It’s been two years since “the thing”.

The day slipped past quietly and I only realised afterward. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d realised. I took the children to church and it was mad chaos, we doubled the congregation and halved the age and my son loud whispered at the start of Eucharist, MUM IF JESUS IS EVERYWHERE IS HE ON MY HEAD?

But in the chaos I felt Him whisper thank you for bringing the kids to see Me like the silence in the storm. That night I was complaining anyway about trying to pin four kids into the pews and then had to admit to Him that actually I really loved going anyway even though it was mad. I’m pretty sure He was grinning.

But on with it. I have thought a lot about the word participation lately and how it relates to faith.

This whole journey the last two years has been marked by a sense of invitation into something more, something deeper and truer and more wonderful than I had previously known or expected.

I don’t know if we have a curiosity button, but if we do, mine keeps getting pushed, further up and further in do I want to explore the heights and the depths and the widths of this, roaming with no end in sight.

I find a sign marked participation and I wonder where it shall lead me. I do not know the first thing about hiking, let alone following, but I suspect neither did the disciples. And the map has always been right there, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

And Jesus turned, seeing them following, right and asked What do you seek? And I smile and He smiles, we look at each other and grin, a wordless Where are you staying? Come and see, He invites.

I want to, so much. The signpost was planted in my heart two years ago and I couldn’t understand it, why it was there. It meant nothing to me growing up and suddenly, there it is.

I sit with these words for weeks until Fr Jeremiah Mycroft then posts on them and I am reminded yet again that my journal is never as private as I think it is.

The Pentecostal megachurchy space I have been in since I was a teenager, the faith as Dominion, Name-it-and-claim-it, Word of Faith theology, Seven Mountain Mandate, the perpetual grasping for Eden and the fruit from the tree, the desire to control our culture and take dominion over the earth, it permeates so much of Christianity like ink slowly spreading in a water jar.

I sense a tiredness there for me, for all of us. I feel it in my bones, a creeping shadow over the Greenwood.

“A sickness lies over the Greenwood. The Woodsmen who live there now call it Mirkwood…”1

But then I wonder about this signpost, Participation, what does it mean and how deep does it go? All the way down I sense. John saw a lamb slain at the centre of all creation and I sense the Incarnation is at the root of all this below, and He is always first, He draws us up and in to Himself and my head and heart is turned, as if by a breeze, Where are you staying Lord?

Come and see, He says.

We love, because He first loved us, we pray because He first prayed for us, we participate because the Incarnation was the first and truest participation. Christ with us, in us, for us and we in Him.

And so on and on it goes, a lot of daydreaming and wondering what I am being offered to participate in, to respond to?

Admittedly there’s been a lot of internal kicking and screaming lately. Jesus please lead me… but don’t lead me there! I’d rather go to Africa! You’re kidding right?

It’ll look good on you, He says.

No it won’t!

He grins and I’m annoyed, for so many reasons but mostly because I know I’m going to lose here.

I tell my husband

He is silent but finally shrugs oh well, but don’t you dare tell Him you’d rather be sent to Africa, that’s the last place I want to go!

So I do the scary thing, I make the appointment. I almost never drink but I ponder if any pubs are open beforehand so I can get some Dutch courage, sadly too early in the day…

How am I? He asks

Terrified I say.

He just smiles.

Why? He asks.

I spend two hours laying out the story, my tears and snot and charismatic weirdness down on the table. If that’s Jesus, then I want in.

I never know how people are going to react to a mad story like mine, as even friends give me sideways looks and this is a complete stranger.

And yet I am astonished yet again to be met with such kindness and acceptance even thought we come from different worlds. I think about it for days afterwards and something in me feels a little bit healed and I am very grateful. I know there will be many more of these needed conversations.

I’m still suspicious about whether it really will look good on me, but His confidence abounds…

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.2

I think about the charism of speaking in tongues, as a participation into that eternal conversation going on amongst the Trinity, the perpetual intercession they have, happening just beyond our eyesight.

I add my poetry to the conversation, although I sense often it is more of an agreement, than anything else, a fiat perhaps? Let it be to me, a yes, lets do this together and like a child tugging on their parents pant leg, I am lifted up and carried away in the beauty of it all.

I sense it is the perfect embodied prayer on this earthly plain, I cannot miss as I do not make it nor inspire it; it is jumping into a a flowing river, I just surrender to the current and allow it to take me where it wills, it is a leaf allowing itself to be caught by the wind and swirled up into the unknown, of course it isn’t safe, but it’s good, so good, and beautiful and true.

It is a gift to be lifted into and I can’t stop smiling, my cheeks have hurt a lot this week from the smiling and the joy

And if that is true I wonder about the Communion of Saints, how they experience this participation in the intercession. To be alive in Christ, is to be a full participant in this, ongoing eternal wellspring of loving prayer at the heart of all things, whereas we, on this early plane are still limited, can only see in part.

I think of Charlize Theron in that movie Aeon Flux and how her character receives and consumes a tablet, allowing her to step into the invisible conversation going on amongst the Monicans, hidden from her world.

I decide, much to my hesitation and Protestanty misgivings, to try it one day sitting in the car.

Hi Mary,

I don’t know if you can hear me

But I love your Son

I collapse in giggles when I realise what I have blurted out. I really don’t have anything else to say, but somehow that will suffice. I imagine that would make her smile.

I await your pitchforks…

And the participation thing is everywhere, enveloping us all, so rich, beautiful and good. It compels us to ask Lord where are you going? What are you doing? Rather than here is my own agenda let’s fit you in there somewhere Lord.

Every now and then the veil thins and I brush into it in a cataphatic way, a man prays for me in a dream, I see Him praying for me and I too pray for others in that other-world, some known, some strangers. My written records start from when I was 15 but aye, His prayers were before then and will continue on.

I read a biography of St Kateri and reflect on Mohawk Spirituality and the Taniwha stories I was brought up on, how similar they are. The True Myth3 once again hidden in plain sight, about consuming the body of your enemies in order to ingest their mana, their strength. How much more would the Divine one do that is being offered to us?

Partakers of the divine nature,4 it says, the sacramental clues are everywhere, why have I not noticed them before? Truely this is deep enough for a child to wade in and an elephant to swim in.5

I read Roy Godwin’s book The Grace Outpouring and am enchanted by the picture painted as evangelism as a simple blessing, an invitation and participation. There are no turn or burn signs here, just something so warm, so good and lifegiving here and I’m utterly intrigued by it. Is that what priesthood is all about? A perpetual offering? I’m not sure but it delights me.

So I have a go at it. A colleague is feeling unwell. I suck up the courage and offer to pray for her, to bless her with healing. She receives the offer gratefully. I take her hand and wobble through a 5 second prayer. It doesn’t seem like anything is happening but I get a message that night. Something has happened neither of us were expecting.

I like the idea of it, less trying to evangelise, more trying to bless.

Someone else is feeling fearful. I offer to bless them with peace. They stare at me and then the dam bursts and they spend the next 20 mins telling me about their entire spiritual journey on the side of the road. I sense the door is wide open, perhaps this will only be a little piece of her journey, moving toward the Good and Beautiful and True and I am privileged to be a part of it.

If we are invited, drawn in, poured out in this never ending overflow, and rather than dominate, how can we invite into the kingdom, right here, in our own space?

The desire for power, control, lies at the root of this faith as domination, this surge of Christian Nationalism, we can see the fruit and it is not gentle, loving, Christlike. Domination has no place in a downward kenosis.

But Faith as Participation, that strikes me as a different focus. As He invites me, so I can invite others, with Him, through Him, In Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, we are being drawn together and bit by bit ever increasingly is the prayer at the table being answered.6

I do not need to chase to the ends of the earth looking for them, I can notice and participate in the things in front of me, I receive, I invite, make the offer, with hands open wide.

I think back to the beginning of this all, You told me you wanted me to simply receive You. At the time, I saw it only as a one story building, but I’ve since noticed there are stairs and many more floors to explore in You, and that the invitation was so much more bigger than I realised at the time.

I wasn’t ready then, and I perhaps I am not quite there yet, but like the dreams I keep having, always inviting me closer and nearer, to this sacramental engagement, I see it now and I want to say yes, I pray for the grace to say yes. I am willing to be made willing, and all that.

The focus is different, quieter, harder, downward, more embodied, but I sense there is so much beauty there. Come and See, He says, the participation, the invitation offered there in the word, by the Word

What are you looking for?

Come and see

Bring Me what food you have

I let them read me, all the secrets of my heart.

You want theology for this? People do stupid things for love all the time: There’s your theology! and I laugh as I start to realise how content I actually am in Christ and I look for only Him. I didn’t realise it was there before.

I know there will be many voices with varying opinions, but by the grace He has no doubt given me, I am beginning to lose the taste for other’s opinions and am content to kneel at the back with a goofy look on my face, I love you, I want in…

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“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him…”

I’ve had a few strange moment this week where everything I read in the gospels seems alive and sacramental and breathing, like signposts echoing down the ages, you know that timey-wimey space thing, so much bigger on the inside then it looks, the words in red truely do have that Tardis thing going on.

I’ve sat with this one in Luke 15 for the last week. His father saw him and had compassion.

It’s an odd thing to be seen. It happened to me, a few days ago.

Charismatics talk about it as having your mail read. It’s never happened to me before, and with all the abuses going on in the Charismatic community, I will have to admit, I’m quite skeptical of such things. Have been for a long time.

It’s safe to say I’ve been living in quite a lot of tension at the moment. There are some things I simply cannot reconcile, and I am unable to see a way forward. But I suppose just because I can’t, doesn’t mean He can’t.

So I keep most of it to myself and the Trinity. It’s kind of a need to know basis.

And then I get broadsided with something unexpected. I’m still tearful.

He sees me. He has compassion on me.

Them cataphatic nudges, all the ones I’ve ever had, they’ve all been like signposts, pointing the way, look, see, behold…

And I get the sense He’s not in a hurry. If this is Him, He can lead. I will continue to do as I’ve always done, sit close by and try to listen.

But if you think of me, I would appreciate prayer right now…

Just sitting in prayer is like sitting in the warmth of the sun. We don’t say much.

Here I am, with You,

My hands grow hot just thinking and writing about prayer, let alone “doing it.” Whether that’s a common bodily reaction to prayer? I’m honestly not sure, but it seems so for me. Even sneaking into adoration in a freezing church in the middle of winter, my toes can be numb due to my incessant Kiwi need to wear jandals everywhere, but my hands run hot. My son complains and squirms away from the heat during church, if I should rest my hands on his back to bless him. I honestly don’t know what’s up with that, just one of them weird Christian things I suppose. It’s safe to say I don’t mind the free heating, particularly in winter, I guess. Anyone else relate?

I’ve often wondered over the last couple years if it’s psychological, but I don’t consciously think of it happening when I’m sitting down alone with Him. But then a wave of warmth rolls over them, and it can be… distracting.

I finished a lovely little book by Rowan Williams last week: Being Christian, and inwardly cheered when I got to this part on page 78:

“Prayer, more and more is not something we do, but what we are letting God do in us.”

I’ve held a very similar hot take for some time now, that perhaps prayer is less about what we do, and more about what He does in us. I do wonder if sometimes I go off on philosophical tangents particularly when faced with mounting household chores, but to see it articulated there, by an intellectual giant in the faith? Well didn’t I just feel like an absolute spiritual genius sitting in front of my pile of washing.

At least temporarily.

I’ll take it though. 😂

I do natter away to Him all day, but I do so love the intentional alone-ness time. It really does matter. I think of it as this: We can be in the same room as a person, in their house, but we’re not always sitting at the table, eating…

So help me arise

Help me come

Lead me on the path

For I do not know how to get there on my own

I am so far away

The light of a distant sacrament

I can only see it in my heart

But You see me

Your compassion reaches out

Draws me in

I am not worthy

But You cut me off with kisses

I’m home, Father

Reading: Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father’s love by Fr. Thomas Acklin OSB and Fr. Boniface Hicks OSB

Listening to: Invitation by Blueprint Church

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Hey friends and strangers,

I know it’s been a while. Apologies for the silence. We’ve been dealing with some family health stuff.

It hasn’t been easy trying to navigate this journey since the great disruption that occurred nearly two years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so grateful that it happened.

How now shall I live? is a very real and relevant ongoing question that lingers. Much of this journey can be excruciatingly awkward.

At every step I realise I really don’t know very much and when one opens the theological closet and it all rains down on your head sometimes and gee golly I have LOTS of questions. They ruminate inside my head and I wonder who to ask, as it’s not fair to biff them all on one person. Welcome to spiritual puberty, I suppose. Lotta weird things, lotta ordinary things happening, little miracles in unexpected places.

And then some weeks it’s like you’re living in the supernatural version of Miranda.

Such fun. SUCH FUN.

I think this sums up my faith most days. It’s never boring. Sure it’s often very ordinary. Boring, nahhh…

This whole journey right? Couple steps forward, couple steps back. A non linear zig zag, blown by the wind, often chased by a Goose.

The road gives you a lot of time to think. I wonder how long the prodigal son was walking for, far away lands and all. I feel very far some days, but I expect that is because I do not yet see clearly.

A couple months after “the thing” happened, I started noticing my attention was being drawn in a most unexpected direction, to things I hadn’t thought about in many years.

Sacraments. There, I said it.

Don’t shoot me, Pentys…

Eucharist for example. It didn’t mean anything to me growing up, but for some reason that I still can’t explain I have found myself inexplicably drawn to it. I have a hard time admitting it out loud to myself so it amuses me that I’m even writing this down.

See, I grew up going to a small town Catholic Church, but then joined an AOG youth group in my teens and later a large pentecostal church when I moved away.

So then “the thing” happened. That’s a whole other story I’ve already gone into.

Last year I began sneaking into services at the Anglican Church, hoping to hide at the back. Why Anglican? Well… I kept getting pushed towards these folks and I’d figure I’d better stop kicking as I was starting to leave grooves in the carpet.

My plan of slipping under the radar did not work actually, because as I was to discover, I am of a completely different ethnic makeup to the vast majority of the congregation…. meaning I stuck out like a marshmallow in a bowl of liquorice.

Eventually I was to get challenged by one of my new friends… “so… if you actually go to another church… then why are you here…?”

Oh biscuits. You weren’t supposed to ask me that question.

It’s rather awkward to confess the truth out loud.

I’m here for the Eucharist.

Why?

Ah, I don’t know. Some things are beyond words.

But for the first time, and without being under pressure from anyone, I’ve felt that actual freedom, to explore gestures wildly all of this…

Sacraments.

Gifts.

Overlaps of grace.

I have these suspicions you see, I think of these things, all of these moments, these overlaps of grace as less symbolic and more sacramental these days, even if I am still…uncomfortable with the word.

I find myself no longer satisfied with the explanation that baptism is “an outward sign of an inner reality”. It feels too simplistic, like I have outgrown this old cloth, and I cannot go back. There’s more going on, I know it, I know it and it bugs the hell out of me… ironically…

I do ponder sometimes if since the Reformation the Protestant church (and I say that term loosely) has drifted slowly into a secularisation of these things, these sacraments… Sure, many of us, particularly with a charismatic bent can agree on the gifts of the Spirit…. But what about the graces of the Spirit?

I don’t want to be all wardrobe and no Narnia. I intend to leave room for the wonder of these things, that I admittedly do not understand.

It was actually somewhat heartwarming to read Ronald Rolhiesers Facebook post where he admits that even after all his study, even he does not understand the Eucharist. Oh goody, it’s not just me then.

I do also wonder if there has been a slow creep of this secularisation of the sacraments into the Catholic Church as well.

A couple weeks ago I listened to a podcast episode by and friends on Pentecostalism and Sacraments. I started crying about 20 mins in. Had to stop the episode, came back the next day and immediately began weeping again, and if you asked me why, I couldn’t and still can’t tell you why. Then another friend DM’d me the episode for good measure. Took days to finish it. I sat outside in the patio of all places and cried through the rest of it. But shoot, I felt seen, in the tension of it all. I don’t want to say I’m post-Pentecostal, it’s not that, but I sense I’ve outgrown something and find myself in a space longing for something more beautiful, deeper and richer and perhaps that’s where the tears come from. Oof, it’s happening again.

I have a theory, you see, that the deepest part of all creation is the human heart as it was made to contain that which cannot be contained. We cannot find the edge of it, the horizon is beyond our sight, and it remains entirely unknowable to only Him. But perhaps it was always meant to.

But I digress from today’s story

So this happened back in February.

My 7 year old daughter had been talking about getting baptised for a couple months. Some days she’ll say maybe next year, maybe 2027, maybe when I’m 8 or 9.

I shrug and let her do her thing.

I’m sewing away one Saturday and she bursts in and announced she had decided. She wanted to get baptised the very next day.

And, she says, I want you to do it…

I went uh… ME?

I know it’s possible, but I’ve only been only this new thing for about 18 months and I feel entirely inadequate. To top it off, she immediately announced it to her siblings and then they all announced they too wanted to get baptised.

I am thoroughly outnumbered, theologically and numerically. What’s a wahine to do other than facepalm? Should I delay until I think they’re really really sure? How does one know, anyway?

But suffer the little children, how can I say no? And they’ve already raided my printer paper to make invitations to invite their friends. The pencil box has exploded across the table like a wild goose has been at it. Perhaps He has.

I rest my head on my sewing machine and complain away, God I don’t really know what I’m doing here.

And what do you know…

God speaks in many ways, right, but every now and then a whole unbidden sentence will drop in there and time seems to slow down as it washes over you in that strange sort of way.

This came with a wry sort of smile, Well it’s not really you who does the calling… and it’s not really you who does the baptising either….

It hung in the air

Was that Him? I only know that I feel a million times better, the weight that lifts off the shoulders, none of this is up to me and you realise how little you have to do with anything.

I feel like I’ve been gently put back in my lane. It’s a strange invitation to trust, in this upside down kingdom sort of way, that we are all being led by a little child here.

It’s ok.

It’s going to be ok.

Don’t worry about it.

A memory also arose from many years back.

I hadn’t thought of it in a long time

Before that weekend I could probably count on one hand the amount of people I’d shared this with. If any.

It’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve sort of started leaning into some of the… other stuff. The other stuff. I’m still so uncomfortable with the V word. It gets bandied about on the internet like candy.

Visions, words of knowledge, pictures, they weren’t really part of my vocabulary or theological understanding growing up in our Catholic Church.

Often I would get bored and and daydream away during church, or sung worship or something. I always just assumed I had a vivid imagination, never connecting the dots, that maybe, just maybe there was more going on than I realised.

I was 18, standing on the beach that day in the middle of winter.

Stu and James were out in the water baptising people. It’s cold and windy. But as I watched them, I had this prickly feeling, they weren’t alone. There was another Man out there in the water that day. He was there. I couldn’t see Him, but I could see Him.

He was waiting for me.

I looked around, nobody seemed to be noticing anything.

I stayed silent. Maybe it was just my imagination. Yes, that was probably it.

I don’t want to be laughed at so I stay silent. I write it off.

Back to that Saturday.

It dawns on me that He still waits for me there, in the water. For us, all of us.

It’s a gift He wants to give to my kids.

Let it be unto them then.

So I make a few phone calls, organise to borrow a friend’s pool the next day, turns out churchy people can be rather accomodating for a last minute baptism.

I am still rather cautious though so I keep it low key, and remind the kids this is their call, and we won’t love them any more or any less should they choose not to that day.

It’s important to me that they have a comfortable experience with it so I find some videos of kids getting baptised on YouTube for the kids to watch so they can be familiar with the process. We talk through the different methods in the picture book.

That night, I have a dream.

There is a dark shadowy figure standing in our bedroom doorway entrance.

I wake up shouting Jesus, Jesus, JESUS

It’s gone.

Middle of the night, shadowy visitors. Never had this happen before.

I do not wake my husband to tell him. It’s already gone. And nobody else needs to lose sleep over it, really. I pray, then go back to sleep.

I tell him in the morning and we pray for the kids together.

And the afternoon comes and we hop into the pool and walk each child through the process. At least one of them has a funny sensory relationship with water so it would be better to practise so they know what is coming and they don’t scream the house down, thank you ‘tism.

And then we do it.

One requests to be dipped backwards, one requests to go forwards, one wishes to be held in his father’s arm and bobbed down and the youngest of all adored the picture of water going over the baby in the storybook so I borrow a plastic jug, say the words and pour water over her head, while my non denom Pastors hoot and cheer: yay, Catholic styles!

And everything is quiet and peaceful, the sun is shining, the Son is smiling, the birds and insects happily chirping away. Even the usual echolalia chattering we have become accustomed to stills and stops and stops. A miracle indeed. He whispers to one of the grownups holding him I feel different. There’s tears. Oh…

We order pizza and the kids do happy leaps into the pool.

A week later I was rostered on to run the kids program the following Sunday.

It wasn’t going well, the kids, well really my kids are all over the place, so I keep it simple and send them off to make play dough people (made in the image of God et al) and most of them end up making snowmen. Praise the Lord.

But they are engaged and happy.

I am standing there talking to my co leader.1

Somehow the conversation goes around to the baptism the previous week, the fearfully and wonderfully made bit, union, purpose, how mind boggling it is, and the dawning of truth, here within us. We talk about Augustine, you were within me, but I was without you, knowledge, understanding, sacraments and how little we know.

We silently contemplate the awe of the gift that it is, that He is to us.

At some point it begins to dawn within me that kids church today is not for the kids, it is for my Co-Leader.

I read a story about baptism, I talk about the different ways you can get done. I tentatively share the vision I had as a teenager. Well, it’s only kids, who are they going to tell? It’s a gift from the Giver of good things, after all. My kids share about baptism. I ask the kids, who has been baptised?

Some have, some have not.

My Co-Leader turns to me, she says, I think kids church hasn’t been for the kids today, I think it’s been for me. I’ve been going to church and doing the stuff, but I feel like this is what’s been missing in my life…

My heart catches as I realise, she senses it too, having named the exact thoughts I was thinking.

I tell her she could get baptised today if she wanted to.

It hangs in the air…

She says, I can’t, I’ll have to wait.

Church finishes and people start collecting their kids. My pastor pops her head in to ask how it went. We are chatting and at that point my Co-Leader has had enough.

She marches up to us and says I want to get baptised. Now. I cannot wait any longer. There’s a hose in the carpark, do me now.

Props to her, my pastor doesn’t even blink an eye, you’d think she does this every day. All right then, I guess this is what we are doing. It is a real here is water, what prevents us? kind of moment.

Her daughter then says what about me? so there we go again. Carpark baptism, round 2, here we come.

It is messy, unorthodox and joyful. We are all teary and wet. And the children shriek as they jump in and out of the puddles we make. Water pistols then appeared from nowhere. Because of course.

Geese do love water…

And I… I am often caught off guard by the grace of our King…

Couple steps forward, couple steps back,

Blown by the wind,

Stalked by a Goose.

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I almost published it when I heard that in the States federal funding for public broadcasting for television was being cut due to *cough* certain political decisions… and then yet again still didn’t. I’m incorrigible like that. There’s multiple drafts in my folder.

But is on my back to publish something so I guess you’re all getting it now. 😂

I didn’t grow up on Mr Roger’s Neighbourhood like multiple generations of Americans did. I wish I did though.

The internet is full of stories about this man. People sharing first hand experiences of bumping into him on lifts, on holiday.

And in every experience people wrote that here was a man without guile or pretence, exactly the same in real life that he was on television.

A man who always seemed to have time for others, never in a hurry, knowing he was exactly where he needed to be. Jesus was a bit like that too if I recall, with his timing, often late by our standards sometimes but always intentional.

So for my Kiwi/Aussie mates who have no idea who I’m talking about, Mr Rogers aka Fred Rogers was ordained as a Presbyterian minister before being granted permission to work in television as the host of a children’s television show for over 40 years which he saw as his ministry.

He was an absolute natural at what we teachers today call ‘emotional coaching’ where he prioritised and validated feelings and mental health and what to do about them.

And because I have friends who collect icons, here’s an absolute banger that I’m sure Fred would have been highly amused by.

My favourite video of Fred to watch is actually the one where he testifies before the senate. Fred had been a children’s television host for a while and in 1969 he was asked to speak and advocate for funding for public television before the Senate. (Which is a USA thing)

At the beginning of the video Senator John Pastore has no idea who he is, and is frankly doesn’t care. There’s an element of hostility towards him as he initially interrupts.

But Fred’s astonishing strength here is his gentleness, he is unrushed, unhurried, unperturbed by the senator’s sarcasm directed at him, simply allowing it to flow around him like a river around a boulder that has sat for centuries. His words are slow, measured and purposeful. It’s hard to describe exactly what is going on but it’s obvious that something beyond you or I is happening here.

If I was ever asked to explain how a gentle answer turns away wrath, well this would be it. And yet there’s… so much more to it. I’ve watched this video so many times over the years and it still puts the hairs on my arm on end.

In less than 7 minutes the senator throws his hands up almost in disbelief, like he no longer has any say in this. He doesn’t. He’s quietly outmatched here. I suppose gentleness really is an underrated fruit of the Spirit.

His wife said he wasn’t a perfect man, but he’s always struck me as a person with an incredibly measured sense of purpose.

Anthony Breznican, a former Entertainment Weekly writer shared a beautiful story of an encounter that he had with Fred Rogers in an elevator.1 As they were departing the elevator, he told Fred that his television show had helped him while he was grieving the loss of his grandfather. Fred stopped and invited him to sit with him at the window. He asked Anthony questions about what his grandfather had meant to him and shared stories about his own. Anthony then apologised for taking up his time. Fred just looked at him and said “Sometimes we’re exactly where we need to be.”

I’ve thought of that often as I consider how interruptible I am as a person, particularly with my own children. Something to reflect on I suppose.

But maybe I’ll go for a walk this week, notice what is going on around me, and consider what it is and who I have in my life to be grateful for. Perhaps I’ll even leave my phone at home…

There’s about a million things I could write about Fred Rogers but perhaps I’ll just leave you with his words

“We get so wrapped up in numbers in our society. The most important thing is that we are able to be one-to-one, you and I with each other at the moment. If we can be present to the moment with the person that we happen to be with, that's what's important.”

Reading: Essence of Prayer by Ruth Burrows

Listening to: This version of I the Lord of Sea and Sky. I’m a sucker for the suspended notes and the jazzy scale movement by thirds in the right hand piano. I haven’t heard it in over 25 years but I played it for church on Sunday and this was my research 😂

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The communion of saints.

What even is it really?

We can try to name it, to define it but at the end of the day I think it’s just one of those things we just got to accept.

It’s wild and mysterious.

This sort of thing where we are all in Him and He in us.

Whether we are living or dead, we are held, we are His.

I’m not sure how else to describe it. I think it’s one of those things that has to be experienced.

Ever been in a shop and you look up and see a stranger and you know, you just know they’re a Christian?

I remember being a kid, growing up at my parent’s Catholic Church and knowing there was just something funny about this lady who went there. Everyone else was “normal” but there was just something about her eyes that made me slightly uncomfortable, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. And she was also a bit too happy with the tambourine during Shine Jesus Shine…

Years later when I did a Youth Alpha course as a teenager I noticed the same thing, the lady who ran it had the same thing going on there with the eyes. Again it made me uncomfortable, but by this stage I had worked it out.

I still look up and notice it when I’m out in public every now and then. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it, but there’s a difference between your average person off the street, your pew warmer and then there’s those people that clearly… have the Holy Spirit.. or maybe more accurately, He has them.

I don’t really know how it works, but I’ve always been able to pick a charismatic out of a lineup, a coffee shop, a beach, a supermarket, they don’t even need to talk or be carrying a tambourine… they’re just… different.

Something about the face, something about the eyes,

Every now and then I will suck up the courage and approach one of these strangers and directly ask if they’re a Christian... it’s always been a resounding yes.

I don’t do it very often as I chicken out and am usually escorted by my numerous offspring, but I’m working on trusting my senses more.

A few months ago I walked into the kids play room at McDonald’s, looked up and locked eyes with an elderly lady and instantly thought WHOA now that’s a little glow worm for Jesus right there.

Another time the kids and I were in line for the toilets at the beach and they started chatting to an elderly couple. I looked at them and I just knew. The wife also knew too because she then asked us straight out if we were. Lots of sheepish giggles.

Here’s another fun little story for you.

Earlier this year I had gone to a conference in the city. I had left my accomodation early in the morning to miss the traffic and had headed straight to a nearby coffee shop about 1-2 km away from the venue for breakfast.

I sit at the front window so I can watch people coming and going while I’m listening to my earphones. My breakfast is still being made.

While I’m sitting at the front window waiting for it, a car pulls into a parking space a little way ahead of the shop. An older man and woman exit the car. They’re about 50 metres away from me up the street.

I can’t explain it but I instantly knew they were Christians and that they were going to be attending the same conference as me. They walk down the street and enter the coffee shop, walking up to the counter to order.

They murmur to each other, not seeing a staff members around to take their order. I call out across the room without looking up that she’s out the back (making my breakfast) and will be back in again shortly.

She duly returns, takes their order and makes their coffee and disappears again. They sit down.

I think, because I am full of Holy Mischief… that I am going to have some fun with this.

We are currently the only three people in the main area of the coffee shop and it is early morning.

They sit at the opposite corner to me, as far away as possible.

I break the social coffee shop taboo and call out across the room “So, got any plans for today?”

Startled the woman goes, “Uh… yeah, we’ve come into the city to go to a conference actually…”

I casually say “Oh yeah, what conference is that?”

She says it’s being held at a local church nearby.

Then awkwardly feeling she should reciprocate the thoughtful social intrusion… she asks “…So do you… have any plans on today..?”

I say “well coincidently I too… am also going to a conference actually… at a church nearby…”

The penny slowly began to drop.

I confessed with a giggle I knew what they were as soon as I saw them get out of their car.

The man grinned and asked if his halo was shining particularly brightly that day.

They were good sports really.

Turns out he was the photographer for the conference. Go figure.

Anyone else notice this sort of thing with strangers? I’d actually love to hear your stories.

There’s been a number of things going on in recent weeks, hence the lack of posts. I’ve worked a lot lately and my energy levels in the evenings aren’t great.

Lately I’ve just been posting thoughts about prayer as they arise, and I haven’t gotten around to organising them into any semblance of a post.

On top of it all, there had been rather an influx of subscribers lately which I haven’t been able to keep up with. I suspect most of you are here because you too like to think about prayer, you like to read about it and most probably also like to do it even, to hold that space. Or you just find my memes amusing.

So something happened for me last week that’s got me thinking about the strangeness of it all, the whole communion of saints thing.

Last week I had another brush with it.

Time for some more stories.

One morning in February this year I had gotten up early to pray. I had only just sat there and very quickly I got a… strong mental picture of a man, a stranger that I have never met before. He had a beige collared shirt, messy black hair, he was standing there sort of slightly turned away from me with both hands raised up, not in worship, more like I’m in trouble type and he looked a bit stressed.

He was also looking right at me which was a bit disconcerting. I have no idea if he could see me or not so I’m not going to speculate.

He could possibly have been South American, but I don’t know. For all you Kiwis he looked a bit like Brian Tamaki actually but it wasn’t him. 😂

Anyway I figured, whatever this is, I guess I’m supposed to pray for this guy, because he looks like he clearly needs it. So I did.

Still do from time to time, hoping he’s ok. I kind of said to God at the time, look I’m okay with the unexplained mystery of whatever this is, I don’t need to meet him or anything.

About a month later in March I am reading an old journal I used to keep as a teenager and I come across this dream from December 2002.

For context, I am 17 and things are… all over the place at home.

I don’t remember having this dream at all but I wrote the whole thing down so I’ll summarise what I wrote.

In the dream I was standing in my parents Catholic Church that I went to as a kid.

I’m upset and feeling ashamed. A tall blonde man, Nordic/Norwegian looking walks in through the door and straight up to me. He stands behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders and begins to quietly pray for me. Then he disappears and Jesus is standing in his place, exactly where He stood with His hands still on my shoulders and carries on praying for me. I reach my hands up, take His hands and put them on my head.

The dream ends.

When I read about this dream I immediately thought of the other man I’d seen a month earlier.

They weren’t the same person but I thought whoa… maybe, just maybe there is a similar thing going on, whereas I just needed prayer and in some mysterious way that none of us can understand, well God, (well for want of a better word) just peoplenapped up a random guy to come pray for me.

And then that dark haired man needed prayer and I got tapped for it.

I wonder how often stuff like this actually happens and we don’t realise it… or dismiss it. Or even remember it. I don’t really understand it but I’m more and more ok with the weird and the mystery of Christianity these days. I guess I kind of always thought the communion of saints was some sort of lofty mystical airy fairy thing but maybe it’s a lot closer, the veil a lot thinner than we realise. Maybe dreams are a place where the veil thins. Who knows? I also think I’m probably less stubborn when I am asleep.

I wonder if just because prayer occurs in a dream, doesn’t automatically mean that it’s not valid or isn’t real or seen. We still exist on more than just a conscious level and it wouldn’t make sense to assume that God stops working either when we are asleep.

Recently for me there’s been a lot going on. And I’ll admit it, I don’t really know how to “do” Christianity. The imposter syndrome is strong with this one.

And I’m just over a year into this new journey, fueled by grace, coffee, and memes in that order.

I’m constantly bumbling my way through this, overthinking everything, not knowing where I’m going, and I’m actually quite thankful that I happen to be an ordinary person and a complete unknown in that. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be trying to work this out and have any measure of fame. There are some celebrities who come to mind. Yikes. I feel for them.

What I am slowly discovering though, is how much grace there is for me.

I tend to be hard on myself, why can’t I just believe these things? Why am I so slow to trust? Why can’t I just get it? Why can’t I just accept His love for me?

So there I go, overthinking like I never overthought before when something happened.

I had a dream. Another brush with the communion of saints, like ships in the night.

In the dream, a man was there standing in front of me, quietly praying for me.

With kindness in his voice he asked me:

Don’t you know how your Father sees you?

Don’t you know how your Father loves you?

Don’t you know that your Father adores you?

I woke up.

Well I don’t know about you, but I felt pretty wrecked after that. Nothing like having a couple layers of your heart peeled back to expose where you’ve been running and hiding.

The words were spoken in gentleness, not in any kind of accusing way.

Don’t you know?

It’s a rather simplistic conclusion to come to, one which may trigger all the armchair theologians on Substack, but perhaps God is a lot nicer than we realise.

Perhaps He even likes us.

I don’t have any other explanation for this kindness that stalks me in the night.

So excuse me, but I think I will be sitting with these questions for quite some time.

Don’t wait up.

“We spend our lives invoking upon ourselves imagined necessities, creating God in the image of our own fears - and all the while, he is beating us over the head with the balloon of grace and the styrofoam baseball bat of a vindicating judgment. The history of salvation is slapstick all the way, right up to and including the end.”
― Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus

I’ve sat with this beautiful post on deconstruction from for a couple days… not rushing, just mulling it over.

And I’m particularly struck by a line in it that he quotes from St John of the Cross

“Then stripped of every spiritual comfort we are forced to love God for God’s own sake, not for what God gives us.”1

I’ve read that line before and to be honest it’s never quite sat right with me.

Look, far be it from me to argue with Johnny here. Who am I really? Half a world and time separates us. And yes, maybe I’m misinterpreting it or taking it out of context.

But my own experience of the loss of faith and the darkness of deconstruction that I’ve previously written about here and here is actually not of being forced into anything. In fact, it felt a lot more like an invitation, to come and see.

In the darkness of my deconstruction, was I forced into anything?

Actually, no.

No, for the first time, there was an astonishing light, space to breathe, room to be wild and free, to explore the heights and breaths and depths of whatever this is.

I’ve written before that it felt like I’d been given the keys to a brand new playground, saying come in, explore Me, enjoy Me, get to know Me.

It’s taken a while for me to get this: that true love doesn’t force. And I never felt forced here. Instead I was invited in. There’s room at His table.

I can only speak from my own experience. And that is that God evidently has an awful awe-full lot of grace for doubters and questioners. I should know.

The last thing I was expecting was for my deconstruction to get interrupted in such a dramatic way. But I have always been a little bit “extra” and apparently, I’m made in His image, so go figure. Guess we know where it comes from now.

There’s this other thing.

I hesitate to say “God told me” this and this. There’s enough people on the internet saying stuff like that, and I probably disbelieve 98% of it.

But what He said to me one night last year made a huge difference in how I began to approach Him. How did I know He told me this? I can’t explain it, I just woke up in the middle of the night with that strange “knowing” feeling.

It was like He’d said You don’t have to say “I love You”.

Inwardly I thought, man I don’t know about this. Aren’t we supposed to love You? Isn’t this one of the things we “have” to do or else?

It was quiet, gentle but insistent. You don’t have to say it

I silently mulled over it for months. I was sure He had spoken to me but it made no sense. Why would He say that?

Then one day, the pieces suddenly fell into place. A childhood memory, long buried surfaced. And I began to understand.

I’m not going to get into the details of why He said this particular thing to me here, publicly.

Only that it was actually highly specific and addressed a particular event.

And sometimes, with just a few words, the previously unknown burdens that we have carried our whole lives begin to shift.

He didn’t want forced words from me. He wanted something real. Something that should only come with time and trust anyway.

It’s amusing to think I’m not actually the one in charge of my whole deconstruction. He is. I only thought I was. I suppose it was His idea all along, really…

And here we are, some time down the track. And yes, at some point I did fall in love…

Do I want to say it now? Yes

So how’s it all going?

Well, less of a deconstruction, more of a love affair…

PS: Hello to the 35 new subscribers since my last post at the beginning of this month, we’re a slow burn around here but people keep trickling in anyway…

Listening to: He Will Be by CityAlight

Reading: Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ by Jeanne Guyon

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I’ve had a number of conversations over the last year with people who say well, I’ve been a Christian for 30+ years and I’ve never experienced anything like that. And the truth is: I don’t have an answer for it really, all the strange and marvellous things. I just don’t. He does as He pleases.

I mean, sure you can ask Him, and I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with that.

There’s a bit I get stuck on in Richard Foster’s lovely book on prayer, where he quotes Emilie Griffin and how such experiences can be a distraction, and surprisingly to myself, I think I’m starting to agree.

It’s not that they aren’t amazing and wonderful and everything.

But I’ve tentatively stopped asking for anything like that.

You see, I’ve been wondering for some time now, for me at least, they are a distraction to the long slow work of formation etc. I can’t speak for everyone, just myself. Dallas Willard clears his throat loudly from his chair in the corner of the room.

I’ve questioned myself a lot lately as too why I’m even writing the stuff down.

I felt a bit triggered by watching another story of a lady on YouTube who had an experience and wow, it sounded amazing and all that and then I followed the link to her webpage and there it was, pedalling the story to flip her life coaching business, because you need to invest in yourself something something about the kingdom of God. And it’s all over YouTube, people who have had these mystical experiences and then sell the sacred to flip their business.

I have no words. I feel a bit sick really.

I just can’t.

I’m not sure why it hurts to see that sort of thing but it does.

So no, I’m not going to sell you my 12 step plan to making your life better with Jesus for only $49 a month mentorship program, because I find that stuff kind of horrifying actually.

That’s not to say I don’t like talking about it, all the strange and oddly mysterious things that have happened1 and are still happening, because grace is a marvellous thing, really. And I am unexplainably joyful even unto myself and it spills over and over and I am grinning like a fool most of the time. How could you sell that? I can’t and won’t nor turn it into a product, the same way people admire an item I’ve sewed and say oh you could sell that… Not everything is for sale Janet!

So I have zero plans to turn on paid subscriptions for Substack. Come sit at my table instead and I’ll alter your dress or your pants and we’ll eat cake and drink tea and smile at the marvellous things He has done.

I’m not even putting my full name on here because I’d simply prefer not to and just don’t wish to be any sort of Christian influencer. I don’t work in ministry, I suspect I’m way too immature for anything like that. And I ponder more and more on what it means to be ordinary and invisible, quietly working this out in fear and trembling, there but for the grace of God go I… there’s only one way of beating the algorithm, the hustle and sometimes stepping off that bus and letting it go is the only thing we can do.

Yes, some of you know me in real life, and do actually know my name, we see you at church on Sundays and that’s fine, I trust that you will protect our privacy etc. You may have even been there when I got wrangled into sharing the story in public at a church service months ago. Yeah, it’s on YouTube but absolutely not, I won’t be linking it here.

I confess I haven’t watched it, because there’s a certain personal cringe that comes with watching yourself cry for 30 minutes in front of a Sunday morning crowd. And don’t go looking for it, as I’m quietly confident you won’t find it. Thankfully we are small enough that we have no PR team that will try to promo anything like that. Hilariously, as I volunteer there one day a week, I probably am the PR person. SHE didn’t believe… until GOD SHOWED UP!!!

Strahan Coleman, lovely chap, has an excellent book, ‘Beholding’ in which I’m stuck at chapter 2.

“Sadly, God can, and has, become a means for many of us in ministry to gain popularity, wealth, success and personal significance. As I mentioned, I know from personal experience as a musician how it feels to oscillate between sincerity and ambition in the blurry Christian industry that occupies our times. Success is a powerful drug, even with the most genuine of hearts, and the current of our mainstream pop Christianity seems to tug us constantly towards its siren’s call. It takes real resilience and focus to push back against it.”

I’ve spent rather a long time in my life spouting opinions about who I thought God was and who I thought I was and then quite suddenly came to the realisation last year that pretty much all of those were wrong. Clearly some sort of accidental byproduct of regularly sitting down with the Author of Truth. Whoops. Should have seen that coming.

And so I came to learn my opinions really weren’t a good indicator of who God actually was. In case you can’t tell, I’m snorting audibly. Now that I’ve written it out, it seems so obvious.

And now for the first time I’ve been stopping and asking ok God, who do you say You are? Who do you say I am?

I know nothing is wasted, but as I am now mere weeks now away from turning 40, I think about how much time I spent over the years telling God who I thought He was, rather than waiting and listening to let Him speak to my soul, to tell me who He was, my salvation.

Probably a much better way to do things around here, really.

Learning to hear the voice of God whatever that looks like, whatever that sounds like, can be an interesting process. Sometimes there’s just an odd sense of knowing, a rightness to it all. Ever had that?

I’ve had that knowing thing a couple times quite clearly for sometimes for strange specific things, sometimes it comes like that, most of the time it doesn’t.

A time that really stands out in my head was many years ago as a fairly new Christian.

We young’uns had gone away to another city for a youth conference and we were being billeted by some people from another church. Our youth leaders took us to the Warewhare to buy present for our hosts.

Everybody else returned with chocolates etc. And I… for some reason I wandered off to the kids book section and returned with Horton Hears A Who.

My Youth leader looked at me like I was crazy. She said why are you getting that book? There were no kids in the house.

I don’t know. Just felt right. I refused to put it back despite being pressured to. I wrapped up the book. Wrote her a note of encouragement. Something about faithfulness.

Turns out it was the woman’s favourite childhood book. There was no way I could have known that. A year later I happened to run into this woman’s sister in a shop. I didn’t really know either of them very well and I can’t even remember their names or what they look like, to be honest. But the first thing she blurted out to me as soon as she saw me was: you’re the one who gave her the book.

And what could I say as to why I did it in the first place? I don’t even remember, just that there was a rightness to it all, the strange ways, He speaks indeed, even though Dr Seuss. The invitations into newness of life, metamorphosis, oh I’ve been thinking about language a lot lately, Sam I am.

I think about Strahan’s Quiet Fire course I’ve been on this year, learning to listen, and I realise I don’t want to be loud, dramatic, all fireworks, burning out quickly. I could never sustain that. I suspect He’s not interested in that either. I want to be slow, measured, purposeful; that’s who He is. Quietly alive, alone in my room at 10pm on a Monday evening, smiling until my cheeks hurt. He’s in no hurry with any of this. 40 years is as a breath, a leaf on the wind. Trust the stillness, the silence, the inner ache that wants to tell Him over and over again oh where has my beloved gone? Hā ki roto, hā ki waho.

And I am grateful for the grace, the gift that is stronger than my own selfishness.

Listening To: Safe In The Covering by Cageless Birds

Reading: Beholding by Strahan Coleman

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So I’ve stolen a phrase from my Anglican friends notice what I notice

I reckon they’re ok with it, really.

By this I mean I’m actively practising the art of listening in my everyday life, that Lectio Divina thing in the ordinary, everyday mundane, a whisper, a sunset, a willywilly, a passing word that turns my head, but I can’t stop thinking about.

Augustine’s head was turned by sing song words of children playing in the garden, and I too, ask only this; teach me to hear your voice and look for your leading in the unlikeliest of places.

What is my attention being drawn to? What do you want me to notice?

So time for another story:

At the beginning of August, I was helping with a woman’s conference in my town. I’m being the door girl, meeting and greeting the ladyfolk as they arrive. I ended up having a brief conversation with a woman who was telling me about her daughter and how for the first time they have just started doing a family devotional time. I couldn’t stop thinking about it after we both walked away. I was completely distracted by this and then finally twigged: God is this you? What are you saying here, is this something I’m supposed to notice?

Why?

Oh no… you can’t possibly be serious….

Okay God if this is you… if this is something that you want our family to do, then you gotta help with this because my parents never did this with us growing up, and I have no idea what it could look like or what it supposed to look like?

And you know what our family is like? It’s completely chaotic at the best of times!

You know when you try to argue but it’s pointless because you’re going to lose anyway?

So then, what’s the best version of this that it could look like? What do you want us to do?

I didn’t end up listening to the speaker. I was completely distracted by the internal conversation going on. By that I mean, when I argue and He just grins. And I sat down and wrote and wrote and emerged nearly 4 pages later in my journal with a plan.

Hubby picked me up. We played car tag, then with four kids in tow I headed to Kmart.

I grabbed a large candle, got four sketchbook for the kids, then picked up hubby. The kids immediately spilled the beans. I got a sideways are you kidding me look.

I sheepishly shrugged uhhhh…. look I think this might be something He wants us to do as a family. And it’s a weird thing to have to explain, but it’s like I’m getting the hey you should definitely try this! level of enthusiasm vibes from God about it.

Does He even do vibes? Because this isn’t my enthusiasm or confidence…. It feels like His. Is this even a thing? Anyone know what I’m talking about?

Calling it a family devotional time still feels weird to me. And I’m not sure how much of the language around this that I feel comfortable with yet. But we’ve been doing it for over a month now, and lacking in better titles I’ve just been calling it Family Listening time. The idea being, if the most important thing is what God says about you, then perhaps we should learn to listen to His voice. And as I’ve been learning to listen, then why shouldn’t we learn to do it together as a family?

I won’t lie, sometimes, it takes 5-10 mins to round up all all the crew. And their enthusiasm is akin to putting four cats around a pool and inviting them in to take swimming lessons. Not all the cats are going to have the same level of enthusiasm for aquatic activities, night after night… and that’s putting it mildly. Some nights, it’s enough to have everyone in the same room, if not at the same table.

Flexibility is a must, I think. And our options for Family Listening time currently include lying down on the floor with a cushion, resting your head upon the table, sitting at the table, drawing or writing what you think God is saying to you. Even opening up a kids bible and reading it…

There’s a lot of “just going with it” involved in this. Trust not to worry what the kids are doing, whether they look like they are participating or not. I felt strongly that we’re not to get frustrated with what it looks like on the outside, even if it is crazy or chaotic.

Months ago in March I felt to cut back on a bunch of our after school activities and things to create space in our family. I wasn’t sure what for but felt it was necessary at the time. Now we seem to have been drawn into something deeper, together.

But there’s a promise, that I’ve felt here, that if we create the space, then He will minister to them in the intentionality of it. I’m not actually entirely sure what that means but I wrote it down. It’s a step of trust that it’s not all on us. It’s on Him. We just follow and make space and we can trust him to carry the rest.

My sheep hear My voice… well sheep can be frustrating… especially when you’re trying to arrange them around a table.

So here I am learning to listen, to love, to lead at the pace of the children to the voice of the Shepherd. I won’t lie, there’s meat and there’s bones in it all, wheat and tares, in the things they draw and say, but I hold it lightly and let grace carry the rest.

I ask Lord, what shall we do tonight? And yep, we’re just going to go with whatever pops in my head without trying to be clever about it all. There’s no time for overthinking it. No time at all.

But what if it’s not God?

Well yeah, there’s that argument I guess but truth is, I feel surrounded like it’s all gonna be okay, that even this small offering, the intentionality of it is accepted for what it is. And I can only hold it loosely, it is my time no longer, because neither was it my idea in the first place. Aren’t we all just stewards of these things, children included?

Not every night looks the same or has to be the same. Silence in the, uh traditional sense also has to be surrendered when you have this many people who are a bit spicy.

One night we all went outside, children piled on our laps and we contemplated the heavens for a while. God, what are you saying to us about the stars tonight? was the question we asked.

In fact, I think the fact that it’s different every night is good for us, like facets on a jewel I learn we can pray anything, with anything, through anything and perhaps for a few seconds a moment of what appears to be true inner stillness seems to occur in amongst the noise. Once we managed the outwardly quiet for approximately 1.5 minutes before the dam burst on my son’s mouth and the torrent of questions came at me once again.

But I am learning patience. Wouldn’t it be funny, if this entire exercise was less about creating space and more about teaching me patience than anything. I suspect a little from column A, a little from Column B…

One night I printed off the Lord’s Prayer, a copy for each of us. Every now and then we look at a line and ponder what it means. We’re not yet half way through and the kids seem to have memorised it without any real effort on my part. Strange. Also, it’s cute when they have lisps. Harold be your name.

Some nights, like last night, it doesn’t feel like it is working at all. But I sit there anyway, palms open in front of the candle, (yes I also have to guard it from the kids) close my eyes, Here I am, if this is leading, then yes, I guess will do it.

The other week we were sitting and my younger daughter immediately began to draw her “dweam” that she had last night. After 5 mins she waved it in my face: Mum look, I saw the gates of heavwen and there are wots of old people. And mum’s mum is there! I saw your mum!

I’m a skeptical person. I could give Thomas a run for his money. And the Lizard brain goes: I don’t think she had a dream, this is the first time she’s mentioned it all day.

She knows that her grandmother died a very long time ago, I took the kids to her grave for the first time over the summer. We spent a couple mins there and then took off to pat the friendly horses and haven’t spoken about it since.

I don’t know what she sees, if she even see anything, if the entire thing was all made up.

But in that space, I was suddenly, unexpectedly overcome, tears pricking my eyes, trying my best to keep it in.

I haven’t felt grief for her in a long time, truth is it was so long ago that I don’t even remember her enough. It wouldn’t be conservative to say the last time I cried was well over a decade ago. But the sudden wave splashed out of nowhere, through my daughter’s words.

I don’t know what to think about it, even weeks later. The language of heaven must be a funny thing, God’s voice leaks into our imagination and I wonder how interchangeable visions, dreams, pictures, all these mysteries are to a young child.

So I’m not going to question it, assess it, tear it apart. I will simply let it be for what it is, an unexpected gift, perhaps, a mystery to sit in silence with.

Listening to: Nothing I Hold On To by Will Reagan

Bedside Reading: There’s a huge pile stacked up at the moment and I know I’m kidding myself that I can simultaneously read all of these: They include:

The Diary of An Old Soul by George MacDonald

Room For Good Things To Run Wild by Josh Nadeau

Unseen by Sara Hagerty

A Prayer Journal by Flannery O’Connor

Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen

Beholding by Strahan Coleman

The Dark Night of the Soul by St John of the Cross

My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers

For those of you who know me, this may surprise you. But up until last November we did not say grace as a family. We just ate.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to.

Hear me out on this before you get your pitchforks.

See, I’ve always felt awkward and embarrassed by it for years. We said it growing up. And we snickered at our cousins who had to “sing it”.

And then we stopped saying it after my mother died. It was a relief really.

But then any time a visitor came we had to say it. And I didn’t want a bar of it.

I left home, finally free from it.

It’s not that I wasn’t grateful. I just didn’t see the point of the daily performance, the show we had to put on at the start of meals. Who was it for really? Clearly not for God.

I just didn’t have a good reason for it. And until I did, why bother?

Then last year happened.

And in November I happened to listen to a particular sermon by the Anglicans1 about acknowledging God in all your ways and I thought… well you know what? Maybe, just maybe, this is something I could do.

I’ve never wanted to do this in my life, but I think Rev, you’ve just convinced me that this could be ok. Baby steps, guys.

So I corralled hubby in the bedroom when he came home from work that evening and gave him the ol’ heads up, I think we should do this.

Bless him and the way he stared at me. There’s been many of those moments along the way.

So when we sat down at the table that night, I explained to the kids what we were about to do. Because if God is in the room, then yes we are going to acknowledge Him as the source of our food, our life, and then I did the thing. First time willingly…

I won’t lie, it did feel awkward, quite possibly right up there with losing your virginity… 😂 but I kept it short and sweet and to the point. Great! The kids seemed interested, at least. No cringy songs for us! We are Simpsons, not Flanders!

So we carried on doing it throughout our trip to NZ over the summer. One night in Auckland we ended up at a friend’s place for dinner. One of the children volunteered to say grace and then our host said the dreaded words: Did you know you can sing grace?

The kids were utterly enchanted. No, they did not know you could sing grace. Can you teach us?

Our host, ever obliging, ever charming, happily sung them the earworm which promptly burrowed its way into my children’s brains and found a permanent nest in the process. And she even taught them the second verse! Our friendship is promptly cancelled.

The kids spent the rest of the road trip singing it at the top of their lungs at every opportunity they could. Walking through the carpark at Kelly Tarltons. In the cafe at Auckland Museum. While leaving another friends house. The looks, the looks we got. The kids didn’t care. They were obsessed.

We had dinner with their teenaged cousins that they just met for the first time. Who have also probably never said grace in their lives and are clearly wondering why their little cousins who just showed up at the door are really the Flanders kids. Trust me, guys, I’m wondering it too.

It’s odd, you know, when your identity your whole life has been as a Simpson, raised by Simpsons… and now you are raising Flanders kids… and learning to embrace this and live differently, coming to terms with the fact that your real identity might actually be a Flanders too…. Well baby steps… and I’m not one to go down without a fight… even if it’s one I know I’ll lose…

I’m not sure quite how it happened, but it’s happening. I’ve been thinking about (un)intentional practices a lot lately as we recently added a new one into our family in the last month… so stay tuned for part 2 as to how that’s going!

Thank you Lord for giving us fooood….

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Short and sweet this week, dear readers…

Look, I’ll admit it, I’ve never overly been a fan of icons. I grew up in a house full of them. And I mean full. I counted 27 on the wall last time but apparently the true number is roughly around 70.

But this one has sort of grown on me since I was introduced to it a few months ago. I’m deliberately avoiding googling it though as I think I just want to experience it, to sit with it for what it is, rather than read someone else’s analysis of it.

So all I know is that it is the Trinity icon, roughly 14th/15th century icon by a guy called Rublev. And if you know more, please don’t spoil it for me. I’m absolutely certain there’s a lot of people on here who know far more than me.

What are my observations?

Well, I’ve already heard about the bit where there was supposedly a mirror down at the bottom so you could see your face in it, as being invited to the table. Thanks be to for dropping that banger of a spoiler.

I like that the Father and the Son figure have the same identical face and they’re looking at each other. I think the one on the right is the Holy Spirit and they seem to be looking down. It’s hard to tell whether they’re looking at the communion cup symbol or towards the mirror, where we are represented. Perhaps both?

There is symbolic imagery behind the figures like the city building/temple? and the tree. I can’t tell what was supposed to be on the other side but that’s okay. I might just sit with those ones a bit longer.

We’re so good as humans at dissecting everything, we navel gaze, overthink, overcomplicate, reduce things down to nothing, burning the pot in the process.

And it’s even worse when it comes to the sacred. We turn everything into a commodity. Even His sheep. There’s so much I could say, but I just don’t want to. I’m tired, you see, so tired of it all.

No longer do I want to be a consumer here, I think I’d like to be a beholder instead.

There’s plenty of things in scripture I don’t understand, that I’ve been sitting with this week even. But I think it’s ok to sit and wrestle with them. You see, in the wrestling, in the staying, you remain close by in that way, in the touching, in the holding and being held.

I’ve loved this poem for so many years. It found a home and stuck around, so to speak. It’s a good one to read out loud.

Introduction to Poetry1

By Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

And yes, much to my own consternation and all my never nevers and I still can’t believe I’m actually doing this… I have caved…. and there is a copy getting itself professionally sorted at the framers right now. I’ll let you know when it arrives.

Anyway, if you need a good book that is the antithesis of consumerism at the moment, may I recommend Beholding by Strahan Coleman. Oof.

Reading: Poems of Madame Guyon

Listening to: He Will Be by CityAlight.

After not really listening to much Christian music for a long time, I’ve sort of started enjoying these guys. They’re more hymn based, but I like that they have a decent amount of depth even if the odd Calvinist line slips through past the censors.

A couple months ago, I started writing down some of the stories of the journey I’ve been on the last year. My mates are often giving me the “so how’s it going?” ‘ol wink but because of kidruptions we often don’t get to finish a story. So writing them down just seemed like the obvious solution.

The other week I spent 30 seconds effort on a couple of whimsical words on that mysterious thing Jesus did at the last supper and it seemed to gel with a lot of people. Since then the amount of subscribers seem to have tripled, so I feel perhaps I should do some sort of introductions post. The Substack algorithm is really a mystery to me sometimes… but here you all are anyway, signed up for more this-is-how-it’s-going reflections and whimsical run on sentences.

I mean, shoot, most of you aren’t going to read this anyway. And I’ve just twigged last night after staring at these words for a week that the Friday before I wrote that note about the Eucharist/Communion I had another one of those jolly dreams. Yes, really, I’ve only just realised now that there might possibly be a connection. I’m a bit slow sometimes, most of the time. They crash in on me like uninvited dwarves and the Wizard is super amused by it all. I’m less stubborn when I’m asleep, I think.

In the dream I was sitting around a table with some of my friends from work and I was explaining the mystery of the Eucharist to them. Then five days later, a couple of spontaneous words on a throwaway note and suddenly here you all are. Substack is the table and we’re all having a conversation about this.

Which I kind of love, actually, I think we should have more conversations about mystery. and I am looking at you two waiting for that podcast. 😂

As for me though, you’ll be lucky if you get more than two posts a month out of me. I don’t have the energy or time for much more than that. And creativity seems to be leaking out of every crack at the moment and I’m fair struggling to mop it up.

So, Kia ora, welcome, my name is Christina and I live in the Western Australian desert. Lot of red dirt here. It’s a stark contrast to the green of New Zealand where I was born and grew up. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it to be honest.

Hubby and I have four young kids. I work part time in a very ordinary job. I don’t work in ministry.

A year ago I prayed a prayer one night, not actually expecting anything and somehow ended up falling through a wardrobe into Narnia. That’s the short version. For the long version….1

How’s it been going since then?

Well, to be honest, kind of life changing.

And uncomfortable. I think this pretty well sums it up.

“Dear me!” he went on. “Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures? Anything from climbing trees to visiting elves-or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores! Bless me, life used to be quite inter - I mean, you used to upset things badly in these parts once upon a time. I beg your pardon, but I had no idea you were still in business.”

“Where else should I be?” said the wizard.2

I went to the Australian 24/7 National prayer gathering in March, the first time I’ve dared to step through the doors of a large gathering with other Christians in a very long time. People keep turning to me and asking so what’s your ministry?

And I’m weeeeellll see I don’t really have one, I’m a bit more what they call ornamental, you know decorative… Not the answer I imagine they were looking for but it amused me.

But have you ever had one of those times where you’re driving the kids around, just minding your own business through an intersection, and a verse sort of settles upon you, sticks to you, a bit like a wet blanket really, and you think huh, this is strange, but the important strange, in spite of my very ordinary surroundings.

My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me3

It echoes away in the days afterwards, what do you mean?

Hear my voice

Hear my voice

Maybe it’s really as simple as that and I realise if I do nothing else in this life, perhaps I am just supposed to be a listener, whatever that means. I can’t quite describe it but it fits like a glove I just can’t peel off. Perhaps it won’t ever tick any traditional boxes but I’m ok with whatever this is.

But boy does that expose all my stubbornness, because I know very well if you listen, then He might just say something that I don’t want to do, hence the follow me part. And my natural instinct is to, well, run away so there we go.

“Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not today. Good morning! But please come to tea - any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Come tomorrow! Good bye!” With that the hobbit turned and scuttled inside his round green door, and shut it as quickly as he dared, not to seem rude. Wizards after all are wizards.4

Then that also exposes the sheer lack of trust I have in Him. Hey, I’m being honest! We’re still dancing around this come and see, subject. Anyone else noticed it’s a rather uncomfortable thing, reading the bible sometimes.

The question washes over me gently: Why are you so afraid?

I don’t know, I’m a strange hybrid of emotions, when it comes to Him; of longing and fear, overthinking everything.

Many years ago I used to work in a Native plant nursery on the edge of the Waitakere Forest. I loved the calm silence of the bush, the whisperings of the trees and the karanga of the ruru at night when I would sleep over. There I tamed a thrush once, by feeding it worms. Closer and closer it would come, hopping, flittering about under my stool between my feet while I was working. Any time the house cat came down the valley it would fly down and screech and perform to warn me of the impending danger I was in. I belonged to him, you see.

I’m like that, a skittish creature really, but bit by bit you are slowly wearing me down; we both know it. Haven’t I’ve been circling you warily for years?

But then I am reminded all of this, this entire thing is a work of grace. If you’d asked me a year ago would I be sitting here writing long run on sentences about faith and journeys and dreams and strange carryings on happening around me I would have thought you were cracked. I didn’t even like Him a year ago.

And yet here we are. You’ve got to laugh.

I didn’t go looking for Him, He came looking for me and that’s really what it comes down to. I am the object and I was decided upon and that’s it.5 And after all that I suppose there isn’t much I can pray, except I’m willing, to be made willing. I know my poverty well, I can say that much. I still seem to wake up most mornings a reluctant atheist compelled by grace to my knees, casting my little prayers to the wild Wind, but knowing I am yet being held.

teach me who You are

teach me how to listen to You

teach me how to taste You

teach me how to seek You

teach me how to be vulnerable with You

teach me how to delight in You

teach me how to trust You

teach me how to surrender

teach me how to receive You

We’re at the eve of D-day for me at the moment. Dream day, Disruption day, the great Unravelling, Find-a-versary, whatever you want to call it, 21st of July 2024. Martin Shaw gets it, in sweeter words than mine.

I don’t think I’ll ever lose the wonder that that was the prayer you chose to answer that night. I mean, shoot, I’ve read that bit, the one that says without faith it is impossible to please You. And I know there was definitely no faith in it, this ridiculous half-arsed prayer. God I need help.

And yet that! That was the one you chose, that you were waiting for?

There’s a level of humility and graciousness here, that I haven’t grasped. Not mine of course, but Yours. Who am I that you should answer any of them, and in that way?

I don’t think I ever understood grace before, and I realise I understand it even less now, being a recipient of it.

That sort of thing leaves a mark, like a brand on your soul.

I don’t know what any of this is supposed to look like, just that you disrupted the trajectory of my life that night. And everything I’ve needed for this Harenga Tapu6 you’ve provided. So keep calm and carry on, I go, losing things I didn’t need along the road but never alone, awake and listening for the quiet invitation wherever it leads, so very very grateful. There’s something new and different here, something solid, a new tūrangawaewae.7

But You, at least, You are a God who deals in fragments and firmaments, who gathers up the last crumbs, who collects tears, who looks for lost things, who knows what belongs to Him, who feeds the hungry and confounds the full, and who seems to really, well, enjoy a good agricultural related story.

May this life be an adventure of learning who You are; and then after that, an eternal further up and further in: heights upon heights, depths upon depths, journeys upon journeys; oh I have my suspicions of the gloriousness of it all.

So I’d like to leave you with some profound spiritual wisdom that I’ve acquired over the last year. Actually no, sorry, I have none of that. Try hitting up though, I hear he’s got some in a shed out the back…

Gandalf in the meantime was still standing outside the door and laughing long but quietly. After a while he stepped up and with the spike on his staff scratched a queer sign on the hobbit’s beautiful green front-door. Then he stole away, just about the time when Bilbo was finishing his second cake and beginning to think that he had escaped adventures very well.8

Reading: Prayer: Finding the Heart’s true home, by Richard Foster. (Yes, I’m still here, I keep getting stuck around page 10…)

Listening to: Brother by Land of Colour

Something that the Anglicans1 said that has dogged me for some time now is the phrase notice what I notice. It’s a blimmen good expression and I’ve been seriously attempting that in many aspects of my life for the last 8 months or so.

You may have heard talk of a ‘quiet revival’ in Britain and Europe. Whatever this is, it is not the same as what was before, rather something new is unfolding. The times, they are a-changin,2 as the old song goes. I hesitate to comment on what is prophetic, and what is not, given how loaded that word is and how often it has been abused, particularly as of late.

But I sense a change on the air, leaves on the wind that catch my attention as they swirl past. I see it in my children, being drawn nearer as I have been over the last year on this strange sort of journey.3 It arises seemingly spontaneously, the hairs on my arms prickle and it stops me in my tracks. One Sunday my young son marches to the front of church during a worship song in full view of everyone, wraps his arms around a large wooden cross and embraces it as tightly as he can, à la Saint Francis of Assisi. Then sits at the foot of it speaking to Him.

They also dream in the night and see things in the day I do not, with eyes that are more unfettered than mine.

All moments that could perhaps pass for coincidence, except for the knowing deep within me. Wind, where are you blowing? Glimpses of the divine, in amongst the ordinary everyday, the quiet unfolding in silence.

Then there are the dreams that keep coming most weeks with metaphors that discomfort me, stirring me to pray, sometimes for specific people, other times with more extrinsic meanings. How far they do extend, I do not know. I try to hold them lightly, and myself not too seriously.

I am quietly grateful for the gift of tongues in this, in the understanding that whatever it is that I am saying will always be in perfect agreement. Like an arrow reaches its target, I suppose here I can trust that I cannot miss, at least not in this mystery.

The wind blew past this week and I noticed something. I haven’t thought of that song in years. Not since my CCD days, every Tuesday afternoon, 3.45-5pm, lured entirely by the chance of biscuits and motivated to stay by the peer pressure, not to mention the hiding I’d get if I left early.

I hated it then, the cheesiness of it all (my sincere apologies to Graham Kendrick if you ever read this). The upbeat positively of it just jarred with the reality I was living. I just don’t think I’ve ever been genuinely joyful enough to sing it, does that make sense?

But I haven’t been able to get it out of my head this week. Something has changed and now I find myself too emotional to sing it. The words undo me, and all this is because of a few videos I watched on social media this week.

What would you say if you saw thousands of people standing in a field, hands raised, singing hymns of praise abut who Jesus is and what Hes’s done?

What would you call that? A worship service right?

Well that’s exactly what happened at Glastonbury festival last week, and I can’t get the video out of my head. For those of you outside the UK who don’t know what Glastonbury is, it is a large (secular) music festival. Essentially the UK’s version of Coachella or Woodstock.

But thousands of people were singing these words… they may not have realised what they were doing but that’s irrelevant. I suppose truth has found stranger authors; Pilate for example.

“Lord the light of your love is shining.

In the midst of the darkness shining.

Jesus light of the world, shine upon us.

Set us free by the truth you now bring us.

Shine on me. Shine on me.4

In the midst of the darkness, in a field in England, something is stirring, something is moving. It may not look like any sort of traditional worship service but that was essentially what it was. And the unconventional song leader James B. Partridge, leading from a children’s book of praise, doesn’t consider himself a particularly religious person according to this interview.

But what I see is a man standing in a field, leading thousands of people in singing and proclaiming:

Shine Jesus shine,

Fill this land with the Fathers Glory

Blaze Spirit blaze, set our hearts on fire.

Flow river flow

Flood the nation with grace and mercy.

Send forth your word.

Lord and let there be light.”5

Those prophetic words, that crowd, the sun shines as the Son shines and I can only look on with astonishment from so far away. The joy on so many faces in the crowd, they want this, and they are excited to sing. This is not the only song, there are many more including Give me Oil in my Lamp and Lord of the Dance and He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands among others.

I have linked a few of them below, mostly from this years Glastonbury set, although he also played last year as well. There is also a clip from a gig in Tunbridge Wells where he even brings Graham Kendrick on stage to lead the song.

This is a BBC Somerset interview where he goes into more detail about how he got started.

This is from Glastonbury 2024: Give me Oil in My Lamp/Shine Jesus Shine.

Another TikTok mashup of songs sung at Glastonbury 2024

@travelsbytashprimary school bangers - best set of glasto reliving our childhood 😂 #glastonbury #glastonburyfestival #glasto #glastofest #primaryschoolbangers

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A concert in Tunbridge Wells earlier this year where Graham Kendrick joined James B. Partridge on stage to sing Shine Jesus Shine.

@jamesbpartridgeAn incredible moment when Graham Kendrick, the songwriter of Shine Jesus Shine joined me live on stage at Tunbridge Wells Assembly Hall. Here is our duet from the end of that show. If you enjoy then there is a whole podcast episode out now which is a nearly hour long interview with the man himself. #primaryschoolmemories #singingassembly #primaryschoolassembly #britishprimaryschool #primaryschoolbangers #shinejesusshine #grahamkendrick #notesfromschoolpodcast

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So many things to ponder in our hearts. May we have eyes to see, ears to hear.

I do not want to speculate any further. There’s nothing I can say. Alas, I can only notice what I notice, wonder what I wonder. The words echo away in my heart and still I cannot sing them. I am too moved.

“He’s got the whole of Glastonbury, in His hands…” they echo.

Yes, indeed. That much is clear.

Reading: Rivers from Eden by Eden and Brad Jersak

Listening to: Shine Jesus Shine by Graham Kendrick

Learning: Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy

Phillip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.

“Come and see,” said Philip.1

I’ve sat on this post for a while. It’s been the easiest one to write, but the hardest one to edit. Words spill out like chilli from the pot and it’s harder to put them back in. Now I’m entirely distracted by that clip from The Office. Arrrghhh.

I’ve read and reread it over and over, wondering how much to share, what to say. And I just don’t know sometimes. What do I know of anything? I am no theologian. I have more curiosity than theology.

Grief, doubt, all of those things. And faith. It’s a bit of a spectrum really, coming in all shapes, colours and sizes. There are quiet stories and bumpy winding roads.

And then there’s people like me who seem to fit into the latter with the crap hitting the fan from the get go.

Ever been to one of those youth groups where they get the kids to stand up and give their testimonies? Not me though. I don’t blame them, I wasn’t exactly good for advertising. Ah those good old 2000s youth groups. Need I say more?

My BC was bad and my AD was even worse. I remember back when I first joined, as a teenager, the testimonies that emphasised how bad your life was before, and how good it was after. And I’d wonder, hang on a minute here, my story doesn’t resemble that at all? But you can’t ask questions like that. It doesn’t fit the church mold.

We don’t complain, someone else has it worse, you can’t say anything, you can’t speak up, you’re tangiweto2 if you do. You know, there was one time, early on, my youth group leader took me aside and directly asked me. I think she had a word of knowledge, I don’t know how else she could have known. I was terrified and I lied to her face and denied it, denied it, denied it.

I wonder how my life would have changed if I’d told the truth to an outsider. But he’s dead now anyway and can’t hurt anyone else. There was no justice for me. But there may not have been anyway. Tangiweto, tangiweto, rings in my head. We hide things in plain sight and those who see it say nothing. I want to shake them, you all knew, and did nothing. And even after they knew, guess who came around for dinner the following week?

Then there was the ongoing stress of it all, the tension, violent outbursts, breaking up the fights, to coming home from school, picking her up off the ground where she’d been lying for hours crying, I try to fix everything, I can’t. My hair starts turning white. Eventually she dies.

Another takes me under her wing. After a while, I think, maybe I can bear this.

Then she drives her car off the road.

I’d left home by this point, thrown a few things together in a suitcase and hitched a ride to the city. I don’t remember anyone being home that day to say goodbye to.

Getting away helped with the first round of grief. The second wave came 6 months after I moved to the city and the boat was swamped.

The grief swallows you alive and I didn’t know enough christian cliche things to keep me afloat. Better to get lost in the city in plain sight, become invisible in the pews.

Some days, most days, it’s all too much.

I don’t know how many well meaning people said to me during that time God never gives us more than we can handle. Even then I would think to myself what a stupid thing to say, do I look like I’m handling it?

You try and repeat it to yourself God is good, all the time, all the time, God is good, just keep repeating it, just keep swimming and it will become true.

Somehow I made it work. It’s easier to shut down on the inside and sit in the back. The bigger the church, the easier it is to hide. Even easier when your theology and understanding is, well, kinda crap.

Better to keep these doubts buried, keep everyone happy. I hate to brag, but I really was an expert at taking care of myself at this point, I’d been doing it all my life. I’ve never trusted anyone other than myself, right from when I was a child when I knew adults couldn’t be trusted.

See, you can hide a belief in your heart for many years, and for me, it was, secretly that God was absent between the ages of 10 and 20. He checked out.

That’s the part of your story that you don’t admit to people. Nobody wants to hear it anyway. So you just keep silent and do your best to fit the mold. Try, try, try again to believe this entire time that God was good but if I’m honest, I just couldn’t see it.

Years passed and the pain lessened with time and distance and an awful lot of squashing it down, fracturing in the process.

Humans really are remarkable creatures, able to carry and manage an entire spectrum of contrasting beliefs and somehow stick it together and call it truth.

And I held my dichotomy of belief here, maintaining the image on the surface to the ocean of doubt below. He wasn’t good, He didn’t love me and He didn’t care. And I don’t know (and still don’t) know how to believe any differently if I’m honest.

I wasn’t aware of how much of this I was carrying until I accidentally, unexpectedly blurted out the truth one night in May last year.

But I think for the first time in my life I’ve suddenly realised that my doubts are ok. That I’m still welcome anyway in the midst of it.

It’s a bit isolating living a story like this, walking this road. Most people prefer the happy face, the happy ending story. But real life isn’t always like that. These fears that dog my every step, that it’s not ok, that I’m not going to measure up as I simply don’t believe the right things.

But then I think of Thomas, the tension between him and the others and how it was ok, because he didn’t believe the right things either, and yet was met with kindness. Gives me hope, it does. I find solace in the Psalms as I suppose many others have.

The first time He came, it really was better than people could have imagined. So the next time, why should we expect anything different?

I remember a conversation with Frank Ritchie last year, about to hit him with the stickiest of questions how do you know after everything, that God is actually good?

Luckily for him, he didn’t need to answer it because I suddenly understood in the asking of it. Funny how that happens sometimes.

I realised that I didn’t actually have to know and believe it, but that the quiet invitation was to simply come and see irregardless. There was simply no expectation on me to have it all together faith wise. Or to convince myself of anything anymore.

Maybe it was always supposed to be His job and I’d never allowed space for that. And because I was so bloody curious about this invitation maybe, just maybe I could put on the coat and take a step into the wardrobe… as I have have heard some rumours about what lies beyond…

I suppose I’ve never considered, that it’s ok, not to be ok. You can be invited and held anyway. Let grace fill the cracks between what is and what one day will be.

An invitation you see, it holds you, it sees you, somewhere in the tension between doubt and faith, between uncertainty and knowing, between disappointment and hope.

I know my theology isn’t correct. You don’t need to tell me that. None of ours is. Something, something about seeing through a glass dimly. But I do hope, that although I don’t see it right now, still have no answers, to be pleasantly surprised one day by the Answerer beyond the wardrobe door.

It’s interesting though. I can’t make myself a Christian, a believer, a truster, I can only surrender to the invisible work of grace that permeates everything. I cannot decide how it rests, how it goes, how it falls. If I could control it, I’d be simply being the author of my own salvation. And I think I’m weary of doing that. Sometimes it takes damm near 40 years in the wilderness. I laugh when I think about where I live now. Still in the desert.

Come, be my centre of gravity

I came across something surprising a few months ago. See, I’d started reading through some of my old journals from that time. It’s a painful read and to be honest, I’ve thought about burning them many times. But I wrote everything down.

Some things, I just didn’t expect. I’m not going to go into detail on this platform about what I found there. I think most people wouldn’t believe me anyway if I told them.

But as, I said, if you see me in person and you’re curious, ask away.

So let’s just say that what I’ve found there is forcing me to reframe my thinking about that entire period of my life. And I’m forced to finally admit that I can no longer say that God was absent or He abandoned me during that time, as the proof was in my own handwriting that that was not the case.

So now choices have to be made. Terms of agreement set. Arms need to be laid down.3

I like to think we’ve negotiated some sort of truce: I’ll keep sitting if you keep doing the convincing. But He’s entirely too disruptive for this sort of thing and probably amused at my vain attempts at negotiation.

Fun fact, so I actually have a counselling/inner healing session booked for next week to revisit dealing with some of this stuff and a couple nights ago I had a dream with a rather well known person in it who has recently been in the news. Except we both know who it really was in disguise. I mean, come on. Worst disguise ever!

He just grinned at me and threw his arms around me and was genuinely thrilled I’d accepted his invitation to come see Him. He seems to like surprising me by showing up in some of my old haunts. Feels a bit like a hint that He’s far more excited about next week than I am. I’m still giggling actually, as it really was hilarious.

It’s the second dream I’ve had in the last 6 months about being invited along with my daughter up to meet the person in charge. Someone said to me you know, I actually think your daughter represents your younger self here.

Oh…

In the first dream I was asked twice if I wanted to come. I said no.

This time I said yes.

So I’m not going to pretend I’ve got it all figured out. But look who’s been playing the long game this entire time.

You know, I think your desire and ability to convince me that I am loved is still greater than my ability to believe in it. And at the end of the day I know who wins. We both do. It’s that picture of an eclipse I keep seeing over and over since last year.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Come and see

Can anything good come out of this mess?

Come and see

Are you better than I dare hope?

Come and see

“For he has not ignored or belittled the suffering of the needy

He has not turned his back on them, but has listened to their cries for help.”

Psalm 22 vs 24 NLT

Reading: Confessions by Augustine

Listening to: Chapel Sessions by Gateway Worship

It’s taken me a while to write this down, and there are some events I have ultimately decided to cut out as I didn’t feel it was my story to tell. I also wanted to get permission from the said Anglicans mentioned in this story and have chosen to retract their names etc for privacy’s sake. Some thoughts are a bit scattered but I trust that you will all bear with me.

I never learned how to weave, although I have an uncle and an aunt who do it. Harakeke* doesn’t exactly grow here in the desert, although I have somehow managed to keep alive one native Australian variety which I have growing in a pot.

Growing up in New Zealand we had large bushes in our yard far taller than me which I liked to run my hands along and press against my cheek, smooth to the touch, breathing in the faint scent.

I’ve never thought about if God has sidequests but I suppose He’s always doing more than one thing at a time in our lives, people and events being woven in like strands of muka.* Time will tell I suppose, on what pattern and design the whatu* will take. I am not the weaver of this story, rather I can see its all been initiated by grace. I suppose I’m more the harakeke, planted by the banks, learning to sink its roots down deep.

So here are some of these side quests I have observed over the last year, quiet nudges of kindness, an offering of freshly cut harakeke. Who knows what they will become in the end?

July:

I wake up, soaked in sweat, wondering what just happened. It is 2am but I get up anyway and write it down. It is days before I can tell my husband, and truth be known, I don’t know what to say or think about it. For weeks, months, I am agitated, on edge trying to make sense of it. The ground has suddenly shifted underneath me and I can no longer find my way. I’ve walked this land in circles for so many years and now I’ve awoken and the landscape has been disrupted. The trees have changed and all known landmarks are gone. I know nothing will ever be the same.

A quiet invitation begins to occur. At the same time something else happens that I didn’t expect.

I come across a sermon by an Anglican Vicar online. I haven’t listened, really listened in years. But for some reason I press play while I am sitting sewing one night. It’s a gut punch I wasn’t prepared for. I’m not sure when I started crying. Pretty early in. I replay it over and over.

He talks about Him, that one that I saw in the night. He repeats the same invitations that have been already echoing in me for weeks now and says a bruised reed He will not break and a smouldering wick He will not put out? I’ve never thought about what that metaphor means and I realise, that’s people he’s talking about. People. Me, it’s me.

Me and Him, Him and me, suddenly crashing into the same space and time, over thousands of years, just to hold me in His arms. I remember what it was like. And yet I just can’t put it in words. I just don’t have them. The kindness is tangible, I’m safe, there is nothing else to say.

It’s a small Anglican church in Wellington, half a world away it seems. I don’t know anything about Anglicans, having only visited their churches as a tourist. The messages are recorded and uploaded to Spotify so I sit and secretly listen, for the first time in a long time.

He says he is doing something called expositionally teaching through the gospel of Matthew. I don’t know what that is but I binge listen, sometimes 3 sermons a night for weeks and weeks. There are several years worth of them so I sit and sew and drink it in.

I hide at the back of the Sermon on the Mount, sitting on the grass. Only One knows I’m there. I listen, I fold washing, I drive the children around on errands, following the crowd from village to village and I start to feel hopeful, like my hand is being gently held, and I’m being walked through the stories, with these people I have never met, who don’t know I’m there, that everything is going to be ok.

Some time passes and I wonder, should I reach out? I don’t know what to say so I leave it. But after a while, I figure why not? I’m grateful for the bread. So I email them, saying an awkward hello, you don’t know me, but thank you, the sermons are wonderful and challenging. I don’t know how to say I’ve had a strange experience, but these have been just what I needed, so I just tell the truth in one sentence, even though I’m sure it sounds crazy.

A kind reply comes a couple days later. I respond, being honest with where I’m up to, that I still can’t get my head around much of this stuff, and mention I will be in NZ for the summer, staying in a city far far away from Wellington. I have no plans to head south.

He replies saying you know coincidentally we will be in that same city at New Years and would I like to meet? I am surprised and reply yes. And then… nothing. Silence.

December comes and we fly to New Zealand and fall into the arms of our extended family.

I walk through the summer in NZ and we lock eyes every day, as the sun rises. I have no understanding but a growing sense of belonging which I have never felt before, ever, as I am quietly unravelled at the dawn of each new day.

Everything is calm, the children are happy, delighting in the new surroundings and the family that embraces them and spoils them rotten. I never heard back from the Anglicans so I shrug my shoulders and carry on, continuing to explore daily the wonder of whatever this is.

My daughter has a birthday. I am disorganised and have not gotten her a cake as we are busy sightseeing. We discuss it on the drive back - she is not sure what she wants but knows she definitely doesn’t want a chocolate cake.

An elderly woman I don’t know and have never met knocks on the door an hour after we get back with an enormous carrot cake slathered with half inch thick icing. It pours over the sides. It is rich and extravagant.

She says God told her that morning to bake a cake and bring it over. My daughter is delighted. God knows she loves icing and there is so much of it. I don’t even know what to say. But there it is. The Lord will provide, the uh, cake?

This is a city full of churches and so I visit a nearby one. It’s close by in the same suburb and it has a children’s program running over the summer that the kids love. It gives me time to sit and soak it in anonymously, with no expectations on myself. One Sunday they announce they have visitors: ____ and ____ are here from ______ ministry organisation.

____ and _____ I think, I know those names, I think they go to that same church in Wellington. They make them stand up and wave and I decide I will go up to them afterwards and say hello.

So I walk up and awkwardly say hi and tell her I’ve heard her preach online, and I just wanted to put a face to the name, because you go to that church down in Wellington don’t you? She stares at me and asks if I attend here. No I say, my name’s Christina and I’m just visiting from Australia.

I KNOW who you are she says, we’ve all been praying for you. I am floored, we have only just met, how do you know who I am? She invites me to come to the conference the following week, everyone is apparently keen to meet me and have lunch.

It dwells on me later that even if I had never emailed them, I still would have ended up at the exact same church service in a city full of churches, and still walked up to say hello and thank you, all of us unintentionally meeting in a city that none of us live in, so for some reason I’m meant to meet these people.

So a couple days later we all sit down together, the Anglicans and I, somehow together at last having lunch and I stumble through this mad crazy story, still so new and raw, laying it all on the table. We share a meal and a box of tissues.

They tell me the week I emailed they had been sitting around feeling disillusioned with how things were going. They didn’t think they were having an impact online.

Then my email arrived.

We’re all in wonder with the strangeness of it all, the weaving of all our lives together in a way none of us could have imagined. We pray, sing and say farewell for now. Perhaps one day our strands of muka will touch again.

The children and I drive north for a week. People I haven’t seen in years keep reaching out, approaching us, inviting us to their houses for meals, they ask me how it’s going, I end up crying on their couches, guys I think Jesus showed up. Auckland, the city of sails and tears and unexpected grace.

My head is struggling to catch up with this as I realise I have nothing, know nothing. Still don’t, really. Just this daily experience of sitting there watching the sun rise while the Son rises. It is all going to be ok.

It’s our last Sunday in NZ. That morning I say a ridiculous prayer, as I’ve had some ridiculous thoughts about the thing I swore I’d never do in my life. But like most previous decisions in my life I wake up with a whimsical attitude. So I throw up my hands and say LookIthinkI’dliketogotoBibleCollegeandifyouthinkthisisagoodideathenmaybeIcanmeetsomeonetodaywhoknowsaboutthatsortofthing. Then we leave for church.

And everyone avoids me like the plague.

I shrug it off and sit in the cafe afterwards. The kids cheerfully explode food all over the place.

An old man sidles up to me while I am keeping the mess at bay and we make conversation about his family, London, Australia, his kids, my kids while I am cleaning up chips. He is quiet and unassuming. I ask him how long he has come to this church. About 25 years he says. I snort and say well coincidentally that’s about how long I have been pottering about church but haven’t really allowed the truth of the gospel to permeate my heart.

He cocks his head and looks at me. He decides he’s going to sit down. Pulls out his wallet and gives me his card.

I take it and look at it. Rev Dr ______ _______. He’s got a doctorate I think. I say the stupidest thing, Hey do you know anything about Bible college? Even I want to kick myself. A bit he says with quiet humility. I find out later he ran a Bible college.

I tell him I think I’d like to go but I don’t know anything about it. This thing has happened and my brain whatever this is can’t keep up. And I realise I really don’t know a thing about God or anything. He listens, nods knowingly, and says yeah, I realised after I did my PHD I didn’t really know anything about God either. Do keep in touch, he says, sincerely.

I tell my inlaws the story that night at a bar and they screech with laughter. They all know who he is.

So I guess we’re doing this now. Within a few weeks I’d found a place, enrolled online and have completed two units so far. (Go me!)

I sat down this morning while sorting out the children’s socks. Ah, the most mundane of tasks of a mother’s life. I pressed play in that sermon, you know, the first one I watched. I started ugly crying within 10 minutes. I can’t seem to keep it together no matter how many times I listen to it. Some sermons should come with a warning label. Anglicans, if you ever needed feedback, there you go!

The old landscape is gone, old frameworks are being steadily, imperceptibly dismantled. I am glad for it, as I didn’t like it much anyway.

All the ideas I had about God, all of this, didn’t really exist. I thought I had Him all figured out, but it was all in my head, and I am being undone. Sometimes He moves fast, but mostly intentionally and purposefully and now we both know I am in his trap He has no intent of rushing any of this. I am running out of things to cling on to but I think that is the point. No hurry, I expect it’s a lifetime’s work. But He is kind, He is safe.

Ah, no matter how many books I read, I do not know how to pray. But I’m learning how to receive. The more you know, the less you know. There is no real “how to” and no right way. But, I think perhaps there is no wrong way either. Maybe it’s like a painting you both work on together. And yet less about what I do, and more about what happens to me.

Some days I just sit sideways on an armchair at the crack of dawn, asking nothing, saying nothing, being present in this longing, which I think is perhaps a gift from Him anyway so I presume it’s ok.

I had a dream, a few months ago now, that I was sitting on the floor of a Marae, mussel shell in hand, having my first lesson on how to process harakeke. I’m not sure what the dream means, or where any of this will go, but sitting and learning is always a good start for anything.

Reading: Clinging: The Experience of Prayer by Emilie Griffin

Listening to: Invitation by Blueprint Church

*Harakeke: NZ native flax

*Muka: twine made from processed flax fibre

*Whatu: The weaving process

“Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.”

― G. K. Chesterton

Some people fall in love overnight, and for others truth dawns as a sunrise, a slow burn, I was unaware of until it was too late. Everything is different in the growing sunlight and its slowly dwelling on me that I’d been in the dark all along. Oh no, I’m in trouble now. Can’t go back, the chasm* behind me is even more vast, nowhere to go but over the edge and further up and further in.

Charlie Macksey talks about an “epiphany in droplets” -  and I think he’s right. The rain kept falling, and I couldn’t control it or stop it but neither did I want to.

I never understood this stuff growing up, it was always me here and you up there, somewhere out there far away on a cloud that I couldn’t touch or perceive so it was easy to feel alone, particularly in my head. Where were you when I needed you?

Over the past months I’ve begun being dimly aware, a growing awakening to this idea of cohabitation, what they call union in some spaces, where we are actually mingled and you inhabit every part of me. I asked Him once what do you mean because I didn’t understand it and started thinking of a sponge where the liquid is absorbed into it while remaining itself, but somehow more, fuller.

How long has this been occurring for? Beats me because I’m still the lady in the old story rubbing her eyes finally sitting up in bed, wondering how long I’ve been asleep for and who are you and what are you doing in my bedroom and why is it so dusty in here? Are those vines?

Someone told me, out here, in Wongatha Country, the word used for born again is also the same word used for awakening. I’m not sure if that’s what’s happened but I feel startled awake, disoriented after being asleep for years. And I don’t have theology, I have a sunrise instead.

It’s not that it only just happened, but more so that it’s always been here, it was just the mail I never opened, the birds that chirped away at dawn, the sunset staining the eucalyptus, all these ordinary remarkable things you take for granted but you never really pay attention to, a quiet constance present in the chaos. I turn my head and there you are.

I remember lying there on the couch one afternoon and said I’m conflicted on how I feel about you. You said hmmm well I only feel one way towards you and I was startled enough to probe oh yeah… What’s that then? You want to tell me about it? And we both laughed knowingly because who am I kidding right?

For my entire life my interior world has felt like a sack of squirrels masquerading as a person. Keeping out of my own head on some days seems like an impossible task; the dentist points out that I grind my teeth and are you stressed? and I remember the bubbling anxiety I have lived with for so long.

So when the growing sense of this invitation happened, I was skeptical, wondering what was the point of any of this. I don’t even like spending time with me. Come to me, you said, and I, awaking in the night sneaking to the lounge to awkwardly kneel in front of a chair, unsure of what else to do but resigned to the fact that this is what we’re doing now.

And then one night I awoke, the words already ringing in my heart sit with me, be with me, receive me and my grace for you. You don’t have to do anything else. You don’t have to perform for me, look spiritual or feel worshipful. Do it whether you perceive anything happening or not. There’s more that He said, but I finally was realising I was hemmed in, there was nowhere else to go, because you’d just find me in my sleep again.

So I tried it and sat there on the floor of my room in all my silent awkwardness wondering what I should do. Receive, you said. Ok, here I am, I said, whatever, do the rest then. And I sat and I sat and I sat anyway day after day without a clue.

Then a week and a half in I thought, you know, this isn’t so bad, I actually feel a lot happier. Is this joy? Why am I walking during the day smiling all the time?

And why do I feel like I’m being punched in the chest everytime I think about your love that I don’t believe in? Oh God, I’m having a heart attack aren’t I?  It’s one of those slow moving ones that only happen when I think about you…. Wait that doesn’t make sense…. But I’m still googling female symptoms of a heart attack anyway.

It’s hard to describe, because it doesn’t make sense to the logic in my brain, which has clearly been bypassed here. I’ve never felt less meditative in my life, and yet, I realise it’s somehow not on me to will myself into a state of zen or peace or whatever this is. I haven’t been able to do that my entire life, let alone now.

And yet, I’ve noticed something unusual, an unexpected discovery which echoes through the day, a quietness, a peace, a constancy in the chaos I never dreamed of or experienced before, a lifeline outside of myself.

I do nothing. He does it all. I make space, and He fills it. Feels strange, my lack of effort to be and feel prayerful or anything really.

It wasn’t long after this that I was driving the kids to soccer and it suddenly hit me: This is a trap isn’t it?

Yeah, He said with a smile. But you’ll enjoy it… I burst out laughing, unsure if I’d heard what I’d heard or if it was just me. Either way, I was enjoying it to my consternation.

“I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?”

C. S Lewis, Surprised by Joy

Prayer only leads to trouble, I see that now, possibly the most dangerous thing I could have done, and the worst kind of trouble is the falling in love kind, completely bypassing my mind where all my doubts and protests live. One cannot be too careful you see, and I walked straight into that trap myself.

So I suppose poetry will do when theology runs out, and when you have finally run out of your pretty words, try a sunrise or looking up at the stars. But perhaps I should have started there in the first place, like those who came before me.

Listening to: The Servant Song by Jon Niven

Reading: Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard Foster

• Sheldon Vanauken wrote about his horror in finding the gap behind him had widened and was even more vast than the one in front of him in A Severe Mercy, pg 111.

Many years ago when I was 18 I was going to sleep one night - my bed was against the wall and I was lying there just talking to God praying that He would put his angels in my room to watch over me as I sleep etc. Whatever right?

At that point my room lit up with a brilliant white light coming from behind me.

I was lying facing the wall and I was absolutely crapping myself but was like I HAVE to roll over and look, as I might not get this opportunity again. You can’t not want to look right? My heart was absolutely racing but finally got the courage to roll over and look at this beautiful white light. So I did.

That’s when I remembered I had one of those old Nokia blue brick cell phones that would light up when it was fully charged. That combined with white walls and a few strategically placed mirrors... 🤦‍♀️

Well let’s just say it still took me an hour for my heart to stop racing so I could get to sleep that night. I have no doubt they were there… probably busting a gut laughing.. 😂

It’s been about a year since my faith collapsed.

Cracks formed underneath, imperceptible, unbeknown to all including myself.

Out here in the desert where I live we’ve just had a late thunderstorm. The sky shatters and in about a week, the water will have dried up, the earth will mirror this and crack open. What secrets will we find underneath the surface of this?

It’s been almost one year since I blurted out mine, at a friend’s house, unknown to everyone… including me. I’m not even sure of the exact date myself of when it was, and the subsequent crumbling, the unravelling of myself, of something decades in the making.

Truth has a funny way of finding us when we least expect it. As for me, it escaped before I hardly realised what I was saying.

I drove home that night, wondering why on earth I said that out loud. Of course I believed. Didn’t I? Of course God loved me. Didn’t He?

Was He even there though?

The dam broke and I was helpless to stop it.

I was devastated, silent, unable to grasp at the threads of what was slipping away between my fingers. I gave up plugging holes, and sat down amidst the flood, the chaos, unsure if anything would be left. I did not tell anyone what was happening. I could not.

I, along with it wasn’t fixable, as far as I was concerned. I could no longer force myself to believe.

Time passes and you sit there alone, defeated, faced with yourself in the ruins of your old beliefs like broken pieces of pottery. Months passed, silently, hopelessly.

Then something happened I was not expecting.

I’m not sure how much detail I will get into in here about the following strange event that then occurred last July. There’s enough people on the internet monetising experiences like this and I dread becoming a spectacle.

Even more do I dread using Him for my own gain. There’s a tension here, in wanting to be open and honest about what I believe, but also not wanting to use Him to make myself look spiritual when the quiet unfolding of whatever this is, is still so fresh, so new. I don’t have the theology for any of this stuff. Does any mortal?

Here, I may just read more than I write, ponder more than I respond, notice what I notice instead.

There’s a strangeness and a mystery to it that I will never understand. But I’m grateful. If I could describe it as anything, it was less of a finding then a being found, a dream, a gift. He came looking for me when I wasn’t looking for Him. It was ordinary, quiet and unexpected. Without hype or emotional manipulation. Disruptive? Entirely. Kind? Beyond measure. I’ve never felt so safe.

And I’ve been a wreck ever since.

I didn’t wake up from the dream with everything fixed, with all my doubts vanishing overnight. But rather in the following months, I felt a strange sense of being invited, even welcomed into something new and different. It’s hard to explain.

But if you can imagine, it feels like I’ve been handed the keys to a brand new playground and told, oh just come in, explore Me, enjoy Me, get to know Me. That’s how wonderous it feels, in the realisation of there being no expectations on me, but oh, I sense the warmth of the welcome, the gentleness, the patience beyond my understanding. It both fascinates me and draws me in.

It’s become a running joke between Him and me, you see: What are you doing to me? A question I have probably asked multiple times a day since the start of all this. I get nothing but a smile in return. I actually don’t need an answer. I’m learning to embrace the mystery in all of this. How to get up early in the morning and hold space for Him as we contemplate each other. I never thought I’d enjoy it so much. Moths to the flame I suppose.

Some of those who know me in person may already know some of this unexpected journey. Last month I was asked to share about some of it publicly at a church service which was new and different. It’s never something you feel ready for and I’m not sure if I will ever feel comfortable doing that sort of thing. I wept through much of it, as this story isn’t one I seem to be able to talk about without tears. But if you see me in person, and you’re curious, feel free to ask away.

Recently I realised writing has always seemed to mirror my internal faith journey, almost as if one was compelled by the other. I started writing about 6 months after I became a Christian as a teenager and it gradually trickled to a stop some time in my mid to late 20s. I’ve never considered connecting the two but I’m already well into my third journal now since October which surprises even myself.

The wildflowers will be already starting to spring up, though they are not yet visible above the surface. In about a week, the normally bare red dirt here will be carpeted with them, their yellow faces turned towards the sun, basking in its light. I’ve never felt so hopeful, so safe, in the light, in the finding and being found.

Listening to: Give Me You by Jon Guerra & Andrew Belle

Reading: Experience Jesus Really by John Eldredge