Graham Chastney (happenings)

Count Your Blessings #128 - Walking hand-in-hand with my children

Earlier this evening on twitter I asked this question: "Do I stay or do I go - have finished meetings, am I better finishing work here, or better going home and finishing there?"

Steve replied: "Go home and have a walk in the evening sunshine - I should take my own advise!"

As it happened Emily, Jonathan and myself found ourselves surprisingly at a loose end this evening. With Steve's words still on my mind, we took his advice and drove up to Scorton; it's a beautiful little Lancashire village.

We parked the car by the bowling green next to the church. The crown green bowling was in full swing - a quintessentially English scene.

As we made our way up the hill Jonathan and Emily both put their hands through my arms as we walked along. As they are 12 and 16 I regard this as something of a miracle. Mark Twain famously said:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

It's a real privilege to know that they both think that being around their old dad isn't too bad after all.

Beyond the bowling green we decided to explore a new path alongside the stream. It was so pretty as the dappled light of the lowering sun shining through the trees.

We took the camera and each experimented with different scenes and views as we went along.

The plan was to walk up around the village and then back down to the village shop where they serve some of the best locally made ice-cream around. Unfortunately the shop was closed and we were left feeling just a little cheated. We had no option but to drive off to the local garage and buy a manufactured ice-cream instead. Sitting in the car scoffing isn't the same as meandering along with a proper cone in your hand.

We finished our walk as we started it - hand-in-hand.

The touch of a hand is a very powerful thing, something very reassuring, very safe.

The touch of Jesus hand was very powerful indeed. One day he went to the house of a ruler who's daughter had just died:

When Jesus entered the ruler's house and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd, he said, "Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep." But they laughed at him. After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. News of this spread through all that region.

Matthew 9

There's a gospel song that goes like this:

Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water
Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea
Take a look at yourself
And you can look at others differently
Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee

What safer place could there be.

Count Your Blessings #127 - The Swell of Sweet Peas in the Kitchen

This evening after I had finished work I went downstairs and noticed that it had stopped raining. I like to breathe in the fresh air after rain so I went out into the garden armed with a pair of scissors.

One of the things that we grow in our garden nearly every year are sweet peas. I don't really grow them for their looks, I grow them for their scent, their looks are a bonus. Because of this years strange weather they have taken a bit to get going so this was only the second bunch I had cut.

Armed with my catch I came back into the kitchen picking up a vase in the utility room I placed them on the window ledge, stopping along the way to let Sue have a smell. They were lovely.

Just now I walked back into the kitchen and the whole room is filled with their fragrance.

Something about sweet peas means that they belong in the kitchen or in the dining room, I'm not sure why, but that's where I always put them.

There's a saying that goes around that smell is the thing that helps us remember the most:

Nothing is more memorable than a smell.  One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town.  Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.  Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.  A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.  Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

The smell of a certain sun-cream reminds me of holidays in Florida. It was very hot and we used loads of it.

The sent of a certain shampoo brand reminds me of cruising in the Bahamas. We had to shower every day before going to the grand dining hall for Dinner.

Johnson's Baby Oil reminds me of bath time with my children when they were younger.

The odour of soil reminds me of days digging at the family allotment as a child.

The smell of incense takes me to a friends wedding where so much of was used that I felt ill, if I remember correctly Sue was pregnant at the time and really struggled.

Conversely, the thought of Bovril brings a rather unpleasant taste to my mouth because someone once left a cup in an open plan office while they were off work. It started to ferment and it took days to find where the terrible smell had come from. We still had to work.

The Bible tells of an occasion not long before Jesus when Mary took an expensive jar of perfume and anointed Jesus with it.

Then Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance.

John 12

Nard was used as a burial incense - without knowing it Mary was signaling that the time for Jesus death was coming close.

I wonder what thought came to those who were present on that day, in that room full of fragrance,  years later when they smelled that sent again.

Count Your Blessings #126 - Grace

I'm amazed that I haven't written this one before now. Actually, if truth be known, I thought I had, but searching through it looks like I haven't.

A few quotations to start with:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

     Amazing Grace, John Newton

"Grace...
It's a name for a girl
It's also a thought that, changed the world"

     Grace, U2

“Grace is given to heal the spiritually sick, not to decorate spiritual heroes”

     Martin Luther

"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."

     The Serenity Prayer, Reinhold Niebuhr

"a. the freely given, unmerited favour and love of God.

     Dictionary.com

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

     John 1:17

There are a myriad of books too - "What's so Amazing about grace?", "Amazing Grace", "God's Lavish Grace", "The Grace Awakening". Search Amazon and there are over 3,000 books in the "Religion and Spirituality" section.

I could go on - but I won't. I just wanted to make the point that Grace is huge.

In many ways Grace is a meta-blessing, it's beyond a blessing, it's above a blessing. Many of the blessing that I talk about are only possible because of Grace. It is "the freely given, unmerited favour and love of God", I receive from God favour and love that I have not merited, I have not earned and I do not deserve.

I don't really write these posts to try and debate huge philosophical issues, I try to write from personal experience. I know that I can't stand before God and say - "give me this because I deserve it!" - I don't deserve it, any of it. I don't have to look far into my life to realise that I deserve God's contempt, but He doesn't treat me with contempt, He treats me with love and favour.

As I look back through the previous "blessings" that I have written so many of them stories of Grace.

The fresh life that I experience comes as a gift of Grace.

Special messages from loved ones are a gift of Grace.

When I realise that things aren't as bad as they first seemed it's a gift of Grace.

I look around me and see all sorts of things that I don't deserve, I am so privileged - what more can I say. I'll leave you with some words that are thousands of years old, but just as relevant today:

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

1 Corinthians 1:3

Count Your Blessings #125 - Time to sketch

One day last week I decided to take some time off. I've been doing a lot of travelling and working long hours for a couple of months now. Weekends have been busy too. It was time for a break.

I'd normally aline an impromptu day off with Sue's day off, but that wouldn't have been possible for a few more weeks.

It was a lovely day, the sun was shining, and there was a cooling gentle breeze. I packed some lunch, my camera, my iPod, a book of walks, some pencils and a sketch pad then headed off to a small village nearby called Hurst Green. Hurst Green is the home of Stonyhurst College. John Tolkien, son of J.R.R. Tolkien went to school there. It was arguably one of the places that inspired the scenery of Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

It's certainly a beautiful idyllic place.

The map book had a new walk for me to try out, I've done a couple of walks from Hurst Green before, so I was excited at the prospect of seeing some new sites.

The walk set off down a lane through some woods beside a small brook. The dappled light created by the sunlight shining through the leaves of the trees was lovely.

The walk took me up a hill and then down towards the river Ribble eventually reaching the Dinkley pedestrian suspension bridge. There used to be a ferry that crossed the river at this point apparently, but now it looks a bit out of place sat in a valley not really going from anywhere to anywhere.

It was time for lunch, and time to get the pencils out.

The water levels were low and I could sit on a rock practically in the middle of the river, looking up at the bridge. The harsh straight lines contrasted wonderfully with the more subtle soft shapes of the trees. There were a couple of fluffy white clouds in the sky lighting up the iridescent blue sky. It was a scene that demanded to be sketched.

The pencil moved across the paper drawing me into the scene before me. As my eyes switched from scene to paper and back again I noticed the different trees that lined the river and the tall grass away in the distance. I noticed the flow of the water as it ambled along.

I have no idea why I don't sketch more, the creative act makes me feel alive.

Perhaps that points to one reason why I don't. I tend to save sketching for the times when I have the time to enjoy it. I don't actually want to sit down and bash something out, I want to enjoy the process.

My sketching isn't high art, but that's not why I do it. I don't want to spend my time asking the question "It's pretty, but is it Art?" as the Devil whispered in Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Conundrum of the Workshops":

When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art ?"

I'm not being artistic, I'm being creative.

Creativity is something that seems to be drummed out of adults, as I've said before. It does me all sorts of good to spend some time creating something and it saddens me that life leaves so little time to do it.

Few people are likely to see my sketches, and I'm not doing it to pass an exam, I'm just being creative.

My sketches aren't going to an expedition, and I'm not trying to win approval, I'm just being creative.

Reading through the Bible I see a God who was and is massively creative. But God also seems that value the creativity of man.

Count Your Blessings #124 - Standing on history

Last week I was near Washington D.C. on business. Unlike many business trips we actually had some time see a couple of sites.

On one trip we went up into Washington D.C. and went around the sites including Capitol Hill, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial from where Martin Luther King Jnr. gave his famous "I have a dream" speech. One of the steps up to the memorial is marked with an inscription marking the event. Standing on the step looking out I got a new sense of the historic events that took place - on that very spot.

At the end of the trip we had a couple of hours spare which we used to visit the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center. In the middle of the museum sits the B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay.  This is the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima just before the end of World War II. Standing in front of this hulk of polished metal I tried to imagine how it must have felt inside the cockpit on that day. What did they talk about on the way out? What did they talk about on the way back? How did they feel about their role in the events of 6th August 1945 as they lived the rest of their lives?

On Saturday, after my return, I went to a friend's wedding. This was the wedding of someone who had been part of the church youth work years ago when Sue and I were involved. It was a historic event especially for the bride and the groom.

Each of these events resonate through time. Each of these events have changed the world in which I live. Each of these events will continue to change the world in which I live. Some in relatively minor ways, for me, others in more significant ways. They are all part of my history.

Few people would doubt that Jesus was a historic figure. H.G. Wells once said this:

"I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very centre of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history."

His history continues to resonate and continues to influence. His history continues to be a part of my history too.

(Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera with me on my trip, so a picture from my garden will have to be a more than adequate substitute.)

Count Your Blessings #123 - Pottering in the garden

I work as a technologist. My life is spent around the latest and greatest gadgets, information technology, computation, storage, wireless and all manner of things that are changing our lives. Sometimes it's a bit like working in a reality distortion field, the stuff I am doing isn't yet real life.

When I'm not at work I still like to use the technology (which is why I'm writing a blog), but I also like to reconnect with the real world. One way of reconnecting that I return to again and again is to potter in the garden.

There is something very cathartic about getting your hands dirty.

I try not to have an agenda when I go out, work is run by agendas, pottering requires no agenda. It always amazes me how much I find to do without an  agenda. The garden looks OK, and will probably stay looking OK without me doing anything, but having ventured out and invested some time I can see a real difference. See a job - do a job, nothing more complicated than that.

A  while ago I watched a series in which the TV Gardener Monty Don took a number of young people with drug problems through a programme that tried to reconnected them with the land. I'm not sure how successful Monty would say that the series was, but I could relate to where he was aiming.

There is something about tending the land, pottering in the garden, that connects with something deep inside me. Perhaps it's because I used to spend hours down on the allotment with my Dad, or perhaps it's something more fundamental than that. Perhaps it's something deep in our very fabric.

There is something about mowing the lawn that surfaces all of my frustrations, I have no idea why. The inner conversation is often quite angry, but having been surfaced, the frustrations are normally gone, left in the pile of clippings in the compost bin.

Today I jet-washed the patio, it's not a task that can be rushed, it takes as long as it takes. You kind of have to find the rhythm to be successful. It does me good to be in a rhythm, I prefer to be rushing, but it's much better for me when I'm walking to a beat.

I always feel blessed after a few hours in the garden.

I would loved to have seen the Garden of Eden, I'm expecting to see something even better one day. I wonder whether it will need us to potter in it? I wonder whether we will feel the need to potter in it?

Count Your Blessings #122 - Fresh Life

Yesterday we went walking as a family in the Lake District, starting off from Grasmere.

This week has been a weeks holiday, we haven't been away anywhere, we've just made the most of pottering around at home. It's been a good time for clearing up all of those little jobs that have needed to be done for some time, we've also had lots of fun.

As we were walking up towards Easedale Tarn we came across a sheep with a lamb. We could tell from the start that it was a very young lamb. It was still very wobbly on it's feet and the umbilical cord was still fixed too.

Emily took my new camera and stealthily eased towards the lamb and it's mother. They were both still very tired. The mother had been carrying this lamb around for some time (a sheep's gestation period is around 5 months) and I'm sure that birth isn't a simple thing even for sheep.

As Emily was still taking picture some people came walking down the path, they had watched the sheep giving birth only a short while earlier.

This was new life, a completely new start. But what kind of a life would it be?

This was no cosy hospital ward, we were part way up the side of a mountain it's still quite cold up there; the wind had quite a bite. It might not be the place where we would choose to be born into but there were Herdwick sheep, specially bred to stand the conditions up there on that mountain. They were were they were meant to be.

The other week I was out walking in the morning when I took a diversion to a nearby pond. As I approached, the water rippled and there were a few splashes, there were frogs everywhere, and frog-spawn too. More new life.

Psalm 19 says this:

The Law of the LORD is perfect;
   it gives us new life.
His teachings last forever,
   and they give wisdom
   to ordinary people.

In today's society it seems like a complete contradiction to talk about "law" giving "new life", we expect "law" to bring rules and constraints leading to a lack of life. But that would be to misunderstand of the meaning of "law". Other translations try to use other words to explain it better: instructions, revelation, teachings. I'm no Greek scholar, so I'm in no position to try and explain the actual meaning. My experience tells me that all of these words are kind of correct. The times I feel "new life" are when I follow in the paths that God outlines, I feel that "new life" ebbing away when I ignore them. I prefer the word "paths" because I think that it's a better reflection of my own experience, "He guides me in paths of righteousness" as it ways in Psalm 23. The key to this phrase, for me, is the first part - "He guides" - this is no set of laws that are written down and used as a measuring rod. These are path of righteousness, paths of new life, that He guides us in, and He guides is in relationship.

So, my experience is this, new life comes through walking paths of relationship.