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A toasting fork and a villa in Tuscany

5/29/2018

6 Comments

 
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While having a clean out recently I found the toasting fork we used in my childhood home. In an instant I was back in the weatherboard cottage where I grew up. It was a small house with only six rooms, a lounge room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms, the tiniest keep-your-elbows-in-when-you’re-getting-dried bathroom and a toilet in the backyard.
 
The dining room had the only table in the house so became the centre of the home. There we ate our meals, entertain guests, did our homework, and my mother, who was a dressmaker, made wedding dresses to order. I remember the old leadlight dresser that held our china and cutlery, the ice chest, which kept our food chilled before refrigeration and the gaslight on the wall, which we lit during blackouts that came with monotonous regularity.
 
The only heating in the house was a gas fire, with ceramic candles that glowed red when they were heated. In winter I volunteered to make the toast each morning, holding the bread on the toasting fork in front of the fire so I could get warm. Sometimes we’d toast crumpets which we ate dripping with butter and honey. On cold winter evenings we often toasted raisin bread for supper and on special occasions we had toasted marshmallows with hot chocolate.
 
Oh the memories that old fork rekindled … the warmth of the fire, the chatter and laughter around the table and even the taste of toasted thickly sliced bread, which the baker had deliver that day, with lashings of homemade jam or honey.
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Scientists tell us that the human brain’s memory storage capacity is approximately 2.5 million gigabytes and memories are stored, not as a single memory but in different regions of the brain – smell, emotions, visual, spatial, auditory etc. We remember by association, such as the sight of the toasting fork, and then the brain connects all the different parts to make a complete memory. We have an average of 70,000 thoughts a day, that’s a lot of memory to store.
 
Triggers to memory come in all shapes and sizes but they are usually associated with our senses. In 2007, my cousin and I had a week in a villa just south of Florence, in Tuscany. Set on a hill, the villa looked out across olive groves, vineyards and the lush Tuscan countryside with almost 360-degree vistas. The rooms were spacious with high ceilings and rich, vibrant colours on the walls and furnishings. We ate in a courtyard surrounded by pots of brilliant red geraniums and grape vine draped arbors.
 
Now whenever I use the special soap I used on that trip, the fragrance brings back memories of the villa, the fun times I had with my cousin, the sights, the tastes and the colours of Tuscany. Smell is the most powerful of all triggers evidently because we have at least 1,000 different types of smell receptors but only four types of light sensors and about four types of receptors for touch.
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And memories return at often the most unexpected moments and sometimes with the most powerful emotions. Last week music did that for me.
 
I was staying with friends last Sunday and went with them to their historic, stone country church. The organ was very old but the organist had a magic touch. I was transported by the music and after the service I went to thank him. Before I could utter a word, I burst into tears, to my surprise, and his. Then I heard myself saying, “You remind me of my father, he was a pianist and organist and played with the same style, passion and sensitivity as you”. Hearing that music brought my father to ‘life’ again for me and I was overwhelmed by the memories.
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What a complex and wonderful thing memory is. It connects our past with our present and provides the road map of our life. Oscar Wilde says, “Memory is the diary we all carry with us.” It's the diary we write everyday; the sum total of the pain and the richness of life, stitched together into the fabric of our existence.
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But memory is so much more. It’s the road map for our resurrection life. Jesus promised, “ The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you”. And not just his Word and his promises but the way he has provided in the past, his unfailing love and goodness over the years that have become my foundation for trusting him for the future. He reminds me of the lessons of the past that I need to relearn again and again and again. Memory is a part of the gift of faith.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits!” Psalm 103:2
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6 Comments

The Autumn that time forgot

5/22/2018

1 Comment

 
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I’m a city girl at heart but I do miss the seasonal changes that country folk enjoy. Each year I make two pilgrimages, in spring and autumn, to the hilltop village of Mount Wilson, in the heritage listed Blue Mountains National Park. It's a time to embrace the beauty of the changing season and they are some of my favourite days of the year.
 
With a population of just 200 people, Mount Wilson boasts a church, a fire station and a village hall. There are no cafes or shops, just unspoilt vistas in all directions. It's a village of gardens where cold climate plants thrive in the rich volcanic soil and cold mountain atmosphere. The gardens are vast and magnificent, an investment of decades of love and commitment, and each year that love blossoms into a spectacle of beauty.
 
This year I wandered my way thorugh the early morning mist, through the lush rainforest into the centre of a village wrapped in a blanket of green ... vivid, luminous green. I was stunned. The same week last year I had photographed those same trees ablaze with red and orange. As I ventured deeper into the village there were a few glimpses of colour, the odd tree valiantly forcing its way into the rapidly ebbing season, but mostly it seemed to be the autumn that time forgot.
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It had never entered my mind that autumn would be missing. Doesn’t autumn follow summer as death follows life? I took it for granted. It was a given.
 
I guess I live a lot of my life like that, taking life for granted.
 
And yet it's the very thing that has frustrated me over the years. When the washing and ironing was done, clean clothes in the drawers, food in the fridge and meals on time, nothing was ever said. But when something wasn’t there, I always heard. Funny how we don’t miss something until it isn’t there or until what’s missing makes life uncomfortable.
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While I'm blithely taking things for granted, I'm missing the gifts around me every day. It reminds me of a story my mother told me.

Edna and Stan were siblings. Their father was a quiet, loving man but always busy outside the home, their mother, an exceedingly demanding woman who feigned ill health to get attention. As soon as Stan found work, he moved to another state while Edna became the faithful, loyal daughter who cared for her parents and was constantly at her mother's beck and call.

On rare occasions when Stan came back to visit his parents, his mother would 'kill the fatted calf' and organise the celebrations. They were difficult days for Edna, not that she begrudged the celebrations, she loved her brother dearly and was excited to see him again, but it hurt.

Edna was my mother. She shared with me that over all the years she cared for her mother there was never any appreciation or words of kindness, whatever she gave was just expected of her.
Oh how easy it is for people, especially those close to us, to blur into the fabric of life, to lose their value, become commonplace, and taken for granted. 

Rarely is it intentional, our focus is elsewhere rather than in the present moment. Mostly we just fail to notice what is being given to us or we register but don't think to voice our gratitude. I think maybe the opposite of 'taken for granted' is 'appreciated'.

My next-door neighbour taught kindergarten children for over 40 years. Her advice, “The best way to change a child's behaviour is to catch them being good and take the opportunity to praise them”. The power of appreciation! We all know it ... it has the power to change our perspective on life.

And its not just people, but things and experiences that I can so easily take for granted ... health, my ability to go to buy whatever groceries I need, being able to get in a car and drive wherever I want to go and a roof over my head. If I'm honest there are an endless list of things I do on automatic, never stopping to realise how fortunate I am, never pausing to be grateful. Each one, a gift left unwrapped.


“To be ignorant of the sacrifices of others that yielded the blessings I enjoy leaves me exchanging the reality of 'blessing' for the assumption of 'entitlement.'   Craig Lounsbrough 

A very different view of autumn in the Tusheti Mountains.
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/10/the-shepherds-of-the-tusheti-mountains/544514/​
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1 Comment

Changing winds

5/15/2018

4 Comments

 
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It was still dark and the air was crisp on my face as I headed out. It was my first time in Canowindra, enticed there by the annual International Hot Air Balloon race. I pulled my jacket more tightly around me; it was colder than I’d anticipated. The excitement was palpable as I joined the other early birds gathering around the showground in the barely awake morning.
 
Various groups were laying their balloons out on the ground and the race was on to get them inflated and ready to go. There are time limits and tasks to accomplish throughout the race so everyone was keen to be the first to fly. As morning broke and light filtered through the clouds, the balloons took on a life of their own, bursting into a kaleidoscope of colour.
 
I stood in wonder at the transformation of a flat piece of material into something truly majestic, but it was a painful process. Sometimes when it was half inflated it would flutter again to the ground like an exhausted dove and the whole process would begin again. Patience, perseverance and team effort and suddenly she was up, the beauty of her colours accentuated by the rising sun.
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The roar of the burners broke the morning silence. One by one the balloons lifted off and quickly became no more than a dot on the horizon.  In less than an hour, they were back to perform one of their tasks. Watching the balloonists skill as they navigated their balloon around the oval placing their markers in just the right place to win the most points, was fascinating. Guiding such huge objects around trees, posts and rooftops must be a challenge but it looked effortless.
 
After watching about a third of the balloons return, the rest went sailing by, high in the sky. An official told me that the wind had changed and the rest were unable to accomplish their task. I’d been so caught up in the wonder and intrigue of it all that I hadn’t thought about their dependence on the wind. They weren’t in control, the wind was.
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Few of us enjoy change; some of us fight actively against it, but change opens a door that we might never open, as I discovered one day in the back blocks of Paris.  My daughter and I had just arrived the night before and had planned a day sightseeing. Over breakfast my daughter was chatting to some other guests who’d been to some markets the day before. At the mention of markets, I saw my daughter’s eyes light up and watched her get even more animated when she discovered they were antique markets.
 
My heart sank, but to the markets we went. Filled to overflowing with French furniture, exquisite furnishings, painting, sketches and memorabilia, they were outstanding markets and beyond anything we could imagine back home. The morning passed quickly and as we exited the markets, chatting about all we’d do with the afternoon ahead, I was mugged.

​In one horrible moment I lost everything, my money, credit cards, even my bus ticket back to Oxford where I was staying. Suddenly, everything we’d planned, all those weeks of dreaming and anticipation felt swept away … in one inconceivable moment, everything changed.
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Reporting it to the French police, when neither of us spoke French, trying to cancel credit cards without my phone card and with only French speaking operators, and to be left with nothing more than the small amount of money my daughter had, left us feeling lost and alone.

Returning to the hotel for a much-needed cup of tea, I remember vividly saying to my daughter, “Well he’s taken everything but I refuse to let him rob us of the fun and enjoyment of this trip. We will find another way". And we did.
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We couldn’t afford transport so we walked everywhere and discovered the real Paris, beyond the tourist maps, beauty in the back blocks that we would otherwise have missed. We found good food in quaint and unlikely places and went home with spectacular memories. Those few days taught me a lot about myself, they gave me a whole new perspective on change and I became a much wiser traveller. 

  • Change challenges. I experienced things I would never have chosen for myself. It took me around corners I wouldn’t have turned, and forced me to explore the unknown and find its hidden benefits.  
 
  • Change exposes. It taught me a lot about myself. It showed me my capacity for handling trauma and how I react in an emergency. It forced me to be innovative and dig deep inside myself to find courage.
 
  • I view change through my lens. The mugging reminded me that the labels I put on experiences, ‘bad’, ‘tragic’, ‘horrific’, are my perspective. It’s only in hindsight that I saw how God turned it for good and that it enabled me to grow in faith.
 
Sometimes change comes as a strong wind that blows us off course, sometimes as a hurricane that turns our world upside down with searing pain or loss. But the haunting voice of change always calls us to have the courage to step out into the unknown in faith and find what we might never have chosen for ourselves. 
The greatest growth lies beyond change and how we handle that change reveals a great deal about who we are and who we can become.
4 Comments

Table talk

5/8/2018

1 Comment

 
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This year dear friends took me out to lunch for my birthday to a quaint little restaurant called Bygone Beauties, snuggled along a side street in Leura, in the spectacular Blue Mountains. I felt as if I'd arrived with Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. In every corner of the room, along every shelf, and stuffed into endless wall-long glass cabinets were teapots and teacups of every imaginable size, shape and era.

There was a tearoom where a waiter in a top hat served fresh scones with lashings of jam and cream, and a lunchroom that looked out onto the first blush of autumn. It was a delightful setting and the food was good but it was the time around the table that was most memorable; time to chat and reminisce, to laugh and to share deeply about life. It passed all too quickly.

These friends have a special place in my heart. Our friendship goes back decades. Six wives met regularly in each other’s homes to pray for each other, our families and our church. We would lunch together and encourage one another. Then three or four times a year we would share an evening meal, husbands included. Twelve of us around the table. Our conversations were rich and deep and there was lots of laughter and celebration, the enjoyment of good food and each other. It was table fellowship.
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That’s the thing about memorable meals, they feed more than the body; they feed the soul. 
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This week I watched The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and one sentence jumped out at me. Three starving people were given the opportunity for an unexpected meal … “But Elizabeth knew they had a deeper hunger than for food, they hungered for relationship”
… they invited their neighbours to share their precious meal.
 
Food and relationship, the two essentials of life, knitted together around a table. Maybe that’s why Jesus had a habit of turning up at tables.
 
He ate with sinners and misfits, demonstrating his love. He sat at the table with Pharisees and showed them what compassion looked like and around that same table he taught them about humility and encouraged them to show hospitality to those who had no way of returning the favour. As his life drew to a close, he invited the twelve men he loved most dearly to a meal around a table, to share his heart.
 
Jesus met people at the most central and ordinary place of human connection, the humble table. 
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Its easy to see a meal as the next thing on our to do list, especially in the time-poor, technologically-saturated world in which we live. To eat quickly so we can get onto all the other things that need to be done. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. That’s how I was raised.

I grew up in a home with a mother who constantly required us to hurry up and eat our dinner. The minute we’d finished the last morsel, our plate was whisked away so we could get washed up and the kitchen cleaned. I learned to “get a wriggle on” as she used to say.

I still eat far too quickly, but somewhere along the path of life I’ve come to value the meal table as a sacred place ... a place of communion. A place where I can offer, not just food and hospitality, but myself.

​A place of safety where people can share their stories, their burdens and their joys. A place where they feel heard, whether that’s the excited outpouring of a child’s day or the struggling questions of a mate. A place of laughter and relaxation and that, its-good-to-be-home feeling.
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In her book, Dinner; a love story, Jenny Rosenstrach quotes, “There is so much tearing at the family fabric these days; anything we can do to make the cloth stronger is worth embracing”. I agree. Dinner should be a love story, not a battle zone. That may mean choosing to leave the 'baggage' of the day at the door as I come to the table, determining to be present. It will mean letting go of my desire to be heard, in order to hear others. It will mean being patient as a little one tries to explain, and creating an enjoyable experience so mealtimes are looked forward to. 

I wonder what our children are learning day by day as they eat at our meal table? I suspect we teach more then we realise ... good and not so good. I once read about an employer who, on trying to decide whether to employ someone, would take them out for a meal. They watched what the future employee ordered, how they spoke to the waiter, how they ate and how they handled conversation.  A meal table is a place of revelation.


But creating beautiful memories around a meal table is worth the effort and maybe we follow closest in the footsteps of Jesus when our table becomes a place of communion, where we share our food and ourselves with love, grace and gratitude.

What will people look back on with fond memories of times around your table? What is your most memorable meal?

​Please leave a comment and share your memories.
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Just a dot on the map

5/1/2018

2 Comments

 
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I found it quite by accident. Just a dot on the map on the road from Orange to Forbes, one of those incidental places you pass through without even noticing, but to my surprise it’s a town with a fascinating history.
 
Eugowra is a pretty little town
consisting of just a handful of shops, a pub, museum and general store. It has a total population of 530, but as I discovered it wasn’t always like that. Dotted around the town are significant buildings that give a hint to its much larger past and on the walls are murals telling their history. Other murals are painted on billboards that stand at important historical sights where buildings once stood, long gone but not forgotten.
 
As I wandered around the town, enticed by murals beckoning from every corner, I realised that this sleepy little town was once a thriving community of sheep farmers, timber getters and granite miners. It throbbed with families whose Saturday afternoons were spent watching The Wizard of Oz at the local theatre, men who went to war and young couples who married and created homes. But then came economic downturn and people moved to larger regional cities to find jobs and the town slowly died.
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The story of Eugowra began way back in 1834 when a bush station was established on what was then the route taken by bullock drays on their way to the Lachlan goldfields, and Cobb and Co coaches carrying gold back to Orange and Bathurst. In June 1862 Eugowra suddenly became front page news when the infamous Frank Gardiner and his gang of bushrangers, including Ben Hall, staged Australia’s largest ever gold robbery. They held up and robbed a stagecoach carrying 84.56kg of gold and 3,700 pounds in cash. ​ Only a portion was ever recovered. 
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A few years ago Jodie Greenhalgh became part of the story of Eugowra. She is a graphic designer with a heart to bring life back into the town and she had a wild idea. Jodie suggested a series of murals telling the story of Eugowra’s past. They set about finding sponsors, paint, and artists, sign writers and graphic designers from across Australia willing to be part of the project.
 
In the first year 30 artists began to tell the story with brushstrokes on bricks, metal and wood. From bushrangers to rusty cars and the click of the shearers shears, the story unfolded. Two years later there were 65 artists, each one becoming part of the bigger story, and it isn't finished yet. Now tourist coaches stop and people like me are coaxed from their cars, and the town is breathing again. I love the power of a small idea!
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One of the major industries in Eugowra is granite mining and 1820 cubic metres of granite was processed locally and used in the building of the new Parliament House. I love the way the smallest places can contribute in significant ways.
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I drove home wondering what the gallery of my life would look like, what would be included and how would the artist depict it?  

We each have an individual story that's unique and we each contribute that story to others in our life ... to siblings and parents, life partners, children and friends. We enlarge each other's story and ours in the process. But in the upcloseness of immediacy, within the parameters of our own world, it's hard to see the bigger picture. 

Just last week a friend reminded me that about 35 years ago I introduced her to the author, George MacDonald and began for her a love affair with his books. Now she is watching her children come to love his stories too. Day by day we throw pebbles into a pond unaware of where the ripples will lead. We don't just cook a meal for our family, create a home or have coffee and a conversation with a friend, we are investing in people's lives and trust that God will take our small investments and paint them into the bigger picture we don't yet see.

My life and yours probably won't ever be depicted in a gallery but can I encourage you to record it in some way so those who follow after you might see the bigger picture ... will understand how your life was a part of who they are ... maybe catch a glimpse of the ripples on the pond you set in motion. 

I was privileged to write the history of the suburb where I live. Over four years, I sat and talked with folk who'd lived the history. By the time the book was launched, some of those people had died and their story would have died with them but thankfully it is now recorded for generations to come.

You don't have to write a book, you can narrate it in your own voice and record it - what I would give to hear my father's voice today! It could be just a series of photos and captions and maybe you get the whole family involved because it's their story too, but whatever you do, leave a witness to your life for those who follow and a testimony to the hand of God in your life.
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    Author

    Glenyss Barnham
    ​I'm a mother and grandmother who loves  discovering beauty in unexpected places.

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