Tuesday Tune – We’ve only just begun

– The Carpenters

DH and I had a fantastically quiet New Year’s Eve last night. I usually hate New Year’s Eve, and more specifically the run up to it, as people get increasingly anxious about the coolness of their plans for what has to be The Biggest Night Of The Year and don’t want to commit to anything until they are sure that have secured the best offer going. I’m not really that cool, and I can’t be bothered with it, but I do want to spend time with the fabulous people in my life. Sadly many of them are mostly scattered all over the world, and after getting back from Belfast and being absolutely knackered DH and I decided we would just keep it simple (and quiet) and have a luscious dinner and watch a film. It was bliss! None of the ‘what should we do?’ dilemma… no more wondering if we should try to lure people to our child-friendly house, no more stressing over trying to potentially keep different guests entertained. Just me. And him. Perfect. We have above mentioned yummy dinner and talked about the year, the ups and downs, what we had learnt, what highlights, what sadnesses. It was beautiful and reflective and funny.

I chose this tune for today because when I was thinking back today on our conversation, I realised that in many ways it does feel like DH and I are just starting (again). Obviously its a new year and all that… but I think that this past year was very important for us as a couple and as a family. DH finished his PGCE and is actually getting PAID to be a teacher. Like, a proper salary! And I discovered and re-discovered many things about myself. In particular I have really enjoyed getting involved in musical things again with joining a really fun and social small choir. I love it! 🙂 It is great singing with people and also hanging out the people who are the same age as me, and who have different interests, backgrounds, outlooks etc to the people who I’m generally hanging around with in other parts of my life.

I have also got interested again in feminism and discovered a way of speaking and a vocabulary that I did not have. I did a little feminist theology at university but I mostly forgot it..! I think that it has been seeing how young girls are treated, and change (usually in line with what society deems as ‘acceptable’/desirable) as they get older, and how society and the church talks, thinks and acts towards women that has reignited this passion in me. Particularly being a mother of a girl, I feel passionately about what kind of world she and her peers throughout the world are growing up in, and what I can do to change and influence that world. Of course this is just as important for how Sir Pip and I bring up our son, but the messages that our (all of our) daughters will receive will begin earlier and be clearer than the messages our son will receive. Over this past year I feel like my eyes have been opened and I have found a language and a group of people that understand and who can help to form my ideas and values. For the most part these women are not Christians but I have found that I am closer to ways of justice, I am walking nearer to paths of peace and I am more active in expecting, and demanding that things be different than I often am amongst Christian circles. I feel that the Spirit of God is deeply in these things, although when I try to relate this to my faith there aren’t the concepts or the language to express what I am beginning to feel and experience. Although we say that there is no separation between sacred and secular we don’t actually mean it and we don’t have ways of talking like normal people to demonstrate our belief that this is true.

Anyway, I am rattling away now… 2012 was a year of great significance – a sort of coming of age in some ways. Which fits I guess, considering the grand old age of 30 that I reached at the beginning of the year. For 2013 I hope for more of the same… but more on that later this week. In the meantime, enjoy the song..! 🙂