A journey with wit and wisdom

It's Saturday evening. We've hit one of those rare moments of calm when the main path through the festival village seems almost empty. E., 21/2, runs ahead of us, flinging her arms wide and shouts to anyone with ears to hear
"Greenbot....I love you!"

So do I, her granny.

It's been 20 years now since I first fell in love with this place of wonder, hopes and dreams, falling into the arms of the festival with delight, as I discovered that there WAS a tribe to which I belonged, a place which heart and soul could both call home. 

In those first years at Cheltenham, with free range children exploring far and wide, enjoying a freedom and safety that I couldn't always offer them elsewhere, it was all about the talks. I bought tapes by the dozen, discovered new writers, new ways of approaching faith in terms of radical Kingdom living which my gently conventional Cotswold village church somehow never quite articulated, lapped up so much wit and wisdom, found myself stretched, challenged, inspired. I loved it all, - and the belated realisation that my own sense of discontent with the way Church and life seemed to play out was shared by others kept me going through the switch-back journey of discernment and ordination training. 
I made friends - online friends (a concept that was still excitingly novel, and transformative for me) with whom I spent many a happy evening on the Greenbelt forum, and so for a few years the festival was mainly a feverish series of catch ups, of "Greenbelt hugs" (oh, dear, dotty, beloved Anna, you are missed, still missed!) exchanged en route to yet another unmissable talk.
With them I savoured many, many Greenbelt moments. glimpses of God in unexpected corners that filled me with joy.

I watched those free-range children find their own roles, their own homes in the Greenbelt community...When I first travelled to India, at the same stage in my daughter's life as I had lost my own parents, it was to Greenbelt friends that I entrusted their emotional and spiritual flourishing if something went wrong and I failed to return. 
Those friendships were intense, sometimes demanding but never less than life-enhancing - and forged in our shared love of this place of hope and transformation year after year after year.

Greenbelt has always been a place where I could try new things...listen to music I'd never have met elsewhere, experience worship that was light years away from the norm I encountered as I travelled through curacy and into the early years of life as a parish priest. 
Sometimes Gloucester diocese, my then home, had clergy training days at the racecourse - and it always felt as if somewhere, just out of sight, the festival was going on in a parallel universe...that Snowy was stewarding a crowd into a John Bell talk, while The Rising brought in crowds to Centaur and DFG were up to something subversively funny in Underground, 
Ten years in to our relationship I had come to realise that there would ALWAYS be more than I could possibly fit in...but that if I missed something wonderful one year, there would be something no less wonderful waiting for me when we returned just twelve months on. I became less frenetic in my passage from Performance Cafe to Centaur, from Wild Goose to Christian Aid. It would all be alright. There were enough of us who were trying to live our faith in a Greenbelt kind of way, such that if I didn't get to everything, there would be others to pick up any one message and take it home with them.

5 years ago, I moved from Gloucester to Coventry - and the festival moved too, recovering from the trauma of 2012 Mudbelt, after which life at Cheltenham was never quite the same. Planted afresh on a greenfield site at Boughton, Greenbelt changed shape a little, but the passion, the beauty, the faith, hope and love were absolutely unaltered and we moved into a new chapter in our family too, as long-term partners became family and then, 3 summers ago, the very special Miss E experienced her first festival. With her dad up to his ears as head of traffic, it wasn't an easy weekend for her mum, but she's a wonderful woman who persevered anyway, so that last year we had the fun of chasing a rampaging toddler through the festival village, passing friends, talks, art work at a gallop. I'm not sure what I actually attended in2018 (I know I was at Communion, with the same group of beloved friends with whom we've shared this holy moment for at least a decade, as children were born to enlarge our circle) but I found that, despite a vague feeling that I hadn't actually experienced that much, when I returned to work I FELT as if I had been to Greenbelt. Renewed, enthused, challenged and changed. The addictive mix I've been lapping up continues to sustain and delight me.

And, this year, as temperatures soared, things were different again.
Different, but exactly the same in terms of what actually matters. Understanding friends coped when our conversations never shifted from the superficial to their former depths, as I had one eye constantly on a blonde, curly head intent on heading off across the Lawn to explore fresh woods and pastures new. In a new season, landscapes adjust their contours, and new delights emerge.

No, i didn't get to all the talks I might have enjoyed - but goodness, I was fed well by those I did attend. Mark Oakley, Padgraig O'Touma, Rachel Mann and the incomparable Nadia Bolz-Weber made everything gloriously alright, restoring my faith in preaching, in the power of story and in the joy of living in my own body...something Miss E had been trying to get across for a while.
I spent more time in the Haven and lying in the shade while Miss E created her own campsite out of a folding seat and organised her toys for "'Munion in the bootiful big tent" than I did soaking up the peace of the Chapel...but there were Greenbelt moments aplenty. 
Too late to gain a space inside Shelter for Saturday night's Taize service, I sat on the grass looking out across the lake towards the house and the festival village. I thought about a dear friend whose mother's life is gently coming to an end as we sang "Wait for the Lord whose day is near, wait for the Lord, keep watch, take heart!" and reflected that Greenbelt, more than anything else, enables me to keep faith and stretch out in yearning towards the Kingdom with all that is in me. And God was there, and I was there, and around us Greenbelt buzzed with life and that same longing urging us onwards.
And on Sunday morning I had an almost unbelievable, overwhelming privilege, when, asked to read at the Communion service, I found that my "lines" included my most loved verse in the whole of Scripture.
"For the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. And the darkness never will", matched by the wonder of the Magnificat, with its vision of the world turned upside down..rekindling my own treasured memory of being installed at Coventry on the feast of the Visitation, singing "Tell out my soul" as my beloved church family walked me up the aisle of the Cathedral towards a new life and ministry there...
I was even, incredibly, entrusted with the words of Institution, shared with a remarkable 9 year old. 
So many precious, precious words, to speak aloud in the place I love.
And I stood on my little platform, surrounded by 5,000 plus Greenbelters singing "O holy night" with all that was in them, and knew that here, right HERE, heaven was touching earth again. 
And I was part of it, caught up in love and delight and grace upon grace upon grace.

"Make life more like Greenbelt" said my younger son, as we headed home one year, coated in mud but shining with joy.
"Greenbelt is a state of mind, not just a festival" said another...and once again I'm restored to myself, by 4 days unlike any other. 
As so often, my best beloved E said it best, with her joyous exclamation
"Greenbot...I love you".
"Amen", and again  I say "Amen."

What's in a name?

In this case, rather alot.


Today we are celebrating Mothering Sunday in the UK.


NOT Mothers' Day - that is something entirely different - a "Hallmark" festival dedicated to saccharine images of the perfect mother, the one whose cosy but spotless home is a haven where each of her 2.4 children is fed a diet of wholesome but delicious food and all her washing is whiter than white. Outside the book of Proverbs I've never come across such a woman - which is fortunate, as I'd probably have to kill her on the spot - but a trip to pretty much any shopping centre across the country yesterday might have convinced you that she's alive and well as are all her delightfully grateful offspring.


Even when my children were at the stage of egg-box daffodils and those lovingly hand-made cards that dropped glitter all over the house, so that it shimmered for weeks afterwards (TOLD you there was no such beast as the hallmark Supermum!) I struggled with this image of motherhood, as I knew I could never, even for a second, live up to it. I hope that my children know that I love them with every fibre of my being - but I'm just NOT that sort of mother - so I felt uncomfortable, even fraudulent, when subjected to that kind of gushing praise. 
Also, of course, I missed my own mother, dead 10 years before my first-born entered the world (oh she  would have been so appalled to be showered with the largesse that the High Street would like us to think is inevitable)....and I thought about the babies I'd carried who were never born...and the friends who longed for children but failed to conceive...and I had a friend whose own mother was a nightmare, someone who, long before J K Rowling wrote about Dementors, would suck the life out of you so that you thought you would never be happy again....


So - Mothers' Day has never been a riotous success for me.


But we're not talking about Mothers' Day, are we?


In contrast, I'm delighted that the Church invites us to observe Mothering Sunday...because, of course, we can all both give and receive mothering.
I always ensure that the churches I lead have enough flowers to share with everyone who comes - men, women & children, as a thank you for the ways in which they love, care and nurture one another...
And I try very hard to make space for those whose experience of motherhood has been distressing.


Today having launched the proceedings with Fr Simon's splendid "Dangerous Pet"  (which went down a treat in both churches) I talked about the Church as the family created at the foot of the cross, when Jesus told his mother "Woman, behold your son" ,and his dear friend John
"Here is your mother".
I talked about the joy and the pain of mothering - about how they represent two sides of the same coin of love that God gives us to spend with reckless abandon, about how it can be hard to disentangle them, so that even those whose experiences of mothering and being mothered are really positive may find themselves a bit weepy today.
And, as I always do, I created a prayer station where people could light a candle in thanksgiving for any who had mothered them, or as a prayer for healing of sad memories of relationships lost or damaged...or never realised.

I know that this isn't enough, that amid the tide of posies and chocolates and fulsome praise the pain of so many may seem to be ignored. Some of our flowers went to a family not far from here who are spending their last Mothering Sunday together, as the mum is almost at the end of her cancer journey. Her children are just a little younger than my own, and the care that they offer to their mother is a testimony to the care and love she has lavished on them...They seemed genuinely pleased to see me but I'm under no illusions about the pain that everyone in that house is be feeling today...and next year will be the first of a string of heartbreaking anniversaries.


Maybe we just ought to abolish the celebration entirely.


But no.


The act of mothering is important. We all need it...love, support, nurture, affirmation - and it's good to have this annual reminder that it's something we can all give as well as receive.


But I do want to say, very loudly, that to insist that today is MOTHERING SUNDAY is not, in this case, one more example of the church standing against the tide of modern life for no good reason. 
It is, rather, a reminder that we celebrate so much more than the perfect family...not that such a thing exists...
and a reminder that the Church exists to carry on mothering the whole world - the one that God loves so much. 

Mothering Sunday...(a homily for 8.00 at St Matthew's)

A day to say thank you


Thank you to our birth mothers, - those who carried us in the womb, laboured to bring us into the world and who, often, continued the hugely demanding work of raising us...offering us unconditional love, looking after our physical needs, modelling patterns of thought and behaviour and sometimes of faith to last us all our adult lives


Thank you to those many others who shared in that work of love and nurture too, without any biological ties to constrain them.


Whatever your relationship with your own parents, I hope and pray you'll know what I mean, that you will have encountered many to mother you.


On Tuesday I was privileged to give the address at Eirene's funeral.
Eirene was, most certainly, my second mother...
My own mother was an invalid, often in hospital as I grew up, and she died when I was just 18.
I loved her dearly, and she taught me so much...but she knew, as I did, that when the day came that I was left without her, Eirene would continue to do a splendid job of cooking me meals, listening to my joys and my woes, offering wise advice when asked and supporting me when I ignored it....
That Eirene would continue to model generous living, compassion, and that all important unconditional love which we need if we are to flourish and become fully human.


She did this for me, and for my children, for the next three decades and more...so I am particularly aware today of all the ways in which I've been mothered by her


But of course, at the moment when I might most have needed that sort of loving support – she was unable to give it.
Her children and I negotiated the reality of her death without her because that's how it works.


And it was hard, and it was sad but – God had put others in place to carry on that work of loving, supporting, listening, advising...others to model generous living, compassion and acceptance.
Others to mother me...for this, of course, is the work of the Church – our mother in faith.


I'm blessed in belonging to not just these two church communities of our benefice but also through the social networking site, Twitter, to another community of some 900 assorted friends who have chosen to be linked to me, who read my comments (in just 140 characters) about what's going on for me in my life and my faith, who share their own highs and lows and the stuff in between...
140 characters may not seem long enough to share very much, but over the past few years the friendships forged have become very real and very very strong.
When I talk about my “twitter family” I'm really not using the term lightly.


So as I wept at Eirene's loss, as I tried to negotiate my own grief while responding with love and care to the griefs of these parishes (for in the 3 weeks since Eirene died I've officiated at 10 other funerals), as I struggled with the emotional roller coaster that bereavement involves, it was the twitter community who heard my laments, who prayed me through the anxieties, who wept with me as I wept and did all that it could to carry my burdens for me.
As I stood up to speak at her funeral, it was with the knowledge that several hundred people who had never known Eirene, but knew who she had been to me, were praying for me and for all of us gathered there – and of course, the knowledge of their prayers enabled me to speak the words that were filling my heart that day.
Twitter, in short, did all that a church could do...all that a church should do....
Loving, supporting, listening, advising, praying
The work of the Church as a family, bound together through faith, hope and love
A family there for one another...sharing the work of mothering together.


So today I invite you to pause and give thanks for those people, and those communities that have mothered you...
and to pray a blessing on those whom you mother.
Some may be members of this church family...some may be part of that great multitude who now rejoice around the throne of God...
To some you may have the strongest of blood ties...others you may know by chance, by happy circumstance...


But all of them and all of you are caught up in this God given work of mothering....Because it is as we learn to give of the best we can manage by way of unconditional love that we become, each one of us, more truly Christ like...
Human relationships exist so that we can learn about that love which is at the heart of our relationship with God...a first taste of that relationship that he longs to have with each of us.


Julian of Norwich talks often about God as our mother – and sometimes people seem very shocked by this...but God uses the same sort of language speaking in the Old Testament through the prophet Hosea
When Israel was a child, I loved him, 
   and out of Egypt I called my son. 
2 But the more they were called, 
   the more they went away from me.[a] 
They sacrificed to the Baals 
   and they burned incense to images. 
3 It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, 
   taking them by the arms; 
but they did not realize 
   it was I who healed them. 
4 I led them with cords of human kindness, 
   with ties of love. 
To them I was like one who lifts 
   a little child to the cheek, 
   and I bent down to feed them.


And through Isaiah
“I will comfort you just as a mother comforts her children”
Even Jesus uses these same profoundly motherly images
“Jerusalem...how often have I longed to gather your children together as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wing..”


Nurture, comfort, protection – God given gifts that we can show to one another as we reflect God's light and life...
Gifts that we may have received from our mothers...but gifts that we are called to share whether male or female, parents or childless...


I thank God for all those who have mothered me, for those who continue to do so and pray that I too may share in this work of love for God's sake.

Off to Mount Moriah

The Eucharistic lectionary yesterday featured that story that strikes dread into the heart of children's workers throughout the world - the (almost) sacrifice of Isaac...
As my curate read it to the small Thursday congregation gathered up the hill, painfully conscious of the high cost that some clergy families are paying right now for the sake of vocation, I was almost speechless...

Why THAT reading today?

What could I possibly say about it?

It didn't seem to me that there was the option of ignoring it - it's not the kind of Bible story you can gloss over or expect the congregation to forget.

So I waited for inspiration.
Nothing.

I read the Gospel.
Nothing stirred.

We said the Creed (BCP service, this).
Still nothing.

Too late now. No escape..

"Please sit down.

What are we to make of this story? 

What does it say about God? how could we ever share it with our children?"

And suddenly I found myself answering my own questions - not just for Abraham and Isaac, but for my own children (who have undoubtedly felt themselves offered as a sacrifice on the altar of my priesthood from time to time) and for the families of all my friends who have asked, from time to time, whether this mad, wild and sometimes wonderful calling is really worth it.

Because, of course, in the end God DIDNT demand that sacrifice.

The point was not that God wanted to take back the gift that had been given, nor that some ghastly blood-lust should be assuaged.

God wanted Abraham to confirm his that relationship that had enabled him to leave his father's house and venture into the unknown at God's invitation.

I'm pretty certain that this is what it's all about, really.

Even at my darkest, most disillusioned moments I've always known that God cares about my children even more than I do...because God's perspective is total. My recurring problem is actually trusting in my heart that God will deliver the care that, in my head, I know I can rely on. So, I make contingency plans, try to protect my loved ones just in case God fails to turn up, struggle with herding a whole flock of sheep and rams up the mountainside so that there's absolutely no danger that one of my most precious, beloved children will be sacrificed on the altar of my ministry - or in any other way at all.

And in doing that, I limit both my expectations of God and God's opportunities to act - because, in my experience at least, God just doesn't wade in unasked.

I don't think this makes things feel any better, when you seem to be stuck in the wilderness with nothing to rescue your children from all sorts of painful sacrifices...but it does, perhaps, offer a further reassurance that, as FabBishop always says as he shares the cure of souls with a new incumbent, we can honestly

"put our trust in God. He is faithful"

And of course, the ending of the Abraham story gives us something huge to look forward to....for he is, famously, blessed to be a blessing. I know that will be true for my friends who are stuck on the mountain as well.

Uncharted territory

June 17th 1978....a Saturday, just 2 days before my 1st A level (Music Aural, as it happens)

The independent school I was attending had Saturday morning lessons, but these were suspended for the Upper 6th so that we could concentrate on revision. 

I think I was working on history when my housemaster came into the library, tapped me on the shoulder and took me away from my books and, I guess, away from my childhood too.

That morning, while I was worrying about the causes of the English Civil War, my father had quietly moved on from the pain of the last weeks of cancer, the sadness of saying farewell, and had gone safely home to the God whom he'd served with quiet devotion all his 67 years.

The next days, weeks, months were unlike anything I had ever experienced.

From being younger than my years, focussed solely on exam work and music I found myself abruptly transformed into the adult as my mother struggled with a loss so devastating that it took with it her will to live, her reason to engage with the world.

When she died herself, 6 months later, it was almost a relief. They needed to be together - and, surely, had done all they could to prepare me for the world.

And, you know, I think they pretty much had.

They had taught me that there is always enough Love to go round, and had given me a language to recognise this.

They had taught me that it's ALWAYS worth going the extra mile for your friends (and had given me friends who demonstrated that in so many many ways)

They had shown me how books and music can transform pretty much any situation and left me with a lifelong passion for both

And they had shown me how to give, and why it matters to make a difference.

Sometimes, though, I wonder what else I might have learned - particularly now, as I explore what it means to be the parent of adult children...how to provide enough support to be helpful without either swamping or disabling them...how (the familiar, but still challenging lesson here) to both embrace and let go.

They never had to do that...I hope that, one day, my children will look back on my parenting with the same gratitude with which I remember - not just on anniversaries, but whenever I think of them.

I thank my God on each remembrance...

It was St Francis' day, just 4 months after my birth, when my parents brought me to baptism. They had waited a long time, 11 years, for the gift of a child and they both knew the reality of ill-health that gave us an uncertain future together. 

It would, perhaps, have been sensible to choose god-parents who were parents of small children too...to make tacit preparations for the day when they themselves might not be there to love and nurture their only child.

But they didn't.

They took loving risks – and those risks paid off 1000 fold.

Each of my three god-parents gave me something different, something precious which has stayed with me all my life – but of them all, J was the person whom I loved most in the whole world, after my parents.

She was a teenager herself that October day...and I cannot remember a time when I did not adore her and want to be like her. That might be expected in a small girl, glimpsing the glamorous wonder of young adult life as J and her friends appeared each summer, like a flock of exotic birds who brought colour and music and warmth to the rather adult world in which I moved. Of course I idolized her. To my child-self she was perfect – the prettiest of her group, her laugh the most joyful, her hug the best at mending wounds of any kind. But as I grew up I realized that her beauty and charisma was not just the product of childish admiration. It was who she was.

Later I would joke with my parents that if she found herself dropped suddenly in the middle of the Gobi desert, someone would materialize and offer to carry her luggage...J had the gift of making others long to do things for her, though most often she would be finding ways to do things for them.

When she fell in love, while working as an au pair in Denmark, and married out there I was, of course, both delighted and desolate. Her family (my unofficial extended family) still lived just down the road from mine but inevitably her trips home became less frequent. In time she brought home her first baby and that summer on the beach his Moses basket was part of the luggage of our shared family encampment – and I fell in love all over again, composing lullabies on my recorder and pouring over him, enthralled.

All my memories of J are of summer and sunshine. Though she was there, too, as an essential part of the Christmas celebrations of my childhood , it was, and is, in the sunlight on the waves that I will think of her most. She was no stranger to hard times too, losing her own father before she was grown up, and dealing with a broken marriage and, no doubt, all sorts of other sadness that she preferred to protect us from. I can see her, bursting with life and beauty as she stood beside Daddy's grave on the day of his funeral...pregnant with her beloved daughter, her blossoming a sign of hope and continued love as we grappled with the reality of loss.

That summer as Mummy fled to her favourite cousin, living in Holland, I too crossed the north sea and went north to Denmark, where J and her new husband were beginning work on the country cottage that was to be their home from then on. Things were quite basic that first year...but I loved it all so much...sleeping in the gypsy wagon at the bottom of the garden, watching J milk her goat and make a wonderful smokey goats cheese, picking tomatoes and collecting eggs, sitting drinking beer in her garden late into the long summer evenings...Even the rainy days were wonderful as I sat at her kitchen table, beside the range, with a delightful tabby kitten (“Jens Pussykin” by name) curled up on my lap and J and I talked and talked and talked – of life and hopes and dreams and sadness. I felt understood on every level there could possibly be...known and loved to my very core.

She was a natural Franciscan – finding and celebrating God in all creation, rarely talking about the Creator but sharing His love with a directness that might have seemed naïve until you were exposed to it.

My resolve to be “just like her when I grow up” was probably confirmed unconsciously that first summer in Denmark and so many of the things that have brought me most joy in life – my children, my animals (the chickens were in part her birthday gift to me last year) the huge skies of the Welsh borders, the light playing on the waves , the sound of the canal water lapping against Polyphony on a summer evening – are things that I've loved and shared with her.

I remember her excitement and delight as I prepared for Cambridge, the long letters in her beautiful italic script that would arrive so regularly through my student years and beyond...

How did she ever find time, with 3 children, a husband a small-holding and a job? - but somehow she did. 

Why haven't I saved them all? That saddens me now, as I know they brimmed over with her warmth.

When things have been tough, we've cried together.

When they have been joyful, we've celebrated.

On my wedding day, it was J who took the place of my parents, dead then some 7 years, standing beside me in the “receiving line” so that I had someone to call my own as the endless stream of my new family and my old friends wound past...Her daughter was my bridesmaid – and my best J memory of that day was finding her surrounded by happy children, enabling them to play safely beside the swimming pool at my in-law's home. 

When we lived in London, I took my own children down to Sussex in an echo of those summer days of my childhood – and remember one golden day in Eastbourne when it was Hugger Steward's turn to be the baby in the basket as J, staying with her mum for a few weeks, played with Hatti Gandhi, helping her to find those sea-washed fragments of glass that we called mermaid's tears.

I never had to pretend with her. The unconditional love that she had offered to my child self continued through to the very end.

Is this all true? 

Is love painting an unrealistic picture?

It's certainly true for me...In asking J to be my godmother, my parents gave me one of their greatest gifts and I'm blessed by each memory of her. In her last months, she phoned regularly and we talked about what lay ahead, about hopes and fears and where to look for strength . Her last card to me speaks still of future hopes – of seeing us this year, of spending time on Polyphony. Whenever I go aboard now, I will give thanks for J, and smile through my tears as I remember again that love is stronger than death.

Looking forward, looking back

I'm snuggled in bed with Theo the kitten purring loudly on my chest - and with just a few minutes of typing time before he launches into another round of Kill the Cursor, his new favourite game. Maybe time, then, for a quick round of Janus, a reflection on 2010 as it vanishes in the mist behind me and just a quick glance at what might lie ahead...

2010 was the year I'd been dreading for so long.

24 years ago, when my DD Hattie Gandhi was first placed in my arms, I threw myself heart and soul into motherhood and from then on a large part of the landscape of my life was defined by my children, shaped by their needs, enlivened by their joys...Of course I knew (and know) that they were simply "on loan", that however precious the ties, however deep the connections, my task as a parent was to work myself out of a job, to make my children ready to manage life in a world which, one day, will not include me at all - and over the past 5 years I've been learning what that process really feels like as each in turn moved from school to university.

Helpfully, of course, those 5 years also saw my own transition from curate to incumbent - so that instead of the responsibilities of nurturing and launching 3 young adults I gained responsibility for 2 radically different communities, their spiritual welfare, their exploration of God in the every day....Despite this, though, I was dreading autumn 2010 when my younger son, blogname The Dufflepud, would depart for university and my firstborn would complete her MA and step out into the adult world of work.Because my own parents died when I was 18, this whole chapter is uncharted territory - I don't even know how NOT to do it (though I guess I'd suggest that the approach my parents inadvertently adopted is probably not the ideal!!).

So - 2010 loomed, black and scary on my horizon for quite a long time....the knowledge that I would turn 50 (which certainly sounds grown up, even if it doesn't feel it) compounding the problem. Surely I'd emerge from THAT year a radically different being - assuming there was anything left of me at all.

If that all sounds rather silly - your view of the situation is entirely correct!

Yes, 2010 saw the departure of the "last child" but though I miss them all inordinately, there are so many other things crowding into my life, from chickens (the birthday present that asserts each day that life begins at 50!) and the Christmas kitten to a whole raft of new and interesting jobs within the diocese, and new connections and relationships within the parish too. The few evenings when I was home alone last term (I think there may have been 4 all told) were blissful islands in a sea of busyness, rather than bleak little encounters with a lonely world....I even managed a few evenings with dear and special friends, and a spot of proper cooking...and I met a whole collection of new chicken-keeping friends with whom to share. I coped, I really did - and even enjoyed myself!

Yes, my children were STILL responsible for the highlights of the year - the wonderful surprise birthday party that gathered so many loved and loving people that the whole evening was an exercise in counting my blessings in human form - the pride at Hattie Gandhi's wonderful MA distinction - the joy in meeting and coming to love Hugger Steward's GF - the delight in hearing of new discoveries, new interests as the Dufflepud settled into university.

But perhaps the greatest joy of the year was one that came from near-disaster, when the Dufflepud missed his grades for his first-choice university. He and I were both shell-shocked, and a bit of me just wanted to wail and gnash my teeth at an unkind universe....His siblings, however, are made of stronger stuff and between them looked after both his practical needs - sorting out a kind of "Cabinet War Room" to help him negotiate the complex process of UCAS Clearing - and the more sensitive issues of self esteem in a family where A grades have been almost taken for granted. The way the children operated that day was perhaps the best gift in a year of many gifts - for they showed me in everything they did that they were indeed the sort of caring and competent adults that I longed for them to be - and that, when the time comes, they will indeed look after one another.

So maybe 2010 was indeed the year that I grew up - and it turned out not to be so frightening after all!

2011 - who knows? But whatever lies ahead, I've some wonderful people travelling with me - and more Love than I can imagine leading me on.

17th June 1978

Might just have been the day when I grew up - or thought I did.

It was, you see, the day on which my house-master came into the school library, where I was determinedly revising for my first A level, to be sat 2 days later, and told me that my father had died.

In common with many another only child, the death of my parents was the substance of, quite literally, my worst nightmares - and suddenly, here I was living it. But God is kind, and this, like so many other imagined fears, was less cataclysmic in reality than my dawn terrors.
The protective wall that had surrounded me through childhood was, in a moment, blasted away, but the world beyond was both gentler and more welcoming than I had dared to believe.
It contained music and poetry that would give meaning even in this situation of apparent chaos, where the certainties of life had been obscured.
It seemed I might not sink without trace, might even eventually enjoy learning to float.

That I was even half-ready to try is, of course, thanks to the unconditional love that my parents had lavished on me for so long that I never, for a moment, doubted that in this universe the facts are kind.

What's more, they bequeathed to me a language that enabled me to interpret what was happening when, as I travelled home by train to confront this life changed utterly, I was met in a railway carriage by a love beyond anything I could ever have conceived.

So 17th June is a day when, for all my concern for inclusive language, my thoughts will always be full of Fatherhood. It's the day when it seemed to me that, as one father's love was interrupted, I experienced Another's in ways I'd not dreamed of, a day to give thanks to one Father for the other.
Thirty one years on, I still do.

Shades of grey on a January morning

I guess I'm struggling just a little with the entry into a new year.
It's not that I'm not very happy and at home in my parishes,where there are challenges and joys aplenty to keep me busy for the coming year and well beyond.
It's not that I don't love living in the vicarage, where the space has just seemed "right" for us from the word go. It's a wonderful home, and during the week when the Dufflepud and I occupy it on our own, and might have expected to feel a teeny bit lost in a family house, it welcomes and enfolds us most beautifully.
This corner of Gloucestershire suits me just fine...and with open hillsides and ancient woodland only minutes away, it suits the dogs too.
So, really, there is nothing to complain about as I dip my foot into the waters of 2009 - and believe me I do know this, really I do.

It's just that, as always, Christmas has been a time to spend with my so-loved children. We've seen each other day after day after day. I've gone to bed knowing they would emerge from their nests sometime in the course of the following day. Bedrooms that have been tidy and chilly during term time have spilled over with music and colour and messy life. Cats have been cuddled and dogs danced with, and there have been hugs on tap whenever they might be needed or just enjoyed.
But, quite rightly, it's nearly time for the students to return to uni...and each time they go back I'm a little more aware that their lives are mostly lived elsewhere. These Christmas days have been a brief illusory return to the time when our worlds mostly overlapped. I'm just wondering whether that lesson in letting go has to be faced at every opportunity throughout their lives. I know (heavens, I really do know) that parenthood is all about working myself out of a job (in that respect it is in many ways akin to parish ministry) but knowing that, I don't really have to like it...or those milestones that remind me that even my youngest child will only be here at home for a couple more years.

There we are. Having had a little whine, I now feel much better - and ready to get on with the business of forming a resolution or two.
Stand back, 2009...I'm on my way.

Bonus post

I'm breaking my self-imposed NaBloPoMo rule of only one post a day (thirty days is quite a long time, otherwise) because today is Hugger Steward's birthday.
The last time we were apart on 24th November, I was in India - and it felt unbelievably strange not to hug him in person.
This time he is much closer at hand, in the grip of an essay crisis in Cambridge...so once again the birthday hugs will have to wait for a few days.
But I'm thinking about him so much - about all that he has done in the year since his last birthday, about his hopes for the coming year, and mine for him too.
I don't know if the year ahead will include such a dramatic achievement as climbing Kilimanjaro...so, in case of doubt, let's publish the evidence of that once again.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HS. LOVE YOU LOTS.

News from darkest Africa

for those as wants to know...
Hugger Steward is clearly alive and well, as he has not only sent me a brief (very brief - he's so male) email but has also posted on his website here
I wish there were pictures, but we'll have to wait for those. Meanwhile, I'm just happy to have been waved at from half a world away.

And he's off

Being substantially taller than his sister, Hugger Steward is not dwarfed by his backpack in the same way at all - but he has packed it with even more care, and has done all he can to prepare for most eventualities. I just wish his mother were more prepared for the central purpose of parenthood, which is, I'm sure, to work yourself out of a job.
Never mind. The Dufflepud has GCSEs ahead, so there should be quite enough to keep me occupied as a mum, assuming that my parishes leave me with time or emotional energy to spare - and July isn't really that long to wait for a hug.

I still don't have this "letting go" thing sorted...

Long term readers may remember the freak floods that struck Heathrow 2 years ago, when Hattie Gandhi was heading off on her gap year travels to Thailand.
May I just recommend that you suspend any travel plans for tomorrow, as now it's Hugger Steward's turn...only this time rather than going to work in a school, with an address and an internet connection, he is heading off into the wilds of Tanzania to work with Village Africa.
He will be helping to build a school (or maybe a health centre) in one of two remote villages, where there is no electricity, no cell phone reception and definitely no internet - so basically, when he leaves here tomorrow that's it in terms of regular communication until he gets home. Volunteers are bussed into the nearest town every couple of weeks, so I should hear something along the way, and having belatedly visited the Village Africa website I'm hugely excited that he will be involved in work that will make such a difference.
The pictures are enticing, and he's full of common sense, though he's short on experience of the big wide world (well, who isn't at 18?) so I don't think I'm actually that fearful for his safety (though if you thought about praying, that would certainly be welcome...) - but oh my goodness, I will miss him!
He finished his temporary job in Cheltenham at the beginning of April, to help us with the move here, and has since then been at home, unpacking boxes, preparing for his trip and listening to his mother's tales of joy and woe as I've hurtled into the vicarage en route from one encounter to the next. He has been the person with whom I've done such processing as there has been time for (he usually is) and, of course, the source of many and many a trade-mark hug. Just imagining life without those hugs available on a daily basis makes me feel distinctly tearful...and of course, this is simply the first stage in the serial letting-go - a road that leads through Africa, to Cambridge and then...who knows?

Yesterday was full and happy. I left first thing to drive down to Sussex by the sea, where my honorary mum, the wonderful E was celebrating her 90th birthday together with her 3 children, J, T & S,- all of whom have been part of my life forever.
Though the actual birthday was on Thursday, there was still a hugely festive air to the holiday cottage where we gathered - J and her husband coming from Denmark, and earlier in the week D had visited from Dubai, as well as those of us who'd come from assorted corners of the UK. For me E has been a warm and constant presence, a source of love and encouragement at every stage. just after the 2nd world war, when my father contracted tuberculosis and found himself in a sanitorium next to E's husband T, an RAF pilot who had been one of the "few" in the Battle of Britain. When both men were discharged, they lost touch for a few years, bumping into each other by chance when Daddy needed a ladder to arrange a fundraising display, popped in to a nearby pub (in a small town a good 50 miles away from the sanitorium) to borrow one and found T working behind the bar. The friendship resumed instantly and when T2 was born, Daddy became his godfather, while we returned the compliment when J became my godmother in turn. Sadly tuberculosis claimed T's life before I was even born, but the families remained close, E caring for me and including me among her children during my own mother's frequent spells in hospital. Bringing up 3 children on a war widow's pension must have been so hard, but there was never a feeling of scarcity, of eking out resources - rather a joyous creativity as E showed us what could be done to create beauty from things that others would have discarded. I like to think that HG's penchant for "Charity Shop Chic" was learned from watching E, always quirkily elegant on less than a shoe string. I love that whole family so much. They've always been there...always welcomed me...always made me feel totally at home....and the loving connections continue for the next generation, as T2 is Hattie Gandhi's godfather.
Yesterday was,I think, the first time we've all been together since HG was very tiny.There were lots of "do you remember?" conversations, lots of comfortable silences, lots of sheer delight in each other's company. Since my generation had all grown up by the seaside, where else could be the right backdrop for our rejoicings? It was all very British - cold and windswept and wonderful...and after a few bracing moments (the only concession to E's age was that we didn't actually stride for a couple of miles along the beach) we took refuge in a nearby pub (where William Blake had a run in with the army once long before).
300 miles round trip and worth every second.

Thank you, E...Your birthday, like your birth, was a gift to all of us.

Birthday Girl

14th January 1987 saw London in the grip of a snow storm...It had started snowing the day before, and a thick layer already covered Wandsworth Common as we drove past it on the way to an ante-natal appointment at St George's, Tooting. Because 14th was my due date, we actually saw my consultant that day - and she agreed that there was nothing much happening and booked me in for another appointment the following week,
"At which stage," she added, somewhat ominously, "we'll discuss the options for an induction".

So, when I woke the following morning feeling a bit uncomfortable, I didn't pay very much attention.
First babies, after all, never arrive on their due date - and anyway, it would be much too much like hard work to make LCM dig out our car and drive me the 4 miles to the hospital, only to be sent home again when nothing much happened.
Only, it became apparent that something really was happening. Nothing very much, just enough to make me determined to keep walking up and down stairs while LCM ate some breakfast.Sitting or standing still just didn't seem to be an option...so our drive through the snow silenced streets of South London was rather a challenge - but still, I was quite sure this couldn't be labour. Not on the right day. No, I'd invented it because I was excited and longing for this baby to become a reality...

We parked the car and made our way through the falling snow. To my surprise, I seemed to have to stop every few minutes as waves of discomfort swept over me - but this couldn't be labour. It was much too manageable.Going up to the delivery suite in the lift was a bit of a show stopper - not least because I found myself sharing it with my (awe-inspiring) consultant. Surely I couldn't be about to prove her wrong.
But when we got into a delivery room, suddenly I was sure that she was indeed quite quite wrong.
"Goodness" said Helen, the student midwife, "I can see your baby's head - what alot of hair!"
The need to push became the single most important force in creation - and so, fifty minutes after we arrived at the hospital, my own darling daughter, - with hair damp and curly, and eyes as blue as the sunlit sea, - was placed in my arms for the very first time. The earth jolted on its axis, the traffic in the streets ground to a halt and there was music everywhere...

Three days of dream- land, as London struggled with the snow, and my baby (my baby!!) and I cuddled up together in our bed by the window, basking in the hot-house temperatures of the post-natal ward, surrounded by endless bouquets of pink flowers, as we watched people outside slither and slide on the icy pavements. People showered us with cards and gifts - but I couldn't understand why. Didn't they see that I already had all that I could ever have dreamed of?



Well, we came home, the dream was indeed reality, and the music of those first heady minutes of motherhood became a constant sound-track to our lives as this first-born of mine sang before she spoke, and has moved through life on a tide of song ever since.
Today I drove down to Cardiff to help her celebrate, amid the busyness of exam week.
Again, loving friends conspired to counter nature...The day was set grey, wet and murky, but BestUniFriend had arranged an indoor picnic, - its centre-piece a fully-fitted picnic hamper, containing all sorts of Wind in the Willows delights - and created an enchanted landscape - complete with elephants, peacocks and butterflies (albeit in minature) in which to savour it.

When I first cradled her in the soft light of the delivery room, once all the busyness was over and done, my prayer for her was that she would always have someone to love her, someone on whose sofa she could crash if the day had been bad, special people whom she could love and be loved by. Driving home tonight, I realised just how fully that prayer has been answered. Her life is full of special people, people who love her, people whom she loves and I'm so grateful.But most of all I'm grateful that she is my daughter.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARLING GIRL - THANK YOU FOR 21 DELIGHTFUL YEARS.

Catch up posts

What a blessing I realised I had no hope of producing a post a day for the whole year...but just to break the blogging ice, a few quick bullets of what's been going on here

Saturday - once sermon procrastination was done and dusted, we embarked on a frenzy of house cleaning and cooking in honour of stage 1 of Hattie Gandhi's 21st birthday. The Day itself is still to come, but she has 3 major essays and an exam that week so her celebrations are being somewhat scattered. Saturday was the "Significant People" party - featuring a couple of her godparents, her musical and writing mentors, dearest of all dear friends - and us, the rest of the GoodinParts family too. We had the loveliest evening. Her special people are indeed truly special (the two godparents close enough to come are my first ever school friend, whom I met in the sandpit in my first week at kindergarten 43 years ago, and my honorary brother (son of my hon mother, E) whom I've known and loved all my life) - and HG glowed gently with the sheer delight of having some of her favourite souls on the planet gathered in one place. Not for nothing did both mother and daughter cherish Henrietta's House during childhood - with its vision of a house where all the people we love best can be together.

Flowers and fizz abounded, conversation was relaxed and happy, writing mentor regaled us with wonderful story telling, but my favourite part of the evening was surely when violas, flutes and guitars appeared and all sorts of music followed. It's hard to accept that my first born is fully adult now, but what could be better for a parent than to know that her life is full of story and song, full of light and colour, but most of all full of people who love and are loved by her.

And to-day's lesson is...

Never let anyone kid you that letting go gets easier with experience.

Yesterday afternoon, Hugger Steward and I were out working on his driving, as it’s not long till he takes his test. He’s been learning for 4 months and is a good driver on the whole, so if we’re just proceeding from A to B for a purpose I tend to be pretty relaxed and forget the “L” plates on the car.
When we’re out to practice specific things, though, it’s somehow a different matter.
I remember all the things he doesn’t know, imagine all the situations he’s unprepared for, and all the anxieties and neuroses of a mother watching her offspring try their wings come into play with a vengeance. Against all reason, all need, yesterday saw me clenching my hands, applying my foot to a non-existent brake-pedal, indulging in all the dotty behaviours that seem to be part of my pattern when struggling to let go of control of something or someone important. As we came down a steep hill towards the race-course, I remembered another time when I’d felt just this way…as Hattie Gandhi, aged 6 or thereabouts, raced downhill on her bike, just days after taking off the fairy wheels for the last time. It felt like a parable of parenthood then, and it still does…that headlong rush of a child into their future, leaving me standing, wondering at their courage.

After a cosy Christmas break, with familiar traditions revisited, and young adults largely content to fall into the roles they’ve taken right through their childhood, perhaps it’s not surprising that the current dose of letting go feels particularly challenging…specially when I realise that next time HG comes home it will be to a different house, one that she will never have lived in full time, one that she may never really think of as “home”. She went back to uni yesterda, and HS is beginning to prepare for his stay in Africa later in the year… Their mother is slowly unclenching her fists and continuing to work on smiling as she watches them fly.

Evidence that life continues...

Still here - thanks for asking! Just rather alot of life about the place at the moment and it's all rather manic...

• Many schools in the parish means many Carol services, rehearsals and end of term assemblies (all trucking along quite nicely, I'm glad to say - and now that my own children are so ancient it's great to have opportunities to engage with small people in tea-towels..)

• An 18th birthday means a party and many empties (but at least the domesticclimate is so green that there is no question of not washing and recyling)

• Many services means many sermons (no of course I've not written them yet - but I think I can see where both Advent 3 and Christmas morning sermons are heading...and I have an outline for the brand new Family Eucharist for Christmas too so things are feeling quite positive there)

• Many friends means much shopping (which I positively enjoyed doing in Cardiff with Hattie Gandhi - much much better as a shared activity) University life is working itself up to a frenzy of Christmas celebration even as I write: at the weekend I got to hear HG's choir sing a splendid concert - including some Lassus to die for - and even dropped in on the household Christmas of her best-uni-girl-friend [in the house HG will be sharing next year] where mince pies were being made without the aid of rolling pins and everything was very purry and contented)

So I think I'm fighting a losing battle with Advent. I'm still trying to think meaningful Advent thoughts, and will get back to you if any of them actually emerge, but meanwhile please say a prayer for all those for whom this is a painfully difficult time...particularly for two Davids, both of whom have very recently lost their life's companion, and for whom the light of Christmas is needed more than ever this year.

A thing of shreds and patches

Back in the summer holidays (an unimaginably long time ago on this bleak December day) I posted a picture of our sitting-room covered in a heap of bright colours as HG and her friends worked on a patchwork for her student room. I promised photos of the finished article, but have only recently sorted out the bluetooth that allows me to upload phone pictures to the computer...so finally, here is the girl in her glorious nest - blandness fully transformed.

As the new vicarage has been decorated (and carpetted - how wonderful is that!!) in totally safe and neutral magnolia, I rather think I'll be needing ways to bring some extra colour into the rooms there myself. Hattie Gandhi, however, is quite clear that she isn't about to create further patchworks any time soon. I think that starting with a double quilt may have been just a shade ambitious. It's a shame. I fancy a patchwork throw just like hers, but different, for the sofa in the study! Such a good conversation piece -
"That blue fabric there is the curtain the dog ate...Oh, and there's a leper's costume from Jesus Christ Superstar".
On reflection, it might be a route to Too Much Information for unsuspecting visitors, who may be reassured by the calm of magnolia - especially when off-set by the joys of the fireplace to come....
In any case, it's quite rare to be able to see the sofa in here for the junk piled upon it.
I did say something earlier about doing some tidying...After all, it is my day off!

Another adult in the family.

The weather turned suddenly colder in the third week of November that year.
I went to bed really early, because I'd not been sleeping too well.
Late pregnancy is like that.
In the attic room upstairs, Longsuffering Clockmaker was busy making something the church needed in time for Advent.
I slept heavily but woke up suddenly and completely at around one a.m. and told him it was time to phone the babysitter.
Within half an hour we were on our way to the hospital.
"Well, you've quite a long way to go" the midwife said
"Your husband ought to go home and get some proper sleep. Nothing much will happen till the morning at least"
Two hours later the slow movement of the Mozart flute and harp concerto was drowned by the indignant cry of my first son...the boy that, after 3 miscarriages, I had been assured I would never carry to term.
He lay there beside me, calm and alert...seeming already to have a wisdom that I could only envy.

18 years on, he is still the wisest member of our family, and a calm presence when mother and sister boil over, as we often do.
Flute music remains his signature - his birthday present looks alot like this

(if you're a flutey person, it's a miyazawa PA102)

And I love him so very much that I'd embarass him to admit to it in public...but he's one of the best Huggers on the planet so I think I'll just go and collect one
without further ado.


Happy Birthday, Hugger Steward.