Friday, August 28, 2009

items of stuff

Highlights from the collection of dust-collecting objects I have rescued from my parents' from a fate of inactivity, sitting in boxes or on shelves in my house untouched for years...

- 2 Calvin and Hobbes books = comic genius!
- "Baby Lion" my maneless, noseless oldest stuffed animal who in his long life has been lost and found several times, been through the washing machine, washed in the bath (didn't do wonders for his mane though) and played countless imaginary games.
- a photo album of the first ever photographs I've ever taken, most of them being of my sister (a grinning 4 year old, arranging her dolls in lines in order to teach, bathing them and posing in a variety of clothing - she hasn't changed much!)
- lots of old diaries - some rivetting entries from 1994 included:
"April 9th; we went to Dunoon by car. I was bored."
"January 16th: I tidyed my room" and then again on December 30th "I tidied my room again. It was my last chance." Apparently some things don't change...!

Sunday, August 16, 2009

On transitions and sacrements

I really don't like being between things... Unfortunately at the moment I am between occupations, between churches, between flatmates (though I am loving living with my temporary lovely German flatmate who is both relaxing to be with and an endless source of interesting conversation!). To add to that is my strong dislike to not being busy.
It makes it hard for me to see the point. I feel aimless. A drifter.

The only concrete thing in my life at the moment, other than my fiancé currently swamped with heaps of studying, is Jesus. But even He seems like an idea sometimes, abstract and airy and with no bearing on my real life a lot of the time.

At the weekend I remembered again why I love communion. I know lots of people who think communion is dull and lifeless and boring... but my experience of it has always been nothing short of powerful, moving and alive! Every time something different in that many-layered profound symbolism strikes me - whether on a basic level e.g. his body was broken for us or on another level e.g. the fact that we are all a part of the body of Jesus, sharing in this one piece of bread. But what it is that makes it so real, is that it's physical - bread and wine are physical, I interact with them physically (by eating and drinking them). I'm overwhelmed when I see bread broken because I realise that Jesus' body was a real physical human body broken but the symbolism only works because the bread is physical and not some idea. And I don't just observe it from afar, I share in it. I touch it, munch it, taste it.

This is what I hold on to when nothing else is fixed - the physical reality of Jesus, who lived and died and rose again, the Father who is utterly just and to the uttermost forgives, the Spirit that transforms - my God.