And then I felt the support of the ropes. Maybe it was no more than a slight pull from above as my friend encouraged me upwards. Maybe I suddenly remembered that I was climbing with an experienced Himalayan climber who would of course have everything under control. Whatever it was, it was enough to energise me in a way I had thought would be completely impossible and scrambling upwards I shot up the last few metres of rock face like someone had put a rocket up my behind. Needless to say I arrived at the top gasping for breath. Completely relieved and shaking with a heady mix of fear and exhilaration I lay flat on my back, gazing at the sky with immense gratitude that my life was not in fact over.

But hey I tell a lie for there has been another near death experience; one not over in moments but drawn out over many many months if not years. A slow living death would be a better description as inch by inch the hard reality hit me that my life was in fact at an end, or so it seemed. That the choices made to risk all had simply left me with an insurmountable pile of debt made all the more intimidating by the level of responsibility I now carried as a Dad with two young girls.

It’s a terrible terrible thing to come to the realisation that your life is effectively over. That all the remaining years would be filled with the thorns and thistles of work to somehow keep your head inches above the rising tide of water, if in fact that was possible. For that’s what economic slavery is, a place inhabited by many millions across the world where all hope has gone and lives become no more than pawns in the power play of the trade routes, all the cards lying in the hands of others.

Lives without hope.

I remember the days of conference going where inspirational speakers, including at times myself, would tell the story of those ancient Celts setting off in their coracles. The very best orators would sometimes be chosen to read the prayer of Brendan as the call to adventuring beckoned. What we never told however was that some of these brave adventurers didn’t make it. Their coracles filled with water and they shivered their way into the most terrifying death.

You see some of us just don’t make it.

However to slowly begin to rediscover that there is a place of hope that can be found is huge; daring to believe that life has not come to an end but there may just be a way out of this dark incarceration of the soul, absolutely massive. Slowly energy returns and the days begin with hope rather than despair. The possibility looms that maybe one day in the future you might even get back in that coracle again…………. for no more than a little paddle round the bay but even that would be fun!

As the prophet Zechariah said three thousand years ago, “As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you I will set you free from the waterless pit.Return to your stronghold Oh prisoner of hope. Today I declare I will return to you double”

You know, maybe this journey of death has been inevitable for how can we prophesy into such dark places across the world without having first touched the depths of despair ourselves? Ha now here’s a good thought! A return to Jeddah one day, where everything was lost………..with my double portion to hand. Now that would be a good journey to make!

“We thought solidarity was being nice and affirming but ultimately it’s to stay in there with brokenness and let it lead you where it will……..Solidarity with pain and weakness is an aspect of masculine love. None of us would choose to be nailed to the cross or to freely take the side of victims in society. Circumstances will unwittingly trap us there and finally there is no way out……..This is God, step by step seducing us and drawing us into solidarity”

Thanks Sally Ann for drawing my attention to this most amazing quote.

So Happy New Year from this small part of cyber space! Yep you’ve got it, don’t come here if you want some cheery pick me up! No new year resolutions here about keeping fit down at the gym. I have my own daily work out that more than suffices. No, my new year resolution, for what’s it’s worth, is to keep holding in to that place of entrapment. Yes that place where the master story teller has seductively lead me and then, well thrown away the key it would sometimes seem. But how about this. Which scenario would you prefer? A handful of cards to play in the card game of life, or a fistful of nothing other than a complete reliance on the Master……………. to serve up a fresh hand when the time is right? Most of the time I would go for the cards I must confess. A good CV or some financial clout would do wonders I am sure, but maybe just maybe I could miss the best cards of all?

So that’s where I am at the start of this year. Holding in to my story; which is all broken up and completely without sense, but perhaps I can say at the start of this year, that is just about okay….I think!

It’s the normal routines of life that keep us going at times isn’t it? Or at least for me. That’s how you do your time I am told, jail time that is. By getting your head down, minding your own business and living each day one at a time.

I have come to the conclusion, be it for my own sanity’s sake, that every story needs some jail time thrown in; perhaps with a few years hard labour tossed in for good measure. Maybe it was those years that helped craft the man Nelson Mandela became. The isolation and rigour of those twenty seven years; the long days and nights to look deep inside your own soul.  Maybe that’s why President Jacob Zuma’s lost his way. You know, the one who was booed. He only did ten years on Robben Island. Not long enough perhaps to fully search the depths.

Whether it be the imprisonment of a career going nowhere, physical infirmity or any other form of major loss that life throws at us, the result is the same; all opportunity for control of the future is taken from us. Yeah I know, I can hear the life coach mantras too, but hear the words of that most ancient of journeymen, Job. ‘If He imprisons a man there can be no release’

Wow, not the most comforting of words Job! Could have come up with something else surely?

Maybe your doing your time too. Maybe you feel as we do cos we had such a good story! A story that spanned continents and weaved its way through some of the most amazing cities across the globe. It was good to tell and wonderful to live as history and geography connected on the parchment paper of lives lived out in the reality of our own living room.

Where did it all go?

Part of the reality of being inside, in jail I mean, is you feel completely disconnected from everything you used to feel so connected to. Like John the Baptist as he tentatively asks from his prison cell, ‘are you the one, or should we look for another? Can you hear the pain in that question? If so then you have some understanding of the true nature of prison time.

So I draw courage today cos I’m doing my time, and the surroundings are a lot more pleasant that Robben Island I can tell you.

I have heard it said that ‘you don’t give a man a sword until he has learnt to dance’ Sadly this particular blogger has always been an embarrassing dancer. The notorious ‘Dad’s dance’ found its beginnings at my feet. However it is such a liberating thing to begin to discover hilarious laughter in the place of failure; to look at the ashes of our lives and throw our heads back and laugh, for you cannot trust a man with a sword until he has learnt to dance. Thank you Richard Rohr was it, for those words?

Learning to laugh in the face of adversity is huge, yet in so doing I will not deny the reality of these last years.   Indeed to do so would be to renegade on the deep conviction I carry that the master storyteller never drops the pen on the story of our lives, even if there have been many many moments when I have wondered just that. Yet to live without a story is unthinkable is it not? Life would surely lose all meaning and context. Yes I could immerse myself in family and in that I am so totally blessed. Indeed these recent years I have discovered something of that ‘Mafioso stick together mentality’ It’s the family that matters! Well yes it is, and I am grateful for that, but I also choose to believe there is  more to our stories than  even the wonder of family.

So what are these gems buried so deep in the ashes of these wilderness years? Gems that demanded we walk as close as we have ever come to financial implosion and caused me to doubt everything I have sown my life into these last thirty plus years? Well, with huge thanks to Walter Brueggemann and his most excellent book ‘The Land’ they lie somewhere between the precariousness of wilderness journey and the promise of land gifted.

More I hope to follow. These gems are somewhere…….honest!

What has it all been about?

I am aware that amongst some, the language of exile has become familiar, perhaps a metaphor for loss of influence or a way of describing a growing gulf in values and ethics across the western world. For Kathy and I no such luxury! Oh that our journey was simply metaphorical or tied up in conversations about values and ethics. Now that would be nice! No; for us it has been earthed in the realities of…..well you know the story, or least you do if you have been following this blog and if you haven’t, well it would take far too long to explain!

Forgive me also if you think I linger too long over events of the last few years documented well in this portion of online space. However to lose your place in the land and amongst the landed is as profound an experience as any I have gone through. That is the material of the recent pages of our story so it is that I must pick up on if we are to begin to gather up the shredded threads. I have no other starting point.

Make sense?

More to follow…………..I hope.

Nearly two weeks ago I and a few friends spoke our the declaration below; without a doubt one of the biggest days of my life. Bold words indeed.Thought I had fully digested them but alas they got stuck somewhere on route. Still, we all need to nail our colours to one mast or another and I have nailed mine.

Regrets? Actually, in my darkest moments, yes. However I can’t actually afford such indulgence. So I set my face, even as I did seven years ago.

A declaration to Arabia, the trade routes and economic systems

We come today as children of the living God, knowing O Lord that our destiny is completely secure in you. You are our provider and you are our Kinsman Redeemer; the one who has the last word over our lives. We have considered the lilies and the ravens and are completely confident of your provision. We therefore refuse the lure of mammon and agree that in casting our bread upon the waters it will not return void.

We rest this day from our labours.

Today our testimony is one of no fear. No room for worry about what we shall eat or what we shall drink for our Father in heaven knows what we need. Ha! That is enough! We declare today we trust you for our old age and we trust you for our children. We refute the fallen systems of this world and refuse to be measured as economic units. Instead we stand in the blessing of Abraham; a blessing that is for us and our children and for those who are far off. Let it flow!

We come to you Arabia as indeed we come to the Square Mile of London, Wall Street of America and every other so called storehouse across the face of this world declaring you are not our keeper. We need you less than you think for our destiny and inheritance is secured………..but you have need of us and our Lord and the story of grace and redemption that we carry. You think you are rich but we humbly remind you today, you are blind wretched and poor.

Our invitation to you is to leave behind your self-serving agenda and to rise into your true identity. We therefore speak to you trade routes and declare we will not partner with you in service of the god of mammon for there is a different story to rise and a different flow to be found.

• A flow that is from heaven to earth; one that has the power to break famines over lands and deliver whole nations from cycles of poverty.
• A flow that brings freedom in the place of captivity and decrees an exposure and unravelling of child labour, bonded labour and every other form of economic slavery across the face of this world.
• A flow that releases the gold to go to the source of all that is truly glorious……………..for to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power forever and ever.

We therefore stand with Jesus at the door and knock. You Laodicean lands be unlocked to enter your rightful inheritance. We say let blind eyes be opened and purses be unstrung. We stand with pen in one hand and story book in the other declaring let a new story begin to rise up and down the length of these global trade routes; a story of laughter, justice and the glorious provision of our Lord and God. We say to you trade winds that there is a wind far more powerful than you. It is the wind of heaven and the wind from the storehouses of heaven. Let it be heard again across the face of the globe.

So this is our decree today. Hear O lands the word of the Lord. Amen