I'd been saving the picture linked to Ecclesiastes 3:11 for an opportune time to colour it... I love the truth it speaks, but the time to savour the colouring had felt like "not yet."

Over on social media, I found I had been tagged by a friend in a 'challenge' to post five photos of myself that I considered expressed beauty.  As someone who has never considered herself to be physically beautiful, indeed who has been told she is 'plain' and even 'ugly' (long ago and far away) I was surprised, and not a little chuffed to be 'tagged' by someone who I described as "beautiful inside and out".

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I'll post the same words here I posted there, and then add some further reflections (I won't put the photos here due to memory constraints)...

The "I'm beautiful the way I am" Challenge

I never think of myself as beautiful, and let's be honest I'm a bit of a tom-boy with sensitive skin that dislikes makeup [the skin dislikes it], so I am honoured and a little bit chuffed to be nominated for this. The inevitable physical scars of cancer (and related) surgery - totalling almost a metre if laid out end to end - and the invisible scars of life in all its rich reality are part of who I am ... if I have beauty, then these, too, are part of it. Learning to acknowledge my unique beauty is a life-time's work: this is part of that.

The verse from Ecclesiastes reminds us, reassures us, tells us, urges us, to believe that everything - EVERY thing, every THING, EVERYTHING is beautiful, because God has made it so.  Beautiful slugs, beautiful cacti, beautiful fleas, beautiful rocks, beautiful people, beautiful water, beautiful stars, beautiful dust... beauty isn't [just] about outward attractiveness, it is, if we dare to trust this verse, an implicit quality, waiting to be discovered or uncovered.  Beauty is not about picture-perfect physcial attributes, but is something that shines or glimmers despite them.

Beauty is not something we may feel we possess - perhaps we need permission to hear, let alone believe that we each have our own unique beauty.  This is not to deny ugliness, by which I don't mean physical appearance but an inner being that has shrivelled or grown hard or negative,  but it is to say that the potential for beauty remains 'in our time', because God has made us beautiful, and redemption is always possible.

Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder... and the beholder is none other than God.

Thursday 4th Febraury is, so I recently discovered (or maybe rediscovered, my memory is rubbish) World Cancer Day.  This year in the UK four of the major cancer charities have chosen to work together, each selling ther own 'unity bands' to raise funds for their work, but with the common theme of 'unity'.  With the hashtag #adaytounite individuals and families are invited to post photos wearing their band/bands as a sign of this unity.

The four charities each offer something unique...

CRUK is primarily a research charity, covering all kinds of cancer and funding work right across the UK.

The Anthony Nolan Trust is concerned solely with blood cancers, and central to its work are the bone marrow donor registers, as well as research and support.

The Movember Foundation, famous for it's November moustache fundraiser, focuses on mens health in general with key areas including male cancers - prostate and testicular - a mixture of research, education and support.

Breast Cancer Care as it's name suggests is a support charity concerned with cancers affecting the breast in women and men, with education and awareness raising as well as all sorts of practical support.  Unlike the others listed above, it is not a research charity, though increasingly it is involved in campaigning in the area of secondary breast cancer.

I opted to purchase two bands - CRUK and Breast Cancer Care as these are the two that resonate with my experience, and for which I have raised, and do raise, money.

What I like about this awareness and fundraising campaign is that these charities are not competing, they are standing alongside each other, recognising the unique contribution each makes in a huge field.  Sometimes charities do compete, sometimes one will deliberately start up services another already offers... not so unlike churches really!  What is good is when, as here, they can work alongside each other.  There is lots of small scale charitable ecumenism for sure - here in Glasgow I know of joint projects between these and other charities.  This all seems good.

On Tuesday I will have my annual check-up and "squish" - which will be five years since my surgery and, all things being equal, five years NED.  Supporting the charities whose work directly or indirectly has helped me seems a good way to celebrate that.

Seeing the footage of Jo Brand walking the Trans Pennine Trail (TPT) brought back many happy memories of doing more or less (well, more: the route we did was 40 miles longer) the same back in 2006. 

My friend and I walked west to east, Liverpool to Hull in ten days, averaging 20 miles a day (peak was about 24 if memory serves) and carrying everything we needed on our backs.  We set off in blistering heat - with one of us (me) experiencing horrendous blisters and the other (her) suffering with the heat.  We had some crazy adventures, not least the B&B that had double booked and we had to go another three miles to the alternative he'd found... which was good as it was nearer the trail but we'd already walked about five miles off trail to get there... (thankfully he gave us a lift to it).  By the time we arrived in Hull the weather had done what it does in Britain, and turned to cold, lashing rain and a strong wind... having been frazzled we now froze and went into a pub to drip dry and warm up by consuming jam roly poly and custard.  But it was fun, we raised a lot of money for a small research charity, and we made some special memories.

So I enjoyed watching Jo brand walk where I'd walked (or some of it anyway) and savoured the fact that here was a celebrity doing a challenge that was in the reach of ordinary people.  No canoeing down the Amazon or cycling up Africa or any other impossible aspiration... Instead in the dark and cold and wet of January, she took on a demanding schedule to cross this island in the public eye and did it with aplomb.

I really respect her for taking this challenge and completing it.

Leafing through my 'holy colouring book' I found this page, which immediately made me think of a particular friend, who is fond of this text, and of something I became aware of years ago that has shaped my understanding of the text ever since.

Clay pots, so I discovered, were the equivalent in the first century of single use paper cups and other 'take away' containers.  Indeed, I relatively recently disocvered that in parts of India this is still the case, and whole communities earn their living making simple clay pots/cups etc.

So, then, the treasure we have, the 'surpassig power', whatever that means, is contained in paper cups... the most disposable and least valuable containers available.

So we, paper cup like though we are, small, easily crushed or broken, sometimes discarded by society with no more than a second glance, are the vessels, the chosen containers for the 'treasure' that it is the gospel.

It's also a reminder that those I walk past with barely a second glance, treating them with the same casual indifference as a chip-paper or a drink bottle, are considered by God as of immeasurable worth - worthy indeed to contain and the same treasure.

Can't find a way to connect this text and these ideas to green issues - but re-use and recycling must surely by consistent with valuing even the paper cups and plastic bags designed for single use; and maybe, at a stretch to recongnising that those people discarded as worthless are also capable of redemption and resurrection (metaphorical and literal).

So that's my sermon/homily/reflection created by colouring.

I wonder what, if anything, the image or the text or my rambling says to you? 

And I wonder if you can colour, mould, stitch or dance your own sermon?

I was alerted to this link by Northern Baptist College - a dramatic exploration of issues around faith and sexuality.  Here's what the blurb says:

Dancing Bear uses dance, live music, text and drag cabaret to tell a story full of compassion, candour and humour, looking at the often desperate balancing act many gay people continue to face between personal integrity, social acceptance and spiritual peace.

Conceived by director/musician Jamie Fletcher and writer/musician Beccy Owen, Dancing Bear is a relevant and moving piece of theatre that deftly swings between the bleak and the bawdy, as a nine-strong cast explore the current tipping point between Christianity and Homosexuality.

At its heart is a question that is relevant to people of all backgrounds and beliefs: ‘how and who should we love?’.

It may be of interest to readers in Manchester and the north of England.