Epside 118 - When There Are No More Signs

Yesterday I went for a walk somewhere I'd never been before. It was a well marked path. Or at least it was to begin with. As I started the walk there was a big footpath sign that pointed across the field ahead, to a stile. When I got to the stile there was a little yellow arrow pointing across the field to another stile with another little yellow arrow pointing across the next field to yet another stile with another little yellow arrow. And so it continued. Or at least so it continued until it didn't. Eventually I came to a field so big and so hilly that I couldn't see the other side, and didn't know where there the stile was. So the only choice I had was to trust that the sign was pointing in the right direction and keep on going until I could see the next one. And lo and behold, there it was, eventually, and my uncertainty had been proven to be for no good reason. And all was good again. For a while. But then later I got to a stile that had no sign on it! How was I supposed to know which way to go? How I was I supposed to know that I was even on the right path at all? 

Much like the piece of wood in the corner of the field that doesn't belong to me... 

...it's not my stile

Well I didn't. But going backwards wasn't going to help me at, so I had to just keep going. Going wherever looked most like it was the way I was supposed to go, looking for signs and stiles or anything else which might indicate the way forward. In the end I made it. There were a few sign to reassure me, but often I was on my own just trusting what had come before me to direct me towards what was ahead. Sometimes life is easy, with clear directions and a straight forward path. Other times it's not. It can be hard and confusing. Vague and unclear. In those times we just have to trust the direction we have been given and trust ourselves to follow the path the best we can.

Episode 117 - When You Have Nothing to Say

This week as I sit here to write this blog, as with many weeks, I find myself with nothing to say. Usually after starring at the screen for a little while inspiration hits me and I find something (hopefully worthwhile) to say. But not this week. This week I have nothing. I can't help thinking that God is teaching me a simple lesson which I find easy to ignore. Sometimes in life you really want to say something, you even feel like you really should, but you just don't have any words. In those times it's easy just to say anything, the first things that come to mind, but these are usually wasted words devoid of any value. Perhaps what I need to learn to do is just to say nothing and just be there. So this is me just being here. Saying nothing.

Episode 116 - Hard Habit to Make

I must apologise dear reader for it being so long since I last wrote a blog entry. It was my habit to write my blog every Sunday after Church ready to be automatically published in the late hours of Sunday night and read on Monday morning. But as time continued and life became busy, this became less a habit, and more something that I had to remember to do. And alas something I must confess that I haven’t remembered to do to in recent weeks and I am very sorry for that. But this made me ask myself a very important question; why is it that it seems that good habits are so hard to keep when bad habits seem so easy to form? And why is it so difficult to create good habits when bad habits seem so difficult to break? 

I thought about this for a long time. Probably when I should have just been writing my blog instead. It’s hard to fathom because it seems so contradictory, it seems simply to boil down to saying that good things are hard to do and bad things are easy to do. Is it really that simple? When it comes down to it, am I just naturally not a good person? Well perhaps that’s something that’s not entirely untrue but as I looked deeper I realised that actually it had much more to do with who I want to be than who I am. When I stopped to look at the focus of what I considered to be a habit, I realised that good habits and bad habits weren’t evenly matched. 

When I think of my bad habits, I think of things I naturally do, patterns of repeated behaviour that I’m inclined to follow, but that in retrospect I wish I didn’t or would like to change. But I don’t consider the good things that I naturally or easily do to be good habits, I just consider them to be normal, to be part of who I am. On the contrary, I consider good habits only to be things which I don’t naturally do, but things which I wish I did and that I want to do, and therefore try hard to make part of who I am, despite it being against my natural tendencies. And so it would seem that perhaps I am being too hard on myself. In fact it has nothing to do with being good or bad, but the simple truth that change is hard. And therefore making myself a better version of myself; a me that I’d rather be, is also hard. But then when was anything really worthwhile every easy?

Episode 115 - Are You Receiving Me?

This week I had the privilege of making my first live radio appearance. Or at least my hands did. My friend Ade was making an appearance on Flame community radio to talk about his new single (which can be heard here) and to play a couple of songs live, so he invited me along to accompany him on a Cajon. It was quite a strange experience, playing without being able to see your audience. Not being able to gauge how they are responding to it or even if anyone is listening to it all. It seems strange to communicate something in a way that leaves you without any way of knowing how it’s been received.

As I thought about this I came to thinking that in a funny sort of way all of our live are like a radio broadcast. Over a life time, our whole life, even our smallest acts are seen and experienced by thousands of people. At any moment there’s no saying who might be watching or how they might be affected by us; the people we pass in the street or the person who serves us at the supermarket. Much like a radio programme, we have the power to touch many people’s lives and often we might never have an idea that we have done so.

Episode 114 - Calling the Changes

Life is full of new experiences. Things that we never imagined we’d do yet somehow find ourselves doing. A couple of weekends ago I found myself doing something for the very first time; calling a Ceilidh – that is to say shouting out the instructions to a bunch of dances whilst the music plays. Whilst I’ve been to many Ceilidhs before I have no idea how to lead one, I don’t even know how the dances go, after all, that’s what the caller is for! However, the incredible thing about being the caller of Ceilidh is that it never occurs to the dancers to question what the caller is saying even when he has no idea what he’s doing! It was amazing! Whatever I said they would do! I could have said anything! Even things that didn’t make sense – and I did with surprising regularity, and yet they still tried to follow as I lead.

I should at this point say that despite the description I’m about to give which probably sounds more like a scene from a post-apocalyptic thriller than a party, we did all have a tremendous amount of fun, myself included. I’m not going to lie, there was a tremendous sense of power and authority standing behind that microphone and watching as everyone did as I told them. In some ways I felt like a God. And yet despite my subjects wholehearted attempts to do as I pleased (or perhaps because of this), the dances still upon occasion descended into anarchy and chaos as the dancers got themselves into all sorts of messes. I knew what I wanted them to do and yet so often they weren’t doing it! I must confess that this was usually because of my inability to communicate the dances clearly, however it wasn’t always my fault!

As I stood there barking out orders I began to realise that there were many things that caused my dear friends to stray from the instructions I was giving out. There were all of the distractions of everyone around them. There was the noise which made it difficult to hear. There were the obstacles on the dance floor; stray shoes and fallen bodies. There were other dancers who were getting it wrong and trying to encourage others to follow them. There were hecklers and there was the frustration of “just not getting it”. “If only they could keep hold of what I was saying”, I thought. Then I wondered if that’s how God feels about me as I dance my way through life.

Episode 113 - Walking the Flying Dog

Some people have pet dogs. Others have pet cats. Still others have pet hamsters, or fish, or even micro pigs. Those whose pets are of the canine variety routinely take them for walks. It has even been known for people to walk their pigs or their cats. I not quite sure how one might walk a pet fish, but I’m sure that someone somewhere has tried. I don’t have a pet. So instead, I sometimes walk my drone (nowhere near Gatwick I promise). I get many odd looks as I walk along followed by him (his name is Droney McDroneface).

Through the wonders of technology and an app on my phone, as I fly my drone I can see everything that it sees. It’s quite incredible to see how different things look from my drone above me, compared to how things look from my perspective rooted on the ground. As my drone first takes off it’s amazing to watch as the screen of my phone slowly transitions from my perspective to a whole different way of seeing things, still looking at the same things yet revealing much more. Showing paths that look promising but lead to dead ends, or hidden secrets like statues or buildings or even whole lakes that I didn’t know were there.

This is what I think things are sometimes like with God and I. He can see so much more of life than I ever can from where I am. And yet even knowing this, sometimes I am too busy with what is in my immediate eye line that I refuse change my perspective from what I can see to what God is telling me and all that He can see. In doing so, I miss finding out about upcoming dead-ends and hidden treasures.

Episode 112 - DIY

This week I’ve been doing a little DIY. There’s lots of things that I like about DIY. I like the actual making things and putting things together, because it’s essentially just grown-up Lego. I like the power tools because they make me feel like a power ranger or a ghost buster. Secretly I like it when things go wrong because then I have a puzzle to solve. I very much like enjoying the results of my labour at the end of the project. But most of all I enjoy taking something and making it my own. I like taking a space that I frequently inhabit and not only leaving my mark on it, but making it more suitable to me; whether that be by making it look and feel more appealing to me, or by (more importantly) making it more useful to me and more fitting for the way I live my life.

DIY can be a little bit addictive, the more you do, the more you want to do. It starts off with small vital improvements, but can quickly escalate into elaborate changes to whole rooms and soon you can find that there is no longer a room in the house that you’re happy with. This however is not what DIY is supposed to be about. It’s great to be able to improve what you have, but the potential of what could be should never take away from what currently is. Just because something could be made better does not mean that I should not appreciate what it currently is nor should it prevent me from enjoying it as it currently is.

In many ways my life is a bit of a DIY project. Whether it be the situation I find myself, the things that I spend my time doing, my attitudes, or even my very character; there is plenty that I can improve upon. It is actually a huge joy and privilege to be able to work on and improve these things and to know that the potential is there to do so. And do so I should. But this should never stop me enjoying or appreciating what I already have, and nor should I allow this room for improvement to make me look down upon myself or depreciate my own value, because you know what? Whilst we might all still be learning and growing, I have never yet met another human who wasn’t pretty awesome in their own right, and I should appreciate myself more. And I suspect that you probably should too, because I’m willing to bet that you’re already a pretty awesome person. I mean you’re reading my blog so that’s a pretty good start!..

Another thing about DIY, is that everyone has different tastes and different lifestyles. Just because one person likes things a certain way or finds certain things useful and beneficial doesn’t mean that same will be true for someone else. There are people in this life who will freely tell you what they would have done differently or even tell why what you have chosen to do is wrong. Sometimes this advice (unsolicited or otherwise) is actually very helpful and helps you to further improve what you have already done. More often though, the person offering advice is just airing their own desires forgetting who it is that you are, what it is you need and indeed who it is that this DIY is for! This too can be quite a lot like life. It can be easy to feel pressured into comprising the things you want or even who want to be to avoid criticism or even earn applaud. In fact, it can be incredibly hard to stand for what you want or believe in even when the consequence for not standing can be severe. I just pray that no matter what pressure may come against me, that I may always have the strength to stand.