When the Spirit is upon us....

Yesterday my little girl Emmy became an adult in the church. She got confirmed! How the tears welled up from my heart, happy tears, till all they could do was roll themselves unselfconciously down my cheeks... My Father who is very ill made it somehow and what beauty came from that. He had tears in his eyes too. I caught them before he noticed. The air truly trembled with the breath of the holy spirit within the church. Joy in abundance! What a wonderful thing to witness! The Bishop spoke about what it means to truly live with the spirit in your life. He said, that the way we can best "be" Jesus in the world and give Jesus to others is to truly and authentically be ourselves. Having fidelity to our true nature and the places it leads us. I remember, years ago, thinking identity was like another layer, something you "put on". Maybe it was a collage made up of pieces of the people you most admired. Maybe it was a front that protected your heart from being broken by the world. Maybe it was following the rules that help you become popular in school. Or the value you got from being especially good at something. Maybe, sometimes, it just came down to a new dress and a coat of bright red lipstick. But those are just billboards. True identity is all about taking the layers off one by one. Becoming at one with your true life, the life hidden in Christ. The real true you! The you that fragments into others till you can feel their pain, forget to judge, understand and forgive their sin as you need them to yours. The fragments that turn you into a piece of a bigger picture. A body that goes out from itself again into the world to love and be loved. To fall apart again and to be healed. When the Holy Spirit touches us, no more do we belong to ourselves, but to something eternal. And now my child, my dear Emmy (emmanuelle - "God with us") goes out into the world her heart forever changed, enlarged, anointed, and beating now not only for her own life but for His too.

Multitudes on Monday. How Hope Can Grow from the Debris of Dreams

I am walking home, weighed down with plastic bags that cut through my fingers like cheese slicers. Somehow they're filled to the brim with a weeks worth of shopping for £10.

On this heat worn and frayed, summer day, I'm sixteen years old and thinking, "however did country girl me ever come to be living in the middle of this strange city?"

Home is a two storey terrace shared with 5 unconnected, disconnected souls displaced in one place for a transitory period. Almost feels like a sentence we've been given, to share this one cell for and allotted time before one leaves and another inmate arrives to replace. I have discovered that one face becomes another too easily in a city.

Sometimes it seems I could be in Turkey, North Africa or even Jamaica depending upon which side of the street I'm on. Yardy boys at plantain stalls, women draped in black, serene, guarded, silent, men smoking roll ups in pool rooms and the ever lingering smell of kebabs and hot oil.

Disorrientation fills the air with a thousand unnamed voices giving different directions to the right bus I need to take home.

The heavy air of traffic clogged streets in summer time and the swirling synthetic rainbows of rain laced with petrol turns my thoughts to fog...

Two years later and I'm on the brink of leaving for another country all together.

During the intermission of this "time between", too many lines have been written, scenes been played out, lines spoken and hurts, rehashed, re-played and re-enacted on this stage.

Now all I want to desperatly do is hide in the wings for one night. Curl up into the nothingness of annonimity.

So I travel toward the heart of the city. Following the clogged ateries, mainlines and thread veins of skinny streets, pumping, faster and faster, harder and harder as I get closer to the center.
Convulsing like the strobe lights that seep from darkened doorways as stars begin to dissolve into the orange glow of street lamps.

I'm pregnant, but I don't know it yet.

Exsausted, I find myself sitting on the steps of west end musical stage show on the cusp of an evening's performance.

I hear the clink of shoes on cobble, I smell the static of excitement in foreign voices. French vowels bubble up from the dank and drenched tarmac like champagne.

It is raining heavily and I have no place to go.

I close my eyes and try to find a small corner of quiet.
My ears have throbbed with the noise of this city for so long I hear the conversations between taxi cabs and Double Decker buses in my dreams.

Slowly it comes into view....

The outline of a tree in the distance, branches tanned golden in the sun, bark gilded and shivering, leaves trembling.

It seems too far away to be real. I begin to squint, as I dare to look up a little.

Clouds part mutly. Beneath them the sky is powder blue, it seems to roll out forever.

Somewhere in the far away, I hear a child laughing and some long grass brushes against my legs as I walk.

Then, without warning, I feel a hand on my shoulder.

I turn abruptly, defensive, instinctivly.

No, no one is moving me on this time, this hand simply rests, and waits...

I don't know who it is who gently rests their hand and speaks my name.

One day years from now I will understand. Recognise the voice who called me away that day.

In the white noise of dislocated memories and fears, manifested by what I thought would numb them. A cold sea of concrete, a pavement fractured and scarred, covered with a liquid neon ointment.
Somehow I heard.
Somehow I stumbled
to my feet that day
and followed.

And somehow, now, I find myself sitting beneath tree, that was once nothing but the small seed of His hope, the echo of His voice, in my heart.

Branches tanned golden in the slender sunlight of late summer.

The storm clouds dissolved a long time ago in the blue transparency of this sky of hope. Endless, limitless, boundless, eternal...

I hear a child laughing, now two, now, three, now four.

And the sound heals the wounds that tears once furrowed. Eroding saltwater, carved out a hollow for freshwater to pool.

And I drink long drafts of thankfulness.

All the while as the long grass brushes against my legs while I walk.

I still feel that hand on my shoulder.


Thank you Lord for Summer memories ,

Each cherished moment in which to linger with my children,

The words of friends who encourage with their courage. And give me the courage to share too.

Thank you Lord, for taking my hand towards future life that heals the wounds of the past.

And the wonder of now,

Thank you for the miracle within the small seed of your own hope which you plant in hearts.

It can even grow a "forever home" where trees and blue skies and sunlight emerge from the debris of dreams of a once lost and homeless girl.

Memories of my Father in the garden...

My Father has had a hard life. He’s getting old now and age is bearing down.
These days he enjoys simply sitting in our garden watching the children swing and slide and dig and run making the happy sounds that children do. Somehow children always seem to bring a gift of carefree joy to the deep rooted seat of age.


As shadows lengthen and daylight dilutes into sepia, he can still find a quiet spot in a garden to think, murmur on politics, philosophy or random ideas. Occasionally giving advice on which plants would suit the soil conditions best. Last year it was peas and runner beans, they add a lot of nitrogen to the ground apparently.


My father has always been the kind of person you would remember. He is one of life's eccentrics.
But now old age and a weary body take his footsteps along a quieter route, slower, simpler, treading a pace that can't be forced.


And it is a change of season for my Dad, who like a sailor has had a life of extreme weather conditions. He is used to the challenge of the sea!
In his day, he could claim a mountain in a morning, but now the slow, aching, walk upstairs overwhelms.


He lived for some years in the deserts of North Africa learning how to understand the extremes of both the sun and the storm.
Here, beside the window and the potted plants and the dried flowers threaded with spiderwebs on the sill, life seems to have reached a plateau and it is the hardest yet to acclimatise to.


Still a little abandoned corner of life soil, often left neglected and unnoticed. A place to pile uprooted weeds and fallen leaves.... Now sprouts green. And where tear sodden earth was trod underfoot.... Flowers now grow at his feet.
Four small girls blossoming abundant. An unlikely adventure, but maybe the best yet.
Straining tendril from dehydrated earth to quenching light.


My Dad was a horticulturalist, (maybe that explains all these garden metaphors:)
He had a very messy greenhouse, pots everywhere, and a very messy garden too, full of over zealous jungle like plants.
It was not much of an advert for his business , but it’s the way he liked it.


The greatest peace I’ve seen him have is in nature. Times when we walked the dogs and stumbled upon some secret, undiscovered woodland, and he would just look around and pick out the names of the wildflowers in Latin. Or in the garden with a fork digging out potatoes, staring up at the sky for long stretches in-between, hands resting on the wooden handle, boots deep in trenched earth.
Or watching sea birds catch fish along the coast with an ancient pair of binoculars in hand and silence as a companion.
In my mind the muddy boots of hard times stay at the door. Only flowers will grow in the soil of my memories of him.


One of the greatest gifts my Dad has passed on to me is the connection between God and nature. It is something that has made a deep impression on me, like a footprint in the clay of my heart.
Whenever anyone asked him what he did for a living, he would reply, "I paint with a spade"
We used to make fun of "his art" by saying that it must be of the abstract variety.
But growing tender plants in the greenhouse, exploring nature's heights and depths or uttering a quiet prayer in the silence of a church, were all an embracing of God for him.

When I think of my father I see stormy, grey skies falling head over heels across ragged fields of grass. Potatoes cooking in the embers and tasting wonderfully of like mud and charcoal. The chink of a September sun glinting on the sharp edge of blue tide in the distance. Pheasants and hares hanging in the garage door, homemade scrumpy and apple cores in the compost.
Scraping lichen and moss from grey granite....

"These rocks have been here for a million and more years and they'll be around for a million more after we're all long gone."

A well worn expression (one of my Dad's many) 'oft' used in times of reflection.
Always made me feel infinitely small and grounded and afraid and secure all at the same time.

Truly, we can't build anything physically eternal, in this life. Time will fray and unravel the loose strands of our creations one day. But in nature we can always sense the eternal essence of our creator.


He holds the fabric of our lives in his hands. However torn or frayed or mismatched the pieces are He weaves them in to a new garment.

Bodies age and deteriorate, but my Dad's soul somehow stands as an oak set against the setting sun.
Or a sea bird hovering over the granite tides.

Regardless of the toll time takes on tired bones and the memory dug-well of a life lived to the brim... yet somehow only just truly savoured.
It will stand a little quieter, a little softer a little truer. Weathered maybe, but accepting of the seasons. Both the winter frost and the sunlight of summer.


Reaching only further and higher as the days pass.

Tuesdays Unwrapped at "Chatting at the Sky"

A Story I wanted to share

I'm one day late with this post I know but I wanted to share a story and I wanted somebody's permission before I shared it:0)

*

My Dad is 75 years old. He and my Mum married late and thought after losing their first child they would never have any more. Then I came along! So there's a few years between us.

The feast of the assumption has always been very important to my father.

When he was a young man there was such a thing as National Service in England. My Dad had been a pupil at a Benedictine school called Downside in Somerset.

As with a number of his peers of the same age it was assumed that he would go onto university instead of enlisting for the three years of national service which was mandatory for all those not attending higher education.

My Dad has always loved Horticulture, plants and the outdoors, he could never have worked in an office. He was planning to take a degree in Botany and horticulture, but only after he had served his three years.

He didn't want to distinguish himself from those who maybe wouldn't have had the chance of going to University as an alternative. In those days very few working class people had the opportunity to receive a higher education.

Besides he had a spirit of adventure! He was sent to Egypt at first which to this day he has good memories (and stories) of.

During manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain under the heat Mid Summer something went wrong. A tank accidentally rolled over one of my fathers friends.

Suffering from severe heat stroke he fired his weapon into the sky and was forced to the ground.

He fell unconscious and was in a coma for 6 weeks! In those days they used ECT as therapy. Still nothing worked. It was assumed that he would either be severely damaged or would die. My devout catholic Grandparents were devastated, he was their only son.

Then suddenly, without warning on the morning of August the fifteenth 1956 my Dad woke up speaking with them almost as if nothing had happened.

Even the doctors called it a miracle.

Last night I picked my Dad up all dressed up in his three piece suit Shillelaugh in hand ( His Mum was Irish) and took him to evening mass.

Above us in the sky was a small rainbow about the size of a large full moon. It wasn't arched it was round. The strange thing is that there had not been a drop of rain in the county that whole day. The sky was a pure silvery blue dotted with a few fluffy white clouds. It made me recall the rainbow after the Flood, how it symbolised hope. Which is exactly what the assumption of Our Lady symbolises.

The hope in the belief of Christan's that someday we will be with Our Lord body and soul, completely united and whole.

In this world it is easy to forget that the body is sacred, made in the image and likeness of God. We are all God's children.

On the way home from Mass a beautiful full golden moon slowly appeared through the sky.

Which made me think again of Our Lady and why the assumption is so special. She is the link between us and her son. She reflects the light of the sun like the moon. Even in the deepest darkness that light always shines for us.

Ready to gently awaken us and bring us through the night into a new day, full of hope.

My Wedding Day

My wedding day was a simple affair. We were married in a beautiful old Catholic church,

Although we were married in the morning, the church seemed to be draped in a soft candlelit veil and dewy sunlight, scattered fragmented shards of stain glass across the carved wooden pews and polished floors.

Pachabel's Canon, accompanied me up the aisle. My little girl dressed like a little satin rosebud exchanged my footsteps for petals.

A sudden silence seemed to fall around us as we said our vows.

Ripples of light, echoed words that made an eternal promise. To one another and God.

It was early March and, before we left the hotel where we were staying, we could see from our window that the rain had already spattered the pavements. Polishing the concrete up to a good shine.

I had to run from the car to the church doorway to avoid getting wet.

Yet, after the ceremony, as we came out onto the street, rain simply stopped. Almost to the second. Such a strange thing, I don't believe I 've ever experienced it before or since.

Through the city's steel sky the sunlight glinted like a jewel set in silver.

Before the day, I knew our wedding would not be "The Perfect" wedding on the outside we hadn't the money and Tani's family could not afford to attend. I had wondered queitly too,of our lack of planning and preparation, our lack of money. What about gifts for our guests? A cake ?... the list went on...

But where we lacked, God provided.

Our day was magical.

It wasn't about "the perfect princess dress", or the triple tiered cake, it wasn't about what kind of champagne we served, the reception entertainment, the seating arrangements or an elaborate gift list.

It was only about us.

My husband, I and God.

And it was perfect. Because marriage is simply that, stripped down to the essentials of our relationship with eachother and our relationship with God.
Our wedding day set our foot upon the path of our life together. No planning, just living, working, loving and being moment to moment together through it all, rain clouds and sunshine.... and the rainbows inbetween!