Love Repaid

Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander died and went to heaven. He's a neurosurgeon, so he not only knows what death look like, but has the scans to prove he had it.

Obviously, he came back again, and wrote 'Proof of Heaven' which is a pretty good read, but in the interests of saving you time and money, I shall tell you what he came back to say:

You are absolutely and unconditionally loved. The other side of the great divide, Love is indeed, all there is.

You have nothing to fear.

You can do nothing wrong.


There's freedom for you!

Two thousand years ago today, Someone Else returned from the dead to say pretty much the same thing.  Sadly, the wonder and the joy of  the message of  the  Christ is almost lost to the world outside the church. Almost.

Happy Easter!


Sunday, March 31, 2013
Easter Sunday

How Does One Really Love God?
Meditation 36 of 52

Ordinary Christianity has emphasized that we should love God. This makes sense, but do we really know how to do that? What I find in the mystics is an overwhelming experience of how God has loved us! That’s what comes through all of their writings, and I do mean all—that God is forever the aggressive lover, God is the protagonist, God is the one who seduces me out of my unworthiness. It’s all about God’s initiative! Then the mystics try desperately to pay back, to offer their lives back to the world, to the poor and rejected, and thus back to God. Love is repaid by love alone.

Mystics are not trying to earn God’s love by doing good things or going to church services. That question is already and profoundly resolved. The mystics’ overwhelming experience is this full body blow of divine embrace, a radical acceptance by God even in their state of fragmentation and poverty. That’s what makes it “amazing” and “grace” (see Romans 11:6).

Adapted from Following the Mystics Through the Narrow Gate Richard Rohr,
. . . Seeing God in All Things (CD, DVD, MP3)

Ain't I A Woman... ?

One day, long ago, I went to look around a prestigious school in Gloucester after putting in an application for the post of deputy head teacher. The head took me into his office and said, ' Don't waste your time, the governors are looking for a man..' This was the 1990's, gender discrimination was illegal, but such was the power differential  between this guy and me, that he knew he could say such a thing with impunity.

(Barnwood C of E Primary School, Gloucester, for the record.)

I soldiered on.  And when I finally got my headship (' No-one will ever appoint you as their deputy, apply, for headships,' A kindly LEA officer finally explained,  after five years.(!). ) I didn't get bitter, I got a Master's Degree, and when I finally achieved my goal, at least I had the satisfaction of knowing I'd made it on my own merits. I do wish though, that the men that were given a head-start at my (and other women's) expense, knew that they hadn't.

For many years, a highlight on the Francis Parental Pride Trail was the annual night out at The High School for Girls, Denmark Road , Prize Giving. (The high point of which was the presentation of the Cup for Netball to a young woman about seven feet tall.) My daughters would receive their prizes, then the guest speaker would give an encouraging homily to the assembly. One speaker quoted the first female mayor of the City of Toronto, who said,

'To get on in the world, a woman has to be twice as good as a man. Fortunately, this isn't difficult.'

How I laughed!

AIN'T I A WOMAN!

That man over there say
     a woman needs to be helped into carriages
and lifted over ditches
     and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages
     or over mud puddles
     or gives me a best place...And ain't I a woman?
     Look at me
Look at my arm!
     I have plowed and planted
and gathered into barns
     and no man could head me...
And ain't I a woman?
     I could work as much
and eat as much as a man —
     when I could get to it —
and bear the lash as well
     and ain't I a woman?
I have born 13 children
     and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mother's grief
     none but Jesus heard me...
And ain't I a woman?
     that little man in black there say
a woman can't have as much rights as a man
     cause Christ wasn't a woman
Where did your Christ come from?
     From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
     If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world
     upside down, all alone
together women ought to be able to turn it
     rightside up again.

Copyright © Sojourner Truth, 1852.

The Creation of The World

The first day

   I came to in the dark cold trembling
   while I gathered twigs lit them he came out
   of the cave shivered held his hands over
   the fire and said: Let there be light

 The second day

   I woke at dawn carried water from the river
   to wet the clay ground so the dust wouldn't
   whip his face he came out I poured water into
   his palms he washed his face looked up and
   said: Let's call the roof sky the dryness earth
   and the gathered waters the seas

The third day

  I got up early picked blue red yellow fruit
  piling small seeds between two stones ground
  kneaded roast them he awoke stretched ate the
  bread the sweet fruit said: Let the earth
  bear tender grasses grasses with seeds fruit
  trees

The fourth day

  I awoke suddenly swept the yard with a branch
  of leaves soaked the laundry scrubbed the
  pots cleaned the tools he woke as I sharpened
  the scythe rolled over and said: Let heavenly
  bodies light the sky to divide day from night

 The fifth day

  I rode in the morning filled the troughs
  gave the horses hay milked the cows
  sheared the sheep grazed the goats stuffed
  the geese cut nettles for the ducklings
  ground corn for the hens cooked slops for
  the pigs threw the dog a bone poured the cat
  its milk he yawned slowly rubbed the sleep from his
  eyes and said: Let everything multiply and
  grow and cover the earth

The sixth day

  Pains woke me I gave birth to my child cleaned
  swaddled nursed him he leaned over let the
  little hand squeeze his thumb he smiled at
  his likeness and saw that truly all of his creation
  was good

The seventh day

 The baby's crying woke me I quickly changed
  his diapers nursed him he quieted down I
 lit the fire aired the apartment brought
 up the newspaper
 watered the plants dusted quietly
 made breakfast the smell of coffee woke him he turned
 on the radio lit a cigarette and blessed the seventh day

Eva Toth and Laura Schiff( Ain't I a Woman! 1987,   Linthwaite I (Ed)  Peter Bederick Books, NEW YORK)

 

How The Hell...

... Am I supposed to know where north is? I'm not a migratory bird!

'Turn North onto Ladymeade Lane' instructs the Google Map App. Well it was going to be 50/50, and the odds let me down. They do, half the time.

So I was a bit late arriving at Silver Lane which was definitely the right turning for the Cheddar Valley Railway Walk, I checked. The lane became a track, the track a farm yard... No sign nor sight. I enquire of two women nattering near a horse box. It IS down there, but there's nowhere to park, and the track was mostly potholes. I gave up. I can walk anywhere!

Driving out, I'd noticed a sign reading Paxton 13th Century Church, so abandoning Plan B ( Day Trip To Weston -Super-Mare: Too Cold.) I set off down the narrow winding lanes to find the Church. Naturally, I nearly missed it, but after a neat 40 point turn, narrowly avoiding a drainage ditch, I made it.

The church looks depressed. Grey, uncared for, unloved. Stubby tower, which is sinking into the peat, and leaning oddly, though not sufficient to make it famous. It is unremarkable in a very dull way.

The interior features seventeenth century woodwork, 'axe-carved oak,' I read with interest. It looked it. The few memorials in the floor were cracked, the King James Bible was split.... I picked it up, reverently and climbed into the lesser pulpit ( There were two ... . One more of an elevated box, with setting for four. Some Puritan thing, I expect? ). Laying  the Book on the reading ledge, I opened it and read aloud a treatise on love. Then I left the church in peace.

The building stands, and is preserved in it's unkempt state, but The Church has gone.

I recall Phillip Larkin's superb poem, 'Church Going' which says it all for me.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=yDp234p_fCM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DyDp234p_fCM

Keeping Active...

Keeping Active

“Mary Ellen, You come back here, you little … ! Don’t let me have to chase after you!” I was in trouble; my mother, who loved me to distraction, only called me ‘Mary Ellen’, when I was in trouble.  I didn’t care. I let the wind carry her protest away, and left her to do as she pleased.

 I recall this as the first day back at home, back on my feet , after a spell in hospital. I was five years old. I didn’t know that the cerebral hemorrhage I suffered, following a fall, had nearly killed me; I didn’t know the long sleep I had enjoyed had been a coma; I didn’t know the reason I limped, was because my left side had suffered paralysis. I only knew that the sun was on my face, there was grass beneath my feet, and I could RUN!

I have slowed down considerably over the years, due, in part, to a love of flowers. It’s not possible to study plants at speed, so now I potter, meander, ramble , and dart about between clumps of greenery with a field guide and a camera. An activity that barely looks like activity, and drives all my walking companions to distraction.

 A chocolate box 1950’s childhood, which mine was, was an endless exploration of the capacity of the juvenile human body to walk, run, climb, wade, swim and swing, in and out of trouble. My mother stopped chasing after me when I was about seven. She opened the doors of our council house at the foot at Robinswood Hill, on the outskirts of the City of Gloucester, and let me go: “Look after Adrian mind! And be home for tea!” My brother Adrian, was twenty months younger than me, and like me , a pirate, an astronaut a cowboy and a smuggler.

I recall in particular, a warm day in early May in 1959. I can pinpoint the time, because late primroses and early bluebells were scenting the woods and hedgerows, and, with Queen Anne’s Lace, in a haphazard bouquet I had picked to take home. By now, Adrian and I had explored ‘The Hill’ from base to summit; a gentle ascent of just over 600 feet. We were investigating a disused reservoir that we had recently discovered. It was hidden in plain sight, next to St Katharine’s Church, Matson, and a stone’s throw from Matson Lane.

 The object of our attention had been abandoned many years ago; it was a tangle of hawthorn, bramble and nettle, so overgrown, that it was only our persistence in conquering the rusting defences, that had led to us finding the water at all. The reservoir seemed huge to us, though it was probably less than thirty feet in diameter. The temptation to sail across it was irresistible; we were, after all, pirates.

 This was the day Adrian nearly drowned. Naturally, we told our parents nothing of this. A tale we decided that he had lived NOT to tell, in case our misadventure lead to us both being permanently grounded.

 It seemed that fate was lending a hand in our aquatic enterprise. An old zinc bath lay half-in, half-out , of the water close to the ‘shore’. It wasn’t easy to free it, but, eventually, we pulled it clear. It must have been filthy, but we were too excited to notice, and probably wouldn’t have cared anyway. Adrian, as pirate chief, took to the water first, and paddled confidently to the middle of the reservoir. At the point furthest from safety, the bath began to sink.

I was nine years old, and really didn’t know how to panic. Neither did Adrian. He paddled faster and faster, out-distancing the incoming water by a few feet, sufficient distance to sink the bath in water shallow enough for him to scramble to safety. For many years afterwards, mother recalled with fondness , the afternoon when her two oldest children squelched up the garden path, a rusting zinc bath oozing mud, and smelling of the ditch, roofing their heads. Two pairs of wellington boots protruded from beneath it, propelling it unsteadily forward. The story the mucky pair told to explain the fact that Adrian was soaked from head to foot, came nowhere close to the truth.

 My turn to take to the water came eight years later, when in the Sixth Form at Ribston Hall High School For Girls. I was offered the opportunity to exchange hockey, which I loathed, for rowing, which I was willing to give a go. A short cycle ride to the canal, eight swift strokes forward, and, freedom!

 My sporting achievements at school , up to September 1968, aspired to modest. I specialised in coming third in events that the House Captain couldn't get anyone else to enter, and I was easily persuaded . In 1965, I streaked away in the 100m hurdles shattering a personal best (never having hurdled before in my life). My proudest moment, however, was achieving 3rd in heaving this huge weight down the field; an activity that, to this day, I have to work hard at remembering if it's called 'shotting the put' or 'putting the shot'. Both work for me.

 In 1967, I missed a place in the School Swimming Gala by not paying full attention during the, 'Someone's got to do it', plea and diving in to swim a length in the wrong stroke. I thought at the time, and still do, that my willingness to take part, so vaunted in British sportmanship, should have been rewarded, at the very least, by an, 'Oh, I say, well done!'. But no, I was disqualified.

 I was not always an ‘also-ran’. Indeed, records show, that in July 1969, I was in the shell that beat Stourport in the final heat of 'The Ladies' Coxed Four' at Gloucester Regatta. I was ‘bow’, that is, position number one; rowing backwards at the front of the boat.

Records LIE. Stourport Ladies beat us by a canvas. (If we were horses, that would be ‘by a nose’.) The referee was either biased or blind. One of the Gloucester Men's Eight compounded the deception when he misdirected The Citizen sports reporter. This was almost certainly deliberately, because the Gloucester ladies' captain had chosen to row for Stourport , and there was, in consequence, a general feeling of miff around the boathouse. I have a photograph mother cut from the newspaper. I am leaning on an oar clutching my ill-gotten gain, a Prinknash Potttery tankard. I cherished it for years, until the day I said, “Where’s the pot I won rowing?” and nobody knew.

 I married Ray Francis, a football fan, from choice, and have never regretted it, but I have had to fake 'sportgasms' on numerous occasions since our first date. March, 1970. We were huddled over a tinny transistor radio in Ray's lodgings in Warrington. The blessed Sunderland were playing against the mighty Liverpool. Sunderland scored, probably, as usual, in the last minute , where all this team's games are won or lost. Ray yelled with excitement and leaned over... Our first kiss!

In April 1971, the year Sunderland was demoted to the Second Division, we married. My sympathy for the demoted endures to this day.

 Some time ago, around about the turn of the Millennium, I decided it would be a good idea for Ray and I to share an interest. I quickly realised that flowers would never be his thing, and I was not going to want to spend time checking out the railways. So footie it had to be. I joined a 'Fantasy Football League' and, with some help from experts, and a little studying of form, I managed to pick a squad that sank without trace within minutes of going online.

There is a rider to this story that proves, beyond doubt, that no experience is ever wasted. I was attending a Head Teachers’ Conference in Oxford in 2001, and happened on a table at dinner with four boy heads and one other girl. The topic soon turned from education to football. To my utter amazement I found myself hogging the conversation: “Oh no! Don't talk to me about Babayaro! He's in my Fantasy League team and he's been; on the bench... , sent off … , fouled …, x number of times, in the past month alone!” With a few judicious open-ended questions, and a lot of tut-tutting, I held my own for twenty minutes! I was SO proud. And the boys! Thrilled! One offered to show me a ’ Chelsea’ programme from the previous Saturday, that he happened to have brought with him, and was sitting on his bedside table. An invitation I politely declined.

To spice up my sports-life, I decided, within a year, to ditch Fantasy Football and enter the real world. I became a highly inactive fan of Newcastle United Football Club, then just demoted to the First Division. As a ‘Teaching Head’, I shared responsibility for a Key Stage Two Class at Pauntley Primary School , ten minutes away from where I live, in Newent. My new-found passion for the beautiful game was a big hit with some of my students. Floyd , ten years old and a fellow ‘Magpies’ fan, was keen to know why I supported Newcastle: “ Because,” I smiled, “ Mr Francis supports Sunderland.” Clever boy, he got it at once.