Kind

 

Hello everyone. Happy New Year and all that from all us lot (see above). I hope that you are well. We are back in the swing of things now. It's Sunday night and I'm coming to terms with the fact that Vera is no more. I'm sad enough to have watched the final episode as well as the documentary about the end. As you know, I bow to no one in my love of Vera but I'll be honest - the documentary wasn't the most interesting programme  I have ever seen. It just seemed to be a lot of people sitting around saying how marvellous it was to be in Vera. This didn't even include the silent people who we see standing around in the background of the incident room, pretending to be vital cogs in the Vera crime-solving machine. 

It's not all bad news on the telly front. The Pottery Throwdown is back which is always life-affirming. A new lady from the last series is now working as the Pottery Technician. Being a Pottery technician seems to consist of standing in the drying room and muttering - "That looks like it might crack" (It didn't). I suspect she may be building her part up a bit. 

It's been flipping freezing here but I'm not moaning about the weather, because I don't live in California and I'm not watching my house burn down because of unprecedented dry ground and powerful following winds. Sometimes the word "apocalypse" doesn't seem too overblown at the moment. Would you mind very much if I wrote about something that has been bothering me? It is obviously, all about me as you lot have already found to your cost so I'm going to talk about it anyway. 

I don't know about you but I am finding politics and the news very disturbing at the moment. I'm not mentioning any names, because that's what they want you to do,  but this thing of making horrific, untrue statements just to shake up the status quo or disrupt the way things have always been done is really shocking. The stuff around Jess Phillips - a woman who has lived with death threats for years is particularly awful. I don't think she would claim to be perfect but I can think of no one else that has stood in Parliament, voice shaking with emotion as she pointed out that women and children who have suffered abuse can expect to have around £40 of government money spent on them - against thousands to transport people to Rwanda. I'm glad that women who have been on the pointy end of this particular stick - either through lived experience of abuse or helping others who have suffered  - have come out and defended her. 

It is frightening though that someone with enough money can just say anything, about anyone and no one is able to do anything about it. Last week, we were talking about the words for the year and someone mentioned the word "kind". To be kind was to carry a badge of honour. There was probably no higher praise than to be called "kind". At the moment, this kind of word seems to signal weakness or being a bit pathetic. I find it difficult to deal with the torrent of self-serving hatred that seems to be everywhere at the moment. I wonder what sort of person I should aim to be to deal with the way the world seems to be now. 

Lots of better people than me would be saying "Well, you should aim to be like Jesus" which I find true but a bit depressing because I am more likely to skate down Everest on a tin tray than I am going to be anything like Jesus. So, he is obviously the benchmark but would you mind if I held out for something a bit more attainable? 

Then, this week I watched Jason Carter's tribute to his Grandfather, President Jimmy Carter. I have put the link here but links to YouTube are a bit hit-and-miss so I apologise if it doesn't work. However, I urge you to try and find it and give it a few minutes of your time. I'm old enough to remember Jimmy Carter as a president - a failed president and a figure of fun. Jason tells the story of his grandfather. A man who wore old 1970s shorts, whose phone plugged into the wall and who couldn't work his iPhone. He was also a man who appreciated the grandeur of nature, loved his family and strived for peace. Not every decision was perfect - far from it but, especially in the second half of his life, he seemed to be at peace with who he was and his place in the world - determined to make a positive difference whenever he could. It strikes me as interesting that when he had almost all the power in the world he was considered a failure yet, late, when he came out the other side  - still carrying the stigma of being the permanent mess up - he achieved more than he could ever have imagined. 

I've said it before (probably far too many times) but in the face of overpowering and scary nastiness, we can only find what we can do in our small corner and do it. We can find comfort in our families and friends and our hobbies and all the things that give us joy. And we don't give up and we don't lose hope. 

Have a good week.

So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever. 2 Corinthians 4