A Walk among the Cork Oaks

“How the trees can sometimes bring you round”, was the title I gave to a piece of poetry I wrote when I was about eighteen. I don’t have it still. I wish I did, seeing as I don’t write poetry, as a general rule. As an eighteen year old you do a lot of things that get lost with the passing of time. All that angst and acne.

It was written sometime in between being an unbeliever and entering into a full and living relationship with Jesus Christ, and expresses that sudden awareness that there is a lot more to everything than meets the eye, when it comes to matters concerning God and atheism and faith and doubt. And it was the trees that brought me round to that particular realisation.

Tall trees, stately trees, swaying in the winter wind trees that whistled round our home back then growing up in Coleraine. Trees, that in their own way, spoke to my heart of a Creator who formed them, placed them there, and to whom they returned glory and honour…..simply, by existing. I remember back then as I tried to express my feelings in words “how the trees can sometimes bring your round, the tall trees, the stately trees...” I wish I could remember it all. It was kind of along the lines, and possible inspired a little by the words of Isaiah, “and the trees of the field shall clap their hands as you walk out with joy” * . Words from the old book that at that time I was not ready to fully acknowledge as the Word of God, were already speaking into my life. That would come later.

And now, thirtysomething years later, I find myself walking through an ancient forest of cork trees here in Alentejo, Portugal, and the power of the trees to express something of their Creator comes back to me. These trees in particular seem to possess an ancient wisdom, if trees can be said to have wisdom. Tolkein was good at investing trees with personality with his “Ents” and his “Treebeard” in the forest of Fanghorn. I feel something of Fanghorn’s mystery here in this forest of cork oaks. Their twisted wizened shapes, their weather beaten bark and their spindly branches reaching up to your heavens.

These trees don’t have voices. They are barely able to “clap their hands” either n this windless day of summer. But without words or actions they nevertheless bring glory to their Creator. They do so, simply by existing.

* Isaiah 55:12

Beat the Donkey

Friday night we listened to what to me was the most amazing anarchic energetic creative exhibition of musical theatre I have encountered in a long time. It was billed as a concert by Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista and his troupe of assorted musicians who call themselves “Beat the Donkey” and was part of the week long Festival of World Music in Sines 150 km south of Lisbon which we have been enjoying while here on holiday in the Alentejo Coast

The fact that these multi talented artists trooped out on stage at about one in the morning after two other sets by Polish and Indian musicians had finished did not lessen the surprise at how different this all was. It exploded on stage with rhythms and beats emerging from a whole plethora of strange objects. It seemed to be a case of if it can make a noise, it can make music. In retrospect, maybe that’s why they call their band “Beat the Donkey”- If tapping out a rhythm on the back of your donkey can help you express what’s in your heart, then go ahead and beat it (as long as you don’t hurt the creature).

Isn’t this something even just a little bit close to the words of Jesus when he claimed that if the people on the side of the road who were singing to bless Him were to be silenced - “even the stones on the side of the road would cry out" * , or the cacophony of praise described in Psalm 150. "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord". We are made for music. We are born with rhythm. It’s the natural way we know of expressing what’s inside of us. Lets find ways of harnessing this to what its meant to be – praising the One who made us who we are.

While on the subject. Isn’t it a bit odd that the whole world music scene is so devoid of any expression of authentic faith in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ There’s room for tree huggers, aryudevic massage and lingam stones. But the name of Jesus is so conspicuously absent. What have we, who know Him to be alive and with us, done to deserve that? Or more pointedly, what have we not done? If we claim that we desire to reach out to embrace the world with evangelistic zeal, how have we so completely ignored this celebration of richness and diversity in this wonderful world our God has made? The growth in world music, and the coming together of rhythms and harmonies from Mali, or Mongolia, Iceland or India, over the last thirty years or so is something that everyone else seems to have noticed and paid attention to. But the evangelical remains silent and uninvolved. So it’s really good when we do meet someone engaging in this so human of cultural expressions and trying to invest it with meaning and enrich it with authentic Christianity. Rave on, Rod and Donna, in the deserts of Sindh!!

Links

* Luke 19:40 in the New testament

http://fmm.com.pt/en/programme/

http://www.cyrobaptista.com/index_flash.cfm

What it Means to be Held

Another day, another premmy!! Yesterday we visited a tiny two week old baby, son of good friends here, who, according to the laws of pregnancy ought still to be safely tucked away back in that comfortable all embracing womb for anther two weeks before emerging into the light of day. But here he is, and his puckered up face expresses his distaste for having to breathe air so early and to cope with all these strange new realities around him.

And as Joana carries him off to be changed, screams of indignation filled the air to be placed on a changing mat and no longer held, even for a moment. All he wanted was to be held. The enduring picture in my mind is of the little one content and secure in his mother’s embrace. Sometimes all we want is to be held as well. News this morning is about possible panic surrounding the spread of swine flu, and about the rise of child poverty in Germany, Europe’s richest nation. We might be advanced, we might be prosperous, we might be comfortable in our lives, but there’ still a lot out there to make us anxious and afraid. We still need to be held.


Puts me in mind of Natalie Grants beautiful song “Held”. Written by American singer/songwriter Christa Wells, against the background of three of her friends who had had to cope with tragic loss, the first verse being inspired by one young mother’s loss of her baby after only two months

Two months is too little
They let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence
Would take a child from his mother
While she prays, is appalling

Who told us we'd be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
We're asking why this happens to us
Who have died to live, it's unfair.

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We'd be held

You should listen to it. More than that, you should immerse yourself in the words of Jesus who promises us, not that we won’t ever suffer loss, nor that the sacred thing we hold most dear, will not be torn from our lives in some tragic moment, but that He will remain constant with us through everything we face, and will hold us in the palm of His hand. And reflect on your condition with the words of the ancient Psalm…

“….But I have stilled and quieted my soul.
Like a weaned child with his mother
Like a weaned child is my soul within me.
Put your hope in the Lord.
Both now and for evermore.

Psalm 131

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-hJ87ApWtw&feature=related

http://www.christawells.net/what-it-means-to-be-held.html

Perfect Love Drives out Fear

Now and again I find that I get introduced to new music by my kids. (well, it might be music that has been around for a while but it’s new to me). So it is that I am currently listening to “Muse” thanks to Colin, “Isabelle Boulay” because of Judith’s Francophile tastes, and “Death Cab for Cutie”, well, because it was on Sharon’s ipod!

This latter outfit are an American indie band, from Washington State, and their songs are thoughtful and melancholic. It was when I was running and listening to the song “I will follow you into the dark” * from their “Paths” album that set my mind thinking about Fear and about Religion.

“In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule

I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black

And I held my tongue as she told me

"Son fear is the heart of love"

So I never went back…”

“…If there's no one beside you

When your soul embarks

Then I'll follow you … into the dark”

Morose lyrics, indeed, morbid even. And, while it may paint an unfair caricature of life in church schools, it is a picture which most likely rings a bell in many minds from personal experience. But how far removed is the statement “Fear is the heart of love” from that of Saint John, when he said * *

“There is no fear in love,
Perfect love casts out fear. ~
Because fear has to do with punishment.
The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

And as I think of the way people shy away from us because we might seem somehow religious, or they suspect our motives, because we might want to share the joy we know and experience, then, I think what a stumbling block religion can become. Religion breeds fear, because fear has to do with the intangible, and the sense of powerlessness and vulnerability that comes from it, for religion deals with intangibles, mysteries, hidden things.

But what that dear old Saint John talks about is far from intangible. It is a living and loving relationship with a God who is there and who is not silent and who cares and who loves. The reality of that love drives out fear, empowers us and keeps us against the uncanny, the undefined and the dark unkown. I'm very glad to not have religion, but to have relationship, because religion kills, but relationship brings to life.

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6XZsau7CSk

* * 1 John 4:18

Sometimes it's all about The One

Summer is supposed to begin June 21st. It began for us with a bang on Saturday the 28th. That’s when a small team from Roswell, Georgia in the USA arrived to be with us for a week.

It was very good, though exhausting, as we had prepared a packed week of activities for children and families in the area in which we live – games, crafts, stories, balloons, face painting, football, races – the works. Even a Fourth of July Party! The intention was that people would get to know us better, would connect to our growing community, and above all, would become acquainted with the Jesus we serve.

At the beginning of the week, our good friend Johan Lukasse gave some useful advice. He said that when you begin a week like this, you want to reach as many people as possible. Your focus is on the numbers. You want the whole world to know about you and about the One you follow. But sometimes, he said, it’s not about the hundreds It’s all about the one.

In His life, Jesus had the amazing capacity to deal with the multitudes thronging around Him and also to be intimately concerned about each individual soul. He spoke about a shepherd who was prepared to leave ninety nine sheep behind because He wanted to go after the one. And, by the end of week, that’s the way it has turned out. We can see God specifically at work in the lives of one here and one there. How good is that!

And thanks to you, John Brown, and your watercolours. You sat out in the square each afternoon, painting. Young and old gathered around him to see water and colour on parchment merge into writhing, dancing, swaying trees. They communicated energy and emotion, and you had wise words to accompany your work. And when you created something that was yours, that was a small part of your soul, your inner being, and promptly gave it away to someone who was passing by, you exemplified that spirit of Grace that was in your Father God. That Spirit that was in Christ, and that gave of itself for humanity not expecting anything in return.

http://www.johnbrownarts.com/

Coming up for Air

Yesterday morning at 6am I was down walking by the river. Couldn’t sleep – worrying about life’s imponderables – and the dawn air and the golden strip on the distant horizon of the opposite bank seemed the perfect antidote. At low tide (and the river Tejo is still tidal this far from the coast, why, sometimes you can see scraps of seaweed floating around in the murk) there’s a couple of hundred metres of mudflats and there are a few streams that follow their snaky courses out through the mud to the deeper water.

This morning there was a lot of movement and rippling in one of those streams, and all of a sudden with a flash of silver an eighteen inch fish leaps clear of the surface and splashes back down again. And then another and another. And the performance continues up and down the length of the stream. I’m wondering what on earth for. Are they catching flies this early in the morning? Are they exuberantly rejoicing and jumping for joy in the dawn light? Or are they coming up for air? Judging by the colour and consistency of the water, (and there will be some fishermen out there who will no doubt contradict me) this latter seems to be the best explanation.

Fish are meant to exist and flourish and breathe underwater, but sometimes the environment they’re in forces them to break the surface to find strength and air to carry on from another environment totally different and alien to their natures. Sometimes life can be murky. Can treat us badly. Sometimes the stresses and strains can strangle the life out of us, so we’re left listless – belly up.

Its then when we need to leap up through the surface into the Grace of God. Into that strange new atmosphere where God is and where Christ feeds our souls. Where we breathe spiritual air so rich it burns our lungs and fills our spirit. And then back down again into the murk. To live, revived restored and invigorated to keep going again. To reflect the glory of God and the aroma of Christ to those around us. It’s called morning devotions. Coming up for air.