year end..

is it just me or has this year been somewhat colourless...?
i'm not about to moan, but merely to remark that it has been personally rather uneventful and often hard or horrid for some people i know...
i have also laughed alot this year, i have made a new friend in the brilliant katie hall, i have been to lovely weddings and been at least 2nd drunkest at some drunken parties......i gave up smoking, for a long time.....then a slight hint of boy trauma and the filter-tip queen was back on the scene....
i think its basically been one of slight ups and slight downs....which i guess you could say isn't bad, exactly, but not terribly anything..........i have learnt an awful lot from being and remaining in this slightly bland state, however....mainly that god asks to be known and not felt. there is more of this one fact to learn, obviously....but its a start....
i have this year re-discovered the sheer comfty warmth of being entranced by a novel. those few days, or sometime hours, at times weeks, when the thick plot of a story, or the growing familiarity of its characters, or the delight in getting home to find no-one there, just an empty house and a kettle creating the perfect reading room. aaaah, the history of love. i cannot tell of the wonders of that book.
along with nicole krauss i am discovering the merits of the written work of our dear lord himself.....the bible is become a place where i am much more readily at home and enjoying myself. that wasn't at all true in the bad old days of 2005....!
i had one of the most surprising holidays of my life...the trip to belfast and moneymore and lough erne with drago claire and emma. never have three days been so fully streched out..and all for our comfort and joy - and the sun shone! ha sitting on a boat with death of a naturalist! ha!
i would not have dreamt, not seriously anyway, of living on my own in any time prior to now...but that this time last year the same was true of heald place....hey this time next year i could be living in london, that last bastion of places i swore i'd never live....!
i have not written as much as i would have liked this year, especially on here, and for that i am sorry.....
i have colour in my cheeks these days though....i have sidestepped the pastel path of 2006 and am now looking for garish clashes and bold flowers and daring stripes and more shades of green that even i had thought possible...
2007, i await you...colour me an interesting time of it...

holy shire..

its here...the long-awaited friday of homegoing is here....the last day of term, the last friday before christmas, the last waking up early in 2006....the first day of my holidays....!

and here, for your festive enjoyment, is a photo my mother sent me on her flash new phone of what awaits me there...!

evensong..

so last night i left work and had a lovely walk in the dry, nose-reddening cold to the cathedral. they have evensong there at 5, or 5.30 all weekdays....and i had never been before. there were more people in the choir than in the non-choir, and they all knew what to do and when to stand up and when to turn to face the cross and all that stuff. i knew nothing. i realised what a strange and wonderful thing church is when mid-rigmarole, how it makes no sense unless you know.....this, having been precisely why i left catholicism behind me, is why i can't ordinarily now squeeze myself into the routine of organised services...but you know, i think i must be maturing, because the bizzarity of the whole thing struck me as discipline, as order, as quite lifting...it felt like homage...and it was in the cavermous quiet of manchester cathedral, which is like a younger, warmer version of gloucester cathedral...that the half-dozen of us gathered yesterday evening, for the onyl time ever/ would never be in the same room together again, and never have evensong together again four nights before christmas in the year of our lord two thousand and six...
lovely...

fullheartedly..

i have that slightly tingly sensation today. the anticipation of going home, but not just any old going home, nay, going home for christmas....i was talking to someone last night about the love of the train ride home. i'm not actually getting the train this friday, but catching a lift with mark and chrissie....but the southward journey, seeing the stone of buldings become more normal to me, the lie of the land more pleasing to my eye, and names of places less peculiar, the hills and woods more familiar.
and this is where i make my confession....everytime i go home, but even more in the winterly anticipation of christmas....the lines from -anne of the island- come into my head quickly and clearly....it is my favourite one of the six books, as you may know, and still marks so much of the writing that has made me think -if only i could have written this...- but the truth that some of you may also already know, is that the book is emotionally so open that it is cliched to us now.....the lines are on this page...read them if you wish, and forgive me, if you can my hopeless melodrama...but i love her, and on this one, i trust her to say it better than me....

the winter wonderland..

ah, such wonder...
i had ever such a lovely time in wales this weekend!
to all present, i thank thee..to those who for a minute every now and again i wished were there, consider yourself missed....
the drive down, surprisingly, was probably my favourite time...and no wait, the drive back too..! me cate and hattie found ourselves the first to arrive and last to leave - therefore the homemakers and the clear-up committee...both of which were lovely in their own ways...
and i enjoyed very much the company of the wezzles family, seeing caleb so tired he could hardly move but then being so alive whenever we were praying, having mr vino in our collective midst and wondering how we got by without him all those years....seeing the hughes family, much missed round these parts...
i really felt this air of ease, like we really have made it out of the fearful, insecure time of who's better than who or who's doing better with god than who, and who's going to lead things and whatever....it felt very much like we really do just function together now.....not that we're anywhere near writing the book on it, but it really did seem like a family doing things together and everyone pitching in just when they and only they could do their part...
i loved it

joy cometh..

i should offer an apology here....
the last post was whiny and selfish. i was going to delete it, out of embarrassment, but i think it should serve more as a reminder to myself that whiners are wieners and to just remember the following, before writing any such post in the future...
the evening of monday carried on in much the same vein as the daytime...i felt anxious, sad, and mildly lost. i watched tv, pottered at home, and generally let myself feel quite miserable. i spent some time with ben which was nice and also watched the choir, which i have been enjoying very much. however i played evoision with god and put him off and put him off..
bedtime came and i felt as uneasy as i had all day, knowing too that i was now letting -it- whatever it was, really have a hold.
and then i read about 10 psalms, and prayed. i'm not even kidding when i say god entirely came through, showed me truth, offered me peace and i felt life in me again. it hadn't just been 24 hours, really, it had indeed been longer, possibly much longer.
i learned from scratch (again!) that god answers when i actually call. instead of me not calling and him not answering and me getting cross with him (!!!) when he's not at fault but is just waiting for me to say what i want, and to offer my trust just by asking.
quelle idioa, you might say, na....
good one...
thing is, i'm pretty sure this is how it goes..on and on, over and over....but i think i am starting to see that the quicker i react the quicker he responds to me, because fear and doubt don't have so long to creep in.
i'm quite, quite sure that this has all made alot more sense in my head than it has to you, dear reader, but just believe me that things are ok, and i really am sorry for the last post....love you

ill at ease....

sometimes i forget how good i can fake it...
the being ok, and sometimes when i really am not ok, the world around me is entirely convinced, sucked in......i feel ill at ease, quite often these days.......
i feel like even though i am posing no threat, spiritually, to anyone right now, the very fact that i work where i do pleases god and irks the other one, and here i am again with mental wranglings and old fears......
i think my vision of jesus hasn't grown for sometime. its been ages, in fact, since one of those faith-injecting moments with god, or one of those awe-inspiring glimpses of how its all working out because of him....or even just one of those fractions of a second, where you feel him, near and steady, true and undefeated.
i want him to show up in my life soon, again.....part of me thinks, na, you've seen so much, surely that's enough to live on...?! surely you've had more than most people ever think they're allowed to ask for in their whole long lives..!?
but me, i want more. i want to know him who refused to stay dead...the man who lived. to know that that same rope that pulled him out of being dead will also pull me out of where i feel i am.
i also want to know him in the unfeeling, unsensory way...in the solid, authorised version of himself. in the absolute, the irrefutable, the certainty of history, triumph and fact.
i fear i am reaching that point in life when faith should be simmering down, becoming either tidy and polite and organised (rotas for tea duty, kids' work and welcomes...) or non-existent; grown-out-of, or squeezed out by -reality-
i can't do my job with faith like that, and i can't rise above myself with faith like that either.
i sure can't please god with faith like that.
and the double whammy is i can't be happy or at peace either.
start me up god, and lead the way...

the stage is set...

i can now gladly announce that the first in our advent season of winterly film watching will commence this sunday evening at 7pm at my house.
pigface you said somethign about mulled wine...?!
i'll get the stollen and various other things, feel free to bring anything else you'd like, and cushions or blankets if you so wish, as seating is somewhat limited...!
wooooooooohhhhhhhhooooooowwww