A Happy Christmas

The thing I have enjoyed most about Christmas this year has been being with my family. All my three brothers with my sisters-in-law and their children, gathered at my parents' in Devon, our family home since I was 18. Great fun, if a little bit crazy. Probably what I missed the most Christmassing in Uganda...

But as well as that, I have loved...

Driving down a tiny country lane on Christmas morning to an ancient stone church stuffed to the brim with people young and old, for a short, child-friendly service, with carols, a simple talk and a candle stuck in an orange for each child to take away, and sweets given out at the door on the way out... driving back past sheep-filled fields and waving at a few people out walking their dogs...

Coming home to the log fire, and being all cosy and warm inside, then venturing out for a blast of fresh air, only to return to the fireside...

(my Dad and my oldest brother, Nigel)

A traditional English Christmas lunch, including turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, bread sauce, roast potatoes, carrots, brussels sprouts, Christmas pudding, raspberries and meringue, mince pies, cheese and biscuits, ending with coffee and a selection of truffles, Turkish Delight, nuts and raisins, and of course a chocolate orange... 

 A tree stacked with presents, not particularly for me (!) but for all the family...

 Seeing all the cousins together 

... the freedom to drink alcohol  (only little and often, as the doctor ordered, right?) - especially red wine, gin and tonic, sweet sherry, Baileys...

Down time with my family...

Watching the Queen's speech - an annual event at 3.00 pm  on BBC 1 - and loving hearing her give a truly Christian message about Jesus coming into our lives at Christmas, about the need to forgive one another and help and support one another, it was really good...

And tomorrow we still have to fit in our Christmas hike on Dartmoor, carol singing around the piano, our annual game of charades... still a lot more fun to come!

I have also thought a lot about our friends in Uganda and wondered how all the families there have been, and whether they have had enough gas to cook on, and whether they killed their turkeys in time - and fed them enough first -, and hoping and praying that, even though far from home and extended family, and even in the heat  and sunshine, they have been able to know the tingling excitement of remembering the Baby born in the stable all those years ago... 

Welcome all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span.
Summer in winter, Day in night,
Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great little one whose all-embracing birth
Brings earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.
                                    Richard Crashaw, 1613-1649

I hope this post doesn't serve to make those far from home homesick, but rather to pass on from my experience the encouragement that there will be traditional, home Christmases in the future for you too! And that the tradition, and the luxury, of a family Christmas (especially when it is laid on by a Mum and Dad!) is all the more lovely when one has missed it for a few years. And also the caveat that I have had to search for the meaning of Christmas, to cling to the story of the stable and all it held, all the more in the midst of the food and drink, talking, planning, reuniting and game-playing... And without the meaning (by my observation), it all seems so empty, extravagant, and, even, reckless... 

Happy Christmas everyone! 

Much Talking about Uganda...

Today Dan and I had the chance to share with a group of fifteen or so young people who are going out to Uganda for a short term "gap year" experience, teaching in schools and working alongside Crosslinks mission partners in Kabale.

They were having their Orientation at a big old chilly conference centre in Norfolk, and so we were able to combine this speaking engagement with a few days staying with some good friends in their home near Norwich (they were in Uganda for several years and we spent a lot of time with them.) A few days of holiday bliss for Alex playing and laughing non-stop with his mate Mattie, and Abby with her friend Sienna, and so lovely for us to spend hours chatting and eating with Andy and Rosie. Conversation ranged around moving back to England, Uganda friends and happenings, Zimbabwe (as they also lived in Zim before Uganda), families, jobs, money, the cold and dark, shopping, church, Christmas... It was all great fun and so good to be with people who know us in both our contexts and have made the adjustment about a year ahead of us but are still dealing with some of it themselves. A lovely bonus was that Rosie's cousin Lizzie whom we also knew well from Uganda was there too, visiting from Uganda for Christmas. All nine of us sleeping in a small three-bedroom cottage - it was fun, and cosy! And the talking was therapeutic, as well as all the laughter. A very welcome, relaxing few days.

Speaking to the team going out to Uganda in January was also a lot of fun. Describing the greetings, hand-shaking, food, family life, roads, appropriate dress, church, and traditional religion, and telling some of our store of stories, brought it all back again so vividly. It was great to feel that our experience was helping prepare other people to go out there. I hope we get the opportunity to do it again.

Now looking forward to Christmas in Devon... 

 

Hope

On Sunday morning we had to set out for church at 6.30 am. We were on our way to one of our last link church visits, to St Peters in Harold Wood. This church incidentally was the one I worshipped at for the three years before I first went to Zambia back in 1992, so this was my original main sending church. They gave me a big commissioning in church back then, and my home group had a great party. But in the nineteen years since those farewells, several of the older, prayerful people who were interested in Africa and in me have died, and most of the younger people who I really knew have moved on to other jobs and churches. But there are a handful of people I still know well including the leaders of my home group, and it was lovely to see them again. And I experienced the same bitter-sweet feelings of the sadness of ending a long-standing relationship, of perhaps never seeing some of these people again (since it is pretty far away from Gloucester), but also the relief of putting aside everything that goes with being on support  - the guilt feelings of splashing out on a pastry with that cup of coffee at La Patisserie (again), the self-doubt when writing the monthly prayer-letter - have I done enough this month to justify all the money people have given out of their own pockets to support me? But it was real pleasure to catch up with old friends at St Peters, and as always, we left feeling so pleased we had made it, and so thankful for the warmth and prayer and kindness of people.

Anyway, we set out early that morning, in the dark, having had to scrape the ice off the windscreen and warm up the car before we got in, all feeling still sleepy and cold and over-bundled in hats and scarves in the car. Half an hour later it was still dark and the roads were empty, and the bare trees were looming from the road-sides, stripped branches with twigs for crooked fingers poking out, and black clouds were moving ragged against the dark sky, and I thought about what it would be like if we knew that it was never going to get light, if there was no thought that the sunrise was coming. I imagined myself in some apocalyptic world, like in the movie "The Road", where it was never going to get properly light again. And I thought how horrifying it would be, and how hopeless. In fact I don't think I could go on, if I didn't know the light was coming.

Gradually, thankfully, the sky lightened at the edges, the clouds stood out more starkly against the pale, the silhouetted trees looked less scarey, and at last, directly ahead of us, the intensely bright, orange-rind rim of the Sun slipped up above a hillside, and light poured into all the sky.

Jesus being born into the world 2000 years ago was like the sun rising after years of darkness.

But the darkness is still here in many ways. And today, hearing the news, looking back at the events of 2011, it feels as though this year the darkness was as grim and perhaps hopeless as it has ever been. So many natural disasters, tsunamis and floods, financial recession returning for a "double dip", leaders losing popularity, an Arab Spring bringing with it persecution of Christians, rising prices all over the world, cuts and riots in England, no power in Uganda, Zimbabwe still suffering under the grip of evil... But knowing that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and knowing that he is coming again, is the promise of the Sunrise that will certainly come, and is the promise that gives us hope and enables us to keep going, even at the end of 2011.

Nativity in art

Since my last post I have been trying to find an image which I seem to remember, but can't find, of a manger with the light pouring onto it as if it is the focal point of all of earth and heaven. In hunting for it I realised how much I was enjoying all the multitude of interpretations of the nativity scene, and I thought I would put a few here for you also to enjoy. If you know another amazing one which you love, tell me about it! I'm afraid my comments are not those of an art critic - I probably should read up about these paintings - but I am just airing my reactions to them. 

I love this one (by Duccio) because of the tiny ox and ass peeking over. But more because of the ranks of angels, gazing down, gazing up to God, and having a chat about what they are seeing. 

 I like Chagall's because the cross is also there, and you can almost feel Mary's heart hurting.

 Rembrandt's shows the atmosphere of the stable so well - if it was a stable - although it definitely looks like a Dutch barn here - which is to be expected. But I love how the light glows out from Jesus and how the faces are all turned on him, and the atmosphere is hushed.

 I love this style of Rennaissance painting, with the beautiful city in the background. I love the angels on the roof of the stable. This painting seems full of peace to me. Everyone seems to be waiting quietly for events to unfold.

This one was (apparently) painted by Gari Melchers, in 1891. It conveys the exhaustion of both Mary and Joseph, but especially Mary. It is a much more human telling of the story, but the mystery is retained in the light emanating from the baby.

You just do not find many African depictions of the Nativity, apart from the beautiful wooden and stone carved sets. This one is by a British artist called Brian Whelan, painted "in a Uganda setting." Spot the crowned crane, fish eagle, palms, and geckos. I do like it.

Um, this one I included because of its strangeness, to me at least. Can anyone enlighten me?

Advent in England...

As I read friends' thoughts as Christmas in Uganda approaches, I remember how I always found it strange to be in a hot place for Christmas, even after eighteen years of it (bar the ones when I went back to England). Christmas, in the psyche of northern-hemisphere westerners, is cold, and dark, and involves frost or snow, log fires, pretty lights, and hot drinks. The imagery of the Light coming into the darkness feels vivid and apt. No doubt about that. So to prepare for Christmas in bright hot sunshine was always weird, and to go swimming on Christmas Day was weird, and to eat a hot roast turkey lunch with as many of the trimmings as we could manage to drum up from Shoprite, Uchumi, and packages from home, was also definitely weird. Photos of us standing by the Christmas tree in summer clothes never seemed right.

On the other hand, because the externals felt all wrong, and because we didn't have our families around, and because we knew parcels and cards might not arrive on time, if at all, we really made the most of what we did have. We made an effort to decorate our houses, to have a tree No Matter What, to get together with friends and neighbours, to sing carols, to have children's parties, gift exchanges, do a nativity ourselves if we had to, and we made it work. As Kris said in her recent post, we had to think about the real reason for Christmas because we weren't really being distracted from it by anything else, unless it was our own efforts to reproduce the western trappings!

Here, I suppose I kind of expected Christmas to be laid out on a plate. Here it would be celebrated in the way I was used to, I wouldn't have to make it happen by getting together with the other mums and saying, "What shall we do to make Christmas Chrismassy?"

Here yes there is a lot of talk about Christmas. Yes it is cold and dark (!) and the town centres and some houses are bedecked with beautiful lights. The children have carol services coming up at both their schools, and Christmas Fairs and Abby had a "Jingle Ball".

But, I am struck, and a bit depressed, by how secular all the hype is. Here you do not ever walk into a supermarket and hear carols being played. The shops are loud with pop music, but nothing remotely carolly. The television is wall to wall with ads for Christmas shopping, but they mainly revolve around half-price sofas, and half-price alcohol. It seems as though the most fun anyone is expecting to have this Christmas is to sit on their new amazing sofa drinking and watching television! I have not heard a single mention of Jesus or of anything meaningful behind Christmas on television so far.

Today Abigail and I went clothes shopping, because apart from her uniform we had not bought the poor cold girl any winter clothes since we arrived! Gloucester High Street was awash with people doing their Christmas shopping, all shoulders sloping down towards bulging bags. But looking around at the faces, I saw that nobody looked remotely happy. They more looked determined, and grim.

Even me (to use a Ugandan phrase) - a few days ago, when I realised that this new job is more time consuming than I had anticipated, I was fretting about when I would manage to get all our Christmas shopping done and cards written. Then I pulled myself up short, because I saw that I was no better than anyone else - making Christmas all about those things. What about, how was I going to find time to meditate on the birth of the Saviour? And to be honest, I have not done that. I have been really taken up with the new job, and with getting the children through all their end of term activities. I want to spend time thinking about Jesus coming into the world but I have been distracted from it. I have not had time for it. And so far, nothing much has called my attention to that omission.

Tomorrow we are going back again to the local Baptist Church, which Abby and Alex have declared their favourite, and which we also like - hopefully God will push and pull my heart and spirit back on track. Hopefully I will feel His peace which I need, and His joy which I long for, and the rest of Advent will be a turning towards Him, away from the world, away from the worry and the material demands. The baby in the manger will be from now on the focal point, the anchor I will cling to. In Him, in the Saviour he grew up to be, is my source of hope. That is my prayer tonight, a bit late but not too late, half way through our first Advent in England.

Ostriches!

On a lighter note, today Abby had a schoolfriend, Charlotte, over for the day. We went to a favourite place of ours outside Gloucester, Over Farm, which is a huge farm with a beautiful farm shop, as well as a collection of exotic and not-so-exotic animals which you can feed with packets of animal nuts bought in the shop. They have ponies, donkeys, sheep of course and goats, pigs, a buffalo, and... ostriches. The ostriches have managed to hatch a baby this year, which is quite an achievement here. It was a lovely sunny cold December day, and great to be outdoors. And to warm up with hot chocolate afterwards!

All work and no play...

So I have been working at my new job as Librarian for the Westminster Theological College, for three weeks now. It is more like being a virtual librarian than a real one, in that, the libraries I have to manage and order books for are in nine study centres all over the UK. So I don't actually see the books - I have to order them for the nine centres, who are all at different stages of acquiring the required books (so there are some scary spreadsheets involved, including the master-plan and then multiple stages of record- keeping. Once books have been ordered they have to be entered on the online catalogue system - which I don't know how to do yet. Bar codes and Dewey numbers have to be printed and sent out by post to the nine different centres for them to stick onto the books when they arrive. Once books have been paid for there is a monthly tracking record to be produced, which I also don't know how to do yet.... Part of it is that the old librarian is too busy (hence handing on the job) to spend enough time with me to show me - although he has spent a lot of time with me -, so we are doing it in stages, and I am doing my best to keep up with what I do know how to do. But meanwhile, the directors of the nine Hubs (teaching centres) are emailing me about particular books the catalogue says they have, which they don't have, books which they do have which don't appear on the system, books which have the wrong barcodes on, barcodes which are peeling off, barcode scanners which are not working... Heeeeelp!!!

But I am now at the stage of feeling that I understand the stages of what I have to do, and I know I can do them. But there is this sizeable backlog of small issues, books which are missing and have to be replaced, books which were ordered a year ago, paid for and never arrived, problems which need solving, and I just don't see how I can do it all in 7 - 10 hours a week.

On the other hand, I love the organisation, it is pretty cool - all the study centres have lectures on Monday and Tuesday evenings, some recorded on dvds, and some given via live skype links with the lecturer, who might be in Canada, north of England, London... There are also some "live" lectures and there are also seminars via skype where the lecturer appears as a huge head on the screen and can see all the students, and he speaks to them by name - it is really space-age - like Star Trek as someone put it.

Before the evening sessions begin, there is lovely worship and prayer. The college came out of New Wine which is a charismatic Anglican movement, and so that is the genre of the whole set-up. My colleagues are lovely people who are kind and helpful, and I really enjoy being with them.

I am thankful to God for this job. We needed me to have an income. And in the current climate, jobs are not easy to come by. I feel that it is God-given. And there are all these really good things about it.

But it is stretching me, which is probably good for me. I haven't been stretched in this way, to doing something new and challenging, that I am actually being paid for and with responsibility attached, - with a lot of people depending on me to sort this all out, and get it right, fast - for a long time.

But I have been feeling pretty stressed about it, to the extent that I have been waking up in the early hours feeling tense, tearful, wondering if I have made a mistake... Yet rationally I know I'll be OK, and that I can do it, and once I have got to grips with all the elements of the job I am pretty convinced I will love it. And every single day, when I come back from work I feel completely fine and sure that it is going to be great. But the next morning I wake up a nervous wreck again.

So this nervousness might be my anxiety working over-time, it might be thyroid related, - or it might be that with all the changes and uncertainties we have gone through in the last five months I am more strung out than I realised. Or it might be spiritual.

Anyway, I would appreciate your prayers for me as I deal with this, and as I learn the last few bits I need to learn - and that I'll be able to get the book order I am working on done in time for the new module which is starting soon!!