Monday, November 4, 2019



I recently stumbled across this photo blog and then the writings of Nikaela Peters. Her photos made me want to be a mother to chubby cheeked children, to make big bowls of overnight oatmeal for a family table which I’d spoon into mismatched bowls on Sunday mornings, to kiss the tops of heads, and eat fruit in sunshine. I smiled at her description of her children’s relationship – that competitive, craving, intimately close understanding between two entirely different individuals who at the same time know an obscene amount about each other. And this paragraph from her writing about a road trip took my breath away:

And oh! the land and how it lay, soft in parts, like fat, swelled and dimpled.  I thought I could see it yawning – the rise and fall not just of hills but of breath.  The word “lay” felt appropriate; isn’t that just what land would do next to the ocean, wild and numinous, what you would do, if you were the land?  Lie down?  Surrender to that which you cannot change or control?

In one of her writings she quotes Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead and Home and more. I read Gilead just before I fly away from England, and read Home shortly after arriving, finishing it last week. When I met Chrispy on Saturday and we spoke about books (I love conversations about books) she mentioned Gilead, and when I called Naomi last night she said she’s reading Gilead too.

Reading Home shortly after arriving back to Singapore has been a great comfort. In Home Jack Boughton, infamous black sheep of the Boughton family, returns to his childhood home in small town Gilead. Things don’t change much in Gilead, and Jack is still mistrusted. But the inevitable shifts like his Father’s aging, and the loss of his mother, and dissipation of his father’s old church also mean that coming home is a shock of expectation unmet, and a fear like the fear of the uncanny, settling in.

Yesterday Naomi asked me how it was to move back into a familiar yet unfamiliar place. I couldn't answer her immediately thought I tried, talking about the shift in a relationship of dependence to one of equals with my parents, and yet still living in their house, and the blessing and challenge that is. I talked about the relationships with friends which have been molded apart as life circumstances and priorities and interests diverge. It's weird, I said. I lament, I said. But the closest I could get to articulation was at a remove, watered down by articulation itself, like the removed third-person perspective of Home which then feels truer than any sort of intimacy with its characters.

Third person and first person existences - I believe I live them both. There is the reflective John Ames me that paces my mind in the mornings when I go on runs underneath a soft opalescent sky. Then there is the narrating self that looks at me and tries unsuccessfully to make sense of existence in language.

A first person/third person journey last - last Thursday - walking up dark steps with the fear of the abyss in my heart and the warmth of Jacob's hand in mine. I don't know why the childish fear of the dark never really left me. When we get to the top I want to cry with relief and also embarrassment at my foolishness, and also joy at being there, overlooking sea and buildings and trees with Jacob. We share lunch boxes of essentially the same thing - rice and tau gwa and vegetables. Maybe that is what love includes - you share what you have, not out of need, but for the giving. (My consumption of tofu has gone up exponentially, not that I'm complaining.)

(I'm writing this on a bus that smells strongly of McDonalds chips, and I am trying not to be here.)

Fireworks go off, unexpectedly, and I lie down on my tote bag and look up at faint stars.

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Lunch break/thoughts while walking



Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter.

— Albert Camus, Notebooks

At lunch break, I try to walk out of the museum and go somewhere. Usually it's a spot in Fort Canning park, where I open my lunch box and eat while a film about the 1984 archaeological dig plays in the background.

Once when I was doing this, Jacob appeared with his lunch too, after some inconspicuous questions and a hopeful attempt of finding me within what is quite a large park. That was good.

Last week, I was listening to Charles Foster talk about the 'language' of killer whales as I walked, and how much richer, deeper and detailed it is compared to our speech:

"I’m often frustrated by the inability of my language to reflect the wonder of the world. I intuit that wonder, and then language tells me that I’m getting overexcited and I ought to calm down. But I prefer to trust the intuition. I know that propositions formulated in language can’t do the job. How can I possibly describe my love for my children, my outrage at the cruelty of men, the smell of a wood fire, or the sun on the back of a gull—let alone the dance of these things with one another?

We know from our everyday experience that words fall short of the splendor; that little of our real understanding is mediated through words; that most of what we get even from a formal lecture is subliminal (perhaps communicated by pheromones, or the interlocking of auras, or whatever)."

Later that day I was walking a far more road-side, noisy and dusty way to Little India, and listening to Robert Macfarlane talking about how language shapes our landscape, and vice-versa. His opinion of human language is more redemptive, :

"... poetry has been a huge force and presence in my life. The three poets who I met earliest were the three H’s. They were Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, and Gerard Manley Hopkins; and in a way, for that troika of poets, words have a kind of palp and a heft that is as strong as a pebble or a gale. And I was fascinated by writers who fought and sought to give to their language aspects of matter, and who sought to give to matter aspects of language."

Macfarlane specifically mentions the word smout,  'which means the hole in the bottom of a stone wall up in Cambria, which is left so that small creatures can move through it but sheep can’t get out' and its counterpart in Sussex: 'smeuse', which refers to 'a hole in the base of a hedgerow left by the movement of an animal. To get out of the museum, I sometimes walk through a little gap in the scrawny hedge by the car park, my own little smeuse. I suppose, in that case, I am the animal.  

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Things you wouldn't believe



Last Sunday was a day of revelation. I discovered that segue is pronounced seg-way, not seeg as I'd thought. I also found out that because of the vertical way that time zones are delineated, certain places in Russia - despite having vastly different cultures and climates - have the same time as Singapore. Hong Kong has the same time as Singapore, and yet the experience of someone there and someone here, especially at this moment in history with the riots happening, is so dissimilar. It boggles the mind.

So far, I've largely enjoyed work. Sometimes I sit at the desk and think 'I have nothing to do, I'm so bored', but other times I'm reading articles about Mexican culture, or observing an artefact being taken out of a display case for conservation work (and the tricky maneuvering needed to make sure it doesn't touch the adjacent artefact on loan from Queen Elizabeth) or drafting a tour script which involves thinking carefully about what narrative I hope someone will take away from my tour of a gallery, which is something I'm particularly concerned about since the gallery I'm in charge of covers a period right smack in the middle of Singapore's colonial history.

I'm trying to settle into a rhythm of waking up, doing a bit of exercise, going to work. So far it has been working - sort of. I tend to get to work 5 minutes later than I want to, but since nothing is pressing at the moment and I'm still getting used to the whole work routine, I'm giving myself a little grace on that one. Oddly waking up five minutes earlier doesn't make me get to work on time, so I think it's just urgency after I get back from the run and getting over the disinclination to put on clean work clothes onto a still quite warm body.

Strangely enough one of my favourite times of the day is the morning commute to work. I pop in some head phones and tune into a podcast - most usually one from On Being, the Bible Project, or (most recently) emergence magazine. I've listened to interviews on subjects including silence, prayer, killer whales, gangs, the anthropocene, and the theology of work. Sometimes I listen to podcasts on the way home but other times I feel rather brain dead and instead put on some Dusty Springfield or one of the Sidchoir term playlists for some good old sacred music. (Ne irascaris makes my soul soar, while Hymn to St Cecilia puts a spring into my step!)

I made a chocolate and beetroot cake last night, and improvised with the icing by putting in some silken tofu - let's see how that goes when Jacob comes over to make our monthly newsletter. The newsletter was inspired partly by the prayer letter-emails I'd receive from friends who had graduated or friends who had gone on years abroad, and partly by the chatty newsletters I subscribe to from Hannah Brencher and Wild We Roam. I want it to be a document of our time here together both for our friends but also for us, to see how God is faithful even when we might not see it.

So in other words, despite my trepidation, things are well.

Sunday, September 29, 2019

29/09/2019


I flew back to Singapore on Thursday. Things are still settling, and I'm aware that somewhere within me is a sadness I haven't fully faced about leaving England. But for the moment I am trying to remember my love for this place I am in. 

Yesterday morning I went for a walk with Dad in the cool morning air. We saw hornbills, pink-necked green pigeons and a kingfisher. We walked through many hued flowers and said good morning to older ladies out walking and maids with dogs on leashes. Dad showed me the exercises he does in the outdoor fitness corners, and I tried and failed to do a pull up (one day...). 

I am thankful for the beauty in this country, for the family I have here, and for the exciting prospect of starting work on Tuesday. I can approach this new season with fear or faithfulness, and I'm determined to choose the latter, knowing a good God guides me and those who know Him.

Now there's a storm brewing outside my window - oh, I've missed Singapore's sheet-like rain!

Saturday, September 28, 2019

Break it or bless it


I wrote this a while ago - not sure why I didn't publish it but here we go:

In Taize, I sat down with a nun, and we ended up talking about how relationships are about risk.

Loving Jacob, choosing to love him, falling continuously in love with him - is the riskiest thing I have ever done.

(aside from maybe cycling in London or jumping into a ravine in Jordan.)

(And yet - still the riskiest.)

Let me go back a bit. Soon after I started going out with Jacob, I saw down with a woman in church and talked about relationships, and she told me about setting emotional boundaries. She described it as 'not marrying him in your mind', a phrase which I accepted but didn't understand.

Jacob and I set our physical boundaries pretty early on in our relationship - it was as simple as sitting down and saying 'Let's think about our boundaries.' I had physical boundary talks with my Mum and with a married friend, and those were so useful. That's not to say that keeping physical boundaries was a single event. We've had to continually negotiate and re-affirm those boundaries in these (almost) two years.

But the reason I went to talk to the nun was because I'd been turning over the concept of emotional boundaries in my mind. How do I balance keeping an emotional boundary with the intimacy of love?

It brought me back to a email (part of a weekly subscription I have to hannahbrencher's blog) I received:

'I am all about dreaming and having a vision but there’s a line we can easily cross in our brains. We shift from imagining the possibilities into marrying something in our minds. [...] It’s so easy to shift into this mode of thinking, “This person is going to be mine. This person is going to be my future.”
[...]
Let’s pause. For five seconds, let’s pause and pray a really, really hard prayer to pray: God, bless it or break it. Bless it or break it. It’s a gutsy prayer because God listens. It’s a gutsy prayer because he will move. And it’s a hard prayer to pray because it means you releasing control and you are basically saying, “Whatever the outcome, I’ll still say Amen to it.”'

That prayer is, for me, what balancing an emotional boundary with the risk of love feel like

Having to pray that prayer has become a very big reality this past week, as Jacob and I look to the end of this year and what will happen when I move back to Singapore to start work with NHB. We have dreams of him coming too, getting a job, moving over.  But getting a job isn't easy, nor is moving country, and at a lot of points last week I've felt like systems and circumstances seem to be very much in the way, leaving both of us feeling quite small and weak and unable. So one night we prayed to God to break it or bless it. It was directly the outcome of job applications, but also encompassed the relationship as a whole. I's suggested we pray it, but I found I couldn't actually say the words when I prayed because as Hannah Brencher said, they are really, really hard to pray when you know that God has the power to break something you really want him to bless. Jacob, thankfully, was strong for the both of us and prayed it so that I could nod along in my heart, submitting to God's sovereignty while knowing my heart could be broken, but knowing God is always good.

Back to the present i.e. 28th September:

Now that I read these words in hindsight, I am so glad we did trust God with the risk of holding our relationship. While I wasn't always able to not imagine the future and desire it in my mind (and learning to balance hope for a certain future and trust in God's goodness should it not materialise was a whole other lesson) Jacob and I were able to remind each other that that possibility rested on the grace of God. Jacob comes to Singapore in 2 days, and that fills my heart with gladness and thankfulness.

2 days!

Be still my heart.

Saturday, September 7, 2019

Summer-Autumn



Goodbye August, Hello September.

Mari Andrew wrote 'The hardest part about summer for me is the relentless length: of days, of nights, of weeks. [...] But August is short. August is a three-week foreign love affair that you can't bring back home. August is a beautiful person who just got off the subway, or a tomato whose prime you may miss by a couple of hours. August is a sunset, a Sunday, the last hour of the best party.'

Each day passing brings me closer to saying goodbye to what has been four years of learning and growing, falling in love, falling off bicycles, losing things, losing people, breaking things, getting stronger, and weaker, and stronger, and weaker, and knowing both are part of life's ebb and flow. It has been a very good party.

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This month I read Gilead, and now am reading Mary Oliver's essays, lent to me by Lucy Boddington after I went to visit her one day in her lovely house, where we went on a walk and made Fimo clay objects and tried vegan magnums and she introduced me to the magical voice of Lianne La Havas. On that walk we waded into a stream, and saw a horse being washed (horses, it turns out, use tresemme shampoo too) by a bridge, and Kerry picked the very ripest blackberries off the hedgerows to be eaten there and then.

Gilead is a fictional autobiography written by Reverend John Ames, who is dying, to his son. It reminded me in ways of When Breath becomes Air, with all the tenderness of someone who is leaving the world and therefore has so much to say and also has the wisdom not to cling to what cannot be possessed. In one of my favourite passages, John Ames ends by telling his son, 'This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.'

If these were my last days, my actual last days, I wouldn't be sad about it. I've been trying to balance thesis writing with a deep appreciation for and attention to this interesting world around me. Blackberry picking is meditative, as is listening to Elgar's cello concerto at the proms. Different types of meditative, but great.

Today I noticed a leaf, green inside and framed by brilliant orange, like the amber sun setting in Highgate woods.

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And yet, I am sad about leaving.

I had a dream a few nights ago, which woke me up weeping. In the dream I saw grandma, walking slowly with her stick towards a cluster of sun dappled trees.

'Where are you going, grandma?'

'I am looking for four years'

Let me look with you, let me walk with you. To feel you. To hold you.

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Where have these four years gone? They have been eaten away by multiple hands dipping bread into hummus, danced away in ceilidhs, written away at all hours on essays from the trivial to the transcendental, whiled away lying in fields, whispered away in the dark, cried away in movie theaters and under the solitary cover of sheets and laughed away without fear of the future.

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Queen Elizabeth I was meant to have said one of two things as her last words: 'All my possessions for one moment of time' or 'I count this as the glory of my crown: that I have ruled with your loves.' Such different senses to an ending, and I would choose the latter.

I think I've come to realise a little better what Paul meant when he said 'to live is Christ, to die is gain'. I have felt the joy of living this past month, but also the felt longing for heaven as never before as I read and think about that place of no injustice, utter peace, and perfect relationship with God. So time is not what I crave really. What I hope, is to have lived with love - and to keep doing so.

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Bits on a rainy day


This has been a rainy week.

On Monday I met Rachel Mander for lunch, and afterwards we walked a little way to get gelato. It was grey and dreary, but sometimes you have to be a radical and disobey the dictates of the weather. I got coffee and she got apricot+thyme and chocolate, and we licked it as we exchanged music (rather, she told me about the fantastic band Harvest)

Yesterday it was rainier - the kind of rain that flicks up from the road when you cycle, and gets your dungarees all wet. When I got to the library, I went straight to the bathroom and stood in my t shirt while I dried my dungarees under the hand dryer. (something I would have never dared to do in Cambridge but SOAS relaxed culture and my desperation meant I'd left any embarrassment behind at my door approximately 30 minutes ago, pre-drenching)

Speaking of rain, I've been reading Gilead, and the narrator recounts this beautiful moment:

“The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”

This last week I've encountered lots of beautiful moments on this interesting planet:

I've heard a track coach say he'd just become a great-grandfather for the fourth time.

I've seen a path cleared leading to bushes laden with almost-ripe blackberries.

I've tasted a blueberry cheesecake almost too good to be true.

I've heard a man whisper to his tutor, 'It's so beautiful being in a library surrounded by trees.'

I've walked with friends and gazed at the moon.

I've received a wedding invitation, a postcard from a dear friend, and a pair of jeans that make me feel comfortable and adventurous (let's go on adventure, my friend!)

I've stood out in the garden and inhaled morning air and done a little stretch.

After the sun the rain, after the rain the sun...glad that I live am I.

Monday, August 12, 2019

Lead us not into productivity


On Wdnesday I woke up in a lot of pain. My stomach had swelled up and I was shivering. (I later put the food poisoning like symptoms down to having probably eaten a little bit of a mouldy carrot last night.) Anyway, that took me out for most of the day, as I lay in bed watching videos and reading and listening to music. By mid-afternoon I was feeling a lot steadier, and did some laundry and cooking, and then tried to do some thesis work. But I felt utterly unable, and after cutting some words out here and there, I stood up in frustration and headed back to my room. 'I've been so unproductive,' I said out loud.

Then I mentally wrestled that thought back. Just before leaving Singapore, I'd had a conversation with Leonard about how damaging that word 'productivity' is. Leonard said he preferred the word 'generative', but today I was even far from generative - closer to gestative. But that's how life works, how the seasons work. The woman keeps the child in her womb for nine months before it is born. No one would call that child r woman 'unproductive'. The earth nurtures the seeds during the cold winter before they creep out in spring, but that period of rest is part of the preparation for flourishing.

I recently read a post by the Jubilee Centre about how the ancient Biblical law on gleaning speaks to our society today. The article was directed towards environmental sustainability, but its premise was that productivity is a false (and damaging) goal. The article looks at Leviticus 19:9-10:

‘When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.’

The idea of not going to the very edges, not wringing out every last resource, is compared to the law God gives to Moses to keep to Sabbath as a holy day of rest - here time is the resource, to be lived in not used and spent efficiently and entirely like a commodity. The article explains:

'There is a sense in the Bible that humans are predisposed to overwork – not because we’re innately hard-working, but because we like accumulating wealth. And when you don’t put limits around that, it inevitably results in injustice and oppression. [...] Just as the Sabbath and Sabbatical laws limited the time in which the Israelites should do productive work, so the gleaning laws limited the space of their productivity.  [...] The Bible warns us that an obsession with the ‘good’ of productivity actually prevents us from doing real good: looking after the alien, the orphan and the widow. Permitting gleaning served a kind of double purpose in this respect. It offered direct benefit to the most marginalised in society, who could come and gather leftover crops – just as Ruth does in Boaz’s fields. But it also served as a visible and tangible reminder to better-off Israelites that they were not to prioritise their own harvest and prosperity at the expense of those who struggled to find their next meal.'

A second thing I noticed as I was ill was my predisposition to selfishness. Even when I was hurting (and actually more so because I was hurting) I was thinking of how to make situations work for me, how to save my time, how to do my thesis, how to get my shopping, and as I thought inward, I walked past a homeless man and ignored him. I think this is a really important part of thinking about the rest that radically opposes ultra-productivity - it is not a selfish rest. It is not about making yourself comfortable - it is about gestation, preparing yourself to love and give and respond to God's call to love where he puts you, not where it is most productive for you. Just as productivity is selfish, so can rest be, unless it is seen as resting in God, for God's purposes. If I don't obey God's commandment to leave room in the margins for love and compassion, then I won't practice love and compassion - not on myself and not on others. But those margins must exist in my rest as well - I am leaving the grain not for me to pick up when I am tired but for others.

So this week I wrote a list of All the things I'd rather be than 'productive':

Thoughtful
Creative
Kind
Encouraging
Passionate
Joyful
Beloved
Faithful
Strong
Gentle
Full of integrity
Adventurous
Wise
Empathetic
Peaceful
Curious
Honest

Change my heart O God, make it ever true. Change my heart, O God, may I be like you.

Friday, July 5, 2019

A strange dream


During grad week I had the strangest dream. It consisted of a dystopian world, in which the privileged portion of the human race lived in a large, regulated dome, whereas those not privileged worked as miners in a strip surrounding the dome, separated from the harmful and formless void of space around that, but without the light and oxygen so lavishly pumped into the privileged dome. The privileged dome's people looked like celebrities, or stepford wives. Each 'country' in the dome was a Church sanctuary led by a pastor, while its 'citizens' listened obediently in pews.

Hannah and I were (in this dream) part of a rebel group within the privileged dome, campaigning for miner's rights. The problem was that as the world died around us, the oxygen supply was being depleted. What oxygen the void supplied was pumped into the privileged dome, and as a result the miner's were surviving on less and less, and inevitably they would be entirely starved of oxygen.

So with our rebel group we charged through the churches towards the edge of the dome, where through the glass you could see the miners working in a dim darkness. Only a door separated them and us, a door only open-able from within the dome. I put my hand on the handle as a miner loomed before me and pulled the door open. Immediately, his hands shot out and grabbed my face, and suddenly I realised that letting him in would mean less oxygen for me, for the people I knew, and would mean letting in an angry, disenfranchised and oppressed group who were strong, and ferocious, and hungry for revenge. And so I wrenched myself from his grasp and closed the door, feeling sick at myself for doing so.

Somewhere in the dream Hannah was shot - I cannot remember if her death was the impetus for the rebel charge or was some sort of punishment from the church for our attempt. But I do remember also washing the miner's grubby hand marks from my face, realising that I was at heart a self-preserving, selfish person.

The dream ends with the oxygen in low supply. Even within the privileged dome there is not enough oxygen to sustain activity - every one lies among overturned pews in a cold blue light, breathing shallowly to preserve what time we have left. In my dream, the woman I love curls up near my belly, and I curve around her wanting only to protect and love in the little time we have left. And suddenly I see and know that when we die, our bodies, preserved by the formless void, will resurface in the distant present as the petrified bodies of Pompeii - that the dystopian dome world was not, as I thought, from a distant future but a distant past, and that humans were passing away with the world only to be reborn again.

Monday, May 27, 2019

Learning God's Time: Taize


 “God's time is slow, patient, and kind and welcomes friendship; it is a way of being in the fullness of time that is not determined by productivity, success, or linear movements toward personal goals. It is a way of love, a way of the heart.” 
― John Swinton, Becoming Friends of Time: Disability, Timefullness, and Gentle Discipleship

One of my worst habits is making lists. I have nothing against lists - they organise, they help with anxiety, they create anticipation, and they help the chronically forgetful. But they also are illusory, giving the pretense of control over future time.  At this time, I will, at this time, I will... 

In Cambridge I realised at one point that my lists just weren't working because I hadn't scheduled in time to get from one place to another. Aside from that, I hadn't scheduled in time where I just lay on my bed in a funk, or when I took longer in the toilet, or when I had a general unwillingness to speed through life at my fastest pace, as my list expected. I'm saying 'my list' as if it is a thing separate from me, but let's take away that veneer right now - that expectation was self-generated and self-imposed.

This Lent I went to Paris and Amsterdam on a study trip with my scholarship programme. It was an incredible trip, which brought us to different museums/libraries/archives and let us engage with different curators and keepers. One perennial feature of the trip, however, was being told to hurry because we were late for our appointments. I wondered if the person planning the trip had, like I so often do, forgotten about the human predilection for tarrying. It was a sharp contrast to move from that hurried pace of 'getting there' to the slow meander one adopts within a museum. Partly because the objects have a (real or culturally constructed) aura which behoves you to slow and quieten your step. When you were in front of something that mattered to you, you stopped and contemplated. And then you stepped out into the city streets and resumed the blistering pace.

From Paris and Amsterdam I took the slow train with Jacob to Taize. I sat there as the french country side passed outside the window and tried to write out as much as I could about Foreigners in Tang Chinese Art as fast as I could, the dynamic which I am ashamed to say is my normal approach to work. 

That dynamic is, of course, part of the main narrative of productivity, which is the bedrock of our market-economy society. Shortly after returning to London, I listened to a podcast by John Swinton, called 'Becoming Friends of Time'. Swinton talks about how the advent of the second hand on the clock made time something measurable, and when measurable, commodifiable. 'Time was something you fit your day into rather than simply marking the different structures of the day', he says. The day became consciously limited by time, rather than a time full space, given by God. A God who is unlimited naturally is sovereign over an open and spacious time, but when time is god and in control, then daily life is constricted.

Taize was a place where the second hand did not exist, and time felt full and expansive again. One of the main things I was struck by in my time there was not knowing the time. There's a large bell tower, which rings on the hour so you know when it's time for prayer/breakfast/bible thought/prayer/lunch/cleaning/dinner/prayer. In between, the hour passes as it always does in daily life, however, you don't have the pressure to use it. Rather than time being used, or wasted, time is given and filled. And it is all the more full for doing less in it. 

It was full of prayer and people. Having expansive time meant finding it easy to slow down and love people. John Swinton talks about how Jesus, in coming to earth, limited himself to the average human walking speed of 3 miles an hour, to love us and be with us. There are so many times where I feel I'm going too fast to sit and stay with a person. Even when I do physically my mind often trips ahead of itself to 'the next thing'. 'Love has a speed', Swinton says, and that speed is slow and generous. Not rushing in time with people meant conversations meandered from introductions to travel to social justice issues to hopes and dreams to zero waste. 

Having expansive time also meant slowing down in prayer. The bedrock of the Taize day were the three sessions of prayer, which were mostly held as sung meditation. Near the beginning of the session was a period of silence, which we stayed in for about 7-8 minutes (apparently - but what are minutes when you don't have a watch/phone to keep the time?). Initially that silent space was so difficult to be in. My mind would wander, I'd get frustrated at myself for being unable to 'meditate well'... overall my mind was not a very peaceful place, and rather than meditating on God I'd be trying to muster my own force of will. But about three days in, I realised how silly that was. Not simply because self-focused effort is sort of antithetical to meditation, but also because I didn't only have those 7 minutes to meditate. I had all day, all time. Time slowed, not so that my mind could quicken and 'catch up', but so that I could learn to slow down with it. 

Time didn't only seem to slow and expand, but go backwards. I felt in lots of ways that I had gone back to a past time, a child time. When seated in the prayer hall one day, I stopped singing and curled up and listened to the song around me. In the darkness of myself and surrounded by a chant of love I felt foetal, not so much entombed but en-wombed. That child-like-ness extended to being fed - which meant not having any real control over what I ate which is not something I felt initially comfortable with. But just as a silenced second hand meant letting go of control over each minute, so receiving food meant letting go of control over each nutrient and telling myself, 'even in this small thing, Lord, not my will but yours be done.' (and perhaps it is just me, but I often find it easier to trust God's will for the big uncontrollable things rather than the small every day things which I am so used to 'managing')

One day, Jacob and I took a walk to 'the source' - a wooded area that clears to reveal a pond (it is all very psalm 23, green pastures and still waters, particularly because you are meant to keep silence while there). We sat in a tree and wrote letters to our eighty-year-old selves. Writing to eighty year old me was another time-bending moment, which emphasised again what mattered at this time might not matter in sixty years (how my Tang China essay did, for instance), whilst other things were timeless. I was writing to myself, but in another sense I was writing to the God who is ancient of days and yet whose mercies are new every morning, a timeless God who already knows and loves and has made provision for my eighty year old self. We exchanged our letters after we'd finished and laughed in that silent space. 

Coming back to London has made it slightly more difficult to remember and integrate those timeless days. But small changes have been good - taking proper lunch breaks instead of eating whilst reading another article, stopping work by dinner time, making reading God's word protected time in the morning, and not setting a fixed 'end time' when I meet friends. Sundays are days when I feel closest to that utter timelessness, and each Sabbath is a step closer to eternity, when time stretches out forever without end and is filled with the presence of God.

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Very quick dinners (mostly toast)


Last week I came back from track and made dinner, ate it in bed, then called Jacob. As we said goodnight I said, 'Oh one more thing - guess what I had for dinner tonight?'

It was a bowl of peas.

A bowl of peas.

Not that there's anything wrong with peas. In fact, that was precisely what I was craving that evening so I very much enjoyed my big bowl of peas. However, sometimes when I get back at 8.30 and have nothing prepared the thought of cooking is quite a lot. Those nights of semi-desperation and semi-laziness have resulted in me perfecting the art of whipping up  a very quick dinner.

So here are some recipe ideas (if they can be called recipes) for the nights when all you want is something in 15 minutes but you don't want frozen peas. To be enjoyed over a good book, or a good conversation. Or in an exhausted heap.

Hummus on Toast

Ingredients
1 can Chickpeas
2 big squeezes of Lemon juice
1 clove Garlic (you can microwave it for 30 seconds if the rawness of it gets to you)
Toast
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
A big glug of Tahini
A generous pinch of cumin

Optional 
Parsley/Spinach
Roasted Red Pepper

Method
- Blend everything in a food processor until it forms hummus, adding a little water if it's too thick
- Spread on Toast, top with whatever you fancy (sauerkraut/sliced cucumber is delicious)
- Have as many pieces of toast as you feel hungry for.

Garlicky Butterbeans and Kale on Toast

Ingredients
1 can Butter Beans
Some sliced up Sundried Tomatoes (in oil, so you don't have to rehydrate them)
1 clove Garlic
2 pieces of Toast
A couple of big handfuls of Kale (or spinach)
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper

Optional 
Smoked Paprika
Nutritional Yeast
Tahini
Slices of Vegan Sausage (so. good.)

Method

- Just fry it all, there's no way this can go wrong.

Fried Rice

Ingredients
A portion of already cooked Rice
1 clove Garlic
1/2 chopped up Red Pepper
1/2 Onion
Handful Frozen Peas (you knew they'd make their entrance somehow)
Handful Frozen Corn
Tahini
Nutritional Yeast
Grated Ginger
Soy Sauce
Sesame Oil

Optional
Grated Carrot/Courgette
Sliced Spring Onions
Cubed Tofu
Mushrooms
Leftover Beans etc.

Method
-Fry the Onion, Red Pepper and Garlic and Ginger in a little Sesame Oil
-Put in the Rice, Peas, Corn and keep frying till the frozen things are no longer frozen
-Shake in some soy sauce
-In the last minute, put in nutritional yeast and tahini and stir it about

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Reducing my waste (again)


This term I've been trying to reduce the plastic waste I produce as much as possible. My forays into conscious consumption have been on an on-again-off-again journey. In 2015, I wrote a post about how I was going to only buy clothes/cosmetics from charity shops or ethically-conscious shops, because I didn't want to support sweat shop labour or animal testing. That promise was quite easy to keep, partly because I love charity shops and don't use much make up at all.

In 2016 I wrote about reducing waste and eight different ways I was trying to put that into practice, from using solid shampoo to making soup with slightly-past-it veggies. I kept some of those good habits, but definitely fell back into bad habits, particularly regarding food packaging.

But with renewed energy, inspired by the likes of Sedona Christina, Sustainably Vegan, Venetia Falconer and blessed by the abundance of unpackaged shops in London, I'm trying again! I'm far from perfect, and I wanted to make it really clear that it's not a matter of perfection. The earth will benefit far more from a concerted effort of many imperfect individuals than the performance of one perfect individual. The aspiration for perfection can make making the first steps (and inevitable mistakes) really daunting. Instead I try to think that the way I am trying to live is out of grace for the earth, because of the grace God has shown me. And if I am trying to live a life of grace, it is necessary to have grace for myself too, so that my mistakes aren't condemning but just part of life, to be recognised and improved on where possible.

Here are some things I've put into place, and some habits I've cultivated/am trying to cultivate as I continue my low waste journey:

1. Using a menstrual cup. I got this quite early on but found getting used to it really difficult and quite painful, since I hadn't even ventured into the world of tampons. After lots of patience, youtube tutorials and support from fellow cup-using friends, it has now become really easy to use and honestly makes having your period so much less of a faff since it only requires changing every 8-12 hours (without any risk of Toxic shock syndrome)! Added bonuses include:

- Being able to swim with them in unlike pads
- Not worrying about period supplies for up to 10 years
- Some menstrual cup manufacturers work to reduce period poverty, e.g. freedomcups, stopperiodpoverty, thecupeffect
- Not throwing lots of pads/tampons into the bin
- Basically not feeling them at all
- Becoming more familiar with my own body

2. Buying unpackaged food items. I get unpackaged dry goods (rice, lentils, pasta, coucous, nuts and seeds, spices) from the SOAS co-op or the Harmless Store in Wood Green, just a 15 minute cycle away. For fresh items, I get what I can from ALDI and Lidl, and for what is packaged (most things) I either try and find them at the farmer's markets on Saturday or the little vegetable and fruit shop outside the archway tube staion.

Some things I'm still working on:

- Frozen items (particularly peas - I love peas!!!) I've got some frozen peas, spinach and berries at the Bulk Market in Hackney (40 mins away) but that's quite a long way to go for frozen food.
- Beans in cans. This is largely out of convenience since I find cooking beans a drag, and also out of caution from that time I almost burnt down my student house when I forgot I had some chickpeas boiling on the hob. Thankfully cans are recyclable, but obviously it would be great to reduce even recyclable waste.
- Soy Milk - still comes in a carton, and while my council recycles them lots of places don't.
- Jarred things (maple syrup/sundried tomatoes) The jars, when finished, are actually quite useful for storing dry items (though not in the case of maple syrup jars I have to say)
- Peanut Butter/tahini - I tried making my own with bulk peanuts, but the little food processor was not having it, so to preserve its life I stopped. I do try to get the biggest tubs of peanut butter/tahini possible to reduce packaging, but I'd still like to find a decent affordable alternative.

3. Making food items that I miss in packaging. I used to get these date and coconut bars from Aldi which were absolutely delicious. This year I've made a lot more hummus and my own snacks, from bliss balls to granola to spiced nuts/seeds to a chocolate mousse made of black beans (don't hate on it till you try it, it's so good)

4. Replacing packaged cosmetics/toiletries with items in recyclable packaging. Aside from solid shampoo and soap, I've started using solid deodorant (which comes in a metal tin) and am picking up some solid sunscreen (also in a tin) tomorrow! Instead of using cotton pads for toner I use the edge of a towel (although I still have leftover cotton pads, which I'm saving for if I go travelling or something)

Things I'm still working on:

- Toothpaste. I tried the coconut oil and baking soda she-bang and did not enjoy it, and am still not quite sure about baking soda based toothpastes for dental hygiene and tooth health. (Baking soda, however, seems to be the base of most commercially produced zero waste toothpastes) I don't know how to solve this, and ma actually hoping to find a squeezy toothpaste in recyclable or compostable packaging (if you know of any please tell me!)
- Make up. Thought I only have a few bits, they are all in plastic/non recyclable packaging (apart from the mascara and skin tint I have from lush which I think are recyclable) I don't plan on buying any more at the moment, but when I do need some in the future I'm not even sure where to start looking! (particularly if I'm in Singapore)
- Shaving. Currently on my last of a big bunch of disposable razors Hannah gave me when she left the UK, but I do plan to get a safety razor with replaceable blades after that. Still kind of scared of that since I've heard some horror stories about the sharpness of those things, but with practice and care hopefully I won't cause a disaster. (Update: have got the safety razor, it's all fine. I did nick myself a little but but it was not a disaster at all)

5. Other little things: got a coconut bristle dish brush which works wonderfully. Not quite so wonderful is the 'unsponge' I got, a fabric sponge which is washable and reusable. Unfortunately it doesn't dry easily and also doesn't scratch off stubborn bits of food so well.

6. As before:

- bringing food in a tupperware/old ice cream container when I pack food, plus a spoon/fork from the kitchen and a water bottle where ever I go is always useful.
- using cloth tote bags instead of plastic bags
- bamboo toothbrushes going strong
- second hand clothing purchases as always, although I have expanded out from charity shops to depop and ebay. (Depop and ebay, however, generate waste with the shipping packaging...)
- research, research, research! It took me a while to find different bulk stores/items like the coconut brush, but with more people thinking about, writing about, and promoting these things, it is a lot easier than it could be!

Friday, March 22, 2019

Death of a poem



Today was a mostly good day, but I ended it with a little weep, because my favourite poem died. Back in Cambridge, some time in my first or second year, I wrote the poem down on a piece of card I'd cut out from a tea-box. I wrote some lines bigger and bolder - the lines that really spoke to me. I called it my life poem, and tucked it away in my wallet.

You do not have to be good.

I'd first come across this poem on a day where I felt suffocated and stressed. It helped me breathe again, that first line cutting through all my striving and reminding me of the basic fact of grace. In Cambridge, grace was a shield against competition and imposter syndrome, a sanctuary and dwelling place when I asked myself simultaneously 'Am I doing enough?' and 'How can I do anything more?'

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

In Cambridge, when at times I felt so homesick I’d count the days till I’d fly home and then curl onto my bed and cry, I'd think of the last lines and feel seen by a God above. Even in my room, my loneliness wasn't unknown to him and the reminder that He is my Heavenly Father, the person who has put me in this world, into this big family of people and nature and words and art was something to hold on to. By the end of the year Cambridge felt less harsh, more exciting, and certainly more like family. As I wrote for the Unfiltered Network: 'Family happens where love is, and Cambridge is a place full of people who love intensely. [...] This intense atmosphere of unreserved love can be intimidating – or it can be an invitation [...] When you let yourself express your joy and passion to other people, you aren’t compared or patronised, but like a bud unfurling before the sun, you are invited to bloom – to develop that passion alongside people who find it equally important.'

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.

When Grandma died and the sadness felt like an enveloping cloud, the poem reminded me it was alright to feel sad, but also that sadness was not the end. Sadness was not the future, even though it was a legitimate part of my present, and continues to be a legitimate part of my present now and then. (like, for example, writing this blog post and suddenly her soap smell and love of colour and fragile but persistent voice singing hymns beside me all come back) I didn't stay away from the world of people who love me and supported me, even though I felt like a big part of that world had gone. I talked to friends, cried on shoulders, and tried (and continue to try) to love the world she loved more fiercely.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

About month later, on a bus in Rome, I sat beside blonde-haired boy and showed him the poem. It felt dangerously vulnerable, as if the poem had become part of me, but I felt safe enough to show it to him. He didn't laugh at how the lines didn't fit within the width of the tea-box card. He didn't even laugh at the fact that it was written on a tea-box.

(Reader, I'm dating him.)

It took courage, but later in Dubai I felt safe enough to hold out more vulnerable words. And since then I've been learning to let myself love, to love, to be loved, to see God's love through the prism of this love on earth.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

I've shared this poem since, with close friends and in poetry groups. A dear friend told me recently that she now has it by heart, her Mum listens to it on spotify, and a friend of a friend of hers has it on her door. I imagine the poem as a pebble - it dropped into my life on that melancholy day and sent a ripple through my world. As I share it with others and they share it with others it moves over life worlds and through people eternally. So though I hold its sodden, pulpy fragments in my hands and mourn, it is not gone. It is all around me and within me. It is every time I feel joy with a friend from Cambridge, every time a remember Grandma, every time I kiss Jacob, every time I breathe in the grace of God.

And so now, the poem, in full:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Sunday, March 17, 2019

On Breath without Air and Buddhism


Earlier last term I finished the audiobook of Breath without Air, a combination of multiple cycle rides around the city with one ear phone plugged in culminating in a final fifteen minutes in my room, lying down listening to Lucy Kalanithi's epilogue (read by Cassandra Campbell) with tears streaming down my face.

Another thing I tried to do last term is wrap my head around the concept of nirvana. I'm still not entirely clear I grasp the Buddhist understanding of it, but I am quite sure I am closer to understanding than before.

These two things might seem oddly disjunct, but while I was reading about Nirvana my mind kept going back to something Paul Kalanithi believed in and repeated through the memoir: that life should not be about avoiding suffering, but about creating meaning.

A brief summary of what I've learn about Nirvana. Nirvana is not going to heaven or immortality, neither is it annihilation or apocalypse.  Nirvana is a cessation of desire/stress/clinging/craving/longing (Sanskrit: tṛ́ṣṇā - literally translated 'thirst') which traps us in the repeated cycle of birth, life and death (also called samsara) which is suffering. All the things we use to feel our way around the world and feel that we are in the world - all these cease:

'there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; neither dimension of the infinitude of space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor staying; neither passing away nor arising: unestablished, unevolving, without support ...' (Udana 8.1)

What I see in the philosophy of Nirvana is the escape of suffering, in part through the understanding that the samsara is a construct of impermanent minds and bodies. (along with other practices encapsulated in the 8 fold path)

In Christianity I see something radically different, something far more along the lines of Kalanithi's conclusion. Suffering is so present in the bible - the 'whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth', Job loses his family, his property, his health, the Israelites are enslaved and wander through desert lands, are exiled, are occupied, Paul speaks about a 'thorn in [his] flesh' and even Jesus, faced with the pain of the cross and the separation from God his Father, says 'Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.' And yet that suffering is part of a God-authored narrative suffused with meaning: the defeat of sin and death and the restoration of humankind's relationship with God, for the glory of God which entails our satisfaction in Him.

Suffering in this life is therefore far, far outweighed by the weight of glory and satisfaction that Christ gives us both in the life to come, and in the here and now. This way of looking at life does not negate suffering, indeed, it gives it even more severity because it is so at odds with the joy that God pre-destined for us and given us through Jesus. It is understood as imperfect, unjust, and painful. Yet it is also made meaningful, because it can produce hope, and allow us to show radical love and care, and expose our need of God and how His kingdom is the fulfilment of desires we didn't even know we have.

At one point in Kalanithi's book, after his diagnosis, he and his wife Lucy consider having a child. She asks “Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?” and he answers “Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” I think that encapsulates the Christian understanding of suffering. We suffer because things are not perfect, but we are capable of suffering because we have an innate sense of the tragedy of loss and end and an innate sense of the rightness of eternity (given that eternity is free of what gives rise to tragedy). The Christian therefore does not shun pain, but embraces life with its contingent pricks and blows, knowing that those pricks and blows were first suffered by Jesus, in his death which actualised an eternity in which suffering does not exist, replaced as it is by endless joy. Perception, sense, nature, personhood - these remain, but made entirely good again. That, surely, is something to be desired.

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

18/02/2019



Yesterday was a grey day of rain, anxiety, essay writing and dissertation proposal submission. After waking up with my heart beating fast already, as if my body was afraid of the day, I brainstormed and submitted my dissertation proposal and then walked out into the drizzle to buy a lemon to cheer myself up and to make hummus.

As I cycled down to school I spoke to God, apologising for how short sighted my focus had been that morning - everything hung on the balance of how I worked, how I lived. I didn't think of grace, or the cross, or the wideness of God's mercy and His capacity and my identity in Him, separate from achievement or striving. I began this year determined not to let myself get anxious about work, but I realise I can't even do that on my own strength - I need God to change my heart, to take that anxiety away and to carry me through writing and reading and thinking.

As I prayed with Jacob that evening, I remembered a couple of weeks ago when I ran in Hampstead Heath. It was a sunny day, and I was feeling exhausted but happy, and I centred myself as I ran by thinking: 'I am a girl, in leggings and trainers, running in Hampstead Heath. The sun is shining, there are other runners out too - they are probably just as tired as I am but they know, like I do, that doing a difficult thing is rewarding.' And as I thought about the facts and the privelege I had to be where I was, doing what I love, with people around me who love and support me my heart swelled and I felt the lyrics of that child's hymn I used to sing in Sunday school 'this is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it'. On days like yesterday, when things are drab and not exciting - those days are still made by God and I want to be able to rejoice in them too.

Sunday, February 10, 2019

This semi-long distance relationship


'Why do you love me?' I asked Jacob on a Monday night last term on a day where I was finding it hard to feel the love despite knowing it exists. A hard thing about living a semi-long distance relationship is not having all the ways of expressing love you used to have, and then having to trust that love exists (oh hello Wales villanelle) without those signs so unconsciously littered in every day life spent together. It's a lot like faith in God when you have 'valley moments' and God seems far away - you know he loves you, you know he exists, you know and yet you can't see or touch or speak.

The day after that I came back from a morning in the library to find a postcard for me on the stairs. 'This postcard is a sign' it said, with big words 'I LOVE YOU' on the front and a poem mixing semiotics and assurance on the back (I find semiotics fascinating if you didn't already know). He must have sent it before I asked him on Monday night, and yet it was like the question I asked had conjured that physical reminder of an answer.

All this to say, semi-long distance isn't easy, and it takes work and writing post cards and articulating why you love the other even when it seems the most obvious thing - and yet the love endures and grows all the better for it. Here are 5 important things I've learnt after a term and a bit of this semi-long distance relationship:

1. Say what you want/how you feel. 

Early on in our relationship Jacob sent me the song 'Honesty' by Billy Joel (just because he likes Billy Joel) but I took it very seriously and vowed that I wouldn't play games -  when I felt something I'd say it and when I needed something I'd ask it. That has been incredibly helpful with semi-long distance - when you aren't there to read body language or see someone's change of mood from day to day, when so much of their life is obscured it's impossible to be able to know what they need or want so instinctively. And what they need and want changes because of distance, but the adapting to that isn't easy unless they articulate their new needs.

Last term I had to tell Jacob that I needed to feel desired/wanted despite the distance between us. The change from seeing each other almost every day to seeing each other once every couple of weeks (if that) meant that articulating love in the every day together ways of time and touch and certain acts of service weren't an option any more, so I needed him to say he loved me more, or describe his day to me more or ask about mine. Telling him I felt that way instead of letting it make me hurt or frustrated inside was so good - it showed him that I trusted him to be able to adapt, and showed me how earnestly he does want to make sure I feel loved when he made conscious efforts after that conversation to do so.

`2. Stick to your rules.

Quite early on in our relationship Jacob and I came up with clear boundaries regarding intimacy. One important one was not spending a night in the same room together. This has meant that each time I visit him in Cambridge I've asked people if I can stay with them. It might be an added 'inconvenience' but it has been really useful in helping us respect each other and obey God even when I've not seen him for a while, and am tired from travelling, and his bed is so warm and the outside so cold...

But I do it because I love and respect him, and I love and respect God, and I know keeping my side of this promise shows him that I am someone who can keep faith, and it also upholds the purity that God asks of us to have in our relationships. So though because I love him keeping the rules are hard, because I love Him/him keeping the rules are worth it.

3. Comfort each other with truth

On a crummy day I was telling Jacob over the phone how I was feeling frustrated, and finding it particularly hard to pray. 'Jesus is right by you,' he said, 'he's holding you in his arms and smiling down at you.'

I laughed. 'I was with you until you said smiling,' I said, 'In my head he was frowning and disappointed.'

'No! He's smiling - he loves you and you're his child.'

It's particularly hard not being able to 'be there for each other' in the immediate sense when either one of us is going through a hard time, but the most loving thing either of us can do is speak the truths that both of us believe in. Jacob reminds me that God made me, loves me, and that He has a plan and his plan is good. Those three truths are good no matter what the situation, because they remind me that I have a purpose, a comforter, and a guide. The reminding is loving and comforting in itself, but it is also a humble recognition of a greater and more constant comforter than either of us can ever be.

4. Have a shared ritual

Jacob and I have prayed together almost every night since we started this year. We begun this in Singapore, continued in Wales and so we had that ritual pretty much rooted when we parted for the term. Nightly calls have been such a source of joy - we've seen so many prayer come true which is incredible, but it also is a way of caring for each other actively since we know that prayer works, and if we pray for the other person's peace or productivity or courage or... we know that God will take that prayer and use it according to his plan and purpose.

Particularly in the early weeks of London, prayer was such a familiarity in an unfamiliar environment and routine, and it really grounded me to know I could keep praying no matter what, and that Jacob was praying too. When Jacob was in Rome, he stood in the stairwell of a noisy hostel and called despite the shaky wifi. If I'm out late, I often call him on my cycle home, keeping one earphone out to listen for traffic and the other in to hear about his life. It's a ritual that has become so interwoven in each of our lives and which weaves our lives together.

(Other rituals include having porridge while sitting on the bed whenever I visit him in Cambridge, or going for a run together whenever he comes here/I go there)

5. Make time together more than ordinary

In a conversation with Lucy (who is so wise, and so easy to confide in) about how she and her boyfriend work with distance in their relationship, she mentioned how one of the beautiful aspects of a long distance relationship was the specialness of the time together. Since they wouldn't see each other often, when they did see each other they'd make it a point to make the time extraordinary.

When Jacob is coming over, I try to get as much work done as possible before he arrives, so that time is free for doing joyful, special things with him. The last time I went to Cambridge we went to a play and a burns night party, and the last time he was in London we went to Pierre Bonnard's exhibition and the orchestra - things we wouldn't do usually, and things we probably wouldn't do alone. Sharing them with him makes them extra special, though they are already special in themselves. It's a way for each of us to show the other that we value them coming over and that we save the best of our time for them.

Saturday, February 9, 2019

From "A Brave and Startling Truth"

Cool art by www.kanghee.kim
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

(Maya Angelou)

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Compliments from my brother

Related image



A Chinese New Year's Eve conversation with Tim about our respective strengths and personalities resulted in this gem:

Tim (on why I am like Monica from friends - apparently): 'You have your shit together.'

Me: 'I do not have my shit together.'

Tim: 'You have the most shit together out of all of us!'

Um - thank you?

Monday, February 4, 2019

i thank You God for most this amazing



Today I sat on a park bench in the late afternoon sun, diary in hand, thinking 'How do I distill this golden weekend into words?' Even that precise moment, sitting there, was beyond the capacity of my writing - because of my own literary limitations and the moment's infinite nature. I was in the park because I went for a walk because the world is beautiful and no other reason, and the sun shone on my face - I am unworthy, and yet I basked in it.

This morning Jacob left, but not before sharing this weekend with me. We shared yoga and a run, overdue hugs and kisses, the paintings of Pierre Bonnard in the Tate Modern, a long bus ride, a vegan quiche and Christmas muesli, and a concert by the London Philharmonic Orchestra which left me breathless. Sharing is a far better word than doing, partly because often we aren't the makers of the joy we partake in, and also partly because this weekend has impressed on me so strongly something I'd been thinking on Friday after reading Romans 12 - that as part of God's community we belong to each other, him to me and me to him.***  Therefore, somehow the joy I feel at the sun on my face is also his joy, because I know my joy makes his complete. 

That was something else we talked about this weekend - the possibility of a 'sated joy' this side of heaven, and we concluded that it must operate like that phrase Christians often use to explain the tension between the fact that the kingdom of God has fully come with Jesus and is also yet to be fully expressed: that we will see the full expression of joy when we finally see God, and yet here on earth because of His grace, we can feel joy that is full and complete.

I thought, as I sat there, about a question my friend Pierre had asked me this week: whether I feel overwhelmed that Jacob might come to Singapore at the end of the year if God provides a way. I said no, then I said yes, and I meant it both times. Not overwhelmed because I feel so certain that this is good, and he feels sure too - besides, the alternative seems more 'overwhelming'. But also yes, because love is the scariest thing and it means coming up with the terrifying and beautiful realisation that you are wanted, cherished, that you could change someone's future and they yours. And yes because I wouldn't want to have such a commitment from someone I didn't feel overwhelmed by. It wouldn't be love if I wasn't overwhelmed - I feel quite strongly that some part of yourself must be drowned in the face of something so good.

I only sat there for ten minutes, thinking, writing, reading some of the poems from the anthology Alex gave me for Christmas ('forgive me' the letter that came with it said, 'I found it in Oxfam books a couple of weeks before Christmas and couldn't resist') - I will leave you a poem now.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


*** God's people are told to 'belong to each other', in a segment about the community of Christ following the call to offer ourselves to God in worship. I gathered that in some ways how we offer our bodies to God has to do with how we operate in the body of Christ (as Romans 12 puts it - I don't think the metaphor's echo of the 'offer your bodies' is accidental) and cultivating humility, valuing diversity, 'belonging' to each other and using your gifts generously and cheerfully were what I saw as ways the passage encouraged Christians to live in a way that made the body of Christ a worshipful one, a community pleasing to God.

Sunday, February 3, 2019

Devotion


This year, I decided to hold a word as my 'word of the year': a word to go through and grow through this year with. The word I chose was 'devotion'.

The word 'devotion' in the bible (greek - προσκαρτερῶ) has its roots in words meaning strength and perseverance, attention to one thing or adherence to one person. I wanted to be attentive (Mary Oliver, after all, said that attention is the beginning of devotion) in my interactions, giving myself wholly in conversations and time with people, with God, with my work and my running. I suppose you could think of it as being a fully present person at any one point.

God was so good a the beginning of the year, giving me reminders of devotion (when cycling down to see Jacob on that wondrous St Martin in the Fields day I passed a statue that had the very word inscribed onto it in big capital letters) and giving me the strength to actually be single-mindedly attentive in what I did. Spending time with someone (or someones) and being absolutely invested in the present, not planning ahead for the minutes and hours after or worrying about what you left undone in the past, is so liberating and makes time with people so special. I feel this more acutely in London, where it is far more difficult to arrange a meeting with someone, so when you do see each other the time seems surrounded by a palpable halo of preciousness. Something did  worry me though - devotion requires rather a lot of giving of yourself to that thing. A half-hearted devotee is a creature of oxymoron, but I wondered how I could retreat and rest, and still throw myself into this life whole heartedly?

On a run a while ago, I realised something that quite simply cleared every thing up (from a theoretical point of view - practice takes practise):

You only need to be devoted to one thing. 

After all, you can only be devoted to one thing, or you change the definition of the word. Devotion requires adherence/attention to one thing or person - and I have no doubt in my mind who that shall be. Teach me Lord, I thought, to be devoted to you. Because where devotion to other things asks that I give my all to them alone, devotion to God means attention and love to my neighbours, honouring my time and my work and my body. But the attention and purpose I approach all else with is rooted in the strength and perseverance that comes from God.

In practice this has meant sacrificing my 'goals' and the intentions behind what I do apart from God (for instance, maintaining a good grade average, getting faster/stronger in track, finishing every bit of reading, only eating healthy meals...) and letting him lead me.  It hasn't meant I don't care about these areas - in fact, I care more about them because I see them as areas to use God's gifts and express my thanks to him in creative ways. It just means that the end point, where my eyes are fixed upon, is always (ideally, though obviously not realistically) God's glory rather than measures of success in these areas. It has meant that I've felt a lot less anxious, a lot more joyful, and learnt a lot more about God's character which has meant worship has become so much more of a real and a living part of my life in and out of church. I'm excited to see what the rest of the year teaches me and how that will change me...

When I walk out into the world, I take no thoughts with me.  That’s not easy, but you can learn to do it.  An empty mind is hungry, so you can look at everything longer, and closer.  Don’t hum!  When you listen with empty ears, you hear more.  And this is the core of the secret:  Attention is the beginning of devotion.
-Mary Oliver

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

3 other small things:


1. Last Saturday when I got home from the airport (it seems so long ago) I came back to the house and found flowers by the door. I was talking to Jacob at the time over the phone, and after opening the door and putting things down, and bringing the flowers in, I asked if he'd got them - and he had. They were beautiful, different shades of pink, and purple and blue and cream, small leaves with a soft, downy fur on them and others that were long and elegant. I put them on the kitchen table, and one morning during the week I came down and was surprised by their beautiful scent. ( I could finally smell then because my cold was beginning to clear)

2. On Sunday during my cycle to church, at a traffic light I caught the eye of someone walking across the street. I can't explain it, it was a funny gaze but not in a bad way. I looked away, then a couple of seconds later looked back to find him looking over his shoulder at me still. He grinned, 'so beautiful!' he said, and I laughed. What a lovely thing to say to a stranger, to make her day.

3. Yesterday I got home from a lecture and felt so tired I lay tummy down on my bed for a while. When I had breathed a little, I propped myself up on my elbows and read a cup of jo article - this one on parenting. And suddenly, reading Loren's comment, I found myself crying:

“I was putting my four-year-old daughter down for the night. She was begging me to stay with her, but we had guests over. I told her ‘Just think happy thoughts.’ She said, ‘But, Mama, you are my happy thought.’ Be still my heart.” — Loren

The best day of 2019 (so far)



I realise I haven't written anything 'small' here for a while, something just descriptive and not reflective. It may be because I feel like I need to make 'worthy' offerings on this platform, whatever that means (and perhaps my mind tells me different things are worthy at different times.)

Here is something 'small', just a day, because it was a day of joy and that is quite worthy enough.

Last week, tuesday.

I woke up and did some yoga, breathing in and out on the mat that Alex sent to the signal-less, up-a-mountain-in-the-lake-district, next-to-an-abandoned-slate-mine hostel that I was in last year on my birthday.

I had breakfast, porridge. I might have had a cup of tea. (I am proud to say that my prediction to fall in love with tea has largely worked - I have had more than 25 cups of rooibos since mid-October last year, and also various other cups in different houses with different people.)

I did some reading, then made some sandwiches accompanied by a growing excitement. Sourdough bread, hummus, smoked walnut tofu, sliced beetroot, sauteed garlicky kale, hummus, bread.

I got onto Liv and cycled down to St James Park, singing Ellie Goulding's The Writer as I went - I can never remember the first verse, so I always start from the chorus, cycle through the second verse, back to the chorus, second verse, over and over till I get bored. But the people I pass in quick succession do not know and I quite like repeating the line 'I try out a smile and I aim it at you/You must have missed it/You always do'. The cycle took me past St Martin in the Fields, the National Gallery and down The Mall, a wide avenue which makes me feel quite regal.

When I got to St James Park, I chose a spot on a bench that was drenched in sunlight, and sat there and read while I waited for Jacob. I'm working my way through 'The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', which is taking a long time, no longer the quick hurricane reading I did as an undergrad. But that means I get to enjoy the book in different places and different times, like on a park bench in the sun. Half my mind was on the book and half was just enjoying the feeling of sun on my skin and the feeling of spring. Of course, it is still technically winter, but the sun and the green of the park and the almost palpable shared feeling of promise was quite a spring like feeling.

'If we were in another universe where Jacob and I had never met, and I was on this bench reading, and he walked by, would he fall in love with me?' I wondered.

Jacob entered from a different end of the park, so I walked along the pond to meet him halfway and as always after I haven't seen him for a while - butterflies. (It's been a year and a half but I still feel as happily excited as November 2017) We sat on the same park bench I'd been reading on, and he pronounced the sandwich the best one he'd ever had.

Writing about time with Jacob is one of the hardest things, because I can't remember every detail but the each detail was a golden moment.  And I can't convey how normal conversation is elevated because it isn't elevated by words but just by being there, with him. Will you trust that I was wonderfully happy without my writing how?