Day of the earth

It’s Holy Saturday today, which of course means this is the last day of Lent. To be honest I can’t quite believe it’s here. I’m caught between wanting to stay in this time of reflection, yet not wanting to hold back from the Easter celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.

My hope is that I’ll be able to celebrate whilst perusing a culturally subversive life, more focussed on following Jesus in all the tiny decisions I make everyday. I want to see the Kingdom break in to more places I go, all the while learning how to see that work continued in the everyday bustle of living in the city.

Lamentation, Giotto di Bondone (1305/06)

I read John 19 this afternoon to help focus the day. Some call today “the day of the earth”. There’s a remembering of Jesus descending from the cross and returning to earth, to be buried, entombed. Reflecting on this reminded me of the peaceable nature of God’s Kingdom. That even in the face of something dark and destructive, when all you’ve done looks like it’s being taken away, God’s grace and power is way beyond the things facing you (even a torturous death). That he can take what looks like death and bring about something new.

So for me, I’m longing to see tomorrow morning come, I’m longing to see the resurrected Christ disturb my everyday and show me over and over again that sacrifice, compassion and love will always win.

Bring on Easter morning!

Peace & love,

dan

There’s been a shift.

Entering into Lent is often quite a strange experience.

You stand at the edge of this six-week span clutching to something you know you should be able let go of, asking yourself the question “can I really do this?” Then with a degree of abandonment mixed with reluctance, you choose to make a sacrifice, one which you hope will remind you of the momentous Christ event mapped out in the distant Lenten terrain. Then as you embark on this journey, you hope to emerge the other side closer, and held tight by God as you wake up to the realisation that your grip on things doesn’t really need to be so tight.

For me this year is no different. I’ve been through this before, yet during the past six weeks I’ve found myself wondering if things really were going to change in me. I started wondering if I had become too familiar with change that I couldn’t see it happening. So I’ve recently been trying to dig down and ask myself some difficult questions; What am I really letting go of ? Is there anything I really need to die to that I might be avoiding? What will I really be like at the end of all this?

But here’s part of my struggle, as we’ve been working through these weeks I’ve had moments when I’ve simply been thinking:

Oh I need to deal with that… but hang on, it’s going costs more than my weekly budget.
Well, not to worry, I’ll just wait until Easter. I’ll buy it then.

Now, waiting to buy something in itself isn’t a bad thing; I mean exercising patience is always good for you. But every time I’ve had that thought (and there’s been many times over the past few weeks) it became increasingly frustrating.

Normally I’m ok with waiting so long as I have an idea of how long. It can be ages, or a short time, I’m not to fussed just so long as I have an idea. So my frustration hasn’t really been in the waiting. I’ve found myself in a tension between knowing I can wait, and realizing that it’s not ok to put things off until Easter as if everything will get back to ‘normal’ after Lent has passed.

I read Stuart’s post the other day and it resonated with similar thoughts running through my mind. How will I carry on life after Lent? If I’m dying to something here, then surely it’s going to affect me?

It’s as if this last week has started to really make me look ahead, not just forward thinking, planning, or the in way you look for the light at the end of the tunnel. But more in terms of reflecting on how I live my life after Easter, living out justice with the kind of humanity God designed me with.

Things around us aren’t always as they should be and this season of Lent has really helped highlight the struggles I have with seeking to see them become more as they should be when the presence of Gods kingdom is near.

So in recognition of this, I made a coffee, ate a hot cross bun and wrote this thought:

There’s been a shift.

I hope you’re feeling it too…

Peace & grace x

It tasted good to feel the benefit of Lent.

Tea anyone?

It feels like I should have written more by now. But the simple fact is I haven’t.

It’s like when you’ve got something to do and instead of really getting on with it, you go off and make a cup of tea in a vain bid to distract yourself from what you really should be doing. And if you’re looking to make the distraction last longer, yet at the same time justified, you end up asking people around you, “I’m making a cuppa, do you want one?” providing you an entirely legitimate time extension as you ‘selflessly’ make the entire office a cup of tea. All the while your work isn’t being done, and you’re looking at the clock as the kettle boils wondering if an hour really has to last an hour.

I think it’s entirely possible to get to this point in Lent and start loosing steam.

It’s possible to get to this point having given something up and long for it all to be over. Our attention can start to run off course and we’re left wondering why we started this in the first place.

I found myself at times wondering why am I doing this? Why make things harder? Why would you do that to yourself?

But then I remember, It’s not about me. Not everything is about me. Even trying to celebrate whether I’m doing well with the Lent project isn’t the issue. Focusing any energy on the fact that we’re living on less is not the point, humbling myself and realizing that what I have is to used well, not wasting or simply indulging myself with things is becoming more apparent. Writing about how God can change our lives through spiritual disciplines, Dallas Willard (a great Christian philosopher and theologian) puts it this way:

The idealization of poverty is one of the most dangerous illusions of Christians in the contemporary world. Stewardship – which requires possessions and includes giving – is the true spiritual discipline in relation to wealth.

So he’s not saying wealth is bad (not that I thought it was) but he makes the obvious point, which is that how we use and share goods (money, property, possessions, skills..) is central to developing as an apprentice of Jesus.

I think I’m at a stage where my vision of what it means to manage what I have is becoming clearer.

Life can feel like a car wreck

I’ve been reminded recently that there are times in life when things happen so fast you only get to understand them after the event. This was brought home quite abruptly on Monday as we managed to avoid piling into a crash happening literally in front of us at 50mph.

The RAC van hit the cab, which then spun and flipped onto its side. Thankfully I managed to glide around and pull in, completely avoiding the whole thing. I got out and ran down the hard shoulder towards the cab which still had the engine running and petrol pouring out onto the road.

Now, I’d decided to wear a cream jumper that day and right in the middle of getting the driver out, this thought enters my head… “try and keep it clean”. Can you imagine, I’m facing the underside of the cab with the engine chugging away, petrol leaking out, who knows if it’s going to explode, we don’t know at this point what state the driver is in, and I’m thinking about my jumper. Ok, so it was only a fleeting thought, but still there are more important things to worry about.

We pulled the driver out, debris all over the road, cars passing by and all the time wondering if the cab was going to ignite. Thankfully it didn’t.

I walked both drivers safely out of the way and sat them on some steps near the roadside. We waited with them until the police, ambulance and fire brigade turned up to deal with all the wreckage (we do have amazing provision in this country).

But here’s the thing, can you believe no one was hurt? No blood, not even a scratch. I mean it literally was a miracle. In the midst of this car wreck everyone was fine. So as I gave my statement to the police officer, I couldn’t help but realise after the event how God can be right there in the midst of the chaos. But sometimes you can only realise that after the dust has settled.

A real miracle, no one was hurt!

I'm not sure they were taking new membership at this location.

The cab got spun and flipped by the van

Unexpected costs

Anyone who knows me knows that throughout the course of any given month me and Isabella have a lot of people flowing through our home. I mean a lot. I worked out that since we bought our sofas back in 2001, they’ve been on the receiving end of over 10,000 instances of people’s behinds being parked. They’ve done well, but we decided that after years of faithful service, the time had come for their replacement.

So off we went, in the midst of the snow and January sales to find a worthy successor, which reveled itself in the form of 3 seater with an attractive 50% off the retail price. Nice. As you’d expect we went through the usual transaction dance with the salesman, “How will you be paying for it?” “…what colour would you like it in sir?” “…is there suitable access to get it into your home?” Amongst my various responses, my answer to this last question was “Yes, of course there’s room”.

Bit of a mistake.

Yesterday it turned up and we had the fun of removing the front door just to get it in the hallway. Then along with the delivery guys we negotiated it into the doorway of the lounge only to find out that even with the most trained mind for considering physical space, it didn’t take long to realise the words of the delivery guy rang true, “da simple fact eez, it ain’t gonna go.”

He was right, and after giving his short speech about how it isn’t his job to make it fit he took a deep intake of breath (in only the way that people who are about to charge you a lot of money do) and said “well, we got 11 uver jobs so we can’t ‘ang about”. With that they promptly gave me the paper work and shot off into the distance with the sofa leaning against the door way, peering in.

Not such a great moment.

Now I’m not one to be beaten, so I looked around the lounge and concluded it could fit, but only through the rear window. So as you do, I took the window apart and removed the glass. Called a friend (thanks Stuart) and we took it back out the house, around the side and popped it through the window (I say ‘popped’, but it was more of a “to me, to you” moment).

Needless to say we got it in the house ok. But then there was this obvious problem, the gaping hole where the glass used to be. And this is where it hit me, I hadn’t calculated on having to take the window out, and the cost of repairing a window certainly wasn’t part of the weekly budget. I know it seems like a slightly odd thing, but then unexpected costs often are.

And in this I was suddenly made aware that it’s one thing making a budget and sticking to it when things are fine, but when you get a curve ball, that’s when things start to become tricky. What if your children need shoes at the beginning of the school year? What about when your fridge packs up? Or your bath leaks? What happens when things need replacing and you don’t have any savings?

This business of benefits in Lent is starting to make me realise that when you’re strapped and then offered a bit of cash, or credit at interest, you could really get yourself into a mess.

The window cost £26.47 to repair, so I think we’ll have to tighten things up a bit around here.

Halima’s Story

Feeling quite inspired this morning after hearing Halima’s story (for anyone who missed it, check out the website where you can download the talk and also some pics too) she’s someone we came to know recently through instigating the Benefits in Lent project. It’s been great so far hearing a whole load of people’s stories that continue to point us all in the direction of carrying each other’s load.

It seems that confronting this issue is raising all kinds of stuff in us…

May the tension between dying to what holds us down, and that which can be birthed in us continue!

The bottle

Compliments of the hostle!

Being prepared (or not)

(So I wrote this post early this morning but for some reason it didn’t work and I lost it. I was so disapointed. In my mind I’d managed to write something clear, that I thought captured where I’m at right now. I hope I can recapture something of what I was chewing over)

I realsed something today about planning. As you’ll know from yesterdays post I’m away all week doing some community organising training, which meant I had to bring a bunch of stuff with me. So there’s all the usual things like clothes, shoes, toiletries, pen, note book… But anyone who knows me won’t be all that surprised I forgot something.

Shower gel.

Now in itself this isn’t a tradgedy. But I have found it more socially acceptable to not smell. Now ordinarily I’d just buy some on the go, it’s convenient, it’s easy. But then I wondered “so would you just do that if your income was low?” Probably not, maybe, I’m not sure… But it did make me think that with more money comes convenience and speed, you can afford to live differently.

So I had a choice to make. Buy more gel which I didn’t ‘need’, or hope there would be some where I was going. I went for the hope option.

Now, the accomodation I’m staying at is actually the HQ for the ‘Boys Brigade’ (think church hall meets army barracks) so it’s not what you’d call 5star, more like 2. But I was grateful to find a funny little bottle filled with a green solution waiting for me in the bathroom.

It reminded me that sometimes I’m not prepared for things, I forget or I’m simply unable to make everything work.

I feel like maybe I’m starting to really enter into this season of Lent. I think as we approach the first week I’m starting to reflect more deeply on what it might mean to really learn what it means to organise money.

So I leave you with this latest form of learning, brought courtesy of a tiny bottle of gel. My hope that I can continue to become more prepared to trust in Jesus as I let go of control.

Peace & love,

dan

Boot camp

I’m away for the week doing some training with London Citizens which is very exciting as these guys are having a real impact in addressing the question “how can I be a good neighbour in such a large, diverse and dynamic city?”

But being here away from home for the week of course poses a couple of issues when trying to engage with benefits during Lent. But it did reminded me that my life is full of opportunity, that I am priveleged to go and do things that perhaps may otherwise be restricted.

But then I met one of the delegates.

She’s on benefits and told us about her situation (there’s a lot of great story telling going on here) and how she’s becoming an organiser to help herself and others get free from debt that cripples so many (her credit card debt is off the scale – at least compared with what she could ever afford to repay). She’s a hard working single mum simply trying to get by and make life for her son better than she’s found it.

She was quite an inspiration and encouraged me to return with a fuller understanding and desire to engage with the project.

Lent is a time to reflect, but my hope is that reflection and stirring of God agitates us to begin a process of social change in our neighbourhood.

Peace & love.

Dan

(oh and the plan is to post every day, but let’s see – the timetable is pretty tight!)

First Sunday of Lent

Well so far, so good. We’re sticking to our budget and things seem to be ok. But I’ve been thinking the first week is probably not going to be as tough as when the stocks of food already in the cupboard start getting used up. I suppose there are many flaws to the project, but I hope as we continue our awareness will increase and that as we continue to try and align ourselves with those who have less, God will profoundly change us.

Bring on week two!