scrrrumptious

One of the things I loved most about south of France culture was the lifestyle that revolves around eating. The french reeeeally know how to enjoy their food! Meals are usually long, they last several courses, each one enjoyed round the table with family and friends. No one ever hurries to eat their meal. Even at school, the lunch hour was 2 hours long, an hour of eating and hour for clubs and recreational activity. There was even a stash of wine and cheese for staff who felt the urge! My favourite meals were those when I was invited round for dinner by a french family and we sat eating till well after dark. Every bite is savoured, seasoned with avid conversation, sometimes silences.
There are few things I enjoy more than spending a couple of hours at the table eating a scrumptious meal with people I love. Anyone who knows me will know how excited I get about a plate of good food! (see photo above) I love to savour every bite and then spend loads of time just sitting with the people at the table afterwards digesting :) hmmm (satisfied siiiigh)
Do I have that same attitude to spending time with God? I think that time should be as unrushed, savoured, slowly digested, seasoned with both conversation and silence... And yet so often it isn't... I read this a couple of years ago and came across it again last night. It strikes a chord because it's too often true of me. Makes me think of that banquet parable... although I know it isn't necessarily talking about that, when I read it I can't help but think on how often I end up making excuses!
It's more than just that though, I was thinking about how Jesus describes himself as the Bread of life. But that isn't the only reference made to where our sustenance should come from...
Comparing time with God to time with a yummy scrummy meal helps me to think about my eagerness to spend time with God as much as how I do it. En bref quality time enjoyed.

Energy

Yesterday marked the end of an almost solid 3 weeks of youth/kids work. SU Music Camp followed by Maranatha Camp followed by my Glasgow church (Findlay)'s holiday club. Now I am regularly described as a highly energetic person. Once I start dancing on a night out I can keep going and going and going and going. Now I knew I would be tired from doing two residential christian camps in a row but I didn't expect the kind of tiredness I ended up with. I expected sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion, tiredness of the kind where you can't keep your eyes open. Instead I ended up with the kind that seeped out all the joy I had in doing almost everything I loved doing. I wasn't that physically tired and yet this kind of tiredness was so much more zapping. I read this for the first time in ESV translation at the beginning of last week when I was feeling at my most zapped. It says "those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength..."
Waiting does not come naturally to me, I like to do as much as possible as soon as possible. I usually do first and think afterwards which is sometimes good and other times not so.
But I don't think this waiting is procrastinating, inactive kind of waiting around. It's knowing and remembering and seeking and listening in stillness, it's opening the curtains of my heart every day and enjoying the warmth of the sun. These past few days I've been learning how to wait again and I've feel like I've just woken up from a long sleep. Energy and motivation have returned. Ironic since I've spent every morning in the last week running and singing and dancing exuberantly with primary school age kids. I've been very aware of this; his energy at work within me.

My heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my heart, my portion forever. Ps73:26

On living with a bride-to-be

This morning the last of the wedding entourage disappeared... and once again we are a flat of 2... ah twas a beautiful day and so special to be so involved! Tis rather sad though... I have made more than a few new friends over the last weeks and have got to speak a lot a French! :) Living with a bride to be has been an experience...! You might get accidentally mocked in the father of the bride's speech because he thought a message written on your noticeboard was written by his daughter and not by you, have to deal with a constant flow of people (no difference there really though!), have to deal with frequent mood swings, end up with twice as much milk as what you started of with because the mother of the bride wants to make up for "invading your space". All in all it has been a fun and chaotic few weeks and I'm very glad that Mr and Mrs Sharpe have only moved around the corner :)

Prince Caspian

Saw this tonight with two of my flatmate's bridesmaids-to-be and it was amaaaazing!!! Again the C.S Lewis magic was beautifully captured on film, beautifully played, the characters came out brilliantly and were well developed over the course of the film. I love the fact that a plot can be so fantastical yet the characters, their personalities and inner tests and struggles they go through are so tangible and easy to identify with :)
And again Edmund proved to be my favourite character of all, Lydie (maid of honour/la dame de la cote d'or) put it beautifully when she said "I love that he's so humble, or rather so humbled. Edmund's living under grace and he knows it."
I also love the fact that my heart goes a putter and I get excited shivers when Aslan appears!
...and I'm going to see it again next week with the bf and sis! woop woop! :)

On hen parties, samba gigs and helping little old ladies

I was just thinking of what I've been up to over the last couple of weeks. I've been unemployed and not loving it, but now that I think about it... I've not exactly been bored, what with job-hunting, tidying and re-tidying the flat, organising a rather large hen party, attending another, dancing my socks off in my favourite venue, enjoying the parade, getting a free 3 course meal in returning for helping a lost little lady on the street (blog post to follow), staying up too late and then catching up on sleep again, baking cakes at silly hours, accumulated copious boxes and musical instruments - we now have a keyboard, a trombone, a violin, a couple of guitars, cello and darbuka (drum) - (only the latter 3 actually belong to flat residents), the chaos that ensues when a flatmate is getting married, some jamming and mix that in with a touch o frustration, excitement, joy, grief...
I'm so thankful that God doesn't change even if everything else does!
And also for laughter :)

living in "holy fear"

I've been thinking about this for a while... So it's summer now and as soon as I found a way to relax post-exam time (took a lot longer than expected) I hit that post-exam lazy period and instantly found myself battling with both laziness and numbness... Yeah I know it's important to relax and all that, but there must be a balance somewhere, right? So right now I'm striving to find that balance. In the midst of everything I've been doing (see previous post), with that summer feeling and the job-hunting and everything else, I want to still be seeking God with all of my heart. So how do I keep the balance...?
The phrase that has stuck in my head the last wee while has been "holy fear", it comes from the NIV version of this verse "By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family." Hebrews 11:7 though I guess a better way of putting it would be "reverent fear" like it says here. I think we often forget or at least I often forget that God is magnaminously holy... and His holiness is kinda scary! It's incredible that he shows us any mercy at all! But then that's what makes it so amazing, that's what makes it grace... we can approach Him, be part of His family because of Jesus! But then I should be living my life in light of that... in light of grace, every breath is a gift and I should always be aware of that.
I think there is an antidote to laziness, to complacency, to taking God's grace for granted and it's knowing God, knowing His justice, His righteousness, His mercy, His holiness, His gift of grace. Surely if we start to grasp these things and that they are all characteristics of the one and only God, then we couldn't possibly live in vain!

summer begins...

hmmm summers... not sure what I think of them really! Nearly all of my summers, except perhaps the last one have involved lots of waiting and trusting till I reach the end of my tether. This summer has been no different. I have been trying and applying and trying and applying to go away on mission abroad this summer and nothing has suited or fitted or worked out. I was supposed to go to Romania with Africa Inland Mission and now (because I was the only confirmed accepted member of the team) I'm not, clearly God has other plans! There was a jury citation sticking out like a sore thumb this week but I didn't get picked for that. So I've been job-hunting and recording an album and going to what has seemed like a million birthday parties (which have included...

a trip to Dumfries, a surprise for the flatmate, about 20 bouquets of flowers in our kitchen, seeing people I haven't seen for ages in a nice pub and an international food/fancy dress soiree) and hanging out with folk and cooking a lot and eating icecream and going to the park and catching up on sleep and saying goodbye to internationals (a post devoted to that will follow), hmm maybe (with the exception of goodbyes and mega uncertainty) I do like summers... :)

When a scar becomes a feature...

"When everything's grey - colours become really evident."

I was really aware of this in exam-time where things like bumping into someone in the library or a nice dinner become a huge treat. (Though now my exams are over, I'm having to work harder to enjoy little things with all the post-exam fatigue and busyness I'd put off for after exams hogging my time!)

I'm also really aware of this looking back at the last couple of years, after a long time of feeling like Humpty Dumpty. Tis such a sad nursery rhyme really. When I was really really little I used to sing those last two lines with my saddest voice possible:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the king's horses and all the king's men

couldn't put Humpty together again :(

I don't think I am always aware of my scars, but then something triggers off a painful memory or an uber-emotional response that catches me off guard and I remember again. They are scars accumulated over the last couple of years in particular, that lie dormant just under my skin and that have always been easier just to ignore. And it's easy enough to ignore them in busyness when everyone else is oblivious to them. Still when I am aware of them, they've always seemed so permanent, making me feel like a Humpty Dumpty. Anyway in recent months, some healing has finally been taking place. The King can put Humpty together again :)

The bizarre thing is, I'm starting to realise that the scars will be a permanent fixture but this is actually a good thing! The acts that caused the scars were most definitely not good, but the scars themselves are playing a part in defining me. They keep me aware of my brokeness and aware of His grace, kinda like it says here, because I am aware of my fragile broken jarofclaylike nature, I am more aware of the fact that it's His power working in me that makes things happen... and it's as though pieces are being put together but in a different and perhaps better combination to the way they were before.

Things also seem brighter before they did before, because I went through the grey, because I did break into many pieces, I am able to better appreciate wholeness and sunshine when I have it! It's a bit like with Glasgow and sunshine: on one of those rare beautiful days, the whole city is out soaking it up because they are rare. We appreciate the beautiful days so much more!

What is amaaazing and what I do want to draw your attention to is that, He's able to regenerate, restore, renew, resurrect and yet what is made whole again is always better than before!!! It blows my mind! Tis crazy that we have such a powerful yet compassionate God! :) Thankyou

blue sky patches in the cloud that is exam-time

Sunshine, wearing flipflops, jamming/studying/wandering in the park (of which I do have pretty photos, but these are on my flatmates computer which is currently down in London with her fiancee, doh!), heartbreaking news, playing in the pitchdark planeterium with the band, new beginnings, giggles, silly late nights, scrabulous, getting fed, plenty banter, bonding over exam pains, fluishness forcing me to have a day off when I needed it so much, hearing and being freshed by the gospel yet again at one of those leader days run by them, sunshine, good jazz (both live and on lastfm.com)...

And I finally finally saw Once! Bizarrely realistic! :- from that first jamming encounter where everything just clicks, band practices in tiny bedrooms, the jamming dinner party... and all so beeeeyooootiful!

And the cloud ends (at least for me) on Thursday afternoon.... oh yeah :)

Animated Iranians

I'd originally intended not to blog until exams are over. But to be honest, I need a brain break!
Plus this film (which I saw on Tuesday) was truly amaaaazing, I've been dying to rave about it!
Why is it amaaazing?
Because: (in bullet point form)
- It's aesthetically beautiful
- The characters are so real and well depicted
- It's witty and often very funny
- It's highly educational! I didn't know anything about Iranian politics or political history yet didn't feel lost at all since it explains it all really well!

Amazing I tell you! Go see it!

Wanted: Polaroid

A fellow sortofGlasgower Emma is going to Uganda/Rwanda in 8 weeks. I definitely recommend checking this out

gems

Lastfm.com is genius... especially when one is procrastinating :D
You stick in an artist you like into a box and it generates a whole load of music that is similar to it!

And through this I have fallen in love with these gems...
- Fionn Regan=purty!
- Adem=ohsobeautifully constructed music
- Kings of Convenience= very chilled but luscious harmonies
- And I've been a fan of Beirut, which I found via 3hive, for quite some time now

And then I've discovered that artists I'd originally dismissed as boring have actually made beautiful songs, notably KT Tunstall with the song "Silent Sea"

Good music does help me to study! Honest!

What would I do without bbc i player?!

Completely forgot about this until someone "beboed" me to tell me they'd seen me on tv yesterday! Doh!

It was filmed back in November to be fair! Songs of Praise (episode 2) - from 14 minutes...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b00b099r.shtml

I've got cabin fever...

This is what silly long hours in the library does to me...




Cabin Fever ah!

At the age of 40, by 9' o clock

Just to give you background on this post. On one of our many french lesson tangents, I was challenged by him to write a story with that first line...
Now just to inform you, what a lot of people don't know is I used to be a compulsive story writer. I was addicted! It was better than TV, better than reading, better than music (maybe that says something about how exciting my life was back then :S)
Anyhoo I tried to write a story based on that title and didn't do so well. In fact I realised I couldn't anymore, there is too much going on in real life to escape it anymore or to make a new one for myself, which is what writing had always been to me. It was, back then, in childhood, escapism. And now I don't want to escape, I want to live! And all I can manage is this jarbbled prose-esque poetry. See I still love words but I've forgotten how to lose myself in another character. I can only write as myself. So this is what I came up with... a genuine fear...

At the age of 40, by 9' o clock, on a Tuesday morning, when the rain has stopped, and the kids have just left for school and the husband for work and the people carrier is sitting vacant, still, after a morning's work, what will I be? What will move me?
If I get a stable job, "career" I should say, a comfortable life, "settle down", will I still be living? And when I say living, I mean really living... breathing, wide-eyed with each breath. By sunsets, scrumptious chords, silly words, real smiles.
Or will I just be numb? Settle for little. Half-hearted days, hollow nights. Comfort having blunted the tips of my nerve-ends. Content just to stagnate in a detached house, drive the kids to music lessons, dance classes, day job, kiss my man good morning, good night. Content that my chat is just gossip, my friends just middle-class, drifting along with what comes easy. Never to engage with the world beyond my front doorstep, beyond what I can see and hear, beyond this suburban dome. Content to give money but never my life. Never to reach up, reach out, yearn for more, love, knowledge, truth, understanding, likeness, lifeblood of my maker.
The very thought strikes chords of fear in my heart, phantom of the opera-esque. "To die slowly" and not . To never have given my all...
Even if I choose that suburban lifestyle, though right now I can barely imagine myself in it... I want to stay here, on a rock that is higher than I, in awareness of brokenness, always in need of that which I do not deserve, always seeing more that needs to change, yet always ever more amazed, ever more in love with Him, in love with them... I don't want an ordinary life, I want one full to brimming.
A prayer to the God of my life... At the age of 40, by 5'o clock, on a Tuesday morning, when the rain has stopped... that's where I want to be.

In need of pruning

These are my roses which sit by my (as you can see) grubby window, hardly get watered, yet still seem to flourish regardless. Or at least that's what they looked like a couple of days after I returned from a 10 day long stint in Edinburgh last week. At first they'd looked very sad and wilted so I gave them some water hoping that they would spring back to life as they have done in the past which they kind of did - well as you can see... they became this mixture of dead and living leaves growing from the same branches. It was kinda like the dead leaves were getting in the way, just hanging on even though they were dead and impeding new leaves from sprouting. "in need of pruning" was my first thought...

And then that got me thinking... that's kinda like me. I'm a mixture of living and dead bits I think. There are some parts of my life that are flourishing, where God has been moving and I get excited and feel alive just thinking about them. And then there are other parts... they need to change or just go. I can't grow anymore when there's all these dead leaves getting in the way, just like the plant.

So what are these dead leaves? There are a lot of them and I don't think I could put a name to them all or am even aware of a lot of them. But I think most of them stem from pride and selfishness, and that in turn stems from not fully understanding or always being aware of the fact that God is the centre of the universe not me. In Him all things hold together, everything is sustained by Him, depends on Him and that includes me and everything I do.

I think one of the biggest traps I've been falling into of late is thinking that what I do and how well I do it defines me. I find myself drawing identity and self-worth from this. And those thoughts hinder me. They hinder me cos I think I need to do everything, I start doing things just for the sake of feeling useful or used. Sometimes I start doing too much and man oh man are my motives throroughly messed up!

I've been learning over the last while that this is my identity. Not what I do or how successful it is, though God wants me to do everything as well I can and use what He has given me. This tells me that God doesn't actually need me to do His work at all. He's God after all, creator, sustainer, author and perfector of everything. But out of His grace He chooses to use me, to use any of us. Though we mess things up and don't always do things His way and make mistakes which are often humungous. He still wants to make us a part of His plan! Wow!!!
I read this earlier and noticed this:- God uses the Samaritan women to spread the word about Jesus! I mean, a Samaritan woman! She would have been undesirable in every sense of the word; because she was a woman, because she was a Samaritan, looked down on by Jesus' own countrymen and probably looked down on even by her own people because of her loose morals and messy marital history. Yet Jesus gave her the time of day. And people believed in him "because of her testimony"!
That challenges the way I look at myself and also the way I look at others. Even amongst people who are "marginalised" and my role is to love, it is so easy to take on a patronising self-righteous "I'm helping these people" attitude, not treating them like the equals they are, and I will still find myself drawn to those with decent banter or looks or even with "potential". Yet Jesus sees worth in everyone that we can't always see. He sees people as people, made in God's image.

I'd like to see that too.

P.S Apologies for the length of that! Those were a lot of thoughts building up over the last wee while. And I am spending loooooong hours in uni library right now!

Lied

This post has been a long time in coming... I gush enough about these guys in person I may as well do it in a blog.




So from left to right...
Loik - Breton guitarist extraordinaire (also has a remarkable talent for french pffffffffffffts)
Ilhan - dutchman with east kilbride accent is provider of pistachios, also perfectionist drummer (I forget what kind of drum it is), recorder and author of the "bits analyses"
Elaine, scottish lass with beautiful voice and remarkable talent for making up melodies on the spot to beautiful chords that Loik plays
I cello and giggle (both of which get caught on cheap mp3 player) and eat most of the pistachios (they're as addictive as biscuits ;P)

Together we jam and laugh and eat pistachios and jam some more, and everytime we jam a new song is spontaneously sparked. So we record it, Ilhan emails them to us complete with a bits analysis e.g "3.56-3.58 - perfect guitar bit" and we can then play and refine and play and refine some more...

aaaaaaaah I love it! (in case you hadn't already guessed) :)

decompartmentalisation

Pheeew... that's a long word to describe what I'd like to achieve in life!

I came back a couple of days ago from a weekend where everything went click in my head. I remembered who I am and how that works out in life and felt like I was looking at the best news there ever could be i.e God's grace shown to us in Jesus, with fresh eyes. But now I'm back in everyday life I'm remembering how difficult it can be to put these things into action.
If only I was always aware of...

God in my living
There in my breathing
God in my waking
God in my sleeping
God in my resting
There in my working
God in my thinking
God in my speaking

Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything

God in my hoping
There in my dreaming
God in my watching
God in my waiting
God in my laughing
There in my weeping
God in my hurting
God in my healing

Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me the hope of glory
You are everything

I like this song because it reminds me that though I have such trouble including God in every part of my life and not compartmentalising, He actually is in everything, whether or not I am aware of Him. He is there in the unexpected and the expected and the clean and the messy. He is there whatever my state of mind may be. I guess it's the awareness that's the key and also what I struggle with - living in continual awareness of God and of who I am in relation to him. I cleaned my desk a couple of weeks ago, and it's still clear today! (though the rest of my room is not so clean) and I have recently discovered the joy of sitting at my desk by my ohsosunny window, drinking green tea and just being with God. Those times just seem to be getting less and less frequent as I am getting busier and busier though they are becoming more precious as a result. I do appreciate most of the simple pleasures in life, like a scrumptious chord or a collection of crocuses or uncontrollable laugh or an understanding glance between close friends and I know it's good to enjoy these things. I just want to be more aware of God as I go about enjoying them so I can remember that they come from Him and so that I'll thank Him because He is the source of all that is good and love in this world. I'd like to live in continual wide-eyed grateful awe and appreciation...
And that's only one side of the coin. What about when I'm down, agrieved, stressed, guilt-stricken... I want to be aware of God and love Him in that too - by trusting and continuing to love others regardless of my internal state or situation.
It's a challenge, but I want to try and love God in everything...

banter of the last wee while

photoworthy banter of the last wee while

- much jamming (there will be a post devoted to that shortly) and getting acquainted with a jembe at a haggis party (now I can't stop drumming! Got in trouble for drumming at the table the other day)
- Global Village - many stalls manned by international students with many dishes. Things I may have sampled the cuisine of roughly 10 different countries, needless to say the french couldn't get themselves organised to have a stall there. We paid four quid and could sample them all and then were treated to live music and dancing. I discovered that Iranian food is really quite a treat!
- a couple of gigs with the strangers
- a couple more birthdays of the psychology crew, another one coming up on Saturday
- pictionary with a random collection of native and non-native english speakers
NB A. It helps if there is some secondary language in common (in our case french and dutch) then if a word comes up that some people don't know, it makes it easier to explain

B. overcomplicated drawings may be funny, but do not win a game... take for example... Jellyfish

- Nor do abstract interpretations of concepts... here are two drawings to illustrate...
one is literal

the other a little more abstract

both mean "revolution"
C. one must add on looking the word in the dictionary time i.e "Ah I know what the word is but I don't know it in english!" to make things fair
D. don't drum on the table unless you have a deathwish

Slowly getting used to me new camera and so to illustrate these bullet points...

For those of you who found us sitting and smiling with blank faces comedy, you can now watch the unedited version of that interview, gaelic, english and all here under "agallamh"...