Most mornings I like to find my own way in prayer. I tend to read a Psalm and then see where the quiet takes me. Sometimes, I like to be directed in my praying, I like to be taken somewhere.
Recently I’ve been listening to pray-as-you-go and finding the direction a real blessing. Directing prayer is a skill. People want to be taken on a journey, but not route marched somewhere, especially in their personal prayer. The folks at pray-as-you-go seem to have the balance just right.
Over 10 years ago now (probably over 15 years I can’t quite remember) I walked into a doctors surgery. Sitting down I explained to the doctor that I had been suffering from a tights chest and wondered whether I was suffering from asthma or something like that.
This particular doctor was an old school doctor, dressed in a suit and looking over the top of his glasses. He asked me an interesting question: “If I shouted at you right now would you burst into tears?”
Sometimes someone asks a question that is unexpected, but to which you immediately know the answer, and the answer was “Yes”.
He then proceeded to get out a pencil and a piece of blank paper and draw me a diagram similar to the one below:
He then went on to explain.
He explained how a certain level of stress was something we needed to motivate us to do things. Without any impetus we get nothing done. The stress doesn’t need to increase very much for our productivity to increase rapidly. We can live in the area of normal working stress all of the time with just the normal breaks.
He also acknowledged that there were times when we needed to sprint for something. “Sprinting” increases your stress even further, but doesn’t deliver that much extra productivity. You can only sprint for short periods of time before you have to relax.
The problem with sprinting is that it quite quickly pushes over the top and our productivity starts to decrease.
If you try to sprint all of the time then your productivity actually goes down and the more you push the faster it goes down. This is where the real problem comes in, sprint too hard and for too long and you can’t go back up the curve. It’s a steep curve and the only way back is to start back at the beginning. You have to take the straight line to the bottom left hand corner, and there are no short-cuts.
This is where my tight chest came in. It was a warning sign. My body was telling me something. It was telling me that I was on the way down the slope. I had been sprinting for too long.
The doctor told me to go home and not to go back to work for a week. It was a gloriously sunny week and I spent all of it in the garden reading. I went back to work knowing a new warning sign.
Last week I went on a “Defensive Driving” course organised by my employer. This course was a full day with a driving instructor being taught how to drive more safely. We started the day with the mandatory classroom training. Part way through this training we were shown a set of photographs of road scenes and asked to explain the significant information in the picture. On the first few photographs we highlighted one or two obvious things, the instructor would then point out another ten or fifteen things we should have noticed. Quite often the things we did see had more significance that we were aware of. On various occasions he would say things like “See that light there, that means that there has probably been a fatality at this junction.”
A learnt another set of warning signs.
On Friday last week I had a tight chest and would have happily burst into tears, the warning sign was back. It was time to do something. This weekend I took the opportunity to stop. We went walking in the countryside and enjoyed the sun on our backs. I heeded the warning sign and I am already feeling a bit better. This week I will try to control my diary so that I have some space for relaxation.
Warning signs are a blessing, but only if we heed them.
It’s late here in the UK and I’m still working, 22:00 to be precise. One of the joys of working in a global role within a global organisation is that sometimes you have to join calls with people in different time zones.
Not only is it late, but I’m also tired and have a headache. I’ve already taken some paracetamol but it is only numbing the pain rather than taking it away altogether.
When I have finished this call I am looking forward to leaving this desk, releasing my hands from the keyboard and getting into the shower. Standing in the shower I know that my headache will subside and the tight muscles in my neck will relax.
A few years ago now, when we moved house, one of the things we looked for was a good shower. The shower in our current home has certainly lived up to our requirements.
I have spent hundreds of hours stood in showers over the years, and I don’t regret any of them. Standing in the flow is so therapeutic that it is very precious indeed.
Sometimes I stand in the shower and imagine that I am sat beneath a waterfall.
Sometimes I imagine that the show is a wave crashing over me.
Standing there I am taken out of my immediate surroundings and taken to a much more relaxed place.
The shower is also a great place to think. There are many times when I am trying to get my head around something that a shower provides the answer.
“Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.”
I have something of a routine for weekday mornings. This routine often involves a good long walk before I start work.
For the last few months this walk has been completely in the dark. Leave in the dark, come back in the dark. Everything is still shut down. Not much wildlife can be bothered to out and about in the cold and the dark. Neighbours walking their dogs are just black shadows somewhere in the distance.
Today was different.
Today I left in the dark, but I came back in the light. Today the birds were in a spiraling competition to have the loudest call. Blackbird alarm calls were shooting off in every direction. Today the rabbits white tails were bobbing across the grass seeking cover. Today there was a slight glisten on the brook.
Today I walked into the light.
Walking is so rich with meaning – the changing of the light seemed to bring these meanings into clear focus.
Walking means steady progress. Each step forward is a step forward, it’s not a radical painful wrench it’s a step forward. Each step forward was a step into a new day with new opportunities.
Walking means rhythm. Each step was followed by another step, and another. Each day’s walk is a step further in the rhythm of the seasons. Last week I walked in the dark. This week I leave in the light and come back in the dark. Next week I will probably leave in the light and come back in the light.
As I was walking I was reminded of a Bob Dylan song:
Well I’m pressing on
Yes, I’m pressing on
Well I’m pressing on
To the higher calling of my Lord.Many try to stop me, shake me up in my mind,
Say, “Prove to me that He is Lord, show me a sign.”
What kind of sign they need when it all come from within,
When what’s lost has been found, what’s to come has already been?Well I’m pressing on
Yes, I’m pressing on
Well I’m pressing on
To the higher calling of my Lord.Shake the dust off of your feet, don’t look back.
Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack.
Temptation’s not an easy thing, Adam given the devil reign
Because he sinned I got no choice, it run in my vein.Well I’m pressing on
Yes, I’m pressing on
Well I’m pressing on
To the higher calling of my Lord.
I’ve had a song going around my head over the last few days, it goes like this:
Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I posses.
I thank the Lord I’ve been blessed.
With more than my share of happiness.
It’s a song from my childhood that is still being sung by Ken Dodd. I was surprised to find out that it was in the charts before I was even born. This song is one of those that once you get it put in your brain it just goes around and around. If you would like the full lyrics they are here.
One of my favourite blogs comes from the self styled Chief Happiness Officer. I particularly like the Monday Tips which give some really creative ideas for making your work environment a happier place.
Happiness has actually been a really big thing recently with articles in the BBC and the film The Pursuit of Happyness.
So does the Bible have anything to say about Happiness? Christians are often characterised as people who are against everything and lacking in joy.
Actually the Bible has loads to say about being happy and encourages it time and time again. Here’s just one of them:
I bless God every chance I get; my lungs expand with his praise.
I live and breathe God;
if things aren’t going well, hear this and be happy:
Join me in spreading the news;
together let’s get the word out.
God met me more than halfway,
he freed me from my anxious fears.
Look at him; give him your warmest smile.
Never hide your feelings from him.
One of the things that struck me hard about my frustrations post was that frustration is a state of mind. I can chose to be frustrated, and I can choose to not be frustrated. I can choose to live in frustration and I can choose to live in happiness but if my choice is going to be real it needs to be expressed. It’s no good sitting saying to myself that this frustrating situation is making me happy. I need to interact with the situation to stop it being frustrating and for it to become fulfilling. Sometime the correct expression is to leave, more often that expression is to interact with the situation and either change myself or change the situation.
So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can.
I’m writing this post through gritted teeth because I’m writing about something I desperately want to be true.
I want frustrations to be a blessing. I want to be able to look at each frustration as an “opportunity to learn”. I want to be able to look back at frustrating situation and see how I have grown through them.
But most of the time frustrations are just that, frustrations.
Let me give you some examples of what I am talking about:
The other week Sue and I went to do our “Big Shop”. It’s something we do once a month, we take two trollies around one of the local stores and fill up on all of those things that we know we will need and won’t perish, toilet roll, cereal, shampoo, etc. We find it’s a great way of controlling our finances.
We undertake this adventure on pay day, which for me is in the middle of the month.
In December we decided to do this on our own while the children were out doing other things. We’ve done this a few times, we knew how long it would take, and we knew how much time we had, so no problems.
No problems until we arrived at the check-out.
We were lulled into a false sense of security because there were no queue even though it was getting close to Christmas. Unfortunately there didn’t need to be any queues, the check-out assistant made sure that all of our time was taken. Bip…
I don’t know exactly how long she took, but it felt like she was averaging a piece of merchandise every 10 seconds. Bip…
It wasn’t just that she was slow, she also insisted on talking to her colleague on the next check-out who had nothing better to do. Like many people our delightful check-out assistant was completely incapable of bipping and talking at the same time. Bip…
“What are you doing for Christmas Mavis.” Bip…
By this time an explosion was going off in my head, “Does this woman not realise that we are the customer here! We are the ones that pay her wages!” Bip…
“Does she not see that we have two trollies that are FULL!!!” Bip…
Sue huffs to make her feelings felt and receives the look of the daggers, but still she proceeds as a pace that a snail would have found dull. Bip…
“Does this woman thing we enjoy being in this store!” Bip…
The explosion in my head is turning into a volcano. Bip…
“Does this woman think we have nothing better to do!” Bip…
Frustration, frustration, frustration. Bip…
I would love to be able to say that my thoughts were completely different. I’d love to be able to say that I stood there and thought about that ladies life and how terribly boring her job must be. I’d love to be able to say that I had compassion on her and showed it by some random act of kindness.
But no, frustration, frustration, frustration.
Did my frustration impact the check-out assistant – no, not one tiny little bit.
Did my frustration impact me – most definitely. I’ve been carrying it around for weeks, along with all sorts of other frustrations. It’s now January 2007 and I’m still talking about something that happened in a different year.
Frustration says much more about me than the situation. They are only frustration because I choose to allow them to become frustrations.
Frustrations should be a blessing.
I’m tempted to start writing a few “Frustration” posts, taking a situation apart and looking at why something is frustrating and how a different approach would create a different result. I’m worried if I did, though, that I’d spend my life looking for frustrations to write about. I have enough frustrations without going and looking for them. What do you think? Do you think it could be therapeutic?
I’ll finish with some words of Jesus:
“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
“You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
“You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.
“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
“You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.
“You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.
“Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.”
It’s easy to focus on all of the lawlessness and disorder in the UK. All of you have to do is go to the BBC’s UK News pages and you get enough information to believe that things are terrible.
Last night I read the story of John Dau in this months National Geographic. John is one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan”.
I found myself reading the article quite matter-of-factly, it was only at the end that I realised what I had read. Right the way through this piece are details of lawlessness and disorder that I can’t even imagine. Sections like this one:
At dawn we met a woman and her two girls from our village, and we joined them, heading east toward Ethiopia, where we thought we would be safe. My knees were scraped from falling as we ran, my feet were bloody, and I was naked, because I had left the village that way. None of us had taken anything as we fled. No food, no cooking pots. We ate almost nothing—wild roots, a pumpkin from a farmer’s field. At night the mosquitoes would torment us as we tried to sleep.
Then, one day, a group of militia ambushed us. The men grabbed Abraham, forced him to the ground, and began beating him with a stick, telling him to give them money. He had no money, so they took his shirt and left him in the dirt, his back bloody. I felt lucky, because they had not killed Abraham. I do not know why they let him live.
We kept going, now heading southeast to avoid the militia, but on the seventh day, we ran into another militia. Again, they beat Abraham, and this time they beat me, too, over and over on the head with a stick. While they were beating us, they abducted the woman and girls. That was the last time we saw them.
Or like this one:
When we got to Gilo River, it was very full and strong, and we could see crocodiles waiting away from shore. We were gathered there on the riverbank when suddenly Ethiopian rebels attacked, firing on us. I dived into the river and began swimming as hard as I could. Another boy dived almost on top of me, but he could not swim well, and he clutched at me. I tried to help him, but I didn’t have the strength, and the river was forcing us both under. I had to leave him. Somehow, I made it to the other side. We lost about 9,000 boys and a few men that day on the Gilo River. But 18,000 of us, mostly Dinka boys, had made it back to our homeland.
The whole article is full of sections like this; stories of humanities inhumanity.
I am very thankful that this is not the reality in which I live. I am thankful that, for the most part, I live somewhere where there is law and order.
Last weekend was Christmas tree erecting and decorating weekend for me, and not just one tree, I had the joy of helping to decorate two.
It’s become a bit of a tradition that on a Saturday close to Christmas my friend Dave and I go and collect the two trees. There’s one tree for church and one for our house.
The tree for church was 14ft this year, Dave had already reserved it so we weren’t worry about choosing a tree. It has been rather wet in Lancashire this year and the tree was sodden. All the water made it heavier than anything we had previously erected. It was a good job we weren’t travelling far. It was also fortunate that Dave’s Dad and Jonathan had come to help us.
Picking a tree for our house was a little more tricky. 
I wondered around a couple of times. They had very tall thin trees and shorter fatter trees, but no shorter thin trees. As I was about to give up the lady from farm bought another tree out. It was still wrapped in the mesh they put it in for transportation. She started to unfurl it and branch by branch out came a wonderful smaller thin tree, great.
Once we got to church we lifted out the huge 14ft tree and pondered over what we were going to do. We thought we could just about get it into the pot, but we weren’t sure the pot would stand up with a sodden tree in it. Having done this a few times we knew that once we took the tree out of its transportation mesh there was no going back 
so we had to be sure. We struggled to put the tree up into the pot and managed it, but we still weren’t sure it would stay up. A pragmatic approach was needed, out came the saw. The church Christmas tree is now a magnificent 12ft tree. We could now get on with the decorating.
Once home it was time to put up the Chastney family tree. Putting up the tree has become a fabulous time of remembering. Out of the garage comes the box of decorations; decorations that have been built up over years.
There’s are decorations that we have been sent by family who were living in Florida. We look at these decorations and remember two fabulous holidays. One different from the other but both fabulous in there own ways.
There’s a decoration given to us by a spiritual mentor who is no longer with us, but we know she is loving her time in Heaven.
There are decorations which are carvings of African 
animals reminding me of a trip to Cape Town, South Africa.
There are decorations with dates on them which remind us of a time when Jonathan and Emily were only small.
The lights on the tree remind us of a time when we helped decorate a ward at the local hospital. We went to one of the local department stores and asked them if they could help in any way. They gave us all of the previous years decorations. There were boxes and boxes of lights. There were so many that we bought some of them home and put them on our own tree.
We don’t have a designer tree, we have a memory tree.
The common blackbird has a wonderfully distinctive alarm call which I’m sure it uses all the time but I only seen to here at sunrise or sunset. It’s normally just before sunset actually, at dusk.
At the back of our house there is an old hawethorn hedge. As ire step out of the bad door a shrill cry will break the quiet and then fly off into the approaching dark.
It’s such a distinctive call that it still makes may heart jump, even though I must have heard it thousands of times.
The Bible says that the end of the world will be marked by a trumpet blast, I’m not sure what it will sound like but I’m sure it will do more than make my heart jump.
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices shouting in heaven:
“The world has now become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.”
Sue and I are very alike in many, many ways. One of the differences though, is the television we watched when we were younger. I was reminded of this today when the news came out that ITV are planning a new episode of Tizwaz. They are also running a vote on what people watched Tizwaz or Swap Shop. I was definitely a Tizwaz person, Sue a Swap Shop adherent.
Tizwaz wasn’t just a programme we watched, it was also a programme we acted out. One summer I was at a friends house and we created our own gunge, and proceeded to gunge each other. We all tried to do Trevor McDonut impressions.
I’ll not go into the impact that Sally James had on a bunch of young adolescents.
Tizwas is part of my childhood, one that I am very fortunate to say was full of fun and joy, and not much sadness.
The book of Proverbs in the Bible is a book of wisdom, it says this:
Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.
This passage is often applied to discipline, but I like to apply it more broadly that that:
Direct a child how to laugh, and when they are older, they will laugh.
Direct a child how to have fun, and when they are older, they will have fun.
Direct a child in adventure, and when they are older, they will have adventures.
Direct a child how to create memories, and when they are older, they will create memories.
The other weekend Sue, myself and a few friends (the famous 5, Nina, Sue, Bob, Dave and myself) decided that we would enjoy the beautiful Lancashire countryside on our feet. Nina had a book of nice walks so off we went to Hurst Green, home of Stonyhurst College. The walk had it all, hills, villages, rivers, woods and all for 6 miles of effort.
As we walked from the village up to the college we weren’t sure what the weather was going to do, typical for Lancashire on October. As we started the walk down the lane towards the college it started to rain, but within minutes it had stopped and the sun had come out. Perfect weather for rainbows and sure enough there one was arching right across the top of the college.
All the colour were there. How do you remember them again?
Red and yellow and pink and green
Purple and orange and blue
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow too.
Or is it:
Richard of York gave battle in vain
The colours were fabulous however you remember them, so rich and vibrant. It was almost like an archway of coloured glass spread across the sky.
Rainbows always remind me of Noah and the flood. Right at the end of the flood, just as things were starting to dry out God reaffirmed his commitment to Noah and his family using a rainbow:
Then God spoke to Noah and his sons: “I’m setting up my covenant with you including your children who will come after you, along with everything alive around you—birds, farm animals, wild animals—that came out of the ship with you. I’m setting up my covenant with you that never again will everything living be destroyed by floodwaters; no, never again will a flood destroy the Earth.”
God continued, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and everything living around you and everyone living after you. I’m putting my rainbow in the clouds, a sign of the covenant between me and the Earth. From now on, when I form a cloud over the Earth and the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll remember my covenant between me and you and everything living, that never again will floodwaters destroy all life. When the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll see it and remember the eternal covenant between God and everything living, every last living creature on Earth.”
A rainbow is a sign to remind us of a promise. It’s a sign of God’s commitment to everything living – that includes you. What a blessing.
We learnt another lesson from our walk. After we had passed the college the walk became a little interesting. The guide book said that we need to walk 1/2 mile down one particular road before we came to a cross-roads. Anyway, we walked 1/2 mile with no end in sight and the nearest road we could see was a long way away. Unfortunately we had only taken the book and not a real proper, to scale, map. The map in the book turned out to have been drawn by someone who doesn’t understand scale. Instead of carrying on regardless we took a different route down to the river Hodder and the lovely walk along the banks. We then started the “short” walk back to the village which turned out to be another marathon. When we got back and looked at a real Ordnance Survey map the first 1/2 mile to the cross-roads was more like 1 1/2 miles and the “short” walk back to the village was another 1 1/2 miles. Rather than being 6 miles the walk would have been nearer to 8 miles. We’ll remember a proper map next time 
.
Over the weekend we went through the annual routine of putting the clocks back. The result for me is that before I finish my working day it’s all dark outside.
Here in my study though I’m accompanied by light. There’s the small halogen lamp on my desk which lights the wall behind my screen. There’s the Ikea Nott uplighter in the corner by the window. I even have the choice of putting the light in the middle of the room on. In the landing outside the study there is another light, and more in the bedrooms and all the way through downstairs. Outside there are even more lights. Nowhere do I need to be in darkness.
The light allows everything to be seen.
Jesus used a lamp in a parable:
Then Jesus asked them, “Would anyone light a lamp and then put it under a basket or under a bed? Of course not! A lamp is placed on a stand, where its light will shine. For everything that is hidden will eventually be brought into the open, and every secret will be brought to light. Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”
Graham Chastney 