Trust

The wheat and the tares

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What even are tares? I had to look this up and found out that tares or darnel look very like wheat seeds but are actually poisonous.

Recently I was thinking about this parable while mulling over a decision I made a number of years ago when I could not see a way forward with one of my children and asked a good friend to help. What I asked of my friend was quite a big ask but I really at that point did not see what else I could do.

My friend said yes. Everything seemed to go well at the start, but then my friend had unforeseen stresses and responsibilities in her own life and had to bail out. I completely understood why and looked for someone else. In the end we got help from strangers which wasn’t easy, but it worked out.

All’s well that ends well, you might say, but it’s quite so simple. My asking something of my friend just before what was to turn out to be a difficult period in her life, has affected our friendship although I will always be grateful to her for being willing to try. Good has come out of this, but people were also hurt on all sides and these effects don’t go away even if you forgive each other.

I’ve been turning this situation over in my mind and thinking, what else could I have done, what should I have done? If I had known what my friend was going to go through, I would never have asked her to help us and if she had known, I’m quite sure she would not have said ‘Yes’.

Hindsight is a great thing and yet even with hindsight nothing is clear. I still don’t see that there were a lot of other options at the time, and much good eventually came out of this even if there was also hurt on all sides.

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I was mulling over this for several days, wondering what I should have done, and also, since I am only human, trying to apportion blame or exonerate, when the parable of the wheat and the tares came up in the daily reading. I have never understood this parable and have always found the image of the tares being taken into the furnace and burnt very frightening. I was brought up on hell, fire and judgement sermons and this parable has usually triggered fear and painful memories.

This time, however, as I listened to the parable on the Jesuit Pray as You Go App, it seemed to say something different. It seemed that Christ was saying that because I am an imperfect person in a flawed world, there will always be wheat and tares in every situation. Nothing is pure and unadulterated and to seek or expect perfection is to chase a mirage.

And yet, is there another side to this? Is it possible that everything can be redeemed? Is the parable of the tares telling us that at the end of time all that is imperfect and painful in a situation or relationship will be gathered up and burnt away leaving only the pure gold of love?

I don’t know and am hardly able to even imagine how the pain in this and other situations which I perceive as difficult could be burnt away, and yet I recognise that even where I have hurt others or where I feel that they have let me down or hurt me, there is still, under all the layers of blame and counter-blame, love.

Another thing I have been struggling with recently is suicide bereavement. It seems that this type of bereavement is like a burn which is shocking and sharply painful when it happens, and which can burn deeper and deeper into the skin as time goes on. The initial shock and grief of bereavement is long over, but I am still becoming aware of the ongoing and deep effects of this type of wound.

There has been a physical effect. In the four years since my sister took her life, many members of my family, including myself, have developed chronic health conditions.

There is a mental effect. I have struggled with numbness and sometimes still feel that I am fumbling through life half-frozen. There are days when I find it difficult to focus on anything. There are still times when I feel caught in that awful moment when my sister was dying. My anxiety can be high. The worst in a sense has happened. Who is to say it won’t happen again?

There is a spiritual effect. This is harder to reckon or describe. My best attempt is to say that it’s not so much that I have no hope, but that it’s hard to feel any hope.

All this has been brought to the fore by my nephew, my sister’s son, being hospitalised because of his own struggles with mental illness. It’s hard for us to have hope. We only see our helplessness, our inability, despite our love for his mother, to prevent a tragedy. We no longer have hope in ourselves. Institutions like the government and the NHS have let us down. What grounds do we have for hope?

Going beyond my own feelings, I recognise that my family’s suffering is by no means unique. There are many apparently hopeless situations in this world from other families bereaved in tragic circumstances to complex, political and human messes, like the situation in Palestine. I hope, even though there is, from a purely human point of view, no reason to hope. You could say that hope is illogical, but I choose it. I choose to acknowledge my smallness, do the little things I can do, and hand the rest over to God.

Perhaps even in this situation, which seems to be all tares, there are a few stalks of wheat growing. Recently I saw a tree growing in the cleft of a rock. It was growing in a harsh environment but it was still there. Is hope like that?

For those reading this blog post, please say a prayer for my nephew. Even if you are not sure you believe in prayer, please send some thoughts of love and hope. Thank you.

Is God Bonkers?

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I wrote this blog post several months ago just after the events described in the post. I didn’t post it because I was just so exhausted. If you read the post, you’ll understand why. And then I got busy. And then there were other priorities.

So here we are. I give you the question, Is God Bonkers?

That’s the thought which was going through my head recently, or if I’m really honest with myself it was more like, God is bonkers.

I had been dreading Lent this year, not knowing what to give up or how to mark it. Due to various food sensitivities it seemed like I was already giving up all of the usual suspects like coffee and alcohol and even sugar. What more could I do? Finally, the thought came to me and it seemed to fit: this year, I’ll give up anxiety.

I notice that I have a tendency, like many people, to talk about anxiety as if it belongs to me. ‘My anxiety went through the roof when such and such happened’, I might say. Perhaps this is because it has become such an ingrained part of me that it feels like a limb or an arm, something attached to me which makes itself felt at regular intervals. How could I give it up? Did I have any control over it?

I decided that if I got anxious about something, I would do what I could, say a prayer and let go. Sounds simple doesn’t it. Probably as simple as riding a bike when you are four years old and see all your friends mastering this feat of balance, but when you try it you fall off again and again and again.

My decision to give up anxiety was severely tested on Ash Wednesday when a neighbour came round to complain about something which one of my children may or may not have been involved in. I stayed calm, but over the next week or two my anxiety rose as I heard rumours and counter rumours and did not know where the truth lay.

Anxiety creeps up gradually. I can recognise worry when my mind frets and comes back again and again to an issue and I can make a conscious decision to take my mind off the hamster wheel of worry. What I call anxiety is something goes on at a deeper level over which I have less control. I begin to feel helpless and as if everything is going wrong and can’t be righted and it’s all my fault in some way even though I can’t see how I can possibly do anything about it.

Despite trying to pray and even trying to let go, I had reached this point about ten days into Lent when I went to Mass and said to God, I simply can’t do any more.

That night I felt that we managed to actually have a relaxing evening as a family for the first time in a while and that the bad feelings between us dissipated. I went to bed feeling peaceful. The next morning, my son woke me by thumping on the bedroom door. Half asleep, I heard my husband get up and then yell that there was a flood.

When I came downstairs, the kitchen ceiling was caving in due to water flowing into it from the room above. Well, it wasn’t quite how I had envisaged my weekend but after a few minutes of panic, we managed to find the lever to turn off the water and began phoning plumbers. It’s very difficult to get hold of a plumber on a Saturday morning, but eventually we got hold of someone.

Next, I stupidly turned on the kitchen light to see if the electrics were working and got an electric shock. Fortunately, I was wearing rubber soled shoes. Note to self: never touch a socket if you’ve had a flood!

When the plumber arrived, he pointed to the huge sag in the kitchen ceiling and said, “That’s not a good sign.”

“I’m desperate for a cup of tea,” my husband said, and I realised that I could do with a cup, too. Since there was no electricity, I thought I was quite clever heating the water up on the gas stove. I had just got it boiling when the plumber climbed up a ladder and said, “I’ll see if I can let some of the water out of the ceiling.”

He poked the ceiling with a screwdriver and water began pouring down bringing with it chunks of plaster. I managed to leap back from the stove just as a large chunk dropped on top of it. Now I had had two narrow escapes.

As the day went on it became clear that the house was becoming uninhabitable. An electrician arrived, took the cover off the light switch (by now the electricity was off at the mains) and a stream of water poured out of the socket. No wonder I had got an electric shock.

As a result, of all these problems, we had to move out of our house into a temporary place for a week. Even though I now had lots of practical challenges to deal with, I found myself out of the uncomfortable situation in our street with all the rumours and counter rumours and settled in a quiet, peaceful place in another part of town. Perhaps it was an answer to prayer? If so, then the only thought which came to mind was, God is bonkers. Flooding our house to solve a problem with the neighbours seemed like total overkill.

I thought of a large man, clumsily handling a tiny kitten in a well-meaning way but accidentally hurting it, but then I thought that’s not quite the right image. God doesn’t make mistakes. So, the next image which came to me was of a large person holding a kitten firmly so that it couldn’t wriggle or scratch or possibly leap out of the person’s arms and hurt itself. I don’t know why the kitten was being held like this. Possibly it needed a vaccination, or maybe it just needed to calm down.

So I am like the kitten, in a situation where I don’t have much choice or much wriggle room, but I hope and trust that I am in God’s arms.

Looking back on what I have written here I do feel like I was looked after. We had intense disruption for a week and then everything was sorted although it was a while before my body caught up with the idea that the house was more or less back to normal.

Trust and prayer

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It is Easter Monday (although it has taken me almost two weeks to write this up) and it is snowing in Scotland. I am sitting beside the fire and I am thinking about writing about prayer. I don’t know what I’ll write. That’s often the case. At it’s best, writing is a form of meditation and I discover new things about myself and life as I write.

So now, as I put some peat on the fire, I really don’t know what to say, but that’s okay because I’m hoping that by writing things down, I’ll find out what’s been sitting at the back of my head for the last few months.

When it seems that prayer isn’t answered

It started off when a friend of mine wrote down some of her thoughts on prayer. Like me, she has had the experience of praying for something for years and finally having to accept that that prayer would not be answered.

In my case, I prayed that my sister would be healed, but just over two years ago, my sister lost her battle with mental illness. How could a prayer be more not answered than someone you have loved and prayed for dying in despair?

My sister had been let down very badly by a health system that has been decimated by cuts. Not only that, even if the best of treatment had been available, we still know very little about mental illness. There is no magic pill. However, my sister was a fighter. She wanted to be well enough to be with her family, but when she didn’t get the help she needed, it got too much. I’ll believe until the end of my life that my sister would still be alive if she had got the treatment she needed, but she didn’t and she died. I could say, why me, why us, but from another viewpoint, I have to say, why not us, when so many other families are suffering for similar reasons.

Even, or perhaps especially, in these first few days and weeks of acute pain as I faced the horrible reality of my sister’s death, I began to realise, in prayer, that perhaps all hope was not gone. My sister was not healed in this life, but perhaps she is being healed in the next one. Perhaps God is answering my prayer, but not in the way I thought.

And so, I still pray for her. But her death has undoubtedly affected how I pray about other situations. Sometimes, when I want to pray about a situation that’s bothering me, I find myself in a very difficult place. It’s like walking along a path, stepping onto what looks like leaves and falling into a hidden hole. In that hole, there is no light, no faith, no hope and apparently no love, because suicide leaves a very deep wound. It apparently negates all hope.

I have to pray from that point of darkness. I have to pray from the position of apparently not seeing a prayer answered and of fearing that God will not answer again or that the same thing could happen to someone else I love.

Should we ask for things?

After her own experience of apparently unanswered prayer, my friend was saying that it’s difficult to ask God for anything. Her prayer has become more a prayer of surrender of acknowledging God’s presence than of making requests.

This set me thinking, should we be asking things of God. Is it fair to come to God with a shopping list of prayer intentions? Would I come to a friend with a list of things I want them to do for me? Well, actually, I do ask friends to help me out at times, and sometimes they ask me for things, but usually I’d have a cup of tea first, ask how they are and tell them how I am. And maybe if I told them about a situation that was difficult, they’d offer to help without me having to ask.

Maybe it’s the same way with God. I think some of my prayer now is about trying to let go of my fear and lack of trust and acknowledge who God is. When I was first thinking of becoming Catholic, a priest told me that God holds me in being every moment of the day, that God never forgets me. I found this a strange idea. Wasn’t God some sort of distant deity who’d set the universe in motion and then sat back to watch the show from a comfortable seat somewhere up there in the sky?

Now, I’m beginning to find this idea comforting. No matter how difficult and painful the situation, I can bring it to God in prayer and know that God in some way holds me and the people I love. Some of my prayer now, especially when I am in pain, is just about trying to bring this into my awareness.

I still ask for things. Of course, I do. Who else can I ask? Sometimes I come to God with my list of complaints, all the things I’d like to change about my own situation or about what’s happening in the world or to other people I know. There is a sense though in which prayer has to involve recognising that in some way I don’t understand, the universe is okay right now. It has to be if God is encircling it, encompassing it, holding it in being.  I discovered in the raw pain of losing someone I loved to suicide that God was still there in the rock bottom, scoured out reality of grief.

Trust

As I write, I am feeling challenged to discover through prayer the ways in which my present situation really is okay even if there are things I would like to change, even if I have a wish list. This involves trust and thanksgiving.

Julian of Norwich says, ‘This is our Lord’s will: that our prayer and our trust should be equally generous.’ When I first read this, I thought it meant that I must somehow work up a conviction that God will answer my prayer the way I want it answered. Now, I don’t think she means trust in a specific outcome. I think she means trust in who God is: trust in God’s love and concern for us and in His care, rather than faith that God will do a certain thing in our lives in a certain way.

When I was in Spain, I discovered a devotion in the form of a thirty-day conversation with Jesus which is all about building trust. I haven’t been able to find an English translation so I attach my own translation here of part of the conversation:

Why are you worried and confused by the problems of life?

Leave me to look after your affairs and everything will go better.

When you hand things over to me, everything will quietly work itself out according to my plans.

Don’t despair or send up an agitated prayer,

As if you want to demand from me what you want.

Close the eyes of your soul and say to me calmly:

Jesus, I trust in You!

Avoid preoccupying yourself with worries and gloomy thoughts about what could happen.

Don’t spoil my plans by trying to impose your own ideas.

Allow me to be God and to act with full freedom.

Hand yourself over to me with confidence. Rest in me and leave your future in my hands.

Say to me frequently:

Jesus, I trust in You!

What damages me the most is when you rely on your reasoning and your own ideas

And try to sort things out in your own way when you tell me

 Jesus, I trust in You!

Don’t be like the patient who told the doctor to treat him but suggested how it should be done.

Let me lift you into my divine arms. Don’t be afraid. I love you.

If you feel that things are getting worse and more complicated despite your prayers,

Keep on trusting, close the eyes of your soul and trust.

Keep telling me every hour:

Jesus, I trust in You!

I need my hands free if I’m to be able to work.

Don’t tie me up with your useless worries. Satan wants to make you restless and worried and take away your peace.

Trust in me. Rest in me. Hand yourself over to me.

The more you abandon yourself to me and have confidence in me, the greater the miracles I will be able to work.

So, don’t worry. Throw all your anxieties on me and sleep peacefully.

Tell me always:

Jesus, I trust in You!

And you will see huge miracles.

I promise you by my love.

No more words

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I’m running out of words.

I am in a place I couldn’t have imagined four years ago when I became Catholic. One of my children is still struggling with what is, at times, a very challenging illness. I considered my situation difficult until it got many times more challenging; my sister and closest friend recently died in appalling circumstances.

I intended this blog to be about my continuing conversion as a child of God, and, more specifically, as a Catholic. I don’t want it to become a suicide survivor’s blog. So, this is probably my last post, at least for a while although I hope I’ll still manage to read other peoples’ posts on wordpress, although at the moment most of what I’m reading is written by people who have lost loved ones to suicide.

I don’t have words to make sense of what has happened. Not yet. I just have to BE, in this place, a hideous desert, where it is not possible to impose some kind of meaning.

It’s like a tree, which was growing in my heart, has been torn out taking some of me with it. I don’t know where all this is going.

In the Bible, the Israelites passed through the desert to reach the Promised Land. The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert for forty days of fasting before beginning his ministry.

In ‘Seven Storey Mountain’, the American Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, uses the image of the desert when writing about his own conversion:

“I had come, like the Jews, through the Red Sea of Baptism. I was entering into a desert – a terribly easy and convenient desert, with all the trials tempered to my weakness- where I would have a chance to give God great glory by simply trusting and obeying Him, and walking in the way that was not according to my own nature and my own judgement. And it would lead me to a land I could not imagine or understand. … It would be a land in which the work of man’s hands and man’s ingenuity counted for little or nothing: but where God would direct all things, and where I would be expected to act so much and so closely under His guidance that it would be as if He thought with my mind, as if He willed with my will.”

I can’t see that land. I can only glimpse it, a place where my heart stays open to God and others, no matter how much I’ve been hurt, a place where I hand myself over to God without any conditions, where I accept life as it is, without demanding success or security. Above all, it’s a place where I am able to do the most difficult thing imaginable: trust in God’s strength whatever happens.

I’m not there yet, but sometimes, when prayer goes beyond words, I go briefly into a place of pain and healing.

Before I end, I want to share two things. The first is a poem by Thomas Merton, written after his only brother was killed in the Second World War. It has touched me. My sister died on a battlefield fighting demons which the rest of us couldn’t see, but which were very real to her.

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Sweet brother, if I do not sleep

My eyes are flowers for your tomb;

And if I cannot eat my bread,

My fasts shall live like willows where you died.

If in the heat I find no water for my thirst,

My thirst shall turn to springs for you, poor traveller.

 

Where, in what desolate and smokey country,

Lies your poor body, lost and dead?

And in what landscape of disaster

Has your unhappy spirit lost its road?

 

Come, in my labor find a resting place

And in my sorrows lay your head,

Or rather take my life and blood

And buy yourself a better bed –

Or take my breath and take my death

And buy yourself a better rest.

 

When all the men of war are shot

And flags have fallen into dust,

Your cross and mine shall tell men still

Christ died on each, for both of us.

 

For in the wreckage of your April Christ lies slain,

And Christ weeps in the ruins of my spring;

The money of Whose tears shall fall

Into your weak and friendless hand,

And buy you back to your own land:

The silence of Whose tears shall fall

Like bells upon your alien tomb.

Hear them and come: they call you home. Thomas Merton

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This last piece I wrote to my sister while on retreat, trying to express my gratitude that she loved me without judgement.

You would love the light here, the way the darker clouds lie on the left and the lighter ones on the right with a winding scraggle of brightness between them, narrow down by the hills and widening upwards like a pathway to heaven, hills piled beneath and me here folded in a wee room with single glazing and chipped paintwork and the sound of birdsong. I’m imagining you sitting out in the garden painting this view, maybe on that wee, folding chair by the ironwork table.

I’m thinking of life, death and rebirth, sa-ta-na-ma. I’m so exhausted, still stunned and dazed. The only way I can heal is by continuing to hold you in love, not pretending you weren’t or that you didn’t matter or that we can just tidy away our memories and put them to the side like the bags of clothes for the charity shop. No pulling myself together and getting on with my life, whatever that means – is it really mine? – will change the fact that you were, are still, always will be a fundamental part of what makes me, me, one of the few, precious people who was an unclouded mirror reflecting back love.

Holey, Holy and Wholly

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I’m writing something I never wanted to write. A short while ago, my sister, who was very precious to me, died in a tragic accident leaving behind a husband and young children. I hate to use the word suicide, because it would suggest some sort of choice on her part. I’ll never know what happened, but I know she wouldn’t have left us unless, in that moment, she felt utterly desperate.

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A death is difficult

The death of someone who should have many years ahead of them is difficult

A sudden death is difficult

A situation where someone seems to have a hand in their own death is even more difficult.

We are still in shock.

In the first few days of shock and tears, I found myself thinking of two things: my sister in her wedding dress absolutely beaming and happy. This came back to me today with the story of Jesus and the wedding feast at Cana. If she had any faith, my sister kept it to herself and at the same time practised love and kindness to others. I am hoping that she is now experiencing God’s love and mercy.

A totally inappropriate joke

The other thing I thought of seemed totally inappropriate. It was a sectarian joke I heard when I was a child. Although things have got better in recent years, Scotland is a country with a Catholic-Protestant divide. Catholics and Protestants go to different schools and when I was a kid, I didn’t meet many Catholics. It’s easier to tell jokes about a group of people if you don’t know any of them personally.

Anyway, this joke kept going through my head, even though it is totally tasteless and wouldn’t be told now after recent terrorist attacks on places of worship. But I’m going to have to tell it to explain what I was thinking about it. It goes like this:

Question: Why did the priest bring a gun to church?

Answer: to make his people holey.

Okay, the joke could have been told about a minister or some other kind of religious leader, but because I grew up in Protestant Scotland, we made it a Catholic joke.

At first, I couldn’t understand why I was thinking about such a tasteless joke after losing my sister, until I went to Mass and began to understand.

I felt as if I was full of holes, as if God had shot holes in my tough exterior, or allowed circumstances to shoot holes in me. I couldn’t stop crying on Baptism Sunday, as if all the holes were letting in, not just pain, but also God’s love. The pain of my sister’s sudden death was flowing through me, as well as the thoughts of all the love that had been between us. But love could flow out of me much more easily, too, through all these holes blown in my defenses.

And there was so much to give comfort: The spirit of Lord Yahweh is on me for Yahweh has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the news to the afflicted, to soothe the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, release to those in prison, to proclaim a year of favour from Yahweh and a day of vengeance for our God, to comfort all who mourn, Isaiah 61:1-2.

It’s impossible to explain these first few days: the pain, the feeling that you are falling, and that yet even as you fall you know that you won’t fall forever, that there is something there: God, ground, love, to hold you up. I almost understood why Flannery O’ Connor’s short stories have the possibility of God’s grace being brought into peoples’ lives through what seems to be an irredeemable disaster or unkindness.

In these first few days, I prayed that I wouldn’t forget what I learnt from being holey, and that I would be able to trust and give myself wholly to God. And maybe that’s what it means to be holy.

Silence

The strange thing is that it was easier to trust God in these first few days, when I was blown into pieces and had absolutely no choice but to ask Him to help me through the next day, next hour, next second.

Now, maybe I’m trying to rebuild the holes, repair the defences as best as I can, even shoot a few missiles in God’s direction: why me, why her, why us? Why couldn’t You heal her? You heal other people, after all? Why was there this perfect storm which led to her death, so many little things done differently might have had another outcome … But I can’t go there. I’ll lose what’s left if I do.

The hardest thing today is the silence. There’s the silence of my sister. Even when I talk to her in my head or write down my thoughts in my diary, she doesn’t answer.

There’s the silence of others. After the initial whirl of emails and texts and facebook messages and people saying how sorry they are, it tails off, as it had to eventually. I’m sitting at home alone, trying to think of anything but what’s happened and finding I can’t.

There’s my own silence. I can’t talk about what happened. It’s very difficult, even to other people closely affected. We say something, the same thing, over and over, pain bouncing back and forth between us like a hot potato which no-one can bear to hold for long.

The most difficult silence to bear is the one I go into when my weary mind can’t take any more words or thoughts about what is, will be or might have been, when I just breathe and try to be aware of … what? Is God in the silence? Often I don’t feel a Presence. Sometimes I don’t find words to pray, and it hurts more than anything else what happens in this silence. I tell God how I feel and cry. Maybe it’s a healing hurt.

I need to end now, just with the thought that all I can ask for is blind trust. It’s so hard to let go of my beautiful sister and accept that I can’t do any more for her on this earth.

Fire

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When I woke up today, You appeared to me as fire.

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What should I call You?

Father

Are You not three and yet one?

Look more closely, at the flames that grow, leap out and fall back, my Son. See the light and feel the heat that comes from me, my Spirit.

But aren’t You the eternal and unchangeable One? How can You grow and leap and dance like a fire and yet never change?

I am still One, always One, burning in a never-ending dance.

I feel uncomfortable seeing You as a fire. It is always moving and changing shape. I thought You were the same yesterday, today and forever.

Watch for a while. It is still there, the same fire, even if the flames are in constant motion. Look at my creation. Plants grow and die back in the autumn, rocks weather, continents move, stars grow brighter and then dimmer. Even ice sheets lose ice in the summer and grow again in the winter. Why do You think that unchangeable means a thing that is frozen and static?

I don’t know. I just feel a bit uncomfortable thinking of You as being in motion. Maybe I want to You to be something set hard and unmoving so that my mind has a chance of one day grasping what You are.

(Laughter) You know that understanding me is impossible. Come closer, little one.

I can’t. I’m frightened.

What are you afraid of?

How can You ask that? Isn’t it obvious? You burn with flames that are hotter than the sun. If I come close, I will be utterly consumed, turned into heat and light without even leaving a cinder.

My dear, why are you so fearful? Didn’t I appear to Moses as a fire?

Moses saw a bush that was burning, and yet didn’t burn up.

Exactly. You will burn, will think that you have lost everything, will be sure that you won’t survive, and yet you won’t be destroyed. Learn this, little one. You will have everything necessary in the moment you need it, not too soon and never a moment too late. Can you trust Me?

It is so hard. You say that I won’t be burnt up, but what will really happen if I move closer to the fire. I cannot approach You and remain unchanged, can I?

Of course not. You will melt, lose what you think is your form, become liquid.

Why must that be?

So that you will flow, become liquid, move to where I want you, fit into the mould I make for you. If you do not melt and abandon yourself to me, you will never discover what I intended you to be.

I am frightened, almost too afraid to say to You, do this. Let me be like the man who said, “I believe, please help my unbelief.” I want to abandon myself to You, I want to melt. Please help the part of me which holds back and wants to remain cool and hard and cold. That is all I can manage right now. I hope it’s enough.

That is all I need. I can make it enough.

Thank you, Father, for showing me the fire.

Spring is coming

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This might seem like a strange title for a post at the end of May, but until a few days ago, the wind still had a cold wintry bite.

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I live in a wet, windswept corner of the Scottish Highlands where we are used to grey skies, rain and above all, cold weather. Temperatures of less than 10 C in July are not uncommon.

Spring can be cold, with frost in May or even June. Sometimes the excess rain can be a problem, with potatoes put into the ground in dry, sunny days in April, rotting in flooded soil after a wet spell in May. In the past, people built the soil up into long ridges (feannagan or lazy beds) and added sand and seaweed to improve drainage. Nowadays, we still do much the same thing although they are smaller and we just call them raised beds.

Planting

My hobby is growing vegetables and it’s always a toss-up. Do I plant earlier and give the plants more time to grow? We only have a very short growing season with winter gales returning from September. Or do I hold off and plant later in May when we can usually be sure of milder weather.

This year, I was a bit over-enthusiastic. We had a cold but sunny winter and a similar, although slightly less bitter, spring. After a run of sunny days in April, I was chafing at the bit. I wanted to get planting. Surely the sun would have warmed up the soil.

I had ordered some Jerusalem artichoke roots, and they were already sprouting shoots. In the first week of April, I got the kids to dig some holes and we planted them.

Jerusalem artichokes grow from roots, a bit like potatoes although they look more like a ginger root. You can eat the root, but they have a reputation for causing flatulence. The reason I’m growing them is that they form a tall, flowering plant which makes a good wind break (I mean wind as in weather …)

Patience

I planted the Jerusalem artichokes near my vegetable beds and then tried to be patient. Two weeks passed, with no sign of the new shoots, but it was early yet.

Three weeks went by and there was still no sign of the Jerusalem artichokes, but I wasn’t too concerned. I busied myself planting peas, beetroot, potatoes and carrots.

After four weeks had passed, I began to get worried. When it got to five or six weeks, I gave up altogether on my roots. They must have rotted in the soil.

The pea seeds also seemed to have rotted. Out of thirty seeds planted, only two to three had come up. Likewise there was no sign of the carrot or beetroot seedlings. Meanwhile the plants I’d started indoors and put out in April were huddled under a net, their growth slowed by a biting east wind.

Faith

Planting requires a mixture of skill and judgement. Is the seed fresh? Have I added enough feed to the soil? Is the ground warm enough? In the end, though, it requires an act of faith to put a dead-looking seed in the soil in the hope that it will sprout into green life.

This year, I felt like I’d got the planting wrong. It just seemed like another thing in a long list of things which had gone wrong in my life, despite my best effort.

However, all was not lost. I’d simply not had enough patience. A few days ago, I saw the first Jerusalem artichoke shoots poking above the soil. It had taken more than six weeks, but they were there. The beetroot shoots have come up, as well as some of the peas. I’ll fill in the gaps with the peas I started indoors.

Only one carrot seedling was in sight. Just to make sure of getting carrots, I started planting more seed, and in the process uncovered a few seedlings. Oops, I should have been more patient.

Signs of spring

When I look at the seedlings in the vegetable patch, I feel as if God is chuckling at me for having so little patience and faith that anything would grow.

I need to have more patience in my own life, too. The last year has been incredibly difficult with one of my kids getting ill and having to give up any kind of work. However, even though there has been no rapid, dramatic change for the better, there are still signs of spring.

Sometimes I am like one of the green seedlings put out too early and exposed to the wind. Because I’ve been bitten by the wind, I’m afraid to grow and try new things even though the weather has taken a turn for the better.

Maybe, too, our lives are a bit like the Jerusalem artichoke roots. Even though we can’t see what’s going on, perhaps God is getting things ready and making things grow.

I just need to have more patience.

 

What should we do with gifts?

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A homemade gift
I was the kind of kid who not only watched the BBC childrens’ programme Blue Peter, but also tried to make the things that they showed. One time, they showed how to make a pen pot and letter holder out of a toilet roll tube and a cardboard box. Of course, their version looked wonderful, because they brought out ‘Here’s the one I prepared earlier’, covered with a slick, glossy paint.

Well, I followed all the instructions. I covered the cardboard box and the tube with paper, painted them and stuck them together. So far, so good. I thought it would make a really good Christmas present for my parents. However, things went wrong when I tried to paint it. I chose brown and navy blue as I thought that they would give me a sophisticated, office sort of colour, but my cheap paint blocks produced a hideous, streaky colour which wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
I wrapped it up in Christmas paper and presented it to my Dad. I had to explain its function, and hoped that he’d be able to use it even if it didn’t look like the Blue Peter version.

A few months later, I was going through my Mum’s bottom drawer where she kept tights and socks (no idea why) and I came across my pen pot, broken into two pieces and clearly unused. I put it back so that my parents would never realise I had seen it, but I carried away a feeling of hurt. It wasn’t the best pen pot, but I’d put so much into it, and it would have been nice if it had been used.

What should we do with gifts?

I am not telling this story, because to complain about my parents or air some unhealed wound from childhood. I have been through the same thing many times as a mother: ‘what a beautiful pot!’, to the hideous item in coiled clay which will be displayed for a while before being quietly cleared out.

The reason I remembered this incident is that I have been thinking about gifts, and come to the conclusion that the most hurtful thing we can do is refuse to use a gift. Even my dog gets depressed when I don’t accept her sometimes over-zealous protection (barking at almost every dog which crosses our path).

The parable of the three servants

I was set off on this train of thought by the weekend Mass reading on the parable about the master who leaves his three servants money (Matthew 25:14-30). One was given five talents, one was given two and the other one. The servants with the greater gifts traded with them and made more money. The servant who had the smaller gift just dug a hole in the ground and buried it.

The priest’s homily was all about how we’re reluctant to use the gifts God gives us, maybe out of fear, or maybe because we don’t want to appear vain.
What he said hit me right between the eyes. I cried all the way through Mass. It was one of those occasions when the presence of Christ in the Eucharist got under my skin into my deepest self and showed me my faults and my fears. I think that some of this goes on at a subconscious level, so it is something difficult to put into words.

Barriers to using gifts

Part of the reason I cried is because I don’t have a job and I don’t quite know what if anything to do about that. At times I can almost convince myself that because I don’t have a job, I don’t have anything to offer, no gifts to share. I’ve taken a few steps to try to get some occasional work, and now I just have to wait.

I need to pray not just for myself, but for others who are unable to work and find it difficult to share their gifts: mothers who struggle to find work after taking time to look after children, those who’ve lost their jobs and are unemployed, those with health problems, young people who don’t believe that they have any gifts.

Suppressing gifts

The other thing I cried about is that I know suppress one of my gifts out of fear of rejection or fear of it just being about my ego. That gift is my desire to write. The Presbyterian part of my mind has, at times, almost convinced me that wanting to write is sinful and that I should stop it altogether. When I write, even if I write a blog about faith, I do it sneakily, hoping that God isn’t looking.

Some time ago, I had actually convinced myself that God wanted me to stop writing and went to Mass to hand myself over to God, but I had to rethink; the reading was this parable about the three servants and their talents.

I even took this to confession and told a priest that I was worried that writing was a sin and that I was prepared to give it up. After a long pause, the priest told me that writing was a gift God had given me and that I should use it as long as I didn’t write something which would harm anyone else.
So I’ve decided to stop being afraid of rejection and try to get some of the stories I write published.

Even if my gift is only worth one talent rather than five or even two, it’s not an excuse for burying it. I might think that my talent isn’t good enough in comparison with others, but God has given it to me for a reason.

It’s my part to do what I can to use and share my gift. What happens then is in God’s hands, whether I have many or few blog followers, or whether people want to publish or read my stories. I just have to try my best and trust and try not to let that spiky thing called the ego come into it.

This week I came across a quote by the Scottish writer Muriel Spark, famous for ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’. She was brought up Presbyterian, but became Catholic in mid-life. When asked what she had achieved as a writer, she said:

‘I have achieved myself. I have expressed something I brought into the world with me…’

I hope that we can aim to build a society where every person has the opportunity and confidence to express what is uniquely them; the gift they brought into the world with them.

A final word

I have been thinking a lot about Nazanin Radcliffe, the mother of a small child who was living and working in Britain, but was jailed when she returned to visit her family in Iran. She is currently being held without charge in solitary confinement. I’d like to share a petition for her release Free Nazanin Radcliffe

One in four

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One in four

Recently I was having a conversation about mental health with someone in my family. I mentioned the fact that one in four people will be affected by mental health problems during their lifetime. A pause followed, in which they digested this statistic, and then they said, “In our family, it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s like almost one hundred percent.”

I had to admit that this was true. I’ve struggled with depression, including severe post-natal depression. Other people in my family have had similar struggles, so many, in fact, that I’ve been guilty of the, “Oh no, not again,” or “Oh no, not another one” feeling when I hear about another crisis.

Statistics just show the average. Some families will have exactly one in four people affected by mental health problems. Other families will hardly be affected by mental illness whilst others will seem to be fighting it all the time.

Down to the fourth generation

Some of our susceptibility can probably be explained by environment and life events, but there is evidence that our genes also play a role. Recently I came across an article describing research carried out on the children and grandchildren of holocaust survivors. It showed that trauma experienced by one generation can actually alter the genes of their children, making them more susceptible to stress and mental health disorders.

I’ve always tried to own my own problems. When I was fighting post-natal depression, I hoped that what I was going through would mean that my children would have less mental health issues to face, not more.

Perhaps it doesn’t work like that. I think of the Bible verse about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children right down to the fourth generation. It seems like a raw deal if God punishes people for mistakes that their great grandparents have made.

Over time I have realised that this verse doesn’t mean that God vindictively causes children and grandchildren to suffer. It simply states a fact: if your life is in a mess then it’s going to have repercussions for the next generation.

Of course, that mess might not be caused by you. Maybe you might have suffered due to war or famine or a natural disaster. If a trauma experienced by the parents affects the genes of the children, does this explain the high levels of depression and alcohol abuse in the Highlands more than one hundred and fifty years after the Clearances?

For how long are the effects of current wars going to be seen in future generations? It is sad to think that those who are lucky enough to survive bombing and displacement and have enough hope left to start a family, might be passing on some of that trauma to their children, no matter how much they try not to.

St Therese and mental illness

I have a fondness for St Therese, perhaps her attitude was, ‘God, I can’t do it on my own. Over to you.’

Her autobiography, ‘Story of a soul’, describes a childhood illness which occurred after her big sister, Pauline, who’d been a sort of substitute mother to her, entered the closed Carmelite convent. Having lost her mother and then her big sister, Therese became ill with what sounds like a severe depression, although there was no such thing as a mental health diagnosis in the 19th century. It also had physical effects and her family feared that she was going to die. Therese herself couldn’t see any way out of the illness, but she prayed and was cured when she turned her head and saw a statue of ‘Our Lady’ smiling at her.

I was searching the web to try to find out more about St Therese and her childhood illness when I came across this beautiful leaflet on St Therese and mental illness. Not only did St. Therese suffer from depression in childhood, but she also bore the pain of seeing her father Louis Martin suffer from mental illness. He spent the last part of his life in a mental asylum. He still became a saint. This gives me hope that mental illness, like physical illness, is something which God allows to come into our lives.

Just as being overweight increases a risk of a heart attack, our choices may increase or decrease our risk of depression. However, there are also other factors outside our control, such as a stressful work environment or a susceptibility to depression which is written into our genes.

The leaflet on St Therese really moved me. It acknowledged the stigma around mental illness and how much of it is suffered in silence. When there is a mental health crisis, people don’t rally round and cook meals for the family the way they might if someone was suffering from a serious physical illness.

For sufferers and carers, mental illness can be lonely. All we can do is follow St Therese’s example, stretch out our arms and say God, ‘I am too little to do this alone. Please pick me up and help me.’

Excess baggage

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I often drop into sacredspace, a site run by the Irish Jesuits which offers a way of praying and meditating on the daily Gospel. Each week they also have some thoughts taken from either a blog or a book.

This week’s piece was Lost Luggage in which Vinita Hampton Wright describes a bag being lost in transit and continuing her travels without even missing the contents. She postulates that we carry around too many burdens, both physical and psychological.

This struck a chord with me because I’ve just had a similar experience. My family life is a bit nomadic at the moment. We are away from home for what was meant to just be a few months. We were due to return today, but have had to delay our return because one of our children is in hospital.

Ten days ago, we moved from one temporary place to another. The bags we had brought with us seemed to have bred during the few months we were here. I felt burdened and harassed by the amount of luggage. Even so, we’d managed to forget quite a lot of stuff. My husband dropped by to pick up a bag of forgotten belongings and I was astonished going through the bag, because I’d actually forgotten that I owned these things.

I have a house stuffed full of belongings and it’s actually a relief to be away from it and realise that there are very few things I miss.

What I don’t miss

  • An old denim skirt I haven’t worn in a long time and keep just in case I run out of anything else to wear.
  • Hand-painted china teaset (even if it was my grandmother’s)
  • Champagne flutes (elegant wedding present, but when was the last time I had champagne)
  • The rest of my jewellery collection. I especially don’t miss the odd earrings I have hoarded just in case the lost one turns up. St Anthony has found a lot of things for me, but I guess there are limits.
  • Bags of baby clothes which we have kept just in case we have grandchildren
  • Boxes of Duplo and baby toys which have been kept for the same reason
  • Books I have already read. Do I really need to re-read Pride and Prejudice for the seventh or eighth time?
  • Ornaments, vases (a cut out 2-litre bottle will do the same job) and other clutter.

What I do miss

  • The dog and all the walks
  • The garden
  • The potatoes I planted before I left
  • The peat stack and the peat bank. At this point I have to admit that my peat stack is very far from a traditional herring bone pattern. In fact, the only way I can keep these peats dry is to put them in old animal feed bags on top of a wooden pallet and to top the whole lot with a plastic tarp.
  • Box of lego for the children
  • Books – the childrens’ books and all the books I haven’t read. I’ve just made a pilgrimage to a second hand bookshop to pick up reading material.
  • My crochet project which was far too large to pack into a suitcase. However, I don’t miss all the half-used balls of wool which I was hoarding ‘just in case’

A place to stay

In the last post, I wrote that I was looking for accommodation, because we wouldn’t have anywhere to stay in three weeks. We have had to change all our plans, because one of our children is ill.

During the last week, I have been flat hunting and I have been thinking about Mary leaving Nazareth for the census in Bethlehem. She was heavily pregnant and it wasn’t a trip that she would have made unless she absolutely had to. She must have worried about finding a place to stay, about when the baby would come and whether the stress of the journey would cause it to come early.

When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem and found all the inns full, they must have been feeling pretty desperate. Up until now, I have imagined Mary exhausted, perhaps already in labour and at the absolute limit of her endurance, being turned away and refused shelter.

In my present predicament of needing to find a place for my family to stay, I have begun to imagine the scene differently. I have hoped and prayed that God provided a place for Mary and Joseph to stay and rest from their travels before Mary actually gave birth. I have pictured her having a few days to settle into the stable, sleep, eat and perhaps even share a joke or two with the census enumerator before giving birth.

I have needed to re-imagine this Gospel scene, because last week I felt that I was getting close to the limit of my faith and endurance. I wanted to believe that Mary had some time to rest before the baby came, because I felt that I was soon going to be too exhausted to do more flat hunting. Before moving again, I needed some time to rest in the knowledge that my family wasn’t going to be homeless.

In fact, we found a place after searching for a week. It is simple and cheap, but we have realised that we don’t need much.

A week ago, this would have felt like a miracle. In fact, someone came forward out of the blue and said that they had a flat to rent. The strange thing about miracles is that the human brain has a way of adapting to them and taking them for granted.

I have a tiny thread of faith, not much, just a mustard seed. I am so frightened and full of doubt. I wish I had more confidence, but this seems like an answer to prayer. Maybe that’s why I am writing about these difficulties here, to record what happens so that I can look back some time and hopefully see how it all fits together even though it just seems confusing and frightening right now.