It just so happened that I found myself at the group for young mums that is run by my Church, St.Mary's. Don't ask why I was there but there I was sitting on a bean bag tapping some wooden sticks together in time to the praise music as one of my little ones danced around shouting 'Praise God' and 'We love you Jesus'. Fully Charismatic (don't tell Granny).
I have 'popped'1 into this group a couple of times recently to meet the current Mrs. Gibbons and have always been aware of the warmth and genuineness of the group. It is not like other mother n tots I've been to. These have been similar to going to a cock fight in a warehouse just of the A11 (don't ask!) Everyone sat in a circle and looked in on the corralled children as they took part in some kind of Darwinian selection process: biggest, fastest, strongest.
I digress. You see, the last time I went I picked up a piece of paper about praying with your kids. Interesting I thought. This could be useful, knowing, as I do, that our prayer time with the kids usually consists of a quick ritualistic one liner before meals with me shouting at some one to put their fork down/stop singing/take their elbows of the table/pass the port! Our pre-meal thanks have become a bit like 'on your marks, get set, go!' Something that just has to been done before we start, a bit like putting your teeth in before you kiss.
Still digressing. Look I'm coming into land now, this 'interesting' piece of paper contained an idea called 'Finger Prayers'. It immediately appealed to me as a man who enjoys routine, systems and order. I present it now for your perusal and hopefully more.
1 Popped. When ever you find yourself with adults around children I find that we all start to use 'pop' instead of things like 'put' or 'stick' or even 'slip' !?.e.g. 'pop that in there' or 'lets just pop this dummy in'. I picked up this viral habit when we were in hospital for two weeks with the premature kid Andrew. Also got a bad dose of Norovirus but that's another story (or claim). All the staff said 'pop' like it was going out of fashion. Even the doctors. Are they trained to say this? Does research show that patients/fretful parents feel comforted and and reassured by things being 'popped'. 'I'm just going to pop this camera up your arse Mr Gibbons.'
I was reading a thing on Yahoo the other week about the number of cities you have visited in your life. Seems that most people, even the fairly well travelled, have rarely visited more than 20. When I tried this little activity with the current Mrs Gibbons, the fragrant Clare Rosamund, it descended into a good tempered argument about what constitutes a city. Is it about cathedrals? Are Manchester and Salford separate cities? Guess it depends which side of the Irwell you are standing on. All became a bit silly so we gave up at around 16 (SAE for a full list).
That is all a bit of a preamble that is getting me to where I want to be. Having been at my Mum's house recently and looking through old photos of myself and family, I have been thinking a lot about my life story, my autobio as I am calling it.1 As I started to reflect back over my life, one of the first things I tried to do was to put together a list of towns and cities where I have lived. It was harder than I thought. So here we go, my hometown CV
Home town CV
1971-1976Kinglassie
1976-1981Kirkwall
1981-1985Leven
1985-1989Methil
1989-1993Aberdeen
1993-1994Bangor
1994-1996Manchester
1996-1997London
1997-1998Manchester II
1998-2001Cambridge
2001- Ely
Ready for my close up. To my left, before One Direction, the young Harry Styles. The boy in front is wearing tartan trousers, akin to those favoured by 1970s golfers.
1 Other working titles include; Dancing on the sideboard, My life as a beach, The death of Seve Ballesteros or Perseverando.
So a minister of the Free Church of Scotland was preaching with liberty from the front of a church in the Western Isles (might have been Harris, might have been Lewis, the truth has been lost in the retelling). Unusually for a wee free church in the islands it was large and even more unusually it was full. It must have been a funeral. Indeed it was so large it boasted a balcony and whats more there were people occupying it. As I said the minister was preaching and as he came to the end of his exposition, he drew the congregation together in prayer. Now in the Free Church of Scotland it is customary to stand to pray (and sit to sing) so the body of the kirk stood and as one bowed their heads. Just as the minister was about to start he spotted a man in the front row of the balcony. He was wearing a rather poor wig and as he started to bow his head it slipped off and fell from the balcony and down amongst the pews below. Barely able to stifle a gasp and struck with embarrassed horror the minister stood transfixed. His horror was compounded as he saw a lady in the pews below bend down and retrieve the fallen toupee. She rose, holding the hairpiece with a bemused appearance on her face. The minister, realising he has been standing in silence as this set-piece unfolded in front of him, falteringly started to pray aloud, but kept an eye on the unfolding drama. The lady with the wig looked around, spotted that the man in the pew in front was as bald as an egg.... The final piece of the puzzle fell into place for her and she gently placed the wig onto the head of the bald man standing to her front.
Spending alot of time thinking about Ezekiel and his valley of dry bones. I think I am feeling acutely the lack of God's vital spark that transforms us from mere dry bones into 'beautiful things'. Over the last year I have come across three pieces of music which I feel have encapsulated this feeling of emptiness, yet an emptiness still tinged with hope, with a realisation that although we do not always feel Him, God is always there. These three tracks have also, I think shown me the way back to God and that is through worshipping Him no matter how low I feel, no matter how dry and empty. In that way as my dry bones cry out to him he is making me into something new.
So first up we have Gungor. An American group with a clean, pure sound which rings like a bell in my soul. Gungor-Dry bones.
Next up another from Gungor. Beautiful things. When I feel I am nothing I remember in this song that I am but through God I can be made into something.
Third and final track is from the Rend Collective Experiment's latest album, the album which inspired the title of this blog, Handmade worship for handmade people. RCE are excellent and provide for me a form of muscular worship, warts and all that does not slide into the banality of some contemporary worship songs which might be classified as 'Jesus is my boyfriend' music. If you aren't part of the collective it is time you were!
Rend Collective experiment-Desert soul
Sorry to bore with own taste in Christian music but I hope you get something out of it, I do.
I guess the Psalms are full of laments and examples of man calling out to God. My feelings are often well captured in their lines. Often in the Psalms we find reference to enemies or oppressors, presumably hostile foreign tribes, factions within David's court and other flesh and bone threats. However, when I read Psalms like this one, Psalm 42, I also hear another cry, a voice calling to be rescued from oppression of the soul, a melancholy pleading to be lifted up, to be strengthened against the everyday 'foes' which assault us all.
With that in mind I wrote out part of the Psalm, the part that seemed to make this call the loudest. I then tried to rewrite it in away which, I hope, conveyed the more general, everyday cry of a believer to their Lord, the cry of a child of God calling for their Saviour to set them free.
9 I say to God my rock, 9 My God has always been there for me, solid as a rock.
"Why have you forgotten me? But just now I feel like he has gone,
Why must I go about mourning, that he has forgotten me-it gets me wondering.
oppressed by the enemy?" Am I going to have to put up with being dragged down
10 My bones suffer mortal agony by life? Am I going to feel empty and sore inside forever?
as my foes taunt me, 10 Sometimes its like everything I know is laughing at me.
saying to me all day long, It makes me sick to the bone,
"Where is your God?" as the world sings it's mocking song,
"Where is your God?"
11 Why are you downcast, O my soul? 11 Why am I so empty, so depressed?
Why so disturbed within me? All these chaotic, confusing, misleading thoughts, why?
Put your hope in God My only hope, my ticket out of this mess is God.
for I will yet praise Him I know that one day soon I will look to Him again and say,
I have never been what you might call a hard-core Scotsman. My self image has never fitted well into the mold of 'Scot'. I think I have a love/hate relationship with the land of my birth. For a while I think I wanted to forget about Scotland and my Scottishness as part of my attempts to become an intellectual man of the world. I used to hate travelling on the London Underground because I new I was going to end up being cornered by a drunk Glaswegian. When this inevitably happened he would usually detect my reluctance to engage in conversation and start to get a bit shirty, as drunk people so often do when you refuse to throw their ball back over the conversational fence. As bad as I feel about this I have never faked an English accent to shake of am inebriated jock. I will never stoop that low!
Having returned to Scotland for a period of RnR 1 I attended a service of the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing)2 and eat wild salmon at the Minister's Manse. Later I found myself cruising the sleazy3 tourist shops of Portree on the Isle of Skye. In a period of about 45 minutes; I considered my favourite tartan tie in the Edinburgh Woollen Mill4, actually tried on a Harris tweed sports jacket, bought Boswell and Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and tapped my foot to some accordion and fiddle music!
Having never eaten salmon in my puff and actually quite enjoyed it, I started to compile a list of 'Things typically Scottish', things which might have strong positive associations with Scotland and/or the Scottish. I present this list for you now, along with position on each.
Things typically Scottish
Whiskey-hate the stuff, smell makes me gag. If it comes to some kind of ceremonial whiskey drinking e.g. Burns' night/Saturday night then I tend to just wet my lips and pass it on.
Porridge-no positive feeling towards this stuff other than the childhood memories of my gran pouring it into a drawer in the sideboard lined with greaseproof paper. When cooled and hardened this could be cut and given to children as a kind of working class muesli bar.
Fish, esp salmon-always disliked fish. The smell of hot salmon could bring on nausea.
Being tight with money-well gotta fess up here, I am a bit mean but also have a masochistic aversion to dealing with money matters or financial affairs. I let the current Mrs Gibbons deal with it. I feel totally out of my depth in those fiscal waters.
Haggis-never really ate haggis till I left home around 1983. Since then I have delighted in the 'Chieftan' several times and his misunderstood relative the vegetarian haggis. Another great thing about haggis is convincing foreign people and the English that a Haggis is a living animal which needs to be hunted and caught in a net before slaughter. I once made a small boy cry with that story. I kid you not.
Football-I consider myself the personification of Scottish football, i.e. I'm rubbish. Played rugby instead and am pretty mediocre at that. There is a pattern forming here. The 1978 world cup in Argentina crystallised my feelings about the national team. They possess the amazing ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and tend to play brilliantly when the odds are heaped against them, but usually to no avail, as shown in the final group game vs Holland. Archie Gemmill, we salute you! Watch it and weep at the poetic beauty as the wee man fi Paisley make Cruyff and his boys look like eejits!
Being drunk in public-never again, not since that time in 1998 when the police were nearly called to a Tesco's just outside of Northampton when it looked like I was a sexually assaulting my wife, the fragrant Clare Rosamund. look, I'd had a beer or two and we were quite recently married at the time, what more can I say?
Bagpipes-shit.
Scottish nationalism-I flirted briefly with the SNP in my student days at Aberdeen, think I even voted for them. Now I tend to think Scotland is better off in the tent pissing out. For one thing who gets to keep the nukes!?
Calvin-loving the salvation by grace alone/struggling with election and predetermination5
Robert Burns-I used to think Burns was pretty naff, with Tam O'Shanter being the acme of naffness. Then I read it and was totally gripped by its sexy magical voyeurism and adrenaline fuelled chase scene 6. I thought it was all about a silly hat. Needless to say I soon discovered the works of Burns to be intelligent, sensitive, passionate and riven with a desire for social justice.
Rain/wind-apparently very common in Scotland. No strong feeling on it myself but they do say when in the highlands if you don't like the weather wait 15 minutes.
Being dour-Gordon Brown MP. Need I saw more?
Deep fried Mars bars-if I had been given a deep fried Mars bar for every time a kid had asked me if I'd ever had a deep friend Mars bar I'd probably look like a deep fried Mars bar. Or dead. Same thing really.
Balamory- Does Balamory reflect the ethnic mix in the Inner Hebrides? Look at miss Hoolie's pre-school class and I think you might ask a few questions.
Kilts-love them and want one. Few men in my family have the physique to carry off the kilt. After wearing kilts to my wedding most were arrested for 'having no visible means of support'. My dad said he looked like a lamp shade when wearing a kilt.
Gingerness-nothing against ginger people, in fact I'm a bit gingery myself in the beard department. The current Mrs Gibbons, the fragrant Clare Rosamund, actually wants our wee boy to have ginger hair and constantly remarks on his 'coppery tones'. Not so sure myself.
Billy Connolly-this man is the world's best anecdotal joke teller. I refer you to his appearance on Parkinson in the 1970's where he delivered the now classic 'murdered the wife' joke.
1 Reading n (w)Riting
2 A schism of a schism. Members of the FCC (Free Church Continuing) refer to the members of the Free Church as the 'residual body', or the 'rump' in less charitable moments. Members of the Free Church have apparently nick-named the FCC as the 'Taliban'. Nuff said.
3 Sleazy in the way that afterwards you feel dirty and empty and promise yourself that you will never do it again. Of course, even as you are promising yourself this you know that soon, in fact the next chance you get, you probably will!
4 then wondered if I would ever wear a tie again.
5 think I'm Arminian ,not Armenian like Dave 'the Duke' Dickinson, great episode of Who do you think you are
As the Duke of Wellington once said, "Top o the mornin' to ya!"1 Shortly after that he said "When a man turns over he should turn out." I have adapted this phrase for the modern ear to "Roll over, roll out"2 . What does all this actually mean? Well if I can be so bold as to attempt to translate the words of the Iron Duke 3, I think what he was trying to say was that when you wake up for the first time and turn over in bed, that is the time you should get up out of bed. This is a phrase which has followed me around since I first read it, haunting me like the ghost of procrastination. It has been knocking around my head a great deal in the past few weeks since my sleeping patterns have been knocked off kilter by a combination of depression and medication. I have been finding myself waking a lot through the night then 'properly' rousing at around 0530HRS 4. Now I do not think the Duke was meaning that if you get up for a pee at 0235HRS then you should get dressed and start making tea n toast! But what about the half past five awakening? Too early? In my dreams I rise effortlessly from my white cotton sheets, slip downstairs and put on the coffee. With the rich aroma stimulating my clean, hairless nostrils I pop the pain aux chocolate into the oven and sit back with the latest edition of Military Matters, noting with excitement the cover teaser about an article on page 17 about the Duke of Wellington's daily routine, Six steps to a healthier, more energized life. A day with the iron duke. Next week bowel health the Bonaparte way! Reality bites and I turn over, not out.
1 Seems he was as Irish as Brad Pitt in Blown Away. 2 Any publishers reading this I've got a great idea for a self help book based on the routines and disciplines of great generals through history. 3 Only a few men were ever great enough to carry the name 'The Duke'. Wellington, although he needed the prefix of 'Iron' to let you know he was hard. Overcompensating I think. The other men worthy of the handle are John 'the duke' Wayne and my personal favourite David 'the duke' Dickinson. Cheap as chips! 4 Since I am talking about a military man I felt the armed forces style time thing was a nice touch. It's what the Duke would have expected. Mind you though, whe what the 24 hour notation invented?
The last few weeks have been hard ones for me (and my family). I have been off work for over 8 weeks with depression. In that time I have been on three different types of anti-depressant, none of which have made any kind of dent into the gloom. Coming off my last drug and starting my new one has been a nightmare. I had proper Trainspotting style cold turkey; sweats, shivering, headache, violent mood swings and even some minor visual hallucinations1. It felt like you could have popped my head with a pin.
That is all behind me now as the new drug, Mirtazapine2 begins to take over in my brain. This drug affects the levels of Serotonin like Prozac3 but also Noradrenaline, a neurotransmitter similar to adrenaline ans involved in control of blood pressure and heart rate along with other things. The thing is nobody really understands how altering the levels of these neuro-transmitters can improve depression. The thing is clinical trials show they do 4.
Besides these chemical interventions, lifestyle changes are said to help, no-brainer if you have reactive depression5. The time off work is definitely helping, reduced stress and has given me crucial breathing space. Before being signed off I was starting to have fantasies about/plan minor to moderately serious accidents for myself to get me off work. I would spend quite a bit off time thinking about how I could get run over by a car and guaranteeing just a broken leg and nothing worse. Fortunately I have never been low enough to plan my suicide, I thought about it, but never anything more.
1 Not quite Renton's baby on the ceiling horror of Trainspotting but disconcerting none the less!
2 I have Christened this one Marzipan. Bit of a game in my family what with me being on so many different types of anti-depressants. Started out as a way of not letting the kids know. Citalopram some how became 'psych-nut-trolley'. We do a similar thing with biscuits, perhaps I'll post on this at a later date.
3 Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel worth a read if you like mis-lit. While I am recommending books I really enjoyed Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad,
4 Haven't checked but then that's why we pay Doctors. Free at the point of use but we all still pay
5 reactive depression is succinctly summed up in the witty bumper stickers or posters you see in offices i.e. "Shit happens..."I'm not sure what I've got. Bit of a history in the family. My great gran on mum's side though the man on the TV could see up her skirt!
