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.

  

Mothers Day

My mother and I were never especially close.

I always considered my Grandmother more my mother, because for all sorts of odd family reasons I was raised by her until it was time to go to school. As I grew to adult hood and married we grew even more distant. Where I made different choices to those she made or might have made she took it as a criticism of herself. Sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn't but it certainly didn't help matters. Mothers Day's came and went and I observed them politely, no more than that.

Dad and I were always close but my mother, well. We never really seemed to be on the same wavelength.

Then Dad died eight months ago, just after my sister had emigrated.

And Mum and I found ourselves thrown together.

It has been a curious thing to come to know my mother, now in her seventies when I am in my fifties. To forge the first tentative strands of friendship. To put aside a lifetime of grudges and anger and hurt. To discover that we share a similar taste in movies and that the things that make us laugh are the same, that both of us sleep with a nightlight, that we both love the fragrance of gardenia's. Small things often, unimportant perhaps, but of such things can new beginnings be made.

I am fortunate, I think, to get a second chance.

And today she and I have had a lovely laughter filled lunch.

Small Boy isn't small any more

Robin at Metanoia writes of being astonished at her son's births and made me think of my own astonishment that my own Small Boy was seventeen yesterday, and is no longer a small boy. I shall have to find a new name for him. Mostly I think that as a parent I am astonished at how fast and how thoroughly my sons have grown up, and I marvel at the change from helpless dependence to striding independence.

But none of this normal, natural growing up is what astonished me about Small Boy.

He was born some nine weeks early and I think the first time I was truly astonished by him was when we celebrated his first birthday. Up till then I think each day had been such a struggle to keep him alive that I had ceased to think about his first birthday or any other birthday. That first year was spent in hospitals and doctors rooms and blood labs and imaging centres and his survival was by no means certain. I didn't think of that though, each day was an effort dedicated to keeping him alive.

Like many premies he grew out of his difficulties and by his fourth year of school spent almost all term there. In time he grew into a fine dedicated sportsman, passionate about rugby in particular. When he went to High School it was hard to beleive that he had ever been ill. He was undoubtedly a jock.

Then he was involved in an horrific rugby accident in a match twenty two months ago and suddenly we were in a hospital waiting anxiously as doctors worked to keep him alive and prevent the swelling spinal cord from further damage that would result in permanent paralysis. This too he finally overcame and is once more fit and rushing about sports fields. Tragically never again as a player. The recovery has been long and hard and involved the loss of dreams that many of us do not experience until we are much older, and often not in so brutal a fashion.

Remembering his frightening panicky (on my part) sudden birth I am astonished that he has reached seventeen at all. I never dared to dream about his birthdays, taking each one as a gift.

Today I am delighted by his survival and courage and strength and honesty.

Festivals and Nowhere

Today is a holiday in Zimbabwe.

So I was free to attend the first day of a week long annual schools rugby festival with my husband and son. It was more wintry than usual but despite that it was good to be able to attend. Two years ago my son was a leading participant, last year he was recovering from a fractured vertebrae and this year he was again participating but as a referee. I find it heartbreaking but he loves still being totally immersed in the game that he loves so passionately.

With out the tension that usually accompanies such tournaments (for me) I had an utterly different perspective.

Firstly I have never noticed that this festival is mostly about creating friendships amongst the boys. Zimbabwe is a small country with somewhere between ten and twelve million people so a sporting event that draws in eighty six high schools is a big deal.  I had time to notice and to marvel at a festival that attracts schools from every strata of our society. Schools range from my sons school which is the oldest boys school in the country, playing sports at the highest level for over hundred years to a poor rural school attending for the first time. Coaches from new schools are attached to top playing schools to assist their own development. 

Moments in the day ....

        - the inspiration of meeting my friend Nikki who had a mastectomy a couple of weeks ago, who usually runs a pitch side medical team (such as the one that saved my sons life twenty months ago) but not being fit enough  to do so now promoted to overall management of the medical teams;

       - watching my son take charge of a difficult bad tempered game maintain control and keep it safe for the players;

       - meeting referee's from Uganda and Zambia and from Bulawayo in southern Zimbabwe

 but with out doubt the best moment in the day was the sheer confusion in the announcers voice as he announced the team from Nowhere. He clearly does not know that while many church mission stations in this country are named for saints such as St Ignatius or Regina Coeli or for the areas in which they are situated such as the Jesuit Mission at Chisawasha there are none so quirkily named as Nowhere Mission deep in the bush about five hours north west of the the capital - in the middle of Nowhere if truth be told......

I am still chuckling.