‘There’s No-one Quite Like Grandma’

There is an episode of the wonderful ‘Miranda’ where she and her friend Stevie are trying to appear less middle-aged in order to impress a younger friend.  A quick scan of the flat and Miranda is ordered to ‘Hide your Werther’s Originals, your knitting and your boxed set of Midsomer Murders’.  In mid-laugh, I realised that I subscribe to two of the three defining sure-fire characteristics of old fogeydom – and the only reason I don’t eat Werther’s Original is a terror of inhaling one and choking on it!  Ageing, you see, is the thing that we all apparently run from.  So you may well be upholstered with underwear bearing the tensile strength of a trampoline and hide your crow’s feet under dark glasses but hey, from a distance you may have knocked ten years off your age.  And as long as you don’t resemble a mummy or Donatella Versace I applaud you.

I’m thinking along these lines as my tiny new granddaughter Elizabeth, only a week old, is the harbinger of the next generation of our family.  I thought I’d feel older as people now refer to me as Granny as though that is my first name.  I can still remember my own grandmother, probably in her fifties when I was born.  She looked like a gran.  She always wore a pinny that had a complicated arrangement of straps to do it up.  She wore a proper hat even if she didn’t actually have a coat on, even indoors sometimes, and I can count on one hand the times I saw her in shoes and not slippers.  But actually it’s not age I’m aware of but the dynamic of family life as we grow into a clan.  That makes me matriarch.  From Sarah (once Sarai) to Mother Teresa we are an unbroken line of strong women.

I quite like the idea of moving into the position of matriarch.  It suggests wisdom with the years, a mellowing of the temperament, a graciousness if you will.  The one they will come to for advice, fun and boiled sweets.  Provided of course your role model is say the Queen rather than Joan Crawford.

I thought of the power families; the Ewings, the Carringtons, the Colbys, and decided you could combine the matriarchal qualities; the gentleness and wisdom of Miss Ellie, the empathy and softness of Crystal and the fierce passions of Alexis (I know the fierce passions were largely directed at just getting her own way but of course I’ll be re-channelling mine into family).

The Bible doesn’t have particular instructions for grandmothers but in Titus we find Paul referring to the role of older women with some age advice.  ‘To train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no-one will malign the word of God’. That I’m entrusted with that kind of task is a huge privilege and in a way I feel I’ve come of age in a good way.  It’s only a number after all and I’ve always been terrible with numbers!

Love in Jesus

Lisa xx

Fame costs …

I spent the early to mid eighties in America and devoted a lot of time to watching a phenomenon called MTV (music television).  It was a pioneer channel exclusively showing pop videos and to this day I can’t hear ‘Love Plus One’ by Haircut 100 without remembering their video: New Romantics in Fair Isle sweaters and plus fours. What were they thinking!

MTV was where I first saw Whitney Houston.  She was dazzling, young, beautiful and she had an amazing voice.  From the beginning she had the world at her feet; hit singles and albums followed.  Then she made a film ‘The Bodyguard’, and one simple little Dolly Parton-penned song called ‘I Will Always Love You’ was used for the ending sequence sung by Houston.  Given a gorgeous orchestrated arrangement, I think it was the ultimate song that showcased her God-given voice.  It became THE song played at thousands of weddings – and often at funerals too.  The world belonged to her.

Yet even then Whitney’s life was beginning to unravel.  There has since been the documented abuse of drugs and alcohol.  A turbulent relationship with the one person who should have been caring for her.  A battle with personal demons.  It was the undoing of her.  It was with great sadness, but not much surprise, we heard on the early morning news she had died.  Her career peaked in approximately ten glorious years and then after that just replays, echoes of her original massive talent ever more ghostly and faint until an untimely death at 48 years of age.

Everyone knew she grew up in the Baptist church learning her craft in the choir.  If anyone could withstand the pressure of not just a glamorous career in music but also film, well it had to be her.  If you have Jesus in the foundation of your life you build on that security don’t you?  The glittering prizes may come along but He can show you how worthless they are.  You have the truth and it sets you free, doesn’t it?

I don’t think anyone, especially Christians, take a wild leap into catastrophe.  More likely what happens is a slow, imperceptible, incremental drift.  When we take Mia to the beach she goes into the sea to swim. She’ll spend ages in the water and after a while you can see how far she has drifted with the undercurrent away from where we are on the beach, her marker.  She’ll be unaware busily doing her thing but we can see and keep an eye on her.  Drifting is probably our greatest danger as Christians because we don’t know we’re doing it.  Our marker is Jesus and we are in peril when we take our eyes off Him.  We may still have a belief but when our everyday life is no longer shaped by Him we are adrift and prey to whatever has us in its sights.

I hope Whitney has finally found peace in the arms of our Saviour but she went too early, something her family, her fans, and everyone who knew and loved her are only too aware of.

Love in Jesus,

Lisa

Heart Matters.

February, it’s all about hearts!  You may be feverishly scanning the shelves for Valentine cards (new relationship) or just musing on how you could buy a magazine for the price of a card these days (less new relationship.  Don’t look at me, I’m just saying some might!)  And while people are thinking of the emotional state of their hearts, they can think about their real beating ones (thanks British Heart Foundation).  Any attention called to heart health/awareness is a good idea.  For most people there’s a lot of things they can do to help themselves with the right information and support.  I can’t believe that Valentine, who is after all a saint and therefore should be pretty understanding about these sorts of things, wouldn’t mind sharing his day for the sake of the nation’s health.  And of course I have a vested interest in matters of the heart.

It has been a year since I began my enquiries to find out, as far as possible, if my condition, Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, is inherited.  When we began tests at the University Hospital in London I was told it would be a while before they could be reasonably sure one way or another.  The funding wasn’t able to support all the research being done for heart disease so, like all good English folk, I took my place in the queue and waited.  In the meantime of course, life doesn’t.  Kate is expecting her baby in March and we await our first grandchild with huge excitement.  And now there’s a new disquieting thought; if it’s an inherited gene, there’s a possibility it can be passed on to my grandchild.

As the owner of a damaged heart, I often find myself thinking of Psalm 139 and what it means to be ‘fearfully and wonderfully’ made.  The endless potential of humanity, its depth and breadth captured in two words.  David was a master poet!  I don’t think Mary Shelly for all her literary genius topped that, even as she was knitting Frankenstein’s creation together.  A single cell dividing and containing every piece of information ever required to become a human being is mind blowing.  If the very action of being created isn’t conviction enough of a creator then I’m not sure what is.  This is very much on my mind as I see the first scan of our grandchild at twelve weeks.  The design of the human being is awesome.  ‘I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made’.  But not perfectly made.  Not this side of heaven.

We don’t yet know if a rogue gene plays a part in our family health.  So many others are in a ‘waiting room’ too hoping for the best, dreading the worst.  And yet as Christians we know it’s not about perfect bodies but about a relationship with and a hope in God.  This is where we learn to trust.  In our most unfixable maybe broken state, this is where we learn that God will speak into our circumstances.  He does know, He does care and He still has things to say in and through our most helpless of infirmities.  For all of us in our waiting rooms, let’s wait with hope and expectation.

Love in Jesus,

Lisa

Christmas 2011 – ‘Born in a camp’

Jesus’ iconic image is borrowed so many times you wonder if he wished he’d got himself an agent!  He’s appeared on ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘South Park’ and at least one episode of ‘House’. Usually cast in a supporting role to the stars of the programme.

‘Image of Jesus appeared on man’s toast’ is the sort of story much loved by the red tops.  It leads me to suspect that his intellectual property isn’t as robustly protected as, oh I don’t know, say Pippa Middleton’s.  He is constantly misquoted or being used to spearhead some vaguely ethical campaign.  When others invoke him, as the protesters outside St. Paul’s Cathedral did recently, it really does make for some disquiet.   WWJD?  That is the question.   The recently resigned Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser couldn’t resist jumping on the ‘brand’ wagon declaring he could imagine Jesus being born in the camp.

It seems appropriate to think about that birth as we move into the Advent season.  The wonderfully familiar story of a dirt-poor couple having to travel hundreds of miles in the last few weeks of her pregnancy to be in Bethlehem, fulfilling a God-given prophecy of cosmic significance.

Maybe we can imagine Jesus being born into some kind of refugee camp.  It suits our idea of his image; born in a cattle shed, laid in a manger.  (With all the government cuts I believe the NHS is thinking of remodelling maternity care.  You have been warned!)  See how Jesus identifies with the poorest and the dispossessed.  His first visitors were the shepherds, living out on the hills, earning a scrap of a wage, considered the lowest of the low by polite society.  By contrast though, he was also visited by wise men or were they kings?  Wealthier than a Russian football club owner and bearing fabulous costly presents for the impoverished infant.  I can see Canon Fraser welcoming the shepherds but he might have some explaining to do to the protesters he identified with when a fleet of camels loaded with bling turned up.

Jesus came for everyone, poor and rich; ‘Sell everything you have and follow me’.   The wealthy aren’t excluded because of their wealth but Jesus recognised how much money could get in the way.  When he turned over the tables of the money lenders in the temple it was precisely because they were robbing people in the temple – God’s house.  Jesus was always about God’s agenda, and the principle objective was repentance and baptism.  It was little enough to do with poverty or greed.

The problem with trying to appropriate Jesus is that he resolutely defies being appropriated.  You can’t formularize how he works or what he says.  Many people claim him for themselves or believe they are speaking for him or his interests as the Occupy London protesters did.  But how often we get it wrong.  Camp site or cattle stall, the baby grew up being the saviour of the world.  Therefore he calls the shots; we always come to him on his terms.  He is the True Star.

Have a blessed Christmas.

Love in Jesus,

Lisa

Day of the Lord

TRW recently made a statement out loud that went along the line of, ‘I’m absolutely never watching another Nicholas Cage film in my life. Or at least one I’m required to pay hard cash for’. Nic’s greatest crime is not necessarily bad acting, in fact it’s probably the promise shown so early in his career that has made the subsequent years feel like a bit of a waste. It turns out he has an uncanny knack of picking extraordinarily bad films to act in. There’s a handy guide just in case you find yourself tempted to watch a Nicholas Cage film. Does he have short hair in the film? It’s probably alright whereas long hair denotes the film as a stinker. Wearing a vest? Don’t go there. The more ammunition the worse the movie and don’t depend on A List co-stars. He did appear with the incomparable Angelina Jolie in Gone in 60 seconds and it was still a dud.
But the final reason that Nic and I don’t speak any more was the film ‘Knowing’. It came out two years ago, big screen stuff with off-the-chart CGI and a satisfyingly obscure plot that stepped up tension and terror as the film became a full-on end-of-the-world extravaganza. Sounds gripping doesn’t it? And then just as you expect the four horsemen of the apocalypse to appear, who turns up? Aliens. There’s a time and a place for aliens but sometimes they feel like the Scooby Doo ending: the one you use when you’re not sure how to end a book or a film. A bit like they did in Dallas when Bobby Ewing had to be brought back (from the grave) and the whole thing had been a dream for about six years. Or the time Benny from Crossroads went to a shed to get a screw driver and didn’t come back for four years.
TRW had to revisit Knowing in her head just like she did after first seeing The Sixth Sense. So, the whole thing was an alien movie, not a biblical one as one had been sort of led to believe. And those beings that kept mysteriously appearing – not angels but aliens. How very typical that aliens knew it was the end of the world. We meanwhile were too busy looking at crop circles to have noticed.
Someone somewhere always knows ‘exactly’ when the world will end. It will be according to either
a. Nostradamus;
b. Ancient civilisations or
c. Someone’s mate called Dave who found a website with all the above and has Facebooked his discovery to 1,000 close friends.
Recently (according to teenage lore and font of all internet knowledge TRW’s son) it’s the turn of the ancient Mayans with their ‘spooky’ predictive powers causing a bit of a stir. TRW along with many others finds a persistent problem with predictions of this nature. How is it that they can’t be used to prevent the forecast tragedy? What’s the point of prophesying a catastrophe if it’s unpreventable? Call TRW a curmudgeon for splitting such finely honed hairs! If there is an answer it has to be in the very nature of how these things are expressed. Nostradamus had quatrains dear reader (remember that one for Trivial pursuit) and through these to have ‘predicted’ many of the major world events, Have you ever tried reading one of his quatrains? Along with the Mayans and every other sooth sayer the language is so obscure, the connections so tenuous that it robs them of any credible predictive powers. You could apply any one of them to almost any event and make some sort of connection. TRW has done this herself. On the strength of knowing Johnny Depp owned a house in Rye, she swears she saw him once waiting outside Sports Direct. See how easily these things are done! One of the Mayan features is the date of the End of the World. Maybe they just ran out of numbers after 2013 or whenever it’s going to happen, did anyone think of that? For a number dyslexic like TRW that could so easily happen.
Biblically end times are vague and deliberately so. Jesus made enigmatic references to the signs of the end of the age but without doubt these events are connected to and precede his return to earth to gather his church, his people, to himself forever. It signifies the end of the old order of things and the beginning of a new and glorious one. Every generation must have believed things to be so bad as to herald the end times. The results of global conflict, famine, pestilence, war in all its atrocity, concentration camps, genocide, apartheid. And what about the natural disasters that have caused such misery? Are they signs to be read, or just the natural state of a broken world? Paradoxically there are times when such disasters bring out the best in people. For a while our differences are forgotten as we strive for a common goal; to relieve suffering, bring healing, feed the hungry and comfort those who are desolate. God is still working His eternal purposes out. Even Jesus didn’t know when it would end, in fact it is only God who does(and apparently Professor Brian Cox. Clever clogs).
There’s nothing to be gained by thinking too much about how and when it all ends. TRW puts total faith in the time of a new heaven and a new earth. When God himself will wipe every tear from our eyes. When there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things will have passed away. A challenging quote TRW came across recently states, ‘No matter what your religious beliefs there is only one truth. Where will you be spiritually when Christ comes to enrapture his church’? Don’t worry, be ready.

Novel Thoughts

Did you spot the deliberate mistake last month? The Little Mermaid was written by Hans Christian Anderson not the Grimms.  Ah, the brothers Grimm – always punishing their women in print.  Is it any wonder The Little Mermaid ended up mistakenly in their canon of misery?  Everyone knows that Danny Kaye actually is Hans Christian Anderson and therefore much too nice to write anything more challenging that The Ugly Duckling.

Anyway, it did get me thinking on a literary note.  I’m sure I’ve talked about the book club I belong to and the diverse material we’ve covered.  The books are terrific.  The last one we read, The Busy Christian’s Guide to Busyness by Tim Chester is one I can totally recommend.  Our problem is that some of us are ‘women of a certain age.’   Consequently we gather every six weeks or so to talk about what we’ve read only to find the collective memory ramparts have been breached.    I’ve now taken to writing notes as I read; it’s the equivalent of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that hopefully lead me back to the beginning of the book!

The home group I’m part of within St. Matthews is composed of a wider age group.  Recently we talked about our respective schools – as the eldest my experiences are frankly antiquated.   Memories of various teachers hurling the blackboard eraser across the classroom in order to concuss an unsuspecting back row talker.  They call teachers by their first names now you know!   It was great to hear that good literature is still inspiring students just as it inspired me all those years ago.

It was my pre-C.S.E. year that I first read anything by John Wyndham.  We read The Chrysalids which set me on a lifelong nerdy affection for sci-fi.*  When I discovered Chocky by the same author I knew I’d found my perfect book and try to re-read it from time to time.

They still teach on Lord of the Flies.  Hated it.  A first proper book that opened up the whole uncomfortable aspect of the darkness of human behaviour.  The reader is compelled onwards by the narrative but you know it’s all going to end VERY BADLY.  It’s the equivalent of reading while peeping from behind your hands.

When my daughter Kate sat her A levels she fell in love with the works of Margaret Atwood and later Aldous Huxley, especially Brave New World.  I couldn’t get on with that.   ‘A future world dominated by scientific totalitarianism’.  If that doesn’t get you into a library (provided it hasn’t been closed down) I don’t know what will.   I know I should have persevered with it, improving the mind etc., but happily chucked it for a biography on Elizabeth Taylor.  Rocks!   Frocks!  Now that’s what I call reading.

Much to my delight, our book group is reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.  Utterly brilliant, I read it once ages ago. Funny, clever, enlightening.  It takes the form of an old devil Screwtape writing to his young nephew Wormwood about how to…..Tell you what, read it for yourself.   It’s so much better than Lord of the Flies!

* Hot off the press.  The prequel to Blade Runner is being made!   I know the very word prequel can be detrimental to your health, (Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, Butch and Sundance The Early Years. Need I go on?).  But this is Blade Runner, the stuff of genius.  What could possibly go wrong….?

What are words worth?

TRW has been busy on your behalf you’ll be pleased to know and has branched out from merely watching TV for the nation to reviewing an actual film at the cinema!    I know you’re already fed up hearing about Golden-Globe-winning-Oscar-nominated  The King’s Speech and I sympathise.  TRW felt very much like that about The Sound of Music till she saw it and next thing it’s running up lederhosen on the machine much like Maria and those curtains!

It doesn’t hurt that the film is led by a triumvirate (you’ll have to look this up as did I) of actors at the top of their game.  Colin Firth has finally said ‘bye bye’ to the wet-shirted Mr. Darcy.  It was about time. Girls that was sixteen years ago, move on!   His portrayal as the reserved, anxious  younger brother Bertie to the glamorous playboy Prince is both intense and poignant.  Helena Bonham Carter is totally believable as the sweet faced Elizabeth Windsor but let’s face it, with much better teeth.  I suppose in an age where rickets, scarlet fever and WW1 dogged people’s health, good dental practise was way down the list of priorities.  And yes TRW is aware it’s an obsession but has owned up to it.

Geoffrey Rush as speech therapist Lionel Logue is a charismatic performance.   He may have the face folds of a Shar Pei puppy but Rush commands attention on screen.  Originally from Australia, Logue was a maverick speech therapist.  The origins of his practise began with the shell shocked stutterers coming back from the Front.  He worked with survivors whose interior world had collapsed at the sights and sounds they had been subjected to.  You can imagine he has little time for class barriers, pompousness or royal etiquette.  The complex relationship between these two men is the beating heart of the film.

There are different  theories as to why people stammer.  Bertie’s seemed to be exacerbated by a particularly dysfunctional family.  There are small painful glimpses of the past as Logue persists in breaking down the emotional barriers.  A sterile loveless childhood.  An overindulged older brother, a younger brother Johnny shut away because of his epilepsy.  A childhood death,  unkind nannies, a cold mother, a terrifying father.   And if the idea of giving speeches as the Duke of York weren’t bad enough, events take a catastrophic turn with the abdication of David as King in order to marry ‘the woman he loved’.  Into the spotlight steps the timorous, newly made King George 6^th.

We hardly ever think about the mechanics of speech; for most of us it’s as automatic as blinking.  Yet communication is fundamental to all of us.  In the Grimm version of The Little Mermaid she gives up her voice in order to acquire legs and therefore go and get her Prince.  But without her voice, how can she tell him she loves him?  Pity she didn’t have time to learn to read and write – then she could have facebooked him.  But I get that at the heart of the narrative was the actual sacrifice; what she gave up for love.

The film is rife with what’s  now probably thought of as old fashioned qualities in our self-serving culture – duty, responsibility, sacrifice.  No doubt David thought he was being acutely sacrificial in surrendering his Kingship for the sake of Wallis Simpson.  Except for the fact that from then on he gave every impression of a man who had a narrow escape from the frightful bother of being the King.  It was to the ill prepared younger brother that the weight of responsibility fell.  It was he who sacrificed anything like a normal, private family life for the sake of his country.  And it was he who finally overcomes his terror of public speaking to make the speech of his life; as war upon Germany is declared.

TRW would like to make it known she is not particularly a royalist (Andrew, Edward, Fergie, Camilla, how many reasons do you need!) but left the cinema with much admiration for a man who, with such a daunting task set before him, set about achieving it with determination and courage.

Of course, when it comes to sacrifice, Jesus has the last word every time.  A heavenly kingdom is built upon what he achieved for us on the cross.  A different kind of King, destined before the beginning of time to be Lord of All who gave up everything for love.

We may admire a man who overcomes adversity in order to prevail but we are not called simply to admire Jesus for all he did.  Our sacrifice is to surrender our lives to him in order for that kingdom to grow through us.  How else do we show our love for Christ?  What in effect are we prepared to give up for that love?

A New Dawn, a New Day.

Before it becomes totally replaced by newer/crazier stuff, TRW would just like to add her contribution about the extraordinary story of Los 33. Maybe it is just the Spanish turn of phrase but it seemed that everything written or uttered by the miners or their President or anyone connected just sounded so profound. It was such a galvanizing event from beginning to end. Almost certainly film-worthy. And by golly can’t you just see the Hollywood execs drooling at the prospect. Who will play whom? The way TRW sees it, being set in Chile and all they are going to be a bit stuck. You can’t really see Colin Farrell or Matt Damon in those parts. And of course there is only one Javier Bardem which is a pity as he can’t play all the roles.

It’s not impossible that it may yet be set in small town America and Harrison Ford will be the town’s Mayor (in lieu of a President). They will rescue all but one of the miners, just before the last one gets out there will be another rock fall. Tension. Someone will have to go in and fix the capsule (either saint or sinner but someone will have to die) and then at the end as the last miner gets pulled out an almighty explosion. The mine sealed forever. TRW knows she watches far too many movies, thank you for pointing that out.

But look. Way better than fiction, who would have believed it? Finding the 33 alive after 17 days alone was miraculous. The much vaunted note sent up by the miners with the economy of words of a haiku. The same note that became talismanic for the President (though I believe there has been a bit of an undignified squabble over owner’s rights now). And the sheer unbelievable daring of the rescue that involved a global effort of technical knowhow, equipment and ingenious Heath Robinson style inventing on the spot. We watched the miners come up in that tiny capsule and TRW doesn’t mind admitting to almost holding her breath just not able to believe that it wouldn’t suddenly break down and only half the men would be rescued.

And those scenes of them stepping out of the capsule. It would take a heart of stone or Simon Cowell not to be affected by them. The earth rarely returns its sons caught up in such a catastrophe and for every man there was a sense of personal resurrection. The whole event could read as a metaphor and TRW thinks that many preachers (The Rector being one of them) will be referring to it for some time to come. The refuge, the darkness, unable to rescue themselves, Jesus himself entombed for three days in the earth. It’s rich with symbolism. For some of those men it was the first time they prayed as real fear gripped them, especially in the first 17 days. But for many they were already men of faith. One of them referred to being ‘with the devil but I put my hand up to God, I knew he wouldn’t let me go’. Jesus was referred to as the ’34^th man in the refuge’. They reminded TRW of the disciples somehow. Men of limited educational opportunities. Men who worked the land with their hands. Afraid but encouraging each other and believing that somehow God would work a miracle. And in a very 21st Century way, He did.

What was really humbling and moving was the fact that before they clasped wives or children to themselves, they sank to their knees in prayer, in praise, in thankfulness. Men unafraid to claim the greatness of their God in a very public yet dignified way.

TRW got rather caught up in the very unselfconscious way these men gave testimony to their faith and thought about some secularists. The ones who occasionally have a book to flog and thereby use it as another opportunity to tell us what muddle-headed ninnies we are to actually BELIEVE this stuff (or words to that effect). TRW pictured them on cold comfort farm huddled over the burning embers of The Church of England newspaper, rubbing their hands together and tutting over such vulgar displays of what they must think of as mediaeval clap trap. They are without a shadow of a doubt utterly convinced of the non- existence of God and TRW believes it takes a brave soul to boast that: check out Psalm 14:1. They say there are no atheists in foxholes; it’s when the chips are down we discover what it is we do believe. But if it were one of them stuck in that awful dark pit with no possible way of rescuing themselves would they really just sit and wait to die? Or like the psalmist would they ‘wait patiently for the lord, he turned to me and heard my cry he lifted me out of the slimy pit out of the mud and mire he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord’. Los 33 discovered the truth of that. And so did the millions watching.