playing with sludge

Soups.

It's a Tuesday. So that's where the day started again.

Eager to please, and thus intent on variety, I opted for a 'velvety' (as in smooth and creamy) golden vegetable soup - that was the 'safe', more traditional option, for those that like to stick within parameters of what's familiar.

And alongside that I made a Tomato, Spinach and Mascarpone soup - which plainly people don't always get every day! At least, not judging by the comments that were made.

There were those who unilaterally took it upon themselves to call it 'sludge'. Now Sludge Soup has an alliterative ring to it, of course. But that's about all it's got going for it as descriptive of a soup. Not exactly the sort of name to give it a wide appeal!

Others asked, 'Are there tadpoles in it?' To which the reply was given (not, I hasten to say, by me!) that if there were they'd at least be high in protein!

Well, we certainly have our laughs out there each day! We take the task of serving others seriously. And yet we don't take ourselves too seriously at all. (And the folk actually liked the soup and some of them even enjoyed it enough to be asking for more!)

We play as much as work. Or at least we try to. I remember someone writing in a book (I think it was maybe Leonard Sweet) that the good things in life we play, not work. Like music.

We need to learn to play far more. And that's what we try to do, I suppose, in the way we do things here. Playing, as an orchestra learns to play. Together. Taking the music seriously, but playing it together.

Having fun in the tasks that require to be done. And finding ourselves enriched.

That's the sort of pattern to our lives, the way we try to live them here. And again, for me, there's been a great variety today.

Some spells in the kitchen. At the start of the day, when no-one else is around, getting on with concocting these panfuls of sludge. I mean, soup. And helping out later on when it's time for the big clearing up, with the dishes and pans and recepticles all to be washed and the whole place tidied up.

There's a certain, simple therapy in that. Creating order out of chaos. Restoring things to the way they're meant to be. A kind of simple kitchen sacrament of what my life's about.

The meeting at night was a version of 'soup-making' too. A futher chance to think through how the vision God has given us, for what The Lot (the place up town) can be, may best be realised in days to come.

A bit like musicians might enjoy a 'jamming' session. Bringing their skills and playing away on their instruments until the new tune they've been looking for begins to emerge from the music they're starting to play.

That's what the meeting was like. Playing away. Serious issues, but we don't take ourselves too seriously. And the outlines at least of a striking new tune was beginning, by the end, to emerge! It was an exciting time.

I was drinking a cup of coffee there, when the handle broke off and the cup all spilled right over the floor. For no apparent reason. End result - a mess.

It struck me as a picture of the way it often is. We lose our hold.

Almost as if our handle on the thing is simply taken right away. By God, in his wise and sovereign providence (as in he knows what he's doing, even when we don't have a clue!)

And things become a mess. Or seem to be so.

But it's out of the sludge that the tadpoles come. It's out of the mess, the chaos there was at the start, it's out of all that that creation itself emerged.

Maybe God needs what seems to us a mess to bring about a thing that's altogether new.

So we have to lose our hold, and lose control. No longer with a handle on the thing at all. A mess.

But something new and wonderful is taking shape. The tadpoles are emerging from the sludge. Life!

It's been that sort of day. Meeting different people once again. Talking through a range of different issues with each one. But always like musicians at their play. Teasing out the tunes which will enable us to live God's future tense.

Tuesday afternoon there's Scrabble in the hall. People there all playing with words. Serious stuff. But they play with words.

And I was doing that too.

Not 'Scrabbling' away in the hall. But playing with words, as I sought, like some musician on his instrument of language with its countless strings of words, to tease into existence a new tune: the message I'll be bringing to the people who will gather at the service of thanksgiving I'll be leading.

Tomorrow. Another day.

A new day. What God is always bringing.