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?

The best of 2018

2018 was possibly the happiest year of my life.

In January, I began the new year watching the fireworks over Edinburgh castle and feeling so much hope and promise it almost felt painful, in the way a heart bursting with joy is painful. I ceilidhed on the streets with Alex, and danced to Bohemian Rhapsody and the Lion King with Emily in an odd club called The Shack. This year I watched fireworks over an Austrian lake from Nat's house in Zell Am See and wondered if I could have a year so wonderful again .

The last months of Cambridge: 

I had cosy movie nights with Alex, early morning essay practices with Becky, slow Sunday mornings with Jacob and loping Saturday runs.

I wrote an essay with the line 'unlike Ellie, Scarlett refuses to eat the carrots of reality', which to this day I am not sure whether to be proud or ashamed of. (I was definitely proud of that essay as a whole though.)

I decided to join the rowing team, if only for the chance to have my overnight oats in the sun by the boat house.

I fell sick, and realised how much blessing existed in the smallest of things like going for a walk, and birdsong, and peas. 

I finished my dissertation, which I was really happy with, which I learnt so much about God from. 

Perhaps the most glorious day of the year - the day I jumped into the Cam with Harriet and Jacob, then rode on the back of the bike while Harriet pedalled so we could make it to our respective evensong rehearsals, then sang Noble in B minor as a sun ray came through the chapel window and warmed my face, tried to get ice cream in the break (which didn't happen, but the thrill of trying!) and then sang with my heart brimful of joy - God is so good.

Exams were terrifying but also such a good test of trust. I prayed with a group of Christian Englings before each paper, and emerged out of the first two feeling dissatisfied, the Visual culture one feeling jubilant, and the final postcolonial one feeling satisfied and oh so relieved. Always there was the knowledge or the timely reminder from people around me that it was all in God's hands. 

I graduated with a first, and my family came to be there for it. It was so happy and so sad - a high way to end three years of study, but then again I didn't want it to end. Not because I didn't feel ready for what was to come - in the graduation speech that Juliet Foster gave she used the same picture Miss Tan had shown my Junior College class when we graduated (Quentin Blake's Finale) and I felt full of confidence and hope for the next year. Cambridge certainly left me equipped with more knowledge, more assurance of what I know (and of what I don't - but balanced with a curiosity to find out), and more happy memories than I can count. (I know this isn't every person's experience, and Cambridge was certainly hard at times, but overall I was incredibly blessed in that place.) 

Choir tour followed - my first time in America. I meant to write about this, but never got round to it. As usual choir tour was a strange, bubble of space in which everything is so present, and events so vivid one moment and already the next day they've attracted that strange, blurred quality of memory. Lots of my memories of America are either coloured blue or orange - so many sunsets (from a still beach in Cape Cod, from the Staten Island Ferry, from the High Line) and so many bright, afternoon walks in a place where everything, even the sky, seems bigger.

The end of student life really began after choir tour was over - I remember having a few days back in Ixworth, which was like a small oasis. I went for a walk daily, in a field near the house, just myself and audiobooks. I watched hares and deer that had been nibbling on the crops bound away as they heard my footsteps, and saw calm sunsets. Life settled back into a step by step that wasn't going anywhere in particular, but was going.

Those steps soon took me up 16 hills in the Lake District with Becky. A different kind of step by step - sometimes quite difficult when the going was steep - but always incredibly rewarding. The quietness of the hills, the husky labour of breath and occasional deep, winding conversation were such luxuries.

“Oh, how can I put into words the joys of a walk over country such as this; the scenes that delight the eyes, the blessed peace of mind, the sheer exuberance which fills your soul as you tread the firm turf? This is something to be lived, not read about. On these breezy heights, a transformation is wondrously wrought within you. Your thoughts are simple, in tune with your surroundings; the complicated problems you brought with you from the town are smoothed away. Up here, you are near to your Creator; you are conscious of the infinite; you gain new perspectives; thoughts run in new strange channels; there are stirrings in your soul which are quite beyond the power of my pen to describe. Something happens to you in the silent places which never could in the towns, and it is a good thing to sit awhile in a quiet spot and meditate. The hills have a power to soothe and heal which is their very own. No man ever sat alone on the top of a hill and planned a murder or a robbery, and no man ever came down from the hills without feeling in some way refreshed, and the better for his experience.” ― Alfred Wainwright

Back home for the shortest summer, in which Jacob came too and my two worlds or here and there, home and home, collided and thankfully both welcomed the other. In first year I remember returning to England feeling like I was two different people, daughter me at home, student me in Cambridge, but at the close of three years those two people have made friends and become one. Seeing the people I love so much - Emily and Christy, Weixin and Ellis, Claire and Luk Ching, the board games group from church, the class, Cheemeng, Ben... it was a blessing to know that though I am so absent so much of the time, our friendship has deep roots and stays.

In a kind of chiasmus my return to the UK was marked by more hill walking - this time in Wales, with Jacob. They were higher hills, and more fightening -- 'as we reached the summit, the winds picked up, whipping against our exposed faces and hands till they were numb, tugging at the hoods of our raincoats [...] cold, wind, howling, storm, tempest. At points the wind was so strong it was physically difficult to lift your leg against it to take the next step [...] 'God, please keep us safe,' I thought over and over, hoping I could cover this mountain with a cloud of prayer to counter the cloud we were stepping into which obscured all view and seemed to transport us into a different dimension, black and merciless and entirely elemental [...] There were large steps, a giant's staircase, to reach the highest point, and in a surreal vision I felt like Jacob and I were small children, fightened and desperate, ascending to the throne of some mighty but severe God [...] only to reach the throne and cling on - and it was empty.' (excerpts from my diary)

In October I began studying in SOAS. I remember one day feeling that London was too much, and saying to myself 'this is possibly the hardest thing you've done, but you're doing it. Maybe you aren't doing it well, but you are doing it and that is good enough.' It was hard, but I know I can do hard things. In November I did a hard thing with Jacob and ran 10 kilometres in the South Downs, but it didn't feel hard but glorious. I finished my first term with a lot more knowledge about Buddhism, and a lot more love for the bible and God. People have asked me how studying different religions impacts my own faith, and I think by juxtaposition it makes me thankful for the unique parts of Christianity, and by similarity it makes me wonder that so many various people search for God or meaning - even in Buddhism where there is no 'God' really, since there is no enduring self (and the Buddha was a human), there is still a yearning for the things we attach to God - perfect peace, the end of suffering, and that is inevitably represented in a identified, deified figure.

I began this year wondering if I'd used up all the joy last year, but realised that the grace shown to me in every turn is proof not that grace is limited but that it is sustaining and freely given. Assured of God's graciousness, I know he will give grace for this new year because he doesn't change, and doesn't run out, and doesn't hold back his love from those who love him.

In the next five minutes, you will receive sustaining grace flowing to you from the future, and you will accumulate another five minutes’ worth of grace in the reservoir of the past. The proper response to the grace you experienced in the past is thankfulness, and the proper response to grace promised to you in the future is faith. We are thankful for the past grace of the last year, and we are confident in the future grace for the new year. (Grace for the New Year, John Piper)

Thoughts on London, a term in

Yesterday as my plane landed and I took the next two buses back to Highgate, all I could feel within me was how much I wanted to be back in my house, on my bed, sprawled and resting. And then I realised how God had answered my prayers from last term, the prayers especially in the first two difficult weeks, where I asked Him to please let me settle. London has, in some ways, become home because now when I return it feels familiar and comfortably recognisable. 

It no doubt took adjusting to: my cycle commute has gone from 5-7 km a day to 14-20 km a day. The bigness of this city means longer and more urban routes (read: getting stuck behind buses, rubbish trucks and the billion black taxis), but it has taught me the value of not-rushing and letting go of the anxiety of being late even if I am, simply because there's nothing (within the realms of sensible safety) I can do. The bigness of the city also means that as I cycle along streets, particularly when it's dark, I feel a comforting anonymity - and I sing as much and as loudly as I want to. After all, who's going to ever see me again? Archway road has been treated to many a rendition of hillsong songs, and once I went full gospel and ran through the songs from Sister Act and Joyful Noise, with all the vocalising. 

I feel thankful as well for finding a church that I feel so comfortable in, and which I genuinely longed to go back to over the holidays. Each time I cycle over the Thames to get to church I gasp (sometimes internally, to avoid traffic fumes) at how darn beautiful this city is if I look. Those moments of wonder happened often those early days - the view of the city from parliament hill, a particularly striking piece of activist art film in the Tate Modern, the Serpentine sparkling in the sun...

This term, feeling more at home, I want to live in London with abandon. I want to enjoy it, to look and see and wonder often. I don't want to cling to the familiarity too much, so that every day is just a cycle from house to SOAS or house to church. I want to cycle to theatres and parks and monuments and friends houses and cafes and book stores. Please let it be good.

A few other things I've learnt:

- You do not have to be friends with everyone. People come and go here so quickly that it is impossible to emotionally invest deeply with each person you 'click' with. All you can do is try and then accept if, like a wave they retreat back into the ocean of a million people and you never cross paths again.

-A 'recovery day' of just staying at home and doing the necessary like laundry and cooking and work is utterly justified, but on days where it isn't needed staying indoors will drive you sad.

- Hampstead Heath is utterly beautiful even when it is gloomy.

- The tube is endlessly exciting if you don't use it often (and endlessly costly if you do)

- You never need to buy bread if you have the Olio food waste app (I have a regular sourdough supplier now: some of the tastiest bread I've ever eaten and always absolutely free)

- Meeting someone once in a term is normal, and the rare-ness of it makes the time extra special