A Bad Night, An Invite. a Flare-up (right ankle), and An Anniversary

Monday night was awful - my right ankle flared up and my whole body was shaking with the pain  Neither of us got much in the way of sleep.  The ankle is still swollen and painful - I have my trusty zimmer beside me as I type - but I was able to sleep last night, for which I thank God.

We are awaiting the arrival of our Waitrose order, and after that Col may be going to Portsmouth, on a call out - another dementia patient has gone missing.  So I hope to be able to totter about and make him a packed lunch. And supper tonight is really easy - IF Waitrose send everything we have ordered - pizza and a berry salad. 

It is now lunchtime and the order has come, all present and correct, and the dementia patient has been found, safe and well, so I shall have the Captain to myself today. And I have spent the morning  in cyberspace - at the meeting and in the field service.  Plus I have the packed lunch for tomorrow on standby in the fridge, as he didn't need it for today.

Our annual Convention - POWERFUL BY FAITH - is coming up - and as it will be in online.  If  you would like to attend some, or all, of the sessions, you can find the details here:   https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/conventions/  

Or simply go to our website JW.org, go to "About us" and click on "Conventions".

It is a three day Convention - Friday, Saturday and Sunday - as always.  Sessions will be posted incrementally in July and August.

We in the congregation here will have the Friday morning session on Sunday (if that makes any sense) after a shortened Watchtower.  The meeting will begin at 9.30, with a half hour study, and then, after a 10 minute interlude, the Convention will start.

I am very much looking forward to it. We are all going to need a strong faith to get us through these "difficult times, hard to deal with". And if we have that faith in Jehovah, we will get through to the restored earthly paradise. He will help us every step of the way.

It is Penny and George's 45th Wedding Anniversary today - hurray for them!  Pen has posted a lovely picture of George on the beach on fb this morning.   But where are these years flying away to?

A Sea-Fret

I drew the curtains this morning to find a sea fret hiding the Channel. The Green disappears into a misty distance with no sea on view.   I had a weekend of meetings and study and doing some witnessing letters and sofa-dozing in a haze of painkillers.  The Captain stewarded a swimming race and spent yesterday out in the field metal-detecting.  Oh and I am trying to find a gardener for one of the ladies we met on the doors.  She rings me and Jean every so often and says she is looking forward to seeing our little red car in her drive again.

I am re-reading the King biography of Janet Frame.  Ir would interest anyone who has read her wonderful autobiography.  The autobiography is in three parts and begins with "To the Is-Land".  It has made me want to quote Frame herself once again.  I put these quotes in a blog last year, but I do often think about them.

This is from the first part of the autobiography: "To the Is-Land":

"I remember a gray day when I stood by the gate and listened to the wind in the telegraph wires.  I had my first conscious feeling of an outside sadness, or it seemed to come from outside, from the sound of the wind moaning in the wires. I looked up and down the white dusty road and saw no-one. The wind was blowing from place to place past us, and I was there, in between, listening. I felt a burden of sadness and loneliness as if something had happened or begun and I knew about it.  I don't think I had yet thought of myself as a person looking out at the world; until then, I felt I was the world. In listening to the wind and its sad song, I knew I was listening to a sadness that had no relation to me, which belonged to the world."

The sadness that belongs to the world.  I often used to wonder about it.  Why?  What had happened?

Janet Frame actually goes on to answer the question she raises - but I don't know if she herself made the connection.  She is still very young, and is talking of visits to and from the uncles and the aunts. She says:

"The aunts were still there, still talking of Up Central and Middlemarch (Middlemarch, Lottie) and Inchclutha; and the uncles with their shy Frame look and the particular set of the lips that said, 'Everything should be perfect. Why isn't it?'"

Everything should be perfect. Why isn't it?  

Genesis answers that question and also assures us of the coming rescue, which is so close now.  That is what we, Jehovah's Witnesses, are trying and trying to tell you. So when you get a letter from us, as I hope you will, please read it carefully and think about it seriously.

The Ministry School, a Missing Tooth, and Me

 The Ministry School gave us these parameters for our part:

• Return Visit: (4 min.) Begin with the sample conversation. Offer a publication from our Teaching Toolbox. (th study 9)  (You can find further details on JW.org under the heading meetings, as it gives the schedule for the current week.)

And this is how we tackled it last night:

My Partner:  Hello Sue, how are you?

Me:  Hello My Partner.  Nice to see you in Zoom again. Fine thanks.

MP: We talked last week about God's purposes and how he gave our first parents the lovely and satisfying work of turning the whole earth into a paradise.  Have you thought some more about that?

Me:  I have. And I admit it is a lovely idea, that there is a Creator who cares, and wants us to live in a paradise earth. But I don't know, because the way things are on the earth it feels more like we have been abandoned - left to get on with it - and make a terrible mess of it.

MP:  Yes, I understand, and I know that many people feel the same. But would you think about it this way. If a manufacturer creates a new car, does he send it out there without an Instruction Manual?

Me:  I see the point you are making MP.  Its a logical one I must admit.

MP:  So, if we have a Creator, has he left an Instruction Manual for us?  And if so, what is it? 

Me:  Knowing you MP,  you are going to tell me its the Bible.

MP: Yes, for sure. And I would like you to read Jehovah's assurance to us here at Isaiah 55:11.

MP:  Reads Isaiah 55:11, (though here I am going to quote verse 10 as well, as it puts it in context and is such a lovely and simple image)

For just as the rain and the snow pour down from heaven

And do not return there until they saturate the earth, making it produce and sprout,

Giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

So my word that goes out of my mouth will be.

It will not return to me without results,

But it will certainly accomplish whatever is my delight,

And it will have sure success in what I send it to do.

At this point MP explained these verses, pointing out that they assure us that God's original purpose for the earth has not changed, and it is sure to be fulfilled.  He himself assures us.

Me: Interesting how you link those two Scriptures together - the one in Genesis 1:28 and this from Isaiah - that would not have occurred to me.  I didn't even know them.  But I would love to be able to believe them to be sure they are the truth.

As we were working on the use of Visual Aids, my partner now told me she had been practising screen sharing and showed me the front cover of our new teaching brochure: "Enjoy Life Forever, an interactive Bible Course".  (You can find it on our website JW.org.)

I was very impressed with her computer skills, and the intriguing picture on the front of the Brochure and we agreed to go through it together.

Now re the missing tooth, I did try to remember to keep my mouth as closed as possible.  I don't remember hearing any screams of horror, or stampeding horses, so hopefully I did. And the second front temporary did not fall out in the middle of the talk - something I sometimes waste a bit of energy worrying about.

I had a Telephone Consultation with my GP this morning - and I am to have the other version of codeine - we should be able to put an order through this afternoon.  Hopefully it will stave off the moment I have to go back on Tramadol - a kind of artificial morphine - which he acknowledges will come as my spine continues to crumble.

Anyway, despite the pain, I think I appreciate the gift of life more and more every day. And I find everything more and more interesting.  So please please think about this.  Our Creator, Jehovah, has stated his purpose, and it is to give us, the damaged, dying children of Adam, back the life and perfection our first parents so tragically lost. He wants us to live forever in the restored earthly paradise.  Do have a look at the brochure on JW.org. and think seriously about it.

MOTH!!!

We had a Lime Hawk-moth on the balcony this morning - a most impressive creature.  Had it been any larger I would have been out on the The Green warning all mothers of small children to keep their littl'uns out of range.   Col is just stepping inside now, his Moth Hotel clutched under his arm, and who knows what will be revealed...  and will be filmed.

And do I see a Hollywood style movie coming up - MOTH!!! maybe - in which moths take the villainous place that the poor old sharks were given in the JAWS movies?  Hordes of evil moths will terrorise a load of stereotypes in our seaside town.  One local villain - laughing evilly and twirling his moustachios - will refuse to cancel the annual Carpet Festival because he wants to make even more money for his Mothball shop. He will get his comeuppance at the end in a harrowing scene where all the carpets in his house are eaten by a battalion of carpet moths.

I don't think this is blockbusting material somehow.   The only thing that might attract Hollywood to it is that there would be loads of nudity as the moths would have eaten all our clothes.   However, would the sight of all us retirees, tottering about on our zimmer frames, not a stitch on, all carping about how we were catching our deaths of cold and going into interminable soliloquies about our arthritis meds be the right sort of nudity, the sort that Hollywood requires? 

What have I been doing, beyond lying on the sofa dozing and thinking up ridiculous ideas for movies.  I rarely ever even watch a movie these days.  Col had one on the other night. It had the one who isn't Bruce Willis in it - Tom Cruise I think.  It drove me off my sofa after about 10 minutes. I simply could not watch or listen to it.  

On Saturday and Sunday mornings I attended the meetings. And what a lifesaver they are.  An oasis of sanity in an ocean of madness.

The subject of the public talk was a vitally (literally) important one:  Is there a True Religion from God's Standpoint?  And yesterday I got together with my partner (by phone) for our upcoming talk - her talk not mine - as we worked out how to accomplish study no.9: Appropriate Use of Visual Aids while in Zoom.

As I will probably blog our talk outline at some stage, you will be able to judge it for yourselves. If you wish.  We are working round a lovely promise found at Isaiah 55:10,11

A Few Green Leaves

Here are some beautiful Dalmatian bellflowers from our gardens here.  Taken by Col.  I though at first it was Aubretia, one of my father's favourites - he always had some in his gardens.  And I have named a character in my upcoming Disraeli Hall Aubretia.

I am re-reading "A Few Green Leaves" by Barbara Pym - her last book I believe.  It did indeed mark the end of a fictional era in that Esther Clovis dies.  And a book I might be reading is "Darkness Descending" by Ken Jones . I just saw his story in a series called "I Shouldn't be Alive".  And, indeed, after what happened to him... no, he should not be alive.  But I am very glad he is.

We spoke to Jacks today - things go on with her much the same - it seems an age ago that we used to see each other all the time.  Jean is back and we have had a couple of phone chats. I also phoned Lilian ex of Arabee.  We like to talk about old times now and again - its hard to explain them to anybody else, even if they were interested.

She is also someone who believes in God and who respects the Bible - and I am trying tactfully to get across to her the urgency of the times we live in.  Didn't Jesus himself compare them to "the days of Noah"?

I am having to take anti-inflammatories and strong painkillers now, which is slowing me down a lot. And I was slow enough to start with. Anyway, I did manage to make an apple crumble for Captain B today, and the Sandwich Fairy has visited the fridge, as his two weekend packed lunches are safely in there.  I am trying to reply to Kathryn's lovely letter, and have got it started but its all going so slowly.

Torrential rain this morning.  The Green nearly became The Lake.  It is real humid thunderstormy weather.

A Swan in the Evening (Flare-up right knee)

I am quite obsessed with the Sinead O'Connor version of "He Moved Through the Fair" at the moment:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_XoZhEX3kQ

Sorry this isn't properly linked. I used to be able to use the "link" on the blogposts  but then, as seems to be the way with things now, someone felt impelled to come along and make it incomprehensible.

Monday was very hot and the scent of the balcony flowers filled the dining room.   But my right knee is flaring up so I am in a lot of pain.  And when the singer of the song describes their loved one moving through the fair "like the swan in the evening moves over the lake",  I would have inspired no such description.  Mind you, I have always been on the clumsy side.  At least these days I can blame it on my age and my arthritis...

And today, Tuesday, I am even less swan-like, as both knees seem to be on strike, and very very painful.  I have done next to nothing today being in a haze of painkillers.  I attended the short Field Service in the morning and then talked to my siblings on Zoom,.  Poor Doris is at the doggy dentist at the moment.

And i made lunch and tea for us - a spicy veggie casserole for lunch, and an omleette for Himself for the Captain's supper. I had some Alpen and a yoghurt.

Here are some powerful words from our study schedule this week.  How important it is to come to know and love our Creator, Jehovah:

 "On this subject, perhaps no passage of Scripture is quoted more often than Deuteronomy 6:5-7. Please open your Bible and read those verses. Note that parents are first told to cultivate their own spirituality, building love for Jehovah and taking his words to heart. Yes, you need to be a serious student of God’s Word, reading the Bible regularly and meditating on it so that you develop a real understanding of and love for Jehovah’s ways, principles, and laws. As a result, your heart will be full of fascinating Bible truths that will move you to feel joy, awe, and love for Jehovah. You will have an abundance of good things to impart to your children.​—Luke 6:45"

Deuteronomy 6:5-7 says:  "You must love Jehovah your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength. These words that I am commanding you today must be on your heart, and you must inculcate them in your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road and when you lie down and when you get up."

• • And Luke 6:45 says:  "A good man brings good out of the good treasure of his heart, but a wicked man brings what is wicked out of his wicked treasure; for out of the heart’s abundance his mouth speaks."

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Time and the Child

I was getting a bit of sun, on an overcast Friday, on the balcony, after lunch, watching a tiny little girl in a mulberry red frock running across the Green to the playground.  And it reminded me of my earliest memory, walking with my father, hand in hand, on Hampstead Heath by the Pond.  I would have been about 3 years old.  It is a window that opened in time, nothing else stayed with me of when I was 3 years old.  And I can't even remember that now - I just remember myself remembering it - if that makes sense.

So seeing this little one, running happily to the playground, mother in pursuit, I wondered this. Was there an old lady in her seventies watching me happy by the Pond with my father?  If so,  she would have been born in the 1870s (if my maths is right) - an era that even in my childhood seemed like the distant past.  But it wasn't.  No more, no less, than than 1940s are to children of today.

Not only are our lives very short now, but human history is much shorter than we are told it is.  And the past is not nearly as far away as we might think.

Saturday - hot sunny - beach busy - lots of people and cars.  Did I achieve anything?  I got to the field service meeting, stayed for the group afterwards and (importantly) got some more territory for my letters. But somehow it was a very Aspergery day and I felt rather depressed and downcast by my inability to fit easily into any group. Which of course is why schooldays were a nightmare. And I feel for all such children now being forced through similar horrors.

On the doubleplusgood side, I got a lovely email from one of my congregation sisters in the afternoon, which came just at the right time.

I also managed to turn the rhubarb into a crumble for Himself - clean the bathroom and wash the bathroom mats. plus do my Watchtower studies.   And today, Sunday, was very hot indeed. A wonderful meeting in the morning - a great talk, followed by a great Watchtower - all about how to walk in Jesus' footsteps.  That talk was "Do you recognise Jehovah's Sovereignty in your life?" - and of course walking in Jesus' footsteps is how we show we recognise that he is the one Jehovah has chosen to be the King of the Kingdom.

Captain Butterfly had a SUSSAR training session scheduled today, but instead they were called off on a real hunt for a person who had gone missing in the Camber Sands area.  It was a sunny Sunday, so the world and his wife were also heading for Camber sands and he spent most of his day in traffic jams.  There is no way I would head for a popular beach on a sunny weekend, or bank holiday. But most people clearly don't agree.

The missing person, sadly, remains missing.

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

In the words of the beautiful song, who knows where the time goes?  I got a letter from Kathryn yesterday - we have known each other for ever it seems. And along with updating me on her news, she talks about old times - our 1950s childhood, the radio programmes we used to listen to. though of course we called it the wireless back then.

I stayed with granny in what must have been the last year of her life and remember how determined she was to go on managing in her own home - and how she was managing. She had all sorts of strategies - but the effort of peeling and chopping a couple of carrots exhausted her.

As for where this week has gone...?  I spent yesterday afternoon baking  - making a banana bread from the recipe I mentioned in one of my May blogs.  If it turns out as well the second time, I shall add it to my pantheon But what with that, clearing up after it, and making the evening meal - simply pizza and a berry salad - I was exhausted.  Which is making me think of my grandmother, at the end of her life.

Apparently there is a partial eclipse of the sun today - between 10 and noon.  The Captain reminded me not to look at the sun - should it become visible. So far, early morning, it is a bit overcast.

I feel sure there is a poem in all this somewhere. but I can't find it.

However, Susan Wicks, in her "Listen with Mother" evoked the world of the 1950s beautifully.

LISTEN WITH MOTHER

Susan Wicks

Only this: an old armchair,

a sideboard, sun on carpet,

time, and the child

uncurls, strokes the warm

dog sleeping, dances

to find her mother, She can

hear her, the sweet small

chink of glass in the kitchen,

a tap running. No need

to listen, she will always

dance from the chair,

the old dog will always

be sleeping. On tiptoe

she still skips

across carpet towards her

busy music of absence, the

chink of crockery, the cold tap's

gurgle rising and falling.

Kylie Minogue and my New Specs

Friday morning we were off to collect my new glasses.  When I chose my frames, I was veering towards  the Kylie Minogue rack- yes, they cost a fortune, bur clearly they were going to make me look exactly like Kylie, so worth every penny. But Captain B, having caught sight of the price, hustled me past to the rack of sensible glasses.

"But I want to look exactly like Kylie!"   (Indignant)

"You are lovely as you are." (Soothing)

"As lovely as Kylie?"

"Differently lovely."   

hmmmmm

Anyway, we went towards the cheaper rack, and I seized on a pair of sort of subKylie specs that I thought looked rather good on me.  But they were taken out of my hands by the young girl in charge of us, who directed me firmly to the OldiebutnotveryGoldie section, with a brisk "Those don't fit you, these will be a better fit."

Oh well.  I could blame it all on my still missing front tooth, but given that we are all still wearing facemasks when out in public, maybe not.

Saturday was Field Service followed by getting together in our separate groups to work at our letters, get more territory etc.  Has the good news of the Kingdom ever been so urgent?

And I had a long phone chat with Bea in the afternoon. We talk to Jacks regularly, but still no chance of a meet up.

Now. Sunday afternoon, I am very glad to have had the meeting this morning with its infinitely comforting Bible based teaching assuring us of the rescue to come, because there was some bad health news from the family and I am not at all sure what is going to happen next.

Our talk this morning was about the days of Noah - and the powerful warning they give for us in our day.  The Speaker reminded us of all the evidence for a worldwide flood, which is both geological and historical. And in fact we have never forgotten it to this day, in that a great Feast of the dead - called Halloween in these parts - is held all over the earth on or about the exact day Genesis tells us that Noah and his family entered into the Ark, the door closed behind them, and the Deluge began.

Matthew 24:36-39 was a key scripture, obviously:  

• “Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father. For just as the days of Noah were, so the presence of the Son of man will be.For as they were in those days before the Flood, eating and drinking, men marrying and women being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark and they took no note until the Flood came and swept them all away, so the presence of the Son of man will be."

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Genesis tells us that the earth of Noah's day was "filled with violence", as it is now.  But it's not that everybody was engaged in terrible violence, many were simply so absorbed in their lives that they paid no attention to the warnings  their Creator was giving them through Noah.  And everyone must have known about that great building project, the Ark. It was probably a subject of many a joke - some of them likely quite funny - in whatever the Pre-Flood version of Mock the Week was.  

In these times, the time of Jesus presence, many ARE paying attention. And hopefully millions more will, before Armageddon.  It will usher in an earth in which there will no longer be any need to worry about family members having accidents, or illnesses, or sadnesses of any kind - an earth that will become the paradise it was always meant to be.

In Spain (and a Flare up)

Last night was the Memorial service for Simon, who died in Spain - where he and his family live.  There were 285 of us attending in Zoom.   The ceremony - short and simple - was half in Spanish and half in English.  All I could understand of the Spanish side was that the brother conducting the service read Ecclesiastes 9:5,6:  "For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all, nor do they have any more reward, because all memory of them is forgotten. Also, their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they no longer have any share in what is done under the sun."  At least I am pretty sure I heard those words, in Spanish.

  

These are powerful words. People have such fear for the dead, and  such fear of them.  Yet there is no need. They are conscious of nothing at all. There are no dreams in the sleep of death.  But all who remain in Jehovah's memory, held safe in "the everlasting arms" have such a wonderful awakening ahead of them. They will next open their eyes in an earth truly at peace, in paradise.

So I hope that when that time comes I will be able to meet Simon.  I know his mother, but have never met either of her children.   This is a sad sad time for her, even though she knows she will see him again. Losing a child must be one of the hardest things to come to terms with.

On a much lesser scale, but also caused by the tragic decision our first parents made in Eden (there was no death and no sickness in that paradise garden) my arthritis has flared up again - right leg, top half - and my skin condition has been driving me insane.  Captain B left at the crack of dawn - and I got down as much pain killing as I am allowed with my breakfast and hobbled back to bed.  I slept till lunchtime and do feel a bit better now.  It is the meeting tonight and before it starts I have to get Captain B's supper on the table - chicken curry - heated up by my own fair hands - and a fresh fruit salad.

The Covid Crisis remains with us in the shape of a couple of new variations that seem to be taking hold, but no-one as yet seems to know how effective the vaccines will be.  It has been, and is, an impressive vaccine rollout though.