in {confidence} my life

A hundred years or more ago, or it feels like it. I wrote about reading Christian books with that modern jocular tone with people mentioned. It was one book in particular where the guy was writing about a couple in his church that were struggling with adultery. It got me thinking and writing about how one goes about telling a story without mentioning names and hurting people. It was important because I was embarking on a blog about this life.

One way of course is to only talk about yourself but that is narcissism and to be avoided. Another way is not to write. I pontificate on this in the piece and come up with a compromise. Explaining to people that they may wind up in these lines.

I will republish that piece later on in the week. And NOTE TO SELF: republish at regular intervals. There was occasion recently when a fellow sibling in Christ shared their guts out to me. Told me their backstory and to be honest if I had tried to make it up I would have fallen short. Their story is amazing, complex and really writable.

That sibling, has in writing, that I will never publish or use their story in any way because it was told in confidence – in confidence as in confidential and in confidence as in confident in me that I would not repeat the story. They didn’t ask for it, I gave the piece of paper outlining my understanding of in confidence.

You see these big Christian writers who pontificate on an issue a hundred years or more in their church don’t realise that the bit parts to  their stories are real people who are still alive and still might be struggling with the ramifications of adultery or whatever it is.

A big part of the surrender in my life this year happened in two situations both bound by confidence, both cannot be spoken about and yet the ramifications for me of those situations is that I have jumped and am still jumping, a jump without an end!

trains, giving and hurting

Facing the wrong way on a three hour train journey does not fill me with great happiness, sitting in church being told I was loaded as I put in my last bright blue note in the collection bowl does not fill me with great happiness but then no one ever told me to expect to be happy.

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No idea how I was so distracted, I mean I have taken trains with three screaming children and a grumpy husband and not managed to sit facing the wrong way. I don't know how to undo this situation so I figure I will stay facing the back until I am sick.

The last time I felt like this was on Easter Sunday being driven someplace and feeling like my insides wanted to clothe my outsides. I managed to hold on by the mantra "let me just get to x. let me just get to x" 

Sunday and time for giving. I put my hand in my pocket to take out a fiver and then changed my mind. It has to hurt. Hadn't I said that to someone else earlier in the week? So, yes, it has to hurt. If I give, it has to be real giving not lip service.

Real giving is when you are not giving a small piece at the end of the week or month but when you have to give something up for yourself in order to give. It is not about being thoughtless or irresponsible with money; it is about being judicious and giving what you can.

Sometimes we are without money. But that does not mean our giving has to stop, a man might want to talk in the street when you are rushing to a meeting, a person might need help painting a wall. These are giving opportunities; we need to look out for giving opportunities.

It does not have to hurt but we have to notice it. So for me, changing the bread pan to the 75c one instead of the €2 allows me to buy someone a cup of coffee. I can give the time whilst they drink it and listen to their story for free.

I remember one time I was working in Cork, I was rushing one Friday evening to get to the car back to Kerry when a nurse stood in front of me. A fellow sister in Christ, she was struggling and so on the corridor we sat down, we talked, we listened, we prayed. I broke the landspeed record to be back for a meeting in Kerry but it felt good to be there for her.

I met her again, recently in a different context, she remembered that evening and she told me how on a Friday evening she now went home slowly, reflectively, prayerfully and has helped many people on the way out the building. Giving that grows, a small giving growing in someone else.

Going backward on a train lets me reflect, on times when people have given to me and when I have given to people. The best way, I have discovered to give is to not expect anything from it. To give without expecting thanks. To give without expecting a response. It is a whole new way of giving.

So the person who said I was loaded, a few weeks earlier I had spent a few days supporting someone on the edge of leaving their church, because someone commented on their giving. , and told them they were showing off. How can we be showing off, giving till it hurts? That is not showing off, it is proving to ourselves that we can give more, the more we give, the more we do without, the more we do without.

 

thankle: word invention

Sitting in a waiting room across from someone I love. Shauna Cassidy was not looking at me. Her eyes were downcast, her hands akimbo, legs twitching. In my mind I was sending waves of empathy to her. Could she feel them? Did she sense them? Was her depression deflecting them onto the other people in the room?

Shauna was called into the counsellor. Was I the only one who felt the room grow warmer and lighter? The burden I had been carrying since Shauna asked me to bring her and why, lifted. The fog clearing so the room became less like a tunnel and more like a warren. There were many ways for Shauna to go from this point, the options opening up as she opened her mouth to the listening ears of the counsellor.

A text beeped its way into my consciousness. “Thankle for those thoughts, blessings, Elise xxx [{}]”

Thankle, what a word. Does it exist? I imagine the writer of wordlives, sitting with “thankle” on their desk. It would have to be handwritten, copperplate, and the person, androgynous. I can only see their hands, chubby and uncalloused, no rings. A thankle, what would it look like – A Christmas bauble shining like a star against the artificial lights on the tree, rainbows and fireworks. Full of promise but hollow on the inside.

The counsellor waves me in and I join them in the incense, jasmine I think, filled room, with empty new-age panpipes and I think of a thankle. Shauna is staying, she has filled the forms, she is full of hope and promises, but strangely with thankless in my head I think of all the empty promises, all the hot air,  Aristotle's discussion of the alazôn comes floating into my mind: 'the boaster is regarded as one who pretends to have distinguished qualities which he possesses either not at all or to a lesser degree than he pretends...exaggerating'

I smile, I hug, I wave goodbye. I leave.

There is much to be done, children to be foistered on unsuspecting relatives, a shrivelled, cirrhotic husband to be told, a community to kept at bay. My life to be centered not on panpipe philosophy, not on incense filled sessions and not at the bottom of a heroic Chardonnay. Breathing in and breathing out I sent waves of loves and empathy towards the building of empty promises, beware of the thankle.

I texted Elise telling her about word invention and arranging to meet for lunch. Elise in her need and me in my want of company, away from drugs and alcohol. Our lives were entwined by community, I wondered what Elise needed me for but that’s another tale.

What is in your head, little one?

Why so very, very sad?

Let me hold you

be with you today

Do you know I love you?

Do you know I care?

Prayer of love on you, baby,

wave of empathy send

 

renegade rainbows

If we consider iridescent colours in soap bubbles then we can control when and where we see rainbows. I have known since last summer that spraying water in the polytunnel created beautiful spectrums in the water droplets and I delighted in them. But a bit like the song

I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them but they were only satellites
Is it wrong to wish on space hardware
I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care

Likewise to create rainbows just to make one feel better, or lift the spirits, it is not wrong but reading stuff into it is wrong. The phenomenon I witnessed on Saturday evening a few weeks ago was beautiful possibly never to be repeated, a special occurrence.

Driving into Tralee I discovered that spectrums can be seen in the spray under a vehicle if the sun is at the right angle. This was immediately followed by a full rainbow against a dark grey sky. The downside to all this was I got wet!

Rainbows are created when the sun shines at a certain angle to rainwater droplets. God created rainbows, putting one in the sky as a reminder of the Noahic covenant. Sometimes just like walking along a beach and finding a stone shaped like a heart so we turn a corner in the pouring rain to be surprised by a rainbow.

Claiming a rainbow or a stone as a personal answer to a prayer or a sign of a listening Lord may be arrogant, because we as humans cannot think that big. However our thinking is small, it is provincial, it is personal. We cannot grasp the depth of what God can do. Even if we look at the hills and valleys, view the lakes, marvel at how the seasons change the habitat, we can never fathom how great God is.

So maybe, just maybe when you see a teeny rainbow on a small cloud at sunset with not a drop of rain in sight it is a sign from our mighty God. A personal sign just for you. Or maybe just a freak meteorological event for the whole world.

 

woohoo

Okay so I know it is not a big deal for y'all but I have just done my first personal fiction writing in well over a month. I refused to call it blocked, I called it many things but not block. I went back to what I know. So people I used to know, situations I used to either be a part of or were aware of are getting an airing and possibly I am still on target for nanowrimo. Oh I so hope so, lots of prayer, bucket loads of prayer and an equal quantity of "Get over yourself Suzie, you can write, you great goolar!"

And here it is:

 

Brian made the most of his glass eye, he’d stole a load of
them from some ophthalmic surgeon, just because he could. He was like that,
stealing was never about what he could get for the stuff it was the excitement
of not getting caught.

There was this one time we stole a grandfather clock from
the lobby of a shoe factory. We were running along a towpath when we heard the
cops so Brian said to ditch it in the canal. We could have been caught, it was
so funny.

When we got older and the thieving got more serious, Brian
still did it for kicks. If he needed cash for stuff he went on the rob in our
local nightclub. There’d be a few empty pockets but everyone was so drunk they
never knew.

Up the valley from us was a huge warehouse, we used to recce
while drinking vast quantities of vodka. It was my dream job, like winning the
lottery or something. The pinnacle of my thieving career. Brian didn’t care
about the money, just the fun.

We were nineteen when we teamed up with Pete and Roob, we worked
out that at twenty past ten the watchman settled down to watch a video and by
eleven he was zonko. I was so jittery Brian and I sluiced some H, it took the
edge off but it was nothing like a real high. I needed like meth as well those
days to get a hint of former glory of highs.

The job was going well till we got inside and the freaking
place was empty. Pete went beserk started slapping Brian around . Brian popped
his eye which freaked Pete and Roob. They went running the losers and the old
watchman got them. We went out the way we got in, laughing all the way cos we
nearly got caught.

Brian laughed whenever he thought of that night. Next year I
got cleaned up, I don’t know how and went to college and I got myself a proper
job with a wage and everything. I sometimes would see Brian, he moved out of
his flat and lived in the park and he got older looking and then I didn’t see
him no more.

One day this girl came by and had a box for me, said it was
from Brian. I sat looking at it for a long time. I knew he was gone, proper
gone, and this was his stuff for me. I laughed when I opened it, in the middle
was the mock lizard eye and around – all the eyes he stole from the doctor. I
raised a glass of Vimto to him. 

 

oddities

random thoughts and positions followed me today. I was so flitty in my mind that when Kay came for coffee she told me to shut up. Usually it is the other way round.

I got knocked off my feet and onto my knees by one powerful awesome God and spent some time in the child yoga position and let the peace surround and invade me.

Caroline and Lisa this morning had wisdom for me as well as just being there to let me vent. Rosa sorted herself out which meant I was free for Shona. Life is complicated, or we make life complicated. Caroline is such a blessing in my life, she has that york common sense so missing in my own life. Lisa is stepping up, always a bit of an oddity herself she is pushing through the pontification and had some valid stuff to say today. 

Rosa and Shona, my two bffs, oh how I pray for the day when they will be churched. Rosa making a patchwork quilt of life and Shona like a bull in a china shop. Beautiful people, my people. If or when I leave here I will miss them most.

Just as I put down the dinner, Kay rang and came over. Flitty Suzie and flitty Kay spoke non stop for a thousand sentences or more only curtailed by our phones and more conversations. She left whilst Troolie was sharing wisdom.

A real girlie day with wise flitty unchurched women and a mighty astonishing Lord. I needed today both the fellowship and the kneeling. Bonus yoga.

To Do:

write to Charlene cos she is reading this and I like to give her a land in a good way

write Troolies name too so she can smile wryly

sort my oddities out

 

unblocked birthdays

When the conversation moves towards birthdays I start exiting the building in spirit if not in actual physicality. When I was young, pre-six, birthdays I am sure were the usual mixture of good and bad that every other day was.

On my seventh birthday I discovered that my daddy would not be visiting because it was his girlfriend, Gwendolyn’s birthday. A relative of mine named it "Witches Day" and people wept. I didn't, I went off up the hill and lit a wee fire.

The day I became eight I was encouraged to curse my, by now, stepmother and this ritual was repeated each year until she woke a few days after my tenth birthday paralysed. There was no need to curse the next year.

What a focus to have as a birthday, the ability to paralyse a woman 30 miles away, the inability for a child to celebrate a birthday and a man caught in the headlights. Gwendolyn was scared of the hold I had over my daddy so she kept us apart. We were apart for too long.

Every time I moved I gave him my address and phone number. Not that I am still counting but sixteen years ago he rang me. I was living in a castle; he wanted to speak to my children. I did not refuse but I set limits about when and how. He failed.

My female relatives told me later he only rang because he was drunk. He was drunk every day so that was not a valid reason. Gwendolyn, however, was not present. That was the key difference. She was having a bypass, triple, quadruple, quintuplet, who knows? But she had a stroke and he became a carer.

We finally had something in common but we didn't communicate in this new community of caring. He didn't take to caring very well; he drank copiously and met a new girlfriend. I think he probably always had girlfriends just one or two stick out.

The mill owner's house with its servant quarters and my non-birthdays are all in the past. I am not ready to re-join the community of birthday keepers but every now and then I let it slip. Twenty five years ago I prayed to God for a baby and while I was doing that a girl-child was born on the other side of the world to a big family. She has happily lost too much weight, a bobble head on a skinny frame.

I told a friend on Friday I might write about birthdays one day but I was blocked at the moment. Well I am not blocked anymore and I have written about birthdays and I am thankful I have managed that. It is not a huge story; it is just what it is. A sad tale of thoughtless adults and impressionable children.

My daddy asked me to call him Tony when I was seven; very avant garde, but I needed a dad not just another man. God is my daddy, he is always around. Whenever I need him he is there. And we hang out even when it is just for fun, he guides me when I do stuff wrong to show me the right way. He is everything I need from a parent and more. It would have been nice to have a human dad but knowing I have a heavenly father I can rest in that.

So I consider my birth-day to be the day I became a new creation, transformed, and made new. God is my father and he loves me. I will continue to keep the day to myself and God because the emotions it invokes are difficult for me, forty years of difficult but within a few breaths I remember, this is different, this is real, and this is for God.