Hi folks, I trust you are doing ok and that you have had a good week whatever you have been doing. This week we are meeting at the Quarry Pub at 7.30. I hope that you can join us.
It has been a strange old week, adjusting to darker nights has really affected me. I think generally the grimmer the weather the worse I seem to feel! The complexity of balancing my two jobs has been difficult this week, mainly because of the competing demands of my roles. I’m sure there are many of us who are facing these and other issues around life and work. Another huge part of this week has been seeing Karen’s dad (and mum) struggle massively with the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease as he gears up for an operation that will hopefully help him. It’s really tough to watch!
The other reason it’s been a strange week is that I have been trying to process an event I attended on Monday night, it was an event I was involved with, but wasn’t leading. The focus of the event was around healing and helping folks to move on to new and creative things. It was an absolute JOY to be part of the evening!
Alongside this, I have had a few beautiful conversations with a range of folks from across my roles, there was a mix of joy, pain, laughter and tears… all really wholesome! And to top it off Karen and I went to a gig that was just sublime! The support act of accordion, drums, keyboard and synthesiser was just brilliant and the headliner split her set into two halves with the first part singing songs that we sing at Mariners and Marras, but with an electro folk twist. The second part she played her EP and one of the songs called out some of the complexity and yes, abuse that some traditional folk songs sometimes seem to celebrate. It was a top evening!
Also this week, we dusted off our DVD player which we haven’t used in I don’t know how long! We watched the first two Lord of the Rings movies. My favourite is the second movie, The Two Towers. There is a scene towards the end that spoke to me and I want to share some of that with you, and then some thoughts based on some of the events and things I have been thinking and reflecting on.
I want to quote some words that Sam and Frodo say to each other towards the end of the movie:
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy?
Sam: How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out clearer.
Sam: Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.
So where am I going with all this? Well, I want to talk about what we are holding on to, and what are we fighting for?
First of all, what are we holding on to? I wonder what you (we) are holding on to? For me, as a follower of Jesus, as a believer in something ‘out there’, God if you like or the Divine, whatever name you are comfortable with, that is what I hold on to. Because of that I hold on to hope and love that I see littered around the bible and through the acts of individuals and groups both followers of Jesus and folks who say they don’t believe in anything at all, I sometimes want to ask folks who have no faith what they hold on to?
In faith circles I witnessed it on visible display on Monday night, as people recognised their own brokenness, but also as they reached out to the Divine for help, to let love and forgiveness meet them in their pain. Yes, of course there is still work to be done, but healing has begun. I was in some ways out of my comfort zone in that spiritual cauldron, and yet it felt right, good, wholesome, authentic and it moved me to wonder at my ability to reach within myself to find the divine within me, and realise that I need to find other ways to connect myself with that inner work of the divine.
Another aspect I hold onto is through the community of BFX. When we meet together, those are moments of connection, moments of joy that resource me and I hope you t oo? Our community tries to ask big questions? We try to see how we can make connections between all that is around us and within us with something of the life and love of Jesus and the Divine.
Secondly I want to ponder on Sam’s reply to Frodo’s question… That good in the world is worth fighting for! Now I to want to hold on to the hopeful reality that there is an awful lot of good in the world, we see it in many and varied ways if we look hard enough, even in the midst of the storms we see across the world right now, people are going the extra mile for people and situations, small simple acts of love and kindness happen! And they happen all the time, to quote our liturgy.
Another part of my response to my faith is to hold on to Jesus’s words about loving God, and loving our neighbour as we would love ourselves… I also hold on to words from Micah… What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
I believe our BFX community is one way in which we can make a difference to the world, helping those who struggle with faith and church to connect and find a sense of belonging and maybe help each other explore new ways to understand faith and to help us be better in the world.
We write these blogs each week, to help us understand situations and issues in the world in the hope that we can make a difference by talking about these things differently with people we meet with day to day. It may also be that something strikes a chord within us and we decide to get involved supporting a charity, organisation, or giving our time to something to make a difference. I’m thankful for the many ways each of us tries to do that and maybe we need to talk about those things more.
I hope we can talk about how we love each other, even if we find each other to be annoying at times, because that’s community! We can only grow together and understand what each of us is going through if we talk and share some of our story, and sometime we get to do that as we discuss the blogs each week, but we can also do that in other ways as well, we try to provide other ways for us to connect and our hope is that you can support some of that when we do these things.
Some of those things I mentioned at the start connect into this in small ways, I want to deepen my connection with the divine, and I would love to know what you hold on too, what resources you? I want to share some of the struggles of life with you, and I would love for you to do that with me, or with others. The gig Karen and I attended called out things that are sometimes obvious and yet get missed, what are the issues that concern us? What can we do as individuals and as a community to call some of these things out.
This blog is already long, so I will stop there!
Some questions
What kind of week have you had?
What was your highlight?
Where did you struggle?
Where do you get your resources from?
How does BFX help or not with that?
What issues are you fighting for?
Peace, Rob
Rob Wylie is the founder of BeachcomberFX and guides its leadership team. He has worked in the North East for over 20 years and has vast experience from various roles he has held. He has a passion for Fresh Expressions of Church and Pioneer Ministry as well as beer, beaches and Miniature Schnauzers.
