CONTENT WITH MYSTERY

There are so many questions bubbling around in my head tonight. I think, when I was young and my parents were my age, they were on to a trick with late-night-difficult-questions. I see it now. They’d say things like:

“It’s not something you should worry about right now, my darling.” And… “These things always look clearer in the morning.”

They were right. But there would always come a morning, and sometimes a morning when I really did need to worry about what car insurance was, whom to vote for, or how mortgages work. I suppose I should contentedly agree that eventually I worked those things out at the time I needed them, rather than at age 6. So it should now be with my 45-years old conundrums.

And yet I can’t help bubbling. If God is always focused on reconciliation, I ponder, how come there are some relationships you have to walk away from? If we invite a gay friend over and one of our evangelical friends pops in, what happens if the subject of ministry in church comes up, and what do we do next? Does the theoretical existence of an immovable object rule out the possibility of an unstoppable force and therefore prove that we live in parallel universes? And should I mention that to Sammy?

She’s in the bath. I’m on the temporary sofa, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes. There’s a box of After Eight mints tantalisingly and terribly open near me. They were made for deep question pondering, I shouldn’t wonder. There might well be one or two unstoppable forces if I polish this lot off while I sit here.

I need God to chat with me I think, like my parents used to.

“It’s not something you need to worry about right now, my darling,” I imagine him saying. He always has a way of refocusing me on the now, even though my daydreaming brain gets lost in the future and sometimes the past. “Be content son, be content with the mystery.”

What an awesome phrase: be content with the mystery. I like it. It’s sort of releasing not to have to know things right away! There’s some trust, some glint of Aslan on the beach, some admonition to lean on the Father right in the valley of the unknown shadows. There’s freedom in not having to know how to drive when you’re six. Lean into it, be satisfied, trust the work behind the scenes. I love it.

“So God, how long will she be in the bath then?” I ask.

“Be content with the mystery, my son, be content,” I imagine him saying with a chuckle. Fair enough.

PRONE TO COLD

I don’t understand why it is, but these days I am definitely prone to the cold in a way I don’t think I ever used to be.

I’m not thinner. No, if anything there’s more meat on the bones so I doubt it’s that. It might be climate change I suppose, but there’s been no talk of colder winters, only wetter ones. And no-one else I know has said anything about feeling the cold more.

Nevertheless, on the way to the Post Office today I was shuddering with a raw arctic blast. Coat zipped up, hood over head, walking fast, reciting the Kings and Queens of England… juddering as if it were a trek to one of the polar ice caps.

I was posting a copy of my book. Excitingly, someone I don’t know had ordered it from South Wales, and it felt significant to pray for it as it went under the Post Office counter.

“What’s inside?” asked the clerk.

“B-book,” I stammered. I find it odd how they have to ask you these days - rather like the doctor’s receptionist. What’s it regarding? None of your business. You can’t say that. I didn’t say that.

To be honest I’ve been in there enough, posting books these last few weeks, I’m surprised they’re even curious. A different type of person would say something flippant and sarcastic when asked what's inside. Anthrax, Mein Kampf, The A5 Guide to Public Anarchy - that kind of thing. But then those people get arrested by customs officers for ‘messing about’ don’t they.

I expect I’m cold because I’m just, well, a little bit older. Someday I’ll need the thermostat cranked up to 25 and I’ll be eating soup in front of Cash in the Attic. But the days of the tartan blanket are a long way off, I hope. I’ve got a lot more books to take to the post office before then, I assure you.

I just hope it starts warming up a bit, sometime soon.

BY OXFORD CANAL

It’s an Oxford Day today, so I braved the cold train, and the even colder walk from the station, and I walked up the always pretty Oxford Canal.

I like a canal. A canal shows you the backs of things - like a messy garden: all washing lines and the tops of trampolines, or the windows of fancy red-brick apartments that were once bulked along a busy wharf. I like the boats too, and the twisting path that turns under Victorian bridges.

Anyway. This morning the water was frozen. A man nodded at me as he climbed out of his narrowboat, a cloud of white breath gathering around him. He looked cold. His boat looked cold, trapped as it was, in the green ice.

I wondered what story in your life leads you to live on a house boat. A romantic idyll perhaps? A mid-life crisis, or perhaps a noble stand for economical living. It’s certainly slower - and I imagine, more peaceful. About 45% of me would love it. The rest knows what I’m like in the winter.

I thrust my hands deeper into my coat pockets. I walk from the station through Jericho, all the way up to Aristotle Bridge. There was nobody else about. No traffic puffing exhaust fumes, no honking of horns or bursting of radio, just my feet crunching over the towpath, imagining what it was like to lead a horse, pulling a barge along this very waterway.

After Aristotle Bridge, I take a couple of turns through the streets until I find myself on the main road North. That’s always busy; a leaf-lined thoroughfare of constant traffic pulsing past the houses of lecturers and dons and college professors from an episode of Morse. I sometimes think I’d have liked Oxford as a university town. I know really, that I ended up exactly where I needed to be, all those years ago. What, I wondered, would I tell my seventeen-year-old self, disappointed at a polite rejection from Keble College? What, I wondered, would future me tell me about my disappointments now?

I’m thankful I don’t have to do this walk every day; the early start would be too exhausting to bear, but every now and then, I think it’ll be great. I can’t wait to see how spring falls dappled on that towpath, how the water sparkles in morning sun, or even how the pink summer sky hangs above the silhouetted buildings.

There’s so much ahead to be thankful for.

WHELMING AND OVERWHELMING

So it all worked out. We turned up, we met the previous owners, we stepped inside a shell of white walls and wooden floor, we heard our voices echo, and then they left.

The removal men were quickly on it. Minutes later, the two big vans squealed up outside and in within an hour or so, everything that had been in Stuff Jail stood stacked in various rooms inside our new, still empty-feeling house.

Last time I did this, Sammy’s well-designed Christmas card was lying on the welcome mat. This time, she was there with me, beaming and asking if I felt okay.

“Overwhelmed?” she smiled a couple of times.

“Yes,” I said.

I was certain there was a different word, but that one, overwhelmed, would do for now. Whatever that feeling was, I still have it two days later. It seems like an unreal feeling, a too-grown-up thing. How can we be home owners? How can this strange arrangement of cupboards and tiles, carpet and lightbulbs, be our actual home now?

There once was the idea that you could be whelmed, of course. It sort of meant ‘overturned’ like a ship that had capsized and was bobbing about with its hull skyward - something so momentous had happened that everything had been inverted.

In time I guess, people started to say a thing was over-whelming, as in they had been 'over-turned’ in order to emphasise the drama. An ‘overwhelming’ wave could clearly ‘whelm’ a boat, and it would only be appropriate to say it had been overwhelmed.

It was a pretty good choice of word then: bobbing about in the ocean while all the cleaning was going on in the kitchen. The house is rammed with boxes and crates. We have though, made a decent start.

It’s occurring to me that I feel overwhelmed a lot more than I used to. There’s definitely a nervousness in my life that wasn’t there before. Perhaps it was - perhaps there was a confidence of youth. Perhaps covid wrecked a lot more pathways in my brain. All I know is that I struggle feeling like I’m any good at my job and I’ve felt like that for two years (over two jobs). In the meantime, the overwhelming feeling from the world is that things are meaner, nastier, more dangerously divisive - and that’s kind of heartbreaking.

We’re okay though. And it’ll be one step at a time with the house. I’m looking forward to being able to close the door on the world out there and reminding myself how to live - perhaps the right-way-up, if I can manage a bit of seaworthiness.

GRACE, GROWTH, AND GRIT: THE END OF THE UNSETTLING ADVENTURE

Well then. Last day of the Unsettling Adventure. I was naive to call it that, I think; it’s been horrible.

Anyway. There’s now a distinct finality to the emails from the solicitor. Even the estate agent has gone from frantically defensive to sort of Pina-colada-relaxed and jolly, if you know what I mean. Tomorrow we move.

“All set then?” she asked. It struck me that she had been much more of a question-answerer than an asker, and for her to take a breath to ask such a simple one was refreshing. I told her we were ready.

It’s been such a long season, all of this. It started last November when a face-masked estate agent with shiny shoes came into my flat to chat about valuation, and the process of putting it on the market.

Then, on February 7th, we saw the house we’ll be living in from tomorrow. I still remember the gulp of fear and astonishment I took when they told us our offer had been accepted. If he’d also said it would take eleven months, I’m not sure we’d be where we are now.

We got married in April and moved into the flat together. It strikes me as a sort of surreal time between April and August last year. Through the blossoms of late spring and a broiling summer, we did our best to make home while also knowing it was temporary.

Thinking back to it, the noisy night-time neighbours, the creaky floors, and the sickly smell of weed coming in through the windows, were all little catalysts for us to get going, to long for something more permanent. We keep reminding each other that we couldn’t have stayed there.

It’s interesting to me that the next season, the Unsettling Adventure has actually been longer than that first season of our marriage so far. That means that Sammy and I have spent more time without a home than with one. I think it’s been one of the toughest times of my life, but I’ve learned a lot.

We’ll go to bed peacefully tonight. I’m still nervous - we’ve been looking forward to this house for so long, our expectations are probably stratospheric - there are bound to be some things we’ve overlooked, and certainly there’ll be things we are not expecting in the new house. Navigating through that will be tricky. In fact, just navigating through the basics of what goes where and why, what colour things should be, who gets to see it, when, how… well I’m praying it’ll all work out in some lovely equilibrium.

As it happens, our address corresponds to three things: grace, growth and grit. Ask me how when you see me, but trust me, it really does. I’ve always thought that might be a prophetic symbol of something - and as the Unsettling Adventure comes to an end and the real adventure slots into view, I can really see how God has taught us all three of those things and how useful they may be.

And I am so thankful.

JEFF AND THE MAGIC HARDWARE STORE

I went into a hardware store this weekend. I don’t mean one of those megalithic warehouses with tannoys and taps, I mean a proper old-fashioned, bell on the door, wood-framed hardware emporium.

I was looking for a washer for a shower head. In cleaning the bathroom of our friends’ house where we’ve been staying, I had accidentally snapped the old limescale-encrusted one, and so with a rough notion that they’re all ‘standard size’ I went to find a replacement.

“Can I help?” asked a young man, immediately.

He was somewhere between 16 and 20, with that typical nervous energy. He wore a coat with a fur-lined hood and his fringe covered his eyes. I liked him, almost straightaway.

“Yeah I’m looking for a replacement washer for one of these,” I said, holding out some broken bits of plastic.

“Ah,” he said. And then, “If you’d like to stand in front of the counter sir…”

I got the feeling there were consequences for him if customers moved from exactly where they should have been standing. I didn’t mind. He went on to pull a plastic box out from underneath and placed it on the counter.

“One of these?” he asked. I didn’t know, so I tried to look at what he’d fished out.

“No,” I said, “I don’t think it can be an O-ring. I think it needs to be plastic.”

He carried on rifling through the boxes. I looked around, still rooted to the spot, while he was hunting washers.

Shops just aren’t like this any more. It was crammed full, every surface, every shelf, every wall, bursting with useful things. Tools hung (safely) from the ceiling, there was a column of padlocks, boxes and boxes of nails, screws, fittings, adhesives, and tall displays of wheelie-bin numbers and screw-in house-name plates. It was a fantastic trove of wonder, transported out of time from a different age, like a museum packed to the rafters with exciting objects.

And the smell! Gosh, I can barely describe it now but if you’ve ever been in an old trade shop, you’ll know exactly the woody, rich, varnished aroma that lingers in tiny emporia like our local hardware store. It was magnificent.

“Is it this one?” asked the young guy. A woman shuffled in, carrying a broom. She was much older, with the aspect of a matronly aunt. She peered over his shoulder into the box of washers.

“Hmm. No I don’t think so,” I said. “Not quite the same… aperture…”

“Shall I get Jeff?” she asked him. “Only he’s gonna be disappearing in a minute.”

Of course he is, I thought. Only a wizard would have a shop like this.

“This one maybe?” asked the lad.

“Too big I’m afraid.”

“What was it you were after, Love?” (To me this time)

“Oh. Just a replacement washer for a shower head.”

“Righto. We’re gonna need Jeff. JEFF?” she called out back.

I thought I noticed a flicker of something in the young man behind the counter. I suddenly had a lot of compassion for him.

Then Jeff appeared. I have no idea where from. Flat cap, wrinkled face, wise, experienced, interrupted old Jeff.

“What’s up then?” he said. His accent was thick, old-country. As proud and as endangered as his shop. “Washer is it? What sort? Shower? For a shower? Look. Just here where it says ‘Shower’ on the label. Honestly, I do my best to help make it easy…”

And then he was gone, back to his hardware incantations and adhesive potions, or, more likely, his lunch.

The washer cost me 15p. I smiled and said thanks to the boy, and told him he’d done well and not to worry about it, after he’d apologised for the delay. Then I jangled out of the hardware store, past the brooms and the rakes and the buckets out front, and on into the cold air of the Twenty First Century.

EASY DOES IT

The end is in sight. Yesterday, after about 140 days, we exchanged contracts and kick-started the definite end of the Unsettling Adventure. We got a house!

I phoned the people at Self Storage HQ.

I’m pretty sure I found myself speaking to the same pen-clicking, office-chair-swivelling guard who signed me up.

“Yeah so that’s on your record now (click). Just come in on Wednesday (click) and clear out (click) your unit (click click) and then come into the office and sort it out (click), alright?”

“Sure. Thanks for your help!” I said.

One more trip to Stuff Jail then - and it’ll be Emancipation Day for the sofa and wardrobe and dismantled bed, the boxes and crates and bags and floor lamps that are currently wedged in there. To Sammy’s eye-rolling ‘delight’ I always give a loud, “Hello Stuff!” whenever we pop down for a visit. Next time though, we’ll be taking the stuff home.

I must admit, I’m quite overwhelmed about it. Celebrating the news was much easier for all our WhatsApp pals, who reacted with emojis of delight. For us though, there was a quietness about last night that felt a bit like the stopping of cannons at a ceasefire. You celebrate those kind of victories differently when it’s cost you more than you imagined.

I haven’t been doing so well with it all, to be honest. In a twist of coincidence, last night was also the start of six weeks of Group-CBT for me: an attempt, recommended by my doctor, to help me feel a bit better about things.

“I don’t think I should be here,” I thought silently as the characters introduced themselves. The two young practitioners smiled and made deliberate eye contact with each of us as we each held up a nervous hand.

“I’m Matt,” I smiled, weakly, round the table. There was a tremble of failure in my voice. It’s so odd that as Christians we feel such internal failure at having to go through this kind of thing. My Dad once had a book that was called ‘The Happiest People on Earth’, and the introduction made me feel as though I could never ever have a down day. It’s weird that that lie got stuck in my head.

I think a lot of things about happiness. There’s a quiet sort of happiness going into the next season, but it can’t be rah-rah-rah-bunting and prosecco. It’s gentler, longer lasting, more elegant, I hope. I think CBT will be helpful. As with many things, it’s up to me to make it work, and the first step is being willing to have a go at that, isn’t it?

Sometimes the happiest people on earth don’t have to be the loudest. That’s what you’ll hear me whisper from the sofa in our new house, I reckon. Easy does it.

IN THEORY

I think it’s rained every day this year. It certainly did this morning. It hammered on the conservatory roof and dribbled miserably down the black windows. Still dark, still unconscionably wet. I was up early.

It’s been a really difficult season, this. My friends on the early morning prayer meeting agreed, but I also got the impression that some of them were ever-so-slightly bored by yet another week of me having nothing else in the world to pray about.

A colleague too, told me he empathised - he’d had to live four months in a three-bed house with seven kids and a dog. We’ve hardly had that level of chaos. Although I have had to fish matching socks out of a suitcase most mornings.

Nevertheless, our Unsettling Adventure is really close to ending now. In theory, we exchange tomorrow and move next Wednesday.

I add ‘in theory’ because this process doesn’t really let you believe anything is certain. And almost 20 weeks of uncertainty makes you a bit more cautious.

I’d really like to write about the toll all of this taken on us. To be honest, I would quite like to turn the key in the lock, walk inside, breathe one deep gulp of air, and then collapse on the floor for a whole month. I can’t speak for Sammy - though I reckon she’d want to take more of a look round first so she’d have to climb over my slumbering bulk before she could relax.

It will take a while to process, and a while to recover, but it will be so nice to have space of our own, and I do know that everyone (not just those on the prayer meeting) has been rooting for that on our behalf. 

ANGRY NIGHT

I had an angry night the other night. It’s rare for me - like a blue moon on a Sunday. But there it was. I felt as though my emotions were somehow fluid, like a liquid pounding, broiling through my livid veins.

We’d been told we needed to wait another six weeks for the house, and for no apparent reason at all! I was calm on the phone, but it seems my blood took a while to boil, and, as it turned out, a lot longer to cool down again afterwards.

The worst thing about feeling like that is the effort to control it. We channelled it into an email that was as terse as it was biting, and then I did my best to let it go into the cool damp air of the night sky. I felt like a sap, like someone was taking advantage of our meekness, our quietness, our niceness - and thirty years of feeling like the one who always bows and bends out of the way was bubbling in me like a hot volcano. After all we’d done to wait patiently and be homeless for 18 weeks, we were once again being pushed around. And I had had, and have had enough of that.

-

As it happened, we didn’t send the email. The next day, we were told that the situation had changed again and that actually we could now aim for a much closer date - January 20th.

We didn’t pop open the Prosecco, though you could understand if we had. The truth is that Sammy and I both feel a bit broken by all of this, and she, almost too cautious now to celebrate anything until we’ve got the keys in our hand, gently went on folding clothes as though nothing had happened.

Why in the world can’t I be cool? You know sort of assertive and strong but not compromising when it matters? Why can’t I be fierce in those rare moments without feeling like it’s about to loop out of control?

-

Anyway, it is great news that we can finally move! If the solicitors agree, I don’t think there’s much to stop us now, which is just brilliant after all these months. I just hope nothing else blows up in the meantime. Especially me.

KINDNESS IN THE GLOOM

Listen, I don’t know what to make of this year coming. What I do know is that it started in tears. It’s a bit of a long story but it was all to do with something I’d hoped for that hasn’t happened. The sight of the old year ticking its way into a new one… had set me off.

I’m sure the New Year’s Eve camera angles in London are the same every year. Big Ben with two of the clock faces visible and the corner of the London Eye, the face-on view of the wheel and the barges and the lasers, the high drone view over the river, and then the sweep across the revellers packed into the embankment as the sulphur clears.

What actually is it we’re celebrating? I mean, in the 90s, the future seemed more hopeful, more grand, as I recall. I could go along with the cheery nod to the New Year and feel a little twinkle of my own excitement. But then, I was younger then; perhaps there was a lot more to be wide-eyed about.

But I don’t want to be miserable about this permacrisis world we live in. There’s got to be more to it than shuddering into despair all the time, otherwise why in the world are people like me here? Once the rapture happens, fair enough - cancel everything, but while there’s still hope… surely there can be kindness in the gloom.

I used to think it was simply an excuse for people to go out and get drunk. Honestly, like a sort of long-drawn out version of that British cheer at a waiter smashing a glass - irony that’s become a tradition. New Year’s Eve is terrible; let’s get blotto. Maybe next year will be better than the train crash we’ve just been through? Probably not, but let’s cheer it in anyway. Hoo-ray.

It’s not completely that. It’s an opportunity for a lot more hope. They say, don’t they, that as things get darker, hope gets stronger - or at least, it should. And as long as there people of hope around, there’ll be light in dark places.

Personally, I can’t say that this year will be brilliant. It will be a mixed bag. I can’t predict what’s in store for me and Sammy. And that’s because none of it has happened yet. It’s ours to make of it what we will. And I should say that even if it’s dark and miserable and another slump into global despair, if you’ve got the opportunity, any opportunity at all, to light your bit of it up, then you absolutely should. I hope that’s what I will do too. And you never know: maybe the lights will add up. Just maybe.