Tales from the Edge

Why have I not blogged for so long? Apart from today’s ‘excellence’ blog it is over a year since I last blogged. It’s not for lack of provocative material, for my work and home and friends give me much to think about. It’s probably that I value (or over-value?) my privacy and wonder if anyone is helped by my writing.

For whatever reason, I am going to try again!

I discovered excellence recently.

It took the form of a wonderful treacle scone, superb lapsang souchong tea and beautiful paintings by local artists.

I found it not in a trendy city centre cafe or a new arts centre. No, I found it in the back of beyond, a small village called Glendale in Skye. This is a few miles from the most westerly point of Skye (so this is truly a ‘tale from the edge’!) and my family and I were staying there during the October break. ‘The Red Roof Cafe’ was a converted barn which had probably been built over 200 years ago. Renovated with perseverance and vision, planned with love and imagination and staffed by two friendly workers it was a haven on a stormy day.

As I enjoyed the experience I pondered that excellence can happen anywhere. It does take perseverance and vision, imagination and love. I wondered about the churches of Argyll that I am called to serve. How we can achieve excellence even in small and fragile places. How we don’t need to be part of a big city centre church to grow. How we need to believe that God lead us to a new future.

Where are you challenged to believe that excellence can flourish?

My laptop crashes and I lose recently worked on files

A colleaugue falls in a busy street, her confidence in traffic falters

A newly made friend dies too quickly

It all makes me think about the fragility of life, how often we are not aware of what might break, what might be lost. So I return home and hug my children extra tight. Yes, it is a beautiful world but it’s also as  a fragile world.

Go well…

I am tying to live differently.

For years I have found nurture and strengthening in silence and solitude. I still do and probably always will.

Sometimes I even find God there (or God finds me)

Now though, I am trying to live differently. I am trying to share my life with people.

In front, I continue to be open to two men who are even older than me! Men who have served God for long years in a variety of settings across Scotland, men whom I trust to guide and challenge me. Alongside, I am beginning to share with folk who have been in youth work as long as I have, who have experienced the ups and downs of Christian youth work. And behind? I am beginning to commit myself to supporting people coming into youth work, offering myself to help as much as they want.

The image that comes to me is from American football (hello, Tom Cramb). In front, blockers hit hard into opponenents to open up gaps for the ball-carriers to run through behind them.

What about you? Who are you running behind, who are you running with and who are you ‘blocking’ for, preparing the path for them?

Let me know…

Let me tell you a true story.

Then you can decide what it means for you…

When we moved into our house last summer, there was a big old garage in the garden. How old it was I don’t know but the wood was weathered and worn, doors lop-sided and windows broken. Posts at the corners and sides were rotting from the ground upwards. Wall boarding was so thin in places from rot that you could push your hand through it. Brambles grown in through gaps from the garden outside were flourishing inside.

Yet it was still standing.

Enough wood was strong and secure to hold together the weaknesses. Craftsmanship was standing the test of time. Well cut joints were securely nestled into each other.

Inside was a long, dusty history of the stuff you only really find in old garages; wood, paint tins, nails, tiles, carpet cuttings, a work bench. Then we made our own contribution – bikes, garden tools, odd bits and pieces that we didn’t want to fling out but couldn’t fit in the house.

Weeks passed.

Pauline and I talked about our plans for the garden.

Months passed.

Pauline and I talked about our plans for the garden.

In all our plans the garage was marked for destruction. It had served previous generations well but was now in the way; blocking the light for new plants, cutting the garden in two, a block to making our garden child-friendly. As I walked around it, pondering, I realised that it would be a valuable source of free wood that I could re-use. Bob the Builder’s motto of ‘reduce, re-use and recycle’ looped through my mind as I ran my hands over this old place. In my minds eye I saw the vegetable beds I could build, the chicken run, a play-house for our children ….

So one day, armed with my dad’s old crowbar I began my wrestling, my dismantling. I thought it would take a few days. Oh, how wrong, how wrong I was!

Over the next few months, I sweated, swore and bled as I ripped out old wood, hammered out joints and tore off tarpaper roofing. An old metal bin was pressed into service as a burner and the bonfire began. Rotten wood was endlessly consumed by Dunoon’s version of the eternal flame. Solid wood was stored for future use. Window glass carefully removed and stored.

The garage became unstable, wobbling around me as I pulled, cut and levered, held up only by it’s memory, or so it seemed to me.

Then the day came.

As I had carefully removed walls and roofing, sunlight had increasingly found it’s way through the skeletal framework. Shafts of warm light shone on a floor that had not seen the sun for decades. The wind blew freely where previously it had been shunned. One more insignificant beam was removed, the same as many others. But this time the whole frame swayed, held, swayed again then fell slowly around me. Thankfully unscathed I carried on. Much work was still to be done but the damage had been done. The garage was down. Never to be rebuilt.

I piled up more wood.

Stored nails.

Burnt rubbish.

Finally I swept the old concrete pad the garage was built on and stood back, admiring the open space. It was gone.

Then a few weeks later, the salvaged wood became vegetable beds.

A few months later, a play-house, squint and odd but loved by the children, was built.

Later, after much thought and hard work (maybe another blog story here!) a chicken run was constructed.

Now as I look around the garden, there is no sign of the old garage.

But I do see new life everywhere;

In the greening growth of vegetables and flowers

In the clucking community of Pauline’s hens; Star, Willow and Cheese.

And, best of all,

In the laughing, jumping, crying, shouting, playing life of our children and their friends.

So, what is this story for you?

A rambling update on my life in Dunoon?

A challenge to finally do that gardening you have been putting off for so long?

An analogy of the Church’s past, present and future?

A way of balancing tradition and imagination?

A comment on the place of children in our life?

Something else?

As I worked over these long months, several thoughts and views came to me. However, I won’t put them here. I would love to share them with you though and to hear your own ideas. Get in touch and let’s talk!

Reflections on John 21: 1 – 14, following Jesus after Easter

Through the glorious outburst of resurrection these men’s lives were enlarged by the extravagant, exploding presence of the risen Christ.

Now, however, comes the emptiness. They no longer have a purpose as followers of Jesus, no mission, no purpose and so….they go back to the fishing, they return to their old routines. Hard working men go back to the boats, to what is familiar, dependable.

(When Jesus seems distant what are the routines we are tempted to return to?)

The following night was long and empty, not unknown to them but still a disappointment. After all those wonders and glories with Jesus they taste again the dullness of their old lives.

Now the stranger on the shore speaks, discusses their failures and invites them to try again. Some of the fishermen were amused, some rolled their eyes at the interference and some shrugged their shoulders.

Whatever they felt they flung out their nets again and – the miraculous returns, as unexpected as a resurrection. Bright morning light flashes on fin-flipping fish, incredulous laughter carries across the waves. Life in all it’s fullness breaks out once more which leads to the moment of recognition,

“It’s the Master!”

(I am held by this story, as I prepare again to reach out into the waters, to reach out to young people. Tomorrow, after holidays and preparation, I will return once more to the young people that are the focus of my work and my living – those I work with in Dunoon Grammar and those I am helping churches around Argyll reach out to. I remember also young people I have shared time with over the years, especially those from Gilmerton / Liberton. As I rest in the stillness of this night I imagine hearing the words of Jesus,

“Try again.”

Despite the disappointments, try again
Remember the joys, try again

And I hope, that in being faithful, I will share in a harvest and know the risen Christ once more.

How do you respond to God’s call to ‘try again?’.

Keep in touch.

What do you do?

On Saturday I met a minister. She had worked previously as a nurse, as a chaplain to a childrens’ hospice and in a women’s prison. In the brief time we spent together she spoke honestly and without drama about the ruined lives she has shared. Young girls hooked on drugs through years of sexual abuse, introduced to drugs by their own fathers who passed them onto other men for sex. Teemage girls self-harming and cutting themselves whil ebeing physically, secually and emotionally abused.

What do you do?

I don’t know. As I sit in my comfortable home with my children safely asleep upstairs, I really don’t know. I do know that I am grateful to that minister, not just for being the amazing person for those girls but for bursting my bubble of self-protecting comfort.

What do you do?