Graham Chastney's Blessings

The cold winter this year managed to kill of a number of plants in our garden, amongst them were two Bay Trees. They weren’t the pretties Bay Tree but their leaves were very useful for the Sunday roast and in a stew.

For some reason, best known to someone in the trade, Bay Trees are very expensive to buy, but I had a cunning plan. I knew my Dad had grown some Bay Trees from seed in pots in his garden. So, when we visited recently, I acquired a couple.

Both of these trees had lovely straight trunks but had been left far too long in rather small pots making the branches all spindly with a rather lonely looking and sparse set of leaves.

As I was looking at these leaves and wondering what to do my Dad walked up behind me and said “put them in a new pot, prune them right back and they’ll grow a storm”.

And that is precisely what I did; with a couple of nice big pots, a bag of compost and my trusty secateurs I got to work.

By the time I had finished there were two pots, two straight trunks, and not too much else. If these two had stayed like that it would have been a tragedy and a waste of time, but I was confident that it wouldn’t be.

A good pruning was precisely what these two immature trees needed.

It’s been a few weeks since I gave the trees their crew-cut and, as expected, they’ve grown a storm with leaves and buds all over the place. The toughest bark has become some of the most fertile areas. They are starting to look like trees again. There are still scars from the pruning, but the growth is already worth the disfigurement. There’s even growth right next to the point where the branches have been dissected.

Jesus said:

"I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken.

"Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me.

"I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.”

John 15

I love being part of an extended community that is full of colour and character. Whenever I get full of myself I think about the sparkling rainbows that God has placed in my life and smile. These gems might not be the people that our society regards as stars, or celebrities, but I tell you they are just as sparkling, and just as colourful.

“Diamonds in the rough” would be a good way of describing them, but there’s more to it than that, these diamonds are becoming sparkling gems before my eyes. I don’t know whether they realise it, but they are changing day by day. Sometimes the refining comes with laughter, at other times it comes with tears, and sometimes it comes in the most peculiar of ways,

Sue and I sometimes sit opposite each other and smile wryly at the events that are unfolding before us. Through this smile we are saying to each other “is it me?” this isn’t an accusation, it’s an affectionate phrase we use when we haven’t a clue what is going on.

The community in which we find ourselves is spiced with a whole set of characters, adding extra ingredients to the recipe of our life. Community is a bit like a recipe, if all of the ingredients were exactly the same then meal times would be quite a dull experience, it’s the variety that makes the meal interesting.

As an example there’s a lady with learning difficulties who has become, in many way, an extension to our family. Life is a complicated thing and she needs help to navigate its pitfalls and landmines, sometimes she falls in and then she needs help negotiating her way out. Some people might regard her as “difficult” but she is special in many, many ways. Listening to her pray is like listening to a  child talk directly to its dad, and while she’s conversing her face shines. She goes somewhere that the rest of us can only dream of. The recipe of our community would be missing something without her.

There are also people of learning who have insights as a result of their knowledge that enrich the life of the rest of us. Their learning doesn’t make them better, it just makes them different. They bring another different ingredient.

I have a friend who is wonderfully practical. He can make and mend things that I look at in puzzlement. Another wonderful ingredient and a different set of colours.

Jesus disciples were a mixed bag of individuals too, some of them were societies misfits and outcasts. Jesus didn’t pick them because they all fit some kind of psychometric test, he looked past the exterior and saw something inside that he was looking for. We’re not told, but I’m also sure that the disciples had different academic ability, they had different occupations, some of them requiring book learning, some requiring practical learning. I’m also sure that they had different physical builds, they were from a single ethnic group, but after that they would have been very different.

We aren’t called to live in pristine uniformity, we are called to be part of a body.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to get on with this book, I’m not a Guinness drinker and wondered whether that lack of connection would hinder the reading, but it didn’t. I really enjoyed it.

This book is subtitled “A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World” which is true, but this book is also a biography of a family, the biography of a company and to a certain extent the biography of a country.

I used to do some work for Diageo who now own the Guinness brand so was interested to understand the history of the company. Like many of the great brands it turns out that Guinness was born out of the vision of one man and maintained through a number of generations, each of them holding true to an overall philosophy.

Speaking as a product of my age, who only knows beer as a highly commercialised product, I was surprised by the ancient history of beer which is covered as an introduction to the book. I particularly liked the idea that St. Patrick won over many an Irish tribal chief with his tasty beer.

Arthur Guinness the founder of Guinness sounds like a fascinating person – forward looking and practical. Reading about Arthur I’m drawn to a man of action and of principle. Many companies talk about Corporate Responsibility, it’s a current trend, and Guinness stands as a historic example that few come close to.

It’s fascinating to read, though, about a family that continues on through the generations with the same set of high principles inspired by Arthur. It seems that there are only two career choices for Guinness’s – brewing or the clergy. Their influences read like a who’s who of western Christianity – Wesley, Whitfield, Barnardo, Hudson Taylor, Spurgeon, Moody, Booth, Shaftsbury.

My favourite of the family has to be Rupert Guinness who, having received £5 million as wedding gift decided that he’s going to move into a slum and to use the money to improve the community where he was living.

The book also goes on to talk about the more modern company that is Guinness and in particular their use of advertising. Imagine releasing tens of thousands of bottles of Guinness into the seas as an advertising gimmick these days – but that’s exactly what they did in 1954 and 1959, and these bottles are still being found.

I enjoy biography most of the time, and this book was no exception. It’s a great mix of history, biography and story. It’s also immensely challenging to see what one family can achieve.

Amazon: The Search for God and Guinness.

(This is the first book review I’ve done, but I think I’ll do some more of them. Let me know what you think.)