Me in a nutshell

I read hopeful, inspiring books on Christian spirituality so that I can spot myself in the negative descriptions of what not to do or what happens when things go wrong; so I can think "Yep, that's me. Wow, am I messed up!"

And nine times out of ten if I see someone I know in Tesco I look the other way and pretend I haven't seen them.

Talk Like A Pirate Day

Today is Talk Like A Pirate Day, which explains why my oldest son went off to college looking like this

I think that the red eye only improves the close up picture

Friendships

I've just finished reading Donald Miller's "Blue Like Jazz", and can't wait to turn back to the beginning and start reading it again. Sometimes I love the way that God works. I decided to check my hotmail and there was a message from the library to say that one of the three books that I ordered on inter-library loan had arrived, so over I went to the Library to find that Redcar and Cleveland Library Service had very kindly lent me their copy until 7th December. So I decide to have a quick look through, and what do I find, but a whole load of engagingly-written stuff about loving enemies, about how self-discipline doesn't get you anywhere without allowing yourself to be loved by God, about how it feels to be pretty much totally obsessed with yourself and your own needs and how destructive this turns out to be? Wow. All the stuff I've been thinking about recently, tied together and expressed much more eloquently than I could have done.

Anyway, I was walking back over from the Library when I had a sudden thought. For a long time I've had issues about the way that the Church repeats Jesus's idea of God being a father, sometimes without much consideration for the growing numbers of people who have either no experience of having a father, or have had very bad experiences involving fathers. I think that we as a church need to be careful to say that when you know your dad isn't perfect, that's because in some way you're comparing him to what you think a perfect dad should be like, and that idea of the perfect Dad is one way of understanding God. Anyway, I was crossing the road and thinking (as is my habit) moderately miserable thoughts about friendships and how rubbish I am at them and never really believe that people actually like me (apologies to anyone who is reading this who considers themselves to be my friend: it's not you, it's me), when it occurred to me that if people who have issues about "God is like a Dad" need some extra care, then maybe people like me might well have some issues around "My Friend Jesus". Now, I know that this sounds pretty basic, duh, but it has never ever occurred to me before that if I spend my life thinking that some people like me and quite a lot of people tolerate me, but friendships are things that only happen to other people, then it might conceivably affect the way I look at my relationship with God. Because I don't keep in touch with people (the only person from my past who I have any contact with - excluding a couple a generic Christmas letters - is my friend Julie who sent me an email a couple of weeks ago, after not hearing from me for about four years: apart from that I have no friends from school, from previous jobs or homes or churches) I assume that nobody would want to keep in touch with me. There is nobody I would call on in a crisis or ring up to ask if they wanted to go for a drink. And I assume that God has the same kind of relationship with me, which I know intellectually is weird and wrong but nevertheless I will go away and think about this some more.

Extemely lucky

I'm sitting here in my kitchen, typing on my work laptop which is attached to my home wireless network, having drunk a couple of espressos and eaten far too many chocolate biscuits, and although this is a treat rather than an everyday occurence, it occurs to me that globally speaking I am part of a tiny privileged minority.

Maybe I should be mindful of this more often.

Enemies

I've been thinking off and on about the whole idea of loving enemies. We're instructed to do this, but I feel that individually and as a church we're not very good at it. We don't have intercession prayers for those who mistreat us, and while doing good to others by, for example, supporting Fair Trade is important, we don't give much priority to doing good to those who hate us. Part of the problem might be defining who our enemies are. Is it the person who steals our credit cards or the gang that shouts out abuse at us? Is it the boss who takes advantage of us or the older kids at school who bully us? Is it the transnational corporation that pumps images we don't want at us or is it consumer culture that encourages debt and reliance on the things of this world? I try now and then to pray for people who do things I don't like or approve of, and if there's a story on the news I sometimes pray for the perpetrators as well as the victims of outrages, but I struggle with knowing what practical love for enemies would look like. And what does it mean for the church? My impression is that we might pray for people who do wrong to see the error of their ways, or pray for justice (which often means hoping that people who hurt us will get punished), but we seldom, if ever, pray for blessings on those who curse us.

I don't have an answer for this. Should the church give some money to Stonewall or send Richard Dawkins a birthday card? Seriously, it's easier to define the church's enemies globally and nationally (those who persecute christians, organisations that promote anti-religious propaganda), but how do we decide who our enemies are locally so that we can go out and do good to them?

I don't know... maybe this is just me getting on my high horse; maybe if I went to the Monday night prayer meeting I'd find that they regularly pray for enemies there. But the idea won't leave me alone. Hmmm. Maybe I should mention it to PV. Or not (at least until I manage to get to a Monday prayer group).