Waiting

Michelle at Quantum Theology writes recently of her experience of waiting.

This afternoon I waited and remembered and found that waiting hard, as Michelle found waiting hard.

I came home from work mid afternoon to find Small, who had been perfectly well when I left in the morning, was shivering in bed running a high fever. I suspected either malaria as we have just been in Kariba, or pneumonia as he had a chest infection last week. Either was bad, so I scooped him up and took him off to our family practitioner's practice. As we didn't have an appointment we had to wait for a doctor to fit us in between booked patients.

I sat and waited in the small ward with Small shivering as the fever raged. Small was due on 4th July but arrived unexpectedly on 3rd May. This premature birth gave rise to some serious health difficulties and for seven years I spent a great deal of time waiting in this small ward. I looked at the familiar 1930's ceiling moulding and the beautiful art deco door handles and reread the posters that are now 17 years old and thought of the hours I spent waiting for Small to fight his way out of life threatening illness. And that helpless waiting was hard.

Yet I also recalled the enormous support and kindness I had received in this room. Doctors and nurses who cared for my small son and for me, his often overwhelmed mother, who offered small acts of compassion to ease the tension of waiting. As then so today. A nurse arrived with a cup of tea as we waited for bloods and chest films to come back. It turns out that he has both pneumonia and malaria. Once again I waited as the health professionals strung drips and fed him full of drugs and monitored his vitals.

Now I wait and hope as I have done numerous times before that his own internal strength will enable him to bounce back from this double illness.

But the waiting is hard.

Impulsive desire

I saw my retreat director today as he was in Harare. Lovely to have both rain and time together...refreshing, renewing.

We talked again about beleiving in the dark. We talked of a God who seems to forget that some of us humans are frail and easily broken. Then we talked of the insatiable impulse that has driven me almost crazy since returning from retreat. Every day I have felt the need to know this contradictory and silent God more deeply. Every day I have been aware of the shallow shadows of my beleif. Every day I have wondered how to pray.

Every day my questions grow more intense, and the possibility of answers is lost in the noisy busyness of my daily life.

We concluded that perhaps it was time to seek help from my Jesuit friends and make the Spiritual Exercises.

Wow.

Never saw that coming when I put the kettle on for Fr Richard this afternoon.

One third and two thirds

Being of a mathematical sort of mind it has often struck me that The Third World  or Undeveloped World (where I live) is approximately two thirds of the land mass and population of the world. And while I am in the wealthy bracket in that World (though I am poor by a lot of First World measures) confronting the poverty of most of my world is unavoidable. I am familiar with the litany of lack of freedom and corruption and sheer greed that contributes to this poverty, of AIDS and lack of health care and education and adequate food, how drought impacts vulnerable populations, decimating them. I live with these realities everyday.

I am reading Richard Foster's fascinating book Streams of Grace and in one small paragraph in this densely packed book he mentions that perhaps the Third World is not so much undeveloped as the First World is overdeveloped. This thought was arresting to me as a Third Worlder and I have mulled it over for weeks. It releives a certain sense of inferiority. Then this weekend it has been brought into sharp focus.

A young eight year old son of a distant part of our extended family was burnt playing with fire nearly a year ago. There is no paediatric burns unit here and the care he got was rudimentary. Now he is still underweight and not yet over the shock of the burns and the initial treatment. Consequently he has healed with some thick keliod scarring, especially across his chest which will hinder his growth in the future. He needs pressure bandages and a special gell to control the scaring and assist in making it more flexible so in a few years time when he is over the shock and grown up a little more he can have corrective surgery. But it cannot be done here as there is only one plastic surgeon in Zimbabwe and he doesn't do paediatric work because of his age. Yet in the First World there are a bunch of plastic surgeons who frequently do work that is purely elective. Not that there is anything wrong essentially with what they do....just an inequity is all I'm saying.

And I wonder how we as Christians are supposed to respond to this sort of situation?

What do you think?

Long cats and wet dogs

The heat is baking today and the granite counters in my kitchen are currently hosting three long stretched cats and one long kitten, tummy pressed to the stone! I should really chase them off but it is just to hot for such exertions.

I should really chase Shadow, my elderly golden retriever, out from under the lawn sprinkler as I am sure it is not so good for him to be soaked.

I should so all sorts of things but I think I am going to fall into the pool instead.

Memory

I have spent the morning at the gun club, not a place I ordinarily spend much time. It is a place my husband and sons and cousin love and they thoroughly enjoy the precision target shooting. Their skills vary but seemingly not their pleasure, and all are turned out today as it is the end of year championships, a big day with a real festival atmosphere. I am being useful in scoring. Accountants always get the numbers jobs.

Strange to smell the cordite. And it creates an echo of memory and with it a different perspective after all these years.

I grew up in a war. A dirty little civil, race inspired war. Vicious, bitter, cruel, ugly.

I grew up on a homestead on a farm and such isolated dwellings were vulnerable to attack. Because manpower was desperately short young teenagers on farms were armed and taught to use weapons. I was one of many such. Sure enough when attack happened I did as I was trained and shot back, like many other teenagers caught up in an adult world that we didn't understand. It was a time that introduced us to the terrible world of death and grief as many of our contemporaries died in the conflict.

The cordite smell today brought back those sad, ugly memories.

And the strange thought that I am grateful to be able to offer prayers for all those of my school friends who died in the war on the Feasts of All Souls and All Saints. For a long time, year on year I have attended a service somewhere and remembered. Faithfully. In grief often enough, and over the passage of the years with a deepening love for those lives were brutally cut short, and their families who have had to live with the losses that never really ease.

Dragons and Lizards and weather signs.....

We are having the hottest October in fifty years and possibly in the last hundred years. Temperatures yesterday on my veranda reached 35.1 C (97F) and predicted to reach 38 (100F) this weekend. My friend The Dragon is melting, she claims that Dragons need cool temperatures to be happy. I, on the other hand, nicknamed the Lizard because I so love being warm am a happy camper. Out in the bush the last drop of moisture is being leached away and everything turns taupe and sand coloured and wildfires destroy thousands of hectares.

Last night, later in the evening, having checked on the dogs I felt the faintest zephyr, merest whisper of a breeze. I wasn't even sure, to begin with, that it was even real. Then I realised even the smallest of my wind chimes were not ringing which could only mean that this whisper of air movement was directly out of the north. Excitement bubbled. Our rain bearing winds come from the north and we've had nothing but southerlies for six months. Living in such a drought prone region no one gets even faintly excited, or even sometimes moves indoors until the rain is truly hammering down, but here is just a faint breathe of hope.

Abruptly I was reminded of the gospel from a couple of Sundays ago, where Jesus says to the Pharisees " you can read the weather but not yourselves". It is easy to say to myself, I am self reflective and I do know myself, after a fashion. But there is always something isn't there about myself that takes me by surprise. Some need, some arrogance, some fantasy, some distrust, some nursed anger that blossoms, seemingly out of nowhere. Not in the heat as it does for my friend The Dragon but more often in the rigours of the cold for me.

Hospitality

I am going to a funeral this afternoon.

It is the circumstances that give me pause to reflect this morning. In brief. The Anglican Church in Zimbabwe is a house horribly divided with an excommunicated bishop who holds all the church property and a duly elected bishop with no physical homes for his congregations. Its a mess, and follows our political divisions. So a friend of mine, who is an ordained Anglican priest in South Africa, has been asked to lead the funeral service for his father in law and has no church from which to do so.

The Rector of my sons Jesuit College has made the Chapel available for this service, in the spirit of community. Offering generously of the schools resources to assist, and detailed me as "holiday sacristan" to make sure that he has everything he needs.

It is an honour, and a joy that doors that were once firmly closed are now open and hospitable.

Evening

I have had a tiring day. Just one of those days that happen sometime where you end up somewhere quite other than planned. I settled this morning with the determined intention to clear some niggly small jobs off my desk when a client called to say that she had uncovered a major theft going on in her factory and could I, by chance, come now. Consequently I had a really intense and focused morning planning a strategy, liaising with Fraud Squad and the like. I came home, intending this time to put my feet up and relax and play with small kitten when Small called to say that he had hit a pedestrian who had run out across the road in front of him. More dealings with police, Casualty (ER I guess if you are American) insurance and whatever. It turns out, fortunately, that the the pedestrian has only some minor grazes and was warned by the police to cross roads only at intersections. Hopeless thing that really as no good Zimbabwean really obeys road rules...... but that is another story.

Weary from an unexpectedly intense day I leaned against the sun warmed north facing wall this evening after sunset. The heat seeped into my bones offering comfort and peace.

To idle to move indoors to begin supper for dogs, cat and humans I watched the evening descend to night instead.

Watching the darting, diving flight of the resident palm swifts before they retired for the night.
Watched them silouetted black against a pink opal sky.
Watching the tropical evening twilight fade into peacock blue darkness
Watched the tiny fruit bats clamber out of the magnolia to forage on what the swifts had left
Listened in the growing dark to the tuning night orchestra
Whistling frogs clear and high trebles
Warty toads in basso profundo
Rhythm section comprising the crickets and cicadas.
And lastly glowing eerily the rare, rare sight of a firefly.

Coming to I realised that darkness had come suddenly, as it does in the tropics, and that the wall was cooling behind me. Restored in some measure I turned for indoors and ....supper.....

Loss for Words

I have found myself curiously at a loss for words since I went on retreat. It may be that in the five days I was away suddenly so much had changed, not least me. I came home to friends facing all sorts of life threatening illnesses - either themselves or in close family members. Being beside them in ways that they need has not always been easy.... there is no one size fits all approach and my own sense of helplessness and grief for my friends has overwhelmed any poor words I may have to offer.

Our confirmation class is unexpectedly facing some major changes and next year will be even more challenging than usual - this I have at least learned to deal with. We know from experience that the class happens entirely in the framework that the Spirit dictates.....even when it just seems bleak to us.

The last ten days or so have brought surprising anxiety for Vetboy and Small and my assistant who are all writing exams and appear to be struggling with their course material more than I anticipated. It requires momentous effort on my part to breathe and to trust the Living God loves them even more than I do, and to allow events to unfold as they will.

My husband is travelling a lot and I miss his reassuring self.

And in this wordless, anxious place I learn that prayer does not require words. Just attention and presence.

And for this mercy I am deeply grateful.

Peculiar weather and prayer

It is supposed to be hot and dry. Purple time. Sky no longer blue but white/mauve with haze. Jacaranda trees and petrea bushes flowering purple and bougainvillea alive and vibrant in everything from magenta to bright purple to orange. Instead we have had unseasonal rain and cold and the sky is bright blue and everyone has been digging out their winter pyjama's and clothes only put away the week before. This morning the wind is still blowing out of the cold south and not from the hot equatorial north.

And everyone is quite disoriented by this turn of events. And conversations abound, tinged with anxiety... "does this mean a poor season?" Meaning will we go hungry and thirsty because there is no rain and therefore the dams don't fill so no water and no rain means no crops, no food. We lack the foreign currency reserves to import food. If we can't grow it, we will starve. Rescue won't come from the outside world either given the nature of our politics where food and starvation is a political weapon.

I came back from retreat in the Monastery understanding that despite the messiness of my life, of our lives, God herself is present. That all activity is a form of prayer. Waiting and working, sickness and health, loving and living. There is no part of my life and history that does not belong. I learned that I can resist or open myself to the mystery of my life and that in the opening there is God. Always easier to do of course in the Monastery than in the demands of a life lived in the world.

Here is the reality of the understanding. I loath being cold and rejoice in the summer. My freinds call me a basking lizard for my love of the warmth. Ordinarily I hunker down and wait for the cold to pass, as I know it must and delight in the summer heat. Now I must open myself to the cold and the wintery wind and blue, blue sky. And the first thing I see when I do is that everything is green.....for the dust has been washed away revealing an unexpected bright spring green  not seen before.

I wonder what else I will see if I open my eyes and hear if I listen?

Retreat

After an utterly frantically busy couple of weeks dealing with the tax quarter numbers I am departing on retreat later. My first. Excitement bubbles, mixing occasionally with anxiety and anticipation.

In odd moments of downtime I have realised that my very unMethodist fascination with the Catholic Church and the spiritual writings of the saints began in my twenties when a friend went on retreat and I was envious beyond measure. Life here was such that back then you had to be Catholic to go to a Catholic Centre and no one else did retreats. Even though I have been Catholic for fifteen years now this is the first occasion when I have been in a position to go, family wise, work wise, health wise. I suspect that I have been emotionally and mentally to vulnerable to do this before now also.

Now my husband and Small will manage on their own, and my assistant will run my office and all of them will look after Os the small kitten that joined our family last week.

The preparation for this retreat has had its ups and downs and it has been on and off again at least twice. Now the day is come and I set off for the Benedictine Monastery and Mission isolated in the rural area's this afternoon. I will not have connectivity, and as I did on holiday recently I look forward to being unavailable for four days.

Dad

Tomorrow it will be a year since an aneurysm tore Dad's heart apart.

I am still tender, still miss him, still struggle sometimes to deal with my own conflicted feelings about him. No big surprise really.

Today I choose to remember the last time I saw him. It was a good day but I didn't know that he would be dead the next. He had come for lunch. My mother was holding a charity bridge tournament and he fled some twenty ladies who would be there for the day. We had such fun, he and I. Talking intensely as we always did. Subjects as varied as the global recession, wills and estate planning, running a professional accounting practice, birds, gardening and family stories. He reminisced about Great Uncle Cecil who was never quite right in the head as a result of spending three days stuck in a tree in 1910 with a pride of lions eating his horse below him. Back then Zimbabwe was still largely wilderness!

We talked also about his will. It seemed on his mind. He made his wishes clear and wound up by asking me to look after my mother. I didn't think about it much. Mum and I had never been really close and so I imagined that my sister can do that bit and I'll do the money. Easy promise to keep I thought.

As ever that's not what happened. My sister decided to leave for England and left me to look after Mum in the broadest sense of that word. Not that she is helpless for she is fit and strong at seventy nine, but she needs time and attention as we all do. Astonishingly a year later we have learned to like each other, and to have fun together. Yesterday we laughed and laughed at the antics on Os the eight week old kitten Small came home with last week.

Here is perhaps one of Dad's final gift to me. A relationship with my mother that is worth having and which I am beginning to treasure.

Hope......

Curious thing today.

But I was in the car a lot. Tax quarter again so doing the rounds of all my clients.’

It was hot today. Wind dropped and the cold disappeared with it. And it has been hot and very, very dry. The sky is white. I wondered why this is always my favourite time of year.

I get it. Suddenly I get it…………It is the season of unreasonable hope.

Hope when it is dry and hot and the last drop of moisture is being sucked out of every plant.

Yet the tababouya’s are blooming bright daffodil yellow, the jacaranda’s are nearly in full bloom, the bougainvilleas are magnificently magenta, acacia’s are bright green with the flush of new leaf. All with not a hint of rain, not even any humidity. We all know that it’ll still be weeks before the rains come. Yet all around me are signs of life. The plants believe that the world is a good place. And they trust that it will rain in due time. So they flower and leaf and do what they do, well before there is any proof that it will. Rain that is.

Hope when there is no good reason for it to exist.

And I guess that is faith.

So I love this season.

Harvest Moon

Heavens knows why we here call this moon Harvest Moon also. Weird habit as we are going into summer and after six months of dry have absolutely nothing to harvest but we do. Periodically, I recall that it is a Northern centric world......but that being so

and given that it is for the Southern hemisphere the vernal or spring equinox in a few days....

Moonrise was spectacular this evening. Lifting just above the horizon before true dark and blood red from the haze and dust in the atmosphere. Standing out in the warm evening the frogs seemed to form a chorus heralding the return of longer days and warmth and fertility. Presently though, we are in the deep dry, six months of no rain with the temperatures rising sucking the last remaining moisture out of plant and beast and man. In another month or so perhaps we will have built up to the first of the summer thunderstorms. For now we hunker down, dusty, sky white with haze and hold on. Early mornings smell of the faintest edge of damp on dry, dry grass.

This evening I reflect how often my life has seemed arid and bone dry, where even the deep wells have run dry, and I have not seen the promise of rain and green and verdant, abundant growth that the full summer holds.

Hope. Lost, scattered like ash before the wind.

Tonight I remember to hope.

As a deer pants....

Maria played the opening bars of our post communion hymn "as a deer pants for the water, so do I long for you" and the tears started to flow this morning. Tears from a long week that held two funerals and a even more time with bereaved families, set against the back drop of Dad's impending anniversary.

Breathe, I told myself. Breathe.

Let the tears come, as the merciful Grace of God comes. Unexpected, flowing, abundant.

Breathe, breathe.

The Spirit  moves softly, holding my tender, bruised heart.

Breathe. Gently Breathe.

The rhythm of Mass takes over carrying me forward, acknowledging my longing for God.

Rhythms

Today I am struck by the rhythms that pervade life.

Just at the moment I am caught in the slow, murmuring rhythm of grief. More deaths that I am really able to absorb. Deaths unexpected and expected, deaths of  youngsters just beginning to live and deaths of oldies who have lived long and full lives.

Running through them all the long, low, sighing, pulsing, cadence of grief.

Widow's and widower's and mothers and fathers and siblings and friends asking in fresh sharp anguish "will this feeling ever go? will I ever feel better again?" And the soft, gentle reply from those who know, who have been in this land....no, it never really goes away. But you are resilient, you can endure the unendurable.....even when you don't want to....

Over and around this murmuring the practical of meals cooked, visits made, cakes baked, passengers collected from airports, eulogies and testimonies written, and readings practicised. The doing that overlays the being. Life and death bound together, intertwined, inseparable. Sunshine and shadow.

Patsy

Patsy is a school friend's mother. She and I have been close friends for years and have lunched once a week since my boys were old enough to stay at school till the afternoon.

She died this morning as she wanted. Just her and her Lord in the wee small hours, crossing over without fuss and without undue melodrama and mostly without efforts to resuscitate her. The leukaemia which has made her so frail and gave her so much pain these last few months finally overwhelming her body.

But never her spirit.

Never her spirit.

Sing joyous songs with your Lord Patsy,

for I am singing a sad song this night. How shall I get on with out your faith and love and presence?

Prayer

When I am feeling bleak and have more than usual difficulty with prayer I turn to the words of others if withdrawing to silence is harder than I can cope with. Mostly I turn, again and again, to the Psalms. Recently though I have been reading Richard Fosters book of prayers and today I found this gem that was exactly the prayer I needed to pray today....

Today, O Lord, I accept your acceptance of me.
I confess that you are always with me and for me.
I recieve into my spirit your grace, your mercy, your care.
I rest in your love, O Lord. I rest in your love.
                                                      Amen

Packing

I have been reflecting on a moment that happened the morning we left for holiday. It concerns that trite phrase "carrying a lot of baggage".......

It happened like this.

My husband and son and I were packing for the trip.

Small said  to me "Mom, I've grown out of most of my clothes so I only taking a couple of changes and a smart set for Vetboy's dinner, I'll buy what ever else I need there (perhaps it helps to know that we don't have vast Malls here and some of our shopping is done outside the country). It took him ten minutes to pack.

My husband, who travels a great deal for work, simply took clothes and washbag and other stuff out of his "work" case which is permanently packed, added some more casual clothes and was done in about fifteen minutes.

Me, it took half an hour to pack as I had to start completely from scratch. I don't travel as much, had no need of a new wardrobe. In the end I also had the heaviest suitcase and took too much clothing, and generally travelled less lightly than either my husband or Small. 

Which makes me wonder about what else I make laboured when it needn't be.

Coming home

We have been on holiday partly to celebrate Vetboy's 21st birthday and partly to just spend time sitting on the beach. At the last minute I decided to disconnect from the world and left my laptop and blackberry at home. I didn't think it would be as easy as in the end it turned out to be, and I did enjoy just not being available and I think my assistant liked my trust that she would run my office perfectly satisfactorily while I was away - which of course she did!

We were back a couple of days ago  and so this morning I picked up my duties as holiday sacristan and went early to the chapel to prepare it for the Mass. The weather had deteriorated resulting in overcast and so the empty church was darkened and quiet as I moved slowly and softly and respectfully lighting candles, laying out vestments, setting out out vessels and missals and filling stoups with holy water.  It was peaceful work, full of deep seated pleasure and still happiness. When I was done the candles and brass and bright flowers shone with hushed and waiting expectancy.

As I finished the first congregants were trickled in. Familiar faces, elderly folk who like to come early and say a decade or two of the rosary before Mass. Gradually the chapel filled and Mass began in familiar cadence and song and prayer.

I thought

I am home, amongst my family of faith and it is a good place to be.

Opposites

Terri comments of how reading here makes her aware of the oppositeness of our seasons - hers and mine. I am in winter looking forward to summer and she enjoying summer bounty and preparing for winter. She is not alone. Since beginning this blog I have been made aware that my seasons in the southern hemisphere are not those presently being experienced in the North.

Some things happen at the same time.... it dawned on me that our cherry trees blossom at the same time as those in the North, and that was a wondrous thought to behold.

But mostly I like the yin and yang effect that this oppositeness of seasons has.

I loath being cold and here in this part of Africa when the "real" cold (no snow of course!) lasts a mere six to eight weeks and the heat for months our houses are built airy and open and  not ideal for keeping winter chill out. Yet reading of summer in the North I am reminded that the cold does not last forever and that the world turns, and in time summer and warmth and heat will be present again.

Spring? I don't think so! A taster perhaps.

I have had pneumonia and bronchitis. Been bored to death in bed.

Yesterday I heard the large warty toad who lives under the large pot that serves as my courtyard fishpond give an experimental croak or two.

I knew what stirred him from his winter slumber - slightly warmer weather and an rapid increase in humidity. Sure enough the humidity level stood at 58% when only days ago it was 23%. His skin and whole body was giving him the message that it is spring. Nice as that thought is, I don't think so. It will get cold again before true spring arrives. All two days of it. Then it will be summer. Yay.

I thought about how easily I fall into despair if  I think something is over or healed only to have it come back again. Grief. Sadness. Anger. And the like. Yet sometimes perhaps what I felt was only a taster. A snifter of spring. A promise of what will come. With promises of summer beyond that. Perhaps now I am just experienced enough to be able to enjoy the 'warmer" weather, without dreading winter's inevitable last fling.

Now there's a thought to make me smile.

Birthdays

August is a month of birthdays in our household. There are sons and daughters and nieces and nephews and cousins and friends and relations all who have birthdays this month. So we leap from birthday to birthday with barely a day in between sometimes. In many ways it is a lot of fun and I have learned to begin gift buying months in advance or the budget gets a little strained.

But as I have gotten older some sadness has crept in.

Today for instance is my Dad's birthday. He and I had a tricky relationship so sometimes I am ambivalent about him but today I simply miss his hearty enjoyment of the celebration of his birthday. He was a big noisy man who loved to party and it is very strange to be still and quiet this evening. He and I were so close in so many ways and in recent years my mother allowed me to cook his birthday dinner. I am thinking this evening that we would have been at the planning of the menu for weeks. He would have changed his mind a dozen times and oh we would have laughed our way through the process of choosing a menu. A path that lay between what I could cook for however many were invited and what he wanted.

This month I am also looking forward to Vetboy's twenty first birthday on the 19th. Again it is a day that is a little strained and has been since his younger sister was stillborn on the same day when he was two. Always I wonder on this day, what would she have been like? Would she be a tomboy or a girlie girl (in which case she surely would have picked the wrong mother)? Would she have liked books or horses or dancing? Yet I have a living, breathing son who equally deserves to have this day celebrated. Sometimes it is very hard to deal with the joy and the grief all together.

Other birthdays are mercifully easier and simpler.

So here's to the birthday boys and girls. Have a very good year all of you.

Ordinary people

A friend of ours died suddenly and unexpectedly yesterday.

A chest infection kept me still and inactive so I listened to many of the visitors who came with shocked expressions to see and to comfort and to help in any small way. I watched those who had got there, the first responders, friends of many years. It was they who called the doctor and funeral home. I watched the nearly adult children's god father reassure them that he would fetch them from the plane. I watched others make and pour endless tea. I watched still others make beds for the sudden influx of people. I watched them step back and give a shocked and grieving wife something to do. I watched others bring milk and tea and cake and beer and wine and snacks (the flights arrive late in the evening.......there is going to be a lot of waiting around).

So I watched ordinary people do ordinary loving things well and with a fullness of heart.

In the grand scheme of things not a big deal but down at the frontline of life, a difference that may make it possible for resilience to sprout and grow in the face of overwhelming grief.

Happy Feast Day

To all those who are Jesuits or who are part of a Jesuit family in some way

Happy Feast Day

Makorokoto (congratulations and felicitations in the vernacular)

Snow in Africa

People who aren't African's tend to think of Africa as a hot and dry and dusty place. Indeed we often get "foreign" visitors who toast is "dust in Africa". If you watch the news, any time you like there is some story lurking there of famine in Africa. Pictures of starving children are likely to tug at the world's heartstrings and, thank heaven, produce funds to provide food for these mites.

Along with the vast migrations of the Serengeti in Kenya, gorilla's in the equatorial rain forest and young thugs in pickup's committing horrific crimes and violence are iconic staples of how the rest of the world sees us. Just as we see the First World as a golden shining place of riches and better, safer lives. True but not the whole story.

A picture that does not commonly spring to mind is of snow in Africa. A friend phoned this morning to say that she wasn't going out as the snow that has fallen in parts of South Africa has snowed her in and besides it is too damn cold as our houses are really not built with this kind of weather in mind. She was quite grumpy but said her children who have never seen snow before were having a great time outside with snow ball fights and building snowmen and sledding on her kitchen trays. In the mean time while it isn't snowing here in Harare Zimbabwe and is not likely to (we would really know that there was something seriously wrong with the worlds weather systems if it snowed here) it is fresh and cold.

Chased

"restore the years that the locust has eaten"

This verse has chased me through my prayers and my dreams and odd moments of stillness and in the whirl of activity for a few months. I didn't realise at first that it was actually a bible verse ..... I wondered knowing my mothers stories and my own experience (as a young child) of the devastation that a horde of locusts can cause where this thought came from and who might restore what the locust had taken. When it occurred to me that this might be biblical it was easy to track Joel down. His description of locusts destroying completely on the move is eerily familiar.

My spiritual director is away for nine months.

Where do I turn for help in discerning what being chased by this verse means? I guess I have to trust that as the verse comes to me, so will understanding and enlightenment.

Tonight I pray for light in my darkness.

What do you say?

What do you say to a young man in your confirmation class who says matter of factly to you "my father murdered my mother"?

I knew it was true but didn't know what he knew.

Shocking to hear such words from a teenager.

Words failed me so I hugged him instead.

Check up

I have had a check up with my doctor today.

Wonderful.

After fifteen years of dealing with ill health and setback after setback I guess I was not expecting too much in the early days of treating this epilepsy. I couldn't have been more wrong. I had a battery of tests earlier this week and today learned the results. It is all good. Almost incomprehensible but oh so enjoyable.

I left walking on air, grinning like a crazy person.

I can do this!

And I am moved to bubbling excited gratitude.

Growing up

My sons are out today.

Both surfaced early, Vetboy to go and assist with a dressage show and Small to go and referee. I expect neither home till later this evening when they will appear full of stories of their day and starving hungry. I have prepared for the hunger on a cold winters night with macaroni cheese and rice pudding with stewed fruit. I look forward to their return and their stories.

I have also looked after a friends two year old, "King Julian" of Madagascar fame, this afternoon. I forget surprisingly easily how active toddlers are. King Julian and I did have so much fun and had toys strewn across the kitchen/library by the time we were finished playing. For both of us it was a fun laughter filled afternoon and for his young mother hopefully welcome healing space for herself.

Now that he is gone home giggling with his mother and my kitchen/library restored to rights I reflect how quickly children grow, from baby to toddler to independent youngsters. They grow by the Grace of God, and I have been blessed to participate with food and attention and love.

Given my life back

I am not one for pills and potions and what ever the pharmaceutical industry produce.

And amongst the dismay I felt at discovering I have epilepsy was the idea that I would have to take pills to control the seizures for the rest of my life. Not really having a choice in the matter I began taking the medication prescribed ten days ago, and began examining my life to see where it could be made less busy.....per doctors instruction. All a surprising level of cooperativeness from me, who is not renowned for being a cooperative person.

This afternoon, having a no electricity day I have sat in a sunny corner out of the cold wind and luxuriously read my book. An unheard liberty on a weekday afternoon. Finally succumbing to the soothing silence and the sun I simply sat, still, silent, peaceful. Gradually it dawned on me that something was here that I did not really know, a strange comfortableness, an easyness. Idly examining the feeling I discovered I had no headache or eye strain, that I had slept well without the usual plague of nightmares. I was relaxed, happy, in a good place.

Eventually it dawned on me. This is the impact of the pills, and the beginnings of decluttering my life.

I feel as though I have been given new life, and it is marvellous, wondrous, almost to good to be true. I grasp at it greedily with both hands, enjoying every second just in case it should be taken from me again.

Double golden Wedding

Today we celebrated not one but two golden wedding anniversaries with a blessing at Mass.

It is astonishing that in our turbulent country, where there are nearly as many Zimbabweans in exile as remain, that two couples who were married on the same day in the same church fifty years ago should still be members of the same congregation and firm friends fifty years later.

We celebrated not only their fifty years of marriage each but their fidelity to and the stability offered to our congregation this morning with great joy.

the world out there

I am not much of a news junkie. Usually I find that the news doesn't tell me about the people and how they live and what they see and do. Usually the news seems to be a propaganda tool, part of the "media" brainwashing that goes on in our world today.

In the last few days though certain events stay in my mind

South Sudan is now independent. How amazing is that! After generations of slavery to Khartoum. It seems to me that people (not governments) from all round the world just wouldn't give up and made this happen. People who wouldn't let the agony in Darfur disappear into a news black hole, people who watched on Google Earth for troop movements and the like during the referendum, people who continued even after their leader Col John Garang was killed in a helicopter "accident".

Space Shuttle Endeavour will be the last shuttle into orbit this week. How, I wonder, can the American people let their space programme die? I know it costs money, good heavens I am an accountant. But so much was born out of the space programme... miniaturization, computers, microwaves, communications, Hubble. Who will lead us in development and space research now? The Chinese? Beyond my dismay I am simply sad that these workhorses are being retired with nothing to replace them, and seemingly unappreciated.

Prince William and Catherine are on a tour of Canada and the United States. They have no choice but to live their lives forever in the spotlight. They are going to make mistakes, they are human after all. I pray that they will receive tolerance and understanding.

I wonder at the Greek government who impose terrible austerity on their people without tackling the bloated civil service. Small wonder as it is the civil service who design the policy and they, naturally, protect themselves. Global economics reduce me to perplexed dismay much of the time ..... and seem to concentrate on greed, protectionism and passing the buck - its ok so long as I don't have to pay.

The Chinese Government is developing high speed rail networks for all of China. I don't know too much about China but I wonder at their priorities. People still starve in China. Will this rail network help them?

Well that's my round up of world news....what stories catch your eye?

Shadow, the Sneaky Puff Adder

Shadow is a sneaky puff adder (*) and has caused mayhem in my office today. Each dog has his or her own place and usually peace reigns when we are working. However this morning for reasons best known to Shadow he used his right of elder statesman and took Valentines place under my desk, regardless of the fact that he is too big for the space.

Valentine was totally put out.

I suspect that as a result of the abuse she suffered as a puppy coupled with the fact that she is mostly German Shepard, she is not the most stable of dogs. She has been a thorough going nuisance all morning being utterly unable to settle. She in turn unsettled Apache, the dancing dalmation, who is usually an amiable easy going fellow. Shadow remained oblivious to calls, bones and biscuits temptations and pretended to be far deafer than he actually is. He refused to budge.

He, however, has moved into the sun this afternoon and mercifully peace is restored.

Here are some pictures of the disrupters of the peace......

Shadow the sneaky puff adder

Apache the dancing dalmation and Valentine in a mood

Apache looking handsome and Shadow

(*) I have no idea why we use the expression "sneaky puff adder" as puff adders are not sneaky snakes and mostly will give plenty of noisy warning before striking at some one who ventures to close for their comfort. They are very venomous but really pretty snakes as this picture shows.

Commute times

We had a lot of fun this weekend with various friends, several of whom work in Lusaka Zambia, and now because the airline has gotten absolutely unreliable drive the 1000 odd kilometres to Lusaka on a Monday and home again on a Friday. It takes about the same time as the flight, what with waiting times and airport and flight delays but is considerably harder.

What suddenly bemused me was some gentle teasing of a couple who have moved to the Chisawasha Hills on the outskirts of Harare and some forty five minutes from town. The teasing centred around the distance to travel anywhere..... in fact they described it as living miles from anywhere, in the middle of nowhere. Several people said beautiful place, just that it is so far out! They remarked that living out there you might as well live in Johannesburg, a city notorious for the length of its commutes. My eyebrows raised somewhat, these same people think a 1000 kilometre trip to work is not a long commute?

Epilepsy

Well I've had a couple of exciting weeks but the worst of the not knowing is more or less over. Even with MRI results outstanding (due to an exercise for cutting trees of the line near the Imaging Centre) it appears to the doctors that I have temporal lobe epilepsy.

I am blinking a little, as it was most unexpected and what started as a headache that wouldn't go away has ended somewhere I did not even begin to imagine.

I am told that it is simple to treat.

Seems though that I am in for something of an intensive learning curve in the next couple of months. No driving did make me laugh ..... I haven't driven  for years due to double vision difficulties but no swimming dismays me totally. Perhaps some of these things are negotiable.

Silence is within?

I had to have an MRI last night.

I had been told all sorts of scary stories about how claustrophobic and how noisy the machine is and how hard it is to lie completely still for forty minutes or so. Consequently I was a little anxious.

So it began.

And it was everything I had been told. Small space, loud noise, held still.

Reaching for some way to be that wasn't frightened or panicky I sought comfort in the familiarity of the Rosary. Began the prayers without the beads, using my fingers pressed against the vibrating machine to measure the count. After a while I forgot about the noise and my breathing slowed to an even calm and part of me marvelled that, in the short space of time I have been praying the rosary, it has become so easy to slip into its cadence and rhythm.

So it strikes me what I am sure so many know .... that silence comes from with in and ...... that noise needn't be a disruption of that silence.

Morning meditation

It is very cold here, with ground frost crisping my lawn and those frost tender plants that have survived in my garden, especially so at six thirty this morning as I saw my husband off on his trip to Lusaka. The just risen sun made a warm patch against the bedroom wall and I edged into it, eyes slitted, absorbing the warmth available.

Standing with my eyes closed against the sunrise I listened to the crows to my right and the purple crested louries honking call on my left wondering, no more than idly, how many of each were making such a racket. Not realising that I was listening so intently I began to pick out other bird calls. A chiruping robin, no doubt one of our cats was too close for his comfort, the endless busy chatter of small seed eating finches, the aggressive chirping yellow bellied sunbirds, the piping note of the starlings, the sudden rattling, chattering flurry of a group of babblers, the soft tone of a mourning dove ...... and on and on. Identifying the familiar residents of my garden not as usual by sight but by sound.

All the while enjoying the warming of the sun in a place out of the wind that carried the faintest scent of Antarctica.

As I finally opened my eyes I discovered that I was not alone in sunning myself for not far above my head where a pair of speckled mousebirds and their three offspring clinging below the branch as is their way, tummy's exposed to the morning sun, eyes firmly closed against the glare and further up a whole flock of tiny bronze mannikins were doing the same thing.

I understood why they enjoyed the pleasure of an early morning sunbathe, joined as I was in enjoyment.


And whispering silently beyond our pleasure I could feel the Almighty smiling at our simple happiness.

                                                                     

                                                                          Mousebirds                     

Bronze mannikins

Grandfathers

I know today is Father's Day. A day to celebrate fathers. And that can get mighty tricky for some, for most of us because no one has a perfect father and there are always issues..... some huge, some small.....Today thinking about my dad is too hard. Suddenly I miss him painfully all over again, as if he died only yesterday and not eight months ago. To much to deal with just right now.

Instead I ask my mother about her Dad. He died when I was eleven and I have a child's delighted happy memories of him. Especially of him teasing my mum by pretending not to know where I had got to and actually having me hidden in the knee hole of his desk, or behind his footstool. His celebratory chuckle remains vivid in my memory. He loved books and introduced me to the wonderful world of written words by reading Babar stories to me in his comfortable Scottish burr that didn't fade for all the years he lived in Africa. She tells me he was generous and kindhearted and always played Father Christmas at the local Christmas party. She tells me he was a perfectionist who could be hard to deal with. She tells me, something I didn't know, that like my own Dad he died suddenly and unexpectedly.

I think about having missed out on knowing him, and with gratitude that I knew my other grandfather who died when I was twenty five, and who I lived with at the time of his death. He also was funny, and loved to tease in a kind way. I have learned much about him from going through stuff of my dad's - things I also didn't know. Like how he was retired early by the American Copper Mining company he worked for as he was encouraging the black workforce to form unions. Much frowned upon in the 1940's and early 1950's in colonial Africa.

When I think about  both of them I realise how lucky I am to be here.

Both fought and survived the First World War.

My maternal grandfather ran away to war at age 17 in September 1914, and fought all the way through the war on the Western Front with only minor injuries. It seems remarkable when so many millions died that anyone would live, especially when you consider that he was Mentioned-in-Despatches more than once and won the Military Cross. He wasn't tucked away somewhere safe. He fought with  the Scots Guards in the thick of it.

My paternal grandfather fought in German East Africa. An entirely different kind of war to the trenches in Europe. But brutal none the less. Brutal in an entirely African kind of way. He contracted Blackwater Fever (a deadly form of malaria usually) and dysentery and typhoid. They should have killed him but they didn't. Amazing to think that he lived to be 92 after all that.

Both though, were scarred by the war for both fled into the interior of Africa and never went home to Scotland or the Cape Province of South Africa again. For some years they lived solitary lives farming in remote bush or prospecting. Both then married women much younger than themselves. Both became kind, generous and humorous men in their later lives and seemed somehow to put the awfulness of the war behind them without therapy or dragging after effects.

Neither were well known or famous or celebrities, yet they lived ordinary lives that nonetheless deserve honour and respect and to be remembered with love and fondness.

And without them doing that, well I would not be here to live my own life......... I pray that I will live as well as they did.

Lunar Eclipse

I am not quite together this morning.

I was up way beyond my usual bedtime watching the lunar eclipse.

It was cold out but so worth bundling up, filling a flask with hot coffee, grabbing my binoculars and craning my neck to watch the incredible sight. One of the good things about frequent load shedding is that Harare doesn't have a lot of ambient light, making star and in the case of last night, moon gazing something that can be indulged even in town. Somehow I felt that there should have been a music score to accompany the splendour of the event, music that built to a crescendo as the moon went from bright light to orange to dark and through the other side again.

For me it was not just the eclipse, it was also the changing display of the stars revealed by the changing moonlight, as the moon started to go orange the constellation of Scorpio suddenly stood out with clarity, other lesser stars hidden leaving only Scorpio, proud and easy to identify in the night sky, scattered like bright jewels on black velvet. Yet as the moon darkened other fainter stars were revealed, and so the stars ebbed and waned through the night.

Instead I had the much more entertaining sounds of the neighbourhood children, allowed to stay up late and playing with high excitement under the changing moon.

I was drawn to Psalm 19..

The Heavens declare the Glory of God

The skies proclaim the work of his hands

Day to day pours out speech

and night to night reveals knowledge

There is no speech, nor are there words,

whose voice is not heard.

Patience of Africa

I wondered recently why doctors clients are called patients. I wondered as I waited for an hour for my doctor who was running late as he is given to listening to his patients, if it was because we the patients, need to be patient.But I had a new perspective today.

I had to have an EEG today and there is only one place in Harare (and probably the whole country) where this can be done - the main government hospital, the Pari to locals but really called The Parirenyatwa Hospital. This hospital has suffered terribly from the ravages of super hyper inflation, of mismanagement, of just so much. I was anxious a little about the procedure, and the hospital itself. I arrived on time, found the relevant department, surprised at the helpfulness of the staff I enquired of directions from. Such helpfulness to a white person from a government employee is not the norm. 

When I finally arrived at the correct place I was bemused to see a sign reading EEG, EKG, and DENTAL CLINIC. Interesting combination I thought.

I found the right place and joined a queue of some half dozen people. Thinking to myself that here was  patience in Africa. Queues for services are the same all over the continent. Poor people, for the most part, queue endlessly, not sure that they will get service or even that the service offered is able to be provided. Perhaps the machine will be broken, perhaps the technician is on a go slow, maybe there will be no drugs or no money to treat the illness, maybe there will be no electricity, maybe we will never know why we don't get served. I took my place on the ubiquitous brown benches, so familiar from the continents colonial heritage and dug out my book, for I had come prepared. My bag held book, MP3, water, sweets and biscuits. I know that appointments don't mean a great deal usually. One queues and one takes one's turn

Patience. Acceptance.

Small children ahead of me regarded with wide eyes. So I dug out some sweets. They grinned hugely. 

A young man came out of an office to attend to us. He established that those ahead of me wanted the dentist and not the EEG department. Suddenly, unexpectedly I was the only person in the queue. This same polite young man assisted me in filling out the form, making payment, and in waiting for my turn. The hospital might be tired and worn but it was spotlessly clean and does its best under extreme pressure on its resources. Much like all the people I encountered, polite, helpful, caring.

I wondered again at my expectations of being served, and those of the poor people around me. I wondered at my ingratitude and at their gratitude.

Patience. Acceptance.

Prayer in action. I think I saw it today.

Elephants in water....

These photographs were taken by my friend and assistant Lizane Purse on a recent trip to Kariba, an enormous man made lake on the Zambezi and favourite holiday destination for Zimbabweans.

 A matriarchal group with the Matusadona mountains in the background.

A lone bull with nice ivory.

Elephants in the air

Terri says that she loves the idea of elephants in the air......

I had such a laugh at this .......

If you live in my part of Africa then you will know all sorts of things about elephants. For instance that they can move incredibly quietly through the bush and can appear seemingly out of nowhere a few feet from one. It can be alarming because African elephants are enormous, and they can be a tad unpredictable with fiery tempers and protective instincts and little love or trust for mankind.

You will know that they are both poached to the edge of extinction and over populating their remaining "protected" ( I use the word ironically - poaching is big money and no where is safe) territories. Over population means they are literally eating themselves out of house and home. They are killing themselves. Again anyone who lives in this part of Africa has seen the destruction on the flora that elephants wreak on their stately passage from here to there.

Most of us have watched baby elephants play and teenagers practice charging. We have fitted both our hands into an elephant footprint. We have seen their matriarchal families move in groups through the bush, stomachs rumbling. We have heard their vocalizations, which low range sounds can carry for hundreds of miles ... or so it is thought. If you are really lucky you will have seen them move at night, ivory shining in the moonlight, the impression of grey ghosts belied by the munching and swishing of grasses.

You will know also that sometimes you don't see them at all, for they disappear like grey ghosts in thick scrub and can be completely hidden only a few feet away, but even if you don't see them, chances are you will smell them.

The tang of elephant hanging vividly in the air......

Elephants are awesome (NOT in some teenagery use of that word) they are awe inspiring, terrifying, wonderful, amazing, extra ordinary, beautiful.

But it doesn't often, if ever, occur to me that elephants in the wild are not an experience that people who don't live in Africa share, that in a way I take elephants for granted. After all my husband was held up for an hour on his road trip back from Lusaka yesterday because he had to wait for the elephants on the road to move off.

Frost

We have frost this morning and the wind is very fresh and very cold and out of the south.

When I was a child I loved the smells that the wind carried. I loved the smell of rain and that warm heady mixture of cattle dung and dust that is so Africa before the rains come, and the concretey asphalt smell of a city and waxy smell of acacia  thorn bush in the lowveld and the papery smell of mopane scrub and the vivid tang of elephant or water hanging in the air.

The southerly wind carries for me the ice cold sharpness of the Antarctic snows.

Much as I love still the smells borne on the wild wind, the smell of the Antarctic is one that usually only makes me hunker down and grit my teeth and hold on to the hope of summer heat. This morning as the wind has finally swung around to the South, bearing winter with it I consider opening myself to a different perspective. I can't quite bring myself to enjoy winter but I consider what joy I may find. Warm fires, snuggly warm bed clothes, hot porridge, hot chocolate drinks, three cat bodies cuddled in close. And other than the theme of being warm I see that winter in Zimbabwe is about being close, cuddling and snuggling.

And I think, maybe winter isn't all bad.

Rain in winter

Now I am not a Global Warming kind of pessimist but I do know that weather patterns are changing.

We've just had half an inch of rain.

Not so surprising, I guess, except that winters here are dry and cold, not wet and cold. I woke this morning to thick overcast and thundering rain. Being cold is bad enough, but wet and cold does not please me. More than that the changing weather is killing people .... not just in Africa either

So please remember to switch off lights and walk not drive when you can and to recycle and and and. ..... every small thing that you do adds up to saving lives. For me the line is a pretty direct one.

I met an angel today......

Today I met a woman who had been terribly burned. The burns are long healed but they had reshaped her face and ear and arm and hand (and I should imagine much more hidden by her blouse). I grinned at her because despite only having stumps for fingers and thumb she continued to use her left hand, not withstanding the damage to it, when it might have been easier to learn to use her undamaged right hand. I commented, as I often do, that all the best people are left handed and she laughed outright – relief, I realised in that instant. She said, holding up her damaged hand, that God and Fire had shaped her this way, different from most but she was still as she had been made. Left handed. We talked, two strangers, about intimate damage and maiming. Mine not so visible but present none the less and obvious, seemingly, to her. She said it was not the surgery's, not the pain, not the rebuilding and reshaping of her face and body that had been truly hard but the daily living with the changes unwillingly wrought upon her.

She said her scarred skin would need extra care for the rest of her life, that she would always need to stretch what remained of her maimed muscle or it would seize completely, that she would always be vulnerable to certain "looks" (pity, disgust, horror and others) from strangers, and even friends, that she still fell prey sometimes to despair and depression. Mostly, she said, knew now how to deal with these two, but she didn't tell me how.

In a flash this angel woman revealed to me what I have seen so hazily at best and mostly not at all. This is what healing is. This is what health is. Maimed she might be, for the rest of her life, her soul and mind and spirit and body reshaped by the fire. But it is being able to live with the maiming, being able to live with the consequences of this crippling, productively, constructively, in peace, and contentment. In happiness even.

She did not tell me what I most desperately want to know - the how you live with maiming and the demons of depression that lurk on the fringes of ones mind but she did show my what the direction was.....

Driving with Small

Small came home this evening and said he needed to buy some sports energy drinks as he has a long day refereeng rugby matches tomorrow. I duly handed over the cash and he was half out the door before turning around and saying did I want to come for a ride?

On impulse I said, sure why not?

I didn't think that we would need to visit three shops before we found the brand he likes best.

On the way around several neighbourhoods we stopped for coffee in one place and ice cream in another. We talked and laughed and generally had a good time and it took us an hour and half to shop for four bottles of energy drink, some chewing gum and a chocolate. Not my style at all .... these days I am all about efficiency and getting food in to feed voracious teenage boys. Still it was fun to be reminded of one of the good parts of being a teenager when the idea was simply to hang, seeing and being seen and without a dozen things that need to be done.

He has gone out now to Youth Group but we did have fun and I think suddenly how much I like this boy - sometimes that liking just gets lost in busyness but this evening it was very good to savour it.

Evening

Its no secret that I am a morning kind of person and that by evening time am not at my best. I usually just want to get done what needs to be done and go to bed.

So usually I don't "see" the evening.

Today I took the Dancing Dalmation and "Old Man" retriever for a walk. Valentine is still supposed to be quiet. I say walk but really it was a stroll, threading my rosary through my fingers. Being a convert to Catholicism there are all sorts of traditions of which I am ignorant and this Easter Season I set out to pray the rosary with the help of Mitch Findlay's excellent book. When I began it was awkward and took all my concentration to repeat the prayers. Yet in a surprisingly short time it has become comfortable, easy, soothing and oddly challenging prayer.

This evening I strolled, murmuring my prayers, and found myself aware of the evening.

Aware of the pearl coloured sky, still and peaceful. A few clouds glowing briefly pink and salmon and finally cerise before fading into the coming night. Aware of the last birdsong. Aware of the cooling air, and the tang of water hanging in the faded heat of the afternoon.

A rare occasion when I was present to the evening.

And it was beautiful.

Wonderful, as if the Evening itself took up my own poor prayer.

There are days

There are days when I wonder if I should have gotten out of bed in the morning.

Today happens to be one of them.

Valentine my dog with epilepsy had two fits close together this morning and as something about them as not normal (well assuming that there is anything normal about having fits) I took her to the vet. It turns out she is unwell and running a fever, even though she was her usual energetic hungry self this morning when I got up. It seems that the fever is likely the cause of these fits. My lovely vet suggested I keep her quiet. I ask you! She is a high energy, high maintenance kind of dog. Keep her quiet! I will probably have to sedate her to do so.  In the mean time she has come to work with me and is bored to tears under my desk.

My husband who went to Lusaka in Zambia on the unreliable airline discovered that he can't come home till Friday as today's and the rest of the weeks scheduled flights are definitely cancelled, and then that he has to go urgently to South Africa. He packed for an overnight trip yesterday and now won't be home till Saturday. He has no warm clothes as Johannesburg is way colder than Lusaka and no clean underwear and has had to have a yellow fever vaccination as this is a requirement for entry into South Africa for travellers from Zambia. He is not happy. And I have had a stream of not happy emails from him.

Small and Vetboy are in the midst of preparing for examinations. So not to much fun to be had from these two either. No light hearted chats this week! Both a tad grumpy and I am glad that Vetboy studies in Pretoria so I only have one grumpy boy under my nose.

Usual work pressures building up and having difficulty finishing a project that I would dearly like to see off my desk.

Think I shall grab my rosary and take the healthy dogs for a walk.

And pray that tomorrow will be better than today.

Grace from Grace

I am not good with little girls, even less with teenaged girls.

I know that some of my difficulty arises from my own childhood, and even more from the death of my full term daughter in the womb. A still born child who is horribly deformed is a peculiar kind of grief, such a mixture of feelings. Ever since I find myself wondering what my daughter would have been like at five or ten or fifteen, wondering what books and colours and movies she would have liked and the grief spills, fresh and new. Over and over.

Recently one of my husband's oldest friends remarried, acquired a five year old daughter called Grace and returned home.

We met at Mass one fine but quite ordinary Sunday morning. Grace and I.

It was not love at first sight, not on my part, yet Grace took no notice of my lack of enthusiasm.

I discovered that even if I did not know how to be with her, she most certainly knew how to be with me. Gradually over the last four months we have become friends. She loves Winnie the Pooh and laughs hysterically at the stories of A A Milne, rolling on the floor with delight. I have learned a great deal about Barbie and Ken, about the giant purple dinosaur Barney, about playing in the rain, about laughing, about playing hide and seek, about sitting peacefully with a dozing five year old on my lap, about other ways of sadness and loss.

The thing about Grace is that she draws others into her magical circle that takes no account of years lived, being as she is, fully and seriously concerned with living vibrantly. She sometimes looks at me with sadness and asks how I never learned to play but brightens with the thought that she will teach me.

And teach me she does. In her lessons I find my raw grief for my own small daughter is transmuted in a way that I do not understand into something I do not recognise but which I receive with gratitude.

Grace from Grace indeed.

Travel Advisory

I am bemused. This word thing is making itself felt in my life with some intensity.

I have had an email from an old school friend who lives in Australia now. Her mother has been visiting her for three months and is due home in a couple of weeks. My friend checked with the Australian foreign affairs department to discover that there is a travel advisory in effect. I gather that it say's amongst other things, that the water system has collapsed and cases of cholera have been identified and that the electricity grid has also failed. Travel to Zimbabwe is only advised if it is an absolute priority. My friend does not want her mother to come back because of the advisory but her mother says "don't be silly dear, I am going home". (really, she talks like this)

She contacted me to ascertain if it was safe for her mother to return home.

Now, experience of Australians (including Australian immigrants) leads me to understand that we have very different ideas of what safe means.

Water, sanitation and electricity are bad here. None of them really work that well, or by some standards, at all. That being so, and being Zimbabweans we have "made a plan". We have generators, solar powered lights and geysers (hot water heaters), gas stoves and rechargeable lights depending on a variety of factors. We have water tanks and boreholes, wells or we purchase water from a tanked water supplier. We have made ourselves as comfortable as possible in the circumstances. And now I have a different understanding of what "essential services" means.

And looking round nothing much has changed since her mother left, except that we have gone from summer to winter and that generally means less electricity available from the national grid due to increased demand for heating but that is nothing new. Been a winter problem for ten to fifteen years. But my friend has not been home for seventeen years and I suspect has no real idea of how we live now.

Furthermore she makes no mention of the fragile political situation, which could change in a heart beat. The last ten years have shown us that. And by almost any standard, except possibly Zimbabwean, we live in a politically volatile place that is a powder keg. We could have elections this year or next or not at all. No one knows for certain. We do know that elections will result in terrible violence and horror and intimidation.

And so I have wondered all day how to answer her. I am tempted to say "yes, of course it's safe" and ignore the difference in understanding of that word that exists between us because, knowing her mother I'll bet she is ready to come home. How do I explain the difference to someone who seemingly wilfully is not open to another interpretation? Guess that's a non starter at any rate.

Words and what they might mean to different people!

Oh I think I should have stuck firmly with numbers!

Language

"Bat Bat the ouns went punk. Totally punk. Ahhhhhh. it was so so so coool."

Translation:  Mum, mum the boys went completely mad with excitement. ....

These words spoken by Small before he even made it through the door yesterday evening told me that his school Rugby 1st Team had beaten their nemesis and arch rivals yesterday afternoon. And I gather that it was a memorable game despite the unseasonal rain and cold. My mother looked up blankly from her book and needed a translation.

And I realised that as a Christian I sometimes use language and concepts that have a specific meaning for us but which does not translate well into the wider world. Words like love, sin, redemption, evil, forgiveness, repentance. Recently I seem to have had cross purpose conversations with a couple of close friends who are not Christian and who seem somehow to understand these words and the concepts they represent utterly differently from me. It seems to me that sometimes we use a specialised language that is exclusive. I realise that I take care when talking to non accountants to put technical concepts in words that have common meaning, and that I usually only use the technical language of my profession with fellow accountants. And the reason is simple, I want non accountants to understand me clearly and easily. It is a trick to neither be condescending nor arrogant. I am aware often that another will miss the nuances of my point that another accountant might understand easily and that there are hazards of this approach.

But that I don't do the same thing when talking about my Christian understanding of these words. I assume that others understanding is similar to my own. And because of this there is sometimes a terrible misinformed ignorance about key concepts for Christians.

Terri works on it and says it often "words matter".

Tuber roses

Funny how a smell can evoke old memories and feelings so precisely......

A whole lot of years ago when my husband was just my boyfriend I arrived home from Addis Ababa to find my sink filled with tuber roses and their fragrance filled my flat. That was the moment when I knew I loved him and wanted to grow old with him, knew that I would swap my restless feet and wandering ways and traipsing all over the continent for a settled life with him. To my surprise I found I wanted to grow old with him. Took a while for us to get our act together but we did ... and by and large I have not regretted the right hand turn my life took.

Yesterday, apologising for the fact that he has to travel suddenly and leave me facing Small's teachers - I so loathed school that even now the exercise is fraught - he brought me a bunch of flowers that included of all things tuber roses which are no longer commonly grown here. This evening I smelt them as I arrived home and their heady fragrance reminded me of how I felt that afternoon some twenty plenty years ago.

I never thought the ride would be so extreme, so filled with highs and lows, such joy and such sadness.

Loving and being loved by this man...... absolutely worth the journey.

Preaching

Grief can be a tricky thing.

Yesterday at Mass we had a large number of visitors, as the school was being used for a meeting of the Jesuit schools, in addition to a full compliment of  boarders due to the sports going on this weekend and a surprising number of new visitors and there were four priests concelebrating Mass. Not our usual quiet still worship. The New New Rector (as the boys call him as opposed to the New Rector or the Old Rector - the result of having three rectors in the last couple of years) introduced the priest who was to give the sermon. As he did so he said that in the two months he had been Rector at this school he had discovered that the boys AND the adult congregation did not like long homily's so he had recommended a shortish homily to the guest.

The guest priest said that he had been given his instructions with more of an explanation, and that the New New Rector had set out to discover why there was quiet anarchy in Chapel and what could be done to change it. The boys had told him that they liked the singing but disliked long homilies that begin with quoting the scripture just read. He has radically changed his preaching style and most certainly captured the boys interests and attention and surprised them by allowing their voices to be heard.

Hearing this story I suddenly could hear my father telling much the same story. He went to an Anglican Church school during the Second World War and just after the war ended received a new younger Rector who set out to discover what the boys wanted in a service and discovered much the same thing as the New New Rector. He too listened and became known as Eight Minute for his sermons never lasted more than eight minutes. 

Suddenly I missed Dad more vividly and painfully than I could bear and fled my seat by way of the side chapel close by. Once there I met an acquaintance, younger than me, whose husband died four months ago and has since joined our congregation. She also could not stay because of the crowd and I learned that she had joined our congregation for the quiet, stillness of our Masses and the great beauty of the choir and because amongst us she was reasonably anonymous - something she needs at present. 

We sat together on a bench in the bright May sunshine bonded in silent grief until the New Rector, who was visiting Harare this weekend and not saying Mass, and marking our exits arrived with a tray of tea which he poured out before joining us in the sunshine on our bench.

And there is my missing post

It's quite exciting to wake in the morning and wonder what Blogger has done now, for lo and behold, this morning my missing post is restored, without the comment but hey perhaps I shouldn't be picky. And thank you Robin for letting me know what happened. It's appreciated.

And it's not exactly true that excitement is something I thrive on. Living here is as much excitement as I can do and, by and large, way more than I can do in any given day. My best days, which happen all too rarely, are days filled with small, ordinary, unexciting activities. A little work, some small tidying, cooking a simple meal, a cup of coffee, a cuddling cat on my lap ... or as this morning laptop. The small challenge of keeping him off my keyboard is about as much as I care to be stretched in a day.

But.....

Always there is a but, isn't there?

But expereince would suggest that our lives are not meant to be lived in small, easily acheived challenges (not that keeping the Black and White Cat off my keyboard is an easily acheived challenge). Expereince would suggest that growth comes at the point where our own resources aren't up to the events unfolding around us. There are moments when I sulk furiously because Life is so hard and unfortunately even more when I simply do not want to cooperate with a Grand Design that makes no sense to me. Doesn't help, of course, but ....

Like I said, I can do without excitement most days.

but...

........ and with that thought I think I shall go out into the morning and enjoy the deep pleasure of watching the sun rise. In the east Venus and Mercury and Mars should still be close together and at either end of my garden the Hueglins Robin's are singing their hearts out in a territorial statement, and the sun will be as yet a topaz and amber glow on the horizon. 

Simple pleasures.

So good.

How did I lose a Post?

Okay, so I wrote a post called Reassurance. I know it posted because I had a comment which was reported via my gmail account.

And now its gone. When I got up this morning I had a message saying Blogger was unavailable to try again later. When I did my latest post has gone missing.

I am reasonably technically proficient, given my age, but this confuses me. Has it happened to anyone else?

Reassurance

We live in an uncertain world.

And none more so than Zimbabweans. It has been our experience in recent years that we wake one morning to find the fundamental rules of our lives and society completely changed, by decree. Without warning. Without notice. For instance. One day we have a mad currency and seventeen trillion in the bank and the next that is utterly useless (not that it wasn't before) and we are borrowing someone else's currency.  That day, everyone from richest to poorest was equal. We all had nothing.

Consequent on that particular change most businesses are severely under capitalised, including the banks ... so they have no funds to lend .... its a vicious circle.

And I have spent the last two and half years working with clients to find ways of recapitalising their businesses to keep them viable and functioning. Presently I am working hard with a client who is attempting the near impossible - to significantly grow in our near moribund economy. The effect has been to stretch her resources to breaking point and she teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. Either she is going to make a mint or go down in flames. She will need more than sound planning to make this happen .... she will need those indefinable qualities of courage and hard work and perseverance and, I beleive, a large slice of luck or grace.

The most difficult thing, when she and I work together, is not to offer trite reassurance. It would be so easy to say "it'll be alright" and "don't worry" and  "it's gonna be fine" or "it will work out". Verbal pats on the arm. I don't know any of these things for certain and saying them is not only wrong but unhelpful. My client needs me to walk with her, participating in her problems, being part of the solution, being a listening post as she faces her worst fears and dreams her best dreams. This is how I see my work as a professional.

As things have become more and more difficult for her I have wondered at the nature of reassurance in such an uncertain world. In a wider scope how do we offer reassurance to those who need it, and what sort of reassurance do we need when life gets hard?

And most of all, how does God offer us reassurance in the midst of our uncertain lives?

Morning Prayer .... once more

I am a "morning" person, the only one, as it happens, in my household. I have savoured this silent quiet time when there are no immediate demands on me since my sons were big enough to sleep the night through. Despite the growing cold I had a urgent, childish need to be outside this morning.

And when I got out and lifted my eyes to the East there, rising above the first faint amber blush of dawn, were Venus and Mercury almost chasing each other ahead of the sun with Mars and Jupiter close by. All the other stars had faded leaving these four bright on the horizon. As I gazed in wonder at this rare sight, a robin opened the dawn chorus just above my head and the Crested Snake Eagle flew down to perch on an electricity pole. My small grey cat pranced delicately while the mad Valentine and Spot the dalmatian danced delighted at the prospect of  an outing.

And the Psalmists prayers of wonder and praise came to mind.

Particularly this morning Psalm 19

     The heavens tell out the glory of God
      the vault of heaven reveals his handiwork.
      One days speaks to another,
       night with night shares its knowledge
      and this without speech or language or
      sound of any voice;
      Their music goes out through all the earth
      their words reach the end of the world.
      In them a tent is fixed for the sun,
      who comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy
      rejoicing like a strong man to run his race.
      His rising is at one end of the heavens
      his circuit touches their farthest ends,
      and nothing is hidden from his heat.


      The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul.
      The Lord's instruction never fails,
       and makes the simple wise.
       the precepts of the Lord are right and rejoice the heart.
       The commandments of the Lord shines clear
       and gives light to the eyes.
       The fear of the Lord is pure and abides forever.
       The Lord's decrees are true and righteous every one,
       more to be desired than gold, pure gold in plenty,
       sweeter than syrup or honey from the comb.
       It is these that gives thy servant warning, 
       and he who keeps them wins a great reward.


      Who is aware of his secret sins?
      Cleanse me of any secret fault.
      Hold back thy servant also from sins of self will,
       lest they get the better of me.
     Then I shall be blameless
      and innocent of any great transgression.


      May all that I say and think be acceptable to Thee,
      O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

This is my prayer today.