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Showing posts from 2020

What's getting you through?

Well, here we are, still: lockdown number two for the UK, and the journey feels like it's dragging on... and on... and on.  Normality is a distant dot in our rear view mirrors, while ahead of us is a dull and jumbled landscape of shifting restrictions, cancelled plans and unsatisfying virtual connections.  And no, we are almost certainly not nearly there yet. So, what's keeping you going? (Apart from chocolate cake, of course.) Image: Pixabay I've recently found encouragement from reading the book of 2 Corinthians - a letter by Paul to the church at Corinth when he was seriously struggling.  He'd had some kind of disagreement with them, and spends part of the letter apologising, part justifying himself, quite a lot telling them about all the other awful things that have been happening to him, and he still manages to fit in some phrases of quite profound hope.  This one's been buzzing around in my brain: We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but

Sunsets by the sea: A swift visit to Lymington

It was the end of a hot day.  The cool water felt good on our feet, and the waves lazily pushed the pebbles around on the beach.  Across the channel, the Needles turned from white rock to glowing peach, as the sky dimmed, the air became cooler and stiller, and the red sun sank irresistibly towards the edge of the earth.   We had discovered that the best time to come to the beach was at 7pm.  The crowds had gone, the parking was free, and we didn't have to mess around applying sunscreen.  Once the sun had finally disappeared, we bundled the boys into towels and drove them back to the cottage, where they were happy to fall into bed. The cottage - a compact and fortunately cool Victorian semi - was in Lymington, where we managed to spend a few days in August.  It's a neat little place with a high street that tumbles down the hill to a harbour full of expensive yachts.  A short drive away, through the New Forest, is Beaulieu Motor Museum, which of course had to be the first stop on

John 3:16 vs Micah 6:8 - How do you sum up the Christian faith?

  Through my growing-up years, if I'd asked someone which Bible verse summed up the Christian faith, I'm pretty sure they would have responded with John 3:16.   For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  (John 3:16 NIV) It was the verse; if you could quote one bit of the Bible from memory, this would be it.  Those of us in UK Sunday schools in the 1990s can probably still sing John Hardwick's musical setting , with its acrostic chorus: " L is for the love that he has for me, I am the reason he died on the tree..." (it finishes with F and E , in case you were wondering).  And while no one would argue that it represented the totality of God's revelation to us, I think most evangelical Christians reckoned it was a good start. Nowadays, I rarely hear anyone quote John 3:16.  But everywhere I turn, people seem to be leaning on Micah 6:8. He has shown you, O mortal, what is

States of Matter (or Making a Glorious Mess)

It started off as a lesson about touch. Theo's meant to be looking at the five senses this week, you see, so we've had a bit of fun with tasting food while blindfolded, and guessing the smells.  Today was the sense of touch, so I thought, "Ah yes, those touchy-feely boxes."  Then I thought, "How about jelly?"  Then I thought, "Gels.  Foams.  Aerosols.  All sorts of fun stuff!" And quite frankly, if having a chemistry degree doesn't mean you teach your kids about colloids and viscosity by the age of 10, then what is the point? So for colloids, we had green jelly, blue shower gel, shaving foam and yoghurt.  (Is yoghurt a colloid?  I'm pretty sure it is.)  Otherwise known as lots of lovely gloop.  If you missed that bit of your education, a colloid is basically one state of matter dispersed in another one.  So you can have a solid mixed with a liquid, which gives you something like shower gel, jelly, or yoghurt; or liquid mixed with gas, whic

A cycle of growth

I wonder if you feel like you've had to do a lot of growing lately? For once I'm not talking about vegetable gardens (although the strawberries are ripening fast), but personal growth in response to events around us.  There have been so many things happening in the world that we have to understand and adapt to, and it often feels overwhelming.  How do we comprehend it?  What's the right thing to do?  How much do we have to change, personally?  What are we responsible for? Changing and growing is complicated.  It's not like hopscotch, where you hop neatly from box to box and end up at the finish line.  Sometimes there are obvious changes to make and actions to take, but not always.  A good analogy might be a whirlpool, where each part swirls into the next, sometimes trapping you in an eddy, sometimes pushing you onwards. I couldn't do a good diagram of a whirlpool, so you'll have to imagine this one being full of eddies and swirls instead of nice neat arrows and

Martha and Mary: What happened next?

My name is Martha and I work in a church kitchen.  So I tend to have a certain affinity with the Biblical story of Martha and Mary . For those who are unfamiliar with the story, the traditional version is this. Jesus and his friends went to stay with two sisters, Martha and Mary.  Mary spent her time sitting with Jesus and listening to all his stories, whereas Martha was trying to keep up with all the housework.  Finally Martha got fed up and went to Jesus.  "Don't you care that I'm doing all the work while Mary just sits here?" she asked him.  "Can't you tell her to help?"  But Jesus said, "Martha, you are worried and distracted by all the work, but there's only one thing you need to do.  Mary has chosen the better part, and it won't be taken away from her." Source: Wikimedia Commons (I rather like this picture.  Martha looks like she might just lob a dead bird at Jesus if he doesn't get up and help, pronto.) Or the

Lockdown life

Nine weeks in.  It kind of feels like it's gone quickly, and it kind of feels like we have been doing this forever.  The sheer repetitiveness is probably one of the hardest things.  Having said that, we generally seem to have plenty of stuff to do.  Here are some of the highlights. Physical The trampoline features A LOT.  The boys can do front flips, back flips, any-way-around flips... I just bounce.  Gently. Also cycling along the canal towpath, hitting tennis balls around at the local playing field, and - for me - exercise DVDs.  I might even have tummy muscles by the end of all this!  We've occasionally jumped on the bandwagon and joined in with Joe Wicks , but the poor guy always looks like he's making such hard work of it. He's had a wrist injury the whole time. Educational A recent survey found that middle-class children were doing 6 hours of school work per day, while lower-income kids did 4.5 hours.  From which I conclude that either most pare