I think, on balance, I’d have liked the Son of God bit, even if it was qualified with “Christians believe that…”  Still, after an afternoon of the Grinch, it was a refreshing change.

*snigger*

Today, we visited the Catholic cathedral in Liverpool. I’m always struck, when I go in, by how I don’t hate it nearly as much as I feel like I ought to. It’s a concrete sixties monstrosity, which was falling down by the mid-eighties, and so isn’t even fit for purpose. The corrosion of the bells above the main door has stained the concrete green, in a way that they’ve only partially managed to clean off in the recent renovations, and as a piece of architecture, it seems forever stranded in a state of just-missing.

That’s what I think when I’m sitting here, postulating. When I’m actually there, though, I love it. It’s so calm, so peaceful, and so focussed on God. I love that all the windows are dark blue and purple, giving it a twilight quality even at 1.30pm. I love the big crown of thorns sculpture that dangles over the altar (I wanted to say communion table – I’m such a non-conformist protestant). I love the stations of the cross around the outside edge, and all the little chapels dedicated to this and that. Mostly, though, I love the people. All the staff, even the tour guides and people, just seem to radiate this spirituality that really touches me. A foreign nun, being given a guided tour by one of the staff, stopped to take photos of Daisy in one of the chapels (I let her – she’s a nun, and anyway, Daisy’s cute), then gave her a blessing. I don’t even know what that means, but I know that it’s the sort of thing we don’t do enough of in my church tradition. And I know Jesus did it, so it can only be good.

Inside the Anglican Cathedral

I find the place much more of a spiritual experience, even on a Saturday afternoon when they’re moving the furniture round for some kind of chamber orchestra to play, than I’ve ever found the Anglican cathedral to be. That’s impressive, don’t get me wrong. It’s the biggest protestant cathedral in Europe, it’s impressive on sheer scale, but it’s only like a incomprehensibly large parish church. With a cafe. And being there feels more like visiting a building, and less like calling in on God.

And coming on the back of many generations of protestant snobbery, that’s saying something.

Christmas Eve has a plan pencilled in, but is subject to confirmation from variety of sources, one of which, I’ve just realised, is our church – Christmas Eve this year is also Christmas Sunday, and since we’ve not been in our current church for all that long, we don’t have a clear sense of how to reinterpret their activities of last Christmas, in predicting their activities for this one.

I have considered ringing the pastor-chap, and demanding he commit to something, but he’s very, very, very unlikely to have even thought about it, I should have thought. I hope he thinks about it soon, though, because if Christmas Eve is punctuated by a 4pm Carol Service Followed By Buffet Supper, as Christmas Sunday was last year, the 1 element of what we are currently calling Plan C1 may be entirely scuppered.

I know you all think I’m mad, but at some point in the next ten weeks there is an inevitable period of stress and agitation, while we all work out who will be where, when and with whom, over the Christmas period. Once the plan is settled, the stress oozes out of it, and it really makes precious little difference whether we go through that process now, or in nine and a half weeks’ time. The advantages of doing it now are twofold: 1) I’m already thinking about it, therefore am already stressed, so the sooner I move through that to a position of lock-down, the better I’ll feel; 2) The sooner we have the locked-down plan, the sooner we can make all of the other plans – what food to buy, whether we need to borrow a bigger table, etc, etc.

I sometimes envy the people whose relatives live too far apart for them to reasonably travel from one to the other during Christmas – it must simplify the military operation significantly.

Mostly they sang songs that Neil had written. They used to call it “gospel”, but it wasn’t gospel in a black sense. If anything, it was black gospel meets seventies folk. They even made a couple of tapes which they distributed… well, I’ve no idea how widely they were distributed, but we had half a dozen, on the off-chance that we met someone who wanted one.

The first tape was called Reason For Living, and this is the one that was an integral part of my childhood. Other children pretend to be pop stars, or cartoon characters. We used to play the tape, and pretend to be Aunty Jan.

We were children, and children don’t analyse things. They certainly don’t analyse for lyrical quality, or musical depth, or significance of meaning. Listening to it again, now, I’m struck by how Neil’s lyrical style probably benefited enormously from the first time he bought a modern bible translation – some of the songs are taken verbatim from scripture, which I’m all in favour of, I just don’t understand what they’re saying. That speaks of my lack of education, I suppose – I bet they knew what the songs meant. More than that, though, I’m bowled over by the sheer optimism of the songs. The open-hearted naivety.

I don’t know how Neil and Carol and Jan look back at Agapé. I suspect that they’re the tiniest bit embarrassed, in the way that everyone is embarrassed when they look at their creative efforts of two or three decades ago. Times have changed, styles have changed, and more importantly, they’ve changed – mellowed, matured, not to be any better or worse, just to follow the normal and natural development of life. They’re no more the teens and twenty-somethings they were then, than I’m the four-year-old.

It’s not mine, so I don’t have to get embarrassed by it. My Agapé tape is a huge part of the backdrop of my childhood, and I hold it in great affection for that reason. I also admire the courage, the vision, and the desperate desire the please God that led them to make it – they had more passion and motivation when they were little more than kids themselves, than I’ve ever had.

The world is positively miniscule. Kevin has discovered that his great great great great grandmother was a Jump, which would be worrying if she was a Lancashire Jump, but the connection with the West Derby Jumps is so ancient as to scarcely be relevant (in case anyone thought that 200 years didn’t already put the relationship firmly in the irrelevant category). Still, it’s an unusual name, and a protestant name at that, so we were a little surprised.

The size of the world has also been brought into question by the fact that my aforementioned doorbell-accompanying friend today met my first cousin once removed on my father’s side, or, as we usually call him, Our Phil^*. Phil is an area something or other (they used to be called Superintendants, but some time after I drifted out of the denomination into the murky world of the housechurch movement, and churches that were all too often called “Something or Other Christian Fellowship”, they restructured, and I’ve no idea what he does. The evidence would suggest that he still uses Superintendent as a point of reference to counteract the blank looks.) in the Baptist Union, which means that he turns up at Baptist Churches as guest preacher, authority figure, shoulder to cry on, etc etc, and to celebrate high days and holidays. Our local Baptist church is celebrating such a high-day/holiday at the moment (a centenary), and so there was a comparing of notes between my astute friend, who guessed that there must be some relationship between us, and my distant cousin.

On one level, I’m quite gratified – much depends on tone of voice and levels of irony, but since I’m told he said, “Oh yes, Our Ruth^* – the clever one,” I’m taking it as a compliment. Two tiny degrees, that’s all, nothing to brag about, but thank you.

On another, these things always unnerve me a little. I don’t have huge secrets to protect, when my different worlds collide – plenty of people do, I’m sure – but it just seems very odd, that Tess spent some minutes, this morning, talking to a member of my family, who actually knows me hardly at all, and rarely sees me outside of Christmas. There’s always Christmas, and in a funny way, most of the family rather value the fact that we don’t lose touch all together, because we always go to my Grandma’s at Christmas. But in another, it’s a bit farcical, because we know so little about each other, the need to hold onto that connection is… odd.

An example: before he went to Bible college, Phil worked at Camel Lairds. I’ve always known this, but I only learned today that he did electrical type stuff there – for all I knew he could have been an accountant, or a spot welder. I think I had an idea he wore a suit, so maybe not a spot welder. Similarly, our Will does something in computers – I don’t know what, or for whom, or at what level. Our Tim works for BT, and always has, but I don’t know what he does. And all they know about me is that she’s the clever one – went to University, you know.

I value my family pretty highly. Maybe I ought to speak to some of them.

* I don’t have an Aunty Ermintrude, or an Uncle Joshua. They were merely examples.

One thing we haven’t posted much about, mainly because it’s been quite a sensitive issue, is the fact that after many months of turmoil and soul searching, we’ve left our church. This was a difficult time, for Ruth, Dove had been church for around 10 years, pretty much since she came back to Liverpool to go to uni. For me Dove had been my only church since becoming a Christian around 5 years ago. I’m not going to go in to great detail as to why we left, lets just say it was hard.

During the summer, most churches dwindle in size as everybody goes off on holiday, so we’ve had most Sundays off over the last few months, with the promise to ourselves that we would start to look for a new church in September. Well September is here and the Gilberts returned from there around America trip, so armed with friends we went church hunting on Sunday.

Last Sunday was South Liverpool Vineyard, who meet at Greenbank Collage, just down the road from us, now not being a life long Christian I didn’t know much about the Vineyard collection of churches, I got the impression that they where quite happy clappy and in your face, so I was a bit wary of the trip, but I have to say I liked it. Ruth was initially a bit worried that it might be to dove-like, and hence draw all the comparisons, but I think we overcame that quite quickly.

We where also a bit worried by the action focus of the midweek groups, which again does tend to grate with us a bit, I can’t say why really it just feels uncomfortable, but having talked to quite a few people in the church, I am much more reassured by them, my only worry now is finding a niche.

Overall, I do like South Liverpool Vineyard (even if they do have a long name) and to be honest I could see us settling in there quite nicely, but I don’t want to get carried away just yet, we’ve only been to once church so far, and we’ve only been once. Maybe over the next few months we’ll see.

I’ve come to the conclusion, over the last few months, that I don’t believe in “vision”. At least, I believe that God does, from time to time, give individual and collections of Christians a glimpse of the bigger picture, but that actually, nine times out of ten, we wouldn’t understand it if we saw it, and the search for a vision is likely to represent a huge distraction from the job in hand.

Maybe I underestimate the value of a vision, because of having no great personal need for one. Maybe people who need and value this overarching sense of what they’re working towards function better that way, and I’m just differently made. On the other hand, maybe they’re almost all missing the point.

The way I see my Christianity, I am called to live my life in close proximity to God. I am called to pray regularly, study the bible, and meet with other believers. Through these activities, and, in fact, through any other activity God pleases, I am given the opportunity to hear Him speak to me, in a personal and individual way; to discover what specific things he would have me do and say, and when nothing in particular seems to be pressing, to generally live my life in accordance with the teachings of Jesus – in a way that demonstrates the loving of God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength (that doesn’t sound right, I can never remember the order), and the loving of my neighbours as I love myself.

Frankly, I see that challenge as being quite enough to go on with. Loving my neighbours is a tricky business. Don’t even like some of ‘em.

I don’t really understand why I need a bigger “vision” than that. If, within that, God tells me to go talk to someone at a bus-stop, be a missionary in Timbuctu, preach hell, fire and damnation in the city centre, or quit my job and become a hairdresser, then that’s what I’ll do. Or more likely, I’ll object profusely, argue the toss, and fight him every inch of the way. Fortunately, God’s very patient with me over my attitude problem. Nevertheless, my experience is that God VERY RARELY explains why he wants you to become a hairdresser, he just makes it quite clear, over a period of time, that he does, and years later, you look back and see how well it worked out.

This is becoming rather Adrian Plass like, but I find the idea of waking up in the morning with a fully formed picture of the hairdressing ministry that I’m going to start, the hundreds of people who will be involved in it, converted through it, etc, etc, quite alarming. In fact, I just don’t trust it. If God says be a hairdresser, be a hairdresser. If he uses your hairdressing to bring people to know Jesus, that’s great. If he uses it to do people’s hair, well that’s not so bad, either.

Daisy is doing fine, she is having trouble remembering how to breast feed, but today, she seems to be remembering and we’ve just had a good 13-14 minute feed, with virtually no hassle!

The nights are the thing you can’t prepare for, sleepless nights, are something we have all experienced, but sleepless, coupled with the need to actually get out of bed, and do things, makes the world of difference, it’s still early days, so night times, are still quite clumsy, so once daisy has woken us up, it’s about an hour before we are going back to sleep.

our big plan for today, is to go to church. Not the whole service, just tea and coffee afterwards, this will be daisy’s first trip out, (apart from the trip home from hospital) so we all get a chance to try out the new pram, and Daisy gets to be the center of attention (again).

Ray wasn’t ill, well he wasn’t two weeks ago. Apparently he had blood clots which travelled into his lungs and heart, which took everyone by surprise, and he was rushed into hospital last week, where he died. So it’s all been a bit of a shock.

The funeral was packed, with well over 200 people attending, because as a church we don’t have a building, the funeral was held in elm hall drive, just down the road from the school were we meet.

Without wanting to sound to clich?d, it was a lovely service. Ray was a God loving man, who had many, many friends; it’s very nice to go to a service where people can give true testimony to a person’s life, and not see it as the end but as the beginning of that persons eternal life with God.

In a way some of the Bible you can read again and again, and take in the message, and feel you understand the meaning, but it’s only when something happens that the full power of a verse hits you. I felt that on Thursday, death didn’t have a sting, of course people where very upset, but the assurance that Ray isn’t lost to us forever but that he is now living a new life with god actually gives us hope and a desire to celebrate, both Ray’s life, and the eternal life he has been given through the gift of the lords grace.

It was also the first funeral I’ve ever been too with a burial, as Ruth said, “I’ve never known anyone posh enough to be buried before”. It’s not actually that strange it’s just uncommon.