Neil's blog

I shouldn’t be shocked or surprised, but I am concerned that some websites solely exist to aid ‘affairs’, media magnets offering to spice up one’s love life in total secrecy. They serve a common currency of our time that believes, ‘As long as you don’t get caught, it’s okay!’ Some adverts cash in on the farcical humour created by illicit affairs & their threatened exposure, & respectable people tell jokes about milkmen, postmen or tradesmen who end up in cupboards or the most unlikely of places evading detection. But it’s no joking matter!

Are blokes better at breaking life up into a jigsaw of different areas in which they can behave badly, blind to consequences, a different ethic for each time zone? Certainly gals can fall for the fable too, but such split personalities & ‘two faced’ living must be outed for what they are, party to ‘bare faced lies’ which damage more than the integrity & soul of the executer. The shattered trust of a partner to whom you declared commitment & the damage done to children can be devastating. As a fellow sports chaplain tells his players, “One of the greatest gifts you can possibly give to your children is faithfulness to your partner.”

There is life beyond an affair & God is in the business of forgiveness & fresh starts, but preventative medicine is surely the best cure. Ensuring you get regular quality time together & work at stoking the fires of romance is crucial to an enriching partnership. As I often say to couples I marry, “Marriages that work are working marriages!” As Phil Collins mama used to say, "You can't hurry love, No, you'll just have to wait, Love don't come easy, But it's a game of give and take!" And when you find such a love, don’t fall for the crass ‘grass is greener on the other side’ deception; weed well, look after & cultivate your Garden of Love.

“I am 16 going on 17, dedededededa…” It’s funny how time changes perspective. In her teens, when my wife first saw the ‘Sound of Music’, the handsome young officer of the ’16 to 17’ song drew her admiring eye, now when she sees it, it’s Von Trapp dad, Christopher Plummer, who steals her sight. At 82 Plummer’s the oldest ever Oscar winner, born just 2 years after the Oscars began! And with Meryl Streep, lead actress for playing Margaret Thatcher & black & white ‘The Artist’ winning best film (83 years on from the last silent film triumph) it was a glorious evening of ‘looking back to go forward’.

We live in an age when ‘The Now’ easily dominates horizons, people making decisions based on what surrounds & presses in on their moment of decision. A football chairman makes a kneejerk reaction to sack a manager, a hurt lover makes a damning comment on social media, someone acts on the spur of the moment and lives to regret it.

The ‘City of Adelaide’, known in Irvine as The ‘Carrick’ is the oldest clipper ship in the world, built & launched in 1864, 5 years before the more famous ‘Cutty Sark’. For 20 years with the Scottish Maritime Museum, it has languished in an Irvine slipway, 500 yards from our church (see photo). It looked like lack of funding would see it broken up & its proud past forgotten, but Australia came to the rescue and is shipping it to South Australia where it will become a visual reminder of brave voyages transporting people & produce between Britain & Australia.

Don’t get me wrong, I think we can all too easily get stuck in the past and not move on with the times, but I do believe we need to learn from, listen to & sometimes celebrate our past in order to live life ‘to the max’ in the now, otherwise very easily we loose moorings & direction. So I say, “Well done Plummer, Streep, ‘The Artist’, & Australia for keeping & making history!”

Stunned, supporters stop to double take the headlines, “Rangers Into Administration!” Gobsmacked, music lovers sit disbelieving in the wake of Whitney Houston’s death. Workers wake up to see their jobs flushed away. But then what? In the face of unpalatable truth it’s easy to turbo-drive in higher gears of activity & busyness, to run from reality, scared to face the facts: the loss of a loved one, job, or health; the breakdown of a relationship or crumbling of confidence in beliefs thought unshakeable.

Such is the pace & pressure of modern life that it is harder to slow down, stop, be still & reflect. Gone are the days when letters are replied to in a week with emails demanding instant replies & mobile (cell) phones calling for immediate attention. Faster planes, trains & automobiles speed us from A to B such that we despise delayed flights, cancelled trains, traffic jams or being without internet access or phone signal. We don’t take kindly to our plans getting poked & pranged; and yet being forced to stop & ponder can be rewarding; the chance to ‘BE’, to listen & think about where you & those around you ‘really’ are; to see the significant relationships & activities that are most important in your life, and to act accordingly.

We had our first church family ‘Advance’ (preferred to ‘retreat&rsquo. It was a chance to stop the rush & routines, come aside with like-minded folk (in New Lanark Youth Hostel), and listen to God. We enjoyed great walks, talks & laughs with God & one another amidst stunning scenery (the photo shows some of us at Bonnington Linn). We returned with clearer heads, lighter hearts & spirits determined to walk (rather than run) with God and one another.

As well as fear, another reason we don’t stop to face up to ‘difficult truth’ can be a lack of loving, accepting relationships which encourage us to open up, accept, & journey through our mess together, instead of avoiding or ignoring it.

We do need to be intentional about slowing down to walk at such a humane pace with God & one another, where & when we can ‘Feel free to be!’ ‘Human beings’ rather than ‘human do-ings’.

“We could have had it all!” Adele’s haunting, husky voice soared at the Grammy Awards, an ironic commentary on her own past ruined relationship and Whitney Houston’s present premature death. In one night Adele swept 6 Grammy awards, equalling Whitney’s whole career haul. How many more awards might the beautiful Houston have harvested were it not for her demons & addiction issues?

A fellow football chaplain, at an English Championship club, speaks of the cry for help he received from their Exec’ when one of their number died tragically, “Over to you Rev, we don’t do death!” Indeed, the denial of our mortality is rife in the high clouds of stardom & glory hunting. Yet the way LL Cool opened the 54th Grammy’s with a prayer helpfully bucked this trend towards denial.

"We ask ourselves, 'How do we speak to this time, to this day?" Cool said. "There is no way around this. We've had a death in our family. At least to me, the only thing that seems right is to start with a prayer for our fallen sister Whitney Houston." And so, one of their own led the Academy & World of show-biz in a prayer for Houston’s family, giving thanks for her life, "Heavenly father, we thank you for sharing Whitney Houston with us … we remain truly blessed to have been touched by her spirit ... Amen."

This ability to face the raw emotion & reality of Death was made easier by faith in a gracious, loving heavenly Father, who offers hope even in the face of dire death, who helps lift our eyes to a bigger, longer lasting story.

I haven’t been to the theatre for yonks, but last week I saw a close friend, Rhona Cathcart, excel as the lead in William’s play, “The Glass Menagerie”. With the right breaks, former pro-actress Rhona could possibly have been a film star, but life took her another route of broken dreams & hard life lessons. Not far off Whitney’s age, Rhona took a period of unemployment to tread the boards again in this Glasgow production. She has no desire to return to an actor’s life, but she has scratched a lasting itch & enjoyed a timely ‘dramatic’ celebration. Along with Adele, we wish her God’s Best as she moves onto the next stage of her journey, feet firmly on the ground ready to soar in service, her ‘wing wax’ kept dry. And for Whitney’s nearest & dearest we pray God’s continued comfort!

P.S. See in the attached photo, Rhona’s Curtain Call!

Oh to be got or gotten, dug by someone ready to dig beyond our pretending, proud protective masks (fearful of rejection) in search of treasure they know is there. Oh for friends & family who give you permission to be who you are at the moment and allow you the space to grow into a ‘new you’.

Oh for a friend who lets you make your own mistakes and whose unconditional acceptance helps you face up to your faults & failings with honesty & courage. Oh for someone who gets your sense of humour, or lack of it, and knows when to gut themselves with laughter and when to zip-it.

Oh for earthy angels to ‘tough it out’ with you through grim & grime, plod alongside you through ordinary routines and provide lots of excuses for you to party. Someone like Robbie’s precious pal, “And through it all she offers me protection, a lot of love and affection, whether I'm right or wrong; and down the waterfall, wherever it may take me I know that life won't break me when I come to call, she won't forsake me…”

Who do you ‘dig’ or are trying to ‘dig’? It makes all the difference to ‘be dug’, to be understood, accepted and allowed to grow up to love and be loved. It’s not entirely true that my ‘dug’ (dog) loves me unconditionally, as his good behaviour has much to do with my rewarding him with tasty morsels, but he does appreciate being got, gotten & dug, his needs understood & addressed. Jesus, the ‘Good Master’ models this longed for 'relating' best, indeed he deeply ‘digs’ every single one of us, but are we ready to be ‘dug’?