Crisp, clean sheets, how I adore them, alongside good linen, it makes you feel so good, you go to bed, cosseted and know after a good nights sleep, tomorrow is another day, another clean sheet, of your life where it is a blank page where you can start again.
I also love new beginnings when you can strive purposely forward to look to a brighter future. Since this blog began there there has been several new beginning, in my head, on paper, in actions - but I have to confess that all of them have in one shape or another come to a blinding fault. Not though one to give up, this week is another fresh start, kick started by me reflecting on the celebration of Easter just gone, and my faith as I munch on the last of the Eater eggs.
On Good Friday I sat in church, the one day of the year when the atmosphere is one of quite reflection, of what faith and death means to us as individuals. News had spread in the last few hours that a “young” retired member of the congregation had died. She had been taken very ill in December and her last few months were traumatic for her and her family. The local FB page paid tribute to her as a tireless supporter of local issues including hours in the children hospice shop. A special person who I feel fortunate to have known, she had been friendly, supportive and compassionate to me. She had lived everyday a purposeful life and some would say she deserved to enjoy many more years of retirement. Reflecting on her life and impact on me. I thought of how she came across to others, what I could emulate and what I have thought of people we have deemed “gone too soon” like my Mother and how we can live like that.
I have like my mother a strong spiritual faith, so I believe in the afterlife. I believe there is a reason, that someone dies when they do, the miracle of survival might have occurred dozens of times, without us knowing it. There is a purpose after death; my mother said not long before she died that she was ready to meet her maker to do his ironing for him a domestic chore - she did with as I read today with a willing heart, done to the best of her ability not just for the recipient but for her Lord. Which is why I take comfort that this fried has also gone on to do something purposeful.
Sitting there listening to the sermon was centred around Hope, our Rector quoted Vaclav Havel (czech playwright and President ) “Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning. Hope is not the conviction that something will turnout well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out”.
That means we maintain hope, when life feels that we are beyond hope. For me its this:
I may not be where I want to be at the moment.
I may not feel like a valued member of society at the moment.
I may feel my days lack purpose and are meaningless.
I may feel that I do not belong within the current society and its values.
I may feel as a working age, woman I should be in full time paid work - contributing to society.
What though is Society today? Our rector demonstrated with an Easter Egg and its box.
The box was like the Prime Minsters Easter message - David Cameron talked about our Christian country - we have the heritage - the buildings, the words the music, we have our cultural values and ethos that bring value of responsibility, hard work,charity, compassion and pride in working for common good.
Boxes though are only shells to keep the contents together - its the egg in the middle that is the valuable object, which determines how we act and live, for me thats not the government, or the monarch, or todays society’s norms.
I gain strength and strength from my Loving God, and from those quiet hero’s and heroines including Jesus, Joyce and Jenny who do not judge me for whether I am working or not, but from my thoughts, words, & actions however small they may be as long as I can say they are done with purpose are meaningful and with a loving heart.
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