AS I WALKED OUT ONE MIDSUMMERS EVENING

I seem to have given up on sleep the past few weeks. I’ve been loving our unusually sunny weather, but the evenings have only been cooling down at the point at which I should go to bed, and it then becomes pleasant to sit and enjoy the cool. Its easier to go short on sleep at this time of year though – energy levels are so much higher than in the winter and the body can take more abuse.

Often on balmy June evenings I get the urge to go for a long walk, but haven’t acted on the impulse for ages – there is always a pragmatic reason for not doing so. This past Sunday, however, I seized the moment and caught the chain ferry from Sandbanks across to Studland at about 10.45pm, as a huge blood red moon was rising into the night sky. The sign post at Southhaven Point bearing the legend “Minehead 630 miles” always fills me with a desire to just keep walking. While I didn’t make it to Somerset it was an absolutely perfect evening and I walked through the night, following the coast path to Kimmeridge Bay, and then back to Corfe Castle where Grace picked me up in the morning. 22 miles and 1,000 feet of ascent. (Gyp the dog must have done three times that distance.)

The moon shining on the sea made it almost as bright as day. The dawn chorus started promptly at 2.30am, and the sky began to lighten at 3.30. By 5.00am and at the magical Chapmans Pool the sun was coming over the hills. Between Swanage at 1.00am and Kimmeridge at 6.30 I didn’t see another soul – I was the solitary possessor of the South West Coast Path, which felt rather nice.




Next week I am at the Together on a Mission conference in Brighton. I never expect to get much sleep at this event either – there is too much catching-up to do with friends from around the world. But, as Paul puts it, “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” I'm sure we'll see the weather change next week as well. Many of us have long suspected that the generally grim weather of TOAM week is the result of Terry Virgo's prayers - wanting to keep us off the beach and in every session! Personally, I think this could also be the reason - more than a dodgy ref or a dodgy back four - why England didn't progress any further in the World Cup...

IN PRAISE OF THE HUMBLE MACKEREL

Its been a while since I posted something foodie here. Time to make amends (and on my 500th post on this blog).

On Monday Grace & I managed to get out fishing and caught a bucket load of mackerel. After an hour or so of picking up the odd straggler we got into a shoal and couldn’t catch them fast enough. The bottom of our boat looked like a Japanese whaler – muck all over the place.

I love mackerel. Often treated as no more than bait fish for the pursuit of more desirable species, mackerel are abundant, easy to catch, and generally taken for granted. It is their very success that leads to indifference. If they were rare, or hard to catch, they would be prized in the way that sea bass are.

A fresh mackerel is perhaps the most beautiful fish in British waters – that shimmering silver-green. They are also among the most tasty. Given a choice for my final dinner of a bass or a mackerel I think I’d go for the mackerel. Fresh from the sea and onto a barbeque they are pretty much beyond compare. If all you’ve ever had is shop bought mack, or fish from a summer holiday boat trip round the harbour that have been allowed to go sour in the sun, then you really cannot even begin to imagine what I am talking about. We kill, bleed and gut our mackerel as soon as we get them, and put them in a cool box on ice, so there is none of that bitter taste that so quickly afflicts an uncared for fish – and they are quite simply delicious. Some lemon, garlic, a blast of smoke from a bunch of burning bay leaves, and a couple of pints of west country cider to wash it all down. What’s not to like?!



Of course, when you hit a shoal the result is a catch that even the most fish hungry family cannot get through in one barbeque, so we have been experimenting with other means of fishy preservation. This week it has been gravlax – traditionally a Scandinavean dish made with salmon, but mack make a very good alternative. Served with some of our sourdough bread and a dill and mustard sauce it is pretty good going.


Many of the best things in life are like mackerel – simple and underrated. Like kids jumping over a hose on a hot summers day. Or a comfortable bed. Or the scent of a rose.


It’s all grace. And it is good.

THE BIG FOUR-OH

Well, its my last day of being in my 30’s, and by tomorrow my status as an icon of youth will have receded like a middle-aged hairline! Or, as Agent Smith put it to Neo, “You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death...”

Cheerful!

But as we all know, Smith ends up coming off worst in that encounter, and despite the fact that – shockingly – I was still in my 20’s when The Matrix came out, death holds no fear for followers of The One; so neither should middle-age!

Last year I posted a whole series of reflections on turning 40 on The Leaders Poole blog. One was a series of reflections on ten things John Maxwell says leaders should do before reaching 40, and the other comments about 15 observations made after 40 years of Christian ministry by my father. Scanning through those posts again recently was both encouraging and challenging.

The passing of a decade always feels a significant moment. I don’t recall what I did for my tenth birthday but remember it felt a big deal to hit double figures. The eve of leaving my teens was spent on a Scottish hillside where I had hitchhiked with a friend while at Newcastle University for a spot of walking. My 30th birthday was spent in Eastbourne where I was leading a youth event called re.vive@thebeach. (It was cutting edge to use an email address style title back then!). After a day of activities on Eastbourne seafront about 1,000 of us went back to the King’s Church building where we watched England beat Germany 1-0 in the European Championships (Alan Shearer got the goal – how England could do with a striker of his caliber in this World Cup…). Tomorrow I shall be celebrating with a barbeque with my Life Group.

They say that life begins at 40, and as my family is generally fairly long-lived all things being equal I will probably see another four decades roll by. Hopefully my experience of life so far means that the coming decades will be lived with greater maturity and with growing faith – and with increased fruitfulness. Or as the Psalmist puts it

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.

BEAUTY & THE BEAST

Well, I could hardly let the World Cup start without making a comment…

South Africa – quite possibly the most beautiful nation on earth. This is going to be a World Cup like no other. The levels of exuberance and sheer African pizzazz will make this a mesmerizing event, even if the football itself doesn’t always deliver.

But we have already seen the flipside of South Africa – those British students killed and injured in a coach crash, and Nelson Mandela’s great-granddaughter killed in another accident.

South Africa is captivating and it is dangerous. It is beauty and the beast.

The clichés about South Africa tend to be true (as clichés tend to be). The people are among the warmest and friendliest in the world, but levels of personal violence and casual cruelty are shocking to someone used to the more contained existence of middle-England. The landscape is dramatic and fabulous, but those trees have sharp thorns. The wildlife is superb, but don’t get too close.

And I am envious of those who are there! I would like to be in the crowds, blowing my vuvuzela – another South African phenomena that seems to define the dichotomy of beauty and beast. To some it is the sound of celebration and fun, to others a deafening and deeply unpleasant racket. Me? Well, I’m thinking about having a vuvuzela Sunday at Gateway – worship to the sound of a plastic trumpet!

C’mon England!

132 STEPS

Last week on holiday in Cornwall we spent most of our time on the curiously named Lusty Glaze beach in Newquay. My grandparents first took my father there in 1950 and it has been the Hosiers beach of choice ever since. Even my great-grandmother, at the age of 90, made it down the 132 steps. My great-grandparent, grandparents, parents, parents of my children, and my children – five generations over a period of six decades, all trooping up and down those steps. Its no wonder we feel somewhat proprietorial about the beach.

My parents – fresh back from South Africa – joined us for a couple of days. For the first time in his life my dad has actually got a wetsuit, and he joined the kids bodyboarding in the surf. Not bad for an OAP! The waves were pretty good – big enough for me to get scared a couple of times when I was trying to get out behind the surf line to the green water.

It was also good to be with Blaze Church in Newquay again. And last night I was at Weymouth Family Church, which was planted at about the same time as Blaze, back in 2002. It is exciting to see these churches emerging from the childhood phase of their existence and growing into maturity.

Church has a lot of parallels with family, and like a family individual churches go through phases of childhood, youth and maturity. Each of these phases have things to commend them, and while we are meant to grow into maturity every church should keep a sense of youthfulness and of childlike delight in God. Churches feel healthiest when they have all the generations represented in them, because God’s promises are to all generations, and to those who are still far off.

One of the most beautiful prophetic pictures of this is found in Zechariah 8:4-8. In this prophecy there is a picture of both old people and little children being in the street together. Both do what is appropriate to their age – the old folks sit, holding on to a cane, while the children play. But it is their togetherness that is the thing.

When I was a baby I had to be carried up and down those 132 steps to Lusty Glaze beach. When I was a boy I scurried down them as fast as I could. As a young man I was able to run up them without too much trouble. Last week I felt my lack of fitness as I tried to run up them still. One day – as happened even to my athletic great-grandmother – I will not be able to make those steps at all. But when something is good, each succeeding generation keeps making the journey.

That’s how church should be too.