Marlowe's Ponderings

When words are lost.

2011-09-25T20:44:00.000+01:00

Recently I have lacked words. They seem to be so far from me. Somehow, somewhere I have stopped thinking words. Words feel insufficent. I have also stopped praying in words. My conversations with God have moved away from the spoken, from the thought and into a place of depth of emotion, of great feeling. My prayers have become the act of lifting myself, my feelings, fears, desires, hopes, dreams, of taking my state of being and lifting that to God. I feel more drawn into a mystery than anything else. Like the moment at communion where the host is lifted up, Christ present, Christ given, Christ broken. Words cannot describe the depth of that moment, the way it touches the soul cannot be put into words. The giving of salvation, redemption, the gift of grace manifest as the presence of God is more visible than anything else. My heart feels like it will burst within my chest at the anticipation of heaven. How can I wait another moment to be with the one who I love more than any lover, and who loves me the same?

Then, slowly, I fall to earth, I fall back into the pain of what is now. I am drawn away from the mystery, forgetting the beauty and love and stillness. I lack the strength to stay in that place. The pain ever more real.

Maybe it is time to be silent. To learn stillness.

On Love

2011-05-22T07:23:00.008+01:00

It seems to me that I have a choice to make.

Pain is often a tool that teaches us what not to do. When you touch something that is too hot, it hurts, the pain tells you not to touch it again. The synapses in our body are clever like that, teaching us to respond.

I am in pain, and if I were to purposefully avoid this pain again, which I have experienced again and again over the last few years I would have to close my heart to the world. I would have to not love as deeply, as much, I would have to stop being open and love. I would have to learn how not to love the way I love. I would have to learn how to be someone other than me. The world tells me to do this, the people around me tell me to do this, they see me grieve, they see my tears and they tell me that I need to find another way, a way to stop caring so much about everyone (that isn't how they say it, but that is what it would be).

God has given me a gift in how I love.

You, whoever you are reading this (even if we've never met), I love you, because you are, you exist, you are a human being made in God's image. You are beautiful and I love you, because you are. I'm not sure how this is possible because I look around me and no one else seems to have that (the capacity to love even the stranger they've never met without knowing anything about them). When I get to know someone that love grows, deeper and deeper, and it is wonderful, to know a person, even just a little. I, when I used to have really horrible days, would walk down the street trying not to cry, then I would see someone, or walk onto a bus and I would smile, at the people who passed me by, at the bus drivers (they knew me as the smiling girl with the 'cello), because by smiling at someone I could share something of that love, of that care.

The love I have for people, for each individual in this world is huge, sometimes I barely think I can love as much as I do. When I was a child I really hated the fact that I could not know everyone in the world, because I wanted to know them, I wanted to love them better. For years I would have to remind myself that "lots of love" was not an appropriate way to end every letter I wrote... because that's what I wanted to write, because that is what I felt.

Over the years I have tried to hold back, hold back from loving, to be socially appropriate, to be acceptable, I think it's actually harder for me to live like that, it is far more difficult to try not to care, not to love. To remind myself, it's not okay to love as freely as I love, to try to cut myself off from it. It's as if I've amputated a limb, and for the last year of so I've been living like that. I've been living trying not to love, how I love. Yet by doing that, I've stopped being able to feel how much God loves me. I know that sounds odd, but for years I felt God's love surround me, then I cut myself off from that and I almost killed myself, but was rescued by God's love breaking back into my life and I started loving again. I think that's what I've had to do. God's love in my life is a real presence, is something I sense and hold in my heart, and know, and feel in every moment, except for those few years, and this last year. Cutting myself off was something very much influenced by my peers telling me, shouting at me, throwing at me, beating at me how much they hated me, it was that that did it. It was memories of that coming back that meant that I could cut myself off from that much love this year.

But enough. Enough. I cannot live like that, I cannot live without loving from the depths of my heart, all of humanity, I cannot not love you.

See the thing is, I'm sitting here, a few days away from another funeral, a funeral for someone I loved deeply.

Love like this, it is agony, it is heart ache, it is heart break. It is the most painful thing I have ever known (and I once picked up a stainless steel saucepan at 400°F), and I will cry, and I will weep. But every second of the pain is worth it. I can't learn how not to love, unless I want cut myself off from who I am, cut myself off from knowing the love of God as a sure presence in my life. That I cannot do. I could not live with that betrayal of myself, that betrayal of God and who He made me to be and this gift he gave me.

This post was going to be about how I work out how to change so the pain doesn't hurt so much and how to deal with the pain, but instead, look what happened?

So let me finish by saying. I LOVE YOU.

Lots of love,

Emma xxx

2011-03-19T14:14:00.001Z

I'm sitting here with an essay that needs urgent attention, hair that needs washing, a kitchen that needs tidying and... I'm just sitting here. The sun shinning on my face, listening to Savage Garden's Affirmation and Declaration the same song just played twice - the live version then the studio, 23 songs on shuffle and they follow one another.

I'm not doing anything right now and there are many things I need to do. I look around at all the things the intentions in this room and I start asking myself, 'what am I scared of?' because it is fear that is keeping me here, keeping me from motivation, from action. I look at the shelves and shelves of books and think about how many I want to read, knowing full well that if I sat down and started reading them it wouldn't take me long and I'd enjoy it. But I'm too scared... too scared to read...what!?!

Suddenly the answer comes to me, I'm scared of being me. My memories run back to summer holidays spent reading, dreaming, writing. The days I dedicated to that, that is who I am. Yet that girl was tortured and hated. I'm scared of the consequences of being myself. Yet right now. Right now I can be that girl, I need to be that girl, the girl who reads and dreams and writes and doesn't give a damn about the abuse she's suffer for it, because right now I'm not going to suffer the abuse from it. Not from the wonderful and lovely people around me who will be right there with me, the people who will help me dream, who I can talk ideas with. Who will never shoot me down for existing. The memories are coming back, but there is nothing I can do about that except learn not to hate myself for how I was treated.

Rambling thoughts.

2011-03-06T09:41:00.000Z

I stood and stared into the sea and I heard God speak and it baffled me. Yet I knew in that moment that there was hope, there was future, that standing there at the edge of the sea was what I was meant to be doing at that moment of my life.

The first time someone I loved left me I was 8, my best friend moved to the other side of the country and I didn't see him for a year. I spoke to him every day, I cried myself to sleep, I started wondering if it wouldn't be better if I died because then I could be with God and this would be over. On two occasions I got close to trying to kill myself, in those moments God stopped me, images came into my mind of me lying on the kitchen floor dead and how my parents would react and I knew I couldn't do that to them. It was like my world had fallen apart. Though then was still a chance, I planned the journey down to visit him, I knew which trains I had to get, where the changes were, I worked out how to get into London and which train to get out, which boat to catch when I got to Penzance.

You see, he was one of the people who got me through the day, who kept me going. He wasn't like the girls who would be my friend one day then hate me the next, he wasn't going to turn around and stab me in the back, him being around made the rest bearable. When the stones came hurtling down the clay track behind me, I ignored it, I forced it out of my mind. I got through to the morning because then I get to see T again and I'd forget about everyone else, about how much they hurt me. They didn't stop though, every chance they got for ten years. Then this grief stricken girl goes home because someone has died again and they vandalise the car they see her driving.

In 2008 I went home four times, each because someone had died, twice they wrecked the car. Then somehow last summer I thought I was strong enough to take it on. I didn't see them, they weren't there. Maybe they've all been locked up or left, maybe it's safe now.

No, it's never safe. Not there, each place is a memory. I remember the days I hid in my room away from the window scared if they saw me they'd throw a brick through it. The days I didn't want to leave the house because there was no route where I was certain I would avoid them. The abuse I would get between the bus stop and my house if I went out. The jeers from the bastards who yelled those insults at me for the best part of the 14 years I was bullied for.

I have good memories of that place but I don't know where they are. I can't find them. Maybe the days I spent down in Angie's book shop lost in a world of fantasy and adventure. Walks with Emlyn round the meadows.

Right now it is so easy to blame myself, to come up with some reason why it's my fault, my fault that they never stopped hurting me, my fault that everyone died. These memories are coming back, the moments that part of me knew had happened, but the moments I didn't remember before. At least now I know where those mysterious bruises came from... ontop of the pain, the memories, over and above that is how much I loved Adam, how much it would all be bearable if I could once more look into his eyes and rest my head upon his shoulder.

I need to find another way out. I need to find a way to do this work I want and need to do, all of this, I need to find a way to live without this taking over. For the last few days I've been wanting to rewind to before this summer, to change it so I didn't go back. I was so happy, so full of joy, so alive, nothing could contain my happiness for just being alive. Then my heart broke again, for that little girl who was powerless to do anything else, and for Adam. I feel like a shadow that's bleeding and I want this over. I want this to end more than anything.

I want to go back to the girl that can take on the world. Who has hope and happiness and love.

2011-03-03T14:23:00.000Z

I dreamt last night of a man I have loved and still love, it would be easier for that love to die with death, but it still lives, yet he does not and it burns me up.

This is not a short journey, it is not a quick moment that passes like the seasons, it is slow and it is painful, and I must find a way to live. A way to be without the agony that encompasses me, that makes me dread the sleep that I need so desperately, this life is something new.

How Morwenna Happened

2011-03-02T16:01:00.000Z

I'm sitting here trying not to look at the screen I'm typing onto because my head decided half way through my lecture this morning that it wanted to have a migraine, but then my head was too alive to sleep and so I'm sat here typing.

I've put together a playlist with the songs I listened to one spring, round about Easter, March 2003, David Bowie, Daniel Bedingfield and Alanis Morisette, these songs aren't about how good or bad the music is, but about the memories that flood back. I sat curled up in the corner of my bedroom, this CD playing reading Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry and after three days of reading I walked down to Angie's bookshop and looked through the shelves for something I wanted to read and found nothing. What I needed was something that would jump into my hand and keep me gripped hour after hour. So I sat down and looked through University and College websites, deciding on where I wanted to go. Then with nothing else to do an idea came to mind.

An idea that changed my life.

"I've been writing short stories, but I'm tired of these short stories, they don't go anywhere, and I can't find anything I want to read. Why don't I write something? More than a short story? A story that I want to read. What's stopping me? All these ideas running through my head. Right, okay, I'll write a book."

I thought of names, I thought of places, I couldn't work out surnames so I opened the phonebook at random pages and used the names that stood out. I set it in Cambridge and on the Cornish coast, and an island and... started with seven characters and now have over thirty....

There were two people I told about the stories that I wrote, as I sat day after day with a pen and a book and then a computer and pages and pages and files and files and all of this. Two people I would share those stories with as they sat with me. One has been suffering from ME for 7 years, the other is dead.

My manuscript exists, the story unreadable because of the parts that I knew and forgot to write, the writing terrible and in need of rewriting, but the ideas are wonderful and fill me with joy, there are parts of it I cannot read without crying both with sadness and happiness. It is a wonderful story, and I want to finish it, to give to Tamsin and in memory of Adam. I want it written perfectly, beautiful and printed, bound, I want it like that. For them and for myself, to remind me of what I have done with this life, what I am capable of and the things that I truly love.

2011-02-04T01:05:00.001Z

The battle tonight, every night, is that I lost someone, someone who got me through being a depressed teenager, someone who was a part of that in a positive way, but that is when he was a part of my life.

So dragging myself through the memories of him, also drags me through the memories of who I was. Though that is more emotive than rational. I feel who I was.

Listen now:

You are not the child who lives in fear of the morning, tomorrow you do not have to walk to the bus stop and have abuse yelled at you, you do not have to get on the bus and face the glances thrown at you by the girl who'll be punching you in the face on Thursday, there will be no one punching you in the face on Thursday, there will be no one to graffiti your work, there will be no one to steal your things as soon as you put them down on a desk, there will be no one hitting you over the head on Friday morning, there will be no one screaming you down, you do not have to fight to get your jacket back, because no one is going to steal your jacket, you do not have to run away from the places you want to be because there won't be people there treating you like you don't deserve to exist, there will be no one throwing rubbish at you on the bus, there will be no one throwing stones at you as you walk home from school, or leave the house to clear your head. There will be no one to bring you down and make you feel ashamed of existing.

You have a right to live, you have a right to life, you've endured this much.

You are allowed to live! Its hard to know that when again and again they told you you weren't, but they were wrong, and they are not here.

Adam

2011-02-03T23:16:00.001Z

Rarely have I found the words to say what I need, what I want, where I am.

So time for some straight talking.

Adam, I love you. Adam, I love you. If I could hold you in my arms tonight and never let go I would. You who shared life with me in a way that no one else did then. Ashes is all that remain, ashes, memories and tears.

You never knew, what I did, what I'd done. I fought to keep you alive and you never knew. I saw you, I saw your life falling, I could see the danger and I contrived to keep you away from the fools in my class who were dealing drugs. I saw the sadness you held from losing your best friends and I couldn't stand for it. I stood up to them and got them talking to you again, that night at the Suffolk Punch as I drank JD.

How was it that I was the only one still talking to you? How was it that I was the only one seeing you? Why did you come and sit with me all that time? Why did you stand with me as I waited for my buses? Was I just Harriet's little sister? No, I don't think it was that, or at least it wasn't just that.

You chose to spend that time with me, talking, I barely remember that life, I hardly remember what we talked of. I know I read you every poem. What did you see in me? What did you think of me?

As you treated me with more respect than anyone. You threw away your fags as you saw me coming because you knew I wouldn't hug you if you were smoking because of my asthma. Such a small gesture, but something no one else has ever done.

You'd be by the tree, I remember, I remembered this summer, six months ago I tried to walk across that space and broke down because I knew you wouldn't be standing there again. I used to walk that way just incase you were there to say hello to. Like you used to walk past my table in Starbucks just to see if I was there.

What did we have? What was it? A friendship made of random meetings. Where did you go? Your number was the first number on my phone, when you had a phone. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.

I just want to looking into your eyes and said "I love you" because the school girl crush disappeared into a friendship and a respect that could only be called love, and I loved you, so deeply that I'm too scared to let go, I'm too scared to say goodbye.

You who took me as I was, who never minded what I looked like or what I wore, as you would throw your arms around me and I would drink deep of the smell that was your leather jacket impregnated with aftershave and cigarette smoke, that smell that was you. Burying my face in that jacket, your chin brushing against my forehead.

I want that moment again, I want you again. Now I've passed the age you were when you died, I can't believe that. It's almost three years and my heart still breaks because I just want the chance to say that I love you and to brush my lips against your cheek again.

I want you to know that I loved you because it was not a love that required a response, it was not a love that needed you to love me, it was offered freely, with no request or intention. I just wish that you'd known, maybe you did.

2010-10-30T00:50:00.000+01:00

It's in the moments when the darkness is clouding in that God sends those people who will just sit with you. It's in these moments that Christ shines. When a friend goes beyond the call of a friend, because in Christ we are family. When the fears and the pain wheal and cloud, when you're clinging to the moments when God has spoken to you clearly because even though you know you are walking alone, you feel that you are alone. Suddenly, yet slowly, like a whisper of the Spirit on the air, you know that you have family.

In this moment I realise that the painful thought process that would have happened as I sat alone in my room, the thoughts and memories that were dragged up by love and grief, thoughts that I cannot stem as they crash in on me. These things were spoken, they were voiced to a friend, who sat in patience as I ebbed between releasing the fears that tore at me and holding them back. Now they have been spoken, listened to, now they will not tear me down - at least not tonight.

Elegy to a Writer.

2010-10-29T16:30:00.000+01:00

I do not write to entertain. I do not write for amusement. I write because the words come rising up inside of me, like the music does when I can no longer hold myself back from dancing. I write because I cannot hold myself back, but also when I do place these words into form I hope, I pray that these might inspire one day someone, probably myself most of all. When I began to write a book the aim was to write something that I wanted to read - I couldn't find anything that fitted the sort of story that I wanted, so I began to write. It let me express feelings that I couldn't, it helped me know that I had something that was mine, that could never be taken from me or destroyed.

I've been trying to force myself to do academic writing this week, I am not well enough to do academic writing and I knew it at some point, but kept forgetting. I've been hating myself for not getting words onto a page, I've been remembering every moment where my identity as a writer was threatened, I've been grieving the death of a friend who used to sit with me as I wrote. I bought a ring yesterday to wear on the little finger of my right hand - I used to have rings on that finger and the feeling as I wrote was something special, then they used to mark the paper and so I would take it off and it would sit there as I wrote then be put back on. There were four rings - the first three broke for various reasons (the two of them had been replicas of sealing rings that I used to seal things - they hadn't been made for such work). The last one was stolen, the guy that stole it told me that he'd taken it later that week, I repressed that, I had no memory of that, until yesterday, suddenly it flashed into my head, this memory.

For years writing was all I had, a green exercise book and my Grandfather's Parker is how I started to collect my stories together. Then my first A4 black hardback and then my Waterman Ici Et La and A5 black hardback books, a green twisted glass pen with a pot of rose scented red ink as well. Together those stories sat, and now both a black A5 and a blue A4 collect my stories, my poems, my prayers, my thoughts, I write now with a Waterman Hemisphere, the ink changes colour dependant on my mood and purpose, most often grey because it looks elegant upon the page.

I no longer know how to write in desperation. There is too much in my mind to let the words flow without question. Yet I want to let them, I want to let go.

2010-10-27T14:15:00.000+01:00

How do we live when the darkness seems to be all there is? We look to the light, to the brightness of the sun, to that which God gives us to illuminate the darkest of times. We are made beautiful, we are made perfect, our imperfection, our suffering is taken up by one greater than us. We do not walk alone.

We do not walk alone.

So I sit here, I rub my eyes again, the clouds clear the sun shines on me, my eye line reaches through the windows and the sun is shinning on me. I have to close my eyes because it is so bright, the warmth of this light upon my face and I remember. I remember who I am.

The desires of my heart are fulfilled, too great for me to achieve are the dreams I have, unless they are not my own dreams, then they will be brought to light this world. "This is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God. My tomorrow is his today. My distant hope is his 3D. And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great 'Amen!' from countless angels, from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself. And his is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner. Guaranteed." And I pray, I pray that the dreams that fill my heart, the visions that fill my mind are not my own, but they are his.

So I know, as I sit here, that I am becoming who he made me, I hope that this pain, this anger, this hurt can be turned to light, can be turned to purpose. Right now I need to reclaim the writer, the girl who would wake in the middle of the night to jot down an idea that could not be missed, the girl who could not leave without a pen and a scrap of paper, who has a supply of Starbucks napkin poems from those moments when she ran out of paper, who would spend a week perfecting an idea so that at the weekend she could sit and write, the line, the poem, the scene, the act, the movement.

The perfect book is like a ballet, ever piece can stand alone, every word is every step and they are beautiful alone, but together the symphony builds into a movement that brings tears to the eyes of the reader.

2010-10-26T09:30:00.000+01:00

So much has changed in my life recently I'm starting to feel a bit lost. I gave up writing depressing self-indulgent blog posts three years ago except for moments of desperate need, this might be one, but also I just need to process and to write something and keep it hidden away in a diary feels like keeping something precious, writing it and burning it feels to radical, but writing something and letting it exist away from you, but be there, that's, somehow that's more comforting, more encouraging so if you're reading this and don't want to read something indulgently self-reflective then move on to something new, if not: welcome to my headspace.

2010-10-16T12:35:00.001+01:00

The taste like an old familiar friend, the smooth watered down espresso, the sweet syrup, the warmth refreshing, remembering. Lying on cold polished granite, the echoes of noise a distance away, music in my ears, hiding the tears from the world, in this place that no one knows of, no one sees. Until the moment when the thoughts have been enough, when the fear has passed, when I can pull myself together enough to be alright, to be alive.

Unspeakable terror, fear that has passed on generation to generation, we know in our lives in our bones the horrors that cannot be talked of, cannot be fathomed, too much for those to bear, for those who love.

Unlikely Sanctuary

2010-08-15T19:15:00.000+01:00

In the last few months I've found a likely sanctuary, a place which makes a lot of sense to be the place of peace, freedom and escape. A place of sanctuary is something that I have always needed, until the floods got in the way the lions mouth was always that place, a spring in the village closest to my town, it still acts as that sometimes, but I stopped wanting to walk around this town, it stopped being place and so to get to the village became something harder. Without realising it 9 years ago I began to find a place of sanctuary, though a very unlikely place. For most of the last 9 years it has been my sanctuary, though stopped being that after the death of a friend who I used to spend time there with, finally this week I faced that, I faced the memories all at once and the ghosts stopped hurting, the memories are there but not the sharp stab of grief which stopped me wanting to be there.

The year I started secondary school was the year I turned 13, at the end of August I got my school bus card, any trip anywhere on MK Metro for a total of 35 pence! At the tender age of 12 I took my first trip to Milton Keynes shopping centre by myself. The place confused me at first, especially when I realised I was getting lost walking in a straight line! The weekend before I'd been wandering around the streets of Oxford on my own completely oblivious to the need to think about where I was, confidence and knowledge was something that I had in Oxford, I knew where I was, a map of the city imprinted on my mind from about the age of 7, I could never get lost or forget where I was. Now I was surrounded by this place, glass and marble and palms, shops everywhere, I didn't know where to go or what to do, but I had my independence in this strange place and if all else failed I would go to the only shop I knew until I worked out what I wanted to do - John Lewis.

I had taken to going into Smiths and buy a magazine once a month already - I would walk down to Midsummer and sit and drink coffee. Now I had time and freedom I thought I better try to find somewhere else. That summer day I wandered into Silbury, it wasn't busy, and I took the money out of my purse thinking hard, the guy behind the counter looked at me, I was looking up trying to work out what I wanted to drink - I wanted to drink Mocha, the delicious concoction of chocolate, milk and espresso with vanilla flavoured cream (the vanilla made all the difference), but I was 5 pence short. At the enquiry I told him, he smiled at me, don't worry about it, he said to me and made me a mocha.

From that point on whenever I wanted to stop for coffee it was always Silbury, then I started to write there. I was only writing short stories and I realised how nice it was to sit there with the people walking past, the smell of coffee, inspiration surrounded this young writer. I began to know the staff, they would remember me, and I would always remember the smiles that were returned, the laughter and the coffee they gave me. I would try something different everytime I went in, and it was a lovely place to be.

Slowly every month became every fortnight, every fortnight became every week, and very slowly every week became every day, and sometimes more often than that - though it went back to every week a lot of the time. Secondary school had not been what I had hoped for, I had hoped - naïvely so - that secondary school would be a place where I could learn, where I could use my mind to understand the world, literature, philosophy, to excel at mathematics and chemistry, to learn what I was good at and challenge myself where I wasn't good. Instead it was a fight, a daily battle to learn anything, to do more than sit in the back of class having finished all the set work within the first ten minutes whilst people threw rubbish and insults at me. It was the sort of place that I needed to escape from, and my house felt like a building site (to this day we have an archeological dig in the front room). So slowly I realised that I was happy to be sat in a coffee shop most of the day, the people around me were lovely and I could spend the time out that I needed.

Then I began to write a book, a hefty task for a 14 year old to take on, but I took it in my stride, soon the hours wasted at school became places where I would escape to the place I was writing about, working out the characters one at a time, I would think through a scenario in every way possible, saving it up until I got to Silbury and I would sit and write. Though when you're spending that much time somewhere it no longer becomes just about the writing or the coffee, it became about the people, the people who surrounded me, who made me laugh and smile when I was trying not to cry, the community that existed for me in this place. It became the only place I really wanted to be, and it became my escape, my place of sanctuary, that place I needed more than anything else at that moment in my life.

I could spend many more thousand words talking about how those people stood by me in my times of trouble, how that place was the only place that I was safe, and if anyone tried to attack me there I had defences around me, people who would jump in and save me and when it was my own mind that pressed against me, my own fears and doubts I had my writing, I had words that moulded themselves into people on a page. Of all the things I never expected in my life, I never expected a community of friends who stood by me to come through a Starbucks store in Milton Keynes shopping centre, that place was my sanctuary, where I was found for many years, where people who knew me would look for me, it was a safe place for me to be when I need it.

2010-08-10T23:06:00.001+01:00

Right now I don't want to be in this room, this house, this town. I'm rubbing tears from my eyes again and I realise I've spent more hours crying in this room than not, it feels so familiar to be crying in this room, with baskets of flowers on the walls, black paint from the beam falling into my hair and the rattle of the window as the traffic passes by. I don't want to be crying, but I can't seem to stop myself. My chest aches near my heart, I know it's just stress, I just wish it wasn't.

I'm not made not to care, I'm not made not to want to understand, I'm not made not to love. I love unconditionally, I love without hesitation, I love those whom I cannot trust, and those I cannot trust are only those who have broken my trust more than once, I love before I do anything else, that is who I am, that is how I am.

I do not use this word lightly, I do not talk of romantic love - that I have chosen to sacrifice, I talk of the love that God has shown me, the love that binds me to Him and to the creatures I share this world with, the love that IS God. He has shared with me love that is unrelenting, sacrificial, unconditional and my love is a reflection of that, though a poor one compared to the original, I am but creature. I love because He loves, I strive to love that which He loves.

I would rather love like this than not, yet this love has cost me dear. This love is the reasons for all my tears, this love for those who have hurt and beaten me down, my love for those who have fallen away, my love for those who are lost, have been lost and will yet be lost, my love for those who have thrown me away, rejected and feared me. This love is costly, it is painful and so as a friend once told me - for those people whom we love it is right to cry and we walk down the street with tears in our eyes for the broken, how much better is it to cry for them rather than be someone who does not see them, does not notice them, does not care, does not want to care.

Now I think it is time with to let the frankincense fill the air, let the psalms fill my mind and sit at the feet of my Lord and pray.

2010-08-09T16:53:00.001+01:00

Grief never helps when I need to work. Seven years ago yesterday my Grandmother passed away, seven years ago today I was sat in silbury crying into an americano with irish creme syrup trying to write something, anything to take my mind away from the pain, I did that for several days, there was nowhere else that I was safe, nowhere else I wanted to be, nowhere else I felt I could be, then I called my Dad and we went over to the house, my Grandma's house, my Aunt and my cousin were cleaning, I can't even remember what I did, I just had to be there. Then I was there again before the funeral, walking down the stairs as my Great Aunt looked up at me and mistook me for my mother. I was wearing a black skirt and aubergine top, my cousins stood outside smoking. I hardly remember the church my father spoke I'd never seen him with tears in his eyes before, at the crematorium they played Vaughan William's The Lark Ascending, the pub after was called the Chequers, I wrote it into my book.

2010-07-26T08:30:00.000+01:00

When I decided at the age of 14 that I wanted to write a book I had no idea where it would lead. The places it would take my mind, the people I'd get to know and yet that dream of potential that if I could just finish it to my own wish; that I could find a publisher; that it could engage all those unengaged, everyone who's promised me that however much they hate reading, or don't enjoy books that they would read it.

I sat in Ottakar's - that place named after my childhood's hero's story, full of inspiration, and I decided this would not be another short story, this would not be five pages of strange words of fiction, telling a story from the depths of my mind; my loves, my dreams, my fears, my hopes. This would be something that would be carried on tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, and eventually I'd add something to it every week for three and a half years, some days completely oblivious to anything around me as I put the ink upon the page "Emma, you carry on, I'm locking up, let me know when you need to leave." Became as common place as "Emma? Where have you been? We've been open three hours already!" That was Silbury to me. This place of sanctuary where week after week I would sit and write, my second home, another family, my mood denoting my drink and the only person who dared drink Eggnog Mocha and that much Irish Cream Syrup.

Where is God?

2010-05-26T15:29:00.000+01:00

I'm sitting here today thinking about how wonderful and beautiful life is, about how the goodness of God shines through the darkest moments, and that however hard we try, once we know Him, we can't turn away forever.

I turn my back on the enemy and he can stab me in a back, but he cannot pierce my heart from there whilst the breastplate of righteousness covers me. Whilst the shadow of God's wings covers me, whilst the blood of Christ covers me. From all sides I am covered, from all sides I am protected.

Yet a week ago I was sitting here a mess of tears wondering how this moment could be happening, how God could let me suffer this. Because a week ago, my Nan almost died. The most important word in that sentence is 'almost.' This has happened before, I've been told that she was going into hospital, that the doctors didn't know what else to do, that they'd tried everything but didn't think she could recover. I've been told these things, but it was 7 years ago, I was 14, it was the year my Grandmother died, for several summers it had been visits between two hospitals, I know the smell and the corridors and the nurses of those hospitals. I know where the flower room was where you could go and cut the flowers people had brought and find a vase for them.

So when 7 years later I get a call, my Nanny, she's waiting for the ambulance, I hear from my mother that it's bad, that she might not last a week. I'm half way through writing an essay, my last assignment of the year before exams, and it really matters, up until that moment it mattered. But now I just want to get on a train... no, not a train, a plane! I want to be there, I want a teleport, I want to see her, I want her to see how much I love her. I don't want to sleep because what if she dies whilst I'm sleeping, I fight myself to finish the paper which is already late, I finish the paper, I need to revise, I have an exam in less than a week, I must revise. I don't want to revise, what if she dies whilst I'm sitting that exam, why can't I be there! Why! And I start to pray, and I'm fighting myself for the words, because I know that I want to see her, but I can't pray for her to hang on another few days for me to get there, no, she can't suffer pain just so she can see me. So I pray to God that whatever it is, whatever He wants, take the pain away, take her pain away, if she dies then she isn't in pain, and if she lives let her be better. Please God, just don't let her suffer any more of this! I revise, every few minutes I find I don't know what I've read and the tears are wheeling up in my eyes, I cannot see. I just want to cry, because how can this be happening again, how can we not know what will happen, can she get better again, she's older now, can she get through this.

I cry out to God, so many questions and fears in my mind, and I just cry as I listen to the words the Church are singing "now we arrive at eternity's shore, where death is just a memory and tears are no more" and all I can do is let the tears roll down my face and my heart is screaming now "I CAN'T DO THIS!" and then, my mind, but for a second is still, and I hear the words in a whisper "No, you can't, but I can." In that moment of stillness some level of peace enters my heart. I still want to cry, but I know God is there. Yet not for another few hours did I come out of the haze I'd felt in my head for a week, but within 24 I understood. She was better. I didn't quite believe it. I laughed and cried as I heard, this was another kind of miracle. I knew at Church on Sunday, when the haze lifted, when God gave me a fresh sense of purpose, that even if she had gone to Him at that moment it would have been okay, because she'd "arrive at eternity's shore, where death is just a memory and tears are no more."

Release

2010-03-01T21:44:00.000Z

All the strain and stress passing from my shoulders as a massive wave hits me, a wave that is the love of God, a wave that I've seen coming, of joy and peace, peace and joy, joy and peace, those words spoken over me trice from many corners of this world. For over a month there has been sadness and sorrow and grief so close my heart that I thought it would never fade, and now it is washed away. The power of the love of God invades my heart, break through those chains of sorrow.

My saviour reminded me of who I was, images flashed across my view, images from visions that God has shown me, the dancer, the child strewing rose petals, the holder of a dove, the scribe. Images so powerful, and this power like wings beating above me. "Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by name; thou art mine." Words of scripture in my ears - "you are under the shadow of the wings of the almighty, you dwell here."

As the sun broke through my curtains this morning I felt the warmth and cold of the day all at once. I could not help but dance this morning. As I walked across campus this afternoon I could hardly help but sing. I am suddenly at a place of peace, an invading peace, that dwells so deep within my heart it cannot be taken, only hidden, and so I choose not to hide it.

No longer to fear the death march that comes and is not yet mine. I would not fear my own death for a second, to be with God that I could never fear, but the lives of others lost has been a fear that has no left me, until now. No, that fear is past, I have no power of life and death, I have seen lives saved when my hand guided, but it was not I that did the saving, if life is lost, it was not I that lost it, no, that is not mine.

An Elergy

2010-01-29T06:18:00.002Z

I was going to leave this, I was planning to write it in a few weeks, but I'm not sure that it can wait, I'm not sure I can sleep until it's written. This is a work of semi-fiction, though barely, most of it memory.

If I looked you in the eye what would I say? I lost you, I think of all the things I would have said, all the things we could have done. We wasted the time, I can still smell your tobacco, the way you'd throw a fresh cigarette away if you saw me coming, not from a sense of shame, but of respect you'd toss it from your fingers. Sitting under that oak, you'd see me from a distance and my pace would quicken as I saw you, our paths converging never planned. What would I say to you if I looked you in the eye? Would I tell you that I loved you? Would I try to explain that you kept me alive? That I considered you my brother?

You were the only one who demanded nothing of me, you were the only one I didn't need to impress, you were the only one who never minded who I was or how I was. The thought of seeing you in that studio got me into school, it took me to a class where I would ignore the punches thrown at me, where I would fight guys twice my size to just get my jacket or my bag back, where I would have to search around the room to find anything.

The only people who stood up for me in those moments - God they might have well as written you a death sentence. They were the closest things I had to friends - they weren't sending me hate mail, pretending to defend me and punching me in the middle of drama undercover of characterisation. Regardless of the lies they spurted they were genuine. They helped you deeper into the world which live life to die. "I don't care if it kills me, none of us do, as long as we've lived for today like we've nothing to lose, I don't give a **** if I die tomorrow neither do they." Her voice echoes in my ears, just like her words when I told her you were gone "he can't be dead, I didn't think he could die." How fast she took back her words, how quickly she didn't mean it.

The courage you and that neo-Nazi classmate of yours gave me, every day you got me there, gave me the strength to get through, what a strange place that was? As I would wander home, standing looking into the water of the canal it was like I saw your face beneath the water, telling me that that poison I imagined, the downing that I dreamed of wasn't mine, because I had tomorrow and might see you again.

Oh and now that is yours, just a shadow of my memory, I begin to forget your voice. I can hardly remember you without regret, save for those long moments drinking coffee, hugging you and burying my face in the leather to smell that memory, laced with aftershave and cigarettes.

What would I say to you? I would tell you without hesitation that I wish I could take away the hurt, that I love you without question or falter, because I do consider you my brother, that I would have brought you back to life if I had thought that I could have. But now it's been well past two years since I saw you, and almost two years since I lost you and I still love you and that will never go away, but now it is time for something new. The memories are not worth the cost of remembering how sometimes I ran to you to escape the rubbish that people were throwing at me, how I felt safe when I was with you, how people didn't try to kick me in the back, the good stays locked in my heart, but those roads no longer walked.

Healing

2010-01-25T00:18:00.002Z

God heals, physically, emotionally, spiritually, deeply. He takes away pain and suffering and I am just going to take this moment!

Glory, glory, glory to God in the highest heaven, hosanna my heart cries, hosanna my soul calls forth. You are more marvellous than the coming of the dawn, brighter than the sun and more glorious than the wonders of your creation. You are King of all that is within and without this world, your creatures cry to you glorious Father.

I have seen healing that it barely surprises me that my friends back hurts I pray and the pain vanishes. I have seen someone with a broken toe where all the swelling and bruising disappeared. I am a testimony to God's healing grace, physically, emotionally, spiritually and deeply. I live in freedom that I could have never known, but for the grace of God, a freedom that grows every year.

So glory to God in the highest heaven, because that is a song my soul really does cry out.

Of Mice and Men

2010-01-24T02:11:00.003Z

There is this suddenness that comes over me in the middle of the night, a great desire as I'm about to fall asleep to do EVERYTHING. I want to read everything that has ever been written, I want to know everything that's ever been known, I want to find a way to live in perfect harmony with God, to never find myself turning from Him and His ways and plans. Yet as I fall into that blissful sleep which takes far longer to come than I would ever like, they slip away, like the best laid plans of mice and men falling far away into memory.

I'd like to start waking up like I used to, maybe I need to get the right sleep, I used to bounce, quite literally, out of bed, jumping up and almost run to my bedroom window to draw the curtains and welcome in the sun, in the summer I would throw the window open and declare "Good Morning World." Absorbing the beauty of the day, that it was a fresh new day, my hopes would rise that it would be a good day and I would live like today was the last day I had on this earth, in joy and happiness. I've not lost all of that, but I've lost far too much. Perhaps it's just the way things expand, when hopes are dashed to the ground and knowledge of the horror of this world grows, how the rejection of this world seeps into the soul. Well, it is true that this world has never really had me, however much it tries, it doesn't have a chance, the world doesn't understand me because I don't want this world, I want the one to come, and this world hates me and so I struggle to love it. The more I have love for this world the more my heart is broken, and the more I turn to Jesus the more that heartbreak is healed, because this world and every single person in it, truly does reside in His hands.

Now that's enough for the middle of the night, I must get back to the best laid plans of mice and men that fill my head and maybe eventually sleep and hopefully in the mornings to come awake with a bounce.

God's voice

2010-01-23T13:42:00.003Z

There are times when I have heard God's voice so clearly that I wonder how I can ignore the command of my saviour. Yet somehow... by some means I manage to forget it. I remember when I was about 16 and I felt so disconnected from God, I knew that I'd felt His presence and love in my life over and again more powerfully than I could have imagined, He's showed me things that blew my mind, things that stunned and shocked me and made me love Him even more, yet here I was feeling like I was the otherside of an ocean. It was during a band practice. I had my 'cello in my arms and all I wanted to do was sit there and cry a flood of tears, I was trying to play and knowing that I couldn't, because right at that moment my playing needed to be worship and I didn't know how at that moment, ever note sounded wrong, my fingers couldn't find their places and the notes sounded so discordant, I was surrounded by musicians who were glorifying God at that moment. I dropped out, I stopped playing, because I didn't know what else to do save sound profane. I started to pray in my heart, I started screaming out to God in the pain I was in, 'how can I do this? how can I face tomorrow? why do I have to walk down the street and have rubbish and rocks hit me? why do I have to go back to that place where I have to wrestle guys twice my strength to just get my pen back from their hands just so I can do my work? where I have to be very aware of what's going on so I can duck before a chair hits my head?' and I was sat there screaming WHY! I needed strength, more strength than I could ever have on my own. Sometimes I had borrowed that strength from the sixthformers, my sisters friends, our matron, but human strength was not enough to face tomorrow, it never could have been.

So there I was, and the guys playing and C's singing filled my ears, and surrounded by that sounds of praise to heaven God entered in, He was right there with me, and I knew in that moment of beautiful clarity that I could face tomorrow, infact I could through it, in joy, because He gave me strength, strength that I could never have imagined. My fingers clasped around my bow again and the notes came, like a crashing wave, I have no idea what I played, but it came into the song with joy and love and adoration, praise to God for filling me at that moment with strength that was unimaginable.

Now I'm sitting here, and I know that some of that borrowed strength died and it grieves my heart, yet I realise, that I live today because God entered in. I survived the yesterday, remarkably, because Jesus Christ saved my life in many many ways. So I look around and I think - He's given me things to do, some really aren't ready yet, but I've chosen my essay topic for next semester already because He spoke to me about all this stuff I own, and He told me really clearly to give it up, not emotional or spiritually (though that does come into play in some cases), but literally, physically. I think when it comes past being able to count how many times He's said 'do this' I think maybe... I should have done it already.

Pax, χαριϲ, Liebe.

Remembering Greece

2010-01-19T11:10:00.005Z

I was just reminded of the beauty of Greece.

I've just been washing my hair, and when I wash my hair I take my ring of my finger, it's a double ring, one hand clasping another, and the hands are separate, it would snag in my hair if I kept it on, it's the only time I take it off. As I put the ring back onto my finger I just thought about how it all happened, when I truly said - God you are my everything, and no one else is ever going to have me, as the Misty Edwards song said "I say goodbye to my mother, my father, to every other love and I press on" whenever I hear those words I feel like I'm being reclaimed by God.

I don't remember all of my trip to Greece, I remember some of the grief that I took from my class, but mostly I remember the sheer beauty of standing watching the sun rays shine down over Delphi and Mycenae, the snow at Epidavrous (how perilous is walking across marble in snow!!) standing in the altis at Olympia and understanding how at these places the beauty of God's creation shines so brightly that there was no doubt that they gods were present. I've walked down the main road in Corinth, and imagined the buzz of the market and people who would have been around. I have knelt in the chapel at Ὅσιος Λουκᾶς (Holy Luke) in Boetia, and been provided for by the almighty in the Agora of Athens.

During that trip I was so overwhelmed that I bought a ring, a ring on which I made a covenant with God, that I would be His, and remain faithful, that nothing would ever stop me from worshipping Him, that I would be in his service into eternity and I would do what he asks of me. This ring was a beautiful but flimsy thing, and when it broke almost three years later, I bought a new ring, I saw this ring, clasping hands, and I knew that if I took that ring and wore it, how much it would symbolise God hanging on to me. Just like He was that day I almost fainted in the middle of the Agora, just like He was when I said 'enough of this' and the anxiety and depression left me completely (after 4 hours of prayer that stripped away everything) and for the first time in almost 14 years I felt complete unadulterated joy.

There are not three ages of God as Joachim of Fiore suggested, indeed revelation of God ended with Jesus Christ, there is no more revelation, but what there is, is God reminding us, through inspiration and dreams and visions of who we are made to be, who He has called us to be and how we need to do that. I have seen a church united, and I will not stop until I have seen this dream come into being.

Exams

2010-01-18T11:15:00.003Z

Right now I'm headed toward my exams, the first ones of third year, the first ones that count toward my degree, the first exams for a long time that I really want to do well in.

I'm remarkably calm considering. Last week I felt incredibly stressed, but that stress had nothing to do with exams. Trying not to re-live horrific moments in your life can be hard work, especially when part of you wants to. Sweetness in memories that tasted bitter. I spent about three or four days in this daze, my heart and my head had no idea what they were saying to each other and something inside of me was screaming in tears. I wanted to shout at someone, but there is no one around here who deserves that anger, I found myself just yelling at God, or rather, trying not to yell at God, and knowing that I could not take it on my own shoulders... what over time I've laid on my own shoulders is quite amazing. When after trying moment after moment to help my friends and they turn away from my advice then I blame myself, that's not right, I am not responsible for things out of my control, it would be like trying to blame myself for what happened in Haiti last week... somehow I doubt that had anything to do with me! Though my heart does break for those people, and I trust that right now God is there.

I started reading the Fellowship of the Ring again, it was so long ago that I don't actually remember any of it, there is one problem with what it's doing to me, it's making me want to right, my imagination is playing with the back story for Killan, it's time to write it, but I need to try to resist until next week. Maybe a little bit of it needs to be written down, especially as I've changed Henrietta's name again.... she just doesn't really fit any of her names, poor girl. Maybe Elanayia Helenayia, Elanetta Helenetta, those seems nice. The ray of sun smothered by the darkness of the wanderer, that is who she is, she is beautiful as the princess of Sparta ever could have been, and her betrayal of her homeland more terrible than that.

Since I started writing this I have gone off on more than one tangent. I am so glad that yesterday things got so much better. My heart feels a lot less broken! I was on the verge of driving myself insane, and am very glad that I didn't!

Now as I have a four hour exam in 45 hours I should get on with some revision, Augustine, The Cappadocians, Thomas Aquinas, Joachim of Fiore, Hobbes, Sherlock, Milton, Hegel, Moltmann and Von Balthasar, that's only 1500 years of Trinitarian Theology.