Bald Statements/Good Grief

Yesterday I saw a fantastic exhibition of sculptures at Central URC in Sheffield (sorry, it's over now) by Jean Parker, a woman whose response to breast cancer and the treatment which made all her hair fall out was, during a seven-day silent retreat, to model small clay heads symbolising eight of the emotional/spiritual stages through which this experience had led her, from denial to peace. Later she worked these up into small bronze statues and reworked the themes in a more abstract way in alabaster. The results were placed around the church sanctuary alongside a DVD giving her reflections on her work.
As the publicity for this event had promised, the stages of Jean's grieving also resonate with people who have not experienced breast cancer but know other forms of bereavement and loss. I could imagine the DVD in itself being a very powerful focus for a group discussion or for worship - the whole set-up had been used that way for the local Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service the week before.
Interestingly, I heard that not everyone was happy for a church to be used in this way. I could imagine one of the sculptures in particular, on the theme of anger, arousing negative reactions. As Jean says on the DVD, being angry, especially being an angry woman, is not at all encouraged in society. People don't know what to do with you. Far easier to be depressed, for then you can be comforted. Yet without processing all these stages, how can we be healed?

Get a life!

That's what someone in my congregation advised me as her parting shot, as I edged out of her hospital room. I suspect it may have been because when she asked me what I was doing this evening I admitted that I'd be thinking about the sermon.
But today I think I've had quite a lot of life. Friday began with our drop-in breakfast (best fry-up in Sheffield and some good theological/pastoral conversation), continued with NT Greek (three of us have now got as far as Mark 2 after 2 years hard slog) and a fundraising meeting for our worker with older people (semi-depressing - why do good projects need constant reinvention so people will still give them money?) followed up by two hospital visits and an evening on the computer still ahead of me, to be rounded off with a thriller and a bit of mindless TV.
Does this count as a life? I'm not sure. It would be lovely to have about twice as much time so I could a) reflect on all the different pieces of the mosaic and connect them with one another more creatively and b) do some of the follow-up that should really be done after most of the things I do. But it could be a lot worse. I think.

Home-inspired haiku

I've been visiting my parents, and this morning my father described to me a scene he'd viewed from the window. Given my mother's stroke it seemed very poignant, with imagery of decrease, lost partnership and isolation. We both fell silent - there seemed no more to say - but this haiku came out of it:

Morning. Moon waning.
Two gulls together fly high
Alone in their world.

With apologies to Brian Wren

I seem to have slightly misremembered the title of Brian Wren's book of hymns Piece Together Praise but since this blog was inspired by a course on scrapbooking and piecing together remembered Bible stories (see Women in Ministries blog) it still seems appropriate. And anyway, I find both life and praise never quite fit or make sense if you try to make them out of just one piece, just one voice, just one truth. I always need to piece meaning together from many different contexts - and even then it's usually somewhat distorted to try to fit everything in... though that may be just the result of my mental/handicraft skills...