Farewells

Well, we must be nearly off, because yesterday we had our church farewell tea. It was a joy to see many old friends there. We have felt very loved during our years in Reading. We came in 1984, for a year! Somehow we've stayed, hopefully not overstayed.

So we're off to foreign parts. Maybe we'll see you there.

Marriage

Praise Him who loves to see young lovers,
Fresh hearts that swell with youthful pride;
Thank Him who sends the sun above us,
As bridegroom fit to meet his bride;
Praise Him who loves to see young lovers,
Fresh hearts that swell with youthful pride.


This is a song I heard on my Darvell visit. I don't think I'd ever sung a song with divine love and human love together. But that's typical of a community that reverences marriage. And sings its heart out. Hundreds of unaccompanied voices makes an awesome sound.

The occasion was a celebration of twenty years of marriage for a 80+ year old couple. A fun evening with music, sketches and food. The pair were asked for the secret of their marriage and replied:
Rule One: Listen
Rule Two: Say Sorry
Rule Three: Listen
Rule Four: Say Sorry
And, be thankful.

Life

I am reading Pippa's school copy of 'To The Lighthouse' prior to throwing it out, it's so annotated and dog-eared. A classic, but I haven't read it before. I remember my mother studying it too, for some WI course.
Anyway, it has this passage on life:

'There it was before her - life. ...........She took a look at life, for she had a clear sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared neither with her children or her husband. A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her............................she must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance. There were the eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor. And yet she had said to all these children, You shall go through with it. To eight people she had said relentlessly that.........she was driven on, too quickly she knew, almost as if it were an escape for her too, to say that people must marry; people must have children.'

Amazingly put. I have often wondered myself at that 'in the midst of life we are in death'. (Where's that from? Is it from the funeral service?)
I have half-expected that one day someone on a bus will stand up and shout "we're all dying!" Voicing what we all know but seem unaware of, filling the time with trivia. And yet, knowing this, we love having children. What a paradox.

Surely the only way through this is to believe, like the Community at Darvell, that 'every child is a thought of God'. And, with the Apostle Paul, that if there is no resurrection, we are of all men most miserable.

Don't think that I'm being depressive; just trying to be real.

Brigadoon

Driving away from Darvell, I found myself humming tunes from Brigadoon. It's one of my favourite musicals, about a mysterious village that two Americans find in the Scottish mists.

So why the subconscious connection?

Perhaps the warm welcome from smiling well-scrubbed faces, perhaps the rather antiquated dresses. Or could it be the amazing spontaneous singing from the assembled community? Or that the workshop supervisor was a smiling young Korean called Jeannie.

I certainly felt as if I'd left a piece of my heart behind. And that to stay would require a very permanent forsaking.

There are some very positive aspects to living in community.
Care from cradle to grave. Literally, as they have their own graveyard.
Never having to worry about money again.
Never any need to feel lonely or unwanted.
Able to work and feel useful at any age.
Rarely having to wonder what to have for dinner!

I'll tell you the negatives another day.

Furniture

I was getting rather stressed with the details of our move, especially with furniture. What to put where, how to arrange rooms, what to buy and spending hours in a furniture store trying to choose the 'right' thing. So I went for a wee trip. And guess what?! I ended up working in a factory workshop helping to make furniture!! What a great sense of humour God has.
I spent two days at the Darvell community in Sussex, where Christians live together 'having all things in common' a logical progression of Jesus teaching. It was a wonderful time which has given me food for thought. And lots of fun moments, like trying to explain to amazed sisters who own nothing, as together we folded sheets in the laundry, just what it was that had stressed me out. Their faces were a picture.
I'm hoping that my problems with earthly possessions are now put in perspective.

Betty

My Cousin Betty is a dear. She has just written to wish me well when we move to The Dine as she calls it, because it 'is like history repeating itself'. Someone connected with our family will be living there once again.
She's now 95 but recalls getting up as a child at 7am. to fetch the cows in, delivering the milk, taking the cows back to pasture and still getting to school for 9am.
'Finding Bettys' has been one of the joys of family history and one of these days I'll write a little book with that title.

A New Year

When we got back from Switzerland after Christmas, I was considerably blue but things have been looking up since. On Sunday we went to Pippa's church for Bible Bingo Brunch!! I bet you've never been to one of those before! Not a lot of God stuff to it, but social fun which raised laughs, and probably spirits too. And then today the Head of Finance and I managed to go window shopping without falling out, looking at furniture and fridges. We didn't buy anything, not yet anyway, and we even had fun. Wow!

No, I didn't get the spelling wrong. It's from 'The Compleat Angler', a book title, and a hotel in Marlow where we went for a New Year's Day muddy walk by the Thames.

Here we go, here we go......

Here we go for yet another blog. Well, the thing is, that I am now a global grandparent with grandkids in Eire, Africa and Switzerland. And because I don't see them very often I thought maybe, just maybe, if I started a blog, then their parents might say "Look at what Grandma's been up to!" And they wouldn't forget about me, and the Head of Finance too of course.

And then there's the fact that I'm a pretty useless telephone person, especially long distance, as my children will verify, and the sort of tittle tattle that seems inconsequential on the phone, might be easy to burble about here. Then you'll know that I have a life other than being a grandma! Hence the title.