Turning the Page

You will have trouble

We don’t want trouble, but when Jesus says ‘You Will Have Trouble’, there must be something to help us through. 
There are some promises I would like God not to keep.
I’m not sure if you can still get them or not, but you used to be able to buy a little box and in it there would be little pieces of paper with a scripture on written on it.
They were called promise boxes.
Each day, or whenever you needed a little boost, you would randomly pull out a verse and see what ‘promise’ God was giving you today.
I wonder if in that little box they had the promise ‘You will have trouble.’
How would you feel if you pulled out those words?
 
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I am loved

It can feel very lonely when we don’t experience love. A sense of abandonment. To know that ‘I am loved’ is like the permanent embrace of presence. 
To be loved and know it deeply is, I think, the quest of every heart. According to early Church writer Paul, it is the greatest of all.
When you know you’re loved, there is a sense you are held and known. There is a completeness to who you are.
But, in all honesty, the love most of us have experienced is like store-bought tomatoes.
These tomatoes are seemingly perfect. Round, red, and full of juice. They may even have a label to make sure you know that it’s a tomato.
We buy them, use them, feel we know what a tomato is like and all is well in our tomato world.
I never buy shop tomatoes because once you’ve tasted a REAL TOMATO you’ll never go back.
 
What I mean by a real tomato is one that has been grown in soil, under the heat of the sun, fed with organic fertilisers and simply allowed to grow at its own pace.
I simply can’t explain the difference, but I will try. The flavours are powerful and strong. There isn’t much juice because it’s all flesh. They are beautiful to look at and watch as they ripen.
I regularly give away some of my tomatoes. I ask people to enjoy the difference. To slowly, even mindfully, eat the tomato.
Why am I talking about tomatoes?
What’s the connection to love?
Love Tasting
We all have had tastings of love.
It might be a romantic relationship.
Perhaps the love of a parent to a child and a child to a parent.
Grandparents holding the newborn grandchild. Nothing sweeter.
Or it could be the love of a dog to its owner. Maybe cats, but I’m not sure 🙂.
It’s all love. It’s beautiful and good. But it’s all quite tenuous and has the potential of being lost.
We hope the love will last forever but it relies on everyone playing nicely.
This love is real and true, and it’s part of God’s good creation, but I am afraid it’s much like shop bought tomatoes.
There is a love that I want to sit under and in. To be bathed in. A love that will hold me when the love notes of this world get tangled up and tossed aside.
It’s the full flavoured perfection of an organic tomato slowly grown .
I am loved
All the other loves are signposts to a perfect love that I want and need to be immersed in.
When I know this deep love, in all its fulness of flavour and nutritional perfection, then I can face anything.
I can be stripped of my Mana (Maori word for prestige, authority, influence, spiritual power) and still return love.
I can be spat upon and crucified like the Christ, but still gift forgiveness to ignorance.
When we know this love surrounds us, we are unstoppable in the pursuit of wanting others to know this love.
We give tomatoes away and say, ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good’ Psalm 34:8
Cultivating the ‘I am loved’
Back to tomatoes.
Even in the middle of winter, I still have a focus on the growth of tomatoes.
When I am collecting Autumn leaves to go into the compost, I tell people I am growing tomatoes.
When I am collecting bamboo canes for my tomatoes to grow up, I am growing tomatoes.
I look through the seed catalogues in spring, and I am growing tomatoes.
Growing the sense of being loved is a constant daily meditative activity.
My secret heart.
Everyone of us has a secret heart. It’s that place where all the thoughts and feelings spring up from.
We don’t let many come near it. We want to keep it secret, hidden, and locked away.
But we know it’s there, and often it betrays us. We share something that we wish we could take back. We allow it to become vulnerable because we know it needs connection.
I want my secret heart to be full of wisdom.
David, in his penitent prayer, says this.
You desire truth in the inward being;    therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Psalm 51:6.
So daily, on my pilgrim’s quest for truth, I hear the words ‘I am loved’.
I have a recording of ‘I am’ declarations that I want to anchor my soul to.
But the greatest of all these is ‘I am loved’ 1 Corinthians 13: 13
 
Questions? 
Comments?Email me 🙂📨barry@turningthepage.co.nz
 
Quotes to consider
The antidote to stress, depression, anxiety, despair is to be on then off, work play, inhale exhale, summer winter. Rhythm is built into creation, and the problem with the modern world is that you can get tomatoes at 2 am. Rob Bell. 
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket–safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Love wins over guilt any day. Richard Rohr When Things Fall Apart
Love acts like a giant magnet that pulls out of us, like iron filings, every recorded injury, every scar. Terrence Real
Giving and receiving unconditional love is the most effective and powerful way to personal wholeness and happiness. John Bradshaw.
Questions to answer
Where have you experienced love? Even a small slice of it?
Speaking the truth (I am loved) into yourself seems such a strange thing to do. Why would that be?
How do we confer on to others that they are loved?
Can you gift yourself the gift of being loved? Why or why not?
Formation exercise
Read the other ‘I am …’ posts in this series. Create a voice recording on your mobile phone with you speaking to yourself these truths. Listen to them daily.
Further reading
Barry Pearman
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

It’s not ‘Two steps forward and Three steps back’

Progress and change can seem like ‘two steps forward and three steps back’ but maybe the steps need to be millimetres and with gradual gentle side ways movements we can see movement.
 
It was disappointing when then they said it. In fact, it was surprising.
They said it with good intentions, but it displayed a kind of stereotyping or categorising of a group of people that deserve much more.
The words were these.
‘With your people, it’s two steps forward and three steps back.’
I lost confidence in his ability to understand what I was called to do in the ministry.
Then there was the person who described the people I was supporting as having ‘special needs’. I think she was confusing mental illness with people having an intellectual disability.
I took little guidance from her, either.
There’s some people you don’t want or need in your room.
Have you ever been categorised or labeled?
Maybe you’ve been pressured to change, ‘get better’, be different.
All you ever wanted was someone to walk millimetres beside you and to be a friend.
Don’t walk in front of me… I may not followDon’t walk behind me… I may not leadWalk beside me… just be my friend. Albert Camus
 
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A Christmas Rejection – No Place For You

It wasn't so much a closed door, it was more a Christmas rejection. There is no place for you here.
 
I watched him as he told me he wasn’t going to his family’s Christmas party.
He had felt a lot of rejection from his family and now he couldn’t be bothered with all the politics. He was going somewhere else.
I believe he decided that ‘the corner of a rooftop’ was preferable to a delicious Christmas lunch with people who had shunned him.
It’s a version of what I think the writer of this proverb was saying.
It’s better to live alonein the corner of an atticthan with a quarrelsome wifein a lovely home. Proverbs 25:24
Or maybe it’s a version of what St. Kenneth Rogers of Houston, Texas sang.
You’ve got to know when to hold ’emKnow when to fold ’emKnow when to walk awayAnd know when to run The Gambler
A Christmas Rejection
Christmas time.
A time for a sprinkling of sparkle dust over a simple story.
The Bible doesn’t mention a donkey that Mary rode on.
It doesn’t describe any animals around the manger.
 
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What’s in Your Emergency Mental Health Grab Bag

A crisis hits and the scaffolding around your life seems to shake, but you have a Mental Health Grab Bag, and so you know you can get through this.
 
An emergency hits, or maybe it’s just seeing certain family members. Something gets added to your stress load, and the brain spirals down and out of control.
There might also be times you have to go to a hospital for various medical needs. Maybe you need some respite time.
What would you take? How would prepare for the potential emergency?
I would suggest you need an Emergency Mental Health Grab Bag.
We are all supposed to have a grab bag prepared for the unpredictable events such as earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and other extreme events, but what would you put into your bag?
Mental Health Grab Bag items
Many of the items in my grab bag are what I would call ‘grounding items’.
They help me ground the self into the here and now. Items that are practical, tangible and tactile. They help centre me.
This is my list and you will see that many of the items have links to other articles I have written.
S.T.A.N. planThis is a plan you have prepared beforehand in case of emergency.A S.T.A.N. plan is Simple to understand by all, Timed for review not achievement, Aimed at something of deep importance, and Negotiated with significant others.
Bible verses, Quotes, AffirmationsHave those little verses and sentences easily accessible so that you can say them to yourself. Preferably have them written out on paper. Something tangible and tactile helps the brain to ground itself.
Ladder out of your dark hole. The ladder is a small eBook to help you out of our hole. Get a copy here.
Thinking Compass. A thinking compass is something that will help you keep pointing due North. It’s a little tool with lots of verses, quotes, affirmations. Learn more about it here.
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Good Conversations don’t leave you Feeling Judged

Feeling judged can make you want to hide. Why put yourself out there if people are going to judge you? What you want is a good conversation. 
 
They didn’t have the conversation because they knew they would feel judged. Feelings of being dismissed, ridiculed, ‘shot-down’, laughed at, mocked would land on the already fragile soul.
All they wanted was for someone to listen to them without condemnation.
Instead, like a snail retreating into its shell, they hid.
Perhaps an internet search would provide some answers. A place where you can get some answers (not always the best ones) without the risk of exposure to judgment.
It’s anonymous and risk free of being judged for having suicidal thoughts. Safe, private, and you’re in control.
So we type what longs to be heard.
 
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It’s Hard to Put into Words

There is an internal world to every one of us with words that need sharing, but it’s hard to put into words, so we need someone safe to help us.
They wanted him to tell them what was going on inside, but it felt more like he was in the corner of a boxing ring and they were ready to punch.
When you’re in that kind of space, everything can either shut down or liven up.
For some, they will fight, others will flee, then for others, they will freeze. No words, no expression, just a closed and bolt shut door to the inside of the soul.
It’s then impossible to put anything into words.
I think men, in particular, find it difficult to put complex soul stuff into words. They may want to, but they just don’t know how, especially under the threat of potential getting it wrong. So they shut down.
The ‘going quiet’ becomes a default setting as they try to work it out themselves.
Society breeds into men that should have it all together, to have all the answers and be quick in response. They that are the achiever’s, problem solvers, and heroes on white horses wearing superman capes.
Yet, in reality, all men, if they are honest, have a quivering jelly like heart that wrestles every day with intangibles.
 
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They make me feel

They make me feel … (add in your emotional extreme), but there is a space between stimulus and response. Use it.
I was watching the news the other night and the first item was about a mother complaining about how a politician made her daughter feel. She claimed that the politician was a bully and had threatened her daughter.
I don’t know the full details, but it was the words ‘made her feel’ that grabbed my attention.
These words always do, and I always skip back to the quote from Eleanor Roosevelt.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Eleanor Roosevelt
This belief, that my feelings are under the control of others, is prevalent in our culture.
Listen to these pop songs
You make me feel like a natural woman (Arethra Franklin)
You make me feel like dancing (Leo Sayer)
You make me feel like I’m alive again (Cold play)
You make me feel like a fool (Frankie Cosmos)
You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)
From these songs, that we sing into our psyche, they seem to say that our feelings are hard-wired to the actions of others.
Certainly others can influence how we feel, but can anyone make us feel certain things?
 
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Finding that Still Small Voice

It’s a noisy world with lots of stressors wanting our attention, but there is a still small voice longing to be heard, so quiet yourself and listen.
I have a pendulum clock on a bookshelf near me.
Yesterday, I noticed the pendulum was swinging back and forth freely, but now it’s barely moving.
The only sound I can hear is a little ‘click’ sound coming from it.
In the background, a car passes by, an early bird Tui makes a small announcement to the day.
But is there silence in my brain?
Thoughts whirl. The usual ones.
My pendulum thoughts have begun to swing for another day.
Have you ever simply stopped and noticed the thoughts that seem to dominate the playground of your mind?
Some thoughts you have are so familiar that they have dug thinking tracks deep and wide into the physical networks of your brain.
In the noise, I long for a still, small voice.
 
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Risking a Sacred Conversation

Risking a Sacred Conversation
EDIT
 
We all want to be known, held and loved, but to find this requires a level of risk to have a sacred conversation. Are you ready for that?
 
I once had a conversation with someone, what I would call a sacred conversation, and they couldn’t handle the fire.
They couldn’t handle the heat of what I shared. I could hardly handle it myself, and I was hoping they could help.
But they were too caught up in rules, regulations, and fire extinguishers.
Not everyone can handle the fire. Not everyone has hands that can hold molten lava words. Some can, most can’t, and that’s actually ok.
But for some of the deep burning coals that we carry in our lives, we need someone who will risk coming near our fire. Some conversations are sacred moments where angels hold their breath to see what will proceed.
These sacred conversations are always risky.
So risky that you won’t be able to come near them without the divestment of footwear.
 
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