An alien in the house

I saw this today!







Only this ['delightful' bubblegum ice cream] can produce such a tongue.

Unless there is indeed an alien in the house [or in Minehead...].

Quantock Beast

I ran the Quantock Beast in 52 minutes this morning, a personal best.
It was the third time I had run the route and the first time that:

• I didn't get lost
• my ankle survived [after a good flight and bad landing in the woods three weeks ago]
• I managed to run up the whole of creul hill [that is how you spell it], despite being jumped on by one young and enthusiastic and one old and tired labradors

All of which perhaps explains why it was a personal best.

It's a fantistic route and if you are interested in doing the real thing go to www.quantockharriers.co.uk/beast.html and join us on 4th July.

Despite this PB I am starting to feel as if I am falling to pieces; ankles, knees, elbows and tonight for the second time my right eye doubled in size with an allergic reaction. Thank God for minor injury units and eye drops, perhaps I should stay inside...

Expecting Brownies

I asked the impossible of the family today, making a batch of brownies and asking everyone not to eat them. They are for some incrediby kind cousins who have offered to put us up in their house by the sea for a few days over half term. For a while they have been saying that we were welcome; 'What, all six of us?' 'Yes'. So, cautiously we asked, and a very deep breath later, heard another affirmative. We'll be taking brownies and some of the forest of rhubard that fills one end of the vegtable bed and one of Jane's freshly grown lettuces and a bottle of wine [for which we bear no responsibility, although I have visited the winefarm, Nedeburg, and highly recommend their wine]. But the brownies are special, although not as good as when made by their original creator as I am constantly reminded. The lemon cheesecake is the same, however good it will never be as good as Sarah's cheesecake, simply because it wasn't made by Sarah.

However, it is important not to overrate the the brownies. At the end of their first week at their new school as I was walking home with the children I said that I had a surprise at home. Hoped for options ranged from flat screen plasma tv to new wii games to a new laptop to almost any other new form of technology; setting up the zip wire was the only non-technological option. When I said that I had baked some brownies you could taste the disappointment. But we still all enjoyed the brownies; as we are once again. I just hope that there will still be some to take to the coast.

Purple

We got to the top of the hills just before midnight; 'STOP' I heard.
Snow was on the ground and falling fast and heavy from the sky; and Claire, fresh from Cape Town had never seen snow before. Despite the hour, despite frozen middnight, despite my assurance that we would see far more snow when we got to the high mountains, we had to stop, and it was wonderful. Yet my memories of the Berwins are far more of the heather than the snow, miles upon miles of purple moorland, rising and falling as far as the eye can see. It was the first place that I had known such colour.

However when I first painted a purple stole, I was already serving my curacy in Minehead and it was to Dunkery that I was drawn. There is no patch of heather on Exmoor, not even around Dunkery, to rival the Berwins in their full splendour, but it's good enough. Since that first stole I have also come to know Bossington Beacon; to the extent that I can now navigate my way over it and around it and up and down it in almost any weather and when my running shoes have fallen to pieces and my feet are taking the strain. What Bossington Beacon has, beautifully and powerfully, is heather and gorse together, above the sea and sand [Selworthy Sands] and shingle [Porlock Bay]. It's neither big, nor high or remote, but it is special.

We wear purple stoles in Lent and Advent, the seasons that lead to Easter and Christmas. Purple in church is not the colour of emperors but of mourning and waiting and confession. Which is perhaps an uneasy fit with the glory and joy of the heather covered moorland. Yet, somehow, as with so many other fusions of art and sprituality, it works, or at least, it enables me to paint some purple stoles.

Red

From the wind and fire of Pentecost, to the blood and fire of martyrdom. A red stole seeks to express some of the power and grace of the Holy Sprit that gives life to the church; so much so that some are even willing to give their lives for God.

A good and very generous friend wrote in his blog www.rectorymusings.blogspot.com of the red stole that I painted for him:

I love the movement and unbridled power of the design which captures both Mike's and my own experience and understanding (if that's the right word to use) of God's Spirit.

In the heart of the fire the wind moves the flames and the colours focus and swirl and re-form, red and yellow, blue and white. It is astonishing how much diversity there is within a simple fire, and how far the heat can spread. Which is not, perhaps, a bad analogy for the Holy Spirit.

Starting afresh

Well, the decision is now made.

I'm going to be a primary school teacher! And Jane is going to have to get up earlier in the morning! I have accepted the offer of a place on the Somerset Graduate Teacher Programme and a place at a school.

Even after all that has happened over the last two years, in which I have seen enough of the darker side of the church to last me a life time, it was still a surprisingly hard decision to leave full time ministry and do something different.

How is it that the church can almost simultaneously be so loving and so destructive and sometimes flip from one to the other without logic or reason? Don't worry, I'm not seriously expecting an answer to that question.
As an update: I have only received one response to this question which was 'because of frail human beings like you and me' which is entirely true. Yet it is perhaps interesting that there has only been one response. There is a reluctance to talk about bullying within the church and yet, tragically, it does exist at almost every level and without obsessing about it we do need to address the problem.

Having made the decision it feels really good. I am incredibly grateful to God for this new opportunity in an exciting school, to the kindness of family and friends and the welcome of the local churches here where I will continue to lead services and other projects.

I wrote to a friend three years ago that I couldn't paint when it was dark, and she correctly understood me to mean not just the lack of the sun in the depths of winter but also the darkness in too much of my working life. It has been one of the great joys of moving down here, that there has been enough light to paint and create and live.

Green

All of the best photos of me have been of my back. There is one that was entitled by the photographer 'the state of the nation' because that was what we were almost certainly talking about. The two distant figures walking away from the camera are an important part of the picture, but the dominant theme is the green. It was high summer, the braken was chest high and the nettles even higher; the leaves were full and even the light was green. The only exception was the river, flowing fast and very, very cold, just beneath us. Even in July it was not a place to swim, not even for me.

I paint what is around me, the light and the form, yet whenever I start to paint a green stole a part of my mind and memory returns to that valley on that day.

Within the church year green is the colour of growth and development, of change and stability. It is organic and creative.

And so I return to the valley.

White

Many have commented that these are not exactly white, and they are not, and I have never painted a 'pure' white stole. Yet a white stole is worn at Christmas and Easter, for Baptisms and Weddings. It is worn to celebrate God's great love for us, a love that is so great that he chose to become human like us. So my white stoles seek to convey all the joy and movement of humanity and creation, of earth and sea and sky. The light cannot be seen or appreciated aside from the dark.

One final thought that was recently shared with me. If the incarnation is about God sharing our humanity on earth, the Ascension is about Jesus taking that humanity back to God in Heaven.

Times and Seasons

The campaigning has continued in our household, but there are only two votes up for grabs and mine has been already been determined [correctly] to be a soft touch; and what is at stake is not the door of 10 Downing Street but whether we get a Guinea Pig. In reality we have already decided to give in, later in the summer, but before that, it is wonderful to bait the children. Indeed that is one of the great joys of the family growing up, that we can embarras the children. I do a great 'skipping elephant' and the fact that an elephant cannot skip, and neither can I, is neither here nor there.

Going back to the Guinea Pig campaign it is being waged with considerable energy, if little tact. The most recent event led to the offer of a guinea pig, crispy fried or roasted on a spit; and very loud protestations of cruelty. To which I was sorely tempted to reply, 'don't tease, there are times and seasons for everything and guinea pigs are better at Christmas'. But there are times and there are seasons; and so I kept quiet except for the laughter, which left the campaigners hitting me for my cruelty!