This whole Sabbatical has been more difficult than I expected. One key thing it's shown me is how small my capacity is. After removing literally everything from my life that felt like work and that seemed in any sense optional, I freed up really very little time at all. Because, after essentials like eating and showering and dressing are done, 7 hours per day (my current capacity) doesn't stretch to a lot else.
We're working through Luke's account of the life of Jesus at the moment, and yesterday we read Luke 12:22-31.
It comes in the middle of a bunch of teaching: before it there's a warning against hypocrisy, a bit where Jesus is telling his followers they need to step up and acknowledge that they follow Jesus (even when that's dangerous) and a bit where he tells them not to store up supplies for the future as they don't know how much future they have anyway. After it there are several bits about being ready for when Jesus returns. And in the middle is this section, where Jesus seems to be saying "don't worry [even?] about the basic stuff you need to survive: seek my Kingdom and I'll take care of what you need."
Then today I read through Acts 24-26. Paul, the first missionary, has been arrested for causing a disturbance. He's examined by various Roman authorities and is pretty co-operative with all of that, but in 26:28-29 we see this:
Agrippa [the king] said to Paul, “Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?” Paul replied, “Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am—except for these chains.”
After two years in prison, under threat of execution, Paul's key number one concern is unchanged. He wants everyone he comes in contact with to become a Christian.
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Is that what "seeking first the Kingdom" means? Having a razor-sharp focus on evangelism?
Quite some time back I wrote about 'care-casting': explicitly giving God things I'm worried about, using a process I heard described by Gordon Smith, himself inspired by 1 Peter 5:7 "Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you."
That text is part of a bigger passage in the letter the apostle Peter wrote to Christians who were being persecuted in modern-day Turkey. I've had this whole section up on my browser for the past week or so:
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power forever and ever. Amen.
I'm currently dealing with two things I'm finding really hard. Both of them are things that I feel God has led us into; one is something I thought would be easy but has been quite hard (which I've been really frustrated by), the other is proving as hugely difficult as expected and is something I'd love to give up on. It's all been making me pretty anxious and making it hard to sleep.
So, nearly two weeks ago when I was taking a reflective Sabbath day, I realised I needed to be a bit more deliberate about 'care-casting'. I wrote out these two main things that I was anxious about, detailing what I was worried about and what I was finding hard, as well as two smaller things that were also bothering me that day.
The chap who'd talked about doing this drew his idea from two texts: the one from 1 Peter above, and Philippians 4:4-7. The 1 Peter one particularly resonated with me - in particular how it linked not being anxious to disciplining yourself, and how it said that discipline was needed because the devil is trying to devour you. I realised I'd been giving in to anxiety and was allowing that to devour me and steal my peace and my joy. I needed to ask God for the strength to not do that, and to be disciplined in that area. I've come back to that prayer a lot over the past two weeks and have been so much more at peace as a result.
I was also struck by the bit where it says: "Resist him... for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering."
I realised I was suffering because I was doing things I thought God wanted me to do. And that is something that happens to lots of Christians - indeed, it's something we should expect will happen to all of us, at least some of the time. And that's led me to pray for other Christians in similar situations. That's proved a surprisingly helpful way to deal with my anxieties - turning them into prayers for others.
So I've kept that text up on my computer the past wee while and I keep seeing more in it. Yesterday I noticed how it starts with 'humble yourself', and that was helpful in thinking about what I expect in life and what I feel I deserve - and how much pain can come from those expectations/thoughts.
Also, yesterday and today it's been so helpful reflecting on the Easter story. In particular, how Jesus went through terrible things at the hands of the people he loved - because that was what God the Father had called him to do, and because that was what loving people looked like for him at that time. And so, as I walk the path I think God the Father has called me to, I can look at how Jesus went through such vastly bigger difficulties on his path and how that was so worthwhile, and that also helps me to stick to the programme :-)
At the end of February Martin gave up his job with a view to taking six months off as a Sabbatical. This is something we started saving for a while back, after we were struck by the idea of the Sabbatical year in the Leviticus 25 in the Bible:
The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a Sabbath for the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in their yield, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest for the land, a Sabbath for the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your unpruned vine: it shall be a year of complete rest for the land. You may eat what the land yields during its Sabbath—you, your male and female slaves, your hired and your bound laborers who live with you, for your livestock also, and for the wild animals in your land all its yield shall be for food.
For my Sabbath 'fun thing' today I went to Eric Armishaw Park just after low tide for a wander over the beach and mudflats. In the process, I learned that mangroves have rather odd but kind-of pretty flowers:
and that honey bees love them:
This past year has been uncommonly difficult, due to the concussion I acquired almost exactly a year ago. And this past month has been a challenge with a double dose of Covid followed by a bee sting that's led to a significant infection, both of which have set my energies back a lot. However, Monday a week ago I was doing my New Year's Examen and was encouraged to realise quite how amazing one thing that had happened this year was.
1 - Church Women's Conference
In July our church held a one day 'women's conference'. It was the first one, and I had no idea what to expect from it - and wasn't sure if I could make it, as I was still very much limited by my concussion. But I got hold of the programme and decided to go to the main morning session, with a plan to go home over lunch and some workshops and return for the main afternoon one.
The morning session turned out to be a brief session of teaching (I can't remember what on, but by a woman from the church a close friend of mine goes to), followed by a time when you could reflect or come to the front for someone to pray for you. Three other women from my friend's church were also there, and they were all part of a prayer team I'd heard a lot about and felt confident in.
They were asking people to come forward specifically if there were lies in their lives that were holding them back. At one point the woman doing the asking said "maybe there's a voice in your head that says you're useless". Without really even considering it, I stood up and went forward (most unusual for me!). Ever since I first developed CFS, when I get tired and sore, I feel like a bad person and want to hurt myself - and one of the persistent thoughts that comes at those times is that I'm useless.
There were two rows of women at the front by the time I got there, and the three prayer ladies were going from person to person, praying briefly by some and at great length by others, as they felt God instructing them to. The speaker was also saying little bits from time to time about what we could be praying about ourselves. I think she said to specifically name the words in your head as lies and ask God to take them away, but what I really remember was when she said to ask God what words He wanted to put in their place. As soon as I did that, a phrawe popped into my head: "You are My Light in the World". It was so unexpected! But also a very Biblically-correct idea (e.g. in Matthew 5), not just some random thing, and I figured it was likely from God.
So I prayed about that for a bit there. And, over the following weeks, whenever I found myself starting to tell myself I was useless and bad, I resisted articulating that and worked on saying "I am God's Light in the World" instead.
In maybe a few weeks that lie was gone. Doing the New Year's reflection I realised that, with very little input from me, God has taken away something that's made me miserable for years. Thank you, Jesus! It has come back occasionally since, but reminding myself that I am God's light in the world seems to generally deal with it fairly quickly :-)
2 - Strategy to deal with concussion cognitive issues
That wasn't the only significant encouragement from recent months.
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| I loved this house near my niece's place in Wellington. The monarch butterfly to the right of the door was made by the son of one of our neighbours here in Auckland. He lives in Newtown and heaps of the houses in the area were decorated with them :-) |
Over October/November we were in Wellington/Upper Hutt/Whanganui visiting various friends and relatives. We'd hoped to do this trip back in April, but that wasn't realistic due to the concussion. By October, however, I was mostly back to normal with physical stuff (walking, biking swimming etc.), although still more fatigued than previously and still really struggling with doing most cognitive stuff. My concussion physio (through ACC) had given me strategies that had led to steady improvement with my physical symptoms, but I'd found the cognitive strategies recommended by the OT from the same service much less helpful and was feeling pretty stuck.
One person we were visiting on our trip was my friend Louise, who's also a concussion OT. One day she was kind enough to sit down with me and talk through the problems I was having and what she'd recommend if I was her client. It was a completely different approach from what my OT had suggested. Rather than doing exercises (the various worksheets I'd been given previously), she suggested I pay really close attention to how I was doing. She didn't quite put it like this, but what I've taken from it is this:
That last bit (feeling as good as I felt before I started) felt impossible. I always deteriorate significantly during the day - even before the concussion. But I tried to give it a go and it mostly works. Sometimes I've needed to rest only 20 min or so; 30-ish minutes seems typical, sometimes it's been well over an hour. But I do get back to a point where doing the same work feels pretty easy again :-)
This meant I was able to get stuck into the Just Kai Christmas recommendations when I got back. And I literally did as many Just Kai hours in those two weeks as I'd done in the whole year previously - and that without feeling absolutely disgusting at any point! It was a bit of a miracle.
The idea is that this approach will encourage my brain to slowly heal. The time since Wellington has been pretty disrupted (especially this past month), so I can't say I've seen steady improvement in my capacity - but I can say I now have an approach to get way more stuff done than before, and to do it without wiping myself out and feeling absolutely awful afterwards. Hopefully I'll also see actual improvement in time, but it's still an immense and hugely encouraging change.
3 - Small planes have low emissions
For our October/November holiday we flew to Wellington, caught a bus to Whanganui then flew home from there. When I was calculating the carbon emissions for our trip, I noticed something very surprising. The flight to Wellington generated 195kg CO2e across the two of us, whilst the flight back from Whanganui generated only 69kg CO2e (again, for two people).
Why?
Have a look at the screenshots of the detailed info for the two flights.
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| to Wellington |
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| home from Whanganui |
I use the atmosfair calculator in part because it allows you to specify the make of plane used. Looking at the screenshots you can see that, whilst the distance for the second flight was noticeably shorter, by far the biggest difference comes in the emissions related to contrails and ozone. These are significant drivers of climate change, but only occur when fuels are burned at high altitude. For the Wellington flight we were in an Airbus A320 - a biggish plane seating around 170 people. For the flight home we were in in SAAB340 - a much smaller 34-seater plane. Small planes don't fly as high (you can see the altitude difference in the screenshots above), but I hadn't previously realised that such planes weren't flying high enough to form contrails etc. That was super-exciting information!
We're not 100% sure what we'll do with this new knowledge. One thing we'll definitely be looking into is flying to Kāpiti Coast airport rather than Wellington airport next time we're heading that way. Air Chathams flies there daily (in the same SAAB340 planes), and from there it's about 90 min by bus and train to the Wellington CBD. Total carbon emissions under 80*kg CO2e for two people - compared to 195 kg on the regular plane!
*the AirNZ little planes are even more carbon efficient than the Air Chathams once - presumably as they still fly low but carry twice as many people.
We decided many years ago to do only one domestic flight every three years, as part of limiting our carbon emissions - and those flights have basically all been to Wellington or Whanganui. I've now realised we can do those flights for half the carbon emissions we previously expected/generated. Could we fly more often? We're not sure, as that original target was pretty arbitrary and our emissions are still well above sustainable, but we're certainly wondering about it.
I've also realised that Air New Zealand also uses small planes (in their case ATR72s, which even have a slightly smaller per-passenger carbon footprint than the SAAB340s) to service a bunch of regional airports such as Napier. I have a good friend in Napier, and found the drive there two years ago pretty grueling. We're hoping to go back this year and had been thinking to travel via Intercity Gold bus seats. I'm still interested in giving that a go, but am also wondering about flying at least one way: it turns out the emissions from flying are only double that of the bus!!!
Photos from Wellington/Whanganui
I didn't do a proper blog post when I got back from Wellington/Upper Hutt/Whanganui as I got stuck straight into Just Kai stuff as soon as I was able, but here's a few photos of what we got up to.
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| A statue of Katherine Mansfield, made up of fragments of her writing. I was captivated by this when I first spotted it as a teenager, and was delighted to see it's still there. |
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| Printing a T-shirt (for me) with my niece :-) |
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| with my Aunty Elspeth and cousin Karlene in Whanganui |
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| Martin and the Whanganui river |
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| my Whanganui relatives (except for my cousin Garth's daughter) |
Aunty Elspeth also showed me some old family photos I'd never seen before. Apparently my grandad (who died long before I was born) was a gymnast!
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| my grandad's the man kneeling on the right, half-way up the picture. |
I've been telling people that 2024 has been, for me, the year of trusting in God. Of course, that's what every year should be (!), but this year has been different as my capabilities have been so reduced and so unpredictable, and I've had to trust God in that uncertainty.
When I got my concussion back in January I went rapidly downhill over a week or so, to the point where I was only out of bed around 3 hours or so in a day, much of that just sitting in a chair not doing much. Previously I'd been averaging around 7 1/2 hours in a day and being pretty active within that, both mentally and physically.
Initially I was in survival mode (and not doing very well at all until I started getting help from the concussion service). I had to drop pretty much all my Just Kai work, although I did manage to organise our annual summer team picnic and, with extensive help from Christine, get out useful Easter recommendations.
Life's continuing to be challenging at the moment, and I've found myself often feeling trapped. With the concussion, I can't walk far without nausea and I certainly can't ride my bike or swim; I'm also basically not seeing anyone. I'm trying to put into practise what I've been learning about 'active recovery' from concussion, but it's hard as my CFS-related limits have all been disrupted, and figuring out how to do what's needed for the concussion without over-doing it from a CFS perspective is hard.
Yesterday I decided to go to a close friend's 50th birthday afternoon tea. I knew I'd pay for it, but if felt important.
Today has been a real struggle, with lancing pain through my head and eyes through much of the day; although I did manage a 15 minute walk with minimal nausea, which was lovely.
And I've been mulling over two thoughts through the day:
At New Year's we're often encouraged to make resolutions - to look to the year ahead and think about what we'd like to do differently. However, inspired by the daily "Examen" (a Jesuit practise of praying about/reflecting on your day) which I've found so helpful this year, last week I decided to follow a similar process to reflect on the past year instead.
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| the beach where I often go when I want to take time and reflect |
Guided by these thoughts and questions I prayed about the good things that had happened this year and where I'd seen God in those. That included:
Recently our church had two weeks of prayer and fasting, where we were encouraged to spend time in repentance and in doing things that helped us grow closer to God.
I've been working through a book called The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything off and on for about two years now, and have been taken by the idea of doing the daily Examen the Jesuits do. So I decided this was a good time to give it a go!
It's basically a set of five questions to help you reflect on your day. The questions are summarised in the image below.
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When we first got married, Martin and I decided to budget our expenses. I don't remember the reasoning at the time, but it became a really powerful tool to help us live our values.
We started with simply keeping all our receipts for 3 months, and from that worked out reasonable budget categories and amounts. After a couple of years we moved from a physical ledger to the GNUCash accounting programme (a shift for which I took a lot of persuading!), which enabled our system to become more powerful. By 2023 we had over 60 expense categories (many of them sub-catergories or sub-sub-categories off primary categories) and a really good overview of our financial situation. Over the last 15 years we know where all but about $700 of our money has gone....
But over the past six months or so, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. On the one hand, a practical consideration. Just Kai has been growing; our accounts were taking around an hour every week - sometimes more, rarely less - and that was time I'd much rather give to Just Kai. On the other, more of a theological one.
'Letting go' seems to be a bit of a theme in my life right now.
When we went camping the other week, I'd mentioned that we ended up coming home a day earlier than planned. I said I'd done a pretty good job at staying in 'holiday mode' back home, but that's not the whole story :-)
Today is the first day of Lent for the Western church (the various Orthodox churches - have a different calendar and start a bit later). It's not something Baptists tend to observe, and it's not something I grew up with, but I've come to really value it. It's 40 days (excluding Sundays) in the lead-up to Easter when we are encouraged to 'purify' ourselves. It starts with Ash Wednesday, where you can get an ash cross inscribed on your forehead. In the past I've done this at an Anglican church, where they say something like "Dust you are and to dust you will return" - a reminder of our mortality. Today I went to our local Catholic church (mostly because I'd been hoping to go with a Catholic friend, but in the end I went on my own), and there they said "Turn away from sin and live out the gospel".
The ashes survived the bike ride home pretty well!
I wanted to share a New Year's thing I did this morning, then share some photos of things I've been up to over the Christmas/New Year break.
I've really appreciated Advent this year, and have been particularly reflecting on how, at Advent, we think towards the time when Jesus will come to Earth again. We remember those who were waiting for his first coming, and look to the second.
I grew up with my mum talking about how one day Jesus would come again, and there'd be a new heaven and new Earth, and there'd be no more sickness, or crying or pain. She'd have a body that worked properly again, after this one had been damaged by the polio she caught as a kid.
July was incredibly busy for me, with my brother and his family visiting from the UK, a whole bunch of unexpected fuss associated with Just Kai preparing to be at The Justice Conference in September, and supervising a student (a first for me) doing a commissioned (paid!) research project for Just Kai. At the end of it all, I badly needed a holiday!
Over ANZAC weekend Martin and I spent four nights camping at Poukaraka Flats on Waiheke Island. It's a fairly basic Auckland Council campground in the Regional Park there, although less basic than some - there are flush toilets, and the showers are set up so the water reservoirs heat up nicely on a sunny day. The showers also have open ceilings and are located next to some tall trees: it's quite lovely to look up into leaves and a brilliant blue sky :-)
We stayed at the same campground over ANZAC weekend last year. Knowing the place a bit did make the break especially restful - I wasn't so interested in making sure I saw the various interesting things in the area, meaning I spent most of the time just resting.
Here we are about to get going. Most of the kit's on Martin's bike, with just a few bits and pieces on mine.
Here are the bikes after visiting Waiheke Island's Countdown: my bike's a bit more laden, now that we have four night's groceries added to the mix.
I'd made really good time getting to the supermarket. We'd biked to the local train station, caught the train into town and then the ferry across to Waiheke. Last year it took me about an hour to get from the ferry at Matiatia to the supermarket in Ostend; this time it was 45 minutes :-) However, after that things didn't go so well. Waiheke's pretty hilly, and at the beginning of the last hill I ran out of oomph. I've been working very hard recently, and I think I was just too tired - especially with the extra weight of groceries.
Fortunately, where I ran out of energy was by the beach right next to the beach where we'd be camping. Martin suggested I leave my bike at the carpark and walk around the headland, and he'd bike his bike up and over then nip around the headland for my bike and bike that up and over as well. In the end, I decided to take a somewhat longer route and walk over the headland that divides the two beaches - it was a hot day and I wanted some cover, plus it's always nice to be in the bush. I took it pretty slowly and ended up at the campsite at exactly the same time as Martin rolled up on my bike - about an hour after we'd left the supermarket, the same time as it'd taken me to bike last year :-)
It's a glorious place to be: above is the view looking back towards the campsite from the beach at low tide.
At the right in the photo below is the headland I walked over to get to
the campsite. It's an old pa site, with lots of kumara pits.
Martin serving up dinner. These council campsites always seem to have enough picnic tables for anyone who wants to to commandeer one, which is awfully handy. Our tent is big enough to sleep in, but doesn't really have space for much stuff, so we kept all our groceries and other bits and pieces on the table the whole time. Behind Martin you can see there's just a thin band of trees (which made a very effective shelter-belt) and then the sea. It was lovely to go to sleep to the wash of the waves high on the beach :-)
Our setup. You can see the picnic table and tent. We kept a bike at each end of the table the whole time, which meant we could cover the table with a tarp at night or when it rained and the tarp stayed reasonably well above the stuff. It rained a few times while we were there, but not enough to be really troublesome.
It was so good to take time to rest. We did one bush walk, had a couple of swims on the finest day, and listened to a 5-ish hour audio book together. Twice Martin picked cockles for our meals :-) Other than that, I spent an awful lot of time dozing, and didn't do much else other than sit in various places watching birds. It was so good to just 'be'.
It wasn't the cheapest of holidays, at $275 for four nights, but not too bad. Also not too bad from a greenhouse gas point of view, being responsible for around 70kg CO2e (what the planet can absorb per person in about three weeks). And it was so good for us both.
At home, I often find it difficult to truly rest; although I still spend much of my day lying down, I'm most often both playing Solitaire and listening to something. But on this break I found myself quite content to just do nothing. I've been trying to practise more of that at home, too, in the week or so that we've been back - and twice in recent days that's led to me falling asleep in the afternoon - so good :-)
Today has been my weekly Sabbath. I'm so grateful to God for the rhythm of the week, and for every week having a day to rest and to be with God and to do the things I feel like doing. This morning I spent time reflecting on Isaiah 30:15:
For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel:
In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.
It comes at a time when God is trying to call the people of Israel back to him, but they're not interested. And yet, reading those words, I'm so interested! Being with God, rest, quietness, trust - these are the things I so often find myself longing for.
So, I thank God for the regular rhythm of weekly rest, and for regular patches of quiet in the day. I pray for deep rest. But, I also pray for the simplicity of purpose that I hope comes from spending time with God. Because the other thing I was reflecting on this morning was the fleetingness of life. I was reading these words sitting under our oak tree. The leaves were falling - each of them has come to the end of its existence as a leaf. Ants were crawling over me, and I killed one of them as I flicked it off my leg. More significantly, someone we care about a lot from our church is dying - and, although he's lived a long life, it still feels like his life is being cut short as he's so actively living and growing right now. And so I pray, in the short time that I will live, that I won't be consumed with busyness but that I will live out of a still, quiet core - that trust in God will be my strength and my guide, day to day.
This year, as I have for many years, most days during Lent (the traditional Christian season of preparation for Easter) I have done the following reflection.
Spend some time with God each day, ask him to purify your heart and mind through the power of the Holy Spirit. Be willing to surrender to God.
You may want to ask him questions such as:
- What words have I used that have hurt others?
- What actions or activities have I engaged in that are unhelpful or block my relationship with you?
- What ‘fruits’ need to grow in me? Characteristics such as love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness/generosity, faithfulness, gentleness/humility and self-control.
Holiness grows out of prayers like these.
Looking to tomorrow, take time to consider who or where God might want you to serve. What opportunities might arise where you can resist being the first, best or most important person? Are there situations at home, work or in everyday life where you can serve others tomorrow? Are there times where you can allow others to be first? Pray for the grace to be able to lay aside pride and take the place of a servant.
It wasn't originally intended as a Lent reflection, but rather came from a UK Bible Society series of studies on different strands of Christian spirituality - this one came from the 'Holiness' tradition.
I've also been fasting twice a week from when I wake up until around 4 in the afternoon.
Perhaps because of the fasting (something new for this year), or perhaps unrelatedly, it's been an uncommonly fruitful series of reflections for me. I feel like I'm being stretched and my heart is being enlarged - which is not always pleasant, but which is good and satisfying.
I've been uncommonly busy these past 8 weeks or so (thankfully that busyness is mostly at an end now), and it's been helpful to have the Lent reflection time each afternoon, as it's helped me notice how I've been approaching people. In particular, I've noticed again and again that I've been expecting people to be automata, and have been very intolerant of the messyness inherent in their humanity. I want people to do the predictable thing - even when it has no impact on me - because that feels tidy and safe, and those feel like things I need to cope. Again and again I've found myself praying for two particular fruit of the Spirit to grow in my life: kindness and generosity.
And I've been so grateful to see myself changing over the course of the weeks; to realise I really am growing in those areas and giving people more leave to simply be who they are.
Then, maybe three weeks ago, I found my attention repeatedly drawn to a particular tree that I can see from our back step - the golden one in the picture. I felt like God was trying to say something, but I wasn't sure what. So I kept taking time to look at it and wonder and pray.
The penny gradually dropped Monday two weeks ago
Monday is the day I take as my Sabbath. Amongst other things, each Monday I try to take at least an hour to read from the Bible, prayerfully reflect on what I've read, and read from a thought-provoking Christian book. Often I go somewhere else to do this, to be away from the distractions of home.
That Monday I walked to Heron Park. As I entered the park, I wanted to take my shoes off. On Mondays, I try to be particularly attentive to what I 'feel like', so that's what I did. I walked over the strong, thick kikuyu grass, enjoying the feel of it against my soles. When I stopped to do my reflection time under a tree, I kept stopping to run my hands through the thick mats of the grass (kikuyu forms a surprisingly deep mat - I don't think I'd realised that before!), and it felt good. I thought about Moses and how he took off his shoes when he sees God in the burning bush. He did that because the ground was holy because God was there. But obviously that didn't apply to me. Or did it? And I thought about how the whole universe is infused with God's glory - so where I was was holy, after all.
As I walked back, I was amazed at the beauty of this tree, in particular. And then I realised what it was about the other tree, the one I see by our back step. It's blazing, and glorious - a visible token of the glory that generally we can't see.
And that circled back to my first realisation from Lent. Expecting people to be automata and seeing people as obstacles when they act unexpectedly is most especially a problem because all people are made in God's image. They blaze with God's glory even more than that tree does.
On Tuesday, Martin and I got back from a week on Pōnui Island at Scripture Union's only annual camp for grownups - their Bible Study Camp. I'm still exhausted, but it was such a good week. It was a beautiful location, people were so friendly, and the teaching times have given me good stuff to ponder on.
We traveled there from the stunning Kawakawa Bay, somewhere I don't think I've been before:
At the moment, I feel a bit like I'm surrounded by voices that urge me to be afraid. The New Zealand media is the main voice, with stories about our current Covid outbreak dominating everything, and this voice is reinforced by many people I speak to, by social media, even, to an extent, by my church prayer meetings. It feels like there is one key issue in the whole world, and that subject is scary.
I often buy into it. I miss the Covid-free-paradise that we had only a month or so ago. I tend towards the anxious anyway.
All of which makes my 'Sabbath Mondays' particularly precious right now. I'm so appreciating having a day to just 'be' and a day to fix my eyes on Jesus.
