Exams

Right now I'm headed toward my exams, the first ones of third year, the first ones that count toward my degree, the first exams for a long time that I really want to do well in.

I'm remarkably calm considering. Last week I felt incredibly stressed, but that stress had nothing to do with exams. Trying not to re-live horrific moments in your life can be hard work, especially when part of you wants to. Sweetness in memories that tasted bitter. I spent about three or four days in this daze, my heart and my head had no idea what they were saying to each other and something inside of me was screaming in tears. I wanted to shout at someone, but there is no one around here who deserves that anger, I found myself just yelling at God, or rather, trying not to yell at God, and knowing that I could not take it on my own shoulders... what over time I've laid on my own shoulders is quite amazing. When after trying moment after moment to help my friends and they turn away from my advice then I blame myself, that's not right, I am not responsible for things out of my control, it would be like trying to blame myself for what happened in Haiti last week... somehow I doubt that had anything to do with me! Though my heart does break for those people, and I trust that right now God is there.

I started reading the Fellowship of the Ring again, it was so long ago that I don't actually remember any of it, there is one problem with what it's doing to me, it's making me want to right, my imagination is playing with the back story for Killan, it's time to write it, but I need to try to resist until next week. Maybe a little bit of it needs to be written down, especially as I've changed Henrietta's name again.... she just doesn't really fit any of her names, poor girl. Maybe Elanayia Helenayia, Elanetta Helenetta, those seems nice. The ray of sun smothered by the darkness of the wanderer, that is who she is, she is beautiful as the princess of Sparta ever could have been, and her betrayal of her homeland more terrible than that.

Since I started writing this I have gone off on more than one tangent. I am so glad that yesterday things got so much better. My heart feels a lot less broken! I was on the verge of driving myself insane, and am very glad that I didn't!

Now as I have a four hour exam in 45 hours I should get on with some revision, Augustine, The Cappadocians, Thomas Aquinas, Joachim of Fiore, Hobbes, Sherlock, Milton, Hegel, Moltmann and Von Balthasar, that's only 1500 years of Trinitarian Theology.

What do you expect from me? What do I expect of me? Back when I would fight for days to write 500 words and then write 5000 in a day, what was it I lived for except that next line, that next word? Back when every day was a war, and it was raging. The silent battle rages still, it always will, we were born into a war, this is not peace time. We trick ourselves, we pretend that this is peacetime, yet we have NO idea.

There is a war raging, the darkest war of all ages. A war where money, promiscuity, drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, depression are fighting to draw us into the darkness, the darkness of solitude where there is nothing we know, no where safe, where we fear every moment and live in masks, yet the light fights back the darkness, sweet truth that declares God's love like a rushing wind. Declaring that we are free from the chains that bind us down. We need not the material world, Faustus searched for something, a completion to life, and found only death and hell, he forsook the light to embrace the darkness, yet what did the darkness hold? Momentary gain, the face that brought Troy to it's knees, knowledge that broke a man like a dried twig. Yes within the light is the greatest mystery, but that is a mystery that draws us to love, to fellowship, to embrace those around us, to show love how we are shown love, yet here.

Here we sit and do nothing, we fight those we love, we forsake what we need and pretend the world needs us. The world needs us, yes, but the world needs us to shine like the moon, reflecting the glory of the Son. We remember how the light came into the darkness at Christmas, the date doesn't matter, but in the darkest months we remember the coming of the light, it brightens our souls, it takes us and brings us into the indwelling of God. The day becomes a season, and suddenly the dark nights and short days are a little brighter, full or shining lights and good food. We keep the Christmas feast like we used to and yet how luck we are? Those wandering the streets don't have this, we dream back to Christmas long ago, yet a time when the majority lived in poverty, and we forsake those who still do.

Back on the Mac!

There was something beautiful about starting this computer up again. It's been over five weeks since I shut it down, and it really felt like part of my life had been taken away. I don't think materialism is a good thing, I don't agree with it, I feel like we should be as detached as possible from our possessions, but this computer means more me, maybe than it should. It's my contact with the world, it's the music that inspires me to write, it's the keys that I can type 100wpm on because I'm so used to them. It's access to my blogs - both those I read and write, and often it's the ones I read that I miss more! It's what I use when I'm feel like I'm falling down and out, in the dark moments there are articles and music that just remind me of my identity, the truth of Christ in me. My computer is what allows me to express who I am entirely harmlessly, without consequence to anyone else, without limit, I can sit and write what I will, I can sit here and scream words onto a page and delete it straight away. It's my computer that allows me to have journals at the touch of a fingertip whilst I'm writing that ever vital essay, that allows me to format everything the way I like without question. Where I turn spaces on and off at will, where my dashboard has the times from Anchorage to Sydney, where I can tweet prayers and be praying, where I can know the weather, sunset and sunrise every day. It is on this computer that every key does exactly what I tell it to do. Where I can type in Greek or English, where the key commands are whatever I set them to.

So without that for five weeks I had to reassess... everything. I had to remember how to adapt to other computers rather than making computers adapt to me. I had to live my life in a way where I couldn't just get up and know what I need to know, I had to go and find the information. Where I had to fight through the migraines that came after time spent with those harsh computer screens. Maybe I was spoilt growing up with an SE/30 in the house. Maybe I take for granted that I live in the 'iPod generation' - at which point I'd like to note that I had an iPod before they were safe to carry around, October 2003, which had to be ordered from the US, my 15th birthday present, where I squealed at the sight of the Apple Logo as I opened it, back when OSX was new, something I'd not expected in my wildest dreams, and now... now the world has them.

There is a lot to do now, much to be done, and I must get on with some reading!!

Love

It is in the moment of stillness and silence that the voice of God speaks so clearly.

It is in that silence, in the moment where Jesus writes in the dust. The stunned crowd are silences, are brought to their knees because before them is the true law of God, embodied in His very incarnate being. A law that declares love primary.

Love because love is the very being of God, God IS love, and therefore to love is to reflect God and to love God is to live in relation with Him, in a unity that mirrors the Trinity itself. We can never really reflect the love of God in it's entirety, because regardless of the honour we are given by being made in the image of God, we are not God, therefore in every moment we must be striven to find that true love, to be that true love, because it is the least we can do.

If we really do love God, then that is overflowed to love every person on this earth, because as we are honoured, so they are also. How can we hold back? How can be not live in that place that is love? God's loved stretched so far that He was incarnate, He died and suffered a mortal death, and decended into the deepths of Hell - that place that holds are, that binds us, that place that he broke, broke through and conquered, for us... those who fall so short of His presence, so short of His promise - and He did it for love, for love of us.

So we are, by that awesomeness, we are charged to live in that place of love. What does that mean? It means that when we walk down the street and walk past the beggar sat there without thinking, without stopping to share a conversation, by judging them, we are ignoring that call to love. When we return home and complain of the rain or the cold, complain that we don't have enough sugar to put in our tea (I don't drink sugar in tea, but you get my drift), that we don't have enough food and are still hungry after eating a meal, that there isn't pudding or some such. We are throwing in God's face the love, the provision, the saving act of the resurrection, we are throwing that all in God's face and saying that it doesn't matter, that it doesn't matter that we are loved.

How dare we?

So the hecticness of life is something temporal, something changing. Though the busy time that surrounded my birthday weekend has shifted into reading and studying and finding time for devotion.

On Saturday I was walking into the city to go and sit in Starbucks and do some reading - old habits die hard! The healing on the streets team was out, and I stopped to chat to them, I'm studying Spirituality, Health and Healing and it's interesting to see some of the principles we're discussing put into action. So after a bit of a chat with one of the guys there a woman came over, she asked me if I wanted prayer/healing for anything, and after rebuffing the enitial suggestion, I kind of just went - yes, why not. People have been praying for me to be healed for a year with regard to my allergies, and I've been trusting God to do something, expecting that at some point He will let me live in freedom and without fear of being in a room with things that have almost killed me. Well as they were praying I felt this release, I breathed in the cold air and just felt this freedom.

So that I night, not knowing what God had done in that moment, but knowing He'd done something I was at my friend birthday party, in a room surrounded by pizza and still breathing, and well, and so, I just felt like seeing how far this had gone. I looked over at this slice of pizza and just kind of went... I want to try this, after a while and grabbing my med bag I did, I ate a bite of pizza and... I was fine... I waited an hour or so and I was still fine... I didn't react, my two strongest allergies, things that have landed me in hospital on numerous occasions and... I was fine. So I ate more... and discovered that that day, God had healed my allergies.

God HEALED my allergies... a bit like the moment my depression left I just felt so free. Like singing and shouting and glorifying God. Which I have been doing, because really... how can I hold back my praise from a God who is SO merciful, so gracious as to give me this freedom, to heal me, to give me back food, food which I love, which I know the true value of!

I'm going to write up everything at some point, write up how amazing things have been, but right now I must return to my reading, return to learning more about God, about disability, about pastoral care and the theological response.

All I can really say, God is SO good! I love Him with all of my being, and that... that will never end.

I need a plan, a serious P-L-A-N.

Madonna, madonna, madonna... give me leave to prove thee a fool.

Did you worry about your health when you were 13 and collapsing every day? When the heart palpitations started to scare you? Not really

When your doctor told you she could hear a murmur, when your potassium levels were off the charts then you worried... but to no avail - you were fine.

You have nothing yet, nothing to worry about. So you need to stop!

I'm scared - why am I scared? Because my imagination runs at fifty miles an hour? Because I want to know what's going on? Because I started getting used to my allergies, my asthma and my wrist problem being just there and there was nothing else wrong, then suddenly it feels like there is...

Part of me is also expecting to be plunged head first into grief again, this is the longest period since I was 16 where someone hasn't passed away, but within that I got into the mentality of waiting by the phone expecting the next phone call. That was a hangover from before Grandma died, from when Nanny first got really sick, before she recovered from death's door five times... when I was as used to the Hertfordshire hospitals as I was the corridors of Stantonbury - I was 13 when this started, for 7 years it's been something that... is just a kind of constant, fear, worry, grief, preparing for death, not knowing what to do - waiting for the next phone call. Between October 05 and December 08 there were 6 deaths among friends and families. So when I wrote that phrase "Grief's home my heart!" last summer it spoke more than I knew, and two people have died since then.

I want to remember the first two of that number though - they were men who held something remarkable in their character. I wish I'd known both of them better, but I was young and didn't consider the constraints of time and opportunity. I considered Maurice something special, I saw in him the eccentricity and passion that I felt in myself, he was the living image of my Grandfather and I still savour the last memory, though a silly one - my jacket fell from my shoulders, I hadn't noticed, he picked it up and handed it to me, I hadn't said hello yet, I didn't even realise it was him, I was startled, its a strange half memory from years ago, but I had a love for Maurice that earned myself the nickname of his 'girlfriend' (from his wife I might add) though it was admiration for someone who's character I recognised in myself and gave me a confidence to live to that and not care for the world's condemnation of it.

Then there was Jon Jon, now there was a man who lived for the Kingdom of God, who could captivate a room and the first person in the world who had more words than I ever did, I'd wish that his stories would go on forever and they could! I remember sitting cross legged on his sitting room floor eating rice crackers and hearing the most amazing stories of Japan. He lived to share his life, to show the world a love that it had forgotten, very beautiful - living an almost mendicant life it seemed, one day to the next. I remember the last day I saw him as well, he was concerned and had come to see Papa.

I can't live in this memories. Part of me was thinking of deleting this, but I need to let it stand. Before my heart breaks again for the things I cannot help, before my heart breaks for the grave.

This made my day.

"omg ur like the nice hippy sister i want"