A life that's good

It seems rather surreal to say it but I am now fast approaching the end of my fifth term at college and I am more than half way through my Vicar training. In some ways it feels like I have been there for ever. So many long, dark nights out yonder in the countryside! So many, many essays! And yet in other ways it is as if I have just arrived. The whole thing can still be mightily mysterious even on my best days.

I find that I am changing so rapidly here that it's hard to keep up with myself and my own thoughts and feelings. One of the great blessings of my time at college so far has been the chance to study theology to a depth where my whole world view has been shaken up and reordered again. I feel more uncertain and yet oddly more sure. Best of all I feel so much more in awe of this world and of God. I feel like I'm setting out on a new journey and a lifetime of learning.

My experience of training has been given a major boost this year by the church I have been going to and helping out at a bit. There I am reminded of all the things I love about Church. It is down to earth, passionate, brilliant fun, a force for good in the community and a place where I feel happy and rested. When the going gets tough it is good to have a place like that to remind me of where I am heading and that working in church really is a place where I feel fulfilled and at home.

This is a great comfort when, like me, you wander round church practically wearing a sandwich board with the word 'Why?' plastered across it. I really believe that we have to get happy asking 'why' and happy answering it if we are going to make faith and church in any way understandable to a new generation. This is the blessing (and sometimes the difficulty!) of being an interloper into the church as one raised outside of it. I have little attachment to anything but God and his goodness.

No, my heart is tugged more often by very ordinary things and I'm learning to love that. This is what our lives are made up of after all. We need to understand that the holy place is right where we stand. And so last week my heart was tugged by this song on Nashville. It struck me that through all this time with fancy theories and ways of doing things, for all the 'oughts' and 'shoulds', I find myself, deep down, only wanting to return to the simple. To live a life that's good. Nice one, Nashville! 

Sunshine! Quick, get gardening!

Growing stuff, ah it's great isn't it? As the sun decided to make a brief appearance this weekend I took full advantage to do a bit of pruning and feeding of my little babies. I find it significantly easier to give a monkeys about my plants when they are doing something in return for me, namely feeding me and, ideally, looking pretty at the same time. Even then life on the Hulks plot can be tough what with our fondness for swanning off round Europe for weeks on end and our definite lack of fondness for watering.

 

Tried some peas last year!

 

I'm generally pretty challenged in the gardening department but I don't see that as any reason not to have a go. It is amazing how many plants will survive, and even thrive, with completely inept caretakers. Like pretty much everything in life I take a 'try and see' approach to gardening and three years in my fruit plants are all still alive (pretty much...don't mention the gooseberries!) and as they are in tubs they can come with us from house to house which makes a lot of sense given our slightly nomadic lifestyle!

 

If you fancy a go then these are my top five, seeming unkillable plants to try!

1. Mint

Stick it in a tub. It will grow. And grow. And grow. And grow! It needs a bit of watering in the summer but I often forget and it always springs back. My mint plant once entirely proved its worth by saving a Church garden party when someone forgot the mint for the Pimms. I also enjoy it all summer for mint tea.

2. Rosemary and Thyme

I planted these into tubs about five years ago and they survive very well indeed under the arid and unpredictable conditions of my gardening regime! Plus they flower, so look pretty, and smell great.

3. Blueberries

I love my blueberry plants. They need ericaceous compost (you can get little bags of this at the garden centre) and apparently prefer rain water to tap water but mine aren't that lucky! I put my plants near the house so I can grab a handful of blueberries when I want and so the birds keep off them. They like company too so buy a pair.

4. Lavender

Lavender is a bit 'treat it mean keep it keen'. It doesn't like too much water and so far has grown happily on my patio. Lavender bags and lavender biscuits are my go to uses for the plant and I have dried lavender all over my house! It likes a good trim so go for it.

5. Lettuces

This is the easiest thing to grow EVER. Just sprinkle a load of seeds on some compost, stick it on a window sill and watch them sprout up! When they are a few centimetres tall then 'thin' out the seedlings (i.e. remove a few so that each one has a good few centimetres around it to grow). Sew them a few weeks apart in any containers you have hanging about and you will have a constant supply of lettuce for the £1 price tag of a bag of seeds. You will never buy a bag of limp lettuce again!

 

Rosemary in bloom

This year I have actual real flower beds to grow in. I know, get me! Going up in the world eh? This involves a whole new level of gardening know how and, I'm sure, comedy mishaps. Still, I do love getting out and tending to the plants. There is something very therapeutic about it. Fresh air and the excitement of Spring just around the corner again. Seeing the bees buzzing around in the summer. Dashing out like a mad woman to scare birds away from the blueberries. Good times!

Love the life you live

Do you ever have those moments when you flick on Facebook, spot yet another new job/engagement/baby/new house/great holiday announcement, and have that sudden sinking feeling, 'What am I doing? What is happening in my life? Why am I so 'behind'?' This is the curse of social media. Suddenly we know the ins and outs of people lives we've long since stopped hanging about with. Lovely to catch up perhaps but so often it becomes a game of comparisons and don't you always come up short?

In many ways I think we would all be a lot better off if we took more of an honest approach to our interactions online. When a friends comes over for a cup of tea I don't list them my achievements of the week. No, I tell them how it is, the highs and the lows. The boring bits, the bits where I made an idiot of myself (what me? Never!) as well as the bits I'm pleased with and want to celebrate. Wouldn't life online would be so much richer if we poked fun of ourselves a little bit? Told the truth about the fact that, as we type, we are wearing old jogging bottoms, circa 1998, with an indiscreet hole that we STILL can't be bothered to sew up (Just me? Ah.....)

One of my favourite sayings from the book of Proverbs, that I often repeat it to myself, is this: 'Trust in God with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.' Because who knows why I have one lot and someone else has another? All I know is that I don't want to live my life in negative, in constant awareness of all the things I don't have. Rather I want to be where I am, feet firmly on the ground and looking about me for the possibilities and opportunities that MY life is offering ME.

All of this is neatly encapsulated for me in a single image I have from being in Greece, age 18. There my favourite early evening past time was to leap off the rocks into the sea. I'd just swim out in that clear, perfect blue water and feel totally alive, totally free and so deeply, unwaveringly bold. It's so easy to lose that exuberance under all the pressures of life, the shoulds, the oughts, the 'by nows', but who wins then? The life you could have had, your very own, remains unlived. Those straight paths are untraveled.

 

No, I'm reminded again to celebrate my one weird and wonderful little life. My chances, my opportunities, where I am right now. So bring it on Monday, I'm ready for you! Let's see what this week brings!

Home made....car!

Ok, so I'm not exactly making my own car but I am making my car super snazzy with some home spun crafts. Partly this is in a effort to make friends with my new car which, despite now being the proud owner of a full drivers licence, still fills me with a degree of horror particularly as I am now driving solo for the first time.There was a time I couldn't wait to see the back of my driving instructor now I wonder how much it was cost to have him live permanently in my passenger seat. In fact, scrap that, how much do drivers cost these days?!

But anyhow, I digress, my jazzing up of the car is not only to get a bit more friendly with it but also to introduce a little humour to this whole driving thing and some 70s pop colours  to a boring grey interior because, well, when can you not use some 70s pop colours? Never, I hear you cry! So here is a cross stitch I knocked up which I am attaching to some bright flower power fabric to make a cushion for my back seat.



I'm also mid knit to created a patchwork blanket to accompany it. Chuck on my white rimmed aviators, some Donna Summer on the decks and I'm good to go!

All this crafting has been greatly enhanced by the publication of my first 'home made home' article today. As well as contributing the hints and tips I took the photos which was not only brilliant fun but was the first time my snaps have been used alongside my writing outside of this blog. Double whoop! Here's a shot of the spread (I love the design and layout) and a couple of the snaps featuring in the article.

 

 

 

 

You really can do anything with a tin of old paint, some fabric scraps and a tiny, weeny bit of crafting know how. Pick up Woman Alive to find out more!

Thanks for reading, now go retro up your ride! :)

Why I've abandoned femininity for humanity

A good while ago I wrote a rather angst ridden post for International Women's Day particularly focused, in the wake of the failed women bishops measure, on women's lot in the Church. I signed off saying I was off to do a little exploration on this subject and a couple of months later I started a dissertation on the ideas about gender underlying arguments against women's ordination. It has been an enlightening time!

I recently submitted my first draft to my supervisors so now, though I am far from an expert in the subject and my views are still, of course, developing, it seems like a good time to talk about some of the things I have discovered. In particular the reading I have done about gender has prompted new thoughts on that question of what, if anything, does it mean to be a woman today?

Gender is fluid

The first, and probably most startling, discovery I made was how fluid a thing gender really is. Without even going into the 4% of live births in the UK which cannot be categorized as male or female on the level of anatomy and genetics, sociologists widely agree that our concept of what it means to be male or female is largely shaped by our culture.

This was first shown by anthropological research studying different cultures around the world. What it means to be a man, or what is considered to be masculine, in one culture is vastly different in other cultures. This can be seen in typical behaviours, work patterns and child rearing practices. In some cultures child rearing is a male dominated occupation. In some manual labour is women's work. These expressions of manhood and womanhood are often deeply held but also extremely varied.

There are many 'kinds' of masculinity and femininity

It has been argued that there is a dominant expression of femininity and masculinity in Western cultures and if you live in this culture the characteristics of these will be immediately obvious to you. Yep, in a nutshell, the macho, assertive man and the pretty, co-operative woman.

 

These types are favoured, and society exerts pressure on various levels for people to conform to these stereotypes, but within society there are actually multiple expressions of masculinity and femininity. One size really does not fit all and no one masculinity or femininity can be seen as natural or more ideal than another.

Men and Women are as alike as they are different

Within this idea of multiple masculinities and femininities it has also been found that in many qualities and abilities there is more variation within the genders than between them. Of course, as gender is largely created our culture, we can also create differences between genders by how we are socialized but this does not make men or women biologically better at one thing or another. Such differences are remarkably rare and the similarities between the sexes emerges much more starkly in research of this kind.

All this has made me reflect on my original question, way back then, what does it mean to be a woman today? My explorations have in some ways pulled the rug out from under me as many of the differences I consider there to be between men and women can be shown to be variable across cultures and not fixed at all. In many ways I think this is a positive thing. Rather than seeing individuals as something you can stick a label on saying 'Man' or 'Woman' and then expect a certain set of behaviours through this research the diversity and variety of humanity can be recognized and, one day I hope, treasured.

Women don't have to be more sensitive or less assertive. Men don't have to love power tools or be some great rescuer for the women in their lives. The door is opened to greater responsibility on the part of both genders, for themselves and for each other. I have so much more to say on this subject and so much more reflection to do, particularly on the place of femininity in faith and how this has both advanced and hindered women, but my thoughts from the last year have arrived in a place of stressing our mutual calling as men and women to good human, rather than gender specific, values.

In the Bible these are described in one passage as the 'fruit of the spirit'. Galatians 5 reads, 'the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control'. These values are gender neutral. Rather than seeking what it means to be a good woman or a good man I feel confident in saying that if you seek these human values, you won't go far wrong. By bringing kindness and generosity into our encounters with each others difference perhaps we will indeed find more joy and peace. By bring gentleness and patience into our relationships, regardless our gender, better things will surely come.

So that is where I am right now and your thoughts are always appreciated. I will continue to think and debate and be back on this again, I am sure!

We are full of Wonder

I'm having a jolly good time in my studies at the moment. The first few weeks of term were, as always, fairly stressful as I started a new section of my course and learned to navigate a new set of requirement that came along with my latest unit in Modern Theology. My tutor put a new spin on my struggles, however, which has really affected my outlook on it.

Rather than seeing these big questions (y'know simple things like the nature of God and what not!) as things to be anxious over or pin down instead I can see it as play. I can enjoy feeling small and exploring something so much bigger than me. Instead of worry, I can wonder. Since taking this approach I've really started to enjoy myself and my work has improved because of it.

This mini-academic breakthrough made me wonder how much more fun things might be if I took this approach more often in the rest of my life. We take ourselves very seriously don't we? Always stressing and dashing about as if our lives depended on the next task on our To Do list. And yet these things rarely matter as much as we make out that they do. The ironing will wait for tomorrow, the essay will get done at some point, dinner from the freezer will be fine again.

 

The garden. Always seems like a very sensible place to wonder!

And yet while we are dashing about, trying to force an answer out of the mysterious or structure into the chaotic, I wonder if we are missing the things that we can know right here and now in the ambiguity and messiness of our lives. As I've tried to wonder more and stress less this week I have found that the answers actually flow a little faster. When I stop trying to pin God down he pops up all over the place, taking me by surprise all over again.

To me it seems that it is often the most human of things that we deny ourselves. So what do you think? Time to wonder this week? I'll be the one with my head in a bunch of flowers and my mind on the mysteries of the Incarnation! Life, eh?!

I am Afraid

In my life I've been afraid of quite a few different things. I'm trying to overcome a number of fears right now and it is HARD. But the thing with fears is they don't go away if you avoid them. Like a kid with a monster under the bed they just get bigger and hairier and grow horns. No, these things are better out in the open when they can be seen for what they are, away from the shadows and the distortions of the imagination.

I've been doing a bit of reading around phobias and intense fears and have discovered that they normally arise due to a trauma or when a, perhaps seemingly insignificant, event occurs around the same time as you are experiencing a period of high stress. This was particularly the case for me with public speaking. I used to love it. I spent a summer just out of University working at a zoo where I gave the Giant Tortoise keeper talk every lunch time. I can still picture myself clearly leaping about around the outside of the pen with my 'Britney mic' on feeling totally at ease speaking to whoever I could cajole into staying to learn about the global plight of the tortoise.

A couple of years later I was interning for a church and going through a particularly hard time. Some negative comments were made about a presentation I gave and I fell apart. I didn't speak publicly again for three years. It seems excessive and in a way I have always blamed myself, considered myself weak, for giving up in the face of criticism which I could have, should have, just taken it on the chin.

But I now understand that I reacted as anyone would under the circumstances. I was weighed down by a whole world of sadness and this was the straw that broke the camels back. In these situations an intense fear can centre around an object or activity that, especially if that object or activity is avoided, can intensify with time. Its like all your pain and fear from that sad time gets trapped up in one neat package labelled 'public speaking' and your lip quivers even at the thought. I'm still overcoming that fear fully. I don't enjoy public speaking right now but I know that one day I will again.

I've also been reminded this week that being courageous is not an absence of fear or never letting anything get to you. Sometimes life throws you a whole load of rubbish at once and you respond in the only way you can. You get the hell out of there until you can cope with it all again. But it takes real courage, in the face of that fear, to not allow that fear to define you in the long term. To take steps to reclaim what you lost, to reclaim your future for yourself again free from fears that paralyse you and hold you back. To do what is knee-knockingly, jaw clenchingly hard for you.

When I was in Zambia I discovered a fear of heights. Half way up a mountain. After breathing into a paper bag for ten minutes and being roused with a glucose syrup I was faced with the option of climbing on or staying alone on the mountainside until the group scaled the mountain and came back down. I was leading that group and so I decided I had to go on, if nothing else to show them that you can do things that you don't even believe yourself are possible. That afternoon I abseiled 60 metres off the edge of that mountain, blubbing the whole way down like a baby, but I still did it. One of the instructors who was lowering me down said the kindest words anyone has ever said of a snotty nosed thirty year old weeping on an abseiling rope – 'that is true courage'.

 

Me, hanging off a rope. Crying, shaking but braving it out!

So if you, like me, have moments when it seems like everything is bigger, scarier and harder than you can ever handle, then take heart. You are the courageous one and conquering that fear you have is just around the corner.