The gift of hospitality

Bonnie's topic this week is The gift of hospitality'. She features Tammy Maltby, author of The Lifegiving Woman, who says: Your hospitality shouldn’t look like anyone else’s. Hospitality really means loving others with your life...hospitality is a message you give others about their value. It is not about impressing someone but rather providing comfort and care. It is about loving others with...
Your cracked dishes
• Your dramatic flair
• Your dinky apartment
• Your fabulous chili
• Your shyness and introversion
• Your soft spot for teenagers or senior citizens or singles or college students
• Your organizational challenges
• Your impossible schedule
• Your grubby kitchen floor
• Your Oriental rugs
• Your geriatric poodle and overly affectionate cats
• Your knack for decorating
• Your offbeat sense of humor
• Your tendency to run late
• Your perfectionist tendencies
• Your late paycheck
• Your unruly toddlers or sullen teens…or empty nest

Oh yes, I totally agree. Hospitality is about creating a welcoming place for others in my life.
Hospitality means...
taking time to notice when I need to 'invite someone in' to my life
offering my limited listening skills
putting my own agenda aside
opening up my heart
making myself vulnerable
holding the door wide open.

Yet hospitality is also about...
taking time to invite someone to share food
offering up my finances to take a friend out to coffee
putting my need to write aside
opening up my home
making myself vulnerable with a home that is not perfect
holding the door wide open.

Yes, I thought Tammy's post inspiring. So I looked up her blog... and then her wise words of 'Everything you are—your personality, your resources, your circumstances, your talents and spiritual gifts, even your particular failings and challenges—can be used by God to do his kingdom work of hospitality.' flew out the window. She is awesome - no surprise that she is so successful at hospitality! Feeling totally inadequate by comparison, I wondered how on earth I really COULD be as hospitable as her.

I find it really quite hard to believe that my sunk-in-the-middle cakes, second-hand furniture, chipped china and inability to 'pretty up' a table can actually help make others feel at home in my life. Yet I need to remember that hospitality is not about me.

However good a cook I might, or might not be, however beautiful - or not - my home, it's not about putting on a good performance. It's about putting others first. Heard that somewhere before? As it says in Philippians 2:3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

So yes, I can enjoy putting on a breakfast. Or having people to stay for weeks on end, as I have just done - the house has seen more cooking, cleaning and washing of bed linen than it has done for months.

But in the end, it's not about me. Just about offering what I have to Jesus, letting him use it for his glory. I hope.

Once upon a time there was a pond...

Once upon a time there was a pond...a small, barren, neglected pond. Then weed blew in and covered the surface of the water until there was nothing to be seen bar a green carpet.
Ducks and ducklings arrived.
Within a week, the weed had been eaten, the clear water dulled and polluted and the barren look returned. Yet the pond was not neglected. Oh no, Mama and her faithful four visited it several times a day; swam on it; dived into it; bathed in it. It had LOTS of attention.
The ducklings grew up. Mama left. The young grew wings, fledged and flew away.
The mucky water cleared and then, one day, the pond weed returned.

And multiplied.
And exploded!

Rabbits galore!

Mixed blessings, rabbits.

Entertainment value: 10 out of 10. As I type, Our Rabbit, who has been with us since he was Tiny Bunny,is busy chomping his way across the lawn. He acts rather like the dog: lies on his side,asleep, on hot sunny afternoons; sits up, ears alert, watching something hidden in the bushes; or stretches his front paws out, legs extended behind him.
Very like the dog.
Mostly, he ignores us when we attempt to stop him digging in the flowerbeds. And he barely moves when we go outside to sit on the lawn - probably because he thinks it belongs to him.
Very like the dog.
Sometimes, he leaps up, chasing around for apparently no reason; or sits up on his hind legs and EATS the roses. (He particularly likes the petals, but he'll snack on leaves as well.)

Nuisance value: 10 out of 10.
Holes in the lawn. Holes in the flowerbeds. A massive hole, surrounded by mud, in the middle of the bottom lawn.

The damage is not caused by 'our' rabbit, though. That must be due to Evil Bunny, who has a vicious black stripe across his nose, or Ugly Bunny, with his 'staring' coat.

And it certainly can't be the fault of the 'Mini-Buns' - two miniscule rabbits who leap around the front of the house, darting in and out of the bushes. Sooo sweet!

The Fish!

Sometimes I'm too imaginative for my own good. I really mean that.
Take today, for instance. Beautiful weather: sunny, no wind and calm seas. Perfect for kayaking. So off we went, paddling through glassy water out beyond the rocks. It was deeper there, but still calm enough to see WHAT WAS BELOW.
Sea monsters, giant water snakes, hideous creatures of The Deep, barnacle-encrusted skeletons. A dinosaur reared an ugly head just above the waves, fossilized for eternity, a snarl clearly visible on its face. We steered clear as my heart began to beat faster. I cast a nervous glance over my shoulder until it was out of sight...
Unseen fingers clutched fruitlessly at the fishing lure trailing hopefully behind, the line slipping through them with barely a hesitation. Until the rod jerked, struggling against the hands deep below, attempting to drag it - and us - below the surface.
We fought, of course, the rod bending so far I feared it might snap. Slowly, carefully, patiently we reeled the line in, bringing the lure closer and closer to the kayak. We had caught A Fish. (In previous expeditions - in fact, almost in the same place - a fish named Rock put up a tremendous fight. It fought for an hour, pulling the kayak first one way, then the other, until the kayak gave up and left the (fish named) Rock on the seabed where it belonged. But this was a real fish.)
He was indeed a monster. Not quite of Jonah proportions, but with a face of nightmares. And a weight of 4lb 7oz. (That's over 2 kilograms for the metrically inclined.)
Supper.

Sisters' shenanigans

Off to Ireland - Westport County Mayo - to be with my three 'sisters' from Kenya days. Ann, Cath and Mary. Anna, Katerina, 'Mama Miti' (Tree Mother) and me, 'Nyako' (girl, in the Dholuo language. Wow, we go back 30 years - we all met on a training course in the summer of 1981, before we were all sent out to various parts of Africa. That was also exactly when the apparitions of the Virgin Mary started at Medjugorje in Bosnia, not that that has anything to do with it. I think.

It's always a bit crazy when we meet up.

We laugh and reminisce until the wee hours of the morning - the memories as crazy as the evenings. Quite embarrassing, those recollections sometimes. I won't detail them here, just memories of singing, and clothes, and the 1982 coup in Kenya, and who had a crush on who during the preparation course. Crazy people. Crazy memories. Age has NOTHING to do with it,of course.

It's always a joy to get together, but this time seemed crazier than others.

We started by getting to the airport two hours earlier than we needed to. A fault on the right side, anyway, but lots of extra sitting around.
Then Cath, having checked in online for both journeys, gave in her boarding pass for the return journey by mistake. Fortunately, the airline staff noticed just as we were about to board the plane - or the return would have been very interesting.
Then, when we arrived, I couldn't get out of my seat - an unseen force slammed me back down again when I tried to get up. It was easier when I undid my seat belt.

Of course, there were lots of marvellously joyful things too. As Psalm 103 says: O my soul, bless God. From head to toe, I'll bless his holy name! O my soul, bless God, don't forget a single blessing!
Blessings of sitting together on the plane - despite making separate bookings and online check in, it all worked out.
Blessings of walking down the lane with dogs and children and conversation and talking and laughing and drinking wine and eating to-die-for homemade cake and chocolate and chocolate and jokes and laughter and...oh, blessings and blessings.

We visited a derelict abbey,

walked across a salt marsh on a causeway

and drank Guinness in a pub named after Grania O'Malley, 16th century Irish pirate queen; saw wiggly worms, wriggly sand eels and complacent jellyfish; met a charming boy who lives in a pre-famine cottage; paddled in cold Clew Bay and searched rock pools; and made plans. And plans. And plans.

So we sat on rocks at the waters' edge, watching seals sitting on rocks watching us. Up to 20 of them, though sometimes there are as many as 50.

Mullet leapt on the surface of the water. Rock pipits clustered along the shore, ferreting among the pebbles as sand martins ducked and dived over our heads. The grass was springy under our heads. We searched rock pools for fish and shrimps, finding mainly hermit crabs in periwinkle shells and dozens of stranded jellyfish. Their translucent beauty made for compelling photography.

Later, we wandered across miles of deserted sands. Paddled, and swam. (Well, some of us, braving cold, chills and jellyfish.) Only in Ireland could there be such space and tranquillity.

But then....a sudden attack of headache, sickness, nausea, chills, shivering and chattering of teeth. We bundled Cath up warmly, checked her breathing,lay her down in the car and rushed for home, only stopping for essential supplies of headache tablets, water, milk, mints and ice cream. And for Cath to throw up over a wall into a convenient garden. After a shower and a sleep she was fine. Phew.

And so the days continued...early morning tea at 9am, brunches, afternoon tea and cake, late evening suppers with glasses and glasses of wine - enough, but not too much; strolls through the town, absorbing the creativity that is Ireland - mohair scarves and cable-knit sweaters, ceramic art and intricate jewellery, filmy fashions and ethereal photography...; and talking, talking, talking. Mary left us for an urgent dentist appointment: in Dublin, four hours away by train: we missed her. The evening reunion felt as if a family, stretched and separated by adversity, had come together once more. As comfortable as really, really, really old shoes.

The days ended with sharing music: dancing to Ladysmith Black Mambazo and watching Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers sing together...

So we've enjoyed drinking tea like old women; sipping cappuchino coffees like the middle-aged professionals we are in other lives; throwing back wine like young bright twenty-somethings; hanging out like teenagers; giggling like little girls. Four friends of the Sisterhood.

Blithe times. Blessings. Bliss.

Tomorrow we leave.

Wildlife...

Agapanthus...

...lilies...

lobelia

!!

Jonny, we need you!

End of term: some sadness...

The end of the school year - in some ways, much looked forward to - brings with it some sadness. For ten months, the children and I have worked together. They have matured and developed in astonishing ways. One child this year has made amazing strides - he is almost unrecognizable, a completely different child from the one who arrived in my classroom in September.

Me too. The children teach me, change me - usually, these days, making me MORE patient, though not always. They teach me - about surfing, sport, what's 'cool' and what isn't... they sometimes, even, let me gain a tiny glimpse into the ways their minds work.

So, as today was the last day of the school year, we all said our goodbyes. They will have changed again over the summer, entering the next school year even older and 'wiser'. I will see them...in passing, for the odd lesson or two, but it will not be the same. We will have lost our sense of  'togetherness' that we have had over the year.

And that is healthy. They are not, in any case, 'my' children. They have parents, families who, in their turn, will have to let them go into the world as adults.

As I have already had to do. But that is another story, with its own joys and sadness. Enough for today.