Get a Grip

Getting a grip!
It's time to seriously get a hold of that which we were got a hold of for. Paul wrote that a long time ago, but it's right for right now.
There is so much, much, much more in Christ Jesus than we have even scratched the surface of.

Church is not a "holding pen" for heaven. We are not engaged in a spiritual conservation exercise. We are not the defenders of God and His ways, rather He is our defender, our Father, our keeper and provider.
It's time to get a grip

Be blessed

Pete

perfectly formed...

I had an I-Pad for my birthday. It was a bit of a surprise – more than I expected and not what I expected all at the same time.

Call me a geek, a techno oddball.

Funnily enough, I find a similar response when I talk about Jesus: “Oh Yes. One of those are you?”

After over 40 years I still find Him a bit surprising. He greatly exceeds expectations and is not what I expected at all.

You are free to think me a geek, but His forgiveness is free, His love immense and His peace past understanding. He’s more “must have” than an I-Pad.

Blessings

Pete

A light wind - a zephyr - is still a wind.


Maybe today you will feel the whisper of God's


wind across your life, a zephyr if you will.


His light breath is the same as his hurricane - 


full of vim and vigour!

So, all together now:

"Breathe on me breath of god..."

God's emergency exit!

I was putting something together on "People of the Way" and recalled a time when this was so very helpful to us as a family. I thought that maybe someone else could get some help from it too.
Love,
Pete

Elevated thinking...

Dear Dad,

Sorry it’s been a while but I think it was like I had my braces stuck on the gatepost over something. You know what I mean by that do you? Something came up and I couldn’t get myself past it. There I was going back to it in my mind. To be honest with you it was like walking round in circles – always coming back to the same old thing and yet never being quite on top of it. So, you see, my braces were stuck on the gatepost of this thing and I was somehow being pulled at every time I tried to walk away from it.

Alright, I’ll come clean with you. The fact of the matter is I fancied a new car. Well no. I fancied a new car for Ruth. She works hard (this is for your eyes only.) She does work so hard and spends ages in her “mobile office”. (Actually it’s a sort of travelling chocolate wrapper collection point if what I find when I clear it out is anything to go by.) I’ve already said too much – if by any chance she ever gets her hands on this letter and even sniffs a rat of praise for what she does I’ve had it.

Now that just puts me in mind of so many people. You might have come across a few yourself. Those folks that do stuff and then when you try to tell them it’s good, or that they might be half decent you get the “Give over will you!” or “I wish! You should see me on a wet Wednesday afternoon when the kids have trailed muck in on the carpet” or ”I’m not what you think I am you know…I’m no saint!” Personally, I find that sort a bit difficult to handle. It’s like the moment you have anything decent to say to them they stick their head down the neck of their jumper and the rest of the conversation gets increasingly woolly. There you are in the presence of someone in whose shadow you walk. You can’t remember them making a single demand of you. They only have to walk into the room and your life moves on like the Starship Enterprise shifting into warp factor twenty-seven. Clouds part, hunger abates, longings cease etc., etc., etc.

“You do me so much good,” you say.

“”It was nothing,” they reply as the broken shards of your pitiful life are miraculously drawn together in the right order and something frighteningly akin to love starts to stick them to each other with only the tiniest scars of experience to show for the whole sorry mess. “No, really, you would have done the same for me”.

Oh, I would, would I?

Well anyway. She simply must not get a whiff of the “Well done you good and faithful servant”. (Now where have I heard that before? And just how are we going to learn to cope with such unwavering praise when it does come our way I wonder? And just how are we meant to get any practice in for it unless we do some of it to others whilst at the same time allowing them to waft a bit of it in our direction?) Back to the car!

I know it was coming round to the time for a change. High mileage, one or two repairs fast coming over the horizon and the door bins were overflowing with the milk chocolate of human kindness. Ruth didn’t make a song and dance about it of course, just the odd comment or two. Someone at work had just had a new convertible – “nothing too ostentatious mind you”. Maybe a four wheel drive affair? “I just think that it might be nice to have a bit of fun.” (Thankfully, she hadn’t noticed that my mileage was creeping up a bit and that I was getting ready for a few – albeit minor – repairs myself. “Maybe a convertible next time? Perhaps a two leg drive?”)

That’s when I think I got my braces stuck on the gatepost. I found myself going out of my way to pass car showrooms. Stopping off now and then to make a few discrete enquiries. I was a man on a mission - but sneaky. A gumshoe-buyer. An undercover agent in the world of pressed tin and re-cyclable plastic. An air-con-man extraordinaire.

“You’re a bit late love. Been anywhere interesting?”

“Who me?”

“Well yes. It was you I had in mind. You are the man I live with aren’t you?”

“No. Well yes, but, err no. Nowhere in particular.”

“You’ve been looking at cars haven’t you?”

And so the seedy and seamier side of my existence took over. Oh the lies! Oh the scheming machinations of the human mind! How hard we try for what we love!

“It’s no good. I know full well when you’re lying. And anyway, we can’t afford it. I don’t want anything too showy I couldn’t justify it. I’ll have a Fiat Punto.”

Now, no disrespect to Fiat. And certainly none intended to the Punto – in fact it has turned out to be just fine actually. The real problem is that I really don’t think I was buying it for Ruth at all. And like when she buys a dress for a very special occasion I had a sneaking suspicion that Ruth would end up back at the first shop she looked in. Same with the car – we went back to square one, threw a six and climbed the oh so familiar ladder that had been staring us in the face all the time. But why all the running round in circles? To be frank, I was earnest to impress that’s what! The trouser support department was hung up on the upright beam of longing, and the longing was for a touch of the “He’s the best…yes, he does spoil me doesn’t he? ‘Don’t know what I’d do without him…a real treasure…”

So that’s it. This is the now quite feeble sounding excuse for not writing earlier. Selfishness, pure and simple – well simple anyway, if not so pure. And this brings me to the point I had in mind when I sat down to write in the first place. If I’m not trying like mad to get somewhere whilst being pulled backwards at the same time, I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time running around in circles. In fact, I think that I am becoming something of an expert at doing the two together and at the same time. (A bit like that old party trick. The one where you pat your head with one hand and rub your tummy with the other. You should try it sometime – my other dad showed it me once when I was a little kid.)

If I’m beginning to understand how it works – and writing to you now is helping to clarify the whole sorry business of it all for me. The fact is I find myself wanting so much for myself. To get it takes so much effort. I have to really go out of my way to put all the facets of the plan together. Then I have to start conning others like I have already begun to con myself, stretching the whole thing just one step too far. If I’m not running round in circles, I’m running in a straight line but one that takes me away from the real problem I have to face. See, I think it’s me that needs the sorting out. The car is a bit irrelevant I suppose.

This all puts me in mind of some difficulty I had in a lift.

I don’t know if I told you yet - maybe you have already heard from other sources – but I go out to Romania from time to time. It’s family business of a sort. I go with my mate Norman. Now there’s a guy a bit short on guile. He’s more in your mould than mine I’m thinking.

We were popping in to see a friend of ours. He runs a Christian radio station. Well it’s not really a Christian radio station. I don’t think it has made any sort of personal commitment or anything like that. It is more a radio station for Christians. Actually, Naxus (the chap with the radio station in question) thinks that it is more in the market for non-Christians if you get my drift. Anyway, we were in the lift having left his ninth floor Christian/non-Christian radio station when I got bored between floors four and three. Norman had spotted something in my personal demeanour which indicated that trouble could be afoot. A loving yet certain glower radiated from him and filled the small compartment (already a little crowded, what with there being me, him of the glowering visage, two bags, a guitar case and a translator, driver/general fac totem.)

I was trying out the lift for any signs of springiness. The floor had a certain satisfactory measure of give in it. There was just the faintest hint of a bounce so I gave it a go. One quick hop, a little stretching of the cables, one very loud bang and our downward progress halted immediately and, seemingly, forever.

All buttons were pressed until I found the one marked in Romanian for “Alarm”. I rang it once and no one came to the other side of the jammed lift door. I was beginning to play over in my mind various submarine disaster movies I have seen. You know the sort of thing? Men slipping quietly off the mortal coil as oxygen grows thinner and beads of sweat slip dramatically down stalwart looking faces. The look of relief as they hear a faint tapping on the hull and the rising sense of hope as the radio operator (the one who can do the Morse code really well) spells out “Help at hand…cutting equipment set up and ready to go…hot food and warm drinks standing by in the galley…anyone in there got a box of matches for the oxy-acetylene?”

I played the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth on the bell. Norman panicked, I played more, and the fac totem rolled his eyes in growing disbelief. Deciding that something more useful should be done he gave the door a good kicking and it swung open with the surface of floor three some feet above the level of the lift floor. We climbed out, paused for a quick gathering of photographic evidence and legged it down the stairs as the door locks of the flat next door to the lift shaft began to shake rattle and roll.

I should have known that it would end in tears. I just get something in my mind and then push and push until finally I discover the edge of the envelope and have to do a runner. I’ve been like it all my life. (I’ll spare you the story of how I put a match to the neck of an ‘empty’ meths bottle just to see if the fumes would burn. It’s a wonder to me to this day that I have been able to grow a beard!)

Come to think of it, my other dad tried his best to sort me out on this one but I don’t think he ever quite got through on it. The trouble with his master plan was me. I could see through his show. The older I got, the more I saw where I got the running business from. My dad was an expert in his own right, so why should I listen to him? That’s where you come in. Ever since I started getting you into close up I’ve found that there doesn’t seem to be much room for personal manoeuvre. I get the feeling that there isn’t much, if anything, you have ever run away from. Nor does there appear to be anything you have ever gotten yourself hung up on either. I don’t seem to be able to turn anything back on you when you raise it with me.

Well on that note I think I’ll bring this short note to an end.

I did, by the way, go back to the radio station. Naxus was really nice to me – much better than I think I could have ever deserved. On leaving he just stepped out of his office door as I was entering the lift.

“Don’t you mess with my lift!” he called jovially giving it his best Godfather, Mafioso shot.

Write soon,

Love,

Pete. 

The Missional Church... simple

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

I saw this and thought it worth a look. Thanks to a guy called  Jeff Maguire (and friends) for  putting it so succinctly.

Lydia the Tattooed Lady

You've just got to love the Marx Brothers!

"...She has a view of Niagara that nobody has

And on a clear day you can see Alcatraz...

...She once swept an admiral clear of his feet

The ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat..."

Our son helps tell stories on skin - everything from milestones in life to the deepest held beliefs of the people he tattoos.

Groucho lets us into the stories Lydia ("that encyclopidia" (sic)) tells, and tattooed or not we are all walking tales.

I love it when a guy called Paul (Saul in another life) writes to a bunch of people and tells them that they are walking, talking letters from God*.

In a way we're all tatttooed with a story to tell.

The challenge is to tell it.

Highest regards to all.

* 2 Corinthians 3 v 2&3

Dear Dad...first letter home

I'm in the exquisitely fortunate position of having two dads. Both perfectly legal, both of whom I've come to love. I found myself writing to this one - I think the usual term of endearment is "birth-father." Funnily enough, I came to the conclusion (quite early on) that I was writing to the other one too. The second - neither my adoptive, step or any other, just my dad - seemed to me to be quite pleased that I'd got round to writing at all and said it would be fine to put the letters "out there" as, you never know, somebody else might like them too. My other dad isn't around to have a say. Nothing sinister, he just ran his earthly course and we parted - as indeed one day we all must - on exceedingly good terms.

So, here we go with a series which in a moment of complete non-inspiration I have simply called "Dear Dad."

(Kid with squint look about him is the author - Ed)

Dear Dad,

With me it’s always the starting that proves difficult. I’ve laid awake nights just contemplating this moment. Where to begin? How to turn on the tap and let it all come streaming out? Maybe if I knew the secret of keeping the channels open, if I didn’t wander off so easily about my own business I wouldn’t find myself having to write at all. Writing is for the far off isn’t it. Writing is for holidays: “Wish you were here…weather fine…food reasonable…flight abominable…sun hot…sea wet…home soon…love, Pete.” Writing is for business: “Please find enclosed my return of the 5^th inst…yours as in the third party…faithfully (but never quite sincerely) yours, P. Hardy (Peter Hardy, BA, Cert.Ed. RSA Typing/Shorthand, Cycling Proficiency Badge, Leaping Wolf and St. John’s First Aid Certificate.) Writing is for the poor in speech and weak of heart: “I’m writing because I find it so hard to say just what I mean…and to mean just what I say...hoping this hits the mark…gets me off the hook…saves me the tears…shores up my pride…with love (and hoping it somehow might just bounce back), Pete.

I could have called. That’s it, I could have called. What would it take? A minute or two out of the day? It’s like clearing up the backlog of washing and ironing. What kind of commitment does it take? A little here, a little there. But no! Once a week or so I make true pilgrimage to the basket. Not the passing acknowledgement of the pile’s presence. Not the “Well there it is, a bit done now will save all that bother later.” Never let it be said that I don’t know how to chill out, hang out and leave out. The job grows with each passing nod to the need. The thing with pilgrimages is that they seem to require of us something more than the truly, deeply madly, passionately, lovingly lived life. A pilgrimage calls out for careful arrangements to be made. There’s a pre-planned cleansing of the soul, a kind of spiritual deck clearing in readiness for an out-of-the-ordinary but in-body experience. This will require effort. This will demand sacrifice. Martyrdom (of a thankfully temporary nature) may well be on the cards and even dealt onto the table in self-gratifying view of others. So there we are – once in a while I set to with a vengeance. I feed the cleansing mill with days and days of accumulated muck, drape every available radiator with the drying out (pilgrimages seem often to be accompanied by inclement weather – heightens the sense of personal cost) and cry (poor tortured soul) as I take the steep learning curve associated with ironing when more regular practice with fewer articles could have by now delivered to me a Master’s Degree in the mystic art of getting the sleeves right.

Ah yes. I could have called. I could have simply made a little effort, picked up the phone and saved myself the postage, the walk to the post box and the hours spent wondering what kind of look there would be on your face when you read what I finally plucked up the courage to write.

“Dear Dad…” I’ve spent nights tossing and turning. I mean, I’m a dad too. I know what it is to hope for, long for, ache for dad-kid stuff. (Keep this to yourself, but I do sometimes wish that there might be a bit more two way traffic in this family business. I have paid the dues, bought the rights and all that.) I suppose this comes as a bit rich now doesn’t it? A quick poke at the delete key could save a bit of personal embarrassment between us. It just strikes me that perhaps you haven’t slept much either over the years. Sometimes it feels that I never quite manage to slumber or sleep where my own kids are concerned.

Do you know? I think things are a spot better already. “Dimidium facti qui coepit habet” (thanks Horace.) Here I am, maybe for the first time really trying to get through to you. Perhaps a bit of gratitude is called for?  Not from you but from me. I did get your letters by the way. I kept a bit quiet about it at the time but I was thankful for the helping hand you gave from time to time. Truth be told, I think that it was more than from time to time. I think you even boasted about me a bit from what I gather (that tended to get back to me from others rather than direct from you to me but then again, maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention.) Well thanks anyway. No really. Thanks a lot. Well even more than that now I come to think of it. I’m generally beginning to get the hang of this. Now I’ve begun I have the work half done (thanks again Horace).

This all seems so familiar to me now. It gets complicated for a little while but I remember when my own dad had bother with this communication business.

Hang on. “Dear Dad…” “My own dad…” This puts me in mind of a conversation I had in school with a lad. Having almost slain another for speaking ill of his mum we retired to the office. A cup of tea. Half an hour of calming and soothing and out comes all this love for his mum.

“I’d do anything for her sir. Anything. She looked after us when my dad was – well like, you know, knocking her about like. He was always going on at her, always trying to hurt her. I cried ‘cos I was too small to do anything about it. Best thing he did was to leave. I have a new dad now. I mean, he’s not my real dad but he’s more a dad than my real dad was if you get me. He’s taken time with me like my other dad never did. He’s nice to my mum so he’s more like the dad I would have wanted to have. He’s my dad really but it’s complicated sir.”

There must be millions out there with the same kind of tale. Oh, maybe not the violence and deep troubles of my lad at school, but still juggling the issues arising from two dads. “Where do my loyalties lie?” “Who am I anyway?” And then folks say they can’t understand Jesus having two dads. His situation smacks of the ultra modern if you ask me. Dad bunks off leaving a new one to do the business as it were. He gives him everything he can. You know, food, clothes, a roof over his head and a chance at the family business. And then the lad goes looking up the biological pa. Gets in touch with his real self. Talks more about the absent pater than the present one.

So here I am with two dads. And my dad – not you of the “Dear Dad…here I am trying to sort out a letter to you” variety, but the other one who, now I come to think of it would probably welcomed this kind of thing if I had just got around to it – had a bit of a falling out about his dad. This makes three dads and counting, and, like riding a bike, if I stop and think about this for long enough there may well be tears before bedtime. I’ll persevere and hope this comes out as I hoped it would.

So here I am with two dads…and my other dad had this falling out with his and this led to some ripples of less than good will flowing between him and his sister. Life’s never simple is it? “Ripples” is something of an understatement. Let’s try “and so they did take themselves off unto diametrically opposed lands apparently bereft of all modern means of communication despite both having phones and a post box on the corner of the street.” In short, they didn’t speak to each other for let’s call it ten years. Now, I don’t know how it was for his sister in all this. What I do know is that my dad wouldn’t hear of talking to her. What I don’t have a clue about is what went on in the cold dark watches of the night. You know, the time when most of our secret thoughts haul themselves out from under the bedclothes of the mind, strip off their Sunday best and parade themselves for what they truly are – horrifying.

Time passed. Some were born; some learned to drive (more later) and it was given to some to die. A death occurred which called us back to our homeland. During a lull in funereally related duties I offered my dad a ride out in the car (he not, never having been, nor ever destined to be a driver) and me being one of those who twixt life and death had mastered the necessary skills, parted with a shed load of money and been delivered of a licence. Always one for a novelty dad took me up on the offer and I took him to his sister’s house (well it was my car, I had the keys and getting out of the passenger seat at anything over fifteen miles an hour is hardly an option is it?)

“What’s this?” he asked in typically northern fashion.

”Your sister’s” I replied having mastered the nuances of his particular language.

“I’m not going in there”, he replied, linguistically pushing out the boat somewhat.

“Well I am and you’ll look a bit daft sitting the car while I do” I said.

I knocked on the door while he rocked from foot to foot behind me.

“Why it’s you,” his sister said as she opened the door. “The kettle’s on and I’ve a few scones. Come in.”

I spent a wonderful half hour wandering around the local cemetery inspecting the dead while the living put to death the stuff that finally allowed them to get on with living. The funny thing is they never missed calling each other, regular as clockwork until my dad – you know, my real dad – died.

There we are. It’s just a story. One of many about how we seem to be so good at not quite getting our act together, and then, when we do, it’s like we come to life. I’ve a fleeting sense of that happening now. Ever since I made the first teetering steps towards this moment. “Dear Dad…”

Here I am with a chance to make good. My other dad (the “real” one) didn’t do such a half bad job. Maybe I can get that off my chest if you’ll allow me to write again. Meanwhile, the more I think about it, the better the fist of it you seem to have made with me. I feel better for not bottling it all up. It’s like the pile of ironing diminishing because I took a few moments out of the day. It hasn’t been such a hill to climb after all.

Must close for now. Things to do, people to see. Did you know that I have got on pretty well so far? I’d like to think that you could be proud of me. Maybe even speak well of me some more should you feel the need of a little fatherly boasting.

Hope this finds you, as it leaves me – well actually no. I hope this finds you better for getting it and I feel so much better for the sending.

I will write again soon. Oh, and I do love you.

Pete

Love in a box

I was touring a little something at Christmas. A whole bunch of schools and church got to hear "Love in a box".

On my desk is this little wooden casket from Malta. My brother got it specially when HMS Ark Royal called in (early '70s I think.) There's nothing in the box but love - he thought of me and brought it home. Since he can't get me any new  stuff now, it grows more precious all the time.

There you go. Love in a box!

I stopped in my tracks as I thought about the old story of Bethlehem, angels, shepherds, wise men, a young kid and her new husband with taxes to pay a a baby to birth. What does it say? She wrapped him up warm and put him in the animal feed box.

Now we are well past that with Valentine's on the horizon I might be past my sell by date here.
On the other hand, I've still got my brother's box from 40 years ago and it's lost none of its edge.
Merry Valentine's, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day...whatever! 

Any love in your box?