Sunday, December 31, 2017

John Piper on Hebrews 10:32-36


This morning I listened to this message by John Piper 'The Plundering of Your Property and the Power of Hope'. You can listen to an audio version and access the full transcript here.

The Christian Church in America suffers from about 350 years of dominance and prosperity. What I mean by dominance is that in most of American history being Christian has been viewed by the wider culture as normal and good and patriotic and culturally acceptable and even beneficial. What I mean by prosperity is that being Christian has generally resulted in things going well  for us American Christians. Since the Christian ethos has been dominant, it has also been a pathway to success. And what I mean by suffering — that we are suffering from 350 years of dominance and prosperity — is that this has deeply ingrained in us a massively unbiblical mindset, namely, a mindset of at-homeness in this world and in this age. This has not been good for us. We are suffering from it, prosperous though we be.

We have been dominant and we have been prosperous, and therefore we have come to feel at home in this world, and have developed a deeply ingrained assumption that things should go well for us, and that this is our world and our age, that being a good Christian and being well thought of must go together, and that poverty and sickness and suffering and death is the worst thing that can happen in a land of Christian wealth and health and ease and upbeat, success-oriented vitality.

And so we have developed a form of Christianity to support this ingrained expectation of acceptance and comfort security and prosperity. This form of Christianity begins by focusing on our felt needs (not our eternal ones that we may not even be aware of), and it makes its appeal on the basis that Christianity will make life a lot better for us in this world. It has not been a call to suffer as an alien, but a call to prosper as a respected citizen — and to be very indignant and angry if someone reveals out Christianity as a liability and not an asset.

"Hebrews 10:32-36

Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.

You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised."

This text fills me with a longing to be free from domesticated, comfort-seeking, entertainment-addicted, prosperity-loving, security-craving, approval-pursuing Christianity, set free from this distorted, unbiblical, powerless Christianity by the power of hope. I hope it does the same for you.

The writer tells the church to “recall the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings.” The word “enlightened” is used at least two ways in the New Testament: it can mean that the one enlightened sees more clearly or shines more clearly. For example, it can mean that light “goes on” in the heart and truth is seen clearly that once was dark (as when Paul prayed that the Ephesians would have the eyes of their hearts enlightened to know God — 1:18). Or it can mean that what is enlightened (doesn’t see more clearly but) shines more clearly (as when Paul says that Christ lightened life and immortality, that is, Christ brought them to light; he made them shine more clearly — 2 Timothy 1:10).

What does it mean here in Hebrews 10:32? It’s pretty clearly a reference to their conversion. And both meanings seem to be very relevant from what we know about that conversion. On the one hand to become a Christian means (from 2 Corinthians 4:6) that God says, “Let there be light,” in our hearts and “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” fills us with confidence of his reality and worth. So we are “enlightened” in the first sense — we see the glory of God and the reality of Christ more clearly. Lights go on in us.

But then the New Testament talks about how becoming a Christian means we also shine like lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse world (Philippians 2:15). We don’t just see the light of God’s glory more clearly, we begin to reflect it. God shines into us and we shine out to the world.

So I take Hebrews 10:32 to point to these two things. These Christians had come to see the light of the gospel of the glory of God as true and infinitely valuable; and they had then begun to shine in the world as a witness to this truth and value. The first experience set them free from the world and the second made them stand out from the world, and be useful as a witness to the world.

And the result was suffering. Verse 32: “But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings.” It is not unnatural for the world to see the shining of Christian truth and Christian love and hate it. Just before Jesus said, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father in heaven” (which sounds like a positive response), he also said, “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:16, 11). In other words, some are enlightened by your shining; others are incensed by your shining.

In the former days, after the Hebrew Christians started to see the glory of Christ and to shine with the glory of Christ, they also started to suffer for Christ. That’s what Christianity meant. Receive Christ and receive suffering. Evidently they thought things or said things or did things that were not politically correct in those days and the upshot was that some of them got arrested and some others got in trouble because they stood by those who got arrested.

Verses 33–34 explain the way they suffered: ““sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison.”“

So there were two ways that these early Christians suffered: one was that some of them got arrested and put in prison, and the other was that the other Christians were willing to share their suffering by showing public sympathy.

This sympathy cost them a lot. Their property was seized and plundered. Verse 34: “You had compassion on them in prison, and accepted joyfully the plundering of your property.” The scene evidently is that some were put in prison. Others had to decide whether to show their solidarity with them or not. They remembered the teachings of Jesus, perhaps, and went to the prison. Jesus said, “I was in prison and you came to me . . . inasmuch as you did it unto one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:36, 40). Hebrew 13:3 says, “Remember those in prison as though in prison with them. Identifying with the offenders, those with culturally unacceptable views, cost them their possessions.”

(John Piper then draws corresponding examples to present day America:

- Reaching unreached people (eg. Ronnie Smith, killed a year ago in Libya)
- Slavery, human trafficking. (Eg. the End It Movement)
- Abortion (eg. Lecrae and Randy Alcorn)
- Race (eg. Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner, Selma)
- Marriage (eg. Calvin Cochran))

What is plain from this text is that the key to this kind of love, compassion, courage, and sacrifice is radical freedom from our love affair with our possessions and our popularity. Where does that freedom come from? The text is very clear in answer to that. It comes from an all-satisfying hope in the treasure God is beyond the grave. And the answer is not that it comes from some superior kind of grace given to saints and martyrs. It comes from cherishing the reward of heaven more than life on earth. This is the other aspect of being “enlightened” (verse 32). Their eyes were opened to see the glory and worth of their future reward. Verse 34b: “You accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, hope, which has a great reward.”

[...]

We are at home in this world. We love our possessions and our popularity. We love approval. But these early Christians were aliens and exiles whose true home was in heaven and in the age to come with Jesus. That world was so real to them and so precious that they did the unthinkable: they “joyfully accepted the seizure of their property.” It’s the joy that’s so jolting here. It’s the joy. This gives fresh meaning to the Old Testament word: “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).

There’s only one explanation for this joy: they really saw and really believed! They were “enlightened” by God to see it! They believed two things about their possession in heaven: one is that it is better (“you yourselves have a better possession” — verse 34) and the other is that this possession is abiding. In other words they really believed that this world is inferior and this world is temporary. The one to come is superior and the one to come is eternal.

These were not words; they were realities. They were so real that when the house and the furniture and the clothes and the books burned, and the horses were stolen, they knew (the word in verse 34 is “knowing”!) that God was actually preparing them for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. They said with Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:10 — we “have nothing yet we possess everything.”

The key to their joyfully accepting the plundering of their property in the midst of danger and loss was that they simply did not put much stock in this world. They had been transferred into the kingdom of God’s Son (Colossians 1:13). They had passed from death to life. Their lives were hid with Christ in God.

The two things that everybody wants they had found — but not in this world. Everybody wants the best happiness possible and the longest happiness possible. This is what the words “better and abiding” point to. They had a better possession and an abiding one. And the possession they had was a place at God’s side in glory. “In your presence is fullness of joy and at your right hand are pleasures for ever more.” Full and forever. Better and abiding.

If we are going to be courageous and fearless before our opponents, if we are going to live so that the worth of the gospel is manifest, if we are going to take the risks the early Christians took for Christ and his kingdom, if we are going to hope fully, then we are going to have to set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. We are going to have to focus our mind’s attention and our heart’s affection on the better and abiding worth of our reward in heaven — God.

(This term I've fallen in love multiple times with this life, and I thank God for it and for the joy He has given me daily. But often I've wondered if sometimes the joyful light of this world blinds me to the realities of hope in God's promise of eternal life. This world naturally feels so much more real. In a though experiment my Focus group leader did with us, she asked how we'd feel and what we'd do if we knew Jesus was coming on Friday (she asked us on a Tuesday). A lot of what I immediately thought to do included saying goodbye to this world - like visiting my family, kissing Jacob goodbye, going for a long long run, longer than ever, and savouring that final experience of finite tiredness, crying at a sad movie because in heaven there are no tears of sorrow or conflict. I wrote in my diary 'What I realise is that there is so much on earth that I haven't done that I want to do, and I don't know what I feel about God taking it away and making it new. I like the oldness, the funny, quirky, sometimes wonky ways of the earth. I'd love for suffering and injustice to be gone, but I also fear not having the life I long to experience with all its flaws and difficulties before I leave this place. I want to grow old, be married, have children, laugh till I cry, fall over, fall in love continuously, eat good food and bad food and forgettable food, swim in salty water and have it sting my eyes, cut my fingernails and pull sweaty socks off my feet and shiver the cold from my bones when I enter a warm house and... this life you know? I love this life.' Perhaps the answer lies in the italics - I love life, and God promises life to the full (John 10:10). It is silly of me to wonder if I'll be happy and satisfied in heaven, because experience is not detracted when sorrow dies, but a new experience of eternal joy is given. I just need to remember not to love this life but to love this life.

I think I've departed somewhat from John Piper's sermon, which also includes standing beside those who are suffering and enduring suffering and difficulty yourself. This is difficult anywhere, and in Cambridge some of the issues he mentioned, like abortion, race and marriage are topics of discussion and disagreement in some areas. There is a predominant and accepted stance for each of them, which is figured in a certain way and often the way God asks us to respond and live according to His word doesn't correspond to how society tells us to respond and live according to the world. For instance, in the case of abortion, someone I know who is the most kind and loving person is really passionate about pro-life, and has openly held discussions and prayer groups about it. These discussions are held in a really loving, non-judgmental way that does not condemn any group of people but earnestly seeks to protect unborn children and advocate against abortion. She has received so much criticism and anger from people who have not got to know her or tried to see where she is coming from or how she is approaching the issue, and it is heart breaking and also incredibly inspiring to see her continue to persevere in what she knows God has asked her to do. I hope that I will have the same God-given wisdom and perseverance to stand fast in what God says is right and true, despite the multiple and different ways of seeing the world around me. Give me light to lighten my mind, O Lord, that I might see with clarity your world and live it out in this one.)

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

26/12/2017



This morning I went for a slow run by the Cam, armed with my disposable camera because it was a beautiful bright day. I took a picture of a yarn bombing on the Lock, a beautiful yellow and pink sun and next to it the story of how a woman had contacted the artist saying her yarn art and the positive messages that accompany them had stopped her from jumping off that bridge. I took a picture of the little horse that reminds me of Scruffy from the Starhill Ponies, after feeding him a carrot that a family feeding them offered me. I took a picture of fen ditton in the sun, my happy place. So many families were out for walks, almost all with happy smiles on their faces, and I thought of how boxing day is a much more joyful day than Christmas day sometimes, when people can be happy rather than frenetic/perform happiness - as Alex said, Boxing Day is like Christmas Day except there's no pressure of an audience to perform to.

Today also marks the day I saw my first ever nudist, went for a river kayak, got rather wet and subsequently felt so cold I wondered as I sprint cycled back to my house if people were looking at me because my lips were a frostbitten purple (they weren't - I looked entirely normal and I suspect 'people looking at me' was simply a self-conscious imagination on my part a la Sasha from Good Morning Midnight)

In other words I have joined the riverbank club in Cambridge (costumes optional - hence the sighting of the nudist) which encourages wild swimming and owns its own kayaks and has a little garden perfect for reading in. It's a very peaceful, safe space, and the people there are so kind and easy going, and (as they repeatedly tell me acccompanied by much chuckling) 'all mad' - but then, all the best people are.

There is nothing better to warm one's self up, however, than a hot mug of cocoa and a maple cinnamon bun with coconut yogurt and almond butter. (Did I tell you I made my own coconut yogurt? Sadly I will be away for too long to use the current batch as a starter for another batch and so I'll have to buy more yogurt as a new starter but the success of this try has convinced me to make more next term.)

Easy Hot Chocolate (If this hot chocolate were a chocolate bar I'd say it would be about 85-90%, since I like my hot chocolate quite intense, but feel free to adjust ratios as you like)

3/4 mug soy milk
1 heaping tablespoon (basically almost 2 tablespoons) cocoa powder
1 less heaping tablespoon brown/coconut sugar

Heat the soy milk up in the microwave, spoon in the cocoa and sugar and stir it very vigorously with a whisk until the powder dissolves and the milk is all nice and frothy. Add more soy milk to cool it down. (I once had a cup of hot chocolate when I was just as cold after wandering around London, and it was made with coconut milk and tasted divine so I'm very much planning to try that as well!)

**The picture on this post is not of my hot chocolate! I don't photograph my drinks, just scarf them down.

Christmas



This was a quiet Christmas.

Last Christmas, I remember spending a lot of it in tears. Perhaps it was some sort of subconscious portentous mourning. More likely it was because Christmas is often such an intense time of people being together, trying to fold pre-conceived visions of happiness into quotidian existence rather than accepting the beauty in some of the most mundane things (like boiled broccoli), that it can all get a bit much. I remember particularly getting almost inconsolably anxious and tearful over a change of plans over Christmas Eve lunch, the sudden shift of yes-shepherds-pie to no-shepherd's-pie to some-people-will-have-shepherd's-pie-and-some-people-will-buy-something-from-somewhere-else causing my careful balance of 'ok this is what is going to happen' to crack and slice open the tears of anxious planning that had been damming themselves within me for a while. I remember refusing to eat with the family, desperately scrubbing the kitchen counters with a sponge as if making everything clean would help, and then collecting myself, returning to the imperfect fold of family (although I'm not sure if I did this at lunch or only at dinner), retreating to the double bedroom and calling Emily.

This year I had a shepherd's pie again, this time a better recipe and far more peaceful circumstances. I made it on Christmas Eve, talking to myself as if I were a cook on a television show 'right so now we're going to take our sweet potato and mash it - leave the skin on that's the most nutritious part'. Between the shepherd's pie being prepared and the shepherd's pie being baked I went on a windy walk under brumous clouds through muddy fields I had not walked before. Once I had got to a place where the noise of cars had faded, and my own thoughts took precedence finally - not my mediated thoughts of planning and organising and worrying but my feeling thoughts of responding and worshipping and experiencing - what happened was a beautiful, unstoppable outpouring of gratitude.

I spoke aloud to the God I know hears me anywhere, giving thanks for the precious space and time I was in which felt so healing, giving thanks for the joy he had filled me in this year and this term especially. I couldn't stop praising him for who he was, what he had done and how excited I am for what he is and will be doing. I thanked him for the people in my life, for the relationships he's sustained, strengthened, deepened, begun and ended. I thanked him for his creation, for the people fighting to protect it and steward it as commanded, for the beauty of hidden places. My words turned into song, going through classics like Dad's version of 'Amazing Grace', the 'Shepherd' song Luk Ching sent me, 'Grace upon Grace' which Hannah and I sung for offertory in summer.

On Christmas Day I woke up, and put on carols just as Dad and Mum always do at home. (I may have replayed Lo he comes with clouds descending and Of the Father's Love Begotten an obscene number of times but there was no one to annoy but myself) and then opened the lovely presents given and sent from people, including the much anticipated mysterious anonymous amazon package received a couple of days ago and left with my previously anonymous neighbour Stuart and the yellow envelope from Jacob. The former was from Alex, and was 'On the Verge of Insanity: Van Gogh and his Illness' which I was deeply pleased with, and the latter was a book Jacob had made (Made! Hand stitched! How does he do these things?) which he had titled (in his beautiful callography) 'A Poetry Anthology - Edited by Miriam Yeo (with contributions from Jacob Henstridge)'. The first page was Wild Geese, which I think of as my life poem and which I remember showing him on a bus in Rome (taking out from my purse the poem written on the back of a cut out tea box, the way I still carry it around with me). There was As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Hopkins which I read when Jacob brought it to the Englings gathering at the Laurence's. There was the You Come Too poem by Frost, those words which we said so much over Summer and which have manifested in an ever growing list of things we want to experience together. There was extracts from The Language of Love and Tea with Roasted Almonds by Yehuda Amichai which I nervously read out to him when we sat together on my bed - I've always loved the ninth stanza, which he wrote out in full, but my heart caught because he included a line from the first stanza which I never saw in its nakedness without the other words of the stanza 'That is to say: the two of us, that is to say: we.' Have I mentioned yet that I love this man?

In the afternoon I had time to do yoga and go for a cycle ride to Milton Country Park and decide to return there without my bicycle (or with a lock so I could relinquish my bike) and walk around its wandering ways. It was exciting to think I was following paths when I had no knowledge of their destinations. In the evening I finished 'Shame' by Salman Rushdie, which ended with terrifying anticipation, to complete a book of magic, gruesome twists, hilarious descriptions and cartoonish yet poignant characters. I had that feeling of close-to-physical exhaustion one gets from the mental and emotional intensity of a good novel, and felt rinsed with terror and pleasure.

Monday, December 18, 2017

Is a fish in water wet?


On the last weekend of term Bramina came to visit, and large parts of our conversation were dominated by the question -- is a fish in water wet?

Wet:

'Made moist or damp by dipping in, or sprinkling or smearing with, water or other liquid.'


Apparently a lot of people have considered this conundrum, and the related problem of defining what is wet (is water wet?)

I began by playing devil's advocate and offering the controversial position that no, a fish in water is not wet, against Bramina who staunchly believes a fish in water is wet - and then I became convinced of the position I'd been offering as a sort of joke. Alex, who was staying in my room as well, considered both sides and asked questions to probe both positions.

And when we brought the conversation to a pub, discussing it with Bramina's friend James who was in Cambridge as well, a man from the table beside us joined in, and then another man from the table behind us, and I could tell the four elderly people at the table on a diagonal from us had strong opinions on the subject but were choosing (perhaps wisely) not to get embroiled in the discussion.

A fish in water isn't wet - it is submerged in water but submersion is different from being wet. Being wet is a process of making or becoming, and a state of relative difference. You become wet, and can only be wet if you were previously dry. Wet exists only because of dry, and is a juxtaposition of dry and not-dry. So, when a fish is removed from water, that fish with water on it out of water is wet. However, when it was absolutely submerged it is not. (was my basic argument)

Hence - me going into the shower is me getting wet, because as I stand in the shower parts of my body remain touching air, juxtaposing themselves with the parts of my body which are under streams of warm water.

Me jumping into a pool is me getting wet - but the process of getting wet only completes itself when I emerge from under the water. When I am fully submerged I am not wet, when I break the surface the parts of me exposed to air are, having been made wet by falling in water, and when I climb out of the water completely I am wet from my head to my toes.

Oatmeal, by Galway Kinnell



I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health
if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have
breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary
companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge,
as he called it with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime,
and unsual willingness to disintigrate, oatmeal should
not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat
it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had
enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John
Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as
wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something
from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the
"Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words "Oi 'ad
a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through
his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his
pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they
made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if
they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket
through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the
configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
and peer about, and then lay \ itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about
the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some
stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal
alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words
lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there
is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him started
on it, and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their
clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,"
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering
furrows, muttering.
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneaously
gummy and crumbly, and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh
to join me.

Galway Kinnell

(This is just to say I've just made granola, and also I can attest to the statement that eating oatmeal with someone else makes it better)

(J and I came across this poem in the fantastic poetry anthology 'Staying Alive' in Blackwells Bookshop in Oxford, and underneath it was a poem by Patrick Kavanagh because editors of poetry anthologies have a sense of humour too)

Saturday, December 2, 2017

3.30 am 2 am 5 am


Last week (and the first parts of this week) was comprised of

a series of late nights.

The first one was after a Sidney party - which was a turning point in more ways than one - where every dressed like the 1950s and we danced to cheesy tunes from Grease but also to the tunes of Flaurence and the Mad Scene and their mix of songs that go you're a sky full of stars/will you hold me tight and not let go/i want something just like this. (The Laurence half of Flaurence is a big fan of coldplay.)

After the magic of that night I cycled back partially in disbelief that I was awake (everything felt like a dream), a feeling compounded when I couldn't fall asleep for another hour and a half - people already asleep can't fall asleep so perhaps, I thought, it was a dream.

The next day I cycled down into town quickly under bright blue skies - someone was playing 'Wonderwall', and I arrived early enough to sit outside for a while and just bask and reply to people's messages. I felt like the pressure of the final essay and the masters application had lifted, I was just a girl on a bench in the sun, ready for breakfast.

The last essay of this whirlwind of a term was begun at 5 am the following day, the day it was due, which is never a good idea. It concluded that:

The characters of King Lear and The Remains of the Day highlight the relatable tragedy of interpersonal relations – that to love and be loved, one must first become vulnerable, a fearful state which often causes a rejection of relationship for the safe harbor of concealment. Yet, while a ship may be safe in harbor, that is not what ships are for, and the characters continue to exhibit a deep yearning for love. What they fail to understand is that love, although it does uncover and perceive every wrong, also covers a multitude of sins. Love is not love without grace within it, and to be loved, and seen for what is behind the pantomime role, in all its undignified, cruel and unworthy state, is also to be forgiven for all of that [...]

Which is something that being in love has taught me, and also something I've come to see as I learn more about the love of God and how me trying to prove myself better than I am to Him makes no sense when he sees the flawed being I am and loves me anyway.

The last 2am was that same day (or more accurately, that day bleeding into the early hours of the next) with choir christmas dinner and secret santa and games and good fun among people who have definitely become like family.

I'd been up almost 21 hours. A whole day almost, and yet I was still hungry for more hours. More hours and more days of this most joyful, magic term.

Friday, December 1, 2017

A result of saying sorry and grammar trips


On a Sunday during post-evensong formal, J noticed that it had been exactly four months since we decided to be together. That, along with the fact that I'd won a game between us in which we counted how many times we said sorry in one day (J - 12, 5 of which came from one moment where he dropped a fork, Miriam - 2 ish) with the person who said it more having to come up with a surprise for the other, meant that on Wednesday (22 Nov) after choir practice J took me out to dinner.

The feeling of being taken out on date is a strange one - I think the closest I've had is when I went for a movie/strings concert with a different J, when neither of us really knew whether we liked the person or not. This time, I knew I was going with someone I definitely like (and when I write 'like' I mean 'love') and I knew that he'd asked me because he likes me and wants to make me happy (and full of good food ha).

We went to Stem and Glory, had absolutely gorgeous food, laughed over the fantastic descriptions on the wine list, talked about so many things but for some reason one of the things that I remember most vividly is a conversation about a horse named bramble, which we decided would be more pony sized than horse sized, would have imperfect white socks of different heights and a rough sort of mane and would have a dark coat. For dessert he got a sticky toffee pudding - the one thing he's missed since going vegan - and the look of utter satisfaction and almost painful pleasure on his face was quite something to behold.

Afterwards back in my room I was rubbing his shoulders and talking about something inconsequential when he half turned with a laugh in his voice and said 'I don't mean to interrupt but you did just say 'my sister and I' about three times when it should have been 'my sister and me'.' which made me laugh as well and give up on the massage for a while.

If I had to describe our evening for a wine bottle it would be 'a straight-forward evening balanced with notes of laughter, surprise, pleasure with a warm finish'

(Perhaps you can tell I don't drink wine very often, and have no skill in the poetry that is wine descriptions, but that's the closest I can get)

Light through the window and bread on the floor


On a Sunday morning to end all Sunday mornings, Jacob came over bearing an already proofed but not yet baked loaf of bread. I'd got the oven warm, and we put it in immediately (after carefully putting a tray of water in the bottom of the oven to steam the bread while it's baking and give it a nice crust - Jacob doesn't make 'just any old bread')

We ate it with jam and peanut butter and banana and avocado and baked beans I'd made fresh that morning (not the Heinz kind that I despise and Jacob actually likes -- we have to agree to disagree on some things, although it is always me who is disagreeing since Jacob is so agreeable about everything.) and the sunlight came through the window and caught his clear eyes.

This was on a no-work Sunday, something Jacob does habitually and which I really respect and decided to try out during term. The first no-work Sunday that happened felt so wonderful and intentionally restful that I spent my rest doing things that filed me with joy - I went for a run, did laundry and hung it out inhaling the smell of fresh clean clothes, and baked maple tahini cookies. I woke up without an alarm, and felt no tiredness at all. I can't say it's perfect, because in subsequent weeks I've sometimes had too much work not to squeeze some in on Sunday, and other times I wonder if the no-work Sunday is truly something I offer to God or if sometimes I lapse into doing it just to challenge myself. But that morning, that breakfast, that breakfast bringer, that was a little moment of perfection.

The Florida Project and my feminist toolkit



This is the best movie I've watched, possibly all year. I watched it on an evening after a life-giving art workshop with Barby Asante, where we discussed our feminist toolkits and asked each other questions, answering with more questions.

This is the second in a series of workshops a few girls and I are doing with Barby, as she develops something for Medwards' art gallery. I remember on the evening of the first session, being late, I pedalled so quickly from choir at Sidney back to Medwards that I made it up that hill in 6 minutes -- a new record, possibly a WORLD record because that hill takes the wind out of any normal person.

In this second session we'd been asked to bring things that were our 'feminist toolkit', or more simply put, things that kept us alive (I'm not sure why it was feminist but I used that as a way of choosing from the many many things that keep me alive a few more specific things). One girl talked about her jewelry/piercings, bought or given at special times by special people. Another girl mentioned her journal and books of poetry. I brought along the 'What I Wish for Miriam by Emily' book that Em gave me when I first flew here, the one that reminds me of our invisible soul-glue bond and that almost always makes me cry when I read it. I talked about that, and the poem by Hannah, the Wyken Vineyard day card from Mum, the post-death birthday card from Auntie Sheila, and a birthday card from Grandma, all which are stuck up in places in my room so that the words from these wise, good, kind and strong female figures in my life surround me and build me up, reminding me who I am, where I've come from, how I'm loved and what I need to remember where ever I end up going.

The question game we played after that was wonderful - it entailed asking someone a question, and their 'answer' had to be a question directed at another person. The questions grew off each other, we asked about family, rituals, politics, emotions, religion... Personal and invasive and 'mattering' questions since no person was required to answer. And for each question you wondered about other people's answers and answered in your heart as well, which was probably more important, to know first what you think about the nature of God and love and safety before basing it off someone else's response. A sort of enforced self analysis.

After that I cycled down to watch  The Florida Project with Alex. Moonee and her friends running with the flip flop slapping, exhausted but inexhaustible run of childhood, or eating ice crema, taking turns to each have a lick, or taking joy in making the shaky noises the come from singing into a fan made me think so much of my own childhood, and miss it. The film was a huge nostalgia trip, and yet at the same time it was about circumstances entirely foreign to me, childhood in an environment of danger, desperation, violence, hatred and poverty. Alex said so aptly afterwards that you felt like someone had wrung out your insides by the end of the film.

When we came out of the theatre at midnight, a drunk girl was singing 'Wonderwall' along to the guitar accompaniment of a homeless man.

Friday, November 3, 2017

Yehuda Amichai and horse chestnuts



The way a photographer, when he sets up     
a shot of sea or desert out to the edge of the horizon,     
has to get something large and close-up into the picture—     
a branch, a chair, a boulder, the corner of a house,     
to get a sense of the infinite, and he forgets about the sea     
and the desert—that’s how I love you, your hand,     
your face, your hair, your nearby voice,     
and I forget the everlasting distance and the endless endings.     
And when we die, again there will be only sea and desert     
and the God we so loved to look at from the window.     
Peace, peace to the far and the near, to the true Gods, peace.

From Yehuda Amichai, “The Language of Love and Tea with Roasted Almonds,” (Stanza 7)

I've been really enjoying getting packages in my pigeonhole this term - mostly they are things I've bought myself: a pair of trousers, some rosehip oil, a corduroy dungaree dress that I haven't stopped wearing since I've got it, 'I, Coriander' because it's a good book, and 'The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai'. When I first got Amichai's book, I flipped open to a page titled The Language of Love and Tea with Roasted Almonds and read and resonated.

It's funny, that in some ways love is like poetry and in other ways love is so very far away from poetry. On a walk with Jacob, we stopped underneath a horse chestnut tree and, knowing that I collect a conker to represent each year in Cambridge we peered through the grass to find the perfect one for this year. He did find the perfect one and put it carefully in my hand - poetic. But later on when he found another conker and split it open we talked about how its inside looked like a brain, and then talked about dissection experiments in school - unpoetic. Still love.

Or tonight - dinner and talking about where we'd be in ten years and eating chocolate. Poetic. And then him dropping his fork and me nicking myself with his knife. Unpoetic. And then him getting Savlon and a plaster. Unpoetic? And me fumbling with the plaster and him sticking it carefully on. Poetic? Lines blur -- I sound like one of those confused literary critics but poetry perhaps isn't so easily defined.

'The Week Spent in Portugal...' Faro


The first thing I can remember about getting from Lisbon to Faro is that we gave some money to a man on the train - he said he was visiting family and hadn't enough money for a ticket, and although usually I am suspicious of that sort of thing, for some reason (Alex would probably attribute it to the heady haze of holiday bliss) I felt he was telling the truth and had real need.

Getting off at Faro was confusing - everything seemed to be asleep, deserted, like when Alex and I had cycled to the Orchard Tea Room for the first time, and its shutters were closed and a wind whipped around the deck chairs and all we could do was imagine the ghosts of the Bloomsbury group and their past moments there.

(Because this time was so long ago that it feels like a 'past memory' itself I may concertina in lots of other memories not necessarily pre-dating this one which Faro has somehow managed to get stuck too, like burrs on a sweater)


We found our hostel - creaky - with three storey bunk beds - and toilet cubicles that were so tiny your knees touched the doors when they were closed, then left it on a mission to have our hair cut. Auntie Sarah had told me before about Steinbeck's Travels with Charley (although having not read it I can't verify if this is true, and I have a feeling she wasn't too sure either -- but for the sake of illustrative memory--) in which his travels are driven by a series of small-things-that-lead-on-to-the-next, for example (an example almost surely not in the text) getting his shoe mended would lead to meeting someone who would take him out for a drink, in which he would lose his watch and search for a watchmaker, and in the process discover an eccentric cafe. That kind of vacillating, meandering adventure not intentionless but with flexible intention. That was sort of what our haircut pursuit turned into, for we stopped in a few small places, trying to communicate through signs with the owners that we'd like a haircut and trying to get a price estimate. Most of the people in Faro we met didn't speak English, unless they were involved in a clear tourist job, and so some of our attempts at asking for a haircut were so futile that we had to quickly make an embarrassed exit.

Finally we returned to  the very first shop we'd been into - a place owned by a tiny old woman with big hair and big personality. She commanded me into a chair, washed and scrubbed my hair and trimmed it, all the while speaking in Portuguese. She spent more time with the hair dryer trying to blow my slippery-straight hair into something resembling her almost-afro, and at one point picked up a can of hairspray which I quite vigorously declined.

Alex took this photo and later titled it something like ‘Girl looks to future with sense of dread’, apt in many ways. Have I ever mentioned that the process of having my hair cut fills me with more fear than going to the dentist?




I am going to have to abandon chronology as in my Dubai post - then it was for a sort of poetic effect, now it is because of a failure of memory. And unlike Dubai, where I quite faithfully kept a diary of days, I did keep a diary while in Lisbon but not in Faro. I wonder why that is? I partially suspect I spent my time in Faro writing about Lisbon, as I am prone to (my diary keeping is a constant process of looking further back than a normal diary does, if there is any such thing as a normal diary)

So instead I shall remember what stuck in my head. One day was the visit to the 'Desert Island', a prospect I had sort of romanticised after watching a short video diary by Wild We Roam. Less romantic was our hostel receptionists quizzical response when we asked her about it: 'It's just an island... there is nothing on it.'


But I still wanted to go to that nothing space (which now I see as akin to the nothing spaces in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), and so Alex and I waited on the dock, playing card games, for a boat to take us there. On the boat I dropped my disposable camera into the sea (rather it rolled off my lap and into the foam froth issuing from the back of the boat) and felt very little for it - having just lost Grandma that previous term, losing a disposable camera with just one photograph on it seemed trivial.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Maybe that was why the Deserted Island was such a draw to me as well - it seemed the perfect place for lost things. The home of the Peter Pan's Lost Boys is an island, and the sandy beaches of Norfolk are the locus for the 'Lost Corner' in Never Let Me Go.

“I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger[...]” 

What Alex and I did find on the Deserted Island was time, and a surreal space to call our own. Behind us the Algarve Coast seemed trapped in a maelstrom of a storm; dark brooding clouds and the blurred air that from a distance means rain. But a glance to our left showed blue skies with wispy white clouds and the calm ebb and flow of waves on sand. Further on we came across a flock of seagulls so numerous that we felt very much we were intruding on their territory. When we headed toward what looked like an area clear of the birds another flock of hundreds rose before our eyes, all the gulls in the world... 


I remember Alex asked something about Grandma on the boat back home - I can't remember what, but I do remember getting slightly teary, and simultaneously thinking how wonderful it was to have a friend I could be truthfully sad in front of. Alex sometimes reminds me that my own sadness is legitimate. In one of our first tea-at-night times this term, when she played her funky music from the turn table she'd brought down, we talked about last year. When I said that Lent term had been a turning point of sorts in my Cambridge experience, she said it must have been, because of Grandma's death. The fact that she remembered and realised that it did change things, and that she said again that that it would of course still feel sore was so honest, and bold and compassionate at the same time - immensely thankful.


Back on shore we circled the orange trees near the church, determined to fell and orange and taste it - one of the reasons we'd chosen Portugal at all was because of the vague impression of Virginia Woolf picking oranges in Spain - Portugal was geographically close enough, and oranges would make it closer still.

A few futile attempts later, we succeeded by hitting one off a tree with a stick. As we prepared to have it, a man approached us looking concerned - we anticipated a scolding but instead he conveyed that the oranges were not good-too sour. We tried it anyway - he was right. That word 'scolding' reminds me of how I used it in conversation with Alex once and she found it very strange, an 'old' word she didn't tend to hear, especially not in the context I used it (I think I'd said the choir teachers would scold the choir committee). And the sour oranges remind me of how on a walk Jacob and I came across a blackberry bush, and tried some, but they were either tasteless or quite unpleasantly sharp, so when I did come across the perfect sweet wild blackberries on a run on a later day I sent him an overly excited snapchat, another 'you come too' moment.

One morning we walked (intentionally although belatedly because it was difficult to find) into a chapel that was plastered with gold and inhabited with statues, which is known for the 'chapel of bones' that resides behind the main chapel. It is quite literally made of human bones, skulls with gaping eye holds and chipped noses, some empty spaces where presumably the skulls have fallen out, It was odd how quickly the humanity and death we were surrounded with faded to architectural features. There was always a slight sense of unease purely because it was so macabre, but at the same time it was far less odd than I had envisaged, probably because there was so much order and symmetry to the bones that I don't usually attribute to the after-death skeleton which just crumbles or is cast into the ground. The purposeful use and arrangement of the bones somehow made them less human. In fact, I found the dripping, sweating, over dose of gold within the chapel and the naturalistic statues of Jesus and Mary far more terrifying - one statue of Mary had a strip of lace draped over her hands, which were taut and slightly outstretched as if petrified and resisting - the lace was like some sort of handcuff, and her face too had a tortured expression which did not impart in me the affective piety and vision of the weeping Madonna by Jesus' cross, but looked instead like Mary was silently suffering some sort of agonising torture as she stood there, frozen. 


We didn't actually spend all our time in Faro - one day we went to Silves, a good thing because it started to pour in Faro just as we boarded the train to Silves. Silves was another 'Travels with Charley' sort of day - Alex was in search of a stamp, I was in search of a plate for Mum and both of us were determined to pick a lemon from a tree. While waiting for Alex while she used the bathroom, I was taking a picture of dappled sunlight on a yellow wall when I turned around to see an old man in the distance beckoning to me. I walked towards him, and he pointed at my camera, and then at himself. 'Do you want me to take a picture of you?' He nodded, and posed, click. I showed him the picture, and we tried to converse but words failed us, although I did understand that he wasn't from Silves but another place nearby. I wonder why he wanted me to take that picture - does he, like Leo Gursky in The History of Love, want to leave as much of himself on earth as possible, to be remembered, to not go gentle into that good night?

I try to make a point of being seen. Often when I’m out I’ll buy a juice, even if I’m not thirsty. If the store is crowded, I’ll sometimes go so far as to drop my change all over the floor, the nickels and dimes skidding in every direction. [...] All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen.


Interesting that although I feel that Portugal taught me to let go, to be alright with losing things, to not need answers on a desert island I was constantly seeking something there. I did find a pottery shop where I thought I might find a plate, but instead I left with a tiny mug, painted with pale green and three yellow flowers. The man who owned the shop moved in in 1992, and told me the building has a long history, having once been a primary school on its second floor. The first owner of the gallery had arrived there, on a bicycle, in 1979. There is plenty of pottery sold in the shops in Silves, but this one vehemently promised that it did not condone 'slavish copying'. 

Alex also found her stamp -and an envelope- in the same place that we found the lemon (we did not pluck it from the trees we saw in Silves, not wanting to be charged with breaking and entering since those trees were all in private gardens. There were public orange trees but we'd learnt our lesson there) It was a small shop that sold food, and when we asked the owner if she sold stamps she said not, but as we were walking away we heard her shout to us - her sister had just arrived and what we needed.

Friday, August 25, 2017

A rumination on love, faith and what we can be sure of



Today I was walking down to the train station for a late start at work (after a 15 hour work day yesterday) and ruminating on the things that I can be sure of in life.

I recently saw this illustration by Mari Andrews of 'Things I Feel Unsure About' as opposed to 'Things I Feel Sure About'. If I had my own list it would look a little like this:

Things I Can Be Sure About:

-My hair looks best the day after I've washed it

-I'm a sucker for crunchy granola

-Skirts and dresses over Trousers and shirts

-I like shoes that make a slight click when heel meets ground (they give me confidence)

-That God so loved this world that He gave His only Son, so that anyone who believes in His Son Jesus Christ will not perish because of the sin that we all commit and that justly merits punishment, but will have eternal life with God because Jesus has paid the price for that sin in His death on the cross.

-That God is faithful:

As surely as the sun rises,
    he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
    like the spring rains that water the earth.

-That I am so often unfaithful:

[My] love is like the morning mist,
    like the early dew that disappears.

Things I Can't Be Sure About:

-Whether the combination of peanut butter and strawberries or tahini and maple syrup wins the sweet toast prize for after dinner snacking

-Whether I'm actually hungry or not

-What I really think about my bond

-If my choices of optional papers for third year are what I really want to do

-Whether I'll be able to do a Master's course next year

Thankfully, I thought, the last two things I am sure of are enough of an assurance to outweigh the uncertainty that I have about small or seemingly big things. Jacob showed me Chapter 6 of Hosea when we were skyping some time ago, and sometimes during the week I search it up on my laptop and read it again. He said something so true about it - that it really contrasts our 'constant inconsistency' with God's unending faithfulness (a surety).

I thought about another conversation we'd had, and how I'd come to see from that that perhaps love isn't closest to a feeling or a series of actions but faith. Love - faith, both sometimes appear to disappear but are actually constant in their true forms. Love - faith, both intangible, both life-giving, both relational, both holding onto the now and hoping for and dreaming about the not-yet.

Love - faith, both nothing without assurance and certainty in some for or another. If you love someone unreasonable, knowing they do not return your love and that you will never be in love together with them, then that love is pain and frustration and destruction. If you have faith in something you do not actually believe in, which proves false and fleeting and unfaithful, then that faith is dead and useless. And so it is an unchanging, constantly constant and sure God which I choose to love foremost and to put my faith in. His assurance is my life song, his constancy my rock, upon which I build my faith and trust in love.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

'The week we spent in Portugal...' - Lisbon


Last week I skyped Alex, a heady 2 hour call that had not a second of silence. After that call, my mind reminded me again how I hadn't ever written about the time we spent in Portugal, a trip born of a combination of essay fever and holiday fervour, flights booked late at night while sitting propped up on my bed, neither of us really believing that we were flying to Lisbon if not for convenient ryanair emails.

We stayed at Grandma's place for a couple of days, listening to Nina Simone while we ate our porridge and cooking an altered version of Biryani on the stove, and on the day of the flight we left before dawn, and listened to the dawn chorus as we drove to the train station.

We flew on a hot, dusty plane to a hot, dusty country, which grew cooler when we stepped out into the city. I floated on a feeling of anticipation that reminded me of Barcelona: the same sepia-tone, and also a slight and unexplained lonesomeness despite the lovely presence of Alex with me.


As usual, my worries (worry, loneliness, anxiety, disappointment, sometimes hard to distinguish) dissipated when we stepped out of the train station, walked past a juice store and the smell of croissants and got to our hostel. It was called the 'Poet's Hostel' and everything about it was perfect. The rooms were named after poets, Portuguese or otherwise, guest-made art hung on the walls, and there was a spacious lounge with bean bags, and very friendly desk staff. We put our things down and contemplated a nap, before deciding to venture out and enjoy the 17 degree weather (I wore a sleeveless dress for the first time in months).


Lisbon is certainly one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen, blue and white tiled buildings, trams dinging by and cobbled streets that glint as if wet in evening light. We walked first to find food - very salty sandwiches - and then tried to find a fashion gallery (closed) and at last sat by the sea, and talked (as we always do) about everything and everything. Two lovers of The Waves, sitting by the waves, and Alex read out the first chapter of The Waves just as she had in Medwards' garden. (We are both suckers for perfect moments, even if self-created.) Then we walked along the beach - now a Prufrock moment! and had dinner at a place called AO26 that I still think about going back to every time I think of Lisbon.



The next day we took a train to Sintra. Sintra reminded me of Pan's labyrinth - 'A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamt of the human world. She dreamt of blue skies, soft breeze and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was, and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness and pain. Eventually she died. However, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. And he would wait for her, until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning ...' The whole place seemed like the castle ruins were not quite laid to rest, but were alive and waiting for something.


There was a large well where water trickled and dripped down the walls as we went down a descending spiral of steps to its depths. When you looked up the circle of sky looked like the moon, apart from a tree branch slashing its silhouette against the milky blue. Then we headed into a dripping tunnel, which led us to a nearby pool. At one point we walked behind the castle walls, climbing over or alongside boulders.

You'd have thought that by the end of that day of clambering and climbing and exploring that we'd finish there - but we went to Belem, because there was an art gallery there that looked interesting. We stopped to get Alex a flaky custard pastry from the shop opposite the monastery where they were originally made by monks.


The Art Gallery itself was immense, and we were sorry not to have more time in it (although no regrets about the pastry or the lovely golden walk we had getting there) In one gallery, there were a collection of photographs of space. Not being very 'good' at 'understanding' art (questionable terms there) I stood in front of the photographs and wondered if photography was a lesser skill compared to painting, or sculpture, or drawing, because it was a machine working for you (although you of course in many aspects work the machine too). And just as I was about to turn away - suddenly - serendipitously - music. Music from the spheres, I like to think. And instantly my experience of the photograph was changed. No longer was it just an 'is' of space and stars. It was overwhelmed with possibility and energy. It made me think about heaven, and oblivion or fulfillment, of peace and uncertainty, and the process of getting over grief.

It rained just as we got to the train station, and was still drizzling when we went back to A026 to get dessert - chocolate mousse for Alex and an exquisite strawberry cheesecake for me (again - still dreaming).

Friday, August 4, 2017

A metaphorical, unchronological, one-sided account of Dubai and Jordan


No dates. No days. Does the sun ever really set in the desert?

Dubai is heavy hot.


The cold tap produces warm water. Heat rises from the water to caress your skin before you want to be touched.

In an artist's studio there is a tile you can touch, pictographic braille that made me illiterate when I closed my eyes - line, circle and point merged into one under my rough, insensitive fingers. Words that usually drop easily into my mind like smooth pebbles into a clear pond become murky or disappear.

There is no water in a desert.

Later with eyes open I remained illiterate, unable to read the curves and dots of Arabic, unable to read the curves and dots of a smile and your eyes. Were those creases care or amusement? Or both? I deemed you unreadable, the desert an empty blank.

Our minds were blank too, we couldn't remember the words we sang every week. We practice fear. 'My soul doth magnify the Lord...' The nervousness is in some ways natural. 'And my spirit doth rejoice in God my Saviour...' But when we practice happiness I shout 'BLESS THE LORD' and it is with real joy and not thespian affectation. More lines.

We talk about how we could never live here, this exotic place with so many shards beneath the glass, a world away from what you describe as your ordinary life.

There is no water in a desert.

Moments later David tells me about how we know so little about space, how we perhaps know even less about oceans, which in some ways can never be fully known, being an utterly fluid medium. Moments later we are lying on a trampoline, the soft give of the net beneath me, the  little leaves prickling the skin on my back, the heat rising off my face and body is familiar, a fragment from childhood. I see four stars above, and a moving light which must be an aeroplane. We talk about the hidden things in people, the depths we never know about them, the things we are just beginning to appreciate as they leave. I suppose people are like oceans, moving and changing and little known.

As we fly from Dubai to Jordan the aeroplane's wing turns from dusty blue to pink to yellow. At one point it falls directly on the seam where the sun's colours fade out, making it appear like a great cosmic eraser, smudging the sunset's brilliant kodak stack of colours into a grey blue that we leave behind us.

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mud-cracked houses
                                If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock  Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water


Things are different in Jordan. Perhaps I have learnt from Dubai that with enough oil and money and the crazy vision of the very rich, you can have water in a desert. We danced along to a fountain show in blazing sunlight. We raced about like five year olds in a water park, slides that shot water – all in the desert.

 “Come, all you who are thirsty,
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
    and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
    and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
    listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
    my faithful love promised to David.

[...]

You will go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
    will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
    will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
    and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord’s renown,
    for an everlasting sign,
    that will endure forever.”
Isaiah 55

Finally, finally, from a distant myth to an immediate reality we reach the desert. The bus was coated with a thin film of sand, which clung to us as well when we stepped out into the desert. The paths the jeep went down were almost unreadable, only slightly lighter sand than the mountains themselves, and we soon alighted and continued on foot, a brief moment of heat and then a plunge into a cool green-blue pool. A pattern repeated, punctuated by the presence of tadpoles, frogs and the most brilliant pink desert flowers. The act of jumping into a pool is easy, even sliding in from a height of about 7 metres is easy unless you think about it. The thought of it is a terror that sits beside you with arms tight around your chest, and the whole choir cheered when Katie plunged in. The last jump is the highest, and I have to pause before letting go. But every time you fall it is the same - exhilaration and joy, flight, fall, impact and the million million bubbles the spring up around you, enveloping you safely and delivering you again to the bright, white desert world.

As we drive away I see a patch of melons, and a patch of tomatoes. I think of the tadpoles, the flowers, the tiny frog I scooped up that walked with webbed feet over my hands and which you wondered over. There is life in this desert and the land cannot stop living. It makes me hopeful, and amazed, and I tell you how wrong we both were. Our lives are not ordinary - we have lived and we are living and will live extraordinary lives, whether we try to or not. I for one have been through the desert and jumped off a cliff into an unknown pool and still live.

I once saw a television programme about the desert. The programme sped up time, the desert burst into life. I watched as colour erupted extraordinary.

I stepped off the plane feeling dry again. I read the words 'The truth has to be melted out of our stubborn lives by suffering. Nothing speaks the truth, nothing tells us how things really are, nothing forces us to know what we do not want to know except pain. And this is how the gods declare their love.' (The Oresteia, Aeschylus) I do not want to be back in this hot, heavy land. I do not want to leave the cool water and prayer call of Jordan.

An imitation of the desert pool is found in Joanna's swimming pool, but I leave at one point and turn somersaults on the trampoline until I can land them, and then I do five because there is an urgency that is taking hold of me at the thought of imminent departure.

You tell me that you read that the present it the closest thing we have on earth to eternity, this encapsulated moment, a bubble with all ends joined together. When I walk with Emily she reminds me that I can just ask. There is no time like the present. There is no present like the time. And I am painfully aware of how quickly it is running away from me. So I decided to stop it. By 10 o'clock.

“The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time--for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.” (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters)

We watched two fountain shows before the third one. And almost proverbially, by the time the third show came on everything was different, and I don't think I saw much of that fountain show at all.


I write, you write, it is not perfect in many ways. I had two drafts before I sent my first letter, and there are things in the second letter I wish I'd re-written. I am never satisfied with my writing, always satisfied with yours. It is difficult not being with you, but if there was anything at all I learnt from Dubai and Jordan, it is that even in the desert there are pools, there are water parks and fountains. One does not die of thirst, all it takes is patience, and the practice of falling.