Wednesday 27 February 2008

Sisters







There is a beautiful woman at church called Jacqui. She always seems so surrounded by the beauty and warmth of God's love and she makes you want to hang out and capture some of that peace.
She saw me one Sunday and with a beaming smile said " Now sit down my gorgeous sister in Christ and tell me when we can get together!?" It's funny how that line might make me feel squirmish if said by someone else..but with her it just sounds so sincere and welcoming and wonderful. It reminds me of why I DO love other people in God's family, people who are not perfect, not even pretending to be, but do try and live a life thats not consumed by this world and all it's trappings.

Church is a wonderful thing when it works, I feel that I can stomach the not so good parts if I can just have some of those moments when Christ is there, where two of us are gathered together. We are all imperfect silly homans, no more so than at Church..when we're all trying to pretend how perfect we are, but another friend has made me really see that throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not always the answer. If I can have those glimpses of real stuff, real connection, real understanding and real Christ...I want to be there.

Monday 11 February 2008

To Me

I wrote this about 6 years ago after watching old movies of my childhood.



Little Andrea

Hello little Andrea, the girl I used to be
I watched you smiling down from the smokey wall
Filled with your own self importance and joy
You haven’t got a care in the world, and why should you.
You have love, overflowing, unconditional
You have future, bright, sunny, never-ending
Beaches, birthdays, comics, bread and soup on Sunday, Christmas lights, dad's never fading attention, mum's care and worry.

Its me big Andrea, the woman
Still have that little girl hope; still have that little girl joy
childhood feelings and love of life
But with a few tears mixed in, a touch more pain.
I wish I could be you again little girl, shining bright
I wish I could live it again, go back to the start, have the sunny days forever
I hate reality; I hate the voice in my head telling me that I can’t have it
I can’t go back. That’s its gone, its moved on…it passed by me one day when I didn’t even see it.
One day I was young, stocky legs in long white socks, pretty hair, precocious smile
Then it was now, and I wasn’t even ready to go yet, I hadn’t had enough of all the loveliness. And it was lovely!
I was there, and I can remember the not so lovely, but why? When the good was so good
Little Andrea, Please come back and live in the place you should be, I know you are there somewhere and I lost you somehow. We may be alone, but we can be that person.
I love you. I love me, most of the time, I smile when I see you, when something reminds me of you. I want to share these moments with you, and maybe you could help me get through.

Love Big Andrea

Friday 8 February 2008

Meaningful randomness


Sometimes when uncertain of a voice from its very loudness, we catch the missing syllable in the echo. In God and Nature we have Voice and Echo
Henry Drummond


!08
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For I know the thoughts that I think towards you , says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
(Jer.29:11-13)

13
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Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering."
Saint Augustine

grandfathermoon
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"The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man





G.K Chesterton


We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship


You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the univerise in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built
C.S Lewis





It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion.
Mahatma Gandhi


We should view everything in this world by the light of redemption, and then we shall view it alright. It makes a wonderful change whether you view Providence from the standpoint of human merit or from the foot of the cross
Spurgeon