Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 9:40 pm. 0 comments
It’s been 5 months since I last blogged here. I feel bad about not having blogged about alot of stuff I’ve thought over that time, but one of the things I’m learning is that most things are temporary, especially when you have a baby!
It was around 5 months ago that I had a bit of an identity crisis. The root of this clearly stem from losing my daughter Amy over 2 years ago, and coincided with my son Toby being born. His birth threw up a few things for me including who I am. I’m now Toby’s Dad, and I’m Amy’s grieving Dad. The joy and delight I have in Toby has left little emotional time to dwell on my grief and the tension between a grieving and joyful Dad has left me a bit confused.
It was around this time that I realised that I didn’t feel I belonged to the group of Christians I’ve known for the last 8 years. This was because after losing Amy, the dawning realisation that I had new and unique needs met a dawning realisation that these needs were not being met by this community of Christians I was part of. This group is fairly homogeneous since we all met at University and are of similar ages. Since we are all still young, and nobody had lost a child, we didn’t have any experience to know how to care for Mary-Lou and myself so we were were not able to be carried by the group. This wasn’t helped by not knowing myself how I could be helped. The pain and confusion of not having been carried by our Christian community left me feeling I didn’t belong.
So I began getting busy, not knowing at the time that I was searching for an identity, something I could point to and say “This is what Ben is about, this is what he does”. I started Guerrilla Gardening in Moss Side. I started helping a project collecting fruit from Manchester gardens to distribute to the poor and hungry. I got funding for a High Definition Camcorder to record Asylum Seekers telling their stories. I started a podcast exploring the implications of Shane Claiborne’s book “The Irresistible Revolution”. I became co-ordinator of my street’s Home Watch. I started planning the Parliament Protest. I got pretty busy all of a sudden and had less and less time for Mary-Lou and Toby.
In the end I gave some of that up, cut back on others, and finished the rest. I’m not as busy as I was (outside of work) and I’m looking forward to discovering routines and patterns (temporary of course) of time and activity with Mary-Lou and Toby.
I’ve not discovered my identity, I’m sure I’ll be figuring it out the rest of my life. But for now it feels good and proper that I rest and invest in the place I have as Mary-Lou’s husband and Amy and Toby’s Dad.
Posted 6 months, 4 weeks ago at 8:53 pm. 0 comments
Last night I had the pleasure of being taught about Conflict from a Christian perspective from my friend Laura Gilchrist. Click play below to listen to the talk yourself - I highly recommend you do, it was very insightful.
I recently saw a fight in London which I just watched. I didn’t go and try to stop it like other people did, I just stood there hoping that they would stop because people were looking.
After it finished I felt terrible and ashamed for not having done more to be a Peacemaker in that situation. I started thinking about my fear and cowardice in that and other situations.
It was refreshing to realise, during Laura’s session, that conflict mostly presents all sorts of positive opportunites. Opportunities for change, empathy, healing, intimacy, 3rd way thingking and more! I now feel much more hopeful about conflicts I may enter in the future and less fearful about engaging with it.
Towards the end of the session, as you will here in the MP3 above,Laura suggested 3 ways forward for us. We can get training on dealing with conflict, we can use or be facilitators or mediators, and we should oppose the myth of Redemptive Violence with stories of Redemptive Peace - an idea I think is really exciting.
We also talked about Non-Violent Direct Action, something I have been thinking about and subscribing to more and more, but that’s for a whole other post!
Posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago at 11:25 pm. 3 comments
I have now finished reading the book Where Is God When It Hurts and it has been very thought provoking. Although it deals largely with physical pain and things like terminal illness, it still helped me think through the pain of my grief in different ways.
The last section of the book is about what Christianity uniquely offers to those in pain. One of the things it talks about is how the concept of the Body Of Christ points to how Christians need to share and carry each others pain and suffering. Philip Yancey quotes a doctor called Paul Brand who says this about the human body:
Individual cells had to give up their autonomy and learn to suffer with one another before effective multicellular organisms could be produced and survive.
He suggests that the way in which cells in the body work should be the same way we humans work. The key to successful relationships lies in the sensation of pain.
In human society we are suffering because we do not suffer enough.
So much of the sorrow in the world is due to the selfishness of one living organism that simply doesn’t care when the next one suffers. In the body if one cell or group of cells grows and flourishes at the expense of the rest, we call it cancer and know that if it is allowed to spread the body is doomed And yet, the only alternative to the cancer is absolute loyalty of every cell to the body, the head.
I am struck that the image of the Body Of Christ is one which means we need to know and share each others pain for it to be healthy. Before reading this, I thought that it just meant we Christians ought to just get along and work together, but now I see a deeper and more meaningful application.
In my grief I have not felt that many share my pain. I know that many of my friends grieved the loss of Amy and have suffered because she is not here. And sometimes I don’t want to spend time grieving with my friends, I’d rather have fun! I know that they haven’t a clue how I feel, and that they couldn’t know how I feel unless they lost their daughter. But I also know that I would feel carried and less isolated if friends asked more often and gave me time and space to answer honestly and to grieve in their presence.
Philip Yancey goes on to point out the we Christians are Christ in this suffering world and should respond to those suffering or in pain with love, tenderness, and by sharing their pain and sorrows. He says his response to the question “Where is God when it hurts?” would be another question: “Where is the Church when it hurts?”
Often the Church is looking the other way, focussing on the personal gain of the Gospel, avoiding the questions surrounding pain and suffering and therefore avoiding those who hurt and struggle.
Posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago at 9:31 pm. 0 comments
A couple of weekends ago we were at a friends wedding at a Manor House in the Countryside which was quite overwhelming, especially since he and his bride had paid for us to stay there over the weekend.The Wedding took place on the Saturday and I welled up and almost cried at 3 points during the day. Looking back on those times I think I was overcome with joy each time, but for different reasons.
The first moment was at the beginning of the ceremony. Now, my friend is the kind of character who needed his own entrance into the hall! The service began with a great rendition of the song “Oh Happy Day” which got everyone excited, then towards the end of the song, my friend came in with his 9 (yes, 9) best men jumping and hollaring and whooping in celebration of their mates imminent marriage.
My chest felt squeezed and my throat tightened as I saw such awesome joy in my friend as he bounced and whooped down the aisle, but it was especially due to the joy his best men had in celebrating this moment in his life. My eyes certainly watered as they partied down the aisle encouraging the whole congregation to join in with their jubilation.
The next moment of joy which made me well up was during one of the worship songs in the ceremony. I looked forward to see the special couple and saw my friends hair bobbing up and down as he was consumed in his worship of God. I think it was seeing the joy my friend had in giving thanks to God for this day and moment of marriage that got to me and made my heart feel heavy again.
The other time when I felt moved enough to cry was during the reception as my friend was finishing his speech. I knew he studied music at university (where I met him) and that his chosen instrument was his voice, but I had never heard him sing opera. But to conclude his speach, he sang a piece of opera to his new wife. The piece went on for alot longer than I thought was necessary, but I think that it’s length and the fact that he never moved his eyes from hers was what made me tingle with delight in seeing his total joy in and devotion to his new wife.
I hadn’t seen or felt such joy for a long, long time, and each moment shook me. It is quite strange to want to cry for joy because your physical responses are so similar to when you cry because of pain, except there is no pain, only delight.
I have asked many times why Amy died. I’m not asking how she died, her stillbirth was one of the 50% that are unexplained. I want to know why.
Mary-Lou particularly has battled with the idea that Amy died because of something she did or didn’t do. No matter how much doctors, midwives and friends reassure her that she didn’t cause Amy’s stillbirth, she still wonders. All she wants is for God himself to tell her that it wasn’t her fault, but he hasn’t.
I knew this was a broken world long before Amy died. I grew up in an evangelical family and was aware that bad things happen to good people as a result of The Fall. I also believed that God was totally good, and this confused me a bit. But I had never experienced any major suffering to have to really figure it out, it was just another confusing tension which I could easily put to the back of my mind. I was also aware of my own sins and pride and never believed that I was one of those good people who didn’t deserve bad things.
When we suffer pain, or a loss, we humans often question why it has happened to us. I wondered whether Amy died as a punishment to me. I couldn’t think of a single sin that might have caused the punishment, afterall, there are many to choose from.
I have also been angry with God and wanted to blame him. WTF was he doing when she died? I believe he had the power to save her, so why, why, why didn’t he?
Reading “Where Is God When It Hurts” recently helped me think through the idea that Amy died as a punishment to me. Philip Yancey points to Job and Jesus to show that it is not a valid conclusion.
Job was blameless, that’s why Satan wanted to ruin him to prove to God that mankind will only freely love him whenthings are good. So Jobs suffering was not because he deserved it or as a punishment and even though Jobs friends urged him to repent of whatever sin broughthim his suffering, he disagreed that this was the reason and still chose to love and honour God.
Then there was Jesus who relieved many individuals of their suffering put never inflicted pain or suffering as a punishment. If God regularly punishes people, you’d have thought Jesus would have broken a few bones!
There are of course plenty of examples of God punishing Israel and others (after repeated warnings) but Yancey argues that this is not how God operates this side of Jesus.
Great. For me. But non of this helps Mary-Lou who is desperate to hear God tell her it wasn’t her fault.
Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 7:11 pm. 0 comments
I am currently reading Philip Yancey’s book “Where Is God When It Hurts“. I had to buy it after asking my friends if anyone had a copy. I was fairly suprised that no-one had the book, but it’s probably quite telling about Western Evangelical Christianity.
I’m definitely finding the book interesting but so far it has been about physical pain rather than emotional pain so I’ve not got alot out of it yet. But it got me thinking about pain differently. Philip Yancey suggests that pain is a wonderful example of God’s awesome creation - God created pain! The nervous system in each one of us protects us from further harm by detecting heat, cold, pressure, friction, etc. Pain is a warning system. He also suggests that fear, loneliness and guilt are good as they help us to make better decisions.
If all that is uncomfortable, read the book!
I started wondering about spiritual pain. If we are also spirits, can we suffer spiritual pain? What could cause spiritual pain? How would it feel? How would we describe it? Would there be another set of words?
When I picture what happened to me when Amy died I imagine myself being torn to pieces from the inside out. I’ve never been through such an emotional event before so I find it difficult to describe my feelings which makes it even harder to distinguish between my emotional pain and my spiritual pain.
All I know right now is that it’s very painful and confusing.
It was around this time that I realised that I didn’t feel I belonged to the group of Christians I’ve known for the last 8 years. This was because after losing Amy, the dawning realisation that I had new and unique needs met a dawning realisation that these needs were not being met by this community of Christians I was part of. This group is fairly homogeneous since we all met at University and are of similar ages. Since we are all still young, and nobody had lost a child, we didn’t have any experience to know how to care for Mary-Lou and myself so we were were not able to be carried by the group. This wasn’t helped by not knowing myself how I could be helped. The pain and confusion of not having been carried by our Christian community left me feeling I didn’t belong. 
After it finished I felt terrible and ashamed for not having done more to be a Peacemaker in that situation. I started thinking about my fear and cowardice in that and other situations.
Individual cells had to give up their autonomy and learn to suffer with one another before effective multicellular organisms could be produced and survive.
In my grief I have not felt that many share my pain. I know that many of my friends grieved the loss of Amy and have suffered because she is not here. And sometimes I don’t want to spend time grieving with my friends, I’d rather have fun! I know that they haven’t a clue how I feel, and that they couldn’t know how I feel unless they lost their daughter. But I also know that I would feel carried and less isolated if friends asked more often and gave me time and space to answer honestly and to grieve in their presence.
The first moment was at the beginning of the ceremony. Now, my friend is the kind of character who needed his own entrance into the hall! The service began with a great rendition of the song “Oh Happy Day” which got everyone excited, then towards the end of the song, my friend came in with his 9 (yes, 9) best men jumping and hollaring and whooping in celebration of their mates imminent marriage.
The other time when I felt moved enough to cry was during the reception as my friend was finishing his speech. I knew he studied music at university (where I met him) and that his chosen instrument was his voice, but I had never heard him sing opera. But to conclude his speach, he sang a piece of opera to his new wife. The piece went on for alot longer than I thought was necessary, but I think that it’s length and the fact that he never moved his eyes from hers was what made me tingle with delight in seeing his total joy in and devotion to his new wife.
When we suffer pain, or a loss, we humans often question why it has happened to us. I wondered whether Amy died as a punishment to me. I couldn’t think of a single sin that might have caused the punishment, afterall, there are many to choose from.
I started wondering about spiritual pain. If we are also spirits, can we suffer spiritual pain? What could cause spiritual pain? How would it feel? How would we describe it? Would there be another set of words?