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Life is messy

8/29/2017

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A few years ago I headed to Braidwood for the Airing of the Quilts. Quilts of every size, shape, colour and design hung from awnings, cascaded over balconies, beautified shop windows and even old pubs. The town was buzzing with festivities and it truly was a celebration of beauty.
 
I've never made a quilt, but I admire people who can make beauty out of a myriad of shreds ... who have the eye for choosing the colours and patterns that work together ... who use shreds that in themselves aren't beautiful yet when worked with others, create a thing of beauty. 
 
As I walked around the town, mesmerised by the skill of the quilters, I remembered a quote from the movie How to Make an American Quilt,

"Young lovers seek perfection, old lovers have learnt the art of sewing shreds together and of seeing beauty in a multiplicity of patterns."  
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The movie is about a group of older women, members of a quilting bee, sharing the stories of their lives with a young girl trying to decide whether to marry. One after the other they share the heartbreaks, the bitter times, the grief and the joys ... the twists and turns their lives have taken.

Slowly it begins to dawn on the young woman that no matter what choice she makes, life will inevitably come with heartache and brokenness intertwined with joy and good times.


As I drove home that afternoon, I thought about the quilts, the quote and about how messy life is.  I make mistakes and unwise choices. I’m human. Relationships break. We hurt one another, we forgive and start again. Life is made up of a thousand broken pieces ... pieces from every chapter of our lives ... beautiful bits ... painful bits ... colourful bits ... ugly bits.  

When I was young I wanted everything to be perfect and struggled because it wasn't. I exerted enormous energy in trying to straighten out the topsy turvy, but to no avail. I had to learn the lessons that age alone could teach me, that life is messy and unpredictable, that I will fail and others will fail me ... there's no such thing as perfection. One day it dawns that we are all broken and most of us feel inadequate ... we are not alone.

Slowly I've accepted that life is a mixture of 'glory and grime'.  

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to believe the bad stuff… to focus on our mistakes and stuff ups … and so much harder to accept the good? Seeing good in myself feels like pride but I've come to realise that I need to hold the two in balance ... to accept my brokenness and value the way God has used it for good in my life, and at the same time enjoy and appreciate the good and beautiful things God created in me … “To be able to sew the shreds together and see beauty in a multiplicity of patterns.


Or as Corrie Ten Boom put it,
 
“The dark threads are as needful
In the weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned.” 


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If you love quilting, Airing of the Quilts  is on the third weekend in November.  The township is alive with all sorts of activities and you get to enjoy a quaint country town full of history and the beauty of a bygone era.
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Messiah's misfits

8/22/2017

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Twelve months ago I started this blog with the vulnerability most of us face at some stage of our life. You know the feeling when shame whispers loudly in your ear, “You’re not good enough”, “Why would anyone want to read what you write”, “You’re photos are not that great".
 
Many times over the year I’ve had to fight the same doubts but pushed on hoping that in sharing the beauty I find in life, someone might be encouraged, inspired, challenged or at the very least a thought or image might brighten their day. Today I step out even further into the arena.
 
I’ve finished my ramble through Romans for now and I’ve tumbled into the fascinating letters Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers. He pours out his heart. He doesn’t pull any punches.
 
“It seems to me that God has put us who bear his message on stage in a theatre in which no one wants to buy a ticket … we’re the Messiah’s misfits. We’re treated like garbage, potato peelings from the culture’s kitchen. And it’s not getting any better.” The Message
 
He was ridiculed and abused by those who rejected him and his beliefs.
 
I’ve spent the majority of my life in a country which called itself a Christian country, where the laws of the land were based on God’s law and where there was freedom of worship and of speech … my right to my beliefs were respected by government and the judiciary.


That's no longer true. Australia is no longer considered a Christian country and in an incredibly short period of time we’ve seen a reversal from respect for the Christian faith to rejection. As I listen to so much of the commentary today, which is hostile and dismissive of Christianity, I see the suffering and persecution that our brothers and sisters are experiencing across the world has arrived at our doorstep.

It has been easy to be a complacent and comfortable Christian until now. Most of us haven’t had to stand against persecution for our faith, but that is about to change and it is changing rapidly. Maybe that is a good thing.
 
Maybe we will be forced to stand up in a way we never have before. Maybe this will be the opportunity for a renewed passion for Christ and for shining light into an increasingly dark world.
As the world tinkers on the brink of war, moral disintegration, terrorism, racial uprising and corruption, there's an even greater need for love and grace to shine through. As Pope Francis said, “We need a revolution, a revolution of tenderness, which starts from the heart and reaches out thought the eyes, ears and hands”.

He also reminded us that, “Tenderness is not weakness; its fortitude”.

I love that word, fortitude … courage, bravery, strength of character, fearlessness, and endurance. That’s the stuff of revolution … a revolution of love and forgiveness.  "For God's Way is not about mere talk; it's an empowered life" 1 Corinthians 4:20.


Perhaps the road ahead is God’s gift, to shake us out of our complacency. I’ve no doubt it is calling us to a fresh commitment to loving … love that blesses those who persecute us and does good to those who hate us or believe differently. There's nothing new in that but there is a new urgency to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
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The secret to ageing well

8/15/2017

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Last week I got to celebrate the 90th birthday of a lifelong friend. I’ve known Joan ever since I was a small child, she has prayed for me, cared for me and been an inspiration over all those years.
 
Joan is the epitome of love, grace, kindness, patience, gentleness, compassion, generosity, thoughtfulness and so much more. Even though she has spent many years in a nursing home, and this year a broken hip robbed her of her mobility, I have never heard her complain.
 
She always asks if I had trouble parking because she doesn’t want me to have to walk too far. Her conversations are all about me – how am I? How is all my family? What have I been doing? She tells me about the folk in the home, the ones she is concerned about.
 
Her whole life she has cared for others. As a nursing sister and passionate worker within the Nurses Christian Fellowship, Joan cared for and nurtured a myriad of people in her lifetime. As a friend she poured herself out in love in endless ways and always with a beautiful smile and a keen sense of humour.  
 
As many people came together to celebrate her 90 years, I watched her quietly caring for each person who spent time with her. It made me realise that the way you live your life is the way you live old age. Sometimes Joan can get a little confused and her mind is not quite as sharp as it used to be and yet her loving, caring, thoughtfulness never ceases to shine though. Its second nature, its who she is ... a woman of grace.
 
In contrast, those who are negative or complaining in life bring those attributes to old age. We've all met them, grumpy and cantankerous ... never quite content. They are miserable in life and somehow it seems magnified in old age.
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Joan's life has been an inspiration to me and now she is inspiring me in old age. It seems to me that we spend a lifetime 'becoming' and old age is the evidence of what we’ve become.  Both a sobering and motivating thought!
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Guerrillas of grace

8/8/2017

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I took these images in Normandy at sunrise. I'll never forget the  stillness, the sheer beauty, the muted colours ... like an exquisite watercolour brushed across the sky and mirrored in the river. I don't think I have ever been so overwhelmed by beauty.
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I chose these images because for me they symbolise  the  everydayness of a new day dawning, sometimes with spectacular beauty, sometimes overcast and colourless, but nevertheless a day in which I will probably encounter some of the battles Ted Loder describes in his book, Guerrillas of Grace.  It's a favourite of mine.

Ted combines poetry and prayer with an honesty and rawness that captures the struggles of life.. He puts into words the ache and longings of my heart in an everyday, down-to-earth way ... the way I so often think. 


Guerrillas and grace sound quite contradictory, two words that you wouldn't expect to find together and yet one dictionary definition of a guerrilla is 'a freedom fighter' … someone who stands against “Both the subtle and blatant pressures to conform”. 
 
Loder said, “Certainly Jesus was the pre-eminent guerrilla of grace; he confronted repressive institutions and liberated captive minds and hearts with his words and his life”. 
Jesus taught a revolutionary way of living ... to love my enemies, forgive those who mistreat me and pour myself out for "the least of these".
 
Guerrillas of Grace  is a collection of prayers, prayers for the battles of life … prayers that inch me away from conformity towards being free and real before God as I stand in his wonderful grace. Prayers for those who want a radical relationship with Jesus rather than a safe, comfortable, rule-keeping  type of Christianity.
 
I share this prayer without comment, hoping that it speaks to you as it does to me.


O persistent God,
deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle.
Pressure me that I might grow more human,
not through the lessening of my struggles,
but through the expansion of them
that will undamn me
and unbury my gifts.
 
​
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Deepen my hurt
until I learn to share it
and myself
openly,
and my needs honestly.
 
Sharpen my fears
until I name them
and release the power I have locked in them
and they in me.
 
Accentuate my confusion
until I shed those grandiose expectations
that divert me from the small, glad gifts
of the now and the here and the me.
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Expose my shame where it shivers,
crouched behind the curtain of propriety,
until I laugh at last
through my common frailties,
laugh my way to becoming whole.
 
Deliver me
from just going through the motions
and wasting everything I have
which is today,
a chance,
a choice,
my creativity,
your call.

Ted Loder, Prayers for the Battle, Guerrillas of Grace.
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Contagious

8/1/2017

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Recently I curled up on the lounge with Mr 5 year old and introduced him to the antics of Herbie the Love Bug. Now he’s a very happy little boy but I have never heard him laugh as hard as he did that day. I found myself laughing out loud, not because of what was happening on the screen but because his laughter was so contagious.
 
Don’t you love a contagious laugh, the sort that invites you in? Perhaps a giggle,
chortle, cackle or a deep belly laugh, a lung–squeezing, belly-shaking, eye-watering laugh that makes your sides ache, the sort that doesn’t know when to stop.
 
That really exhausted feeling you get after a jolly good laugh is your body responding to laughter in the same way it does to a workout. It's been called "internal jogging". Your blood pressure decreases and laughter gives your diaphragm and abdominal, respiratory and back muscles a workout. It relaxes 17 facial muscles!

It's a stress buster. It can lift your spirits, change your mood and defuse a tense situation. Research shows we are 30 times more likely to laugh with other people than we are to laugh alone, so laughter connects us to others and reduces loneliness. Laughter reduces pain by releasing endorphins that are more powerful than the equivalent amounts of morphine.

And there's new evidence from the American Institute of Cardiology that laughter helps your blood vessels function better. It acts on the inner lining of blood vessels, called the endothelium, causing vessels to relax and expand, increasing blood flow ... good for the heart and brain. So there are plenty of reasons to take laughter seriously!  
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Laughter is one of the beautiful gifts of life. 
 
I suspect heaven rings with laughter. Nature constantly points me to a humorous and whimsical Creator who made a Kookaburra's laugh and the cumbersome and awkward looking Pelican, yet when it soars, is there anything more graceful? 
 
There’s the peculiar looking Red-lipped Batfish that looks like something from a Revlon lipstick advertisement and it’s a fish that doesn't swim but walks around on the bottom of the ocean. There are plants that snare and eat insects alive and an endless array of strange, weird and intriguing animals and insects that must have been created by a fun-loving God.
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Life has become so serious. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with all the injustice and evil in the world and the the difficulties and struggles of our own life. Maybe its time to intentionally   add more laughter to our lives ... be more light hearted and use this precious gift to help others lighten up too. So be a little crazy ...
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  • Wear odd socks tomorrow - one red, one green
  • Scour the op shop for that crazy shirt and silly hat and dare to different
  • Fill your home with laughter
  • Invest in some good quality fun movies and watch with family, friends or someone who is lonely or doesn't get out much - my favourite, The Intouchables. If you can recommend others, please leave a comment and share so others can enjoy them too
  • Defuse tension with laughter. My son arrived for his HSC English exam to find his classmates super stressed and panicking. He assured them that they'd all be fine - "Just remember, E=mc2" - they dissolved into laughter and the stress dissipated
  • Relive some funny memories with family or friends - "Remember when ... "
  • Befriend people who bring out the fun side of you, they are a priceless gift
  • Kidnap a friend, a grandchild or neighbour - do something fun together and laugh a lot
  • Cultivate the habit of looking for the funny side of life
  • Remember, a day without laughter is a day wasted   
  • Treasure laughter as a precious gift and share abundantly​ ​
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    Author

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

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