Seeking God – Creator

When you say you believe in God as 'Creator' these days people are pretty much ready to sign you up to the ranks of the crazies. The whole concept has been so hijacked by people on the one hand insisting on a literal view of the Bible, that I don't believe the Bible text itself warrants, and on the flip side those insisting we narrow the scope of our thinking to only that which can be examined under a microscope.

Don't get me wrong there is a whole world of spectacular things that can be learned through observation and empirical study of the world but we are one of the first eras that has insisted that this is the only way to understand the world. There will always be break points in our understanding, the place where our comfort and control ends and the unknown stretches out before us. We will always have the question of what to do with that, with those the ultimate questions. To my mind, we can close them down because we can't pin them down or we can be like the great philosophers that came before us and ask the questions.

My first degree was in Biology and I have always credited this as a major part of the opening of my mind to the possibility of God. Looking at the sheer wonder of the natural environment, its regenerative potential, its diversity and its sheer beauty was what made a believer out of me. Not a believer in God at the time but a believer in hope and in eternity. It is of course true that death is a fundamental part of the natural world but seeing the amazing power of evolution and how life always overcomes, adapts and perseveres put a deep seated sense of peace inside of me.

 

Snap by my lovely friend Hannah at http://hannahruthking.blogspot.co.uk/

The Christian story, then, of hope rising up out of death made a lot of sense. The world is decaying every day, every thing is born with a shelf life and yet there is something in the natural world that speaks of regeneration and renewal. When a forest is affected by natural fire it looks like the end has come but that fire releases seeds which spring up to form new ecosystems, new life and new ways of being. It's the 'Circle of Life', if you will!

By Hannah Ruth King

The sheer diversity of that life, when I did develop a belief in a 'creator' (not I might add as a chap sitting there making Zebras like clay animals but the author and architect of all life commanding life into being like the conductor of an orchestra) left me in awe. Because I wonder how people who claim to believe in God can ever see him as joyless when they wonder on the fact that there are 400,000 different types of flowering plants on earth? I wonder how they can fail to see humour in the baboon or majesty through the elephant? How a great storm cannot help but stop and make them think about the tiny place we occupy in this great big world under a great big God.

Photo by my other lovely friend http://www.hannahbeatrice.co.uk/

So 'Creator' means a lot to me and I'm not willing to relinquish it, despite the connotations today. 'Creator' means walking outside and looking up at a thousand stars and being deeply amazed..That, to me, is something to hold on to.

Seeking God - Home

Home is one of the most fundamental human needs.The greatest gift we can be given, that we should thank our lucky stars for everyday if we had it, is loving parents and a warm home. Life is often about builidng a home, finding a place to put down roots, to make your own, a place that speaks of you are your place in the world. We Brits are thoroughly obsessed with home, aren't we? Stick on Location, Location and pop us on a sofa and we're golden. I love mine to bits. It is thoroughly trussed up and often reinvented. It is my haven and my resting place.

When out house was broken into I realised what happens when your home no longer feels safe anymore. Suddenly your security is gone, the place where you curl up in a ball in front of the telly after a hard day has been forever changed. The place where you are most vulnerable, where you sleep, cry, laugh and throw birthday parties, has been trampled on. I wailed when it happened to me. And yet the idea of home had dramatically changed for me since I encountered God and I was glad for it at that time.

Home was the second word I spoke about God (I'll leave you guessing on the first!). A sense of 'home' was one of the first feeling that I associated with him. Not that I suddenly had a window on some heavenly place, full of fluffy clouds and angels playing harps and some bearded man standing arms wide open where I instantly hoped I'd go to one day. No, the Christian story I embraced of God made man is a commitment to everything we are - flesh and blood and dramas and laughter and baking and telly and gardening and dog walking and box sets and chips.

I think that the Christian story tells us that God is fundamentally, wholeheartedly fixed on transforming what is broken in our world and putting it, and us, back together.  God will give anything for that end, even himself. Home is not a place we go to. It is the one who comes to us. Who fills us with a sense of peace and belonging because we have found what it is we are made for. Home is not a place, it is a person. Home is God. It cannot be shaken, or trespassed in. No one can take it from you, or burn it down, the price of it will never fall, you will never get sick of it.

I love this poem by Emily Bronte because it reminds me that I am both on a journey to my 'home' and already in it. I journey on as I discover more of God and yet I live in this tragic and broken world, and yet somehow my heart is already at home with God and always has been. That 'will be my pole star to the grave'.

Now Trust a Heart That Trusts in You

Now trust a heart that trusts in you,
And firmly say the word 'Adieu';
Be sure wherever I may roam,
My heart is with your heart at home.

Unless there be no truth on earth,
And vows meant true are nothing worth,
And mortal man have no control
Over his unhappy soul;

Unless I change in every thought,
And memory will restore me nought,
And all I have of virtue die
Beneath a far and foreign sky.

The mountain peasant loves the heath
Better than richest plains beneath;
He would not give one moorland wild
For all the fields that ever smiled;

And whiter brows than yours may be,
And rosier cheeks my eyes may see,
And lightning looks from orbs divine
About my pathway burn and shine;

But that pure light, changeless and strong,
Cherished and watched and nursed so long;
That love that first its glory gave
Shall be my pole star to the grave.

The Seeking God Series

Last year, just before I started theological college, I made this picture.

I did it because I wanted to make a permanant reminder of how I felt about God. I wanted to mark who God was for me right then just in case, when times got hard and academic work overwhelmed me, I lost my way a little. I'm now so grateful for this reminder. It is like a slice out of my life of faith that reminds me of what was, and is, important to me.

These last few months have been wonderful, I have explored new ideas and had many new experiences. I love exploring the scholarship behind the Bible and Theology, to think about the history of religion and how the world has changed. More than anything it enhances my faith. To me, God is truth and there is nothing to be afriad of when heading out into the world to weigh the evidence. That, after all, was how I came to find faith in the first place as a very sceptical Biology undergraduate.

 

To question is essential to any alive faith. If you have never questioned your beliefs then how can you help anyone else in their questioning? If you have never reasoned it out with yourself then how can you stand up and present this stuff week in week out with any conviction? Studying with this level of intensity shakes everything up and you have to wait a while to see how things settle. That is where I am right now and that is what this series is about, forging ahead and putting down some of things I am seeing along the way.

Quite like becoming a Christian for the first time I feel like I am stepping out of one world, full of familiar assumptions and understandings, into something brand new that I don't quite understand yet. As Taylor Swift would say it is miserable and magical! All I know, and what I knew then, is that I have to step out of what is comfortable to discover what is ahead of me.

So that is what this little blog series is all about. I'm not presuming to be able to describe God to you. If I could so easily put God into a blog post what kind of God would that be? No, one thing I have constantly found is that the moment you try to squeeze God into a box, God bursts the box right open.

Rather I'm going to talk about what I have seen so far as I navigate this time of change for myself. This series, like all blogging, is partly to aid my own journey. To give expression to the things I am discovering and the things I rediscovering from my past. To put words to things that I haven't attempted to put words to before.

Each week I'm going to look at one of the words for God I stuck in that frame, written out in scrabble tiles, and share some thoughts for your perusal. I'm offering this little series not to tell you what you should think but in the hope that they provide a springboard and a starting place for your own explorations.

One thing I know from the years that I have been on this strange and wonderful journey is that it is always surprising, always inspiring and always, always brings life.

 

You are most welcome to join me.

Present Moment, Perfect Moment

I've just started reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh called Peace in Every Step. I'm always very interested in anything people like Thich Nhat Hanh have to say. He is both a deeply spiritual man abounding in peace and joy but also deeply involved in the daily sturggle of his people against poverty and war. Peace isn't an abstract concept or a nice warm feeling when your village is being stormed by rebels. Anything that comes out of that scenario has a depth and a reality to it that makes it worth hearing.

In Christian teaching Jesus stresses that the only thing we can really change is ourselves. Why go round trying to change others when you haven't even dealt with youself? If we want peace then we must be peace. War originates in the hearts and minds of people like us. If we hate then we contribute to the human created disasters we see, and are devastated over, on the news. We, by getting our own house in order, can contribute to a better, fairer world. Well, that's what I think anyway.

That's why I take this stuff seriously and see time investing in my own sanity and well being as important. I usually spend Monday mornings this way if I can, setting myself up for the week and setting intentions for how I want to tackle the week ahead. Today, after reading Peace in Every Step, I was reminded of the importance of being in the present monent. This is another thing that resonates with what Jesus taught, why worry about tomorrow when you cannot extend you life by even a single hour? All we really have is now. The past is gone, the future isn't here yet. So I spent half an hour just breathing and being where I am - in my house, in my pyjamas, on a slightly grey autumn day.

When I was travelling I was always in the present moment, there was so much to absorb, where else would you be? I tasted everything with the enthusiasm of someone who knew this might be my one and only chance to walk round a market in Madrid or eat gelato in Florence. I was deeply, deeply happy. But back at home it can feel like that is all slipping away and the days become so mundane again. But perhaps that is because we aren't really seeing them, too busy caught up in our thoughts and worries and so life just passes us by.

I loves taking photos on holiday, it made me see the detail in everything I was looking at and savour it. So this morning I walked around my ordinary place and took some snaps.

Snaps of ordinary things like the flowers in the corner of the room...

 

 

And the carpet beneath my bare feet...



The chilli that finally went red....

 

 

Piles of colourful felt....



A bathroom companion...

 

 

Crumpled bed sheets....

 

The things I love about home...



 

 

Where I 'make use of my time'....(and clearly don't dust much!!)

 

Present moment, perfect moment.

 

Gap Year Adventures

My Gap Year with Tearfund, taken after University, was a hugely life changing experience. I was a new Christian then and I felt like I was learning about myself like I was brand new. I was also laying the foundations in my faith. What would be central to me in this new understanding of the world? Sure, I had connected on a personal level to God but I was still working out what exactly God was like (now isn't that a life time project!) and what calling myself 'Christian' really meant for me.

At the recent IF rally in London I was introduced to the current co-ordinator of the Tearfund Gap Year programme and when she heard that my involvement with Tearfund began there she asked me to write a blog about that journey. It is now up on the Tearfund Journeys blog if you'd like to read more.

A lovely new friend made on my second trip to Zambia

Meanwhile I am off on another journey this month for some well needed rest and a healthy dose of adventure thrown in there to keep me on my toes! I'm signing off then until mid August when I will be back, revived, renewed and raring to go!

Don't Judge a Book by its Dodgy Pamphlet

When I first read any of the New Testament gospels it was from a dodgy looking pamphlet that one of my well meaning, but rather irritating, Christian friends had left lying around my house in an effort to convert me. God bless them, it was a noble effort, but it really wasn't getting anywhere. I ignored the pamphlet of Matthew's gospel for a good six months until a series of events sparked by a rather eventful pub outing lead to me picking it up from its dusty corner of my student apartment and giving it a look.



Needless to say I wasn't reading it in Greek back then!

I immediately had to rip the covers off, far too embarrassed to be reading anything that looked that naff (really, Christian publishers, enough with the dewy eyed lambs already!) and swallow my nagging feelings of annoyance at somehow vindicating my friend for having left it there. I didn't own a Bible except an illustrated childrens one I had been given at Primary School and hadn't even considered cracking that open since it was handed to me age nine.

My reaction, then, to this sad looking pamphlet took me rather by surprise. It actually contained some quite good stuff. It was the teaching that grabbed me first.

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ….So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.' (from Matthew 6)

Good stuff eh? I started to catch a voice in there, of someone really quite interested with a depth and wisdom that I knew I was very much seeking in my own life. As I read more and, horror of horrors, went into a shop and, very red faced, purchased a Bible I heard more and more of this voice, in the different gospels, in the Jewish prophets, all through the book. It was pretty exciting.

It is a strange thing as an adult to come to some of the stories of the Bible in a church that is so familiar with them they sometimes can't even hear them any more. This was the case none more so that the crucifixion stories. I merrily plodded my way through the gospels, drinking in the teaching and laughing (yes, the gospels are actually intentionally funny some times!) at some of the wry remarks of Jesus. I really started to like this guy. He was wise, sure, but kind too. This voice emanating from the page was so very kind. But not in soft, lamb hugging, kind of way. He had a razor sharp tongue and no issue putting people in their place if need be. But he was good, the best really, and like no one I had read about before.

Like a kid watching Narnia and not really getting the whole 'Aslan comes back to life thing' I got to the crucifixion scenes and they knocked me sideways. Sure I knew the story but the narratives are brutal and by now this guy had found a place quite firmly in my heart. I cried a bucket load for someone I didn't even know. I still do in fact, even now when I come back to them for study or in a service, I want to run in like Lucy in Narnia and wrap my arms around him and it make it all ok.

Something in the story sums up so much loss to me. The cruelty of humanity to humanity. How we tear down and destroy even what is good and beautiful. How we are filled with this anger somehow, this alienation and we act it out in such violence and turmoil. And then the loss, the terrible grief that comes with being human. The disciples run away and the women, including Jesus' mother, watch on as he is taken away and beaten and killed. That deep seated horror at the finality of life is summed up in that story for me somehow. That moment when everything is lost.

And then of course comes the resurrection. That great stumbling block that scholars are still arguing about in universities today. I've written my reasons for taking something that seems so utterly fanciful seriously before. But needless to say here there comes up the other part of these stories that has captivated me so very much. They are sown through and sprinkled with hope. At the end of Matthew's gospel I felt like I had been on an epic journey. Met this wonderful new person, learned amazing new things and then horror upon horror lost him in the cruellest way only to find him back again and saying these wonderful words,

'And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age'.

What a story, what a book.

The Beating Heart of Community

One of the greatest appeals of church to me is the random hotch-potch of people it brings together. In fact, the more random the group the better. I've never had much time for the church made up of simply 'the white middle'. There has got to be something wrong there and the simplest explanation is that other sectors of the community feel excluded, cannot understand or are unable to participate in what the church is doing. This, of course, would be fine if the church were operating as some kind of suburban social club but it is supposed to be a community bringing God's light and fullness to the earth so in that case it doesn't quite cut the mustard for it to be a homogeneous mass, does it?

Who is locked out of our churches?

It is one of my often banged drums that I am from one of the poorly represented minorities in the church. A recent survey in the Church of England found that only 6% of members came from 'non-churched' backgrounds. It can be easy to gloss over the significance of this but as the number of people with no faith background increases the more interesting this statistic becomes. It speaks rather loudly that the church needs to address the every widening group of people who frankly have no idea what the church is going on about.

Of course the answer to this comes in many guises. I am convinced there is no one size fits all. Some like it formal, some like is casual. Some like drums, some like organs. Some want a hymn book, some want a big screen. That's cool. But more than anything church must have integrity, a beating heart, to be that place of God's light and love. Without that, well, it is dead in the water. Which is why, I believe, that signs of diverse, loving communities are so key.

Being in training to be a future church leader necessarily involves a lot of thinking about how things ought to be done and the best way to structure a service and so on. These things are all extremely useful when it comes to keeping people engaged or even allowing them to hear what us being said in the first place. This said, I still have a real soft spot for a church where it is all a bit random. And you know why? Because people are a bit random.

I like it when everyone in this big, slightly dysfunctional family we call the church gets to stand up and play their part. I like it when people bring their real prayer requests to God rather than the ones the Vicar thinks sound nice. I like it when people bring their old guitar and just have a bloomin' good go. In the same vein I like it when the organist has been there for forty years and misses every third beat. Because it tells me that people matter more than perfect music or eloquent prayers. That community and love and joy is what we are here for, not getting it 'right'.

So how about you? What is the beating heart that you look for in community?