After the heavy stuff of the past few days a couple of little things that appealed to the peverse sense of humour I have...
Last night I was helping with post service refreshments, and went to 'plunge' the caffetiere, only for it to erupt all over the work surface, spraying cups, biscuits, sugar packets and everything else with coffee... what a mess! And I went to bed even after washing with that lovely, exlusive scent "eau de fairtrade coffee"!!
During the night I woke up as I usually do mid-melt (oh, the joys of chemically induced menopause sheduled to last a decade!!) and thought my shoulders were even wetter than usual (sorry if that's too much information)... I realised that my chillow had popped, or at least sprung a leak, soaking my pillow and bedding, ugh! Up I got and sorted that out.
But, overall these two little incidents were so silly, so trivial that they brought a smile to my face, a lightness to my heart and a bit of perspective... OK so I'd had a tough old week, but I had one heck of a lot to be thankful for... including paper towels at church and spare bed linen at home!
Someone said to me after this morning's service, that ministers have a tendency to think they're God... not in the arrogant, above contradiction, my-word-is-law kind of way, but in the impossibly high and unrealisitc expectations they place upon themselves... we allow other people to be fallible but expect ourselves to be perfect.
I think these are wise and helpful words... and I will try to be a teeny bit kinder to myself! I'm not God, just a very naughty girl.... :-)
Today in our service we had one scriptural parable and three others...
The parable of the tenants in the vineyard, rebranded as 'the parable of the landlord who refused to give up'
The Parable of the Candle
Light a candle and see how it dispels the darkness, its tiny flame visible over vast distances, bringing sight to those around. But draw too close to the flame, the source of light, and all is dark.
The Parable of the Charity Fun Run
Young and old, fit and flabby, some fast, some slow, some the full distance, some only part... each one with a shared goal, each one rewarded with the same medal
The Parable of the Ski-ing Lesson (borrowed/adapted from Lesley Riddoch)
The novice skier stood at the top of the slop and pushed off. As she gained pace, she saw in her path a small child... transfixed by that she wished to avoid, she hurtled faster and closer... only when the child moved to one side was disaster averted.
[This one came inits original form with an explanation: don't focus on the thing you want to avoid; focus on the thing you want to achieve]
After yesterday's hear on sleeve stuff, a couple of photos of lovely flowers given to me by folk at church today. Lots of words of encouragment and a few hugs... I hope that admission of fallibility and clay feet frees other people to feel safe to take risks with each other.
This post comes with a health warning... it's brutally honest so don't read it if you are the least bit fragile. This is not a 'nice minister' post, it's a 'this is how it is for me today' post...
You might want to listen to this song as you read:
This song was one of those on my Pink Ribbon Walk playlist, chosen for me by a very proud Scot and 'bc buddy'. It was a long time since I'd heard it, but in the past three months it has been a kind of 'touch stone' for my own experience... "all I wanted was an ordinary life"... but it wasn't to be. Some of it my choice, some of it force of circumstance, some of it so much better than I could have dreamed of, some of it worse than my nightmares... but it has been, and continues to be 'a life less ordinary' (to pinch a film title)
I don't have any regrets about my life so far - it is what it is, and it is part of something bigger and more beautiful than I can comprehend. But...
"I don't know where I'll be in ten years time" - I don't even know if I will be, let alone where I'll be. In my darkest moments, when the fear of recurrence or metastases invades my consciousness I do wonder 'will I be here in years to come'... am I over-reacting to symptoms that could just be part of ageing or am I stupidly dismissing as trival signs of something signfiicant?
"All I wanted was an ordinary life" - just a bright kid from a council house, all I wanted was to get an education, get a good job, have a house, car and a cat... was that too much to ask? I achieved them all, and then surrendered them, one by one, to follow what I believed, and still believe, to be God's call on my life.
"What makes you different from anyone here?" Nothing... and everything... Over the past few months I've become more and more aware of not fitting anywhere anymore (I told you this was a brutally honest post). Not belonging in England. Not belonging in Scotland. Not even sure what British means any more... Baptist minister John Rackley once described the minister as 'the intentional outsider', the one who deliberately maintains a degree of provisionality in their relationships... I get that, but it isn't me, isn't how I operate. Yet, despite my best efforts, despite loving both the congregations entrsuted to me until it hurts, I know I am never entirely 'of' them, there is always the unspoken fact that one day I will go and they will carry on without me.
"Do you miss your life back home?" Where's home? What, even, is 'home? I grew up with 'home' as the various houses where my parents and siblings lived together; as an adult I've joked that it was 'wherever I parked my car'; more recently I have quipped 'wherever Holly (cat) is'... Following God's call on my life has left me somewhat rootless, with no clear sense of 'home'... I have an eschatalogical understanding of course, but increasingly, wherever I reside there's a sense of being a 'reisdent alien'. Do I miss my life back home? I guess I miss knowing what, never mind where, 'home' was.
"I don't care about the cameras, I don't care about the lights..." I never wanted to be "the first ordained woman minister in sole pastoral charge of a Baptist church in Scotland" I just wanted, given that was my calling, to get on and do it the best I can. I never wanted to be a name in Baptist history books, or a role model for other women ministers. I never wanted to be anything other than ordinary... but it wasn't my choice, and I try as best I can to live up to the expectations.
"At night when you go to bed, do these thoughts run through your head..." These, and so many, many more. The over-reflection on anything and everything. The self-flagellation over the things I said that turned out to be unhelpful or hurtful. The fear of fouling up, of messing up the way for other women called into ministry in Baptist churches. The fear of letting God down. The disappointments with myself, with others, with systems... So many, many thoughts...
So, in case anyone who loves me has managed to get this far, the few things I am still sure of are:
God has called me to be the person I am, where I am, doing what I am
There is absolutely no sense that I want to move away from this place or this role (indeed I saw a job advertisement yesterday that once I would have leaped at and it held zero attraction)
I love Glasgow; I love Scotland; I love England... and that's not always an easy or comfortable blend
I love my church, there is nowhere else I could imagine being at this point in time, or in any future I can conceive
Way back when as I explored a call to ordained minsitry, I read a little book called something like 'no matter what the cost' about Christian discipleship - and I thought 'I can sign up for that'. Perhaps as well I couldn't know the future.
I don't know where, or even if, I'll be in ten years time -
I don't care about the 'firstness' or the 'Baptist history'
All I wanted was an ordinary life...
At night when I go to bed
These thoughts (and more) run through my head
I don't know about the future,
And I cannot change the past
But somewhere in it all God has a plan...
And it seems this is no ordinary life...
To live is Christ, to die is gain -
But in between,
The urgent need of the gospel outweighs any desire of mine for ordinariness
