Category: Personal

Yesterday I left the house on one of my regular walks; down the road, right onto the path into the woods, down the hill and along onto the lane at the back. Just as I stepped through the kissing-gate a Kestrel burst out of the long grass opposite. I had obviously disturbed its breakfast, which it carried off with it. Swooping majestically into a nearby tree.

This morning when driving back from the morning prayer meeting at church I pulled into our road and turned the corner. There in front of me a Grey Heron was stood majestically silhouette on the roof of the house in-front of me.

There isn’t a single square inch of land in England, where I live, that hasn’t been touched by man in some way or another. There isn’t a place that you could go to that is truly wild. I doubt that there is anywhere you could go where you couldn’t see a building, a road or a wall. There are very few places where you can go and not hear the sound of vehicles. But the wild isn’t happy with that situation and is just waiting for man to turn his back before it begins reclaiming what it has lost.

The Kestrel and the Heron are symbols of that reality which touched me, and enabled me to touch the wild.

People seem to react in different ways to the wild. Some people have to dive in and get closer, others seem to spend their entire life getting as far away from it as possible. I’m closer to the ‘dive in’ side than to the ‘getting as far away’ side.

I live in a suburb and go to work for an employer in a large organisation. It would be easy for my life to be relatively safe, but not safe in the good sense of the word, safe in the dull, predictable, monotonous sense. Touching the wild reminds me of past adventures and challenges me to new ones. These little glimpses of the wild are like seeing a gate to a secret garden. They are like going through the wardrobe. They are calling me out of the safe and into the wild.

The wild isn’t neat and tidy, it’s wild. The wild isn’t sure and reliable, it’s wild. The wild is out there, not in here. The wild is beautiful. The wild is magnificent.

When was the last time you reached through to the wild. I’m not talking about reaching through to nature, I’m talking of reaching through to the wild and the wild can be found everywhere, especially in peoples lives.

Today is one of those Lancashire days when you need to be constantly changing your clothes. The clouds are skipping across the sky bring rain, then sun, then hale, then sun, then thunder, then rain and then again sun.

I actually like days like this, they make me feel strangely closer to nature than days of full on sunshine.

The other week we bought some flowers to go in the garden but hadn’t had chance to put them out. So in a few minutes in between the showers I put them out. It makes a lovely difference to the way the garden looks.

At 6 o’clock last night while driving home from a conference last night I was well and truly into a routine. I have BBC Radio 4 on and waiting for the 6 O’Clock News to start, and then it happened.

I have heard it a thousand times before.

It’s always the same.

It isn’t even that remarkable.

The news started in the same way as it always has, and hopefully always will. It started with the chiming of Big Ben.

The chime is one of the few things I miss about the evening commute, perhaps that’s why I like it, because it does symbolise the evening commute. But I think that it’s perhaps more than that. It also symbolises that the world has survived through another day. It’s reassuringly dependable.

When I started this series I thought it would start running out of interest quite quickly, not because there wasn’t things to be grateful for but that each topic would get more and more cryptic. But then I had this idea about sharing and was surprised that I hadn’t already written something, amazing, 55 posts and not one about sharing.

Sharing is a sub-topic in many of my posts, but it’s never been the headline.

I often start with a dictionary definition of the thing I’m talking about, so as not to disappoint:

sharing

adj 1: sharing equally with another or others 2: unselfishly willing to share with others; “a warm and sharing friend” n 1: having in common; “the sharing of electrons creates molecules” 2: using or enjoying something jointly with others 3: sharing thoughts and feelings 4: a distribution in shares

There are so many parts of this that I love. I love the words “equally” and “unselfishly”.

As humans we are wired to interact with each other. Much of our art and most of our music is focussed on these interactions. But these interactions only truly work when they are true interactions when people share “thoughts and feelings” and they “enjoy something jointly with others”.

One of the most repeated jokes on the Internet goes something like this:

A young man saw an elderly couple sitting down to lunch at McDonald’s. He noticed that they had ordered one meal, and an extra drink cup. As he watched, the gentleman carefully divided the hamburger in half, then counted out the fries, one for him, one for her, until each had half of them. Then he poured half of the soft drink into the extra cup and set that in front of his wife. The old man then began to eat, and his wife sat watching, with her hands folded in her lap.

The young man decided to ask if they would allow him to purchase another meal for them so that they didn’t have to split theirs.

The old gentleman said, “Oh no. We’ve been married 50 years, and everything has always been and will always be shared, 50/50.”

The young man then asked the wife if she was going to eat, and she replied, “It’s his turn with the teeth.”

Why does this work? The main reason is because we here about the old couple and immediately something inside warms to the way that they are so bonded together that they share everything.

One of my favourite books in the Bible has always been the book of Ecclesiastes , it’s probably the book I quote from the most. Ecclesiastes is the journal of a man who decides that he is going to take in life and experience it all. He is determined not to rule anything out-of-bounds. He is determined to live completely out of the box. He tries all the pleasures that life has to give; he build great riches; he works and strives; be gains great wisdom. Right in the middle of talking about toil and work he says this:

“I turned my head and saw yet another wisp of smoke on its way to nothingness: a solitary person, completely alone–no children, no family, no friends–yet working obsessively late into the night, compulsively greedy for more and more, never bothering to ask, “Why am I working like a dog, never having any fun? And who cares?” More smoke. A bad business.

It’s better to have a partner than go it alone. Share the work, share the wealth.

And if one falls down, the other helps, but if there’s no one to help, tough!

Two in a bed warm each other. Alone, you shiver all night.

By yourself you’re unprotected. With a friend you can face the worst.

Can you round up a third? A three-stranded rope isn’t easily snapped.”

Ecclesiastes 4:7–12

How many people in our current culture does the first part describe “completely alone–no children, no family, no friends–yet working obsessively late into the night”.  Did you know that divorced people are better paid than married people because they tend to work obsessively, but the writer from Ecclesiastes says that it’s a “way to nothingness”.

The contrast is stark – greed or sharing, getting or partnering.

Avoid nothingness practice sharing.

The other day someone pointed out to me how privileged I am when it comes to sharing. They did this by pointing out how many people I have who I could call upon to help me in a time of need; people who are willing to share what they have with me and my family.

On Saturday Sue was at a Ladies Conference all day. Ladies Conferences are one of those things that men are intrigued by, but would never dare to venture into. They are a bit like Toddler groups. Sue used to run one and I called in a couple of times, since then I have had a huge amount of respect for men who are house-husbands and go to these things every week. Imagine sitting there in that alien culture as an outsider, because I don’t think men can ever truly be members of the female culture.

Sorry, just went off on a sidetrack there, anyway Sue was away for the day so I phoned up my very good friend Dave and we decided to spend some time together and go and enjoy the Lakes for the day. We shared the day. It was great. Emily joined us, but Jonathan was off sharing the day with the a few of his friends. For a brief time we shared time, we shared the same air, we shared our opinions, we shared our feelings, we shared our lives.

How did I get to be in the privileged position? There are two answers to that. The first answer is common to everyone. Everyone who shares has people who will share with them; it’s the way it works. The second part of the answer is that I am a member of an extended family, I’m not talking here about my blood family, but about my church family. No member of Sue’s or my blood family live locally, but we still have our church family around us and we thank God for them.

Is anyone’s life ever “a bed of roses”, I don’t think mine ever is. Having said that, I’m not sure I understand the phrase, it’s one that I have used all my life, but I’m not sure I would ever really want to lie down on a load of roses, especially ones with the thorns still attached. As the phrase comes from a poem I’m assuming they are talking about something more akin to a bed of rose petals, but perhaps I’ve completely missed the point.

Anyway, life isn’t “a bed of roses” it has its moments, but normally life has its highs and lows. In the middle of a high or a low seeing a smile is fantastic thing.

There’s an Irish saying which goes like this: “It is easy to be pleasant when life flows by like a song, but the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is trouble, and it always comes with years, and the smile that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through the tears.”

When I was little someone once said something similar to this to me: “A smile is worth a million pounds, but costs nothing”. It’s stuck with me through the years.

Job said this, speaking from a place of desperation and commenting on how people’s attitude to him had changed: “When I smiled at them, they could hardly believe it; their faces lit up, their troubles took wing!”

There are thousands of quotations about a smile. The last one from me for now comes from William Shakespeare’s Othello: “The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.”

A smile is clearly a very powerful thing. They cost nothing. There is no limit on their use. The government doesn’t tax their use. They don’t require any special training or even a weekly work-out. Smiling takes some effort on our behalf, but not that much.

Smiles are also infectious, how many times do we give someone a smile and not get one in return? How many of you looked at the picture of Emily smiling in the snow and didn’t smile yourself?

Go on give a smile today and make someone’s day.

Knowing that you have made someone smile is a double blessing. I’ve recently had a number of people contact me saying how Jimmy and Grandad have made them smile. These comments come from all sorts of people in all sorts of places around the globe and that just makes the feeling better.

At the end of a business meeting someone smiled at me an thanked me for the smiles that these little wooden dolls had given them. It was a bit of a surreal experience where my work life and my private life intersected in a way I hadn’t expected.

Get over there and have a look, it will make you smile.

As we look at a horizon we are looking at the end of the visible earth and the beginning of the visible sky. This isn’t the beginning of sky it’s just the beginning of our view of it.

If we drop our eyes from the horizon we see all the high-points of the lands laid out before us. Lots of different layers; trees, houses, hills, mountains even, all the things that stand above everything else between you and them. As we drop our eyes the number of layers that we see reduces until all we see is the layer we are standing on.

If we lift our eyes from the horizon we get a completely different experience. At any point as we lift our eyes we see another new set of layers and strata. It doesn’t matter how high we lift our eyes we still see a full set of strata. Sometimes the strata that we can see are a long, long, long way away. Sometimes the strata are very close indeed. The strata that we see are never the same there is always something new going on up there, especially in the UK where the weather changes by the minute, not by the season.

Just before we went on our skiing holiday it was so mild that Sue and I sat out in the garden and had lunch, a very surreal experience for February in Lancashire. We were already looking forward to our holiday and we sat there and watched the sky being criss-crossed by plane after plane. Some were obviously huge jumbos, others smaller. Each one housing people on a journey, each journey a story. We sat and imagined what those stories might be and looked forward to the story that our own planned flight would soon be creating. Every now and then a micro-light would fly over making us realise how high up those planes were and how far we could see.

Lyndon Johnson said “A clear stream, a long horizon, a forest wilderness and open sky—these are man’s most ancient possessions. In a modern society, they are his most priceless.”

While we were on holiday we experienced the sky in many different ways. On the first couple of days it was blue and there was no wind. Para-gliders took people on trips around the mountain and again I imagined what it would be like to float up there with them. On the third day the sky changed, in the morning we again had glorious sunshine, by the evening though the sky had come down to meet us bringing snow. The two pictures are taken from the hotel in the morning as we left to ski and in the evening on our return. Our close encounter with the sky continued for another day, but was followed by another different sky with fluffy clouds but not above us, below us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “The sky is the daily bread of the eyes”.

The sky is something we live under every day, we can ignore it if we choose, we can even choose to hide away from it in our houses, but for me the sky keeps calling. But what is is calling?

King David wrote these words in Psalm 19:

The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship. 

Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. 

They speak without a sound or a word; their voice is silent in the skies; yet their message has gone out to all the earth, and their words to all the world.

I’m not sure whether a ‘milestone’ has the same meaning the world over so here’s the definition from www.dictionary.com.

“milestone”

• A stone marker set up on a roadside to indicate the distance in miles from a given point.
• An important event, as in a person’s career, the history of a nation, or the advancement of knowledge in a field; a turning point.

We still see milestones dotted around the UK countryside and within some towns. Many of them have fallen into disrepair but some are maintained by communities as beloved objects, but I’m not talking about that type of milestone.

The life milestones have come thick and fast in the Chastney family over the last few weeks, and there are a number still to come. There is phrase from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that goes like this:

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.

I feel that milestones deserve a similar saying:

We are born into some milestone, some milestones we achieve, and some milestones are thrust upon us.

We all have birthdays, we are born into them. Three of us in this household have birthdays within a month. Jonathan is the first, followed by Emily and then myself. Birthdays are always milestones because they demonstrate the end of one year and highlight the start of another one. Jonathan is moving through his teens and is going through rapid change that will see him transform from a boy to a man. The young man who had his birthday last week was significantly different to the one who had a birthday twelve months ago.

Being a man I am in nature oriented to achieving goals; aiming for a target; seeking to pass a milestone. The other week we chose to go on a skiing holiday. Part of making that choice was subscribing to a goal of taking the first steps in being an accomplished skier. I can’t speak for the others in the party, but for me there was a level of competency which had to be achieved.

As parents Sue and I have our children’s milestones thrust upon us. As Jonathan transitions through adolescence we have to face our own milestones. We are no longer the parents of child, our role has changed. Sometimes life contrives to thrust other milestones upon us, because that’s life.

Every milestone brings an opportunity to look both ways. We have an opportunity to look back at how we have reached this milestone. We also have the opportunity to look forward to the next milestone. Sometimes a milestone is so big that looking forward from it is difficult, even painful. If all we do is stand at a milestone and look back we can’t move on to the next one. A milestone is meant to mark a point on a journey which is not yet complete, it’s not there to tell you that you have arrived.

As a Christian I see my faith as a journey, with milestones. Sometimes I manage to reach the milestones, sometimes I fall short. It doesn’t stop me trying to reach the next one. The Apostle Paul said it like this:

I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward–to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.

Philippians 3:12–14