On Decades…

Ten years ago today, Mrs Hills and I left Australia. It was the kind of move you can only really make once, given the recklessness of it – quit your jobs, sell your stuff, buy one way ticket, and jump, unemployed, into the great unknown.

And what a ride it’s been. We’ve lived in the UK, UAE, and even Jordan for a bit. We managed to bring two happy boys into the world! One with a confused hybrid accent and one who is still testing out syllables. Both are true delights.

We kept moving forward, even when the map was blank, and even when it warned us that “here be dragons” (there were, indeed, sometimes dragons. Most were slain; we reached an uneasy truce with others).

The seasons change and so have we – a desire for flexibility has given way to the joy of domestic rhythms; the joy of the quick-turn problem-solve has given way to longer horizons. We’ve learned the value of showing up – and being showed up for.

There have been good years and objectively rubbish years, along with years of plenty and years of scarce, supplemented by times of mourning and times of dancing (the dancing was not me).

In all, there has been “a time for everything”, as ancient wisdom puts it.

What of the next ten? Who knows! Lots of love, books, hugs and hopefully marginally less dancing (or, at the very least, less Chicken Banana)

On years…

There are years of your life, and there are years of your life.

There are years of just living, and there are years of consequence. Of growth, of pain, of stretching, and jubilation.

…years of your life, and years of your life.

I’ve been thinking about this lately – 2025 being a year of incredible consequence, joy and stretch for us.

There is something meaningful in the rhythm of “big times” and “small times”.

And this is also ancient truth. Ecclesiastes puts it this way: “For everything there is a season…”

In modern life, we’ve become divorced from the seasons and rhythms of existence.

You want a tropical mango in a freezing blizzard in London? You’ve got it!

You want all of the world’s knowledge on a little black rectangle in your pocket? Voila!

…and that’s not healthy.

There are years and there are years… And accepting that is freeing.

It lets you mourn when you should mourn…
It lets you celebrate when you should celebrate…
It lets you stretch when you should stretch…
It lets you harvest when it’s time, or accept when the harvest has failed…

…and it lets you live in the days that you are given.

It enables you to not worry about tomorrow (a wise man once said that tomorrow had enough worries of its own), but rather to let the day unfold as it unfolds.

And sometimes that unfolds in years of consequence.

…sometimes in months of sadness.
…and, often, in days of mere, but blissful, mundanity.

There are years, and there are years. And that’s a good thing.

On one’s early 20s…

I had a surreal moment driving down the highway the other day.

A song from 2008 came on, and I was suddenly struck with the vivid, tangible, memory of being in my early 20s…

You might remember it. That desire for a future you can’t quite put into words yet… A feeling of dissatisfaction and listlessness… a sense that the world doesn’t take you seriously quite as you are…

…an odd, persistent, feeling of life being a bit incomplete.

Of course, I wasn’t incomplete, and, in fact, life was pretty good… I just didn’t know it yet.

And as quick as that, the sensation passed, and I was filled with gratitude. For the love of my wife, for the joy of my two healthy sons, for a meaningful career, for “ride or die” friends, and for the graciousness of God.

This post doesn’t really have a point, but I wish that I could give 2008 me a hug and tell me that it all turns out ok…

…that I wasn’t really incomplete; I was just impatient and should enjoy the ride.

PS: what music does to your brain is wild.

On the gap between disappointment and fulfilment…

I wrote the below on Holy Saturday during the first year of the pandemic. I’ve thought about “the gap between disappointment and fulfilment” a lot since. Reproducing my original post here in full.

—————-

Each year I am struck by what a sense of isolation and helplessness the disciples must have felt on the first Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

All they had known for years came crashing down around them. Their messiah and deliverer died an ignominious death on a Roman cross.
The disciples had in their hearts a vision of political revolution; the establishment of an earthly kingdom. But what they had before their eyes was a crucified leader.

It is easy for us now, on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, to know that we are about to celebrate the resurrection. We know that we can celebrate His death on Friday because his resurrection on Sunday is on the way.

But in that moment, the disciples knew nothing of what was to come.

They hadn’t read to the end of the book – of the victory to come. And even if they had, it was a different victory than the one they had anticipated, and they could not have comprehended, with their religious-political mindset.

But Jesus did know the end of the story. He knew of the victory to come. He knew Sunday was on the way.

Despite our strange isolation this year, we cannot really fully understand what the disciples went through on that first Easter. But we can empathise with the isolation and a sense of helplessness.

More importantly – we can remind ourselves that Jesus knows the end of the story. Isolation is not the end.

Victory – in some form or another – is on the way.

Sunday is on the way.

On rest

My year started with a book that came to me with providential timing.

Last year was a tough year. Really tough. I ended it thoroughly depleted; staggering into the Christmas break emotionally, spiritually and physically wrung out. More than ever, I needed a rest… a sabbath, if you will.

Enter: Sabbath, by Nicola Slee. Slee’s thoughtful and vulnerable book is based on a poem by Wendell Berry, which begins describing his journey into sabbath rest:

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

Real rest requires an element of intentionality – a deliberate pause in order to find the stillness. As my exhausted brain worked through the mess of the year, it began to quiet as I allowed it to process, rejuvenate, recharge.

Reflecting on the book, and on my own relationship with rest, it occurred to me that sabbath actually has an element of work; it involves the work of resting.

To rest actively requires us to consider what has made us tired, and to sort through the chaff in our minds.

But fortunately, this quiet work of the sabbath comes with a reward.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths

Doing the hard work of rest is valuable. It is also, at times, painful. As I took stock and reflected, I could see truths and realities in a way that I could not in the noise and busy-ness of life.

As I approached the end of my break, I wrote in my journal:

This year – more than ever – I have limped over the finish line, frailer and sicker than I have ever been.
Slee says that this is normal – sometimes to enter sabbath is to have it all crash down on you as your body catches up. But this year has been particularly torrid and I think this has had an effect. The last few days have been tough. I begin work again tomorrow and my body knows it. I don’t want to do it.
I need more time.
Even just little more time.
Leaving sabbath is difficult, and not just because we connect with ourselves and with God in it.
Leaving sabbath is hard because we return to a world we do not control, and which has marched on in our absence. Even if I was in control of my world (which I am not), returning is hard as it has grown out of my control in my absence.
While I have been in sabbath, I have been discovering (or rather remembering) some of my passions that bring me joy.
And that, I suppose, is good. Anxiety may be the price of leaving my sabbath woods, but a renewed sense of self and (hopefully) better tools to find rest again are what I take from it.

There are certain parallels between leaving sabbath and leaving the strangeness of this season, whenever that may be.

2020 has forced many of us into a form of sabbath; a mandatory degree of rest and reflection that we have not had before. In many senses, the year has been traumatic… But it has also been an opportunity to reset and renew our inner worlds.

Leaving this form of sabbath will come with its own challenges.

Leaving any sabbath is hard. But eventually the sabbath must end.

The key is to take its lessons and its energies to meet the new day.

Sunday is on the way

Each year I am struck by what a sense of isolation and helplessness the disciples must have felt on the first Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

All they had known for years came crashing down around them. Their messiah and deliverer died an ignominious death on a Roman cross.

The disciples had in their hearts a vision of political revolution; the establishment of an earthly kingdom. But what they had before their eyes was a crucified leader.

But in that moment, the disciples knew nothing of what was to come.

But Jesus did know the end of the story. He knew of the victory to come. He knew Sunday was on the way.

Despite our strange isolation this year, we cannot really fully understand what the disciplines went through on that first Easter. But we can empathise with the isolation and a sense of helplessness.

More importantly – we can remind ourselves that Jesus knows the end of the story. Isolation is not the end. Victory – in some form or another – is on the way.

Sunday is on the way.

On fear, sadness and COVID-19

In many ways, one of the saddest things about COVID-19 is the fear. The fear of each other, the fear of the future and the fear of being without.

I cried a little at Amman airport this morning when I saw two young children wearing face masks. Their parents carried on stoicly, but you don’t cover your children’s faces without being struck by some sort of fear (justified or not). It reminds me of the morning after the Finsbury Park mosque attacks. I was walking to the station and saw little boys and girls accompanied by their tired-looking parents. The children normally walked to school without adult supervision.

The parents were afraid. Literal survival was at stake.

There is something primal about the protection of a parent over a child. And in the case of COVID-19, it’s a risk that they cannot see nor fully comprehend. This event could still be anything and they don’t know how to protect their kin.

I also share in the fear. Today, I was nearly quarantined by flight restrictions. I would have been stuck outside of my home countries, without friends of family. In the hours when that seemed a real possibility, I was afraid. Even as I write this, waiting for the plane to take off, I am anxious.

But what of fear? Fear often comes from a sensible survival instinct, but there is also an element of sadness to it.

There is a sadness to it because a state of fear is your body telling you that something is not normal, is not safe.

Young children with their faces covered is not normal. It is not safe.

And in this case, the non-normal, non-safe state is such an unknown. If a lion is coming towards you, you know what you’re afraid of. In this very strange March 2020, we don’t really know what to be afraid of. Closed borders? Flu symptoms? Running out of bog roll? Each other?

Being afraid without fully knowing what to be afraid of is unusual.

Either way, this state is not normal. And it is not safe.

Yet we have Hope. “I lift up my eyes to the hills– where does my help come from?”

On the passage of time

There is a certain helplessness that comes with the passage of time.

“Time flies”, they said… but it never really rang true to me.

The older I get, the faster time seems to go. There’s a growing sense of running out of time.

When you are a child, the hours and days are endless. As a teenager, you can waste hours lying on your bed, doing nothing, and it costing you nothing.

Time no longer works like that for me.

Every day is full and somehow seems to have fewer minutes than the last.

It’s not a matter of not being in control. It’s that the march of time is speeding up.

And with it, my life.

It is perennially harder to find time for reflection, for prayer, for planning and for growth.

And when you blink, a month has gone.

It’s like being a passenger in a speeding tube of time.

There’s still so much to do, but so little time.

I wonder whether Jesus felt like this, approaching the end of his time on Earth. He had done so much… but did he have the feeling of running out of time as well?

Lent day 12, 2020. Amman, Jordan

On Ash Wednesday

From the love of my own comfort

From the fear of having nothing

From a life of worldly passions

Deliver me, O God

– Audrey Assad

Today is Ash Wednesday; the beginning of Lent.

Lent was (and is) not really something practiced in our church tradition. Pentecostalism was marked, amongst other things, by a desire to do away with many things that appeared liturgical or overly religious, and simply ‘follow the promptings of the (Holy) Spirit’.

So the Christian calendar (at least, apart from Christmas and Easter) was not something observed in our rhythm of worship. For its many wonderful qualities, I do think our tradition misses out on something by not observing some of these very old rhythms.

In my own situation, this Ash Wednesday, I am in a foreign country and away from friends and family. Perhaps as a result, I am acutely aware, maybe more than normal, of the significance of the season.

After all, by its nature, the season demands a certain amount of introspection and solitude.

Am I ready? I think of Him, I think of my faith and reflect on my shortcomings. I am grateful for His sacrifice.

Without Lent, without this season today, would I have this same sense of self-examination?

Likely not.

As the Teacher says in Ecclesiastes, “There is a time for everything under the sun”. And the reality is that this includes times of reflection and times of sorrow, along with times of celebration and times of joy.

Without the balance, we cannot appreciate the extremes.

So, today, I am grateful for Lent.