As I cycled over regent's canal on the way to SOAS this morning, I spoke (as you do) to my bike. 'You're doing an amazing job - I'm so glad I have you,' I said, smiling down at her.
Oh yes, she's a her.
It's time to introduce Liv. After the faithful silver bike that carried me to lectures, choir practices and supervisions all three years of Cambridge was laid to rest (un)ceremoniously at the SOAS bike racks (I still need to figure out what to do with him), I bought Liv from a man named Angel. At first I had some reservations - her brake pads needed replacing, she was a little smaller than Old Silver, and her chain wasn't gleaming, although Angel assured me that with some oil that would be fine. But I needed a bike, and Liv was blue and light and cyclable and so I bought her.
On the first ride home her chain came off (entirely my fault, for messing with the gears) and I thought, 'oh no'. But after a liberal spray of WD-40 and a session with the guys at cycle republic, she worked fine. If Liv was a person she'd be a 65 year old lady, with blue highlights in her hair, and a penchant for poetry and walks and fruit crumble. In other words she's a bike after my own heart.
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Aside from Liv, London has become a lot more personable.
I've joined a bible study group in church, which meets every Wednesday night. On the first night, I was loathe to go, having ended a lecture in school at 7.15pm - 15 minutes after the bible study began. I began steering Liv back home, and then felt an inward pull and stopped. 'Alright God,' I thought, 'I feel like maybe you want me to go for the bible study, but I'm tired and the cycle back from there is even longer than the cycle back from here and -- I just want to go home.'
'So if you want me to go,' I continued, 'I'm going to ask for a sign. If the time it takes to get there is less than 20 minutes, I'll go. If it's more, I'm going home.' (When I left school it had been 19 minutes, and I'd cycled a little in the opposite direction so I was hoping geography was on my side.)
Google maps read 18 minutes.
'Right, God - another sign please because that could have been a fluke. I'm going to check facebook and if there's a notification from the church then I'll go.' (There hadn't been any notifications when I last checked facebook before getting on my bike, so the chances, I thought, were low.)
Lo and behold, a notification.
'Okay God, you're a lot more technological than I thought. I'll go.'
And it was just the thing I needed. The people there were honest, welcoming, refreshing and serious about studying God's word. We learnt about realising our own sinfulness and yet also living in joy that Christ freely forgives that, bringing us from exile from his love into his Kingdom and a relationship with God. I realised that although I often confess my own weakness/lack of trust/need for control, I rarely actually perceive myself as 'sinful' in the absolute depravity it is cast as in the Bible. Perhaps because it's always in tension with the assuaging promise that Christ has forgiven sin and made a way for us to access God despite sin, and access the Holy Spirit to combat sin.
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A Quiet Joy
– Yehuda Amichai (translated by Chana Bloch)
I’m standing in a place where I once loved.
The rain is falling. The rain is my home.
I think words of longing: a landscape
out to the very edge of what’s possible.
I remember you waving your hand
as if wiping mist from the windowpane,
and your face, as if enlarged
from an old blurred photo.
Once I committed a terrible wrong
to myself and others.
But the world is beautifully made for doing good
and for resting, like a park bench.
And late in life I discovered
a quiet joy
like a serious disease that’s discovered too late:
just a little time left now for quiet joy.
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Speaking of body things: I've definitely been having a lot more positive body thoughts lately, which has been all the more wonderful because I haven't been surprised by them - they feel natural and unexceptional as they should be. Partly it's because of a good routine of running in preparation for the 10k, the mornings (or evenings) down the parkland walk and in Hampstead heath are usually fresh and exciting and having a reason beyond my body for running is useful too - now when I run it isn't just me and my legs and the world (which can be either incredibly soothing or a disastrous echo chamber, depending on how my brain is being), it's also 17 November and Jacob and all the people who have donated and the charities.
(Also I'm about £50 away from my target for TRIBE --- if you're reading this and have spare change for a good cause please consider putting it into these anti-trafficking charities!)
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Full Moon
– Alice Oswald
Good God!
What did I dream last night?
I dreamt I was the moon.
I woke and found myself still asleep.
It was like this: my face misted up from inside
And I came and went at will through a little peephole.
I had no voice, no mouth, nothing to express my trouble,
except my shadows leaning downhill, not quite parallel.
Something needs to be said to describe my moonlight.
Almost frost but softer, almost ash but wholer.
Made almost of water, which has strictly speaking
No feature, but a kind of counter-light, call it insight.
Like in woods, when they jostle their hooded shapes,
Their heads congealed together, having murdered each other,
There are moon-beings, sound-beings, such as deer and half-deer
Passing through there, whose eyes can pierce through things.
I was like that: visible invisible visible invisible.
There's no material as variable as moonlight.
I was climbing, clinging to the underneath of my bones, thinking:
Good God! Who have I been last night?
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