Legally Blonde

it is slightly disconcerting and at least a little odd to be planning an Epiphany service while I’m only just coming to terms with Advent, beginning to look forward to Christmas, but writing as if looking back from beyond three weeks hence…

actually, I feel a bit of a fraud on the planning team now. three of the four of us (not me) were licensed by the bishop last Sunday as lay worship leaders, having done a course (I couldn’t go as it was Wednesday nights between Christmas and Easter – clashed with antenatal classes). I’m not certified, but they don’t seem to hold it against me. hope the congregations don’t mind, not sure about authority etc, we are Anglican after all. It was lovely being there for them, but I had a lump in my throat as the Bishop thanked them for their time and gifts and authorised their ministry as lay worship leaders. part of me thought, I want one of those, but then i don’t need a certificate to write, or the bishop’s say so to encourage children to learn and pray.

Quite a lot of what I write, though, I feel I was just holding the pen (or keyboard!) and the words come not from me but just choose me to catch them, a bit like dictation maybe. I enjoy it, and am glad to be useful if any of it helps or speaks to people, but I don’t like taking credit for it. I suppose that comes back to what the bishop said about recognising gifts. I feel like the poor boy of Rosetti’s carol, incredulous that my small offering of time and typing could be as valuable to the baby as the gold, frankincense and myrrh from His more distinguished visitors.

(EmilyLemly told me to get blogging again. there is much of the last 5 months I could or should have told you, but it is easier to start back in gently…!)

The Vicar tells me that the <a href=”http://www.thebricktestament.com/”>Brick Testament</a> has been rated with content warnings for sex, nudity and violence. While it is true that the New Testament contains all three, and Thursday/Friday of Holy Week especially the nudity (stripping) and violence (flogging, crucifying), it surprised and amused me – these are Lego (TM) people, for goodness’ sake!!

(oh eck. can someone sort out my dodgy code for the link?!)

in which I spend an irritable morning fighting with both D and B, see my midwife, dump B in nursery to see my acupuncturist, feel much better, have supper all together at the in-laws’, take my irritable nasty self away from the bosom of the family to go to church – not that I feel like it at all but have also just noticed it is Holy Week rather than just the school holidays and that I should mark it somehow.

Not the best of frames of mind in which to take communion!

It’s an odd service – while still Lent, there is a festive feel. The acclamations and Gloria which have been omitted the last six weeks are used again, the priest and altar wear white and gold, it is a celebration. A celebration of the Passover, and the institution of the Last Supper. On usual Sunday mornings the words are familiar – it can be too easy to rattle them off without thinking too much. On Maundy Thursday it is all raw, new, Not familiar. The disciples are expecting a “normal” passover meal – and they get the new Covenant. A different Lamb entirely.

After Communion the whole feel of the service changes. The Choir sing Psalm 88 while the Vicar strips the altar to symbolise the soldiers’ stripping of Jesus after his arrest. All the church ornaments are packed up – the candles, the banners, the silver cross on the altar, the altar cloth itself – until there is just a bare wooden table, almost shocking in its nakedness (we are familiar with the “dressings” of a wealthy western church; I’m sure this wouldn’t be such a contrast in some southern hemisphere or persecuted churches).

The lights go out. From somewhere far away the Vicar reads a verse from the passage when Jesus is arrested, ending with, “and they ran away and deserted him.”

None of the usual sending out, dismissal, the Lord be with you – and also with you, “normal” church endings. Silence. Then pew doors bang, footsteps ring out, even the choir doesn’t process but scatters. everyone leaves by any door, no formal filing out, shake the vicar’s hand, say goodbye, just scatter in the darkness.

Powerful. shocking. Lonely. Desolate. Wonderful.

Finally I am a little tuned in and aware again, despite not having “done church” much – or at all really – this Lent.

I hope this strange peacefulness sees me through the next couple of days, so I can be a little more patient with the boys and keep sight of “real” Easter, rather than just the chocolate and chicks taught by school and nursery. I suppose they have their reasons for ducking the real story, but I don’t understand. Perhaps no-one wants to risk doing death with four year olds. Not just death, but torture, illegal trial, crucifixion – right in the middle of the “Why?” stage! A challenge, finding accurate, truthful but age-appropriate language…. yes, it is shocking, but should they be protected by a chocolate lie?? shouldn’t they instead have the opportunity to question, wide-eyed? Didn’t Jesus tell us that it is only by becoming childlike that we come to him?

Then again, we have the luxury of hindsight and know about the happy ending: and the family hot cross bun service tomorrow morning!

I’ve been getting awfully deep and meaningful recently, and looking at each new budding and opening outside as relevant. In a way it reminds me of the last couple of months B was on the inside, being Advent, full of expectation, hope, longing, the promise of a new world. This time round it is Spring; Lent is a different sort of preparation, and a lot has to be gone through before the new life the other side.

There are very different reactions around this impending new life, from my husband, my four year old, my friends and family who knew me in December ‘04 and those who have come to me more recently.  Life goes on in all its madness, and B thrives at school – his weird English privately educated square mummy never having heard of some of the apparently normal traditions of Welsh state primaries nevertheless doing her best to help him join in…

On Thursday, the end of term (Friday was INSET) Easter Bonnet Parade. I did my best with an old straw hat my father bought me when I was Benjamin’s age, a few frantic phone calls home and a trip to the craft shop for yellow tissue paper and the cake shop for chicks. It transpired that boys don’t do bonnets. The girls wore amazing creations on straw hats, while the boys were in baseball caps with a rabbit on the peak. Oops. B didn’t seem to mind or notice though, luckily, and enjoyed telling everyone who’d listen the difference between his daffs and jonquils:

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(Incidentally, I’m pleased with how well the tulips have come back! We planted them to come up in time for our wedding in March last year, and I hadn’t realised they were perennials rather than annuals. It is so cheerful looking out and being reminded of the red, gold and joy of it all despite the extreme gray and dampness of the day!)

While he has this bee in his bonnet (sorry) about all things garden, we have been busy planting courgettes, mange-tout and tomatoes in our new super-duper slug-proof block of flats, and beans in the veg patch. We also found a packet of sunflower seeds from last year; I don’t know if they have any hope of actually germinating but we had great fun potting them out anyway. It’s one way to use up a sunny Inset day! He has a fab book with ideas to make gardening and natural exploring etc accessible and fab for children, which suggested growing cress as hair for eggshells with faces:

Sometimes B is brilliantly optimistic, sweet and helpful, looking forward to being a big brother and coming up to my tummy with sweet messages for the new baby. Other times he is very wobbly indeed and wants still to be my baby. This week he will only eat if spoon fed, only drink from a spout cup and after we retrieved all his old nappies from the attic and washed and sorted them out, now he even wants to wear them again (fortunately far, far too small even to attempt indulging that one). We did have a friendly time in the baby’s room, doing some toddler yoga, reading some old books he’d chosen to give the baby and hanging pictures. It can be difficult to know how to acknowledge and reassure his wibbles without indulging too much regression. I keep telling him he’s still my boy and I love him and still will even when the baby comes, but he has his moments!

As does their father, but he is less easy to help, because we grown-ups tend not to be so honestly open, vocal and guileless about our feelings and worries, internalising them as disturbing dreams, health worries, unexplained rattiness… temptations, terrifying thoughts, doubts about the future, life changes… and inability to acknowledge, even to oneself, or address them… which seems to come full circle back to the Lenten musings.

As a (currently) full time wife and mother, there is the temptation (there it is again!) to say that I don’t work at the moment. In fact, I am working harder and longer at a more demanding and worthwhile job than I have ever tried before; but it has taken me a while to be able to acknowledge it. My attitude makes so much difference to how I feel about myself and my role – instead of being drummed down by constructive dismissal, being out of work and ashamed about not earning and sponging completely off my husband’s goodwill, I have come to realise that loving, serving and looking after my boys is one of the most important jobs going, and that now I have more time to put into trying to do it to the best of my ability…

Instead of being frustrated by how long my husband spends in front of Top Gear, I must be glad that he is able to relax and unwind at the end of a hard day’s work. It’s his version of my reading. I need to reread the praises of the Psalmist, “Oh God, you have searched me out and known me, you fashioned me in my mother’s womb,” etc, and consciously relate them to the babe, already with his own relationship with his Maker, and be thankful I am an instrument in our small part of the Creation. Instead of feeling fat and tired I must enjoy my changing shape – taking time out for yoga and meditation, or resting up instead of beating myself up with a guilt stick about the housework etc, is all part of nurturing my growing babe even before we meet, and preparing ourselves to welcome him.

Oh, and talking of whom, I haven’t introduced him here, have I? I was holding off putting anything online until my nearest and dearest (my mother at least!) had seen the originals, but here is new baby boy Sullivan, taking after his father (all leg, and camera shy!):

(oh bother, the disc won’t load properly tonight, isn’t that typical?! another time perhaps… )

(gah. you can tell how untechy I am. I think one of the reasons I blog so little these days is I haven’t yet learned the new new dashboard. hmmph.) (nope, wrong attitude – back to positive blonde! I blog less because I waste less time constantly in front of the screen…!)

We are doing Love Life Live Lent together this year, and have the family big book and then a leaflet each for our own tickings off. Benjamin is jumping randomly through his – can we do this? – rather than an action per day or week, but the one he liked the look of this morning was “give a lolly to your lollipop person” – so we bought one along with the leek en route, then confused her desperately as we were crossing the road.

“Thank you for being our lolly lady and keeping us safe, have a happy day because we are helping our neighbours and planets today!” Mad. Smile!

for my husband’s parents, who have a lengthy night of waiting around in one of our city’s hospitals, as well as a planned inpatient admission later this week at the other.  it never rains but it pours!

I’m not posting specifics, but grateful for your thoughts … He knows, even if we don’t clearly!

PCC this week was, like the Curate’s proverbial egg, good in parts. Some encouraging news and developments, but also some disappointingly trenchant opposition expressed in a most unChristian way. It saddens me that so many people think Church should be only for those of us already on the inside, and not try to grow, develop and meet the needs of those who have little or no opportunity to see real, living faith and meet Christ among us. As token young mum on the committee I am often asked what the families think about aspects of how we do things, but always at a loss. The young who do attend are supported and encouraged to an extent – but their world on the outside is so different from that in which we (who have always “been church”) grew up.  The tradition is familiar and comforting, rather than offputting and alien.

I remember really enjoying and looking forward not just to church but to being old enough for choir practice, Junior Saints outings, seeing friends through church, practicing the readings, helping with the collections, running things at the fetes… there seem to be far fewer young wanting to be as involved these days. Perhaps its the difference between London and South Wales, or at a distance of 20 years, “the young” have changed, as has what appeals to and involves them. On the upside, there are one or two teenagers asking about music group, bell-ringing, even house-groups, and a couple of (non-church-going) Dads who are interested in running some sports on the church field on a relatively regular basis – sport seems to be the big competition for Sunday mornings once our boys hit about 9 or 10.

There’s a mission committee meeting this evening to review the family service experiment I’ve been involved in the last 15 months – we were given a 6-month remit last Christmas! I hope the congregations have valued a slightly different (shorter, non-Eucharistic) format which encourages children and welcomes families who aren’t used to coming to church or staying for the whole service without Sunday school. We shall have to see what the feedback has been like, and take account of it in the planning of future services (I am optimistically assuming they won’t want to axe it!). I only hope I can stay awake for the duration!