I got blisters on my fingers

I had a conversation yesterday during which a friend suggested that practising the Christian life was like practising the guitar; when you first start it hurts, but as you keep practising it comes more and more easily. This has inspired me to pick up my guitar again and pound away at those bar chords, which still sound awful. The difficulty is keeping going through all the awfulness until something beautiful emerges. My fingers hurt A LOT. George Harrison taught himself to play guitar and apparently used to practice until his fingers bled.

Tonight I was, somewhat ambitiously, trying to play 'Waterloo Sunset' by my second favourite band in the world, The Kinks. (I couldn't). It's a really, really beautiful song and to be honest they probably shouldn't print the chords in books so incompetents like me can mangle it. But it reminded me of an interview I once saw on TV with Ray Davies, lead singer of the band, who wrote the song. He apparently struggled with alcohol abuse and his life got pretty messed up. One comment he made really stayed with me: 'I wasn't as good as Waterloo Sunset'.

I find the idea that he created something better than himself really intriguing. Usually Christians say that, while they are basically loved by God and therefore precious and valuable, their actions are less than perfect. Davies managed to create something pure and beautiful and 'better than himself', a vulnerable and imperfect human being. An amazing achievement.

First one to identify the Beatles song which contains the words in the title of this post wins...

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Halloween

It's that magical time of year again - that one night when my small neighbours knock on my door asking for sweeties. This year, I'm properly prepared: I have two pumpkins (I wanted five, but decided to be thrifty), a big tub of sweets and a tube of 100 glow sticks. The sweets are my concession to popular demand; the glow sticks are an attempt to represent light in darkness (a symbolism which will doubtless be lost on the kids). I'm seeing the pumpkin as my main opportunity to communicate something of my Christian faith to my neighbours. One year, while I was at theological college, Halloween fell on a Sunday. The new housing estate church I was assigned to met in a church hall on Sunday afternoons and many of the congregation were unaccompanied children. I googled 'Christian pumpkin carvings' and guess what - there are a lot of ideas out there, America being a country which is big on Halloween and big on Christianity too. I decided to carve a simple f...

Only connect

Last year on Ash Wednesday I attended an ashing service at St Paul's Cathedral. The service focused on confessing our sins and asking God's forgiveness. During the service a berobed priest made the sign of the cross in ash on my forehead. I thought this was pretty cool and refused my husband's request that I rub it off for the train journey home. Then we ran into an old work colleague of mine and I felt rather stupid. Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, is all about sin and repentance - 'sackcloth and ashes' and all that. But I wonder how many people in the UK today identify with the idea that they are sinners in need of forgiveness? My final year dissertation at theological college focused on the dilemma of how to call to repentance people who do not think they have anything of which to repent. I certainly didn't think of myself as a sinner when I first started exploring Christianity. I knew I wasn't perfect, but hey, who is? I have hea...

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A new drama series by Jimmy McGovern finished a couple of weeks ago on the BBC. Broken tells the story of Roman Catholic priest Father Michael Kerrigan, a broken person ministering to other broken people in an unnamed northern city. It's still available on BBC iPlayer and I would encourage you to watch it - only be prepared for a few grim hours. I'll try to avoid spoilers here. Michael has a problem: whenever he celebrates Mass (which I think in the Roman Catholic Church is every day), he has flashbacks. At the moment of consecration - the point at which, Catholics believe, the bread and wine physically become for us the body and blood of Christ - he remembers every shameful thing he's ever done, and every shameful thing that has been done to him. We see his mother screaming at him that he's a dirty, filthy little boy; young women crying because he has treated them badly; mistakes he has made as a priest; people he has let down. His voice falters and he struggles ...

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