An eventful morning.
The weather has been dreadful, but I had to go to a meeting in Lochgilphead. Unfortunately I did not make it. The car pirouetted on a corner and span into a ditch.
I am fine- just a bit stiff and sore, and the car is not a write off.
On Argyll’s winter roads, walking away from an accident is something to be celebrated.
Today was to be our day Christmas shopping. Michaela and I were going to take a day out and go somewhere like Stirling or Ayr- but when we sat down to plan it, neither of us wanted to go. This for the obvious reasons, but also (given all our recent discussions about doing Christmas differently) it just seemed hypocritical and frustratingly conformist-to me at least- Michaela is not so given to wallowing in angst.)
We were going shopping for a lesser amount of stuff anyway- we have been planning different activities and ways of Christmas sharing with many of our friends.
So instead, we spent a day at home MAKING THINGS.
I made a massive pot of chutney, and another of Piccalilli. I chopped veg for about 3 hours and the house is full of a heady smell of spice and vinegar. We will jar them up with hand made labels.
Total cost of ingredients- around £30 plus gas and plus TIME.
Michaela made clay Christmas decorations, which she will paint and string together. Later we will make some wind chimes.
Total cost so far around £20 for clay paint and varnish. And TIME.
And in the process we had a day at home together- listening to radio 4 and CDs.
While a gale is blowing outside.
Because the joy of the thing is never in the buying. Perhaps there may be some people who like shopping- who enjoy the cut and thrust of Christmas commerce, but I suspect they will be very few.
Here is another poster from Buy Nothing Christmas.
I confess- I am going shopping the day after tomorrow.
Christmas shopping.
Because, despite the journey we are on away from this consumer addiction that we call ‘Christmas’, I have not yet gone (forgive me for this) cold turkey.
I intend to treat this latest journey into the world of commerce as an expedition into a hostile land.
I may not return alive.
I would love to have been in Durham for this.
I have had a productive day.
This morning I wrote a piece for another website, for which I was paid £25. This afternoon I spent carving things out of wood. I have been selling about one or two pieces a month in a local art gallery- so this afternoon I might have made things to the value of say (for the purposes of a nice even number!) £75.
All of which set me thinking. How much money do we need? And how simple it seems to be able to link what we produce with this need in a direct way.
Regular readers of this blog will know that my current job- I am a social worker earning a reasonably high salary- is under threat. I was expecting to have a redundancy letter in the post by now, but this has now been delayed until at least next Spring.
One of the things about the kind of work I do now is that there is no easy link between what I produce (which is rather nebulous) and what I earn. Despite all the uncertainties of my future, I find myself craving this link more and more…
Had a lovely time at our housegroup this evening.
I had more or less come to the conclusion that it was time to stop housegroup- that it was time to do something new. But instead of stopping all together, people decided that they would like to continue to meet monthly. So tonight Michaela spent a little more time preparing some simple mediations, and I sat in the corner and played guitar. It was lovely.
You could say that it was a ripple made by the Spirit.
And something about our discussions reminded me of this-
The blocks might be seen to represent our theology- or our value system. The means by which we make sense of the vastness of the universe and our tiny place within it.
But even though the thoughts we have are woven into some kind of system of apparent cohesion and even certainty, there is always something else- something indefinable and difficult to lay hold of.
Something that at times we yearn for, without knowing what it is.
Something that is beautiful and whole- something hopeful.
Something dangerous.
Something that some of us would call- God.
So as we stare at our construction of solid blocks of knowledge, there dancing in the middle of it all- playful and full of Joy- is this other thing. The blocks might describe some of it, but it is not contained by the blocks. The spaces between might seem to be it’s place of dwelling- but these too are transient and transparent.
Rather this thing that we seek- this God- is not contained. He is in and through and without.
The question is how we might respond to this capricious and undefinable God? How do we follow?
I know my own answers to this question- and they are to found in community with my friends. We follow together. We build our (temporary) blocks of understanding with small stones.
We build humbly because our answers are only partial.
But still we build- because within this communal dwelling there is not just us- but something other. Something indescribably beautiful.
At least it does for 106 year old Hetty Bower.
I saw this clip on the news this evening. How wonderful it would be to sit down and talk to this remarkable lady.
Perhaps if we all lived to be 106…
This was the name of the Sunday supliment in last weekend’s Herald newspaper.
A strange title indeed, as buried on page ten in an article entitled ‘A time for others’ was a discussion about the work of Alternativity– in which development worker Margaret Paul was quoted as saying this-
We know that our communities women bear the main burden of Christmas and what should be a happy time can be very stressfull, especially where money is concerned.
Some women see Christmas as a chance to make things up to their children because they live in poverty all year round.
The article also quotes a Samaritans volunteer, who said
People can be very affected by the imagery portraying the perfect Christmas when the reality is that it is different for everyone.
So much more so if you are on your own, or unwell. I know many people who just want to shut their door on Christmas, and wait for the season to pass on by.
What then might be the ultimate Christmas for these folk, and for us?
Does it depend on a colour coded table, set in front of a huge log fire in a picture post card cottage covered in snow? Do it need to be punctuated by the sharing of the perfect presents around the designer tree? All of these things are good- but are they really the measure of what is ‘ultimate’?
My ultimate Christmas celebration involves family, friends, food and an appreciation of the coming of the King of peace.
The rest is just decoration.
I have just watched this film…
It is the story of Uxbal – a single father who struggles to reconcile fatherhood, love, spirituality, crime, guilt and mortality amid the dangerous underworld of modern Barcelona — all before his life is over. He must deal with his loving but unreliable, reckless, and bipolar wife (from whom he is separated and who poses a threat to the safety of their children), and a large group of illegal immigrants for whom he obtains material so that they may not be deported. In the middle of all of this, he is diagnosed with terminal cancer, which he tries to hide from his two children.
It is a gut wrenching masterpiece of cinematography, and is soaked with a wonderful kind of broken loving humanity.
It also tells the story of globalisation, and the poverty on the frontiers of capitalism.
Watch it- but be warned. It will open something up inside…
Paul turned up at our house this evening with a potters wheel. It was fun getting it down into the cellar as it was very heavy.
This is part of the slowly unfolding project that Michaela and Pauline have of converting our cellar into a working pottery. I know nothing about using clay, but I have to say that I love the idea of something so basic being shaped into lovely things down there.
Particularly using this functional basic object that still somehow manages to be beautiful…
It was a lovely old wooden thing, with a treadle and fly wheel. The kind of thing that has been used to shape clay for thousands of years- certainly since the times of Jeremiah-
1This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2“Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
5Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6“O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
(Jeremiah 18 NIV)
We used to sing songs asking God to mould us like clay- shaping us into the perfect pot that he would have us be.
Now, I think that my prayer is more that God would still fill me up and use me, misshapen and rough as my pot surely remains.
May I be ugly, imperfect, but still useful.
Still formed out of the good old earth.
this fragile tent 