Thrown Off Course

Fatih is fragile...so am i.

Had a wonderful, wandering, thought provoking brunch yesterday with a person whose honesty is refreshing and alarming. We traversed the terrain of faith, particularly in its journey from the definite outlines of orthodoxy into a fjord crinkled place that we don't know now (though perhaps in our more rabid moments would have labelled heresy).

I asked a question. because I am interested, for myself and others," if Jesus is no longer lover of your soul, then how do you love that soul and sustain it...more accuately how do you sustain it within a community of faith still somehow hemmed into the orthodoxy.

words of community, compassion, living it out, exploration were voiced as sort of solace...but the repugnance of the sureness of the companions was clear as was the lostness of the boy within.

and then it was my turn to be questioned...and my integrity lay shedded around me, exposing the vapid nakedness of ego - not a place of comfort even when the companion picks up the rags and compares them with their own.

so behind the facade of leadership at this mornings service lurked the mind and soul taunts: why do i lead this double life? is it just self aggrandishment? is it just self indulgent inauthenticity? am i a fraud? is it possible to be "emerging church" but take money from "the mother?" is it just prostitution to use gifts in worship to run a four hymn sandwich devoid of files with .wav or .mov extensions...and not a real candle in sight?

Happiness Offerings

In discussion with a thoughtful person last week i made the comment about feeling happy. Reeling from the shock that such optimism should be admitted to, he asked how I would describe it.

So today's offering is my working definition of happiness
Happiness is like caramel sauce bubbling over on the stove.

Last night the small fish, when quizzed on the topic, proclaimed "that isn't happiness". He was snuggled up on my lap watching the football (but never let it be said that a word about sport passed from my lips). I pushed him to say what happiness was.

Mmm...
wiggle...
"I'm happy!"

Anniversaries

Today is the 20th anniversary of my first great self directed adventure. The trip to England that Icommenced on this day in 1985 was the marker for so many years of my life. For many many years (and probably even now at times) I saw my life as bisected by the trip and its experiences. Two separate people who I couldn't rejoin.

During writing for a unit on Autobiography of Spirit and Soul, I attempted to analyse this hallowed experience. i was helped to understand England as a place of exile and return, part of the cycle and movement of faith through deserts and oceans and wilderness rather than it being the elusive promised land or merely a precurser of "pie in the sky". To come to yourself, it is necessary to journey.

On this day as I remember again the fuss at the airport and the nerves of my naive young overprotected self and the book drugged plane trip I am amazed to find it seems more than a lifetime ago...even more I am amazed to find traces of the delight and joy and appreciation of light (helped by the grey overcast autumnal day it's started as here) and the optimism for the future that marked that day. I stood then on the precipe of an unknown future - it didn't turn out as I rehersed in imaginings...my life hasn't turned out how try imagine either. I wouldn't trade either - the definitate or the mundane, the bisection or the journey.

As I start this I hope that when it comes to such an anniversary there will have been imagining and delight and that it won't have turned out at all like I planned - life is too rich for that.