Tag Archives: Barbara

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Dear Friends, Beloved Reader,

Here we are again. How you holding up?

I've reached the 'somehow ended up watching far too many episodes of Escape to Chateau DIY and am now convinced I need to buy a rundown chateau in the south of France and spend my life fixing it' stage of the pandemic.

chateauIt's gonna be great. You can come stay and we shall sit in the orchard, under the French sun, drinking wine and eating bread and cheese.orchardorcharrd wineSo yeh, Lockdown 2 is mostly creating a Chateau moodboard. This is kinda saving my life right now.

Many years ago now, a wise old priest invited me to come speak at his church .

“What do you want me to talk about?” I asked.

"Come tell us what is saving your life right now,” he answered.

It was as if he had swept his arm across a dusty table and brushed all the formal china to the ground.

I did not have to try to say correct things that were true for everyone. I did not have to use theological language that conformed to the historical teachings of the church. All I had to do was figure out what my life depended on. All I had to do was figure out how I stayed as close to that reality as I could.” From An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor

It is the year of our Lord 2020, consider the formal china swept to the floor. What is saving your life right now?

Alongside dreaming of Chateau Life, saving mine is:

  • Lunch time walks. Still. After becoming a giant dust bowl over the summer, the common is now a massive mud pit. The ground either springs back underfoot or tries to steal your shoes. Turns out, the world is not a cold dead place.
  • Sunday morning walks – life, questions, uncertainty, hope. We walk and talk it out. Conclusions – we know far less than we thought we did. Life is way more uncertain and far more unpredictable than we like to admit. Hope is still a thing, somehow.
  • After work walks - shout out to everyone marching through the dark just to hang out with friends.
  • Less sitting, more dancing. And walking - obvs.
  • Mixed Up podcast. “Going to the hairdressers is just as stressful as some people find the dentist. You just never know if they’ll be able to handle your hair and how they’ll interpret what you ask for.” NEVER BEEN MORE SEEN IN ALL MY LIFE. Going to the hairdressers is terrifying. This is fact.
  • The calendar of good things is back (its mostly food - and walks):

Teach us to remember, God; make our minds a storehouse for past promises kept, all the good things and hope fulfilled - so that we can be a prophet to our own present, a watchman on the walls of our own still night.” Strahan Coleman

  • Spiritual direction. I offload all my messy theological questions, I get some good questions thrown back at me – somehow this is helping me find my way through.
  • This.

When it feels like the dark
Lingers longer than the night
When the shadows feel like giants
Are You chasing me down?
Tell me where could I run
From Your light, where could I hide?
Hemmed within Your precious thoughts
There's no hiding from Your love
Highs and lows
Lord, You're with me either way it goes
Should I rise or should I fall
Even so
Lord, Your mercy is an even flow
You're too good to let me go
Should I dance on the heights
Or make my bed among the depths
Your mercy waits at every end
Like You planned it from the start
Should the dawn come with wings
Or find me far-side of the sea
There Your hand still fastens me
Ever closer to Your heart
Highs and lows
Lord, You're with me either way it goes
Should I rise or should I fall
You are faithful through it all
Highs and lows
You surround me either way it goes
Should I rise or should I fall
Lord, You're with me through it all
Highs and lows
In the rhythms of Your grace, I know
You're too good to let me go

May you find a quiet place within you – deep and untouchable to the violent, raging voices of the moment – to hear God remind you ‘I am with you till the end of the age.’ Strahan

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Its world book day! Rejoice! Celebrate! Books are the greatest!

A few months ago one of my faves tagged me in a book challenge – post one book a day every day for a week. I was SUPER KEEN because I love books and I love sharing what I'm reading. Obvs, I only managed one day because life. But now, here for your delight and edification (and beacause we all may end up at home more than we thought): THESE BOOKS CHANGED MY LIFE AND YOU SIMPLY MUST READ THEM.

First up, is Love Does by Bob Goff. Joy. Whimsy. Jesus. This book changed everything. I LOVE Bob. I don’t leave the country without this book.

I want to go barefoot because it's holy ground; I want to be running because time is short and none of us has as much runway as we think we do; and I want it to be a fight because that's where we can make a difference. That's what love does.”

I even ditched food so they’d be enough space in my bag for it to be carried up a mountain – and food is my very favourite thing. SUCH IS MY DEVOTION. I give this book to EVERYONE – birthday presents, wedding presents, new job presents, thank-you-for-being-a-good-friend presents, how-to-be-a-better-friend presents, sorry-I’m-leaving-the-country-but-let-this-book-distract-you-from-your-sorrow presents… any excuse really.

Next up, is the book that is saving my life right now: An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor. I LOVE Barbara. This book helped me to see the sacred in the unlikeliest of places.

Reverence for creation comes fairly easily for most people. Reverence for other people presents more of a challenge, especially if those people's lives happen to impinge upon your own... I have an easier time loving humankind than I do particluar human beings... Particular human beings rarey do things the way I think they should do them and when they prevent me from doing what I think I should be doing then I can run short on reverence for them."

Third is At Home in The World by Tsh Oxenreider. Tsh and her husband sold all their things and took their 3 kids travelling around the world a year. This book changed everything. Tsh let me know I wasn’t the only one who wants both adventure and routine at the same time.

Wanderlust and my longing for home are birthed from the same place: a desire to find the ultimate spot this side of heaven. When I stir soup at my stove I drift to a distant island. When I'm on the road with my backpack, my heart wanders back to my couch and my favourite cup of coffee.

My equal pull between both are fuelled by my hardwired desire for heaven on earth. And I know I'll never find it. "Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees it takes off his shoes, the rest just sit around and pluck blackberries" unless the flickering bushes compel me to remove my shoes, traveling the world will never satisfy. Neither will the liturgy of normal life back home."

Fourth is The Way of The Heart by Henri Nouwen. This book changed everything. I’ve pretty much highlighted and underlined the entire thing. I LOVE Henri. This book helped me to see how silence is more than just being quiet, solitude more than just being alone and prayer more than just words.

Solitude shows us the way to let our behaviour be shaped not by the compulsion of the world but by our new mind, the mind of Christ. Silence prevents us from being suffocated by our wordy world and teaches us to speak the Word of God. Finally, unceasing prayer gives solitude and silence their real meaning. In unceasing prayer we descend with the mind in to the heart. Thus, we enter through our heart into the heart of God, who embraces all of history with his eternally creative and recreative love.”

Fifth is The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claibourne. This book changed everything. I LOVE Shane. I recently heard him speak and was reminded of how he has such a loving way of challenging what you think it could mean to follow Jesus. Another way is possible.

Our world is desperately in need of imagination, for we have spent so much creativity devising ways of destroying our enemies that some folks don’t think its even possible (much less practical) to love them. We have placed such idolatrous faith in our ability to protect ourselves that we call it more courageous to die killing than to die loving. The faith we have in the market and in the imagination we employ to acquire wealth has so far surpassed our ingenuity to share we cannot help but wonder if the contemporary gospel means good news to the poor whose bellies scream out to God.”

Last is Inspired by Rachel Held Evans. For when the river is no longer a river, the mountain no longer the mountain and all the old answers you had about the Bible and faith and God just don’t make sense any more. This is a recent addition to my must-reads. Disclaimer: may help/hinder/spark a crisis of faith.

God save me from the day when stories of violence, rape and ethnic cleansing inspire anything other than revulsion. i don't want to become a person who is unbothered by these texts... There are parts of the Bible than inspire, parts than perplex and parts that leave you with an open wound. I'm still wrestling, and like Jacob, I will wrestle until I am blessed. God hasn't let go of me yet.

The gospel means that every small story is part of a sweeping story, every ordinary life part of an extraordinary movement. God is busy making all things new, and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus has opened that work to everyone who wants in on it. The church is not a group of people who believe all the same things, the church is a group of people caught up in the sam story, with Jesus at the centre."img_20200316_0720434926429091325460047996.jpg

Got any recommendations for me?