Hide & Seek with God

Hide & Seek with God

Phil Lowe

Forgive me Father, for it has been 37 days since my last blog post… I went from livin’ on a prayer and swinging between trapezes to….the vortex. You might know the vortex. A rabbit hole of commuting, packing lunchboxes, getting blood tests, feeding anti-virals to snot-monster, hacking up a lung, kids. A little matter of organising a fundraiser for close to 300 folks, smiling at clients whist chomping on deadlines as if they were smarties (or Valium, or something slightly speedier), taking on a new work gig whilst keeping all my others, and fighting off the Dark Lord.

I feel God slipping through my fingers like water. Which deep in my heart I know to be impossible, but when the 18-hour work days mount up, when the to-do list of simply getting the days done and delivered is banal and repetitive, it’s too easy to be sucked down into the vortex of life, rather than up into the life of the vortex. images

I also know now that my relationship with God and Jesus is strengthened when I write. Sometimes it feels like I pick over my faith bleached-bones like a vulture, others it’s more Satin bower bird, where I pounce triumphantly on a glimpse of azure. Lately it’s been tumbleweed blowing through the nest.

As I’ve written before, the trick to writer’s block is to write. So these words are dragging out across the keyboard like an vagrant being told to move along. There is no azure. Just tumbleweed tiredness. Not even slanging, vodka-cruiser style prayer.

“I want You back,” I whisper.

“I never left,” He answers.

“Then how come I feel like I miss You?” I implore.

“Because you’re looking too hard, Phil.”

Ah. And there it is. The brilliant blue amongst the tumbleweed. That has been worth the deletions and frustrations in getting a measly 390 words onto a blog post. At an average 2.3 words per minute.

God is in my seasons. I am learning, unlike my fast-paced entrance into His world, that our relationship does not always rely on the original, singular hard focus I once required to change course and establish traction.

Sometimes it’s soft focus. Returning back to being in a world of doing. And sometimes the only way you can simply let it be is by blurring out the hard edges. That’s where He waits.

Doing a Bon Jovi: Livin’ On A Prayer…

Doing a Bon Jovi: Livin’ On A Prayer…

Phil Lowe

The truly miraculous bit about a faith walk with Jesus and God is how personal it gets. This incredibly specific, custom-made, loving relationship. My lesson, as I attempted to explain during my testimony last November, is keeping all my second guessing, flawed, ego self out of the way to actually trust the process.

This year I committed to vulnerability. To opening up ‘me’ to Him. Handing ‘me’ over and saying, “Ok, then, Your will.” Was it easy? Oh no. I’d had an overwhelm of ‘thought creates‘ new age thinking prior to recovering from my Christian hangover. Our society pushes self. The difference between God’s will and my own, before Christianity, is stamped with action and impatience. Door not opening? Well, let me just kick it in.

Waiting on the will of heaven is an art. Of gently nudging on doors and, if they do not open fully, remaining still – rather than running around the side of the building and climbing through the window. It’s like living on a prayer. Doing a Bon Jovi. God either says “Yes” or “Not Yet.”  images

What Jesus has delivered is a relationship that allows me to wait at the door. To cease striving because he has already done the work. Supported by Jesus’ grace it’s easier for me to wait on the will of heaven without feeling frustration at the lack of momentum. I am not defined by my achievements. I am His achievement. His. No matter all that second-guessing, flawed, cage fighting, impatient self. His.

ColdPlay has a lyric about being in the gap between the trapezes that sums up where I am with G&J right now. As I trust, stay planted and grow in Jesus sacrifice, pray and give thanks, the next trapeze handle appears steady under my palms. I often don’t know which direction that trapeze may be swinging from or to, but God is gracious with any wobbly moments. The insistent shoving in my head up levels to a knowing ‘zap’ that signals strongly He is at work. “Draw closer. Trust. I’ve got this,” He tells me.

There is an absolute delight in that. The closer I draw, the better it gets.

As for doubters who would ascribe it to my over-active imagination, I have to say: my imagination isn’t that good. Take this recent unfurling, as I repeated my regular question/prayer to God:

“Why did you hunt me down at forty something years old? I have a range of communication skills. I love leading a team. I know I can build up a business and serve clients. But, really, is that all? I can keep blogging and try to keep writing about all that is lost in translation when it comes to You, but it seems a little limited,” I prayed.

(This is where I am very glad God knows me so intimately and understands His wiring me to think bigger and at a million miles an hour, because did I just tell Him this is a little limited?!?)

I continued: “Blogging is great (5000 readers and counting so far this year, thank you) but wouldn’t it be great to reach further? Like when I worked in radio. Although that’s been over 20 years so I’m probably a bit out of the career space of radio. Plus, you know, the kids are still at school. So if You do have any plans for me, I’d love to stay close to home. But your will not mine. Over to you. But, please, can you make it really clear? You know I need flashing neon signs. Sorry about that. Thank you. Amen.”

The very next morning a job advert landed in my inbox. A global Christian charity was advertising for a leader, to manage a team, work with the CEO and raise the organisation’s profile. Reach further? It radio broadcasts to over 3 billion listeners across the globe. Oh, and local?  Its head office is less than 9km from my home. Hang on, didn’t I just pray about all of this? Really?

I downloaded the job description, read it and, inelegant as is sounds, almost vomited with the adrenalin surge. God zapped into my head: ‘If you apply, Phil, you will get it.”

I wish I could say I smiled and calmly accepted God’s will. Whilst I didn’t descend into the cage fight limbic fight or flight that accompanied my decision-making over getting Lipton’d (yay, growth!) the absolute certainty that God was pressing on me was just as astounding. Help!

I quickly sent the smart-alec pastor (SAP) the job description, accompanied by the sentence, “Please read this. Freakin’ out. Don’t ask me what I prayed over yesterday.”

The reply: “Looks like someone wrote a job description for you, Phil. Of course I have to ask, what was it you prayed for?!”

Remember I also asked God to be really clear. The ‘up in lights’ neon joke I regularly request? As the SAP’s line about it being a job description written for me appeared in the instant messaging window….every light bulb in my office flashed, popped and flared. I kid you not. It was like something out of Poltergeist. I had to step outside and check the electrical safety board. Nothing had tripped.

Seriously, my imagination is not that good. God was more than at work. He was inviting me on a new journey. To trust the air between trapezes. To live on a prayer.

Bile and Bibles: turning the other cheek for my duct tape.

Bile and Bibles: turning the other cheek for my duct tape.

Phil Lowe

I have a interesting relationship with the Bible. By interesting I mean aggravating. It mostly comes from my own inability to devour it in a day and tick it off the list (have I mentioned the virtue of patience is one I am not especially blessed with?) So at the start of this journey I would happily read anything else related to Christian research in a vain attempt to somehow circumvent the need.

Part of the frustration stemmed from my being a speed reader blessed with ease of comprehension. The gift means I can gobble up most books and analyse their contents at speed. The Bible, however, is another matter. It defies devouring. A passage you read one day can impact only slightly, whilst a month later it smacks you around the back of the head with blinding insight.polls_duct_tape_3113_370440_poll

Yet I have had to get to grips because the Bible turns out to be a rather useful ‘back-stop’. The catcher. For those days when I wonder if the shoving in my head is God or simply my over-active imagination. As my footsteps grow stronger on this faith walk, I’ve developed relationship and faith enough to sense the difference – but on the days when my God-frequency goes on the fritz, or I suffer from personal maudlin terror (PMT), and I can do little but mutter the Lord’s Prayer in a slanging sort of way, throwing open the Bible and seeing what my eyes are drawn to helps.

I ought to write to the developers of The Bible app with a suggested upgrade: shake device to shuffle random Bible verses.

I do take a slightly more methodical approach to scripture than ‘flip n flurry’ – I could not make head or tail of this past year if I didn’t. This is where the internet is both curse and blessing. Blessing because technology has delivered Bible apps with beautifully-voiced narrators that make listening to it a joy. Curse because it’s way too easy to type into Reverend Google: ‘Bible verse about xyz’ and get a fast answer. Read all the Bible? Between google and my eidetic memory for snippets, it’s tempting to skim.

Pass the duct tape

Yet skimming for sound-bytes gives rise to much that is lost in translation when it comes to G&J today. Clobber verses taken out of context are not useful. Like recently, when an atheist reader of an earlier blog suggested I keep my female faith opinions to myself. He posted to me thisUnknown image of a bound and gagged woman, referring to a scriptural passage about women needing to be quiet.

Thank you. Let me turn the other cheek so you may stretch that duct tape across my mouth more easily.

1 Timothy 2:11-12 is a useful clobber verse for anyone who wants to punch Christianity for being behind the times on gender equality. Yet with a better reading of The Bible, and perhaps accompanying it with something like John Dickson’s Hearing Her Voice, my critic may have recognised the difference between apostolic teaching from the early church and today, given apostolic teaching has been preserved in the canon of New Testament scripture. So Dickson writes that while the first generation of Christian women were prohibited from laying down foundational, apostolic teaching which would become doctrine, tradition, and, finally, scripture,  once this doctrine had been preserved in Scripture, women may teach it.

Dickson also quotes a Bible verse where Paul does not specify gender, a verse that shows that the opportunity to minister in the Corinthian church was open to whomever was gifted. “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson [or teaching: didachē], a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation” (1 Corinthians 14:26) 

Seems I can ignore the duct tape for another day. And keep on digging into that pesky, Holy text.

Jaysus. There’s three of them?

Jaysus. There’s three of them?

Phil Lowe

Watching the British BBC series, Rev. recently, a scene between the local Imam, Yussef Hasan (played by Kayvan Novak) and the Reverend Adam Smallbone (Tom Hollander), Anglican priest, made me chuckle. As the pair walk around inner-city London, the Imam comments about Rev. Adam’s, “three Gods.” 2illt93

The script is cleverly referring to the Christian trinity: God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit (G, J & HS). Three, yes. But one. The Holy Trinity. Which can be sort of confusing, even to someone who thinks they may have a slight inkling about Christianity.

Before I’d ever met the long-suffering SAP, I was firing him inquisitive emails about what I thought I knew about the Trinity from school, compared to the overlay of eastern philosophies and research into religious teachers that had formed in the intervening years. Like this one, drawing on my years of yoga and striving for non-attachment:

Do all the religious teachers get together at the end and say, “oops, you picked the wrong one?” Or do you say, so long as you make a choice, choose a way of life following ONE religious teaching, then it’s OK? That there’s a kind of traffic control at the final light, with all the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists etc shunted off in different directions?

The SAP’s reply:

All religions really aren’t the same…Morally, there are certain similarities here and there between some aspects of Buddhism and Christianity – as in basically be nice to each other.  But the essential claim of Buddhism is that you can make it to ‘Nirvana’ on your own – and when you get there you are unconscious and unaware of anything or anyone around you because you’ve let go of all the attachments you have with people and places and experiences.

Jesus offers us something completely different.  Sure, He says basically be nice to people.  But…there are some massive claims Jesus makes that no one else makes.  He keeps saying He’s God – that’s why they killed Him in the end.  He keeps saying that He can forgive sin – no other ‘religious’ figure in history said that. 

I recall the paragraph above striking me hard. I’d either forgotten or had never made the connection. I’d spent years happily justifying my position by saying Jesus was just another religious teacher. But He isn’t.

This is why I call Jesus the lightening rod. He is not simply another religious teacher who delivers a message from God. He is God. Made flesh. Who fulfils prophecy after Old Testament prophecy. Who performed miracles.

CS Lewis, atheist/agnostic turned theologian, whose book Mere Christianity was adapted from his series of BBC radio talks made between 1942 and 1944, while Lewis was at Oxford University, describes it well:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Which brings us to…spirit.

So God is Jesus. Jesus is God. The Holy Spirit is their unique brand of….umm…aftershave? Not the most elegant of metaphors. One image used in the Bible comes from nature. The word often translated “spirit” from Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of the Bible, also means “breath” or “wind.”

Another image is advocate or helper. When Jesus was teaching his disciples, he said, “All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 14: 23-26)

An advocate is a person who stands beside you, works with you, and supports your cause. Christians believe the Holy Spirit can live within, filling hearts and minds with freedom, joy, purpose, and grace. In this way, the Holy Spirit is the presence of Jesus in our lives. Or, as I seem to experience it, smoothing out my rough edges.

My personal experience of the Holy Spirit hasn’t been as explicit as that of the disciples in Acts 2:3-4: They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

No disrespect to Pentecostal Christians, but I suspect God is clever enough to know if He tried anything like that with me I’d be reaching for a few shots of flaming Sambuca. Shoving me awake at 3am with repetitive song lines? That’s enough.

Fairness in Religion in Schools + Sex and Sin = Bold and The Beautiful.

Fairness in Religion in Schools + Sex and Sin = Bold and The Beautiful.

Phil Lowe

This post has been sparked by my distantly observing the SRE in schools ‘debate’, and the knee-jerk media response to a PR spun piece of research from the parent-run Victorian lobby group called Fairness in Religion in Schools (FIRIS). I have to show my vested interest from a few perspectives.

1) I’ve worked in the media so know how using news agenda elements can grab the attention of a time-poor journalist struggling to meet the internet’s voracious demands for fresh news, being paid crap cents per word, with the media corporation’s advertising budgets shrinking so he or she is having to write much, much more for much, much less.

2) I’ve run a Public Relations agency for over 15 years and also know how you can dress up a fast survey to make it look like ‘serious’ research to grab the attention of a time-poor journalist struggling to meet the internet’s voracious demands for fresh news, being paid crap cents etc. (See point one)

3) I’m a newish Christian too, so, combined with my long experience of the two points above, I have a fascination with the messaging and stereotypes that are thrust around and can cause instant misunderstanding. Those stereotypes, after all, were the ones that kept me away from church and Jesus for many years.

First, let’s tackle the name of the Lobby group. Fairness In Religion In Schools. Excellent media hook name. Short and snappy. Implies their vision is to treat religion fairly in schools. Until you have a look at their Facebook and website pages and realise their aim is to “formally cease the practice of volunteer-run special religious instruction (SRI) during school hours”. Fairness In Religion? For whom?

Clever though, because by the time any journalist has cottoned on that the name doesn’t necessarily reflect its aim, he or she has been thorughly seduced by the excellent use of tabloid, Today Tonight style language. Fast paced. Uses all the elements found on a news agenda: timeliness, consequence, conflict etc…oh yes, gimme more of that says the news editor. Conflict!

As Natasha Moore explores in her excellent piece on ABC’s The Drum, ‘a sincere presentation of different worldviews and ethical systems within school is a means of enrichment rather than a threat to the status quo’. But how tame does that sound in comparison to book banning, fear of child evangelising, and media savvy sound bites such as Greens MP John Kaye commenting, ‘If parents knew that Scripture was much more than quaint stories about men gadding about in togas and Roman sandals, enrollments would plummet’?

The ‘debate’ was like Christianity meets Day of Our Lives and Bold and The Beautiful. I half expected Ron Moss to make an appearance. Especially when hot sex was thrown into the mix. The headlines sizzled: Calls for end to ‘dangerous’ messages in scripture classes yelled The Sydney Morning Herald. TheBoldAndTheBeautiful_marquee_02_900x506

FIRIS and John Kaye had an issue with a book by Dr Patricia Weerakoon, a sexual health expert and honorary senior lecturer at Sydney University’s Westmead Clinical School. Specifically with how Dr. Weerakoon portrays sex to young people in her ‘Teen Sex By The Book‘.

Dr. Weerakoon is Christian. The book specifically looks at the calling of Christian faith, and how that faith fits with today’s sexually permissive society. It is designed to help teenagers who are Christians, or who are thinking of becoming Christians, navigate a choice that is today viewed as highly counter-cultural. Imagine choosing a religion that proposes saving sex for marriage. A religion that suggests seeking healthy, pleasurable sex within an intimate, satisfying relationship that lasts a lifetime. Imagine being a teenager seeking to follow that Christian path in today’s society. I’d be looking for a guidebook too.

Oddly, Weerakoon’s book is not part of the authorised SRE curriculum. So why did FIRIS and Kaye start banging on about it? From the PR perspective, let me remind you of what makes news. The elements that make up the news agenda are timeliness, consequence, conflict……ooh, did someone just say conflict?

It’s a shame the SMH journalist who wrote the original story didn’t do some fact checking. Blame tight deadlines, crap cents per word etc. If the news shoe fits the agenda, press publish. I’m not saying the FIRIS PR and Publicity manager specifically skewed the story angle to ramp up the news element of conflict in the hope of getting media coverage…..I’m just saying that conflict is an element of the news agenda that almost always gets media coverage.

Hot, steamy, submissive sex

Weerakoon was in the news back in February when she called for Christians to boycott the 50 Shades film, as it normalises “unconventional sexual behaviour”. 50 Shades includes bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism. I find it ironic that FIRIS wanted to ban her book because they see it as pushing unconventional, sexual behaviour too.

A FIRIS concern was how Teen Sex By The Book refers to the Christian concept of headship: that man is the head of woman, and women are to voluntarily submit no matter what. Am I the only one hearing echoes of Anastasia Steel and Christian Gray? To connect the dots, in case anyone misses the point, why on earth would Weerakoon tell people to boycott the film 50 Shades due to its ‘normalising’ submission if she was advocating women voluntarily submit to a notion of Christian headship that FIRIS perceives as having dark undertones?

I’ve written about domestic violence and headship before. Headship does NOT mean submitting to being verbally, mentally and physically abused by your husband. Back to the Bible. Love your wife as Jesus loved the church. Jesus did not wander around in a sleeveless shirt, downing Stella Artois, battering his church. Apologies if you are a gentle, passive soul who enjoys sleeveless shirts and Stella. I’m just messing with a few stereotypes here.

I dislike bleating that Christianity is misunderstood, but JC on roller-skates, it is! Like sin. The secular, simplistic view is that Christianity teaches sin to makes us all feel bad about ourselves. I appreciate where it comes from, given I had to really dig into what sin meant before I could get over my own Christian hangover, but it is so off-track it may as well be on Mars.

However, looking at sin narrowly is handy if you want to fire up the simplistic news agenda around conflict. Why let truth get in the way of a good news story?

Have the nice clergy opened the church doors to gay marriage?

Have the nice clergy opened the church doors to gay marriage?

Phil Lowe

As a newbie Christian, this is something I’m pondering. With gay marriage topping the agenda (because, come on, if a country packed full of the devout like Ireland can do it, why can’t Australia?) could it be asked whether the church has devalued marriage by marrying non-Christians in church? 

Image from http://anglicansablaze.blogspot.com.au
Image from http://anglicansablaze.blogspot.com.au

Putting aside Genesis, gender, Adam and Eve and all the offensive ‘It was Eve not Steve’ bumper stickers, it struck me that ‘marriage’ – the institution from the church’s perspective – has been under threat as soon as the non-faithful started getting married in them.

I have a bunch of aethist / agnostic mates who were married in a church because they wanted a nice architectural venue. I disappointed my Catholic in laws by refusing anything but a civil ceremony. Back then I really didn’t think Jesus wanted much to do with me (and me with him) so why pretend for a day? I suppose if you don’t believe at all, and it’s more about having the The Garrison Church at The Rocks in your wedding photos, then you can probably wing it.

It just seems a bit odd for clergy to offer Christian marriage ceremonies to non-believers. Or is it a grey area? Like, “Well, you do have a christening certificate from 30 odd years ago so we can’t say no, even if we think you’re bunging it on for the fancy photo opportunity.” Plus (the clergy will doubtless howl me down for this one) my cynical mind supposes the upkeep on all those sandstone edifices can be pricey. Taking in a few fees for BDMs (births, deaths, marriages) helps, no?

Catholics say marriage is a sacrament. Jesus doesn’t. He only gave two: baptism (my getting lipton’d) and the Lord’s Supper (Communion). But, much like reverse engineering a marketing campaign, have churches married non-believing people thinking that it was a good starting point? A way of increasing the numbers in the potential soul-saving funnel? That maybe, just maybe, it would help as a starting point for evangelism.

Yet most clergy don’t evangelise to couples asking to be married. Because the clergy are too nice. The whole watered-down, insipid Christianity thing that created my own Christian hangover. Faced with a pushy Bridezilla intent on the location, darling, the location, are there clergy with cojones saying:

“Now, this marriage covenant was ordained by God to provide believers with a picture of Christ’s love and relationship to His church. It represents your union with Jesus Christ. A successful marriage is built upon the biblical truth that God designed each of us with five purposes in mind: worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and missions. So, please, tell me, how are you going to fulfil those five?”

Can you imagine the engaged couple’s faces? Probably the same colour as the numbers in the church’s building and repairs bank account…

Jesus, as I’ve typed before, is the lightning rod. The uber-blog post. If the clergy, through misplaced niceness (and misplaced cojones?) aren’t seriously talking him up whilst performing marriage ceremonies; knowing, deep down, it will be the first and last time they will see the couple in church, then what does it say about Christian marriage?

That the doors are wide open for business, I’d say..

It’s awe-full big and quiet in here today

It’s awe-full big and quiet in here today

Phil Lowe

The rather awesome Glennon Doyle Melton over at Momastery wrote on Facebook earlier: “Just got another email about how my participation in meditation is Un-Christian.”

It reminded me, since doing less yoga and more G&J stuff, I have meditated less and prayed more, probably because I needed to wrestle with prayer as it was so new to me, whilst meditation, thanks to my yoga teacher-training, was something I had happily sat with for years.

Whilst I don’t find the two mutually exclusive, it did make me wonder. I have prayed,  slanged, chattered and even used God as a Father Christmas-like shopping list once or twice, but, since being in this new relationship, have I ever just sat with Him?images-1

The answer was clear: No. 

And yet I want to have the sort of relationship where I can sit with Him and be. Like those closest friends where you sit in companionable silence. Why had I neglected that part of it?

I realised I has been defining prayer as two-way dialogue and, given God has some fairly fabulous ways of replying to me, deriving a great deal of enjoyment from it.

Yet on the back of His yellow post it note about me being the only opponent in my perceived cage fights with Him, it belatedly struck me that perhaps all God wants me to do is just shut up for a minute.

It reminded me of an interview with Mother Theresa that Philip Yancy refers to in his book on Prayer.

An interviewer asked: “When you pray, what do you say to God?”

Mother Teresa said “I don’t talk, I simply listen.”

The interviewer then asked, “Ah, then what is it that God says to you?”

Mother Teresa said, “He doesn’t talk. He also simply listens.”
There was a long silence.

Then Mother Teresa said: “If you can’t understand the meaning of what I’ve just said, I’m sorry but there’s no way I can explain it any better.”

So today, at 4.45am, as my brain bounded awake, I just shut up. Rather than my usual morning prayer approach (Hi, thanks, wow) I accessed the muscle memory of yoga meditation, breathed in, breathed out and quietly said, “Hey, I’m here and I’m shutting up.”

It became unlike any other meditation I had attempted before. Then I would breathe through being non-attached and try to let the to do lists of life dart past without engaging with them. This time, waiting for God, was the fastest, easiest, closest, most awe-full experience.

I slid down a rabbit hole in my soul at light speed, yet without pace. An explosion of cool calmness. Huge vistas focused on one tiny pinpoint.  I listened. God listened. No-one spoke. Just lying on a bench in a garden. Companionably. And (see if you can spot the parallel here) it was very good. I will go back there and shut up tomorrow.

It Takes All Types…. To Be In A Book.

It Takes All Types…. To Be In A Book.

Phil Lowe

I need your help to write a book. If you’ve read these posts for any amount of time, you hopefully understand that whilst I take G&J seriously, I rarely take myself seriously. Life is too full of joy, daftness, fools and jesters for me to take myself seriously. But there are days imageswhen I get a little self-intense. Oddly, those days seem to happen within a tight window once a month. Let’s call them Personal Maudlin Terror days. Often relieved by chocolate and soy milk (think plant oestrogen, lads).

So, in between soy lattes yesterday, I dipped into personal maudlin terror. And had what only can be described as a Holy F%$& moment. 2 Corinthians 11-19 had risen up and slapped me about the head. Putting up with fools gladly because I am wise? Well, I’m either not wise or my definition of gladly is very different to St Paul’s.

Despite knowing fantastic grace, I hit the skids of, “Well, if you’re not suffering this particular fool gladly, Phil, then what hope have you got? Seriously, who are you to think you’ve any chance of being all kind, giving and Christian if you can’t even get to grips with someone whom you feel ready to batter with a tyre-iron?”

(I don’t often have such homicidal urges, BTW. Just between soy lattes on certain days in the month).

As I reached into my wardrobe to don sackcloth and ashes, the oestrogen fog lifted. God’s yellow post it note of grace floated down.

It takes all types. Retired teachers. Recovering gambling addicts. Dieticians. Make-up artists. Economists. Psychologists. Business consultants. Mouthy, cheeky communication consultants. The woman in front of me in the supermarket who had bought one of those motivational ‘rules’ signs for her home because it included ‘Say Your Prayers’. Smart-alecs who become pastors.

Removing the tyre-iron from my fist and brushing the ashes off my forehead the SAP reminded me, “I’m a pastor, Phil. If that doesn’t give everyone hope, nothing will.”

It takes all types. To bring heaven on earth. To walk as a Christian. I’ve met many this past year and their stories range from the everyday to the astounding. People who grew up in Christian homes and can imagine nothing but the peace and joy they draw from it. Others who rebelled against the same Christian upbringing only to return to the fold after looking for love and failing to find it in dodgy, dubious places.

And because I am a writer, editor, story teller, I want more. All the types. All the stories. I’d like to share them here, but I’d also like to put them into a book. Because I’m sure there are plenty of others (male or female) who have PMT days and need a little inspiration.

So will you help? I’d like to interview you about why you are a Christian today and how you got here. The interviews will be conducted via email and possibly phone. Your story needn’t be extreme, like how God reached down and stopped you from suicide. You may just have heard ‘Amazing Grace’, found yourself in tears and never looked back. You may have failed a job interview and had a Bible fall at your feet. If you prefer anonymity, names can be changed.

It takes all types. Strikes me as a pretty good title for a book.

To express interest in participating, please use the form below or click here. Please share the project, too, the more stories the better!

Climb every mountain. Drill for oil. Happy birthday, Mom. Thank-you.

Climb every mountain. Drill for oil. Happy birthday, Mom. Thank-you.

Phil Lowe

Today my Mom would have celebrated her 69th birthday. It is a beautiful milestone that this coming Mother’s Day I will be sitting in a cinema watching sing-along Sound Of Music, as it was the first movie she ever took me to. mumpphilchair2

She sat the whole time with her hand placed on the seat of the folding cinema chair, as I wasn’t then heavy enough to keep it open with my own body weight. I have an imprinted memory: looking down at her hand on the slightly-itchy upholstery. Long, slim, piano-playing fingers. I see them again, now, as I glance down at my keyboard.

We all have a story. My Mom’s, I found out after she died three years ago, wasn’t all it appeared.

Until I was in my 40s, I knew my Mom to be a spirited, single-parent who hadn’t made the best relationship choices, but battled on, even when debilitating illness struck. The single-mindedness she displayed didn’t truly surprise me, even though her stubbornness often caused me frustration.

I wasn’t surprised because of what I knew about her: in the 1960s, after oil was discovered in the vicious North Sea off England and Scotland, she was the Geology-degree holding woman who, in horrendous conditions, would fly out to the oil rigs. Women, in those days, did not sleep overnight on oil rigs. Just in case the bromide in the men’s rations didn’t hold, or some such malarky. b98c898486b5c8942eedc68928392015

Born in 1971, this was the backdrop I grew up to. In whipping wind and sea spray, I imagined her standing on oil-rig platforms, legs planted. Doing what no other woman was doing. Little wonder I believed that I could achieve anything I turned my hand to. Not through any sort of prideful need to measure my own worth. But simply because that was my normal. Women drilled for oil, flew across a boiling sea in helicopters, strode confidently around drilling platforms and held PhDs in Geology.

Until she died. Quickly, painlessly, with dignity. And in the weeks that followed, as I sifted through papers, I came to understand it had all been a fabrication. No Geology PhD. No oil rigs. She had been a secretary within the Geology department at a local University. And had been told, no, women did not do that sort of study. And they certainly didn’t fly on helicopters to oil rigs.

Was I angry? Disappointed? I thought about those feelings for about a nanosecond. Then I laughed and laughed. My Mom had looked around at her world, at the story she was being told, and then looked down at me as a baby and quietly thought, “No. That’s not your story. I want you to have a better one. Without limits.”

This Sunday, if she is alive, hug your Mother. If she is no longer with you, send up a prayer of thanks. I will be sitting in a darkened cinema, singing along to The Sound of Music. When ‘Climb Every Mountain’ comes on, I will cry. Just a little. For the woman who gifted me the crampons, rope and vision to tackle cliffs, pikes and precipices.

Happy birthday, Mom, wish you were here.

God’s Yellow Post-It Notes

God’s Yellow Post-It Notes

Phil Lowe

The joy of Christianity was probably my least-expected discovery. Perhaps it is the freedom that accompanies the realisation that you are absolutely, totally loved and there is nothing you can do to change it. No matter how many times you trip up. There isn’t any kind of ledger to tot up. No need to pressure yourself over good deeds minus bad ones that leave you with some net score. Just remember you are precious, you are loved, you are not alone. The grace of Jesus and the Gospel in a nutshell. Blank yellow sticky note block isolated on white background

Then something else crept in along the edges that left the joy behind.

Awe. At the size and enormity of God’s love and grace. It is the awe that regularly fells me. The shock and awe WOW moments that explode and side swipe my heart. Knee buckling, falling down awe. THAT I never expected.

Take my messy past weeks. God and I were having a few issues. Religion and I were having a few issues. The right to bake cake. In the midst of all this religious overwhelm I forgot two important things:

God. Worship. I was desperately trying to get my exploding head around it all, forgetting that I’d never manage that because, well, religion has a jumbled mess of flawed humanity at the centre of it.

I was using a lot of my messy Psalmesque, vodka cruising style slanging laments at God. Stomping ungraciously, asking, “What are You doing? Where are You?”

I have become used to some fairly explicit answers from God but in the week after Easter, as I dived into work before planning a family trip away, I felt more like solitary echoes coming back to me. My God-frequency was on the fritz.  It wasn’t pretty. A series of 3am wake-ups, vivid dreams, and jumbles of blog post ideas and questions flying around my head. The SAP has commented that watching God and I is often like watching a cage fight. He isn’t far wrong.

I often pray that God will pick a really noticeable voice like Manuel from Fawlty Towers so I’m sure to know it is Him. Yet there is a pattern to how God communicates to me. First a insistent pressing into my head. Then a more relentless shoving. That I managed to ignore twice in three weeks because I was so busy being busy and letting my head explode over cake gate.

I recognise that shoving insistence. At one point I actually said aloud, “Yes, I know, I’ll get to it.” And didn’t. Yet, lovingly, God served me the elegant solution I’d been too busy to get to for seven days before. I apologised…..

….and less than two weeks later the same thing happened again. God pressed. I told Him I’d get to it. He shoved. I told Him I’d get to it. And once again He delivered a loving, elegant, caring solution – despite my short-sightedness and willingness to ignore Him for the week prior.

Hindsight is wonderful. So I humbly apologised because, whilst I was diving headlong on my merry way, stressing how I was going to do something, God quietly delivered me the solution. I could have saved myself a week of overwhelm had I listened the first time. So that’s why I get awed. Because in His position I’d be throwing me around the cage-fighting enclosure, thoroughly impatient with my inability to get with the program. But, similarly with Jacob (Genesis 32:22-32), He happily lets me wrestle and waits patiently for me to get it.

I don’t call any of this miraculous. For me, miracles are the roll up your mat and walk variety. These are love notes. Like the yellow post its I sometimes hide in my children’s lunch boxes to remind them that I love them, miss them and please can they eat all the cucumber and raw carrot sticks before the cookies.

“Be as impatient, stubborn and hard-headed as you like, Phil,” God smiles. “I love you and will wait for you to understand. And if you keep missing the point, then I will still gift you the solution, despite your ignoring Me, despite the angst and pressure I see you putting on yourself, despite how I wish you wouldn’t. I gift this to you because I love you. Draw closer.”

And the final yellow post-it note, that shoved into my head as I finished this blog post? This is what it says:

Phil, the only opponent in this cage fight is you.

Love,

God.