Adam and Eve seem to have gone wandering…
Have any of you, perchance, borrowed my copy of Trevor Dennis’ Looking God in the Eye? It’s unlikely, I know, but the bible study starts next week, and I’ve just had a note from Amazon saying the other copies I ordered a few weeks ago have been delayed…
Two administrative posts in a row… Something other tomorrow, I think.
If any of you have sent me an email lately that I seem to be ignoring, please try again. I’ve had a few emails fail to reach me lately for reasons that remain mysterious.
The ‘how are we different’ game has been fabulous.
The question now is what can we say that is true for all of us?
Same rules apply: you are free to challenge any claim. We rule out ‘we read this blog’ and any claims to Christianity (too dull if we all are, and too hard for those who might describe themselves otherwise to come out.)
So, what can we say? My offering is in the comments.
Just before the eucharist tonight, I stumbled across a set of pictures that a friend and I once prepared for worship. So, I decided to use them as a focus for where our restless hearts might find God (St Augustine, today).
I picked up a picture that I thought was about prayer — about the longing for prayer, for silence.
And instead, what I got was a childhood memory.
I have only three day-in-and-day-out sort of memories from early childhood. One is of sitting on the floor, smoothing the tassels of the white rug against the dark hardwood floor. Another is trying desperately to pet Skipper — a huge and dignified tom-cat who never once scratched me, for all that he hated my efforts to hold (not pull) his tail. And the third is of Mozel — a woman who shared Skipper’s dignity and patience, and who used to let me follow her around the house.
Mozel cleaned for us. I suppose she came when my mother was ill and my grandmother was fragile, and I was too small not to know that cats don’t like having their tails held. All I knew was that she was a familiar presence and the first person who in some strange way I might have thought of as a friend.
She taught me how to dust the living room tables: square, dark and low, made perfect with soft white cloths, folded and filled with woody, lemony wax. She kept secret the time my crayon drifted where it shouldn’t have and somehow got the red swirls off the wall. And she generally humoured me and let me follow her around though what must have been the ‘why’ stage.
I hadn’t thought of her in years.
So, God bless Mozel, and all those people who receive the friendship of children too small to realise how demanding they are.
wonderful exchange 