Thursday, July 02, 2009





It has been two/three weeks since I fell downstairs and hurt my coccyx.
It is just about stopped hurting when I stand up.

That is part of life.
I guess you have your distractions.
Sometimes they are so big, an illness accident struggling relationship, that life becomes that. Just that.
I have never had such a distraction. My obsession is my mission. It has been. It is.
This mission has been scripted - after it was formed without words. It needed to be written to make it more concrete in my soul, but is has been formed over years of trials and testing. Still is.

I started on the road towards this mission when I became a leader at aged 15.
I was trusted and valued and offered responsibility - and nurtured into it.
In those days I was active. Activity and excitement was the objective. I think we did some exciting, risky programmes. I have good memories but it was un-thought out stuff.

A further SHIFT was when I became a Christian at 21.
The trouble was, on reflection, I became an evangelical - or more-so - an evangelist!
I thought that being a Christian was just about telling others about my experience and getting them to press repeat.
My activities changed. I still led lots of exciting activities but also was passionate about my faith in God. I loved Jesus so much. Still do. (He has changed my life so much - open my eyes, kicked my backside, made me think, opened my tear ducts.

I always had a heart for those on the underside of life. I remember having compassion for the boy who always wore a dirty shirt. Others who had no shoes.
I was practical and helpful as well as being passionate about Jesus changing EVERYBODY.

A big change came when I started to think deeper. I suppose I became more rounded. Wholistic. About the whole person. About love.
Yes the big change was when I fell in love.
Fell for love.

When faced by dirty shirts, no shoes, foul language spit into your face, violence extreme, teenage professional criminals, gun carrying smartly dressed-nice to me and their Mother geezers - I had to learn how to love.

When you get no response.
Often violent response.
I was forced to work out what I need to do about these.
"Don't throw pearls before swine" I was advised.
(How I am disgusted with this very thought).
"Go where people will listen to you" I was advised grrrrrrrr.

The trouble was with me. I was only doing stuff to get a response. Getting humans to become Christians in a format that I prescribed.

These young humans I was working with, so often called Yobs and Louts, were beautiful humans.
I clocked that more than anything, ANYTHING, that
Jesus loved these special humans.
God loves these precious humans.
I was converted to to love.
I clocked that we are called to love.
Love the unlovely.
Love the lovely too but -
loving those who are hard to reach - hard to love.

This is where and when 'you are a beautiful human person' came from.
I wanted to be clear that they heard that they are loved.
Much more difficult,
how to exhibit that
demonstrate that,
live that.

So I am desiring to live a life of loving. Even midst distractions.
And I am trying to work that out as I stumble through life.
Changing circumstances.
Changing contexts.
Changing humans.
Love - a love that will not let me go
“But to love another as a person
we must begin by granting him his own autonomy
and identity as a person.
We have to love him for what he is in himself,
and not for what he is to us.
We have to love him for his own good,
not for the good we get out of him.
And this is impossible unless we are capable of a love which ‘transforms’ us,
so to speak, into the other person,
making us able to see things a he sees them,
love what he loves,
experience the deeper realities of his own life as if they were our own.
Without sacrifice, such a transformation is utterly impossible.
But unless we are capable of this kind of transformation
‘into the other’
while remaining ourselves,
we are not yet capable of a fully human existence. “
Thomas Merton