moaning

Today started well, watching the sun lick the land into a new fresh colour. But as the colour fixed itself to the land a storm blew in…When I get a bit down, blue, frustrated (more could be added), I can veer towards moaning and I am at that age, so it’s a perfect storm! 

Recently I found myself singing the praises of someone who lives here in White River, not moaning but that will come. One Saturday Erin and I went to a car boot sale. Yes, we live life on the edge! It does not take me long: no magazines, no tools, no CDs. ‘I’m off for breakfast love’ and I leave Erin to it, by mutual agreement of course. ‘Yogurt, granola and fresh fruit’, seeing as you asked. 

The following week a local restaurant organised a special evening meal deal, so we and friends went along, it was a great change for us as we never go out in the evening. ‘Indian food’, seeing as you asked. 

A week later, Erin received the weekly WhatsApp information for the local independent cinema: Holds about 150 people; you buy wine on the way in; you can have pizza delivered to your seat. What’s not to like? ‘Italian with chillies’, as you asked. 

There is a theme that links these together; all the above events are organised by the same woman. So, I say to Erin later on in the weekend ‘you know if it wasn’t for Sue, we would have no social life’. This enlightenment helped me realise what we took for granted back in the UK; the wealth of possibilities that we had literally on our door step, to engage with a varied range of people and cultural activities. But before I moan a bit more, our challenges are small in comparison with our brothers and sisters in places like ASAM, YWAM Marromeu, and Pemba in Mozambique: they get dressed up to go to Shoprite, the supermarket!

Now I direct to a sobering note. I am reading Bill Bryson, ‘The World as a Stage’, about William Shakespeare. I can only listen to our family and imagine about the situation facing so many aspects of the life in the UK at the moment, fear, rebellion, uncertainty, miss direction, confusion, mourning, isolation and more. In his book Bryson informs his reader that just before the greatest writer England has produced for book and stage is able to find his position in London, a severe outbreak of plague occurred and “London's theatres were officially ordered shut, and would remain so for just under two years, with only the briefest of remissions”. (Page unknown on kindle, chapter 4). Two years! Two years! 

I want to say stop your #@$¥₩ moaning, but I have to look to the mirror first and say it to myself, ‘Nigel stop your moaning.’ To moan is to be focused on my situation. To wail, lament and cry is an activity before God, dragging before him the situation we are all in, knowing only God can make a difference. I hear much of the first and little of the second. 

I am aware how difficult it is to make good decisions now. My mental capacity is not as strong as it was, my spiritual core seems to be like bread dough on a board, soft and moveable. My need for community has shrunk to the shape of my workshop and I am disappointed in things that I so wanted to change. The capacity to be Nigel is not easy. So where do I try to anchor life?

My first hope is selfish, it is the hope I will live through this situation, and that is also part of my spiritual confession. My second hope is that God brings new life out of disorder, darkness, death and hopelessness. It’s the core of the story from Genesis to the New Testament; Creation, Joseph, Isaac. At Easter I believe God gave me Ezekiel 37  as a word for me and my organisation, hope only in God, consider the sober reality of the situation without God. My musical hero Nick Cave sings “I don’t believe in an a interventionist God, but I know that you do". And I do, believe in an a interventionist God. 

Some of it's most rich and fruitful work emerged after the theatre's two year closure, and Shakespeare was able to bring to life his new creations. 

After the darkness and hopelessness of Good Friday, the damming and painful loss experience of Easter Saturday, comes resurrection Sunday. It is not just our experiences that will shape us but where we look to, and where we place our hope.

There are some mornings when I am unsure how to carry on, there are some days when I moan too much, (that won’t change). But occasionally there are just thin moments of hope, spread too far apart, when tasting salty tears I am reminded who God is. At these rare and precious moments grace is enough.

And God intervenes. As he does. On his own terms.