Magical people

I had this thought, the other day at work (clearly induced from re-reading, 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) that we, Christians, are perhaps a magical people.

Now of course I realise this statement will either make some giggle, roll their eyes or foam at the mouth in fury. Still, I think it's a thought worth mulling over.

In HP or Hogwarts land as I call it the magical people, with their aid of their trusty (though not always if you've read all 7 books) wands can perform all kinds of spells, charms and hexes. Their inexplicable abilities in the impossible make them, magical.

In our world, the unmerited favour of a brilliant, ingenious, Creator made man, who died on a cross and then confounded death by rising again left us a gift so we wouldn't be orphans - The Holy Spirit. It is through the Holy Spirit and the clever, inexplicable gifts He gives us that we are able to do and see impossible things in our very finite and fragile human lives.

Now we can't point at something and say, 'accio' and it will come hurtling towards us. But we can lay our hands on our siblings and (perhaps without all the touching for strangers) pray for them. Pray them through the valley they may be in or pray that the Holy Spirit's healing touch would bind up the sickness (or in my case, pulled back muscles). We can dream dreams and see visions, even speak things out before they come to be. We can speak in foreign and unwritten tongues and have the secrets interpreted. We can bless and curse with our tongues (see James 2 for further information) We can read Holy Scripture and get a glimpse into the heart and mind of the most Ancient of Days. In all simplicity, we can stand in the magical even whilst we live in all the mundane of normality.

When I think of the magic in Hogwarts land, I see there is and at the same time, nothing new there. It carries in it all the wish-fulfillment ability we all wish we had. But perhaps it speaks of a deeper, elder truth; that there was and already is, a great magic that we lost at the Fall, which with Christ now restoring us back into places of sons and daughters, we can now pick up where we left off.

But don't get me wrong, I don't think we've been empowered by and through the Holy Spirit solely to play show and tell with our gifts; but rather, to engage with all around us, to better the world we inhabit.

Whichever way we look at it; magic is very much so, still around.

Red

Yesterday I read the second half of my, 'finished' children's story and then emailed it to my Editor friend.

And there it is. The book is finally out of my hands and in anothers. I have begun the process and now I'm free to think of Red and Imogen's next adventures.

It's strange reading back on what you already wrote in a flurry of creative contentment, particularly when what you read makes you smile, tear up or laugh out loud.

I've said it before but my characters really do feel like my little ones. I know them and what they look like, what they'll say and sometimes what they'll think. Finishing this first story made me realise I absolutely do not want to let go of them quite yet, even if they are starting to grow up as it heads into summer time in Eyrely.

Fiction, it's where my heart rests. Without a book to read I feel bereft and when telling stories I feel a happy contentment that sits merrily in this little soul.

Oddity

This is my third attempt to be honest with this virtual page. Honesty, alike truth gives the body and mind a jolt in a way that little else can.

Maybe it's because I've been debating how open I want to be on a blog and whether in all that's good in heaven, I should be blabbing my insecurities. Yes, it's therapeutic and cleansing in a way, but it also has a tendency to leave you feeling that bit more bare than before.

And what is this honesty or truth that has left me wrestling when I should be working, you may be wondering? It is the fear that secretly crept up on me that I am perhaps too awkward and odd to get that sweet gift that comes in a mutual love with another.

Not sure whether this is just normal insecurity we all feel at times or a horribly deeper symptom of something horrible and deeper.

Perhaps it is merely the age old question we humans have carried in our souls since forever ago; 'am I enough? Am I good enough?'

Funny how, even though I've heard the answer to this a million times I still find myself asking it.

A beautiful world

Sometimes a song and the woven notes of its melody do something strange, something unruly and simply inexplicable. Sounds and words seep into cracks in my skin and the pores in my soul, and make their home there. They create a world of thoughts and feelings that shift like seasons. Sometimes it's sunny and delightful; other times the dark of lightening storms hit hard. I have no idea how waves of sound can do that to me. Take me to a place without leaving the spot. Tell me a story with so few words. Show me something with my eyes closed.

'Don't Panic' by Coldplay is one of their older songs alike, 'Writing to reach you' by Travis but somehow, in some odd unknown way, these songs take flight and paint a brightness that few other songs do, for me.

Perhaps it's the refrain of, 'We live in a beautiful world, yeah we do, yeah we do.' Simple but a refreshing take on this mass of iron ore and water. Maybe I spend too much time seeing the desperate hopelessness of our world and so to hear the opposite makes my little heart sing in chorus.

Just perhaps.

Danish Proverb

What you are, is God's gift to you;
What you do with yourself, is your gift to God.

Pocket watch

I have a pocket watch. It' s a kind of burnt bronze with an antiquated lid that pops up at the slight press of the button. The same button that when pulled up moves the clock's hands.

There's also a small chain attached so I can dangle it from my pocket, like the Fat controller in 'Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends'. But there's a small hitch. The battery is dead so the hands remain at the last time I put them on. And that's the odd thing, instead of getting a new battery, I've taken to simply moving the hands to the correct time every now and again.

The pocket watch goes everywhere with me. In my jean pockets or in my brown leather satchel. In my jacket pocket or in between my fingers. On anything I can hook it on or under my pillow when I sleep.

The attachment crept up so stealthily I didn't know it had happened. My fierce loyalty to this little round bit of metal is clearly more than a mental hiccup; I think perhaps it's my way of having Anna close. Maybe that's why I like nothing more than to slip it out of my bag's side pocket and pop open the lid just to look at it and all it's detail. There's history with it, there's the story of how she acquired it, how she gave it to me and more of, the long lost age that pocket watches speak of.

I feel a bit like an old man when I take it out. No one has commented on my mild malaise yet, but that doesn't really bother me because I have secret stories and pictures all dangling off a very small chain.

The Shack

You've probably heard the huge hub-bub surrounding this tale of a man called Mackenzie Allen Phillips whose daughter is kidnapped on a family camping trip and then brutally murdered. His daughter was six years old. Three and a half years later, Mack receives an invite from, 'Papa' or God to return to the shack where the last remnant of his daughter Missy was found.

There was so much hype all over this book I was most aggressive in resisting to read it. But floating about Target last Friday I came across it and dropped it into my basket. Unbeknown to me God would use those 250 pages to wreck all I thought I knew of Him.

I shan't spoil the experience of being a fly on the wall in Mack's unusual weekend with the Lord of the Universe. But I will tell you that during it you may just grasp the ridiculous depth of God's sheer pure love for His creation. You will never see such a devoted heart as God's own. And so I imagine you too will be wrecked, undone and pieced back together again in fear and trembling for the one who loves only you.

And that's the key thing here I think I learned. It isn't solely that God loves the world and the people in it. It's that He loves only you.

He loves only me.