Clovelly - Cottages, Cobbles, and Cats

This week we visited the ancient little Devon fishing village of Clovelly. Clovelly is family owned (none of the residents own their own cottage), there are no cars allowed. Goods are transported through the steep cobbled streets by sledges and donkeys. The little ol' cottages are all white-washed wattle and daub. I just love the little white cottages, particularly the ones with the blue painted windows, they remind me of the little white houses on Greek islands that I just love.  The South West coast is one of my favourite places in England.

This kitty was snoozing outside the visitor centre until a pigeon caught her attention.  Here she is scoping out the birdies.

We stopped at some workshops first to make some dishes.  This is Squidge.

And now Chatterbox making hers.

View from the top of the hill towards the sea.

Squidge looking down the steep cobbled street.

So pretty, but can you imagine this street in icy weather? :)

Inside of the Fisherman's Cottage.

Another kitty, this one didn't stop to chat but was on some kind of mission.

Hubs and the girls looking out across the bay.

Some really gorgeous cottages, I would post all my photos but it would take hours!

Down to the little harbour.

This kitty did come to say hello

Start with a kitty, end with a kitty.

Look Mummy!

My dandelion looks like a bird.

So it does. :)

Book Review. Your Own Jesus: A God Insistent on Making it Personal

Another of my Good Reads reviews:
 3 stars

I enjoyed this book, but it wasn't life changing on the whole, some chapters I felt like skipping thorough. However, there were one or two chapters that really spoke to me.

I love the fact though that that the book is about a personal Jesus, one who wants a deep relationship with us.

Hall writes near the beginning of a conversation with a youth group member who had been in college for a few months:

" "Man, I need help," he said, his voice almost a quiver. "These professors are pounding me. The entire culture here is mocking everything I heard you say."

He spent the next several minutes asking questions, though one unsettled me more than any of the others. He told the story of an assertion someone made in class that left him too befuddled to reply, which is why he had called me for help.

"Now, what do I believe about that again?" he asked.

Less than a year after leaving the cosy spiritual nest of our church group, where everyone shared the same beliefs and lingo, he was facing the white-hot furnace of a hostile universe and its ungodly worldviews. And he folded like paper in fire.

He didn't have his own Jesus. "

This part resonated with me because it is a fear that my children will be able to parrot their handed-down beliefs, but when they step out into the big wide world they may find that you cannot live off someone else's beliefs. But, it is good to have that fear - my children need Jesus, not me (as Mark Hall puts in one of his songs, "We can't strap ourselves to the gospel because we are slowing it down"). This also fitted in with the parts of the other book I've just read 'Why Christian Kids Rebel'.

I need this for me too. I need my own relationship with Jesus. Not a predigested relationship given to me from the pulpit. I need to know him for myself, I need to walk with him and to know him. He isn't a theory, a philosophy, he is real.

Book Review: Why Christian Kids Rebel

Here is my review from GoodReads:
4 stars

I read Tim Kimmel's other book Grace Based Parenting a few years ago and loved it. I did start this book some time ago and stopped for some reason, but this time I read the whole thing.

I enjoyed it mostly and agree with many of his conclusions, but it didn't speak to me as deeply as Grace Based Parenting. Maybe this is because I haven't experienced rebellion from my children...yet! (Let's hope the 'yet' never comes!)

As I said, though, I do agree with his outlook on parenting children as a Christian in the main.

He categorises Christian parenting which may create rebellious children into five groups:

Compulsory Christianity
Cliché Christianity
Comfortable Christianity
Cocoon Christianity
Compromised Christianity

The dangers in modern Christianity for our children is that we have created cocoons for our children – evangelical ghettos. We listen to Christian music, watch Christian TV, mix with Christian friends, go to Christian events…I could go on. We treat our faith as a hobby, enjoying our church events and church meetings, but a hobby that doesn’t change us or anyone else. We drill our children with Bible study and catechism but we don’t demonstrate an authentic relationship with Christ lived out under stress in a world antagonistic towards the true gospel. We create children who can say “Hallelujah” when things go well, but don’t realise they are living a cliché where they don’t know the Yahweh Whom they are praising. We keep our children safe from the world, but they never know what a changed life is, what a sacrificial life is, what sin really means to a lost world. We keep our children ‘safe’, but when they meet real life their faith will not weather the storms.

~oOo~

At the end of the day I agree with much of what Tim Kimmel says, but having never fully tested his theory (my eldest child is nearly 11) I can't say that everything he says is correct! But I do believe that children need to develop real, authentic relationships with Jesus that can be lived out in a stressful and testing world. He has to be their rock and their fortress. I am afraid to wrap my children up too much in cotton wool that when they reach the age of responsibility they are unable to cope with or are enticed by the world. I am afraid that just because now as youngsters they say and do (mostly) the right things doesn't mean that I've got it made and can be complacent.

I can only...
Pray.

Trust.
Guide.
Love.
Offer grace.
Try to live a REAL life in Christ.
Love...again (because you can never love too much).

My gorgeous girl

Ready for high school (she's 11 in August), but still my little girl.  Still a chatterbox, always smiling.  Her primary school reports from nursery until her final year start with saying how smiley she is to ending with how smiley she is.  My gorgeous girl. 

And also her Granddad's little girl. :)

Walking back from the beach in Devon, tired out from catching crabs and shrimp in rock pools and playing in the icy sea on the bodyboard.

Look what I got for my birthday!

Look what hubster got me for my birthday! I'm a very lucky girl.

Tiny wild strawberries and pretty wild flowers

Squidge has been picking flowers and tiny wild strawberries...

He gave us eyes to see them,

And lips that we might tell

How great is God Almighty,

Who has made all things well.

~All Things Bright and Beautiful, Cecil F. Alexander

For Prayer

I would be so grateful for prayer.  So many things are going on that I'm struggling to cope with, I guess I'm just vulnerable right now.

You know that we recently left our church of many years (in fact for me it was the only church I'd ever been a member of), and I am still dealing with the emotions and pain that come from leaving.  I could write a four page rant...but bitterness is not a Jesus-like quality (and I do so want to be more like him)...I might share when things aren't so raw so that I can express things more objectively.

I feel confused, conflicted, emotional, sad, and slightly lost.  But snippets of joy slip through here and there.  Little drops of grace.

Please pray that the love of Christ carries us through.

My mum and dad are struggling with a heavy workload related to the care of my grandma (my mum isn't in the best of health always).  We love Grandma so much, but caring is tiring and all consuming and all they want is for her to be happy and comfortable.  The government don't make things easy for the carer or the elderly - everything is far too complicated and takes far too long when time is short.

Please pray for my grandma's care - that she is happy and contented.  Please pray for mum and dad that these years of retirement are not bogged down by worry, strain and stress.

My granddad may have ear-cancer.  We are waiting for results.  It doesn't look good.

Please pray for my granddad for his healing and that he finds God in all this.  I'm so worried about him. I love my granddad.

Thank you dear bloggy friends.

“God never asked us to meet life's pressures and demands on our own terms or by relying upon our own strength. Nor did He demands that we win His favour by assembling an impressive portfolio of good deeds. Instead, He invites us to enter His rest.” ― Charles R. Swindoll

For Prayer and Rainy Day Photo Safari

Please pray for the residents of Hebden Bridge a town about 9 miles away from us, they've been hit for the second time in recent weeks by awful floods: Flash Floods

We've had a goodly amount of rain, here's pics from a recent walk:

The lake has filled up nicely.

Lake overflow is overflowing :)

The stile is a waterfall

Almost to the roof of the bridge

River almost to its limit.

River bursting its banks.

The lane is a river

Which is river and which is path?

Shall we swim to the gate?

A bit soggy.

Teach Children the Bible is Not About Them

I just read the most wonderful article which Ann Voskamp at Holy Experience linked to the other day.  The article is Teach Children the Bible is Not About Them by Sally Lloyd-Jones at Desiring God.  A quote:

"That the Bible isn’t mainly about me, and what I should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done

That the Bible is most of all a story — the story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.

That — in spite of everything, no matter what, whatever it cost him — God won’t ever stop loving his children… with a wonderful, Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.

That the Bible, in short, is a Story — not a Rule Book — and there is only one Hero in the Story."

It's made me really think about my approach to reading the Bible with my children...

One more week to goooooo!

Things have been manic at school (for those that don't know I work in the kitchen at my girls' school).  But yay! school holidays begin Friday...though I have to work Monday...but yay!

I love being at home.  Other mums might complain about the long school holidays, but I love it!  Even when I didn't work in the school I loved the school holidays.

Just a few more sleeps! :)

The 'Busy' Trap

Hat-tip to annecourager on Facebook.  This is from NYTimes by Tim Kreider: The Busy Trap

Some quotes:

"[I]t isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs  who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence."

"Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s  make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications."

 ~~

"Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and extracurricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown-ups."

 ~~

"Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day".

Books, Books, Books

Here are a couple of books on my wish-list:

The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and 'Women's Work'. ~by Kathleen Norris

The title alone excites me. :)  Here is a quote:

"Our culture's ideal self, especially the accomplished, professional self, rises above necessity, the humble, everyday, ordinary tasks that are best left to unskilled labor. The comfortable lies we tell ourselves regarding these 'little things'--that they don't matter, and that daily personal and household chores are of no significance to us spiritually--are exposed as falsehoods when we consider that reluctance to care for the body is one of the first symptoms of extreme melancholia."

Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another and Other Lessons from the Desert Fathers ~Rowan Williams

This is written by the current Archbishop of Canterbury and sounds both fascinating and beautiful.  Here is a quote:

“What would the Church be like if it were indeed a community not only where each saw his or her vocation as primarily to put the neighbor in touch with God but where it was possible to engage each other in this kind of quest for the truth of oneself, without fear, without expectation of being despised or condemned for not having a standard or acceptable spiritual life”

He also quotes John 'the Dwarf':

" 'You don't build a house by starting with the roof and working down. You start with the foundation'

"They said, 'What does that mean?'

"He said, 'The foundation is our neighbour whom we must win. The neighbour is where we start. Every commandment of Christ depends on this." 

 Williams writes:

"Insofar as you open such doors for one another, you gain God, in the sense that you become a place where God happens for somebody else."