Monthly Archives: November 2007

Count Your Blessings #115 – Man Hugs

Posted on by
Reply

Early Morning View from LatriggJust in case you have any false impressions – I’m a man and I’m British.

There are a few things that British men are renowned for one of them is our reserve. American’s have drive, Italian’s have flamboyance, we British have the delights of reserve.

This reserve has a number of impacts upon us, one of them is our ability to give a receive a hug. Shaking hands is fine, because this allows us to point a small part of ourselves outside of our personal space and into the neutral zone between acquaintances. Unfortunately there just isn’t a satisfactory way to give a hug and still maintain personal space. Personal space is very important to us and has to be maintained at all cost.

If you don’t know what personal space is, it’s that space around you which only very special people get to enter without making you feeling uncomfortable.

We British are very particular about our personal space and don’t share it easily.

The problems of reserve become even more complex when it comes to letting another man into your personal space. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t like women in our personal space, but men, that is another category of complexity all together. There are men that I have known for years who I would not let into my personal space, especially work colleagues. Work colleague, what am I saying, that’s unthinkable.

The strange thing is, we actually like a hug. It has been speculated that the reason that the British are so good at creating team games is that they give us a place where we can share personal space without the complexity.

I am very privileged to have a number of male friends with whom I can share a hug without any of the complexity or the need for a team game. They are very welcome inside my personal space, but it’s taken a long time to get to this point.

Not only that, though, there are occasions when the reality of God inside my personal space is almost tangible. The parables of the lost (Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost Son) in the Bible talk about God’s longing to search for and to embrace each of us. This reaches it’s climax in the parable of the lost son as the son is approaching home. Jesus says this:

“When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him.”

The father is the parable is a picture of God and his longing to come and to embrace us as we turn to him.

For anyone wanting to give a hug today, please remember the correct etiquette:

Count Your Blessings #113 – Scones straight from the oven

Posted on by
Reply

The Singing Ringing TreeLast night, after tea (dinner if you are posh) Emily decided that she wanted to try out some baking.

As part of her Food Technology (Domestic Sciences for you older ones) she is going to be baking scones next Monday, but her teacher had suggested that they might like to try the recipe out before they had to do it in the class. So last night she got out out the flour, the sugar, the butter and the milk along with a few raisins and baked.

After a short wait she came through to the lounge with a tray loaded with jam, lemon curd, honey, butter and scones straight from the oven. Scones really do need to be fresh to be at their best, and what could be fresher than scones that are still hot.

It was wonderful to be able to open them up and watch the butter melt into them.

The whole batch only lasted a few minutes.

Later on I was thinking about the humble ingredients that make such a wonderful treat. Flour, butter, sugar, milk – all everyday ingredients, nothing too fancy, nothing startlingly brilliant or exotic. Normal, straightforward, honest ingredients. But, bring them together in the right mix, add some heat and you have a delightful treat. There’s no star player in that list, no all out sure-fire winner, just humble commonplace parts.

I work a lot in different teams both at my employer and at church. The teams that are the best are the ones where the right mix of ordinary, honest people are brought together in the right way. It’s amazing what those teams can produce without a star performer but with ordinary normal people.

Actually, if I’m honest, I hate teams where people think that they are the stars, they really get my back up. I’ve been involved in a few situations in the last few years where the people thought that they were wonderful, awesome, fabulous and all I wanted to do was to bring them down a peg or two. In one situation it got to the point where I could barely stand to be in the room with someone. Emily made two types of scone, some with raisins and some without. It was like these people were saying that they were the raisins and that the rest of the scone wasn’t important. I can tell you this, the plain scones were just as nice as the ones with raisins. It was the warmth and freshness that made them special, not the star ingredient, and the same is true for teams.

I hope Emily decided to bake again soon, have I told you, the scones were lovely.