Basil puts me in my place

My house is full of stuff. Not secret hoarders, shortly to appear on a Channel 4 documentary levels of stuff, just lots of things. Pretty things, inherited things, revamped things, home made things but LOTS of things. My essay this week is on a fourth century writer, Basil of Caesarea. I'm supposed to be reading about his views on the Holy Spirit and how that represents an advancement on Trinitarian theology (yes, fun eh?!) but I have been waylaid by a little collection of his writings on poverty, riches and basically giving it all away.

Basil was born in to an aristocratic family but after getting serious about the whole Christianity thing found himself attracted to a simpler way of life. More than anything it seems he found his way to a deeply compassionate way of life and that motivated so much of what he did as a Priest and Bishop. He founded a home for the sick out of his own pocket dubbed the Basilia (Nicolia anyone? It has a nice ring eh?!) and saved umpteen people during a serious famine in Caesarea.

His writing certainly packs a punch:

'For if what you say is true, that you have kept from your youth the commandment of love and have given to everyone the same as to yourself, then how did you come by this wealth? Care for the needy requires the expenditure of wealth...Thus, those who love their neighbour as themselves possess nothing more than their neighbour, yet surely you seem to have great possessions! How else can this be, but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of many? For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack love.'

Ouch.

If THAT doesn't get you then nothing will. And so I find myself looking around at all the stuff I have and thinking about my neighbour, my global neighbours, who have so little. Guilty as charged, Basil.

But then I think of the story behind each item. The dress from the beautiful independent store on the High Street, the fabric from the girl who just set out on her own in business, the china from the charity shop on the corner, the jewellery from my Grandma's house, the quilt I made by hand. And then the lines seem to go a little hazy. What does it mean to love my neighbour? To buy nothing and put my wages in the nearest charity box? Perhaps it does, perhaps everything else is just excuses. But then I think of the lady in the haberdashery and the charity shop volunteers and my favourite author whose books I buy and it doesn't seem to so clear cut any more.

Basil left the monastic life to be back in the thick of things in Caesarea and that certainly cost him. It makes me think that perhaps the way to go is not to opt out, no matter how noble it may seem. Perhaps the best option is to really think. To give generously, to live carefully, to buy with integrity. To be neither a burden due to your irresponsibility nor to hold on so tight to what you have and so deny others what is rightly theirs.

What do you think? Is it just qualifying what is straight forward? Stuff = selfishness and there's nothing more to it? Let the conversation begin! Comment or tweet me @nicolahwriter

Dealing with Negativity

I'm a big fan of spiritual guru Gabrielle Bernstein and I particularly love her vlog this week on dealing with negative comments online so I really wanted to share it with you. I love Gabby's approach to life, full of grace and energy and with a real drive to see positive change in the world through personal transformation. Her vlog really hit home for me this week as I spent some time mulling over some negativity that has come my way recently. It's nothing to write home about but weighted me down nonetheless.

The great temptation, I found, is to fall so quickly into the kind of behaviour that is causing the problem in the first place. It's worrying natural to leap into 'an eye for an eye' and fight negativity with negativity when it is the most ineffective attitude to adopt to really transform a situation. First of all, as Gabby suggests, I've found that when comments hit home it's worth spending a little time touching base with myself and asking if they have any real merit. 'Criticism is free advice' is one of my favourite mottos. That comment may not have been made in the kind of spirit I may have wished for but it may have done me an enormous favour. Very often I take it, use it and say 'Ta very much!'.

But you know what? Sometimes people get it wrong. Sometimes people say things out of their own unresolved pool of emotion. At times like that we really need to ask ourselves why someone else's opinion has merit over our own. To have the confidence of our convictions. As a Christian I turn to one of my other fundamentals, who is my audience here? In reality my audience is one. He's the one I'm doing anything in my life for and the only one I need justify myself to.

So what if you think they've got it wrong? What then? I know how I'd like to be treated. I'd like someone to forgive me, to look beyond something stupidly said to the person underneath who, like everyone else, is simply doing their best. I'd like someone to behave in a way that brought light into the situation. There is only one response to anger and that is peace. There is only one response to negativity and that is to be positive. There is only one response to thoughtlessness and that is to forgive. Don't mistake me, that is hard. Intensely hard. I get it so wrong but that is what I'm committing to afresh to this week.

How much for one day of your life?

I recently received my reports back from this years practical placements. My passion for my hospital placement shone through in what I wrote of them and they wrote of me. I feel profoundly changed by the whole experience. Most of all, my greatest revelation, was how intensely ungrateful I am. Sitting by someone's bedside who is fighting valiantly for just one more day of their life is enough to make you reconsider your whole world. I walked out of there desperate to breath in the fresh air and feel the sun on my face. To just live and be grateful.



Living life!

I'm now reading another Lynda Field book (man, I love her!) and one of the scenarios she poses is this: If someone offered to buy one day of your life for a limitless price would you sell and for how much? This question seriously stopped me short. Suddenly massive figures were flying around my brain. In the millions surely, for one of my precious days? I couldn't give one up for any less than that.

My brain whirred with all those things I would be missing. Days like today where I sat in the garden in the sunshine eating feta and tomato sandwiches and laughing with my husband. Feeling the strain in my legs as I cycled up the hill to college (yes, I can do it now!). The light bulb moment as I understand a new idea while studying. The grumpiness too, the fuzzed up feeling of waking. The simple feelings of being alive and well. All of it, so utterly priceless.

The scariest thing about the question is how little I live with this awareness and the hours by the hospital beds showed me much the same thing. If one single day is worth a million pounds to me then why do I treat it like any old thing to be rushed through and on to the next? I have had the great blessing of knowing and being friends with many heroic people who have overcome serious illness in their life. They often have a zest for life that is the envy of everyone around them. The question I have often asked myself is, is that what it will take for me to really enjoy my life? To make the most of every million pound day?

I wonder if the real enjoyment is in the small things. If a well lived life is simply an appreciative one. For the sunshine, for damn good cheese, for a friend's happy face, for a job well done. Perhaps the whole things is not such a mystery after all. Perhaps it really is just slowing down and smelling the roses. If I learn nothing more from this year then let it be that, let me learn to be an expert in living million pound days.

Sping time = garden time!

The sunshine is bringing a whole new dimension to our little abode. This is our first summer here and the change in the weather has finally meant I can get outside and get the garden in shape. We also happen to have an excellent plant nursery in between our house and college where I stopped by today on my way home and picked up a few new additions.

When it comes to plants they have to work pretty hard for me to spend the time looking after them. This usually means they have to be really, really pretty or edible. My absolute fav plants are my Blueberries who fruit every year without fail and need basically no care (or at least haven't suffered too much from having me completely ignore them for the last two years!)

Oregano, yum!

I'm really not green fingered at all. We've never had much outside space. Just windowsills, then a little bit of space outside out front door and now a little patio garden. But in some ways this has been a good way to learn. Everything has been in pots, so I can move them around trying to figure out the best conditions for them, and they can move with me when I move essential if like me you're pretty mobile.

Sugar snap peas, so yummy they hardly ever make it to the kitchen!

My first attempt at growing from seed has been a few batches of lettuces which, I swear to you, is no more tricky than that cress growing experiment you did in Primary School! And then 'Voila!', fresh lettuce every day! Whatever space you have there really is some great stuff to grow (and eat!). It's so fun to experiment and see what plants suit you. I loved growing carrots and potatoes one year and I probably will again one day but now I really focus on fruit - strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants - as it's so low maintenance and on herbs for cooking and looking pretty on the patio.

My ticket to fresh strawberries this summer!

I also grow Lavender which is very low maintenance (anything from the Mediterranean is a total winner for me as it likes arid conditions, i.e. people like me who forget to water!) and chop it for making dried lavender bags. Don't you just love it when two crafts collide?!

Lavender, smells good, looks great!

If you're thinking of starting growing and have no idea where to start I'd really recommend 'The Virgin Gardener' by Laetitia Maklouf. She presents a whole host of projects a bit like recipes in a cook book and it is absolutely jargon free. I often have a browse through it and pick an easy weekend project for inside or out and she totally understands working on a small scale.

So that's my garden this summer, how about yours?

When your hero wants to quit

Tonight saw the return to church of one of my favourite sermon givers. When I hear him speak I feel a deep strength of conviction that that is exactly how I want to communicate one day - with integrity, skill and passion but most of all with real honesty. What I love about this guy is that he tells you exactly as it is, for good or for bad, even if that means telling you exactly how it is with him when I'm sure he'd rather not do. Even to the point where today he told us that, on his recent sabbatical, he had seriously considered packing up being a Priest, after twenty years of ministry, and started mentally filling through alternative occupations.

It was amazing and shocking to hear this from someone I respect and look up to so much, whose books I have on my shelf and whose sermons had a vital hand in getting me into ministry in the first place, and even more so when I heard his reason. With some time away from work, memories of all the times a sermon had misfired or he'd said the wrong thing came back to haunt him to the point where he decided he would never speak again. Never mind all the many, many times he had encouraged, inspired and moved people on to better, more fulfilled lives. No, the soundtrack that ran through his mind was one of doubt and blame and it nearly drove him out of the place where he is utterly meant to be.

I don't know about you but I've got one of those soundtracks of my own. It is so easy to remember the times you got it wrong and to let those moments dominate to the detriment of the many more times that taking that risk was well worth it. The more I write and speak the more I appreciate what a risky business it is. The commenter who calls you ignorant when you speak from your heart or the talk where you stumbled over your words and feel the flush of embarrassment of just not being able to say what you really want to. Suddenly this is the reality, every other moment of success and support fades away into the distance under the neon, day glow flashing critique that you just can't seem to shake. That you fear, after all, might be the one thing that has been said that is really true.

When someone so inspirational to me said he wanted to quit because of these things I wanted to stand up and yell 'Never, ever, do that!' and yet at the same time to hear that even someone who I deem so very competent has the same fears as I do gave me a sudden sense of release. Perhaps this is just how we are and, as he advised, we all need to adjust how we remember. We all need to paint the positives in neon too and let the negatives sits in perspective for a while in the company of the things we get right.

I spent so very long looking for 'my thing' in life that I never really considered how tricky it can be to persist in it. To keep speaking when you would rather be silent, to put yourself out there when you'd rather hide. But bravery has its rewards and sometimes we don't even know it. Sometimes the reward is in someone else's life that is enhanced and encouraged in a way we may never even know or understand.

 

As for me, I'm going send an email tonight to add my day glow positive sign to the mix for my favourite priest and sermon giver because quite frankly I think he ought to know. And the next time I feel my knees begin to quake at the thought of stepping out there into the unknown I'll remember that I'm not the only one and that little act of bravery might have all kinds of consequences that I will never know.

Weekend Crafting and Book Love

This weekend has been a veritable feast of crafting and enjoying all things beautiful. The weekend started off with my husband meeting me from the train with a copy of the Great British Sewing Bee book that I had bee drooling over in a bookshop a couple of days previously. As he was off to a football match he thought it might keep me entertained in his absence. And oh yes it did!

Every since I started watching the show I've been dying to try out making clothes for myself. It has been on my radar for a while, largely because I cannot even begin to consider wearing the shirts that most clergy outfitter produce and fitting is notoriously difficult (and expensive). So to save myself from fashion disaster and serious money troubles I thought learning to make my own would be the best way forwards.

And so without further ado, here is my first attempt at a top modelled for you in a super pose-y photo!



What do you think, alternative career as a model?! Ha!

I think my favourite part is the back which I jazzed up with some buttons that I picked up for 2p each in Oxfam!

It was so easy to make, really, and it fits like a dream. I'm now on the hunt for more cool fabrics to make a slightly longer version.

As well as doing lots of sewing I headed down to a second hand and antique book fair where I, wait for it, TOUCHED A 17th CENTURY SHAKESPEARE!!! It was so amazing and I found the most remarkable (and reasonable priced) find -  a book on the Apostle Paul (who I study for my course) from the 1870s with an inscription in the front of my, not very common, maiden name. Truly wonderful.

So that was my weekend, how about yours?

A little light Life Philosophy

As I write the sun is streaming down on my garden, bathing my little herb garden in light. The weather has been switching between bright sunshine and flashes of rain. The air smells amazing. New little buds are appearing on my fruit plants, ready to yield a new crop this year. The last few weeks have given me a good few opportunities to just slow down like this and enjoy my surroundings. As of Monday I am back to college. Life is changing slightly in that arena as I've now been let lose from all other responsibilities and placements to focus on my academic work for the next year and a bit.

As much as I love the practical side of things, and that is ultimately what all this is for, I'm eagerly anticipating this change of pace and the sheer luxury that is time to think and study in such a remarkable place as Oxford. There is truly nothing I love more these days that wandering through the sun filled quads and frequenting the cafés on Oxford's many gorgeous side streets. Spring and Summer in Oxford are some of the best times of the year in my opinion. There is a veritable feast of pretentious entertainment as every college in the city competes for your business with their latest Shakespeare production on the lawn. The festivals get going and the city looks beautiful. I'm so thankful to be here.

 

 

Thankfulness has been a bit of a theme of my holiday as I reflect on my college journey so far. Every day is by no means perfect but I feel a deep seated thankfulness for the opportunities I am being given and the path that is unfolding before me. There is no doubt that it is a path of many uncertainties. I have no idea where I will be moving to in two years time, it could feasibly be anywhere in the country. I don't know how I will spend summer next year or what I will exchange my sunny Oxford side streets for. All of it is blank and just the little bit of the road ahead of me is visible for now.

But you know what? I'm really glad about that. Despite being a natural born planner (mostly because I think I could live five lifetimes and not fill them with all the things I want to do!) I'm relishing in the joy of truly not knowing, of simply being where I am and loving it. I'm finding that uncertainty looks a lot like freedom when you seize the opportunities in front of you and really make the most of them. I'm trusting myself to do that in whatever circumstances unfold as I practice it day by day and feel those wonderful moments of happiness welling up as a result.

All this philosophizing has made me a bit morbid in conversation recently and I have been musing to friends over coffee that 'we really are all headed to the same place anyway'. I know, what a cheery companion eh? But it reminds me to take things just seriously enough that I take risks and embrace everything that life has to offer me and not too seriously that I am stuck, paralysed by what might go wrong.

At the end of the day, no matter how much we might avoid this reality, life does end. If the last year and the hours spent at hospital bedside tell me anything then it is the reality of that. One day we will have had our shot and our time in the sun and it will be time for a new generation to take on the world. But right now, these are our days. Isn't that a wonderful thought, shot through with possibility? As for me this is my motto as summer approaches: Live life, enjoy it and be thoroughly thankful.