a moment in the rushing...

A moment in the rushing...
The shortest day of the year, winter solstice, a dark sky beyond our kitchen window; we are frantically preparing for our carol service. Gathering together last minute things to create a children's nativity; the Christmas story to be fondly retold in the time honoured tradition of little children dressed in tea towels, tinsel and paper crowns. Mary, taking on the cherished role to stand beside the manger almost as if she were again the mother of the baby king. Our hall the waiting room of boxes and bags of things that need to be transported to church, with hairbrush in one hand and coat in another, breakfast things to be cleared away, people coming for lunch, we fill the dish washer and straighten the cushions... what to do, things to do, the frazzled attempt to make it all right and bring everything and not forget anything. Then we stop, as the bright rising light swathes the dark backdrop of early morning winter sunrise; sweeping across the wide expanse of sky white birds reflecting the sunshine swooping down and up and around. We breathe in the beauty of an unexpected moment of serenity, amidst the crazy doing and the mad rushing and the thoughtless preparation. To what end? When here before us the shortest day of time begins with a silent display of the creator God who silently taps the deepest heart and opens up His purpose beyond the sticky tape and fairy lights a far greater beauty that we almost miss and all too soon the sky has turned to sultry grey and the sunlight fades and the day moves on. We go again but this time with deeper heart throb, packing the car, opening the church and re-creating that Christmas story, knowing that He who came as a baby, who paints the sky deep blue, whose twinkling stars looked upon Himself in the softness of a newborn baby, and allows the sun to shine so clear and bright, once more brings hope and love and a silent moment of belonging to our Christmas rushing.

only a dog.

I am sitting at the computer it's quiet, its evening, it's been cold...a loud thud. I look out of the window but I cannot see anything, then I look again,to hear the piercing scream and howl of a young girl.
Venturing outside, we see them.
A young girl huddled over her precious dog who lies pitifully limp and soaked in blood,the girl howls again.
The car has gone, the car that hit the dog leaves behind this painful picture.
We stand helplessly, 'my mam's coming' cries the girl and we try to direct the traffic, my neighbour goes to fetch a blanket and we all look helplessly at this little bundle of grief.
Mammy arrives, taking a deep breath and comforts her daughter and brings another blanket for the little friend who is no more, tears welling in her own motherly eyes.
The girls pal just stands and watches, her face white and her her lip quivering.
We go back indoors, leaving behind this little family of whom we never knew before, a shrug, a sorry and words cannot share their grief.
Losing a pet they loved, hearing the dreadful thud as the car hit ,taking away the little playmate and leaving a young girl to cry.
The rain comes and washes away the thick blood that stains the road and wipes away the story that I now tell, while knowing that this brief encounter tonight has brought someone such sadness.
Only a dog, only a friend, only part of a life that's gone forever..

Have your cake..and eat it!

Its Saturday afternoon..I love Saturdays...if you are married to a church minister,as I am, Saturdays can be a bit of a busy day, at least for him.
However well you get on in the week there are always final preparations and the sermon to finish. Having lived with this, and him, for rather a long time now, I am resigned to Saturdays being much less of a going out and family sort of a day and more of a doing what I want to do sort of a day.
Saturday is the only day in our house when we can usually get up a little later, when we can sit around a little longer at breakfast and then wonder why it is mid-day already! Saturday is getting the shopping done and buying the all important newspapers. I have an addiction to Saturday papers, namely the Irish Times, whilst he loves the Telegraph.
The Saturday paper has all the weekend extras and the colour supplement that shows me recipes I shall never make,restaurants I could frequent and clothes I most certainly will never wear,( even if I would quite like to!) I read the snippets of places to visit and exhibitions happening in Dublin but rarely attend, keep up with columns about people I feel I know but who don't know me, I even read the obituaries and become sad that such interesting people are no longer with us even though in life I often didn't know they existed! Often I read the lists of Sunday Church Services, I can check the Presbyterians and see who of our colleagues has a visiting preacher and wonder if they are on holiday!
Another aspect of Saturdays , within the busyness of sermon preparation, time is found to watch football or rugby, not me I hasten to add but my dear minister husband. Even if I don't watch I have come to appreciate the cheering crowds and noises of exasperation or jubilation that come from the armchair on Saturday afternoons.
When all this is happening, if I do not have the service sheets to type, though I usually do or a Sunday school lesson to prepare which may get left to the evening... I go to the kitchen and cook. Something about Saturdays, something about reading about others doing things in the paper, something about the homeliness of every ones weekend inspires me to want to bake.
Sometimes I have to cook, we have people coming round, but when there is no particular reason then its so much more fun. Eggs and flour and vanilla essence, I am probably the most unorganised cook and soon the kitchen is filled with wonderful smells and a trail of cooking ingredients. We have shortbread, we have cake, tins are filled and dinners prepared..for no particular reason..except Saturday...
Then the phone rings and someone shouts 'you get it' 'it will be him' and sure enough it is..
Every Saturday at 5 or 6 or 7 and if he doesn't we ask ourselves..'He hasn't phoned, do you think he's OK?'
we chat, he's done this and that, nothing really, nothing much, got a bit lonely, went for a walk, sat in the park, back in the bed sit now...
Then we tell him what we've done
'is he not takin ye out' he asks...and I always say 'no, it's Saturday..'
'oh, right enough' he says
'..but I made cake' I say 'what for?' says he
'no particular reason' I say 'but I'll bring you some to church tomorrow'
'I'd love that' says he,'I'll try to be there early but you know how it is..'
and I know how it is... we finish our Saturday.

Sunday is Sunday.
I cut up some cake and wrap it in tin foil.
It is our tenth anniversary at this church, two weeks ago but it takes time to get 'things together'
They want to give us a presentation, 'there's cake downstairs Ruth' whispers a small boy in Sunday School. There's the embarrassing rigmarole of presentations in front of everyone that comes to me as 'ministers wife', and our children as 'ministers kids' and my husband as 'the Minister'...
and a cake to cut in white icing and plastic flowers and splendidly gooey cream...
In all the commotion a familiar figure, who wasn't there for the whole service but arrives for the end, shakes my hand...'I brought you cake' I say, it almost seems absurd as I look around at everyone sharing the carefully cut celebration cake.
I hand him the tin foil package and he holds it in his hands. we chat, again.
I watch him go..
My 'no particular cake' has become 'very particular cake'.
Finally all the people leave and the rest of the celebration cake is lifted into its shop box and given...to me, to us,
'have your cake, Ruth'...

'you deserve it'

One street, two girls, last nights channel 4 documentary
The one girl lived in the 'affluent area' went to a fee paying school, got driven around by her Mum, had her own bedroom and a lovely garden. The other a young 17 year old who left school at 13, had a little brother of 5 and a Mum who didn't work and suffered with depression.

It could be said that the girl with the wealthy life style was bitter, she had not yet had the chance to work but was studying at a good school paid for by her parents. She didn't like the fact that people lived on benefits and didn't try to make something of their life.

The girl from a difficult and poor background, was resigned to her lot, not necessarily bitter but unable to get out of where she was at. With little money her fear was of what others as they filmed would say about her. She worried about her mother. They appeared pretty hopeless in their situation and had little where with all to make it better. An unspoken love for her mother and brother came across.

The other girl was outspoken about her standard in life and felt she was deserving of it. Her fear was to walk along 'the other end of the road' the very real fear of being mugged even knifed.This girls mother didn't allow her to walk in certain areas and had a superior attitude as they drove around the nearby streets. There was no outward portrayal of their love as a family except one that tried to protect and defend.

Two girls who eventually met. The one girl dressed up and tried to look her best, the other dressed down and tried to blend in. They both chewed gum, they both straightened their hair with hair straighteners, they both shuffled along the road and talked about the local area from their own perspective. From the outside they very nearly looked the same.

Each girl asked the other the wrong questions because of assumptions they made of each other..sometimes they laughed, sometimes there was silence...
The girl from the wealthier background was more understanding after their acquaintance, the other girl realised that although she had so much less she wasn't very different.

Such was this filmed observation of two lives.

It is only when you know someone that you get a bearing on what makes them who they are. Much of what we think is our own, is only the influence of where we come from.
I am grateful for the cushioning I have received in life way before I even lifted a finger to make anything happen. I don't know what sort of a life I would make for myself if my start was one with a mother who was depressed in a council flat and a little brother who had no bed to sleep on...and then I think to myself how can I make assumptions about others when I have had it so good?

In the 'current economic crisis',we watch as money we had put aside and money we had saved blows around like the wind, we never held it in our hands, we knew it was there if we needed it but our day to day needs are met and we have accumulated other things that we seem to never even use.

There are so many people in our own country who hold their money in their hands and watch it go week by week or even by day, there are people in the world who rarely hold much money in their hand and when the grain fails and the weather is severe their world crumbles even further.

As I make another cup of tea and grab a biscuit for myself I am yet again enjoying the benefit of where I come from .... I don't know if I deserve it...

No offence... BUT...

In Ireland you can offend someone if you wear a poppy. A red poppy to honour the dead, men and women who died in the first and second world wars ...some of whom were Irish. In England this week staff at Buckingham Palace were prevented from wearing a poppy because it could cause 'offence'. On Sunday the Queen laid a wreath of poppies at the cenotaph in London, but whoever is in charge of staff at Buckingham palace ruled against staff wearing a Poppy in what is the Queens home for the sake of 'Political correctness'.

This got me thinking about what causes 'offence' and should we just not do things because it might 'cause offence' and anyway what does that exactly mean? If someone does something completely different to me, wears something that I wouldn't wear or even says something that is different to the way I think..should I feel offended and if I do what should I do about it?

It appears to me that offence is caused more by preventing someone from doing something, I am 'offended' that some people think I should not wear a poppy, I am 'offended' that some people think I should not be happy Obama was elected....I am using the word 'offended' but actually I am not...I am just all the more resolute on my opinion whilst acknowledging that others have their opinion too!
When I wear my poppy I am recognizing the sacrifice made by Irish people in the wars, my great grandfather was a surgeon in the British Army..in Ireland.Because I am also from Britain I want to acknowledge the British part in the wars. If I am the only person in Ireland who wears a poppy, that's OK, I don't want or need anyone else to to do it, its my decision.

This week on facebook I was shocked that most of my American friends were so distraught about the elections, I realised that we have friends and very good Friends who are but one part of the American people. I said my bit, they said theirs, I wasn't actually expecting them to change to my opinion, but I felt that mine could be heard and so could theirs. In a way we ended up being 'offended'.. If friendship and belonging depends on whether or not I agree with you or whether or not you like what I do then I am beginning to think that we haven't yet discovered what real friendship is. If I am always looking for people who are an extension of who I am or what I believe then I am only being a friend with myself, if I can move beyond the opinion and still maintain my own, listen to others and learn from them too, then I have moved into a deeper understanding of someone and their opinions as I expect them to do to me. In that case offence is not an option, the responsibility is all on me to not be offended, recognizing that my opinions may offend.

On Saturday we went to Waterford with our daughter to meet a Mennonite/Amish* community, as part of her RE leaving cert project. I love these people, I love their simplicity of life style, I love their serving attitude, I love the way in which they put aside so many of the trappings of the world...but part of me is worried that they don't really dialogue with society to use their christian understanding and change the way society works. I think Christians need to speak out.When thinking about it I wondered if in some ways they do, this particular Mennonite/Amish* group is living and working amongst the community in Waterford and their sincerity and honesty maybe speaks in actions way beyond words. They are by choice passive but their very existence can offend not because of anything they say but simply by their choosing to be alternative, highlighting the frivolity of so much we think is important.(* I am talking from my experience of this group only and they are impressive)

Yesterday our church went to RTE studios to do a live remembrance service. In many ways it was very false, acting out a 'rehearsed' production in a studio. I hope it acknowledged the lives of those who suffered and the families who have remained, I hope it also pointed more to peace than to war and our calling as Christians to be peacemakers.
On our return we watched the DVD of our feeble efforts, of our cringing expressions and the minute details of what we looked like! Such is our egocentricity. Nobody in my family liked watching themselves on TV but everyone else said 'you looked good'. The person I portray may not necessarily be the person I am inside, watching myself on TV was like watching a stranger, and yet I know myself so well. I wonder if the fact that I disliked watching myself so much meant that I was offending myself, is that possible...maybe no one sets out to offend and its as if we are all just watching ourselves on TV and need others not to be offended by us but understood by us. When we understand we can so help and love and sometimes change for the better.

So I have decided that 'offence' is a choice whether it belongs to me or to others and I hope that 'offence' rather than being a word to shun is actually the unique place of reconciliation and change.

Home sweet Home.

We have been in Dublin ten years this actual week! I think if I add Dublin and 12 years in the Northern Ireland I have lived longer in Ireland as a whole than I did in England...
I still have my English accent...
Unfortunately this labels me as constantly 'British', not that I am not proud to be, but I am not necessarily 'English' since my mum was English but I was born in Wales.. therefore I am Welsh..but I lived longer in England, having moved there when I was 7. That I have lived longer in Ireland still, makes my home Irish and having a Dad who was born in Dublin makes me even more Irish! I perpetually never belong. I am one of these people who can't properly lay claim to anywhere or can choose where I want to be a part of depending on who I am with or what it will look like. Consequently I never understand properly national pride and allegiance to one place. I think it might be nice to have lived and remained in one place all of the time, to have my sisters just calling by and to bump into a friend I went to primary school with...
the phone rang..
It was a little lady we know from our church who lives in Dublin. She comes from India and phoned to tell me her problems finding somewhere else to live, today she has trudged around the streets looking for somewhere new to rent with no luck.
At the moment she lives in a little one room appartment, we have visited her there. Whilst she is every bit from India, maybe my inability to lay claim to one nationality loses its significance when I think about her fragile life in rented accommodation and my life here in Dublin, with my family and my home.
Maybe, who I am, is more about 'me' than the place I was born, the place that I live or where I claim to come from. Maybe this little Indian lady with her one room appartment in the centre of Dublin just wants as much as anyone else to belong to some place she can call 'home'.

Facebook

It occurred to me why would anyone want to blog...who reads a blog and who writes them? Obviously I now write one but I haven't a clue if anyone is reading it. The only time I read blogs is if I think they are saying something about me! On a few occasions I discovered things about me that I didn't even know from someone else's point of view! It wasn't necessarily bad but it was from a totally different perspective from how I saw things. Today we picked someone up from the airport; when you bring someone into Dublin for the first time, you start to see all the ordinary things that you take for granted daily, form a different perspective. A bit like blogging! I found myself apologizing for the wind and rain, as if I could have done better, and feeling ashamed at graffiti on the walls as if i should have cleaned up before they arrived! I guess a blog is like that too, I have read blogs that tell the persons inner most secrets, maybe here I am just trying to show the sunny un-graffitied part of my life...maybe that's what a blog is like? Similarly with facebook showing happy smiling faces and a perfect little world we can all live in for a while. I like facebook, it keeps me in touch with people without having to say too much, I know more snippets of peoples lives than I have ever known. I know their favorite colour, when they go out to dinner, if their relationship has ended begun or they got married. On facebook you become friends with people you were already friends with, marry the person you were married to for 22 years, condense what is going on in your life into one small profile status and invite people to see how alike they are to you. I get a buzz if I am 90 % peas in a pod and depressed when I am poles apart from someone I thought I was really good friends with! Such is the unreal world of facebook!
In reality, we change the clocks tonight and get that wonderful extra hour, it will start to get dark by 5 o'clock and the Christmas lights, though not on are up in O'Connell street. It has rained all day and its just ordinary life that makes blogging so ordinary...

orange pumkins

well it worked, I finally tidied the kitchen, threw loads out and now I have proper clear work tops like a real house with a real housewife with a real kitchen, the fact that the whole kitchen should be ripped out doesn't really matter to me tonight. I guess the kitchen itself is over 20 years old and I know that I should keep up and get nice new shiny presses and work tops, in fact that is the churches job and they even said we could...but sometimes I think about all the people in the world who don't even have a kitchen and I feel kind of like why do I need to 'keep up' just because everyone else's kitchen is so nice and new. The other problem is the dreaded CRAFTS! My kitchen doubles up as an art studio, mainly for my adorable minded children..and me...we paint, we stick, we cut out we have glue, glitter and clay..and my kitchen is perfect to make a mess in..even more so now because we have clear work tops to put things on.We even have a press to put the toaster in...but I am sure my family will not be able to work out where to put it and so tomorrow it will be back out on top until I put it back. Funny how old habits die hard. For instance about three years ago we didn't have a dish washer and so naturally we stacked dishes next to the sink and washed up from there. Now we have a dish washer the natural progression would be to put the dirty dishes in the machine..but somehow they still get stacked by the drainer..why? because the dish washer is full..clean ..yes..but some people here can't, won't or don't empty it! Every time I 'gently' mention this fact it is returned with' but I did' or ' I always do the dish washer' translation ' I did it 5 days ago' so basically that's my job..mostly..Alan is pretty OK at it because I sort of moaned and nagged for so long ( well he would say that, I say I just commented)
back to the subject of crafts, I went tonight to a children's craft session ( well not for children but for adults to learn how to do crafts!) It was a bit bizarre really because I can do crafts, I never say I can do anything, so this time I am.Crafts is what I do! Anyway I went! It was weird, it reminded me how kids feel when you stick a paint brush in their hand and tell them to do something. All we had to do at first was paint, ''paint an orange pumpkin''..paintbrush in hand I found myself looking to see what the others were doing..yes at my age too self conscious to just paint an orange pumpkin!Well that wasn't the end..what we didn't make!Instead of my kitchen the place was covered in glitter, paper and glue. Coming back home everyone was out and no one here to admire my handiwork!! The plan is you can make these wonderful things with your kiddies! I know I've already gone off orange pumpkins, maybe we'll stick to black cats to attach on the window with shiny bits to let the light through, what a life I lead..I forgot, the teacher passing behind where I was sitting said 'well done Ruth that's very good' wow, my head was as big as a pumpkin..I actually felt so proud of myself.. good learning experience to go back to your childhood, I go there often!!
Right now I have a splitting headache and a good cup of tea is called for, cleaning the kitchen and forced crafts are certainly too much for anyone!

to WORK or not to WORK

Well I have finally joined the world of blogging. At the moment it also feels like 'time wasting'. I am 'off 'work today, when I say work I mean my income work because today is supposed to be work as in housework work...we'll see.
Coming to check the e-mail has to be my worst bad habit at the moment, granted there are lots of important e-mails to answer but then I think of other things to 'just check' and before I know it I have wasted an hour looking at this screen and achieving very little.
Now if looking at the screen, answering e-mails was my job then I would feel very justified in doing all this...alas..it is not! ( I don't think it is anyway!?)
I have walked the dog, that is virtuous, now I want to clear the kitchen of clutter! This is a near impossibility as although it may seem like a good idea it is virtually impossible as the kitchen in our house doubles up as my work space, the family dining area, childminding area..for cookery arts and crafts, we have no utility room and so the laundry has to be done in here too. However the radio in the kitchen picks up all the stations and so while I 'work' I can pick up classic FM,RTE and BBC the only problem I have is choosing which one. If anyone in my family was astute they might catch on that you can pretty well know my mood from what I am listening to. Classic FM=content and pottering around getting things done! BBC= needs to get away from the daily routine and Dublin. RTE= probably busy and involved in Irish life! if I am listening to a CD=don't talk to me! They havn't worked it out and for the most part let mum listen away...when i am listening I am quiet! When I am listening I get the work done!
So its now to the kitchen to WORK in two hours time I could have a clutter free kitchen!