I don’t want to give the impression that transforming problems is easy. Quite the opposite really. But it is a lot more productive and results in a heck of a lot more growth than running away from them.  Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua – and on and on and on. (Read Hebrews 11 for a more detailed anthology.) If the Bible ain’t your cup of tea, then Hollywood provides numerous similar examples – Frodo, Neo, Marcus Gluteus Maximus, Batman, to name but a few.

A chap called Joseph Campbell looked at all these stories and wrote a book  - The Hero With A Thousand Faces. In it he describes the common landmarks in what he has termed The Hero’s Journey, the transformative adventure all would-be hero’s must go on (and we all want to be a hero).

-       Hearing a calling

-       Committing to the calling

-       Crossing the threshold

-       Finding guardians/mentors/companions

-       Facing the demon

-       Developing new resources

-       Completing the task

-       Returning home

We all face problems and if we chose to ignore what they are telling us they become crises, just so we really do pay attention to them. But a problem is not there to cause us, well…problems, it’s there to call us towards growth, towards life. And the demon is something that just needs transformed, not fought and defeated, and often something within ourselves.

This is the transformative power of Jesus and his cross – the gospel, the good news to those with problems, the poor. As Richard Rohr says, “There is a unique truth that our lives alone can reflect. That’s the only true meaning of heroism as far as I can see…The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality. That is everybody’s greatest cross.“ 

Andof course, the cross is embedded, somewhat paradoxically it would first appear, in love. If we can accept love and identify with the cross, then our problems will be transformed – so that the next one can come along!! But so we begin to rejoice in our sufferings as we welcome the opportunity to learn how to love more.

I’m up for it – how about you?

On the drive to my work there’s a bit of the road marked off for repair – some big lorry busted the manhole cover (thanks buddy!). Well it appears the roads department are very busy this time of year because it’s been like that for weeks. So while we wait for it to be fixed, they’ve put cones around it with a temporary set of traffic lights, which in typical fashion, change very slowly. So here, in this ridiculously small part of a quiet back road, cars will wait for the green light…and wait…and wait…while nothing is coming the other direction. 

Now this got me thinking. What happens when we come across a problem? May I suggest a number of characteristic responses:

THE INNOCENT: “Hole, what hole? There’s no hole heeeerrrrrreeeee!!”

THE ORPHAN: “Oh my gosh, look! There’s a hole in the road with cones round it!! How awful – now I’m stuck here till someone fixes it.”

THE MARTYR: ” There are always holes in my road! Always! Why me? Why pick on me?”

THE WANDERER: “OK, another hole. This obviously not the right way to go. I’m off to find an easier road, one with no holes this time.”

THE WARRIOR: “Right, hole! You’re in for it this time. I’ll show you, I’m going to sort you out once and for all! Come here!!”

What if we learned to ask what the hole tells us about ourselves instead of focusing on the hole itself? What if we then became Wizards who transform the hole, seeing it as an invitation to grow and become more alive? Maybe then we’ll get a green light. 

(Now just to clear this up a little – I don’t actually believe I am God in his entirity - I am part of God and he is part of me, just as Jesus who as our big brother, also said he was God. Think fractals. Does that help?)

So to elaborate, God is love and love is flipping hard. In my line of work, I meet a lot of broken, hurting people who are often either hopeless, helpless or worthless, or a combination of all three. That’s how they see it anyway. I would dearly love to fix them, to help them see a different way of looking at their lives. Many don’t seem to want to hear it…not in 10 minutes anyway. And that’s what’s hard. 

It seems to me that I’ve had all this talk of loving someone, when actually what I’ve been trying to do is change them. Loving does not equate to fixing. To love someone is accepting, being and suffering with them. And realising that, I have so much more respect for God.

I realised this week what a stupid plan sending Jesus to save the world was if God wanted to fix everyone there and then. And why didn’t Jesus just heal everyone, all the time? Why did he not spend 70 years travelling the world sorting everyone out? Maybe God’s intention was to show us how to accept the brokenness in life, to identify with the hurt in others, and to teach us to suffer the pain of love for the sake of someone else. Maybe that’s not a quick fix, but maybe it is a better way than any doctor, psychiatrist, or psychotherapist can offer.

People want answers. They want to know why they have problems and mostly they want to know how they can make them go away…now. I realise I’ve bought into the instant-fix notion of life too. I believe God does change lives and I believe Jesus shows us how to live in that change. Change can only come through love and I believe that truly loving someone is about being with them where they are now and not trying to change them. We do the loving, love does the changing. And that hurts. And there’s no way round that.

So does God hurt? I think if he’s real then he does. And what I love about him is that from that place, he begins to change the hurt into something more beautiful. Pain becomes a signpost. Problems become lessons. Brokenness only leads to the treasure inside coming out – that is as long as we don’t try to stick band-aids all over it.

OK, I may as well say it – I am God.

Before you send the men in white coats round, let me also say that so are you. 

That doesn’t help does it? OK, I’ll explain…at least I’ll try.

I was thinking about Mum and the relationship I had with her. When I was born and for some time after I was unable (as we all were) to make the distinction between her and I. For those months we were one unit, and until I learned self-realisation, Mum was me and I was Mum. 

Jump to the religious texts where Jesus prays that God and I will be one, and Paul writes that my life is hidden with Christ in God, and the boundaries become very blurred. Add to that the metaphor of being born again and the interwoven possibility of God and I becomes more plausible.

We live in a dualistic world where there’s night and day, right and wrong, light and dark, love and fear. We also make the distinction between others and self, breaking the self down further into body and mind, then the mind into yet smaller components that we either define or deny. And finally we arrive at our concept of me, self, I.

And it’s pretty small and limited.

Well, God invites us on a journey back to the bigger picture, back to his perspective. And as Psalm 139 says, there is no night and day – darkness is as light to God. Whether we define or deny, both are. Body or mind, both are. Self or others, both are. God and humanity, both are.

I am God, and God is me, and so much more. And so begins the dance…

(Discuss…)

Two years ago today, my Mum found a bigger place to sing and dance. I just want to pay tribute to who she was and all she taught me (and for buying me such cool shades!). Thanks Mum!!

Finally I get to explore the alternative to piling boxes, and it seems it’s as wonderful as dancing. The more practical amongst us might say that dancing will never get those boxes sorted out, and I think that’s the point. I hope so anyway – I’ve had enough of boxes.

The oldest box I had found was from playschool when during breaktime I decided I would entertain everyone with a personal rendition of “I’m A Little Tea-Pot” complete with actions. I thought I’d start with a group of girls playing something-or-other, definitely less interesting than “I’m A Little Tea-Pot.” I got as far as “short and stout” when they told they weren’t interested. What?!! Well, that was my dancing career in ruins – devastated, I retreated to the corner. No more tea-pot!!

Well, this kind of stayed with me all subconsciously etc. until about a year after Mum died. I was thinking about her, missing her, trying to understand why and all that, when I felt her presence. Now I don’t know if she was there or not, I don’t know whether I believe she could be or not. And I don’t really care – it felt real, she felt real. She was there dancing, beautiful and free. And she said to me, “Dance your dance and sing you song with freedom, and don’t wait till you get here to do so.”

I can’t tell you the effect that had on me.

And since then I’ve been wondering what my dance looks like, what my song sounds like. And now I know that the dance is with God and the beautiful thing about dancing with God is that you never know what’s coming next. It’s so free, so fun, so childlike – dancing like a five-year old, as I’ve discovered.

Anyway, I’m sure other people’s dreams of life with God will be different from dancing. For some it might be flying a spaceship, surfing a wave or eating a big cream bun. It’s probably all of these and so much more.

So when I was remembering my time in playschool, I decided to see what would happen if I knew what I knew now, if my Mum were beside me then with her words of wisdom. And you know what – I changed history. The girls were still at first uninterested, but as I kept dancing, kept singing, they started to join in. In fact, everyone joined in and it became a bit of a musical extravaganza. 

You see, dancing is contagious – you can’t help but join in. (Unless you’re a Korean soldier – they’re very strict on these kind of things, apparently.)

I hear a lot of people blaming age for their problems. They think that getting older means they will automatically fall apart or have to give up having fun. We construct the future in our own heads – and if we believe we’re going to fall apart, we will. “What we call linear time is a reflection of how we perceive change. If we could perceive the changeless, time would cease to exist as we know it.” Deepak Chopra

I’m digressing a little from what I wanted to say, and that is this: we often avoid the things that we perceive as holding us back, such as age. But age isn’t the problem – it’s our concept of getting old and what we perceive that to bring that we fight against. And so we spend our lives trying to avoid illness, suffering, and stress. I’m not advocating actively seeking these things out: we don’t need to – they come to all of us soon enough. But let’s stop avoiding them when they do knock on our doors. There is power in their transformation.

Jesus said this: “Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding your true self.” (The Message)

Some translate this as “taking up your cross and following Jesus.” I’ve always struggled to know what that means. I’m finding that it is a mystery that can only be revealed as you walk the path for yourself – no one can really tell you in words.

This week it will be two years since my Mum died. What was then the worst thing that ever happened to me has become the best thing. That may seem strange and indeed will cause offense to some. But that is the mystery. Somehow, the suffering of death has been transformed into life; her ashes have become a crown of beauty, mourning has been turned into dancing, and my despair has become praise at how God can turn it all around. Yet if I had avoided it all, the ashes would still be ashes and part of me would have died also. 

Mum always loved the autumn leaves and as I sit and look out at piles of them in the garden I am reminded that death and decay only lead to new life and growth. May we learn how to participate in that very natural process on a daily basis.

PS There’s an event running in town next weekend about just that. Check out www.daybreakscotland.co.uk

Sorry for the quietness – I had a few things going on that required my attention for a bit. All good. And I’m now a year older!! I turned the grand old age of thirty – and feel better than ever before.

So there’s been a recurring theme in my conversations over the last few weeks – the R word. Yes, relationship, particularly with God. But it seems that I’ve been talking the talk about being in a relationship with God without really knowing what that looks like, let alone feels like. In fact, I would say I don’t really know what a proper relationship with anyone is, and ‘proper’ I would define as one with another person based on mutual unconditional love. I mean, I’ve been in relationships, but I’ve always had a reason to be in them. My Mum fed me, my Gran gave me money at Christmas, my friends kept me from feeling lonely, lovers…well, you know. And then God provided me with my ticket to heaven (at least I’m hoping he has).

But heck, that’s come at a price. I’ve discovered God is so incredibly boring. A relationship with God is not particularly exciting it seems – there’s a lot of toeing the line with an inordinate amount of lines to toe.

Or is that just the way I’ve been looking at it?

Turns out it is. Turns out I’ve had this idea that God is boring. Not only that, I’ve been thinking that I’m boring too. How about that? No wonder I was so glad when my world came crashing to an end a while back – it was dull. And as I’ve been sorting through the wreckage of boxes that remain I came across a particularly battered and shabby one. I looked inside and found boring old God.

But I’ve learnt that God hides in the mundane, the boring, the awful in order to reveal the party, the fun, the dance to those who seek him. 

A short conclusion to what has been a bigger journey – more to follow, I guess.

“God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.” Richard Rohr

The experiment goes something like this: the scientists put some monkeys, let’s say four, in a locked room. The room has a staircase and on the staircase is a bunch of bananas. But if one of the monkeys climbs the stairs to get a banana, sprinklers turn on and all the monkeys get wet. The monkeys apparently don’t like this very much, so eventually stop climbing the stairs no matter how badly they want a banana. Poor hungry monkeys!

But next the scientists take one monkey out and replace it with a new one who knows nothing of the sprinklers. So when this new monkey spies the bananas he makes a bolt for the stairs. But before he gets there, the other monkeys, who have just dried off, quickly get together and pin him to the ground, stopping him from stepping on the stairs and getting them all soaked again. But what none of them know is that the scientists have already turned off the sprinklers so there’s no chance of them getting wet. Still, the new monkey figures he gets punished if he tries to get a banana so just looks longingly at them instead.

Then a second monkey is taken out and replaced with another new one. The same thing happens when he sees the bananas, but this time the afore-mentioned monkey who is still staring longingly at the bananas now joins in to stop this newcomer with as much gusto as the others, even though he has absolutely no idea why.

Eventually all of the original monkeys are replaced one by one until an interesting thing happens: none of them makes any effort to get the bananas. Apparently it’s just not the done thing around those parts. No one knows why; that’s just the way it was, is and always will be. You just don’t go for the bananas.

I thought this was fascinating and it got me thinking about all the stuff I’m not supposed to do and have no clue why. Like why’s it bad to sleep in church? Why do I have to dress up smart to go into some churches?  Why don’t we go naked? And why when I want to follow my desires do lots of voices in my head say “Oh, you shouldn’t do that!” “That’s just not the done thing here!” “Stop that now!”

By the way, I don’t propose going to church naked – just to make that clear. It would be pretty dangerous to just do what you wanted all the time. But it feels like much of my life I’ve been doing what other people have wanted me to do or not doing what they don’t want me to do. And sometimes I just don’t know why. 

Did you ever think why the Ten Commandments didn’t work? Why did God give us such a hard set of rules when he knew we would never be able to keep them? And Jesus just made it worse when he said being angry at someone was as bad a murdering them, or thinking about sex with that extremely hot girl was a bad as doing it with her. Seems to me he was proving a point. Rules are rules, but without a relationship they mean nothing. Rules are just burdens without love, burdens we were never meant to carry.  

Maybe God made us to like bananas. Maybe once upon a time we weren’t meant to eat any bananas. Maybe now it’s OK that we do. One thing I know is this – God goes bananas over us and longs for us to feel the same about him. I learnt this summer that it’s OK to desire God. And in so doing I’ve been getting rid of the “shoulds,” “musts,” “have tos” that go on in my head about life. He takes me as I am. 

So it’s no longer monkey see, monkey do. I’m God’s monkey and I take my lead from him. He tells me which stairs are good to climb and which ones aren’t, which bananas are good to eat and which ones to avoid. Same goes for apples…but then that was another experiment!!

I met a doctor a few weeks ago and she commented that in her experience (she’s getting on a bit!) people are best to put their problems in a box and leave them on a shelf. It doesn’t do much good opening them up, she said.  ”Really,” I replied, “I think I disagree.”

These boxes don’t just go on a shelf and get forgotten – they become the building blocks of our lives, of our worlds. And they won’t just disappear, they can’t be ignored – problems scream at us to be solved. Problems desire a solution. 

I suspect Dr Holditin was a little scared to look inside such boxes in case they belonged to Pandora and all sorts of horrible things were released and she wouldn’t then be able to gather them all up again. I can see that being a problem. But what Dr Holditin doesn’t realise is that Pandora’s isn’t the only box that has something to teach us.

Erwin Schrodinger, a very clever physicist, also had a box in which he kept his cat. Now Erwin must not have liked his cat very much because he rather cruelly shot it whilst it was still in the box…or at least he tried to shoot it. You see, he never really knew if the cat was dead until he opened the box. Until then it was just a possibility, just as an alive cat was also a possibility. So, Erwin concluded, that until he opened the box the cat was both alive and dead. It wouldn’t be the gun that would kill the cat, but the fact that Erwin couldn’t resist having a peak (maybe he did care after all). Unfortunately though for kitty, Erwin’s curiosity got the better of him. You know the rest.

So what am I saying? Well, Schrodinger’s cat tells us that we are participants in the very thing that we are observing. By opening the box, we’re not just passively checking out what’s inside, we’re actually playing a part in whatever’s going on in there. Viz-a-viz, what we see very much depends on what we’re looking for. 

If I expect my problems to overwhelm me then they will. If I’m constantly looking for all sorts of nightmarish spectres from the past to haunt me, then that’s what I’ll see. Thankfully the flip side of that is that if I’m seeking the treasures contained in the darkness then I’ll be sure to find them. It all depends on what I’m looking for.

Eckhart Tolle tells the story of a beggar who’d been sitting on a box for years, when a stranger walked by. “Spare some change, mister?” mumbled the beggar. “I’ve nothing to give you,” said the stranger, “But why don’t you have a look inside the box?” “Oh, it’s just an old box – there’s nothing in there.” “Ever looked to find out?” asked the stranger. “What’s the point?” replied the beggar, “It’s empty.” “Why don’t you just have a look?” insisted the stranger. After some persuasion the beggar pried the lid open and there inside it was filled with gold. “See,” said the beggar, “I told you so.“

What the beggar and dear Dr Holditin obviously don’t know is that Pandora managed to close the lid to her box before one last thing could escape – Hope. There’s always hope in the midst of our problems. And as I look into the boxes scattered in front of me and see the stories I’ve been telling myself – stories of how I should look, who I should marry, what I should do, how I should behave – I see that these problems have only been pointing me to a better solution than the one I’ve been trying to build myself. 

Jesus said that if we build our lives on his stories then our lives will be unshakeable. Stories that say he loves me as I am, that I am more precious than all of creation, that he has everything I need, that he has been searching all day and night for me and is going to throw a great big party now he has found me. Now these are stories worth listening to.

So what is it that transforms our stories into his stories, that turns empty boxes into treasure chests, despair into hope?