come to the table

On Monday, JustLove had it's Easter Term Launch, and Brian Heasley, national director of 24/7 prayer, came to speak about community and justice. He told us his work Ibiza, the 'Sodom and Gomorrah' of Europe. He moved there with family, and went out at night asking people he found on the streets, those who were drunk, those who were vulnerable, those whose were working as prostitutes, those addicted to or dealing in drugs, if he could pray for them. One man he talked to stopped halfway through telling him his story, and said 'You're actually listening to me, why are you doing that?'

It reminded me of a TED talk I heard about effective communication, which said the basis of it was, of course, listening. Especially when dealing with people who are hurt and broken, they need understanding and empathy, and time. I remember a pastor once telling us that love is spelled with 4 letter: t-i-m-e. (Which completely blew my mind at the time) It's quite sad I think that when I ask someone 'How are you?', the answer usually is 'fine, thanks' or 'good'. And the rest of the conversation is expected to continue, the ball back in my court to speak again. What I really want to know is how you are, really. Did you see anything beautiful today? Has your heart beat a steady pace or did it drop or clench or hurt recently? How is your family? What most excited you about your lectures in the past week? But I think listening has become such a rarity that people assume that they cannot answer in more than quick generalities.

When we evangelise to others, it's so tempting to just blurt out the whole gospel and hope it convinced them of Jesus. But if we really want to show Jesus to people, maybe we should listen like he did, when he let people come to him to tell him their problems so he could heal them, or when he let the two men on the road to Emmaus talk about their confusion over the resurrection, although they were puzzling over what essentially happened to Him.

Brian also talked about how he had spoken to prostitutes, many whom told him they were Christian, but were turned away from churches. That hurt my heart, but it's such a normal thing, for churches to be filled with people who (at least materially) are afloat. Congregations can become so 'same', which to some degree should be the case, since everyone shares a love or curiosity about Jesus. But Jesus welcomed the tax-paper and prostitute and destitute and diseased. And when he preached to the 5000 it wasn't to 5000 perfect people. It was to a motley crew of every body who decided to come to the hillside. I dream of churches that welcome the homeless, and the prostitutes, and the physically and mentally disabled, and the poor, and the homosexual and transexual and pansexual and bisexual and on and on and on. To love them and point them to Jesus who loves them and wants them to stick with Him. Thankfully there are churches and groups already like that, and by God's grace there will be more and more.

Some of the less glamorous moments in a Cambridge students life include witnessing arguments over the fridge temperature (the top shelf freezes and the bottom shelf isn't properly cold) and dropping your coins all over the counter in Sainsburys.

When I was running I got catcalled but weirdly I didn't care. Obviously I thought whoever was whistling was rather pathetic and cowardly, but it didn't make me feel embarrassed or scared or even annoyed. It just slipped off me, like Punchinello's dots in You are Special.

I had dinner with a group of vegans in Downing (Masala spiced lentil burger - better than beef any day) on the grass in the sunshine, until the sun disappeared behind some clouds and I had to clench my teeth to stop them chattering, which made conversation quite difficult.

spring in my step

Spring is here, and apart from occasional grey clouds and hail, we have blue skies and sunshine most days. It's grey now, but chocolate milk muesli is a good distraction from drab weather, especially when combined with the Secret Life of Walter Mitty Soundtrack.

It's funny, I started writing this with a clear intention to get to the end. It's one of the things on the checklist pinned to my board: 'Write blog'.  But I don't really feel like completion at the moment. I feel quite happy to let my fingers and my thoughts take me where they will. That's sort of how I wrote my most recent essay, on Time in Shakespeare's Sonnets and the Winter's Tale. I meandered into ideas like Schumann's Resonances and how the world is speeding up, cryogenics and hourglasses. I wonder if wearing watches is a form of enslavement, constantly having the consciousness of time ticking past.

’Tis time. Descend. Be stone no more. 

Paulina's words (those heartbeat like iambs, quickening the statue into life) remind me of Rezia in Mrs Dalloway (The word “time” split its husk; poured its riches over him) which reminds me that I am dangerously close to really loving Virginia Woolf's works (first Eliot and now Woolf) not with the love that made me re-read 'I hate Fridays' more than seven times, but the sort of tugging, achy love that hit me when I read about Leo Deakin in Random acts of Heroic Love, or Leopold Gursky in The History of Love, or Laura in The Brief History of the Dead.

And what is this moment of time, this particular day in which I have found myself caught? The growl of traffic might be any uproar - forest trees or the roar of wild beasts. Time has whizzed back n inch or two on its reel; our short progress has been cancelled. I think also that our bodies are in truth naked. We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence.

Last term I had a project of pushing myself to do new things every week, new recipes, new places to visit, new experiences. But a couple of days ago I realised that every day every where someone is doing something new, and new things are being discovered all the time, which filled me with so much joy. It is not necessary for me to make new head ways in the world. I can, and I will, but I don't have to. Which is nice.

I feel like this song has become quite apt to the direction this post is taking. This post will have to take a new direction now, however, because I want to tell you about last Friday night.

Benjamin Franklin Leftwich is such a beautiful singer. He closes his eyes when he sings, and sometimes winks, which seems more like nerves than cheek. He performed in the Portland Arms, a small pub in the seedier part of Cambridge, and as Alex, Mariella and I walked there we saw a woman who they said looked like she was on drugs being threatened by two menacing-looking men. I certainly didn't know what to do, and sort of froze, and walked forward because of safety, and then walked back because of conscience. Thankfully Alex had a good head on her shoulders and called the police.

Before Benjamin Francis Leftwich came on, there was an opening act, Denai Moore, who was really good, soulful. Benjamin Francis Leftwich started with Tilikum, which was like rain on dry ground. He held his guitar really close, and stood out of the spot light. For a couple of songs, he performed unplugged, which, in the intimacy of that small room, felt incredibly special. One of his songs had the line 'I am young, and I am yours. I am free, but I am flawed.' which is basically my prayer when I speak to God.

deep breath

I had a good breakfast because what you eat today is your energy for tomorrow.

I had a good lunch.

Total banana count: 8.

I read about T.S Eliot and Time, and T.S Eliot and exile.

I asked Raphael all my questions.

I tried to concretise my Renaissance memorisation, reciting 'The mind is its own place, and in itself/can make a Heaven of Hell, and a Hell of Heaven' (chiasmus/anadiplosis) to Simon Bear, who also mopped up a couple of stress-tears.

I watched 'Composition in Storytelling' to calm down, did some Yoga (child's pose).

Then I looked at my exam schedule to write down my identification number, and realised it was the 1830-1945 paper instead of the 1500-1700 paper tomorrow.

okay okay okay okay okay okay okay yokay yokay

Prayer helps.

Balance restored

[Jesus said]
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."

Luke 4:18-19

Last week I went for training with Just Love.

Probably my favourite session of the training was Josh's talk on the theology behind social justice - how it is in inseparable part of living as believers and lovers of Christ, and it's importance in anticipating God's kingdom come. Or, as I like to put it 'building the republic of heaven here on earth'.

In the Bible, 'Justice' in Hebrew manifests in 3 words:

-Mishpat: This is rectifying Justice, the kind of justice that punishes crime and sin and restores rights. This word appears more than 200 times in the Old Testament (which was written in Hebrew. The New Testament was written in Greek).

-Chesedh: This translates to mercy (an interesting example of how God's character of fully just and fully merciful shows itself in the semantics of justice!)

-Tzedeq: This talks about right relationships. Right relationships of God and Man, Man and Creation, Man and other men, and Man and himself and his own heart/conscience.

I think when people think of God's justice in the Old Testament, they focus on a certain part of the Mishpat part of justice. The many laws and rules and regulations that seem strict and totalitarian. But they forget that the other areas of justice interplay too, and that a loving-justice has always been God's concern for Mankind. His laws for the Israelites which fiercely protect the quartet of the vulnerable (Deuteronomy 14 & 15, Exodus 23:10-12, Leviticus 19 & 23, Leviticus 25) and condemn social injustice (Isaiah 58, Ezekiel 16:49, Isaiah 1:10-13, 16-17). He implements such strict rules because he aches for Tzedeq, a restoring of the right relationship between Him and His children, and because of His perfection and our sin, that can only be done when all is right and balanced and perfect, when His 'rules' are followed and our sin atoned for.

In the New Testament, despite being written in Greek the old Hebrew strains of justice still apply. The gospel is the good news of Man's reconciliation to God through Jesus death on the Cross which 'repays' the debt our sin creates (Mishpat) And this is not through his own works but through God's mercy (Chesedh),  so that the right relationships (Tsedeq) that God created in the beginning once again could flourish in new creation.

Also in the New testament, social justice is interwoven intimately into Jesus life:

1) His incarnation - born to a woman who was unmarried, in the midst of genocide which forced their family to become refugees in Egypt

2) His crew - he mixed with tax collectors, prostitutes, fishermen, people in poverty - he intimately identifies and cares for social outcasts

3) His words and deeds - healing the sick and disabled, protecting the vulnerable and marginalised, overturning and critiquing corruption and hypocrisy in the ruling elite

4) His ethics of love -particularly his 'mission statement' in Luke 4 and the jubilee economics of His church in Acts which reflect those of Deuteronomy.

Social Justice is:

- An example of God's character revealed in scripture

-Us reflecting God's image in us; since we are created in God's image to worship Him, anything that oppresses our fellow brothers and sisters, dehumanising them and preventing worship is an affront to God himself and therefore so wrong.

-An outflow of grace (see Tim Keller's book/video on generous justice) When we were lost in our sin, with no way out, God reached down to pull us out of darkness into his glorious light, and we reflect that dynamic when we free the oppressed and fight injustice

-An integral part of us pointing people to Jesus

-A prophetic image, pointing towards New Creation and God's coming Kingdom, when there will be no more weeping, or pain, or injustice, and no one will hurt or kill on God's holy mountain.

Scotland Day 3 and 4

The train ride from Fort William to Edinburgh was a long one, but oddly enough, one of my favourite parts of the holiday. B and I had a punnet of grapes to munch on, I had Cymbeline to read, and the whole of the Scottish countryside spread out before me. I think travelling on trains is probably my favourite way to travel - no stress of security, gorgeous views, and that rollicking, rocking movement that is just so comforting.

Emily and Uncle Alistair were at the train station to pick us up, which was good since B's foot was still sore.

I helped to cook a sweet potato and chickpea curry for dinner, and then we went for a stand up comedy night. I'd never been for one before, but I love laughing, and so I was looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, most of the jokes were about sex, one was on domestic violence, one very long one was on vegans, and one was about God. I'm not always offended when jokes about veganism or God arise (I never think jokes about domestic violence are alright though, and I think jokes about sex just speak of a lack of creativity) because I think humour can sometimes be a good entry point for talking about deeper issues of veganism or religion. Also, sometimes humour is merited when it points out the tropes or flaws of a movement (like the jokes about 'christian-ese' ...Christians, we really need to stop using such exclusive language) 

Too many parenthesis in that paragraph, I apologise.

But anyway, the man's joke wasn't about Christians, which I think is acceptable because we are so flawed. It was about Jesus, mocking his death, saying His face was sad because He'd been told He was adopted!?!!?! 

Sigh.

Even if you don't believe in the divinity of Jesus, I don't think it's very nice to make fun of a man's very painful death.

I was so sad, that the event that saved all humanity was so rudely and crassly mocked (like the soldiers round the cross who taunted jesus). It's sad that people laugh over things that are so not-funny. It's sad that lots of people there were laughing only because alcohol had deadened their senses and they were often not even laughing at the jokes but just laughing at nothing. It's sad that you can't joke about race but you can joke about religion. And it's sad that people go to a cramped, suffocating pub to hear crass jokes about sex to get joy on a Saturday night when real joy, true laughter without burden or guilt or smut is all accessible and given to us by Jesus. 

I just felt so strongly in the stand up comedy that we were made for something so much better.

The next day was much nicer.

Edinburgh blessed us with beautiful weather our entire time there, and we stepped out into the sunshine and went for a walking tour. I wasn't sure if B could make it through, and we'd agreed that if necessary she'd stop and have a coffee somewhere if things got to much, while I'd continue and tell her about the rest of the tour.

But thankfully we didn't need to, because she was a champion and finished the whole tour, even though I knew her foot was hurting her at points. The Sandeman's tour is incredible, our guide, Ben, was charismatic and knowledgeable and he explained how authors flock to Edinburgh because it has always been the city of contrasts - light and dark, beauty and terrible crime. We heard of some of that beauty - things like the beautiful St Giles Cathedral (with an angel playing the bagpipes!) and the Edinburgh castle and faithful greyfriar's bobby, and also the seedy and dark, like half-hanged maggie, and the hilarious plot to get back the stone of destiny. 

We were due to meet Jasmine for lunch, and so we walked through the meadows to get there, and the crocuses were out. Jasmine had been in ACJC and is in Edinburgh now, and Nat put me in contact with her when she found out I'd be there too. The crazy thing is - B and Jasmine knew each other too, from their dancing backgrounds! Singapore is so small that I shouldn't be surprised, but still, what serendipity!

We had lunch at a lovely cafe Jasmine picked out. When B and I arrived, B looked around and said 'Is Jasmine vegan?...This is definitely one of those vegan places.' And the food was quite delicious, so I'm glad B had a good first take on 'one of those vegan places'. Jasmine's course sounds fascinating - it's a mix of environmental studies and business if I remember right, which I think is what our world needs today (amongst various other things) -businesses that actually work in our capitalist economy but also work with our world.

Jasmine was so kind and joined B and I when we went to Arthur's Seat. Alex called me when I was at  the base of the hill, since she knew I was in Edinburgh. We were both at 'the bottom of Arthur's Seat' but neither of us could see each other. And so we agreed to meet at the top, and I told her to look out for the 'girl in the bright yellow jacket', since I'm basically a light-house beacon of sunshine yellow in that coat - unmissable.

 
 

Alex brought me a really ripe banana - the sweetest present ever, and it fit right into my pocket. I thnk Alex thinks my banana obsession is slightly insane (and so do the Just Love Committee when they found out I eat about 4 a day) but friendship covers a multitude of 'sins'. 

night fall

Usually I sleep easily. 

Last night, after an evening of feeling so tired I couldn't eat (I did manage to have a bowl of mashed potatoes, but I didn't taste any of it) I crawled into bed and said 'Tomorrow is a new day, tomorrow is a new day, tomorrow is a new day'. But I couldn't get to sleep for ages, and when sleep did come, it was a light and troubled one.

Usually I sleep through storms and sounds and everything basically.

But last night I heard the creak of my Grandma's door as she got up to go to the toilet, and the creak of the door as she went back into her room.

And then a loud 'thump'.

I sat up, out of bed, lights on, up the stairs two at a time in the dark.

I paused before I opened the door.

'Grandma? Are you alright?'

'Hello, love, I've just had a little fall.'

I was so glad to here her voice. I cracked open the door and saw her, in her pajamas, back flat on the floor, inexplicably holding her legs in the air. I got her some blankets and she explained she'd been trying to climb back into into bed but couldn't quite make it and slipped back. I got her a pillow for my head and she asked me to go back to bed.

It was about 5.13 am. I got back into bed, but I didn't want Grandma to fall asleep on the floor, so I got more blankets and went back up and curled up to her on the floor. We talked about King Solomon and how on earth his palace could fit so many wives and concubines (and their children)

I could hear the birds beginning to sing outside, but Grandma couldn't hear them. (I do not think they will sing to me)

After a while, she felt ready to start moving, and first rolled over and knelt holding on to the chair for support, then walked over to the bed and rested against that before climbing in and getting comfortable.

I can't help but feel I was meant not to sleep, that I was meant to be awake so that I could respond when Grandma fell. I'm exhausted now, but thank you God, for orchestrating last night in ways I didn't appreciate at first but now know were part of your plan.

Are you enough?

'You are enough'

What does it even mean?

It conveys the idea that you can do anything. 

But anyone who has tried ballet realises that you cannot do anything. You cannot do a pirouette after one lesson. It takes years. And then you realise that you have the wrong foot shape for pointe, or you injure yourself. Or you become a professional ballerina, and then you grow old (I grow old.../I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled)

It conveys the idea that you can create your own happiness, and it will sustain you and you need never hurt or feel sad again.

But even if you are a happy person things happen and people die and hearts break and planes crash, and you realise this world is full of sadness, and sometimes it flies into you like a speck of dust into your eye and the only way to get it out is cry, no matter how many times you've told yourself 'I'm happy'.

It conveys the idea that you can trust yourself.

But when you are angry with that person and in the heat of the moment you say 'I wish you'd never been born' you realise you can't, and that somewhere deep inside you is a monster that leaps out and scratches the hearts of the people you love and leaves deep scars that are hard to heal. 

The thing is, we are all too imperfect to be enough. We are certainly incredible beings, with complex bodies and vast reservoirs of love and creative ideas and spontaneous dance parties, but we are also flawed in so many shattered ways.

And so I disagree with the concept of 'enough-ness'. We should appreciate and love ourselves without feeling the need to be 'enough' for ourselves, because we never will be. We love our friends and family in their broken, flawed states, and don't expect them to be 'enough' so we shouldn't expect ourselves to be either.

That is not to say that we should glorify our weakness. Our weakness is just that, weakness - it leads to bad thoughts, unkind words, selfish actions. To glorify it would lead to another sort of 'I am enough' mentality. The sort that settles for less than we have the vision for, and leads to temporary pleasure and cheap thrills which ultimately leaves us more thirsty and dissatisfied than before.

We are then stuck in this tension between not being enough, and having the vision for so much more - wanting enough-ness, wanting complete fulfillment, wanting life in all it's riches and glittering joy. If we cannot find the answer to that in our world, and if we cannot find the answer to that in ourselves or the people around us who are refracted versions of our flawed self, then the logical conclusion is that the answer is elsewhere, and in a perfect being.

Jesus said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."

Jesus said, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness."

"Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power." Colossians 2:8-10

Thoughts on Room

It must have been coincidence that I watched Room just after writing about Walter Ralegh and the spatiality of his imagination. Like Ralegh, who wrote the words:

The world discerns itself, while I the world behold;
By me the longest years and other times are told;
I, the world’s eye.

in the confines of his prison cell, Room is about a child and his mother (who was kidnapped and kept in a shed at the back of her kidnapper's house, where she bore his child) who has lived most of his life in a room, and to him, it is his whole world.

When he has to escape - he first refuses to believe, and then he's scared, terrified, and then,

he loves the world.

And he knows it is where he was always meant to be.

There I was alone, in the comforting dark of the cinema, crying my eyes out when Jack looks at the sky, and This will destroy you starts playing, and he gasps because the world exists. I was crying partly because it is a beautiful movie and a beautiful moment in the movie, but I was also crying because

Jack is like me, like you, like every person on earth. We're on this planet, this tiny planet in a non-descript galaxy in a universe which might not be the only universe - and we think it's our whole world. And when someone tells us there's another world out there, we refuse to believe, or we humour them and forget about it. But that other world is real and is out there and is so much better than anything we could imagine here.

We might not believe it. We might be afraid of it. But it's there.

And when we get round to believing, when we realise that there is nothing to be afraid of in a place where there will be no weeping, or pain, or fear, or injustice, then we will realise that that place answers all the calls and yearnings of our heart. And we will know that that is where we were always meant to be.

'I've been in the world 37 hours. I've seen pancakes, and a stairs, and birds, and windows, and hundreds of cars. And clouds, and police, and doctors, and grandma and grandpa [...] When I was small, I only knew small things. But now I'm five, I know EVERYTHING!'

Pancake day

Today was pancake day - I'd planned to make pancakes for a while, since in college my lack of a frying pan and time means breakfast is porridge or museli most days.

I used Cookie and Kate's pancake recipe, but replaced the oil with half of a banana because we're running out of oil here and I needed it to fry the pancakes! I managed to drop a big pile of them in the oven when i was trying to carefully place them in to keep them warm, but I quickly picked them up and they tasted just as delicious.

Grandma has been tying a scarf around her waist, sometimes with a hot water bottle tucked in, because she says it makes her feel safe, like someone is holding her together. She started that habit when Grandad and the family began moving from place to place, setting up old folks' homes, and while altruistic it was also unsettling.

“Words strain, 

Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, 

Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, 

Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, 

Will not stay still.”

-T.S Eliot

I'm beginning to really really love T.S Eliot, and if nothing else I will be grateful for that take away from a Cambridge education.

2/4/2016

Grandma and I took a long walk today, to make the most of the sun shine.

We came across two beautiful white horses in the middle of a field, nuzzling each other and flicking their tails to keep away the flies. The sound they make when they crop the grass is so satisfying. 

Spring means daisies have returned to the fields and the grass patches at the sides of roads. Daisies and celandines.

Magnolia.

We found a magnificent pheasant's feather, and then later on we found a dead pheasant, it's body split open and it's head gone, probably the meal of a fox.

I ran my hand over the moss covered tops of the wall near Grandma's house, it felt like stroking a cat, soft and smooth and velvety. I imagined tiny people walking along the precipice, the moss reaching to their calves, hiking along that wall.

life itself going on

Last night and this night saw both Grandma and I in tears in the lounge.

Yesterday, I discovered a box of old photographs. Most were stuck in scrap books or filed into photo albums, but some were loose, and I decided we ought to slide them into albums to keep them safe.

So as I wrote out quotes to memories from Four Quartets, Grandma looked over pictures of October 1997, when Auntie Sarah visited Auntie Sheila. 

I heard a sharp intake of breath, and saw Grandma's lower lip curled in as she looked at a photo pf Auntie Sheila bathed in sunlight in Braemoray. My tears came quicker than I thought they would.

Tonight we watched one of the old home videos Dad would make and send to Grandma. This was of a holiday in 2000 in England, and the camera moved from Lowestoft to Great Yarmouth to Silver Birches (oh, Dee Dee and his wheelbarrow) and Auntie Sheila playing badminton with Hannah in the garden, and Auntie Sarah carefree with us, and Uncle Roger and Auntie Michelle there too.

Silver Birches and England was such a formative part of my childhood - to escape every two years to a place where I'd play hide and seek in wheat fields as high as my head, and you could run out into the back garden and fly a kite, or climb the pear tree, or be chased by an Auntie with a wheelbarrow.

As Grandma said, 'What a lot of water has gone under the bridge since those days.'

I don't know if having Grandma remember those happy days is good, since these days her life is so closed, the expanse of Silver Birches shrunk to the small Ixworth house which she doesn't like to leave, so many people have left, so many different life experiences have changed her and the people she loves for better or for worse. But I feel like it is important. It is important to open these avenues to grieve - it reminds me that my own grief journey is far from over. It is important to remember the beauty of heady summer days and slow walks and screams of laughter and to realise that spring has come, and summer is almost here, and I can make those days live again. It gives me the strangest notion of life going on - "They might be islands of light- islands in the stream I am trying to convey; life itself going on." - of how soon it will be my mother watching videos and crying for a lost sister and my children in the wheat fields and then it will be me watching videos and crying for a lost sister and my children's children in the wheat fields and then I will be gone.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know the place for the first time. 

When the last of earth left to discover 

Is that which was the beginning; 

At the source of the longest river 

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for 

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Scotland Day 2

Today was the day we were to conquer Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the United Kingdom. After the previous day's walk, Bramina's foot was feeling sore, and so we decided we'd take it slow, but in my hear I hoped that we'd make it to the top. The last time I'd been up was the summer of 2013, and the summit had been shrouded in mist and cloud. This time, however, the Glen Nevis Visitors' Centre Staff assured us that apart from a cloud near the bottom of the mountain, the top was blue skies and bright sunshine (and quite a bit of snow).

I packed a monster sandwich, which for a while seemed like it wouldn't fit into my lunch box but with some gentle coaxing (euphemism for me using my hands and jumping to squeeze it all in ruthlessly) I managed. 

The climb began in a cloud, and you couldn't really see more than 5 metres before you at some points. There was a lot of work being done on the mountain path, so B and I had to navigate round large sacks of rock and cement, and punctuated our heavy breathing (mountain climbing is hard work!) with 'Hellos' and 'How's it goings' to the friendly work men.

The enveloping cloud meant that soon we were sweaty and damp with condensation, and so I stripped down to my thermals, although B managed to miraculously stay in four (FOUR) layers.

We'd been walking in the cloud for about an hour, when I decided to take a picture of where we were. I looked down to turn my camera on, and when I looked up.

The world had moved from one plane to another.

It was like when you emerge from the velvety dark of the cinema into sunlight outside.

The cloud had entirely disappeared, in it's place was blue sky and sunshine and a smoke trail in the air and snow capped peaks and the looming presence of Ben Nevis.

It reminded me of the verse 1 Corinthians 13:12

"We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!"

We kept going, although by the third hour it was getting increasingly harder because of the amount of snow surrounding us. I put each foot in the indent left by those who'd climbed before me. There were dog tracks in the snow too.

B was finding it increasingly difficult, because her foot was getting more and more painful, and so we stopped to have lunch, leaving the Irish couple that had climbed part of the way with us to go on without us.

We sat on a little island of rocks and had our sandwiches.

We were just 45 minutes away from the top, surrounded by snow and an ocean of clouds.

On the way back down, we stopped for a second sandwich by a loch, and lay back to sunbathe. We debated the nature of the aquarium industry, coming to no resolution. I am glad for friendships where we can debate and disagree and still be our own people with resolute views, and yet remain in harmony in our hearts. That was the blue-est water I'd seen for a long time, and the blue-est sky above me.

I sang the rest of the way down.