Feb Photo Challenge 1: My view

I was in hospital for 5 days when the challenge started and had two views from my bed (not well enough to go to the window, plus taking a photograph with a IV line in and spare cannula in the other arm was downright tricky without negotiating standing.) Here were my views on 1st Feb:

Feb Photo Challenge

In an effort to stop being useless & start blogging again on a regular basis , and keep up with my aim to take more photographs of my daily life I am jumping on this bandwagon.
I doubt I will manage everyday (is that self- defeatist or realist?) but February needs all the warming up it can get!

Love Latvia

This week I am on a physical and spiritual journey. I am staying in Riga, Latvia with four of my closest christian friends, spending time together and visiting a charity here. The charity works with children who live with poverty and the issues that come hand in hand with severe poverty.

We arrived yesterday morning (suprisingly someone managed to coax me out of bed with a cold and onto a flight. It's amazinv what a cup of tea can do). After finding our backpackers hostel in Old Riga and changing rooms three times we settled in and Kat took us down to the children's centre.

Riga itself is a strange mix of new city and old, East and West. Cosmopolitan and commercialised. Just a ten minute tram ride into the housing area tells the story of a different Riga- (as it does in our UK cities.) Tired looking houses, broken doors and people with tired clothes. Graffiti on the walls. I have been here before in many cities- and it makes me wonder- which city is the real city?
The children's centre is almost unmarked from the buildings around it, down a dark stairwell with broken metal post boxes and damaged concrete stairs and walls.
Inside couldn't be more different. Exploding with laughter and busy-ness and colour. The children have their own slippers here, they are at home.
They put on a play for us- much laughing. We play dodgeball and board games. They have food at the centre.
We listen as one of then says grace.
We play with A and V, sisters with beautiful dark hair and eyes who thrive of adult attention.

The children have such joy, they light the place. They have a trust in Tom and Diaga who run the centre that shows.
I want to speak their languages- some speak a little English, some Russian some Latvian. I want to talk to them and find out about their hopes and dreams.
For now we play. Mainly spinning A, she loves physical games.
They remind me of children in Mayville. Durban. Having very little, but great joy and a great need for relationships.
Very keen to help and get to know you.
They come from the area around the centre. It is run down and we know they need many things the centre provides. Clothes, food and security. The nuturing relationship they have with Tom and Diaga.
I wonder what their stories are and what their stories will be.

&think we need more people like Tom and Diaga who can love and support children in difficult circumstances and bring joy to tired places and situations.
Bring love, where sometimes it's hard to breakthrough, teach trust where it's been hurt.

We went to bed early- and I realise how much I miss living with Jenni and Kat, having someone to pray with and write with.
Community is a blessing.
I wonder: what are your communities?
Where would you travel and what would you do if you could go anywhere?

Service to be resumed shortly

Sorry for the radio silence. I have been more than a little overwhelmed the past month or so.
I have been doing many things, and much sleeping, much studying. Much hoping, and much playing with N- the little one I support at school.
I have just finished (literally) my final exams for my postgraduate course & the coursework part of my ABA therapy qualification. Three exams and an oral defense, followed by an interview if i wish to progress to the Masters. (I am crazy, but am thinking about continuing next year.)
Exams were okay I think, mainly I am so, so glad to finish. I have not have enough energy to do much more than finish my assignments, study and sleep after work.
&boy have I needed sleep.
My total lack of energy and feel-like-death /just am not recovering from glandular fever has been caused by a very severe vitamin d deficiency.
Levels should be 50-75. Mine were 9.
My bones really were aching- I had (have) partial fractures and a partially fractured rib. Calcium levels and bone strength- dire. I am very easily damaged. This is not so great working with little ones with autism and down's syndrome but we have survived!
Good part is I am easily fixed. Super strength vitamin d- sunshine in tablet form- and I will feel much better in about 6 months. I feel a lot better already- am so thankful my GP insisted on the tests and worked out why i felt so awful.
Now my exams are over I hope to regain some balance and some time-out to recover.
First- celebration meal with J and my parents (who are driving me back from Wales- where my exams were)
Second- knitting. Lots and lots of kniting whilst listening to music.
Third- thinking up some new games and activities for N and some of the class- he's not really been getting any additional fun from me the last few weeks.

Then - it's time to put plan Latvia in to action :)

But absolutely first- so thankful my examd and courses are all finished.
& s l e e p.

Lent

 

{This is the time of tension between dying and birth/ The place of solitude where three dreams cross

-T.S.Eliot, Ash Wednesday }

Being a lapsed (recovering?) Anglican in a baptist church I find Lent a strange time. It isn't really corporately marked in the baptist church, and I find I miss the definite change of season, and the ritual and liturgy. I think I miss the stillness and the focus of a High Anglican Lent. It's a little like homesickness at times. Part of me (probably the gothic part) yearns for the poetry of the liturgy and the sombre atmosphere of Anglican church services at Lent.  I have realised I also feel displaced, having left the anglican church abruptly, in grief and with bitterness. The sense of displacement hasn't been helped by physically moving several times either. Whilst I have been in my current church a little over two years,  I have come to realise that often I still feel anglican in a denomination that is not my own. I guess traditions really do die hard. 

Personally Lent has usually been a time I give something up (normally alcohol) and make sure that I fast once a week to realign my life and focus on God and to grow on a spiritual journey of 40 days towards Easter. 

This Lent it isn't wise for me to fast/give up food groups as I am underweight, struggling to get to a healthy weight and eat sensibly. Giving myself an excuse not to eat and skip meals would be foolish. I hardly drink alcohol so it would be no sacrifice to give that up, it wouldn't signify anything.  There's no point  giving something up just for the sake of tradition, that would be to completely negate the purpose of Lent. However, it feels strange to me not being able to continue my own personal rituals of Lent, and I have to keep reminding myself they are only outward tools and symbols of an inner journey. 

Lately my life has been so full and busy I have hardly had time to rest enough and to just be. 

I certainly have not given God enough time.  Prayer is still hard for me, I have been struggling for years.

I feel often that God is distant from me, and as if there is a wall around my heart. This has become easier over the last few months, but I still find prayer an effort, and I don't have the routines and discipline in place any more to make it a habit. Sometimes I feel as if I'm just going through the motions, saying words but they go nowhere, and don't really mean anything. Other times lines of communication are open.. It is hard to try to pray for any length of time when all I feel is distant and a litle lost.  I have been better with daily bible study, but sometimes it is simply study/word reading, not really getting to grips with God/truth in a way I need to. 

This Lent I need to create daily routines and balance to make time to spend with God. 

I need to learn to pray again even when it feels hard, and as if my prayers bounce off the ceiling.
I also need to make time to journal and write, as this is the main way I grow and learn and process things.

Those are my aims for Lent. I don't really know what the new routine will look like completely yet, I need to make decisions about what I can realistically keep doing, how much sleep I need and rest. At the moment I am recovering from glandular fever, and probably have post-viral fatigue syndrome am struggling to work/keep my job in the day. I have had almost no energy to even cook when I return home, let alone manage my postgraduate study. It probably isn't realistic at the moment for me to try getting up earlier to pray and write (as I usually used to throughout university/when I worked with a church) Ideally I will eventually re-establish space in the morning before work, as I thrived on the stillness and the focus of starting my day with quiet and with God.

To recap Lent aims - establish daily/weekly routines so I can

-spend at least half an hour in prayer a day
-daily bible reading
- get plenty of rest  - bed by 9pm
-at least an hour before bed (hopefully *in* bed)of totally free time to write/knit/be.

Craft Challenge 3/26

Finally I have managed to create some things and kick off my craft challenge. The scale of the big bad baby blanket(s) has meant I've been crafting away but seemingly getting nowhere near finished. Rather demoralising, especially when I look at all the other wonderful things people have been making. I am trying to be easy on myself, as lately I have been so, so tired and barely coping with work/postgrad study/daily living let alone anything extra. Most nights I am in bed by 9pm. The doctor is pretty sure I have glandular fever (apparently children under five are prime carriers for the virus). That would explain why I am so tired and poorly feeling. So whilst it seems a small start to my challenge, and mostly cooking gifts, I still feel accomplished!

1/26: Valentine's Day Card - very sparkly!

2/26: heart-shaped shortbreads dipped in chocolate
for James and to post to a lovely friend

3/26: Ginger & Cranberry Fudge
(waiting to set & be wrapped in cellophane.)
for James & also for post-packages.

In progress: I have clearly taken leave of my senses.
This is Big Bad Baby Blanket no2. Raspberry ripple edition.
It is coming along a lot faster than BBBB 1 did. Mainly due to less colours
and less tangling. I am trying not to think about how many rows I have
left to go. Just knit, knit, knit wherever and whenever I get a chance.
Big Bad Baby Blanket 1 needs more wool before I can finish it
but it is so nearly there! Hurrah! Did I mention finishing
it is going to mean I throw a party?

Grace

"Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life..... It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!" If that happens to us, we experience grace."

Paul Tillich.