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.

It'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.So 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.

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