Knitting and other creations.

I started my blog in 2011, which was to be my year of knitting. I sucessfully knitted all of the gifts that I gave.
I learnt to knit at my Godmother's knee and have always taken it for granted.

2011 has drawn to a close but my blogging will continue, not just knitting but other creations too.

Thursday 28 November 2013

Awesome Giggles

Last night I went to a gig on ‘a school night’ it saw just awesome.  Now my idea of a gig is most likely not your idea of a gig.  It was a Stuart Townend gig and was a combination of worship and performance.  I just love group singing, not sure if the folk in front of me liked the group singing, it was too loud to tell!

It reminded me of a carol service I went to last year with some group singing.  My friend and I were singing our hearts our convinced we knew the tune only to discover, we did not!  As  the very professional singers around us sang up, we sang down, we collapsed in fits of giggles, infectious giggles, the sort that the more you try to stop them the more uncontrollable they become.  It wasn't really that funny but we were still giggling on our way home an hour or so later, in fact we only have to talk about it together and it sets us off again.

The thing is we are all different and different things make us giggle.  I hope that you have some moments of infectious giggling between now and Christmas, it’s good for you, it really is.


Sunday 24 November 2013

Domesticity part two

Last weekend I went away on retreat with the lovely ladies from Shall we Dance?  This evening watching the results slow for Strictly Come Dancing I was reminded again how lucky we are to have the perfect dance partnerb in Christ Jesus. As I watched the beautiful dancing this evening I wondered just which dance it is that we are dancing right now. Life is challenging me and it can Sometimes be just a bit much.

Today I have practiced contemplative prayer in the swimming pool. 30 lengths of contemplative prayer. This afternoon I have cooked. Coming centers me. Preparing food for friends and family gives me joy, so my Domesticity this afternoon was to make some Leek and tomato soup with a cheese scone round.  Them this evening I have baked our Christmas cake and it smells yummy.

Now last weekend I announced that I couldn't make scones for all the tea in China. It's true. Today I made yummy cheese scones and even mama bear agreed they were alright. Good old Mary Berry she holds all the answers.

In a turn of fait this afternoon has also seem me empty and defrost my freezer in its entirety!

Three acts of Domesticity in one day!

Saturday 9 November 2013

Forgiveness

Last night I went to see Philomena at the cinema in Lyme Regis. It was a moving film which had a profound affect, I'll say no more than that other than this. The most powerful line of the film was: 'Sister Hildegard, I forgive you.' Philomena was a true woman of valour.

'I forgive you', three small words that so many of us find hard to say and even harder to mean. Jesus taught again and again about forgiveness. The  whole Christian story is after all one about forgiveness and about Grace.  'Father forgiven them they know not what they do'. Jesus was sharing his message of forgiveness right to the very end.

I find forgiveness hard. There are the little petty hurts, which should really be forgotten and forgiven in a heart beat, and indeed many them are because LOVE wins. There is nothing that can't be forgiven when you truly love someone. So my family, my friends I will forgive again and again and I pray that they will forgive me to.

The bigger hurts, they are more challenging to forgive, they are easier to hold onto because they cut deeper. With these hurts I often feel a sense of disappointment that the situation arose in the first instance. They often involve anger that I don't know how to direct and a fear that if I forgive will it happen all over again.  More often than not it is a hurt caused by words harshly spoken occasionally a hurt of actions.  And yet holding onto the hurt is more damaging than risking forgiveness. Yes the hurt may at some point be re lived, but to forgive is too grow and to move forward.

Forgiveness is a very active thing. It is not a set of meaningless words it is an action too. God in his Son Jesus, died on the cross to forgive us, me, my sins. Through his Grace I am forgiven again and again. He loves me as much if not more than i love my family and friends.

This evening watching the Royal British Legion Festival of Rememberance, a little girl was re United with her father who has been serving over seas. In front of 8000 people she ran to her father's arms knowing she was loved just as she was.

It's hard somethings to understand that God is there with his arms wide open for me, to run to him and to receive his forgiveness.  It's hard actually to believe I am that loveable, when I'm cranky and horrible to the people who love me most, when I am in need of so much from them and have very little I feel able to give to them. When you don't really like the way you are, or love the person are it's hard to accept their love.  Yet they like God keep giving because living a life of love is living a life of forgiveness. 

Perhaps the hardest person for me  to forgive is myself, and perhaps that is because I don't really know me right now. Somewhere I'm there, but I'm feeling lost, confused and uncertain, wondering what God had planned for me and when the future unfolds in front of me, will I know which party to take?

Friday 8 November 2013

Domesticity

In our study of A year of biblical womanhood by Rachel Held Evans,  we have moved from Gentleness to Domesticity. 

Domesticity seems to be about cooking and cleaning.  I've been taught well, in that I know how to both cook and clean.

I love to cook, it's one of my favorite things to do. Cooking relaxes me, it centres me. When I'm stressed I cook, when I'm sad I cook, when there's a crisis I cook. There is however a hitch with my love of cooking and that is that I like to cook for others, to feed others and to share food with them.  When it comes to cooking for one and looking after what I eat I'm not so committed.

Equally I know very well how to clean but I tend to leave the cleaning until I can ignore it no more.

I've mentioned before that I am suffering from depression and a 'side effect' of this if you like,  is loosing interest in your environment and yourself.  I know that right now the reason why im not cooking and cleaning is cause I just can't muster the energy.  When you feel low, when you wake up feeling sad for no particular reason,  every ounce of energy is invested in maintaining an air of normality,  of business as usual.  When you step out of the spot light and its just you again, feeling blue, you ask why bother,  what's the point?

I guess that the answer to this question is that I, like you,  am created in the image of God.  That as Julian of Norwich observed,  God made the acorn,  God loves the acorn, God cares for the acorn and the same can be said to us.

So my commitment for November is to continue my reading of the book of Proverbs,  to bake bread every week and to try a new recipe each week and to eat well. My Martha Stewart will be Mary Berry and Delia Smith.

I am also going to try to get on top of my cleaning!

Tuesday 5 November 2013

Under the dark moon A reflection

The program said....
"It's quite liberating to realise that everyone's afraid of something, and whilst dangers can be very real, the strength of our fears lies in the powers of our imaginations.

Fairy tales are full of risk, adventure and change, they contain advice, and inspirations and warnings.  Owning our flaws, and showing our humanity and vulnerability is often not encouraged in our culture, sharing stores helps to bring communities together, and the experience of turning our struggles or restrictions into things of beauty can be a cathartic experience. Our greatest strengths are hidden in our darkest shadows, and it makes bravery to turn and face them. We hope that in the celebration of life in all of its persevered, ridiculous glory in the ever present face of death"

As the performers shared their own stories,  expressed with their bodies the tension between fear and freedom, between living and dying they spoke to me at levels far deeper than they could have ever imagined.

The circus show was conceived as a secular show however the spiritual depths were for me deep wells from which to draw water.

As the girl with the trunk was finally freed to set aside her heavy burden and swing and fly on her trapeze, I was reminded that with God I am free to fly. I am free to set aside my burdens at the foot of the cross and to then live a life of perfect freedom in Christ.  As the boy with the mask set aside his loneliness and walked the length of his tight rope, I was reminded that when we trust in God, all things are possible.

I wanted to walk that tight rope and fly that trapeze, to experience that perfect freedom a nd ecstasy of being held by God.

The hazelnut

Julian of Norwich wrote about a hazel nut, I only have a pewter acorn to consider, but the same words apply. "It lasts and will last forever because God loves it; and everything exists in the same way by the love of God." In this little thing I saw three properties: “the first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God cares for it."

I've been reflecting on these words today and an really struggling with the thought that these same words also apply to me, inperfect as I am, God made me, God loves me,  God cares for me. This is hard to hear and this evening even harder to accept.

When you wake up feeling so very low that you are not sure how to get through the day. When you come home and want to crawl up in a ball and cry or hibernate or better still sleep, oh to sleep that would be a gift.  It's hard to hear that God feels for you in the Same way he cares and loves  the acorn.

John 1 God so loved the world, loved Rebecca, that he gave his Son