Everyone's in there.

This Sunday was Easter Sunday.  I was in the singing group so wound up sat at the front, all keen-like.

And the scripture was, unsurprisingly, John's account of the resurrection.  And we were asked to consider why Mary was crying.  She cried for the death of her friend (who is a saviour if not a friend of sinners).  She cried because his body was not there.  In that, I think perhaps she cried for herself.  She had been deprived of the touchstone for her grief.  If we deal with death by dealing with our dead (which I hope we do) then not having a body to grieve over hampers our grieving.  Like the families of soldiers blown to smithereens in the trenches, where there wasn't enough to identify or bury.  Like the friends of teenagers who disappeared and were never heard of again.  Like the relatives of the victims of the recent air crash and ferry capsizing.

It is good to notice when experiences or people we can relate to show up in the Bible.  And I like to think that we are all included in there without too many stretches of the imagination.  Of course, I also like to stretch my imagination.

Lent 2014 - Days 39-41

Last weekend catchup of Lent 2014.  It has fairly flown by.

I wore a great many things.  It was a busy weekend.  So it's another summary table:

But there is a picture of today:

Spot the sneaky afternoon Maltesers!

Today's clothes were all about being comfortable.  It had been a busy weekend and a late night and I had to return a hire car before work so I was only getting out of bed if I could do so in comfort.  Also skipped adding accessories.  It's a wonder I managed to eat breakfast through my sleepies.

This photograph does show the ridiculous length my hair has got to these days.  Plaited like that it still reaches my waistband (loose it reaches to about my hips), and there's a fair distance from the top of my head to my waist.  That's probably almost three feet of hair.  Ridiculous.

Lent 2014 - Day 38

Flat discipline

Pub food last night, pizza for a colleague's leaving do tonight, it's not a good week for eating simply and getting through vegbox veggies.

Lone discipline

Fuzzy, but glad it's Friday!

Wearing

Linen skirt (item 25):  It's a workhorse, this skirt.  I'll be cycling around town this afternoon running errands and there's no problem with that while wearing this.
Orange vest (item 18):  It's a basic and a staple but today it makes me feel like I'm joining in with Spring, which may have actually Sprung.
Striped jersey blazer (item 13):  This thing is becoming a total workhorse.  I wonder if there are spring-time variations available in other colours... and if it always does that weird thing up by my right* shoulder.

Footwear - oh the embarrassment of still not having polished these boots.
Accessories - little yellow enamel heart earrings to pick up the orange from the vest and my ampersand pendant for whimsy.  Nice and straightforward.

And I've got bare legs!  As is typical when switching to the occasional bare-legged day I have on trainer socks and ankle boots so my feets stay toasty.  And I'll be throwing some tights or something on before I leap on my bicycle, I don't need the wind whistling around my thighs just yet.

*I had to think about this for quite a long time, before I realised that a photograph of me taken in a mirror will mean that my right hand side is on the right.  I blame too many hours staring in confusion at X-rays during anatomy tutorials.

Lent 2014 - Day 37

Flat Discipline

Last night we ate baked potatoes with salad, tuna mayonnaise and cheese.  Tasty stuff.  Tonight friends who moved out of the country are in town so we are meeting them in the pub for tea.  Never mind, eh?

Lone discipline

Out of practice at this malarkey.

Wearing

Khaki skirt (item 29) - it's a practical, comfortable workhorse with jeans-styling, which means POCKETS!  This makes me happy.  The generously cut flared A-line does hang strangely though, doesn't it?
Floral shirt (item 16) - Still not my favourite colours or a pattern that feels particularly 'me' and now that I see the lumpy silhouette it gives I don't know if I can put up with those things in the name of comfort (which it has).  We shall have to see if I will ever actually enact my regular threat to take this to a charity shop.

Footwear:  Purple not-leather mary-janes.  I liked these shoes, with their sturdy mary-jane styling and tiny little heel so much in brown that I bought them in purple too!  My tan and red mary-janes were supposed to replace them but I can't quite give them up yet.  Sometimes you just need a purple shoe that's easy on the feet but respectable looking.  Even if they now look decidedly shoddy.
Hosiery: All my nude tights are in the wash.  It's only the white and purple flowers that are saving this from not feeling like a spring outfit.

Ho hum, off to the pub.

Spring has sprung

Sproing!

OK, so this photograph was taken yesterday and it's not been so bright today, but it's definitely getting warmer.  I have foregone heavy outer layers and thick jumpers, the nights are getting lighter and I've been having some strange dreams that I'm going to ascribe to it being very cosy in my bed these nights and not at all to the large quantities of cheese being eaten in the house at the moment.

There might even be good conditions for gardening over the next few days.  I am, however a lazy gardener and will not do things unless I absolutely have to.

Lent 2014 - days 24-36 catchup

So, I'm utterly rubbish at keeping up with myself in terms of recording my efforts.  But I have been efforting.

I've even managed to reconstruct what I was wearing for most of the last ten days.  Somehow I feel this is faintly ridiculous, and definitely too lame to count as a very mild superpower.  Less easy is remembering what I have eaten and cooked.

Flat discipline

We've received yet more vegetables.  We've eaten a fair amount of them, but I don't feel that we are quite as on top of things as we were, possibly due to tiring of potatoes as our main source of carbohydrate (or, as the beloved likes to think of it, stodge).  Things we have thought up to use our tatties and neeps include:

• Mash.  We have to hide the neeps in with other veggies, but it works.
• Gratin.  Layer 'em up with other veggies and cheese or cream.
• Risotto.  Not so much use for the tatties, but you can sneak a snatch of neep in there and you get let off the absence of tattie if you've used up the last few useable bits of last fortnight's kale.

In more exciting news, this most recent vegbox has included multiple salad greens which have made our lives vitamin filled and tasty.  And launched an excuse for prawn cocktail or coronation chicken when we see these things with yellow stickers on.

I have no idea how much meat or fish we have eaten but there seems to be a slight build-up in the freezer, so we will need to work through that at some point.

Lone discipline

I think this really has to be a handy table format.

So there you are.  I wore things.  I even wore things on day 27, I just can't remember or reconstruct what they were.

I managed to take a couple of photographs over the past 10 days, but only 2 or 3.  I shall post them below regardless.

Day 30 - complete with big, soft, floaty scarf.

Day 30 bonus what-I-wear-outside shot

Day 36.  Someone asked me if I had hurt my wrist.

So there we are.  Today is very minimal and I've resorted to those dark tights again.  I prefer this dress with a necklace but didn't put one on this morning.  I think I look a bit more exciting on my travels today as that means I add the trenchcoat and scarf above.

We don't make the guestlist.

This has been a bit of a refrain in my life recently.

It's a reminder to set aside pride and remember who's actually in charge of the feast.  It's a reminder to set aside judgement and to love mercy.  It's a reminder to set aside control and have faith.

Jesus loved a party.  Jesus loves a party.  And invites us to party with him.  Not just in the hereafter (but that's a topic for another post).  It dampens a party when there's someone sitting in the corner humphing about the other partygoers.  But perhaps it only really spoils the party for the humpher.

We are none of us invited to the party in our finished state.  We are all works in progress.  Which means that no-one is at the party by virtue of their present state.  So we are all wrong about something.  And it won't be until the end of the pre-party that we'll figure out who is wrong about what.  And realise that we're all family anyway and we shouldn't let these petty differences come between us.

Also,  the phrase has come up in a 'we don't get to decide who's on the guestlist' context, but perhaps there's some room for 'we do not deserve to be on the guestlist'.  I don't want to beat my breast and lament my unworthiness, begging you to tell me that I'm quite nice really, but if I'm on any list it's not because I earned my place on it.  I was put on that list by the one planning the feast.  The feast is about him and what he has done to deserve it, not what I have done or who I am.  And because I've taken up the invitation extended to me, I start to become who I truly am and start to do what I am truly here to do.

At least, that's the theory.