Tag Archives: unfiltered

Shoots of Green

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(Written in May 2024)

Each year, I find, it surprises me that the bulbs begin to shoot up, even before the start of winter. My parents come from the Northern Hemisphere, and so much of my understanding of ‘normal’ is therefore displaced from the world I actually live and grew up in. Bulbs are supposed to come up at the end of winter, I always believed. They are the first herald of Spring. But somehow, in our milder Antipodean winters, the dear things seem to get confused and pop up early. 

It is always a shock to notice that the seasons change so methodically- like birthdays- like my menstrual cycle- they keep happening whether we are ready for them or obliviously distracted. I am never quite ready for winter. I fear it – the winter blues- I fear who I become inside of myself in winter. Something inside of me was made for beauty and sunlight, and the cold mornings and the dark nights make it harder to ignore the wounds inside my soul. And so I find myself, like a child (or a teacher!) dreading the end of the summer holidays, kind of trying to ignore it, kind of subconsciously denying that winter is, indeed, coming. 

But, as the years go by, I find myself increasingly ministered to by the bulbs in my garden. And, as I sip my coffee from my prayer bench this morning, I find my eyes overflowing with gratitude for the little spears of green.

I was seven when Grandad passed away from cancer, and was living half a world away. My mum, I remember, was away for weeks. And she was very sad. I was distressed too about one particular question – was Grandad in heaven now? Mum told me that Grandad had not known Jesus during his lifetime. But we serve the God of second chances and ridiculous overflowing grace -the God who told the parable of the workers in the vineyard, who told the thief on the cross that they would be together in paradise. We are loved to pieces by the God of resurrection. Mum told me she had shared this with grandad in the days before he died- in the days where he was no longer able to talk. And, although he hadn’t been able to do much, he had squeezed her hand. 

I remember when Mum came back from Britain, she bought a special brooch of a golden daffodil that she wore on the lapel of her jacket for a long time. Daffodils, she told me, are a symbol of resurrection. We plant the dry dead-looking bulbs deep in the cold earth at the start of autumn, burying them as we bury our mortal bodies at death. And beneath the earth, in the places that we cannot see them, they start to come alive. Slowly, surely, in that place of deepest cold and dark, life is reborn. Until suddenly, sharp ramparts of green spear boldly through the ground, like an army of life assembling. And then the flowers come, trumpeting loudly their resurrection glory- their triumph over Winter – and the herald of Spring. 

I think that one of my first interactions with daffodils was at my grandad’s grave. I remember walking through the graveyard by the Loch where Grandad is buried and standing for a moment before his grave – that place, which my ten year old self had been afraid to approach because of my fear of the sense of desolation. And there were daffodils in bloom. They were great tall rollicking things- a triumphant blast of yellow against the dark grey headstone. And I allowed myself to become enveloped in the glorious yellow-ness of them for a moment that was like a prayer – a prayer where Jesus was talking gently to my heart in words of colour. Death, he was saying, was not the end. In the very place that we think death has won- that is the place of resurrection. 

It turns out that Mum’s brooch was not a coincidence. Daffodils are the symbol of the cancer council, and, as I walk through my own journey with cancer, this could not be more prophetic. Somewhere deep within my heart, twenty four years ago, an encounter with the yellow-ness of daffodils and I believe, also, with the God of hope, fused in me the connection: daffodils and resurrection. And so, even as I think of the sadness of my grandad’s death, the anxiety of the approaching dark and cold, the unknowns of my own journey with cancer, a part of my heart is brimming with the hope of resurrection. And as I look delightedly around me I find, in His grace, God has sent me daffodils-  even before the start of winter.

Waiting for the Dawn

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The thing is, I’ve never really lived in a world without the sun. True, I have definitely lived (and am living in) a time of night. The sun is not showing its face. The earth is cold. I cannot see what is happening. I am rendered powerless. And sometimes I cry and lament and grieve the sun that I remember. Sometimes I wonder if it is – or ever was – real. All I can touch is cold and dark and shrouded, all I hope for is lost in blackness, my horizon disappeared. Every minute I turn my face towards the East, hoping, watching, waiting. Darkness seems to assault me again and again. And again. 

Surely, I say to myself, it was just a dream! Those who hope in the sun are delusional. Can they not see the blackness around them? Are they not willing to acknowledge that their world has shrunk down to the tiny radius around them – the wonders of the day have been lost, and, no matter how hard we try or hope or even believe, we cannot seem to make it come.

And many of us have now given up on the hope of day. It has been too long. No one we know has ever seen a sunrise. It is but a fairytale we tell to children. In the long, cold, darkness, we have learnt to make our own small versions of the sun – lighting candles, and even campfires. We huddle around them like moths, singing songs of worship to the candlelight, YOLOing like cicadas who know we will not live to see the dawn. These, we guard, because our lives depend upon them. Until some cold wind comes and extinguishes them. 

And sometimes in the darkness I find myself able to sing songs about the sun. Sometimes I talk to others who believe that the dawn is coming, who believe in the existence of day. Some of these are those who are holding candles and some, like me, have lost them. Some have even cast them aside willingly, in preparation and expectation of living by daylight. Sometimes, I hold hands with them, joining my trembling heart to their stronger ones, and I recite verses that promise the end of the darkness, as salty rivers run down my cheek and neck. Sometimes, something inside of me inexplicably lights up and I feel, somehow, that I am bathed in sunlight.

And then sometimes I wake from this reverie, overwhelmed by the reality of the darkness, stunned by the pain of it, and I fall to the ground in despair. I declare that the sun has never been. I have hoped and prayed and sung about the dawn, and it has not come. The darkness has only encroached farther, become even darker. And, screaming visceral shrieks of fury and betrayal, I claw at the carpet and weep bitterly. And I curse the sun.

And yet, the thing is, I’ve never really lived in a world without the sun. As I am hoping, singing, praying, weeping -even cursing – the sun itself is the centrifugal force upon which my whole world turns. I cannot see it. I cannot sense it, but sometimes, I am willing admit that it is there, creating a gravitational pull that keeps this whole planet in orbit. Despite the coldness of the night, despite the waves of abandonment that crash over me, it is the sun that keeps the ground from freezing over. Although hidden from my view, a part of me is willing to believe it burns continuously, giving energy to every plant and underwater organism that creates oxygen that allows me to breathe. And my lungs, whether they are singing or whether they are screaming, are swallowing air that has been made possible by the sun.

And my hope, my belief, my cajoling, my despair does not affect the way the sun moves, does not change it – because it is not dependant upon me.  How humbling, how painful, how freeing to realise this! As much as I love or I hate it, as much as I protest or scream, whether or not I can see it, the sun has been and will be the source of all the life I’ve ever known. And, sometimes, I allow myself to be brought to my knees. I admit that I am not the source, that the sun is the centre. I acknowledge that, although my candle is gone, although I cannot see the path ahead, that the ground all around me is not frozen, that the air I breathe continues to support life in my lungs, that it is possible that a sunrise, which I have never seen, and do not control, is coming. 

And I place my hands in the hands of others who also wait with hope for the end of the darkness. And we turn our heads towards the inky blackness of the East. And we wait for the dawn. 

Joy

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Those of you who are extraordinarily observant, may have noticed that I skipped out on writing a blog on the week of advent devoted to ‘peace’. This was not intentional. I really wanted to write one. I wanted to hold myself up as an example of someone who lived a life surrendered in hope and trust and therefore was able to live in the promised ‘peace beyond understanding’. But, right now, that is simply just not true. Peace is something that has largely eluded me for the past while – perhaps four months – as I wrestle and agonise over the decision about whether or not to go ahead with an aggressive and controversial set of surgeries. And, at the end of all of my specialist appointments and conflicting advice, I find myself no closer to an answer than at the beginning.

No, peace has not been something I have been able to access in this season – even though I did truly feel gifted with peace for a large part of the last year. It is linked to something deep and very raw that is still very much in process. Perhaps, one day, I will be able to write about it.

But for now, I will leave peace and focus instead on joy. Joy, strangely, has not been something to elude me in this season. There is a depth and a wonderfulness to joy that I have, truly, been able to access, at times. Like a draught of strong port wine. Or a river I can immerse myself in and be carried along by. Joy comes to me from Outside. It is not something I have to drum up within me. It is an alive thing – an entity – a movement that is going on all around me, and it is inviting us to join.

I have felt moments of almost excruciating joy in the midst of this nuclear rain. Honestly.

I am starting to learn that joy is not an emotion; it is a parallel dimension. It is a place somewhere outside of our space-time continuum, where the victory has already been won, the story has already been resolved, where it is finished. And it is a dance -the eternal victory song of heaven which is being danced right now. And we get to join in with it. It’s a very strange thing. There is literally a celebration of the culmination and completion and redemption of all things – a party – happening in some realm of the spirit that, sometimes, I can connect to. And the celebration is real. It is a place where the wounds of this life have already been healed, the sting of bitterness or regret is not even a memory. Where cancer is just something we laugh at and wonder how we could possibly have been afraid. The relief – the explosion of relief, and delight, and adoration comes in wave after never-ending wave. And sometimes, I surrender my heart to it, diving in, allowing the current to take me and swirl me into this place where death cannot touch me – or even cast a shadow. Where all I sense is this energy of LIFE pulsing through my body and, as I jump and leap try to twirl it out of me, it only grows.

And then, when I crash-land back into the strangeness of my reality, I wonder how I could have possibly accessed this place of joy. Am I crazy? Dissociative? Delusional? Or is there a real world of the spirit that has beckoned and welcomed me, has caught me up in his arms and danced with me, saturating my heart with delight and wonder?

And, as I think about this experience of joy, I am open to the idea that, perhaps I am not crazy. Perhaps my moments in this space of rejoicing are the moments when I am truly awake to reality – the ‘deeper magic’ that C.S. Lewis refers to in Narnia. Perhaps the pain and abuse and betrayal of this world is the delusion and this dance of joy is an innate language that my spirit was always meant to speak. Perhaps, there truly is a parallel universe where all is very, very well.

And then, sometimes, I have a very ordinary – or worse than ordinary – day in this very broken universe. But even as I look at the starkness of the landscape of ‘facts’ and scan reports around me, my heart remembers something of the dance. And the memory both nourishes me and increases my longing.