Seeker

It's 25 January, the birthday (in 1759) of the Scottish poet Robert Burns . All over the world, people of Scottish descent and others who get drawn in to Burns Night celebrations, will this evening be eating haggis. Ours will be a low key celebration for just 2 people, but we have haggis. What else could we eat on Burns Night? It will be a traditional Scottish haggis and comes from a manufacturer based in an area of Scotland where some of my forbearers were farmers of sheep and growers of oats, 'neeps' and 'tatties'. The basic haggis recipe is the minced heart, lungs and liver of a sheep, seasoned and mixed with oatmeal, stuffed into a sheep's stomach lining and boiled. It is traditionally served with mashed root vegetables like potatoes and swedes/turnips. Haggis is one of those foods that tastes much better than it looks. However elaborately it is sometimes presented, a stuffed sheep's stomach just looks revolting to my mind. It does seem strange t...

Because it is  Thanksgiving Day  in the USA and although it's just another gloomy November Thursday here in the UK I've been thinking about thanksgiving in general. There are times when it is hard to feel grateful, whether as a result of personal circumstances or unwelcome events around the world just now. There's certainly no shortage of the latter. In her blog Over the Water in a 2012 post entitled  'Thankful Thursday/Fearful Friday' Rosalind Hughes asks "is thankfulness a feeling, an action or an outcome?" She suggests that Thanksgiving Day (in the USA) is "...about action rather than feelings. Will we act out of fear, that all may at any time be lost, or thankfulness that hope endures regardless? Will we share the relief and the contentment that some of us enjoyed today, or grasp it in case it is in short supply? Either is a rational response to a cathartic gratitude; but faith is not always about the most rational response. Sometime...

Life tends to throw up the unexpected. People like me who like to plan ahead don't always find this easy. At the start of Lent I intended to blog daily with posts about ordinary things for which I was thankful. If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know I have failed to fulfill this intention and thankfulness posts have become sporadic. As someone once said, "if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans". During this Lent there have been several unforeseen events in my life. There have been some days when I haven't felt thankful at all. The last 10 days have been the most difficult. It's also been a time when I have noticed more things to be thankful for but have not had the energy to write any posts. On 11 March my very elderly mother fell and broke her hip. I dropped everything I was committed to do and went with my husband to snow-bound Kent.  What followed is not something I want to share here - or at least not now.  Instead, here...

Today I am thankful for all the mothering I have received in my life, especially from my own mother, but also from others in family, friends, work colleagues and church. So, on this Mothering Sunday , for all those who have nurtured and cared for me, I give thanks. I'm also thankful for these posts about Mothering Sunday by other bloggers: Global Justice and Mothers' Day  by Krish Kandia has a challenging video clip about girls who have no choice about becoming mothers Mothering Sunday by Kathryn at Good in Parts gives a simple but profound message about how God mothers us Mothering Sunday and Mother's Day by Phillip Carter on the OUP blog writes about Constance Smith and the revival of Mothering Sunday 100 years ago with an explanation of how this is confused with Mothers' Day A Sonnet for Mothering Sunday by Malcolm Guite is well worth a read Mothering Sunday 2013 gives a Roman Catholic perspective on the Church as 'our Mother' T...

On my bedside chest I have a large pile of books, in various stages of being read, waiting to be read, or there to be dipped into from time to time. I would find it difficult to live without books - real books, with paper you can feel. Even though I have a Kindle app on my tablet and read books that way, especially when travelling, nothing can beat the pleasure of handling a beautifully bound volume and anticipating the delights or the interest of its content. Today I am thankful for books. Going into a library or, more dangerously, a book shop I am like a child in a sweet shop. Or  like the child I once was, taken by the hand into the local public library and encouraged to browse, or pulling out the books on the bookshelves at home and trying to read whatever I found. Never mind that I was 4 and picking out words in a Tolstoy or a Dickens novel. Browsing for books on the internet can be useful but lacks the pleasure of being able to handle and browse the book itself before c...

Today I am thankful that I did not have to try to find a parking space (at great expense) in Oxford. I enjoy visiting Oxford but parking near the city centre is a nightmare.  Thank God for buses! And especially today for Oxford's 'park and ride' scheme and the opportunity at Thornhill to park free for up to 11 hours on the outskirts and enjoy the bus ride into the city. And today there were lots of parking spaces available - not always the case. It's often full. So I'm grateful for that too. This is part of my Lent series of posts - finding ordinary things to be grateful for each day. Image Credit: Calotype46 on Flickr, CC License

Nothing is wasted, not even the countless marine organisms, most of them microscopic, that died and fell to the bottom of the warm sea that covered southern England. Their skeletons, compacted under pressure over millions of years became limestone.  Thanks to the inspiration of J and his creative prayers in church this morning my Lent thankfulness post today is for coccolithophores , foraminifera, ostracods, molluscs and the like. Not what I was expecting to feel thankful for today, but it caught my imagination. As I looked at the new limestone floor under my feet and the old pillars faced with limestone that support the high church roof over my head I had a sense of the continuity of life and life renewed. In conversation over coffee after the service J brushed a pillar with his finger, showed me the chalky dust on it and said 'and they are all still here and useful'.  So today I am grateful for long-dead marine organisms and for skilled stonemasons. Image Cre...

As I looked out of the bedroom window early this morning, on a cold day with bitter wind and tiny snowflakes falling, I watched a red kite starting to rebuild a nest high in the horse chestnut tree just beyond our garden. A pair has nested there for the last 3 or 4 years so I was not surprised, except that given the low temperatures it seems a bit early. On the other hand the nest building process is a long and thorough one. These are large birds who may attempt to raise 3 or 4 chicks. The nest needs to be strong and securely fixed in the high tree branches. Red kites are becoming numerous in our area, having been re-introduced between 1989-1992 after a long period of extinction in England due to zealous Victorian game-keepers in the 19th century and the fact that for several centuries before that red kites were classed as 'vermin'. We see them a lot now, swooping low over our garden or hovering over the roads looking for road-kill to scavenge. They are magnificent cr...

I've missed a couple of days of Lent thankfulness posts - good intentions not fulfilled. Today is not for something ordinary, but for someone very special. Today I am thankful for the life of Keith Weston, a faithful and prayerful preacher and minister of the gospel and a friend. I have had reason to thank God for him on many previous occasions, especially when he acted in his retirement as locum training incumbent during my husband's curacy. He was such an encouragement to him and also to me.  He graciously agreed to preach on the occasion of my first Holy Communion as a newly ordained priest. That was 14 years ago and I still remember his sermon. The sermon at his thanksgiving service this afternoon was also a great one. Including a masterful romp through most of the the first 10 chapters of Romans, Tom Wright preached on Romans 8: 28b "...those whom he called he also justified;   and those whom he justified he also glorified." I especially like the way...

Today I am grateful for colour.  Since starting to paint with  watercolour I have been astonished by how many different hues can be created using just three primaries, a red, a yellow and a blue.  There's no limit really. The Australian poet Dorothea McKellar (1885-1968) wrote a poem in 1909 which paints a picture of the strong hues of Australia, expresses gratitude to God for colour and for being able to recall colours in the memory. It was said to be her favourite of the poems she wrote and so was read at her funeral Here it is: COLOUR The lovely things that I have watched unthining, unknowing, day by day. That their soft dyes have steeped my soul in colour that will not pass away. Great saffron sunset clouds and larkspur mountains, and fenceless miles of plain. And hillsides golden-green in that unearthly clear shining after rain; And nights of blue and pearl, and long smooth beaches, yellow as sunburnt wheat. Edged with a line of foam that cr...

Do I take literacy for granted? Yes, most of them time I do. Last year in 'Could you cope without reading?' I wrote about the estimated 799 million adults in today's world who are illiterate, most of them women. I am truly blessed to be able to read. Today, in this series of things to be grateful for during Lent, I'm taking some moments to be thankful for literacy. I'm grateful that not only can I read and write but that I love doing both. I'm sitting at my desk surrounded by books. I can access books easily online, even on my phone. I can enjoy or learn from or disagree with what others have written. I have many different ways of using the skill of handwriting or word processing. Yes, today I am thankful for literacy and for countless people who made/make that possible - my parents, teachers, the inventors of printing, paper, internet, booksellers, writers, long-lost ancestors who first wrote messages in the sand or carved them in stone.  Mary Ann Shaf...

This is day 4 of my Lent series of finding reasons to be grateful each day. If you read my post yesterday about being grateful for facial tissues, you will know I had a cold. This was very short-lived - only 48 hours - all symptoms gone. I now feel well. So today I am grateful for a healthy immune system. I'm also grateful for those who have prayed for me and sent good wishes. I suppose I should also be grateful for all those other cold viruses I have successfully fought off over the years, that my body's defence system has remembered.  The illustration is of a leukocyte, a white blood cell, which plays an essential part in the human immune system. Never mind that this one looks pink. Mine seem to have been working hard and well. Thank God for a healthy immune system, not everyone is so blessed. Image Credit: wellcome images on Flickr, CC License

I am fighting a cold virus and finding it harder than usual to feel gratitude. As explained here I aim to notice something to be thankful for each day this Lent. Today is the 3rd day. Today as I sniffle and sneeze I am grateful for paper hankies (or facial tissues if that's what you call them). I'm thankful for being able to take a soft dry one out of the box when I need it, rather than re-use a damp and snotty cotton handkerchief. I'm thankful that I don't have to wash them. They will all be composted at the bottom of our garden among the vegetable peelings and garden waste. The heat will kill the bugs as the paper decomposes before being spread with the matured compost on the vegetable garden. Doing that makes me feel slightly less guilty about whether the manufacture of paper tissues is ecologically ethical. The box I'm using claims that the manufacturers source from well-managed forests, but I still have questions - not enough to stop me using paper hankie...

Have you ever looked at the inside of a snowdrop flower? Here's a photo of one variety, seen from underneath. Every day this Lent I'm trying to notice at least one thing to be thankful for, especially if I haven't noticed it before. This is a good year for snowdrops, flowers I have seen in late winter every year since childhood, but never bothered to look inside. In our garden the earliest snowdrops first appeared just after Christmas and are now at their best. Towards the end of the dark cold winter, snowdrops are such a reassuring sign of the new life to come when spring really gets going. They have been busy during this wet cold winter, in secret and darkness under the earth. There is no sign of them then, under the dead leaves in the shady places. You would think they had died. Not so. The snowdrop bulbs have been sending down deep roots and growing new bulbs. As they start to flower in the snow they look so fragile, but must in fact be really tough. They survive t...

I'm trying to keep Lent simple. Am I giving anything up? That's private. Am I taking anything on? That's my business - but I will share one thing I intend to do during Lent - try to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. To help me I will look out something each day to be thankful for, however insignificant. Once I've noticed it I will tell you about it here.  Today I am grateful for dust and ashes. Does that sound weird? And why have I chosen an image of an Alexander rose to illustrate this post? Well, it reminds me that after his cremation my father's ashes were strewn in the rose garden of the crematorium grounds. So when his body was of no further use to him, an Alexander, it was used to grow beautiful roses. And in our garden today sit the ashes of our last bonfire. Later I will spread these around the flower beds, to help condition the soil and nourish new life. In God's economy nothing is ever wasted and the most surprising new life can spring from the m...

What if the whole world overflowed with gratefulness?  I love this serene and hopeful prayer of thanksgiving by Br. David Steindl-Rast. It has beautiful images and music and a vision of a world overflowing with gratefulness.

I was annoyed yesterday. On returning to our car in a hospital car park after visiting a sick friend we saw the unwelcome yellow package stuck to the windscreen. It contained notice of an automatic fine, for parking in the wrong place. I should not have been annoyed. I chose to park there, in the hopes of "getting away with it." I didn't and shouldn't have.  What I should have been doing was to be grateful for medical services, free at the point of need, that were successfully providing the expert medical intervention our friend needed. There is a lot wrong with the UK's National Health Service. I don't believe the changes proposed in the government's Health and Social Care Bill 2011 will make things better. But - the availability of medical care here is still a blessing that some people in the world can only dream about. The focus today in Christian Aid's 'Count Your Blessings'  Lent calendar is Burundi . After years of conflict this...

To day, Easter Monday, is a Bank Holiday in the UK. It's my first day off from posting daily on a Biblical reading through Lent and Holy Week. So just for joy, here is something different. Thanks to Penelope I recently discoved the beautiful video below. The pictures are stunning. Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, gives encouragement to open your eyes to really look at what's around you and be grateful for today. Enjoy!

In the UK, today, the 4th Sunday in Lent is 'Mothering Sunday', a time for refreshment half-way through Lent.  Traditionally a time to return to the 'mother church'. Also now for showing gratitude for those who care for and mother us. I love the (Church of England) Post Communion Prayer on Mothering Sunday. Rather than a more extended reflection today, here it is: Loving God, as a mother feeds her children at the breast you feed us in this sacrament with the food and drink of eternal life: help us who have tasted your goodness to grow in grace within the household of faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. This post is the 25th in a series of daily Lenten reflections, most of which are based on a Bible reading from the Common Worship Lectionary of the Church of England. This one is based on a seasonal prayer.

What do you do when someone thanks you profusely for doing something you know for certain you didn't do? This happened to me the other day. I was overwhelmed with the depth of the woman's gratitude. As I knew this was totally underserved, I suggested she had mistaken me for someone else. She was adamant that she had never forgotten me or what I did for her on the occasion of (X). In the particular circumstances it was kinder not to argue the point. She did not believe it hadn't been me all those years ago and she really needed to say that thank you. I didn't deserve it but another woman (name unknown) did or does. Perhaps I'll find out who one day. The incident reminded me that giving thanks is often more important than being thanked. What do you think?