not hide. Here I come back to the Virgin Mary (I told you, I would). In the quiet of night, an angel came and changed the direction of a young girls life. She encountered a divine love and a human love all wrapped up into one tiny bundle which she had to nurture and ultimately sacrifice. She is a braver woman than I, I do not think I could have had the faith in God to stand at the foot of the cross as my child was mocked, beaten and humiliated. She had such a pure trust in God and Jesus. It is truly something to which we should all aspire.
The honor of sharing her body with the truly divine is one we will never share. However each and every child carried and born is a miracle of God. Therefore it is a God given vocation, however that plays out in others lives, in mine it is one of the ways in which God has called me to serve. 

As time goes by..............

I can not believe that this year has gone past so quickly. It is has been a year of many journeys, some completed, some abandoned and some yet to reach an end. I have in the space of a year stepped back and faced a past I thought I never could. I have examined and re-examined my faith and beliefs in a very personal way. It has been the year in which my youngest started school, leaving me at home without children for the first time in 12 years. Therefore there has been no point in this last year  when I have not been changing a part of me. Hopefully it has all been a development for the better and not for worse. Certainly, I am now fitter than I ever have been and there is a quiet stillness behind my chaotic life that I thought I would never have.

I know it will seem, odd to some of you that I talk of the end of a year. But for us and our life, it is nearly a year since the journey towards our lives post college began. It was an injection of reality into a life that I had been in denial about. I had not really thought about, what it would mean to leave college. I had only thought about my intense desire to just get out. For many reasons I have found our time here hard. It has taught me many lessons about the Church that I needed to learn, but has also challenged very deeply the traditional beliefs which I have.However a year can make a huge difference.

Last July someone told me "Use this year to sort out your life, then you will all be ready for Parish life" Well I took him at his word, and have done precisely that. I have gone on a journey of discerning quite where and how I fit in, who I am and how to put the past behind me.  The vast expanse of time during the day that has suddenly appeared since my daughter started school, has been used to good effect. I had expected it to be a time of loneliness and boredom, however it has never been dull. I have spent much more time thinking, which has enabled me to start writing again, create small projects for myself around the house, develop my faith and run a fundraising project.

I am most grateful to the people who have encouraged me along the way. Thankful for those who have had the unfortunate experience of being my sounding board and still imparted their wisdom and guidance.  I know that a new journey is only just beginning, I am sure the pathway will be just as confusing as the one here has been. However, I feel more equipped to deal with what life is going to throw at me. My only regret is that the wonderful Churches and Chapels that I have grown to love and be part of over the last year have to be left behind. 

Finding peace in the chaos

At the moment life feels like a bit of a whirlwind. Nothing appears to be in it's right place and nothing appears to be going in the right direction. So while I am now very much looking forward to having everything neatly in it's boxes. For the moment I have to be content with chaos.
There has been a point of concern for me in all of this recently. How do I find the peace in the middle of the tornado around me. I find that I am not finding the time to stop, reflect and pray  until the end of the day and as I say the prayers I should have said earlier in the day I find my mind falling asleep or drifting on to some other point of interest. In short my brain has had enough of this thinking business and would quite like to sleep.  I on the other hand would quite like to force it to pray. I lose more often than not. I have been known to fall asleep Rosary in hand and I am sure I will again. However it strikes me this is not quite the pattern of life I had built up in my life up to this point. It has shocked me quite how easily I have struck aside, what had been so important to me only a few weeks ago. Indeed it still is highly important to me, but has become one of those un-timetabled events that I think I will do later but never ever seem to get round to.  When I have a cause to time table it in, I come to the realization that it really does make a difference.
Those of you who have read the more recent posts I have put up, will be all to aware of the book that I am reading at the moment. It is about the different ways in which one can engage with one's spirituality. Encouraging people to see prayer as a form of thinking, or discerning. In the moments when we stop still, in particular in such moments when we are in front of the Sacrament, we come into contact with Christ. In these moments, if we use them to discern or think about this contact, we can begin to see how we can see God outside the walls of our Church. In discerning a little further we can begin to see how we can reflect that image in ourselves to others. In short how we can go forward and serve.
At the moment the going forward bit seems to be going forward with or without me. I am making myself busy by preoccupying myself with every single detail because I am afraid of the bigger picture. Hiding my head in the sand is something I excel at, however I am learning (more quickly than I would like) that confronting what I am hiding from gives me a far better sense of peace than hiding it. I suppose this is why I also find it easy to say I will pray another time. It means I do not have to think constructively about that from which I am hiding. Sometimes I need a little nudge in the right direction, some times I get it, usually in not such a subtle way either. I guess someone knows I need the sledge hammer approach. Well inside a week I have had two of these moments both of which were reminding me how important this space and time spent in prayer are. Maybe I really should start to listen........

My nonsense meanderings, sandwiched between two bits of sense.

"To lay one's life before God in prayer is already to have faith that in spite of its failures and inconsistencies, in spite of its seeming absurdities and trivialities, it can become a meaningful contribution to God's universe" 

 John Macquarrie (Paths in Spirituality)

Many of you reading this will know that for many different reasons, I have experienced many different expressions of Christianity. All of them though have one thing in common prayer. That has been my cornerstone through all of my life's absurdities and trivialities. A point in which I have reached a seeming point of no return. I am standing on a cliff edge and I really have no idea what is going to be at the bottom when I jump.
On Ascension day last week, I attended Mass and found my self listening to a sermon about Jesus moving up in the world. In the Ascension, he was of course changing his expression of his ministry and in a sense getting a promotion. I had a sledge hammer on the head moment. We are (to take a slightly more literal interpretation than was intended) moving up the country in order to change the way in which we serve Jesus. The ground was instantly swept from under my feet. Here I was sitting quite comfortably in this lovely place in Oxford, and the concept that I was probably sitting there for one of the last times, if not the last time hit me. My head started to swirl with all the things I wanted to do but hadn't, the places I wanted to go back to and the friends made I did not want to leave. Entirely selfish desires.
Going to receive, the words "Father I commend unto you my Spirit" popped up in my thoughts and with them came the knowledge that no matter how much I might fight it, I am going to have to move on wards and quite literally upwards. I discerned in the following moments of quiet prayer, that despite the unknown quantities still involved,  I have a hope that what we are doing can become a meaningful contribution to God's universe. With that knowledge it some how became something I felt I could do.
 Contact me in a few months time and I will probably have found something new to agonize about, that is after all my nature. However, also part of my nature is that instinct towards prayer. So for as many things I can find to get anxious about, I can also find the faith to get through it.

"To have faith is to meet the world with the conviction that in spite of all its ambiguities and its downright evils, there can be discerned in it the reality of love and a ground of hope."

John Macquarrie (Paths in Spirituality)

Packing our lives into Boxes.

 

I have lost track of how many times we have moved now. Sometimes we have gone just down the road at other times we have traveled half the country. It never ceases to amaze me each time though, how much we have acquired. Whether we leave after six months or three years we seem to have accumulated more than is generally needed. So comes the routine of cleansing our lives of what is no longer required. Clothes and toys grown out of get passed on or charity shoppped, along with books that are no longer read. Broken things get re-purposed or thrown out and the enormous pile of magazines each child accumulates over time is sneakily taken to the recycling, hopefully without them ever noticing. Then what is left is packed into boxes of varying shapes and sizes and for about forty eight hours our lives are neatly packaged labelled and organised. Shortly after that the normal chaos ensues.

It is nice however briefly to feel totally in control. There is no mess, no confusion, and no burden. It all sits in it's boxes and I do not need to clean it or tidy it. There is a down side to it all of course. It is useless. In their boxes you can not touch them, read them, cook with them or play with them. It is all very easy to look at the boxes and know where everything is, but this is not the way it is meant to be. 

In some ways your realize how superfluous some of what you own is, other things you realize you are dependent on. Both of these always make me sad. The fact that I own things I do not need, shows me that I am as vulnerable to the consumerist society, as everyone else. I don't like looking in that particular mirror at all. Secondly that I am dependent on gadgets and products to manage, when many people round the world do not have food, let alone something nice to cook it in. 

I am continuously torn between wanting what is waved in front of my face,  the nice desirable things and not taking more from the world than is rightfully mine. I have attempted to make our lives as smaller  an impact on the world as possible, we tend to shop in Charity shops, get most of our furniture from freecycle or relatives and try to buy organic food. When we are finished with something it gets recycled at home or passed on. Still at times like this I can not help but reflect on how privileged I am to have access to these things. Therefore in a few weeks when we arrive at our new destination, and take a whole new path in this journey for God, I will be unpacking those things as quickly as possible. To make use of them. To leave them in the boxes, unused and unloved would make my possession of them even more futile. After all when they are out of boxes, people can come over for tea, cake and a small slice of conversation.

At the heart of it all....

It has been a long time since I sat at this keyboard to write, and much has happened in the intervening time. I have had various bugs that have been going round and just have not felt up to it. For this I apologize. It turned out, however, that my blood pressure had slowly been creeping up. In fact it was so high it was of the charts. So packed away with some tablets and general advice about de-stressing and lifestyle. I took the the tablets and cut down massively on the caffeine, and I (ironically) feel so very much more energetic.

Still all this got me thinking (again). It is amazing how this simple organ beating away inside me keeps me alive, despite all the disrespect I have given it and working far harder than it should ever have had to. It is still there, giving me a chance at life. When I paid a bit of attention to the signals it was giving me, it rewarded me with a new burst of life.

Behind the scenes in our lives is God, despite all we throw at him, he is there working far harder than he should have to. It is very easy to allow a growing malaise in our relationship with God. Bit by bit we can find excuses as to why we can not do this or that. Bit by bit the pressure on our lives builds up and bit by bit we neglect that all important relationship. He does not turn away from us and give up, no matter how far and how hard we push against him. As your life moves away from God increment by increment it is easy not to notice the affect it is having on our lives. Just as I had assumed that my lethargy was due to a virus rather than seeing that my neglect had resulted in my heart struggling to keep my head above water, we find something missing in our lives.  God is struggling very hard to keep us on the right path, even to the point that he has to carry us. When you start to pay attention to the relationship and correct the neglect, you instantly see the rewards in your life.

Working at living a Christian life is not always easy, but if we keep God at the heart of our lives there is a grounding of peace among all the chaos around us. It has been all to easy to get caught up in moving, organizing new schools, sorting out loose ends etc. I had let it all sit on top of me, rather than finding that time to find peace. A long way from now (I hope) even  my faithful heart will stop it's beats, but even then God will not let go. That I think is worth remembering. 

Journeys End (or "I have warm feet")

I promise this will be the last time I mention bare feet of any kind, especially mine. Before I tell you what has stuck with me over the last 40 days and especially the last week, I would like to say Thank You. Thank you to those who have donated money to change lives. Thank you to the people who promoted the cause, so more lives could be changed. Thank you to those of you who simply took the time to ask how my feet were or who prayed for me, it kept me going in the many times I wanted to stop. Because of all you wonderful people there is £541 going to Us.

My feet have survived relatively unscathed, I just have a purple toe. This was ironically acquired on the final few footsteps to Church this morning when I tripped over my daughter. Still it is a good fashion statement with the black soles of my feet.

Starting my journey on Palm Sunday and placing my shoes on after receiving my first Communion of Easter proved to be incredibly moving. Though at the end of it there are few physical injuries to show. There has been due to the cold physical discomfort and pain. There have been many injuries to my pride as well. I have spent a week walking on the dirt and detritus that society is protected from by shoes. Because of all these simple things, going to stand at the altar to receive Communion is intensely humbling. This morning bringing all of my vulnerability to the Altar, standing on holy ground with nothing between me and it, receiving and then returning to my seat and placing my shoes on brought me to tears. There is very simple suffering in what I have endured, enough to disconcert me but not enough to do damage and I can end it. Just like that. I felt so enormously privileged that I had the freedom to make that choice.

So many people suffer around me here and abroad. They have no choice in the matter and no easy solution. Walking bare foot has made me realize how incredible selfish and proud I am. These are not easy lessons to learn, especially when it so obviously laid out in front of you. It has made me realize how easily I will resort to finding the easier way, rather than struggling with the harder one. I am like all human beings weak. Yet despite these faults I have been asked "How my Feet are?" I never thought I would find those simple words so moving, but I can assure you, I can. Despite all my weaknesses, God and my friends still cared about me.

Today of all days, this day of joyous Resurrection highlights this. For if we had not fallen at the first hurdle in Eden there would have been no need for the sacrifice that was paid for us. Yet we were loved enough for God to sacrifice his son, and break the barriers of death to give us life eternal.

So all that remains, is for me to wish you all a very Happy Easter and give you one more very big Thank You.

(If you have not already donated but feel you would like to, please go to https://www.justgiving.com/Hannah-Phillips7 , thank you in advance)