I recently had the amazing priviledge to spend six weeks in a tiny village in Slovakia called Ipelsky Solkolec. We lived in a house which had rather blurry edges in terms of the wildlife, spent our days excavating in 35+ heat, and our evenings chilling out with our neighbour when he came to feed the sheep who lived in our garden and fending off the locals many attempts to get us drunk on various varieties of moonshine. On our weekends we headed off intrepidly on buses, trains, taxis and our smoking dying van to explore, well, anything we could find! We wandered Bratislava, discovering what I maintain to be the best bookshop in the world – Next Apache, which is like what would happen if you moved Biblocafe into Chai Ovna and dumped it on a side street in eastern europe. We visited churches, castles, mountains and numerous tea rooms in central slovakia, and journeyed south to Budapest where we got to play tourist for a bit. Had a fantastic time, and its really hard to sum it up in words so I’ve treid in pictures. Have a look at ‘Slovakia and Hungary 2009′ (in the travel collection) on my flickr for my visula attempt to describe the vibrancy and beauty of the little corner of the world I was lucky enough to spend time in this year.

My last blog post was called ’silence’ which is ironic as that has been how my blog has remained since I wrote it.. I guess I ran out of things to say. Things have been better recently; for those of you who have struggled alongside me these last few months and seen how low I got, the return to bright cheerfulness will have been marked. But I know that I am not really right. I fell as if I am looking at life through a fogged window; the anxiety may have decreased but so has much else. My life has become made up of learning slovak, logic puzzles and revision. I can’t remember the last time I cooked a meal or did something utterly spontaneous. Even deciding late one night last week to get on a bus to Inverness to visit a friend in hospital was more to do with what I felt she needed than a sudden gesture of friendship. I know that life goes on on the other side of the window. God is out there doing beautiful things, I just rarely lift my head enough to see them. I hope that I will wake up soon, open the window that has been shut for so long, and climb out on a rope made up of knotted sheets like in the books I read when I was little. The world may be bigger or smaller than I remember it, but I will remember that ‘every common bush is afire with God’, and I will take off my shoes, even if my own eyes only seee the blackberries for now.

My minister said something quite profound today. He was preaching on the transfiguration and he was talking about the bit where Peter offers to put up tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Peter was talking because he was frightened and didn’t know what to say – he was ‘blethering’ as John put it. Anyway John’s point was that we should find the time just to listen, and stop talking to God. This had real resonance with me. I’ve been finding it so hard to pray in words recently. I seem to get as far as ‘God’ and then don’t know where to go on to. Sometimes I say ‘thanks’ in breathless praise, like when a beautiful grey heron flew over my head in Mugdock Park; other times I say ‘help’ when I have no other way of asking for i t. Other times I merely sit in silence. Liturgy has been a real support. But so has the silence. Sometimes it is not wrong to listen. Those are the most peaceful times, when I truly know that God is God.

On a lighter note, everyone else’s bibles in church this morning said that Elijah was wearing a hairy shirt – but mine says that he was a hairy man! (2 Kings 1v7) What does yours say?

I know double posting this is a bit of a cheat but I don’t care! 

1. I have a secret (ish) love for all kinds of ‘old-fashioned’ crafts, inlcuding carding and spinning wool, knitting, lace-making, embroidery, calligraphy, etc
2. I absolutely love cheesy musicals
3. On the first dig I was on we spent a week excavating a totally empty trench, only for someone the next week to discover an entire in situ smashed pot, millimetres from our section…
4. On another excavation the supervisor suggested they put a rope around my waist to stop me falling into a post-hole I was excavating… it was considerably deeper than my arms are long
5. It says that I am an alien on my birth certificate.
6. I know three people who were born in the same hospital as me
7. I love liturgy
8. I dream one day of living in a light house
9. I have an obsession with notebooks.
10. I used to really want to be a clown, but just wasn’t good enough… L
11. I’m an artist and photographer (not very good though!)
12. I know a day is going to be good when it involves getting up early and putting on walking boots!
13. Have considered renaming the living room to ‘the library’
14. I play the piano and the guitar
15. I know how to say ‘I’m so glad to have met you’ in urdu.
16. I’ve been in the oldest city in North America (St Johns – Newfoundland)
17. The most random thing I’ve probably ever asked for as a present is a sewing machine (I was 16!)
18. I have a Japanese tea set, to which I’ve added a vase, a fan and a love of origami!
19. I hope to one day have a border terrier and an old english sheep dog.
20. My bible has a stand
21. I love political satire
22. I have been to four continents and lived in two
23. I’m the only person in my family who is not now, or intending to be, a teacher
24. My first word was ‘dones’ – trans ‘stones’… uh enough said
25. I have the best friends I could ever dream of having!

Last summer I went to a really incredible place called the Lost Gardens of Helligan in Cornwall. It’s an amazing place not least because for nearly one hundred years it was lost, overgrown and abandoned. The landowner hired an archaeologist and a builder to find it, and slowly the gardens came back to life. It’s an amazing story of regeneration and hope. The cool ending to the tale is that the archaeologist’s next project was to continue his passion for regeneration by transforming an old quarry into the Eden Project. So here’s a photo from the Lost Gardens. Hope you like!

“One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping because of the pain. “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world that makes you real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland.

So as many of you know things haven’t been too good recently. But there is always light, even when we can’t see it. I have been so blessed by my incredible friends. I’ve become so aware of how broken we all are.

When I was younger I used to be obsessed with rocks and minerals (I had a collection…) Oh yes, I was that sad. But there was one semi-precious stone that I always liked the best, always wanted one – the opal. You see the opal is inherently flawed, yet it is the flaws that make it beautiful. The light gets in through the cracks and bounces around inside it (okay I can’t quite remember the science…) – the important thing was that it was cracked and broken and that is what made it be an opal.

The asbo on the 4th summed up a lot. As does Lamentation 3v22.

Sorry I haven’t blogged. I have nothing to say so here is a picture! This is such a beautiful place, Aysgarth Falls waterfall in yorkshire. This is a bench on the path down to the falls, and it says ‘A Special Place’… which it most certainly is.