Frozen by fear

Over the Summer it was deemed necessary to buy a now exceptionally popular Christmas film for my birthday. This was entirely so I could have a treat you understand. The film was, of course, Frozen. Now before you run away and hide in the corner of insanity as "let it go" takes lodge in your head and will not leave. I want to look at the theme of the film, fear. Elsa, desperate to love and reach out, is paralysed and changed by fear. Fear does strange things to us all. It can turn us into irrational beings and in some extreme cases like Elsa it makes us dangerous.

Small fears, paralyse our minds, our bodies and cause us to behave in ways we would not normally do. For instance one teeny spider on the other side of the room catching me by surprise, will make me jump (scream) and run away. I will not then return until said arachnid has been removed. This is daft and irrational, I know it is. I am prepared to have other insects and animals around me, even dangerous ones. Yet this small and defenceless creature, sends me quaking.

More medium fears change who we are. For those who know me well, I am a chatty and out going person. For those meeting me for the first time, you would be lucky to drag a word out of me and you will have to work at starting the conversation. Afraid of slipping up, not knowing what you think and who you are, I would sooner say nothing and avoid people at all costs. It takes a while for me to trust people and even longer for me to trust that a plane will not just fall out of the sky while I am in it.

More extreme fears are more often based in a small bit of reality, but taken out of all proportion. When we fear for our families, our countries and our faiths. When we fear where our next meal comes from or when we will be loved. We change completely. We shut down rational thought, we do not stop long enough to think. We use fight or flight. For those that use fight, the consequences can be catastrophic. There are many evil events in our world right now, how many of them are driven by the constant pressure of fear. Living in constant extreme fear, can do much to permanently alter the psychological reactions of a person. Like Elsa, one tiny mistake not done out of evil but fear. Can change us and drive us to do things we would never dream of doing before.One small act, then meditated on and feared can quickly escalate our actions. Then we can hurt and destroy. You can see it all around us. Fear has a lot to answer for.

Fear has an answer though, as Elsa found. Time, patience and love, build a trust. Step by very slow step as trust builds we begin to let go of our paralysis and then we can truly begin to move on. Facing fears takes a lot of courage and this is why you need someone to demonstrate love to break to bonds of fear that hold you still. For the small fears and even the slightly bigger ones, this is easier. Someone to take your hand, to hold it as you tremble while they show you it is is safe. For entire countries so radicalised by fear, their psyche of their entire cultures so changed by constant barrages of threat. It is much harder to gain trust, to show love and to learn patience.

All of us fear something, all of us need someone to help us through. For us, this Sunday marked Holy Cross Sunday. It is where we look at the symbol of Christ's cross in our lives. The night before he was crucified, in the darkness Christ himself felt this most human of feelings. He feared what he had to do, he struggled to trust in his Father. But he did trust him, he faced his fear and in doing so he broke the bonds of fear for us all. We no longer need to fear, for trust in the Lord, means love from the Lord, means forgiveness and victory over death. We may not see that which loves us most. We may not feel that which carries us through our darkest times. We do however see him reflected in our friends and families. In the stranger that changes your life in some small way. Beyond that, when we look back through our lives, we can see the footprints he has left on our journey. We can see how our trust in him pays off. Christ died that we may have victory over death, that there might be nothing we should fear. For when we stand before God trusting him in humble penitence for all our wrongs, we do not need to fear for his love transcends all.

We just need to learn to stop, take a deep breath, and place our fear at the foot of the cross. For there is no greater forgiveness than his and there is no greater love in which you can place your trust

When did death and divorce become a game?

On a day when we mark the deaths of so many who died that we be free, I am slightly baffled by my children's attitude to death. Not just death either but suicide, divorce and care homes. At the ages of 9 and 6, I am fairly sure I had not even heard of suicide or care homes, yet all of the above are so normal to my children they form part of their role play games with alarming frequency.

I am not going to attack single parents, they are not to blame. I myself was the only child to s single parent for 7 years, until my Mother remarried. It is part of the reason I know it is no game. I know that suicide, care homes and death are not games too. I have been touched by them and the reality of what they mean. Not all of them personally, but certainly I have witnessed friends close to me go through the pain they involve. Yet to my children, these things are normal and something to joke about. I used to believe CBBC was a good thing. It had no adverts and I considered it to deal with issues and educate children. Then I encountered Tracy Beaker and the Dumping ground. It is a follow on from an emerging trend of author's such as Judy Blume when I was younger. They start to deal with the reality of teenage life and struggles there in. Judy Blume did it well, it was portrayed in a much more realistic way and was aimed at a higher age group. Though it has to be said my interests lay in other areas, primarily at the time Gerald Durrell and the Bronte sisters and therefore these books only made a passing impact on my life and identity. However Jacquline Wilson's books have made it into tv adaptations on CBBC. Now, they do deal with important issues and I think this is necessary. The trouble is CBBC viewers are not limited to late primary school and teenage children. It's viewers range official from 7/8 upwards and in reality if they have siblings they start watching it from younger if you only have one television in the house. Now we only have an hours tv watching a day in this house, when I am preparing dinner. On a Saturday and in holidays first thing in the morning. Yet encountering these tv programmes on such a brief time span has still effected the way they see the world, to the extent that we have banned the watching of some of them. It is not that I disagree with them attempting to deal with these problems, it is that they do not just normalise them but make them seem fun. The introduction of cartoon images in between scenes means that through the eyes of a younger child they must be fun and therefore become a game. Before you even know it your child is marrying, divorcing, and sending children to care homes several times in a morning. Yes role play helps children to deal with the world around them. But when such ideas become entrenched and acceptable when they are so young, it is not hard to see why they become easy to do when you are older.

We are a Christian country, we are supposed to believe in a Christian morality. We are supposed to promote the ideas that a stable family is the best way forward. We are meant to demonstrate the sanctity of life, so as that when we come to mark days of remembrance and Christ's crucifixion, the enormity of the sacrifice makes an impact on the children. So as that they can understand it's value, pass it on to the next generation. Such an understanding is required to stop such atrocities ever happening again. If it all becomes normal, even in games at the age of 6, what hope have we for preserving the sanctity of life and family models.

I know many issues in society frighten children and we need to talk to and deal with them with our children. But when they seem so much fun on television, you are not dealing with it. You are going to bring a whole generation of children down with a bump when they realise that what they had thought of as a bit of cartoon fun, actually is far more serious and is full of pain. They will find that death is permanent and people do not come back when you switch the telly on for repeats. That divorce tares families apart. That the many and varied reasons why a child ends up in a care home are anything but glossy and fun. If we want to deal with the issues, we should deal with them a)in guaranteed age range that understand what is trying to be dealt with and b)in a realistic manner, that does not frighten but does ultimately portray what really does happen.

Whilst these things are normal and do happen, they are not meant to be the ideal. If we make them seem more fun than the alternatives, it is no surprise that the next generation will part from their lives and families with such ease. It will not just become a disposable consumer society, but our families and maybe even our lives will become disposable with much more ease. I do not think that all those men went to war and sacrificed their lives, so that we could dispose of ours quite that freely.

The cost of War

MAY 1915

Let us remember, Spring will come again,

To the scorched, blackened woods, where the wounded trees

Wait,with their old wise patience for the heavenly rain,

Sure of the sky: sure of the sea to send its healing breeze,

Sure of the sun. And even as to these

Surely the Spring, when God shall please,

Will come again like a divine surprise

To those who sit today with their great Dead, hands in their hands

eyes in their eyes,

At one with love, at one with Grief: blind to the scattered things

and changing skies.
Charlotte Mew 1869-1928

It has been a very long time since we as a country have experienced the violence of war on our doorsteps. The utter devastation surrounding you, as you live constantly in fear for your life and the lives of your loved ones. So long in fact that a fair few us could not claim to imagine, let alone know how it would feel. What feelings of dread and desolation must have surfaced to open your door, knowing you were safe but many more were dead. Buildings collapsed, bombs dropping, seeking shelter often in vain. What must it have felt like. I have seen the photos from the past and the bombardment of media images of wars present in my time. My heart goes out to those back then and those now. But I can not, no matter how hard I, try understand the true feelings that they must  have experienced everyday as they open their eyes. As they gingerly wake up in the sunlight perhaps momentarily forgetting the destruction being enforced around them, only to come plummeting down to the reality that today might be their last.

I have always had a reticence about whether war is ever justified, it seems to me that it is just an inevitability of human nature. One of our great flaws. Sometimes we wade in with the greatest of intentions, sometimes their is no rhyme nor reason other than to destroy others in the search for overwhelming power. The consequences are never as we planned and always far higher then ever we had intended. 

Every memorial day we stand and remember those that have given their lives,a poignant reminder of the costs people have paid. So many names, to many to list and some will never be known. A great silence and void of death. How can we stare into this void, acknowledge its' existence and still sleep walk so blindly into the devastation that surrounds us. We will destroy lives for our supply of oil, yet ignore the genocide that takes place as a consequence of our actions. We stare down a nation that is slowly edging its' way to challenging us to war. We watch and do nothing as Gaza and Israel, seek to eradicate each other in an unbalanced power struggle. What lesson did we learn precisely from the flattened cities and lives lost in this country in wars gone past. What precisely do we mean, when we say "Never, never again" I have heard those words so many times and yet I have watched genocides occur in other countries and wars raged in our name, then the consequences left to fight for themselves.  From the minute we have learnt how to kill each other, it seems we have not been able to stop.

To me, who will cry over the names of soldiers who died long before I lived. Who has images of violence and death imprinted on her mind by the media, and cries for those she can not help. Such pointless violence, seems just that pointless. But I have never lived in fear of my life of losing all I have to someone who just wants to take it all away. I am however an idealist, I would love to believe that world peace is possible. Certainly as a young child I honestly believed all I would have to do was collect every gun in the world and it would all stop. Of course this is a fantasy, born of a child's desire for peace. Life is more complicated than that. Politics and power, will always find a way to kill because for some not having their own way is worth destroying everything it is that they want. The lessons from history will not be and are not ever learnt, because at the end of the day some people, do not feel compassion or are driven to such levels of despair they feel that they have no choice. Does not make it right, does not make it easy and we should try and stop it. All I can do is hope, pray and help where I can.  

Amidst the flattened Churches and buildings walks Christ, his crown of thorns pressing on his head blood running down his face, his hands and feet shed blood too. He feels their pain and suffering, more than we ever could.   He holds the hands of the dying and guides them towards his Father. He does not abandon them and neither must we. Pain and suffering will exist in our world until the kingdom of heaven comes down to earth. Our job in the meantime is to meet Christ in his suffering and ease it as much as we can.

Accepting who we are.

"You have heard that you shall conceive and bear a son; you have hears that you shall conceive , not of man, but of the Holy Spirit. The angel is waiting for your answer:it is time for him to return to God who sent him. We too are waiting, O Lady, for the word of pity, even we who are overwhelmed in wretchedness by the sentence of damnation"

St Bernard of Clairvaux

The whole world for one brief moment was still waiting on the answer of one young woman. As much as God might have predestined her for this role, he required her submission. She was free to refuse. She could have chosen a comfortable life, but she did not she chose to submit to God. She became a living tabernacle carrying "the word" inside her. Once the Son of Man was born, it was her job to nurture, support and guide this young human male to become our redeemer. 

 We all have a free choice as to whether we listen to what God says to us, and grow  into that knowledge and bring others to Christ. Or, we can chose to ignore what God is asking and seek to serve ourselves.  

Feminism, is self serving. It started out as something quite reasonable, an effort to level the playing field some what. It has taken on a whole new life though. It is in danger of and in some cases already is doing to men, what women have objected to having happen to them. Justified purely and simply with "We deserve to have this now".  The trouble is we do not deserve to trample on others, even if they trample on us. We should not be seeking "tit for tat".

In reality we are not actually all that down trodden. Men are not out to destroy us, undermine us and exploit us. In fact they are actually quite nice. Most men I have met are there to affirm us and want to see us grow. However, we ourselves have to accept that we are different. We are not men and we never can be. Qualifications and ability, are not the only things that make us ideal candidates for a job. We can not always be the right candidate and there are some things we are fundamentally not meant to be. We are not just physically different, we are emotionally and mentally different too. Not deficient, not not as good, just different. Often Mothers expect it all, a good job and a happy family. It is a pipe dream, somewhere along the lines we compromise, either our jobs or our families. Then we turn round and blame men for standing in our way. We stand in our own way, because we are not designed to have it all. God created Man and Woman, together they are in his image.  We are designed to compliment each other and not to be each other. If we learnt to be more confident in who we are, accept who we are and be proud of who we are. We might find that this constant struggle internally might cease.  What we can not keep doing is trying to undermine men, squash them and trample on them in order to prove we are just as good. We have always been equal in the eyes of God. We do not need to prove it, we need to accept it.

We all have a choice, we can listen to God and follow him or we can follow ourselves. Ask yourself in everything you do, "Am I doing this for me, to make me look good, to affirm myself and get noticed or am I doing this out of genuine love and concern for others? Is this God's will?" It is a far harder path to accept that we can not always have what we want and we are certainly not entitled to all that we do want.  

So much more than just words.

When I say think of what it means to pray, for many of us that image of  an innocent child kneeling at their bedside comes to mind. In reality very few of us are young sweet and innocent anymore, nor do we kneel beside our beds in order to pray. Prayer can mean many different things to all of us. I went from being at school where offices were available, to making my way to Church for the Divine Office to having three children! Those of you who have children will know, making time, let alone the practicalities of going to church at least once a day becomes impossible. For many years (in a very guilty manner) prayers became grasped moments of thoughts to God, thankful ones, pleading ones and on occasion fairly desperate ones. But for a considerable time the discipline of the offices was consumed by my children. I believe that God looked no less on my prayers then, than now. Having returned to my daily discipline.  Even still despite this I catch myself in a fleeting thought of a prayer during the day. Old habits die hard I guess.

But reflecting on a lot of what has happened, has made me realise prayer is more than just words or thoughts. Prayer like God infiltrates our lives and our very beings. How we go about our lives can be a prayer. If we offer our lives and work ,  happily and joyfully with others put before ourselves. It becomes a prayful offering. Time spent thinking on and reflecting on our lives becomes prayful discernment.  Time spent admiring and being grateful for our lives becomes a prayer of thanks. Time spent in concern for others becomes a prayful request for God's help.

Prayer can be given in every thought, word and deed that we do. It can even be through the way we dress. Our choice to not wear make up can be a thankful offering of God's beautiful creation. Wearing a crucifix  a prayful reminder of sacrifices made for our salvation. Now for a priest the very act of dressing for Mass is a prayer. Each item has it's own prayer that removes the identity if "me" and replaces it with "Priest".  It is about praying that when  they stand in that altar they are no longer an individual but "in persona Christi" .  A glorious and humbling prayer.  A remberance that the Mass  is not about us as individuals but about giving thanks to God for his almighty gift of sacrifice and redeeming grace. The Priest in his actions during the consecration again emphasises , that this is an act directed at God not us. By facing a wall, as I have heard it said, he is turning with us to face God .  The offering of The gifts is not being made to us, it is made to God that  it might receive his Holy miracle transforming  this bread  and wine into the body and blood of his dear Son.  Then at the end of this  the Priest turns to us knelt in humble gratitude and respect and says "Behold the Lamb of God." Then we approach in a prayful way to receive this wonderful gift.

Each and every action in our lives can be a prayful gift to God.  Without  hesitation we should be willing to offer our lives as such.  Prayer is so much more than  just using words.  The divine office  and Mass  are good starting points to find and listen to God, but should be used as a spring board that catapults  our entire existence as an offering  of  prayer  to our Father.

The peace of God

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. "  John 14:27

From the very beginning of a Christian, to the very end of a Christian's life, we have God's peace. It touches our lives without us even realising it. This week, my niece was touched and blessed with God's peace. May she hold it close to her every day of her life. It is easy on days like an infants Baptism, watching a small vulnerable infant anointed with God's grace, to feel this peace inside our hearts. Surrounded by friends and family, for this short while the abundance of God's grace and peace is flowing around us. Much like the wine at Cana, the gifts of the Holy Spirit shine. At the end of the day, we all part, the warm glow begins to dissipate and so does the shining radiance of God's grace. This has not really gone, it is still flowing with the same abundance as earlier, we have just stopped focussing on it.

So then we go out into our lives and face it's challenges. Some days, when God's creation shines in all it's almighty beauty, we focus on God's gifts of peace. It almost warms our hearts and we can sit back and bask in this wonderful gift. Other days, the weather is bleak our lives fall apart and we go looking desperately for something we can not find. We all have days of dark doubts, when we question where is God's peace among all this pain. All seems lost. For me those days were most abundant when I was a teenager. I wrangled with deep pain and questions. Many of which took many years to answer. I never lost my faith, in fact I did the opposite, I grabbed onto it with both hands hoping it would save me. It did.  Though I questioned at many times point of it all. 

When things are going well, it is easy to bend that ear to listening to God. The quiet tune of peace is obviously dancing in front of us and hope in the future comes easily. When it is dark, claustrophobic and daunting, listening to God is the last thing we want to do. We turn in on ourselves, listening to our own desires. Through the fog of despair, it is hard to see the light of hope. I am lucky that I saw the value of my faith, without it and the guiding patient hand of my husband to be, I am not sure I would have found that peace again. Regularly attending Church even when I did not want to, regularly praying when I felt no hope, is what eventually led me to find the overflowing gifts of God. 

We face challenging questions at the moment, questions of life and truths. Questions about the end of peoples lives, questions about when life starts and when we afford it such recognition, are just a couple of those. It is easy when we look at these, to revel in the depths of despair. How bleak our future will be.  They are hard questions. I very much hope that my niece will grow up in a world that values her uniqueness. Where life is valued and preserved and peace reigns across all the earth. But then I hoped that when my own children were born, I could lose hope.

But I have not. I have learned that even when things seem beyond hope, they are not. I have learnt not only to grab onto my faith with blind faith. My eyes are open, my ears are pricked and I will listen to what God has to say. It may not be easy and it may not always be what I want, but it is the gracious gift of peace. With it, all inner turmoil is stilled from the very moment I choose to listen. 

A valued place

Not for the first time in the last few months, yesterday I was informed through people speaking on the behalf of the CofE, that although this is not perfect it is the right thing to do for us all. I knew it would happen, in some ways it should happen, we got ourselves onto a path that had to be completed the minute we accepted women into Holy orders. Being prepared does not ultimately stop the shock, disbelief and pain. It does not stop the tears.

I am encouraged and indeed have been encouraging myself to have trust in my Church and hope. Every time I have said it, it has felt more like I am trying to convince myself rather than you. Where a year ago, fresh out of college I was totally able to trust the Church. Over the last year, I have seen that even with laws in place, trust is eroded and people bullied. Christ demanded of us sacrifice, pain and suffering that we might be born again. I have a very small amount of very fragile trust and for the last time I will leap into the darkness, in the hope of new life in the Church. One of respect for all.

All I have in my mind,however, is the crowds scattered in front of Pontius Pilot being whipped up to speak against Christ clamouring for his death. From one issue to the next the press clamoured for change last night. Not change based on theology but on modern non- Christian values. All I keep hearing is "Forgive them Father,they know not what they do"

I do not write to you with big long academic words, that has never been my style. I write with honesty as to how I see the Church and our place inside it. I am sad that today I have to look at my daughter and say the majority of our Church no longer value the wonderful unique creation God made in her. It no longer respects the calling of women to be as God designed and desired. That in order to be something great she must emulate man and seek to have glory, recognition and live in the limelight.  That is not what she has been brought up to value, yet to anyone who knows her, you will know she is not shy and has not had her wings clipped by a paternalistic community. On the contrary she is confident in her identity and who she is and she is content. Likewise I have not had my wings clipped and my identity eroded by the friends I have. They are the very people who have taught me not to be ashamed.

So I tentatively look to the future and in the hope Christ brings but it no longer feels as easy as it did.