He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from

the God of his salvation. (Ps 24:5)

We start with a traditional Rastafari prayer:

So we hail our God, Eternal God, Ras Tafari, hear us and help us and cause Thy face to shine upon us, Thy children.

Now it is the next chapter of the Kebra Negast:

7. CONCERNING NOAH

Now Noah was a righteous man. He feared God, and kept the righteousness and the Law which his fathers had declared unto him—now Noah was the tenth generation from Adam—and he kept in remembrance and did what was good, and he preserved his body from fornication, and he admonished his children, bidding them not to mingle with the children of Cain, the arrogant tyrant, the divider of the kingdom, [who] walked in the counsel of the Devil, who maketh evil to flourish. And he taught them everything that God hated—pride, boastfulness of speech, self-adulation, calumniation, false accusation, and the swearing of false oaths. And besides these things, in the wickedness of their uncleanness, which was unlawful and against rule, man wrought pollution with man, and woman worked with woman the abominable thing.

Today’s reading is Psalm 24. It is a psalm of David, praising God for his help in battle and thinking about Heaven. ‘The hill of the Lord’ and ‘his holy place’ are ways of describing heaven and the psalm. In this psalm ‘clean hands and a pure heart’ means that God’s people should do good things as well as avoiding doing evil things.

Psalm 24

1 The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

2 For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.

3 Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place?

4 He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

5 He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

6 This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah.

7 Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

8 Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.

9 Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

10 Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah.

I found a prayer to go along with this psalm…

JAH, you are the King of Glory, and everything ultimately belongs to you. Give me clean hands and a pure heart, as I seek to be part of this generation that seeks your face, who will dwell with you. AMEN

This piece is from the Lion of Judah Society website:

So Abram said to Lot, “Please let there be no strife between you and me, nor between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are brothers. (Genesis 13:8)

Abraham and his nephew Lot both had herds and flocks. In the land of Canaan, water was limited, and the two kinsmen found it impossible to stay together. Their herdsmen quarreled over grazing territory and water rights.

In this relationship, Abraham was Lot’s senior. He was clearly in a position of authority over Lot. He could have sent Lot away, sent him back to Haran, or assigned him to any scrap of ground he chose. Instead, Abraham elected to give Lot the first choice of territory and to be content with whatever remained.

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. (Philippians 2:3–4)

This can be compared to a man who started a business that prospered from the man’s sharp financial prowess and business acumen. When he saw that his young cousin was struggling financially, he brought him into the business as a kindness. After some time the young cousin demanded that the business be split between them. What did the man do? He said, “You take whatever customers you like and as many assets as you want, and I will continue on with whatever is left.”

People don’t ordinarily behave that way. They usually look out for their own interests, and when a quarrel rears up, they do their best to come out on top. Looking out for “number one” is human nature, but it’s not godly nature. Yeshua taught an attitude of self-effacement:

Do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:39–42)
By giving Lot the first choice of the land, Abraham exemplified the spirit of humility and heart of love that Yeshua described. To Abraham, preserving peace between brothers was more important than success or prestige. Predictably, Lot chose the best land for himself. Lot was not wicked. He was a normal sort of person, self-serving and looking out for his own interests. Abraham was not normal. “The disciples of Abraham, our father, are generous, poor in spirit and humble.” [m.Avot 5:19.] (lojs.org)

And lastly, a prayer that echoes the ideas in psalm 24…

He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from

the God of his salvation. (Ps 24:5)

We start with a traditional Rastafari prayer:

So we hail our God, Eternal God, Ras Tafari, hear us and help us and cause Thy face to shine upon us, Thy children.

Now it is the next chapter of the Kebra Negast:

7. CONCERNING NOAH

Now Noah was a righteous man. He feared God, and kept the righteousness and the Law which his fathers had declared unto him—now Noah was the tenth generation from Adam—and he kept in remembrance and did what was good, and he preserved his body from fornication, and he admonished his children, bidding them not to mingle with the children of Cain, the arrogant tyrant, the divider of the kingdom, [who] walked in the counsel of the Devil, who maketh evil to flourish. And he taught them everything that God hated—pride, boastfulness of speech, self-adulation, calumniation, false accusation, and the swearing of false oaths. And besides these things, in the wickedness of their uncleanness, which was unlawful and against rule, man wrought pollution with man, and woman worked with woman the abominable thing.

Today’s reading is Psalm 24. It is a psalm of David, praising God for his help in battle and thinking about Heaven. ‘The hill of the Lord’ and ‘his holy place’ are ways of describing heaven and the psalm. In this psalm ‘clean hands and a pure heart’ means that God’s people should do good things as well as avoiding doing evil things.

Psalm 24

1 The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

2 For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.

3 Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place?

4 He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

5 He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

6 This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah.

7 Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

8 Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.

9 Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

10 Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah.

I found a prayer to go along with this psalm…

JAH, you are the King of Glory, and everything ultimately belongs to you. Give me clean hands and a pure heart, as I seek to be part of this generation that seeks your face, who will dwell with you. AMEN

This piece is from the Lion of Judah Society website:

So Abram said to Lot, “Please let there be no strife between you and me, nor between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are brothers. (Genesis 13:8)

Abraham and his nephew Lot both had herds and flocks. In the land of Canaan, water was limited, and the two kinsmen found it impossible to stay together. Their herdsmen quarreled over grazing territory and water rights.

In this relationship, Abraham was Lot’s senior. He was clearly in a position of authority over Lot. He could have sent Lot away, sent him back to Haran, or assigned him to any scrap of ground he chose. Instead, Abraham elected to give Lot the first choice of territory and to be content with whatever remained.

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. (Philippians 2:3–4)

This can be compared to a man who started a business that prospered from the man’s sharp financial prowess and business acumen. When he saw that his young cousin was struggling financially, he brought him into the business as a kindness. After some time the young cousin demanded that the business be split between them. What did the man do? He said, “You take whatever customers you like and as many assets as you want, and I will continue on with whatever is left.”

People don’t ordinarily behave that way. They usually look out for their own interests, and when a quarrel rears up, they do their best to come out on top. Looking out for “number one” is human nature, but it’s not godly nature. Yeshua taught an attitude of self-effacement:

Do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:39–42)
By giving Lot the first choice of the land, Abraham exemplified the spirit of humility and heart of love that Yeshua described. To Abraham, preserving peace between brothers was more important than success or prestige. Predictably, Lot chose the best land for himself. Lot was not wicked. He was a normal sort of person, self-serving and looking out for his own interests. Abraham was not normal. “The disciples of Abraham, our father, are generous, poor in spirit and humble.” [m.Avot 5:19.] (lojs.org)

And lastly, a prayer that echoes the ideas in psalm 24…

God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. (Ps. 46)

This week is going to be a combination of a service-type letter and a Blitherings because this week the group has to be cancelled. The Chaplaincy have an important planning meeting on Wednesday so none of the groups are running, so I am hoping that I can manage to get this sent out to you.

Let’s start with a prayer….

So we hail our God, Eternal God, Ras Tafari, hear us and help us and cause Thy face to shine upon us, Thy children.

Next is the chapter of the Kebra Negast….

6. CONCERNING THE SIN OF CAIN

And that accursed man Cain, the murderer of his brother, multiplied evil, and his seed did likewise, and they provoked God to wrath with their wickedness. They had not the fear of God before their eyes, and they never kept in mind that He had created them, and they never prayed to Him, and they never worshipped Him, and they never called upon Him, and they never rendered service to Him in fear; nay, they ate, and they drank, and they danced, and they played upon stringed instruments, and sang lewd songs thereto, and they worked uncleanness without law, without measure, and without rule. And the wickedness of the children of Cain multiplied, until at length in the greatness of their filthiness they introduced the seed of the ass into the mare, and the mule came into being, which God had not commanded—even like those who give their children who are believers unto those who deny God, and their offspring become the seed of the filthy Gomorraites, one half of them being of good and one half of them of evil seed. And as for those who do [this] wickedness, their judgment is ready, and their error in lasting.

Next is the psalm for this week. The earth has had a battering this week. First Storm Isha and then Storm Jocelyn have both given my hillside a good old rattle. The trees have creaked and some big branches have come down. Luckily our mountain stayed where it should have been but as in the psalm, the waters definitely did roar. I had always read verse 10 “be still, and know that I am God”, as something peaceful and gentle. Instead it is a statement in a time of war, it is a shake up, a ‘be in awe’ and a cry for acknowledgement of who our God is. Here is Psalm 46…..

1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.

2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

3 though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.

5 God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.

6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

7 The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

8 Come and see what the LORD has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth.

9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.

10 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

11 The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Here is a prayer to end with. This is from Longevity website and written by Brian Ka….

Jah Rastafari, I and I call upon thee,

surround I and I with thy divine protection,

shield I and I from negativity and harm,

guide I and I on the path of righteousness,

and grant I and I spiritual strength and fortitude.

Jah Rastafari, hear I and I prayer.

Amen

***

It’s going to be a short Blitherings this week, I’m sorry, its been a busy week!

Along with everything else going on this week, I have spent a ridiculous amount of time storm watching! Wow! Those storm systems have been powerful….and even though Dilys is a particularly short sausage dog, you should see what happened to her ears when she went outside this week. I really wish I could show you a photograph of it but she always managed to race for the door too fast and I didn’t remember to have my camera ready.

This week has been eaten up with bathing Mali, visits from friends, sorting out tractors, bathing Mali, helping my middle daughter organise her filming schedule for her degree, picking her up from uni, bathing Mali, power cuts from the storms, dropping fuel off when my son runs out of fuel in the tractor…again, bathing Mali. There have been no repeats of the food stealing this week from Mali but she is such a mud-magnet!

I think that next week it will be time for the rams (the boy sheep) to go off to market. They’ve put a decent amount of weight on and there is very little grass left on the fields. They have been eating the hay that we cut last year and some beet that we bought in. Once they have gone, there will be just the breeding ewes (girl sheep) and they will have the field closest to the house. The rest of the fields will spread with muck, we have to get someone in to do that because we haven’t got a spreader, and then they will be left for this year’s hay.

This is going to have to be the lot for this letter…its 2am, I’m sat in the kitchen and everyone else has gone to bed. The fire is just about out, Dilys is snoring like a train and the whole house is rattling with the storm. I need to finish this letter to you and go bank the fire up with coal for the night and hope I can get this out to all of you tomorrow. I will leave you with this picture of Dilys, curled up for the night…

Blessings,

Elizabeth

I’m sat in a coffee shop, drinking coffee, enjoying my own head space and writing this letter to all of you. I’m hoping that I manage to deliver this in person to you, that I get out of the house despite the potential snow. At this point the forecasts still haven’t decided.

It’s very unusual that I get to sit quietly on my own anywhere so I am really enjoying this, but it has also given me space to do a lot of thinking and thinking has lead to me being concerned…I will explain this later.

This week has not been a good week for the family vehicles. Last letter I told you that my son’s sardine can had died of a brake cylinder problem. This week the head gasket on his tractor has gone and my car has two cracked wheel hubs (there’s some grim potholes on our Welsh hill) and its failed its MOT. I have to sit in the car park of the welders for a couple of hours on Wednesday morning while they jack up my car, take its wheels off, weld them, put them back on and then I drive on to our group. If I’m shivering you’ll know why. I think this maybe the moment to actually find my coat. I am really hoping nothing goes wrong and I can get to Berwyn in time.

The head gasket on the tractor is an easier job, my son tells me. Head gaskets for tractors only cost £7 and they are much easier to fix…he says. We will see!

This weekend is the start of lambing so I probably won’t see much of him, he’ll be busy, but if he does turn up back home at any point we will be able to smell when he’s arrived. Usually he smells pretty bad. He’s a farmer…they do. He works pretty full on. He works on a farm with dairy cows. He works on a farm processing logs and doing some work with sheep. He works on another farm with sheep. He has his own sheep. He smells. I do his washing…its grim, but I return it to okay. He has really good shower gel and he returns to smelling okay. But lambing!! 🤢 …..its such a grim smell I have to hold my nose to sort the washing and then it takes so many washes and so much washing powder to get it clean…so that’s my next few weeks.

Some of the readers of this letter will remember Lenny the Liability, my son’s rescue staffy that was a food thief of excellence. He sadly passed away and eventually my son got a new spaniel, Mali. She is the complete opposite of Lenny. She is a very pretty little girl who is so obedient and well-behaved (and an extreme magnet for mud!). She wouldn’t dream of behaving as bad as Lenny did and stealing food. Today she disgraced herself.

I went off to the utility room to sort out the next lot of washing. When I walked back into the kitchen there was Mali skipping round the kitchen with something in her mouth. She skidded to a halt, her eyes grew as big as saucers and she dropped whatever was in her mouth. Guilty! That’s what her whole body said as she ran and hid. The prize was an entire pack of cheese…untouched. The fridge was open…she’s never managed that before. You know that realisation when all the pieces of a puzzle fall together….there was a strange sound in the kitchen, Gwen (the big teddy bear of a retriever, also a greedyguts) was hiding behind the couch, the sound was a sort of gobbling, licking sort of noise, Gwen can open the fridge….GWEN!! Gwen had opened the fridge door, helped herself to an entire pack of butter and was eating it as fast as she could. Gwen was not sorry. Gwen was not ashamed. She was just upset that I had caught her before she managed to eat all the butter.

Once the butter was binned and the cheese was back in the fridge, no worse for its adventure, Gwen’s conscience caught up with her. She ran and grabbed her bunny and presented it to me to try to make it all better. Mali did moves that spaniels make when spaniels are trying to explain that they are really very sorry and won’t ever do this again

Right, my concern….

I know quite a few of you are getting ready to move on from Berwyn. For a few of you this is after long times away, but even for those of you who have been away a shorter time, any days away is a long time. I am praying for you, that you get out and you can live your best life, that you will be content and fulfilled. That you will be the sort of person you would like to be.

Out, whether its after a long or short time, is tough. It’s tougher than you would ever imagine. I spent two whole days looking for resources to help you….its grim. There is nothing. There is so little out there to help you prepare for how it will feel and I’m concerned. So, I’m going to give you the best of my ideas. I went back to work after 3 months when I had my first daughter. I loved my daughter and I loved being a mum, but I also really loved my job. Then stuff started going wrong. It became really clear that my eldest daughter was disabled and also that she had some big health problems and so I had to give up my job. I had 3 children and threw myself into being the best mum I could. I absolutely adored being a mum, but being the mum of a disabled child meant that I spent a lot of time at home, unable to leave home. I spent a huge amount of time dealing with tubes, syringes, drip stands…medical equipment that has the power to scare most people and I had to use it on my tiny, very loved daughter.

It’s quite lonely being that parent of a disabled child. People worry that ‘disabled’ is catching. They don’t know what to say to someone who is a half-dressed, half pyjama-ed ball of worry, who has spent the night on childrens ward, for the third week in a row. Only the strong stay friends with the mess that is disabled parenting.

When it became obvious that my daughter could manage a day with her carer and also that her life expectancy wasn’t great I decided that it was important for her, for me, for the rest of my family, to do something I wanted to do…so I applied to Berwyn, that took a whole load of courage. Then I had to go for an interview. And then turn up to work. I left society 17 years before. I didn’t have work clothes, I had disability-parent clothes…easy to wash blood & vomit out of, can sleep in on a camp bed on a hospital ward. I had a disability-parent haircut…can sleep on a hospital ward for 3 weeks and it still look almost okay. I was completely out of any idea of how to chat to normal people, dress, etc etc. I would sit in the car outside, trying to stop shaking and get the adrenaline up to go in and try to be ‘normal’.

I’m worried that this is going to be you…those of you who are getting out. The world will have changed and you will have changed too. I know you can get out and do well, but only with a mixture of adrenaline, courage and kindness to yourself. There will be moments when you need to push yourself and moments when you will need to not push yourself too hard, to take time to let yourself be peaceful. Take time to go for walks, be part of the outside world and be peaceful enough to enjoy it.

Back in 2020, during lockdown when everyone’s lives were shaken upside down, I started writing these Blitherings. I’m going to borrow a bit from one of the early letters as the best thing I can suggest to help you through..

“When my children were little, every night before bed, we used to do the ‘three good things’ together. After bath & pyjamas, they would have a last cup of tea (how British! always a cup of tea 😊) with me, in front of the fire, snuggled up on the sofa, and they had to think of three good things that had happened that day. My eldest daughter was often ill, as you know. My middle daughter had a period of being badly bullied. My son…well, he was usually cheerful….but whatever had happened in the day, no matter how bad the day was, we could always find 3 good things, even if it was just ‘that day is over, I’m going to bed, tomorrow is a new day’. Always there was something. We also found one thing that we were pleased with ourselves for, something we had done well. It makes a difference, practicing being happy and finding good things.

My 3 children are much more grown up than that now, they glide off to bed with a ‘seeya’, taking their dogs and their cup of tea (see, still British!) but I know that they still think like that…every so often, one of them will say something like ‘I got a good report in school today, that’s one of my three good things’, or ‘I felt well enough to take my dog to the field to play today, I think that’s a good thing’. So my challenge, even in these awful times, is for you each to think of your ‘three good things’ and for a bonus point, what you are proud of yourself for doing/ thinking /being that day. I will be doing it too!”

It isn’t all just my daftness, there are good psychological reasons behind this…honestly! So, those who aren’t leaving us can practice ‘3 good things’, those who are leaving, go well and I will be praying for you…and you can still be pestered with the Blitherings at lockdownletter.com on WordPress (no ‘s’ after letter, that address was already taken).

Blessings,

Elizabeth

I am Blessed!

I’m writing this on ‘Blue Monday’. There is an idea that the 3rd Monday into January is the point when people are the most miserable and are feeling sorry for themselves. I’m assuming it has some sort of commercial value, maybe meant to make us buy something to cheer ourselves up.

I’m sat here cuddled up with Dilys and Gwen, with snow falling outside (eeeeeeeeeekkk!!!), in front of the fire, with the aroma of the stew I’ve made filling the kitchen. My family are all home safe. I’m not feeling that blue…instead I am feeling very blessed.

That’s one of the things that I think is so good about our group. You all focus on blessings, things that are good, and I have noticed it as a trait in most of the reading I have done about Rastafari faith. I don’t think ‘Blue Monday’ is a Rastafari invention! Even though Berwyn is not an ideal place to be, see whether this week you can make a list for yourself of new things like in the prayer above…particularly how as a representative of the Rastafari faith, you get to behave with kindness and care to help make your wing a better place to live.

This week’s psalm….

Psalm 34

1 I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.

2 I will glory in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.

3 Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.

4 I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.

5 Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.

6 This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles.

7 The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.

8 Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.

9 Fear the LORD, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing.

10 The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.

11 Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.

12 Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days,

13 keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies.

14 Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.

15 The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry;

16 but the face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to blot out their name from the earth.

17 The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.

18 The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

19 The righteous person may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all;

20 he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.

21 Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned.

22 The LORD will rescue his servants; no one who takes refuge in him will be condemned.

Verse 8 tells us ‘blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him’. We are blessed and this week my request for you is that you share those blessings in the way you are with the people around you….I know how good you are at that, but this week take an extra step to share the blessings of RasTafari.

Kebra Negast

5. CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF SETH

And Adam died, and Seth reigned in righteousness. And Seth died, and Hênôs (Enos) reigned. And Hênôs (Enos) died, and Ḳâynân (Cainan) reigned. And Ḳâynân (Cainan) died, and Malâl’êl (Mahalaleel) reigned. And Malâl’êl (Mahalaleel) died, and Yârôd (Jared) reigned. And Yârôd died, and Hênôkh (Enoch) reigned in righteousness, and he feared God, and [God] hid him so that he might not see death. And he became a king in his flesh in the Land of the Living. And after Enoch disappeared Mâtûsâlâ (Methuselah) reigned. And Mâtûsâlâ died, and Lâmêkh (Lamech) reigned. And Lâmêkh died, and Nôḥ (Noah) reigned in righteousness, and he pleased God in all his works.

‘He pleased God in all his works’. What a thing to be known for…wow! I just can’t imagine how to remember how to be that good all of the time! I’m working very hard at ‘most’ instead of ‘all’ and that takes a lot of remembering. I mean, I’d like to manage all but..! I guess that’s why I’m suggesting the challenge I set us earlier. We can try to be better bit by bit together.

Prayers and Blessings

Time to pray for each other and give thanks for our blessings.

Reasoning

I thought we would Reason the ideas in today’s readings.

Final Prayer

Yanna (Our) Abbat (Father) Fatari (Creator) who art in

Zion Axum (Heaven) Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I is thy name.

Thy Kingdom come,

thy ‘Will’ be done on earth as it is in Zion Axum (Heaven).

Give us, your children, our daily bread and forgive us our

errors because of the feebleness of our heart.

Deliver us from the Adversary of the day,

and bless our hands and the things that we do.

Grant us long life, good health and strength,

to live and fulfill thy ‘Holy Will’.

For thine is the earth, power and glory forever and ever.  

Amen. Amen. Amen.

21st Century prayer to Emperor Haile Selassie I

proclaiming His Kingdom now on earth.

Blessed be Jah-Rastafari-Haile Selassie I

The Living God!  Amen!

This week I have had an all British make-over. Despite usually only admitting to Welshness, a couple of things per year bring out the whole British-obsession in me….the right weather to cut the hay (I know some of you from the group have been around for my hay-anxieties) and snow! I am completely obsessed with the weather at the moment, have subscribed to websites who produce all the detailed weather charts for different countries, the ones where METEO (who do the forecasts for the BBC) and the Met Office get their information from….completely obsessive! I’m not even supposed to like the snow.

Snow is an absolute nightmare when you live on the side of a steep hill, with no decent main roads and have farm animals…no shopping, no outside water for the animals, no driving down the roads unless its in the tractor, often no electricity because the weight of the snow has brought the power cables down. But I love it! I love wandering about in the unmarked snow and watching the birds, the foxes, the badgers all out going about their lives. I love the strange quiet of the land when no vehicles are moving, nothing is moving, so there is just you and nature. I must admit as well, I can pass a good bit of time just playing ‘dragon breath’ and seeing how deep the drifts are in the field. I love watching all the dogs race round, jumping and snapping at the snowflakes as they fall, chasing each other and barking with excitement. I do agree however that 5 wet, snowy dogs all drying off in our kitchen requires quite a lot of air freshener and towels!

Last year Mali became a snowy natty spaniel, she had snow dreds and we had to melt her in warm water in the sink.

So is it? Isn’t it?…going to snow? I know its going to be cold, its now down to where the low pressure gets dragged to as to whether we get a lot of snow or not and also whether you see me or not next week, because if it snows much at all there is not much chance of me getting to Berwyn. If I can’t get there, I will write you a letter like I did for Christmas and ask the Chaplaincy to see if they can get it to you.

There is something that is not going anywhere this week, or from now on. The sardine can (aka my son’s car) has died in nasty ways. We went off for our Monday excursion to get red diesel, plenty of cans just in case we do have snow, and the brakes started to stick. Some handy WD40 didn’t do the job so my son ended up driving along pulling up the brake pedal with his foot…not good. It seems it’s probably the brake cylinder gone and it doesn’t look like its worth putting a new one in. The state that the sardine can is in now, putting an air freshener into the car would double the car’s value, especially as the little problem it had with the ‘limp-home-mode’ coming on is now almost an every mile sort of problem. I think he and Mali are going back to travelling by tractor.

In the service sheet this week we looked at Psalm 103 and I promised you a story about verse 5 of that psalm “so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s”. The start of this story is a long way from the understanding of why that verse is relevant to my week, so hang on in there!

This week we went to pick up my husband’s Christmas present to me.

When I was young, I used to go for holidays with my parents up to my Grandparents’ house. We lived in a very tiny house at the time so I thought my Nanna’s house was amazing. It was a typical 1930’s house with stained glass parts to the window and it had a dining room as well as a living room and space for proper beds instead of bunk beds, so I thought it was really posh. We had a tiny kitchen, a very small living room and my Dad and Grandad had built a porch onto the back of the house that we squeezed a table into, as well as our coats, shoes and wellie boots.

My Nanna had 3 old clocks in the house, 2 wall clocks in long cases and a grandfather clock in the hall. The grandfather clock had a beautiful painted face and struck the hour. The other two clocks chimed on the hour, quarter past, half past and quarter to the hour. Sunday was clock-winding day and we used to watch my Nanna wind the clocks in the morning after our first cup of tea.

I’ve always been bad at getting to sleep and I was particularly bad at my Nanna’s house. She made the beds up with a sheet, two itchy Welsh wool blankets and a bedcover and the knack was to lie perfectly still so the slightly too small sheets didn’t move and let the itchy blankets get to you. I used to get into a tangle of concentrating so hard not to move that I couldn’t sleep, not being able to sleep meant that I would wriggle, wriggling meant that the itchy blankets got me, then I would have to get out of bed to try to put it all back together again, putting it back together again was a formula only grown-ups knew how to do and it was always cold at my Nanna’s house. My sister had a bed in the same room and after a bit of chatting and silliness she would fall fast asleep and stay sound asleep until morning. I would end up lying coldly, under the itchy blankets, listening to the clocks strike and chime the night away. I ought to have hated the clocks but I was still always mesmerised by them.

Fast forward to this Christmas and grandfather clocks have lost most of their value. No-one wants them. No-one has room for them, there are very few people who know how to repair them, they don’t match with modern furniture and so the value has come down massively on them…but I’ve still always wanted one. My husband said he would buy me a grandfather clock for my Christmas present.

It’s very difficult now to get a whole, original clock. They were made so long ago that bits of it get damaged or broken and then that piece of the clock gets put with a different case, the ceiling is too low so the legs get cut off etc etc. But I wanted an original clock, in its original case and I wanted it to be one of the older clocks too. I had looked for quite a while and I found one I really wanted, it was all original and we could afford it for my present.

We went off to Liverpool to look at it this weekend and if we liked it, to buy it and bring it home. The man who was selling it had inherited two of them from his aunt who had just died. She died at 102 years old, the clocks had been in her family all her life and had been inherited into her family from older family before that. The man who had inherited them now lived in a one bedroom flat in Liverpool and two grandfather clocks were a lot more than the flat could hold. He also wanted to sell the clocks to be able to pay back the loan he had taken out to pay for his aunt’s funeral. He was sad to see them go, but he really couldn’t keep them. By the time I got there one was already sold but it was the one that was left that I was interested in.

We started off by making small talk. The man looked like he had lived life quite hard, he had no hair at all, stretcher earrings in and not a single tooth left in his head. He seemed like a really nice man and I was trying to think of something we had in common to make conversation. He had lots of ska and original punk album covers on the wall…ha! Got it!…I’ll talk about music…I can talk music to anyone, I love most genres of music and I do like punk and ska. ‘Oooo! I like your taste in music’ I say. He says ‘yes, you must be the same age as me’. I’m stood a bit stuck, thinking that I still have most of my teeth and most of my hair and I really didn’t think I looked as old as that. ‘So how old are you?’ my husband asked him. “65”, he says……65!!!!!! He thinks I look 65!!!!!!! That’s almost two decades older than me!!!

I still bought the clock off him.

I went home and nursed my hurt feelings. My children and husband haven’t stopped teasing me. We went on a night out to Liverpool again that weekend with a friend…guess what the first thing my husband told my friend was?…yes, you guessed right! We went to a cocktail bar where one of the cocktails was made with ovaltine…they suggested that I drank that then went home to sleep. Drawing pensions was maybe mentioned. Not good.

I have fended off all sorts of jokes about my age this week so when the psalm I was reading promised ‘youth renewed like the eagle’s’ I couldn’t help but laugh about it. It was either laugh…or cry!

I’m sat here writing this in front of the fire with a mug of fennel tea, listening to the owls calling each other. It is -4*C outside and I can hear tawny owls and barn owls hunting in the field behind our house. I have Gwen for company, she’s leaning against my knee keeping me warm…she’s like a big ginger blanket. Dilys, the sausage dog, has deserted me. She has made herself a lovely nest in her new Christmas blanket right in front of the fire. And I’m off to check the most recent forecasts, hoping for a ton of snow!

Blessings,

Elizabeth

Happy Christmas! Lidät!

Today is the Ganna celebration so we will be having a slight change to the usual meeting (…and, of course, biscuits!!). I thought we would focus on celebration in our psalm and our prayer and then look at some of the traditions around and discuss those. First a prayer…

The Nyahbinghi Prayer

Jah Rastafari, we call upon your name And ask for your divine guidance and protection As we gather here today in unity and strength. We ask that you bless us with your wisdom and knowledge So that we may continue to walk the path of righteousness And fight for justice and equality for all people. We give thanks for your grace and mercy, And ask that you continue to guide us on our journey. Jah Rastafari, hear our prayer and bless us. Amen.

I love this prayer…’we gather here in unity and strength’ & we ask to be blessed ‘with wisdom and knowledge’. I hope with these words we can fathom a way together to put these into action, within the group and outside of it.

Psalm 103

Of David.

1 Praise the LORD, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

2 Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—

3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,

4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,

5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

6 The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

7 He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel:

8 The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

9 He will not always accuse, nor will he harbour his anger forever;

10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.

11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;

12 as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;

14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.

15 The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field;

16 the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.

17 But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children—

18 with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.

19 The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.

20 Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.

21 Praise the LORD, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will.

22 Praise the LORD, all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the LORD, my soul.

Later, in the Blitherings, I will tell you a story about verse 5 of this psalm, but for now this is the psalm I have been reading this week whilst studying the idea of ‘prayer’. Sometimes, especially at the start of the year, its good to just go back and re-think the basics. How do we talk to JAH? I think I’ve talked before about the idea of prayer being ‘Blessings’, but how do we talk to JAH in worship? I think this Psalm is a beautiful example of worship.

Ethiopian Christmas

A Piece About Traditional Christmas From Rastaknowledge Website.

Ethiopia, the oldest nation on record to have followed CHRIST and the nation in which David’s bloodline reigns. Without a doubt being the only nation in history to never be colonized,

Still holds the true and authentic information regarding our history in the Bible. Christmas in Ethiopia is called Ganna (or Genna) and is celebrated on January 7th(or 29th day of the month of Tahsas in Ethiopia).

Rastas CHRISTmas celebration is based on the bible and traditions of the Ethiopian orthodox church. They called this special day as Lidät unlike what the Catholic church used to call it.

It came from an Amharic word which means birthday.

To we who are of Rastafari it is a time to not only celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour in the manner prescribed by tradition.

But to reflect on this event in the context of the original prophecy as told to our father. And the expectations of the time of the manifestation of Elohim not only as Priest and Prophet but King,

Which the Emperor Haile Selassie I has fulfilled. No tree, no snow, no mistletoe. The main decoration depicts the Manger scene, where the Three Kings pay homage to the Infant.

Therefore, it is important to we who are of the faith to keep seeking knowledge and the teachings of HIM. We must hold steadfast upon righteousness and search all things.

I pray you may stay strong in the word of Jah and stay on the path of righteousness. Be blessed. Selah.

* * *

Here are the verses from Matthew 1:2 about the visit from the Magi, the Wise Men:

The Magi Visit the Messiah

2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi[a] from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
    are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
    who will shepherd my people Israel.’[b]”

7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” 9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

* * *

The date for Ganna is centred around the arrival of the 3 kings, one which is based on astrological history, instead of the Western date which was combined with the pagan celebration of Solstice. The Ethiopian church particularly celebrated the part of Balthazar who was reputedly a king from Ethiopia. He was said to be dressed in purple robes and to carry myrrh. Here are 2 pieces to explain myrrh:

“Myrrh is also a dried resin from Arabia and northern Africa (from thorny shrubs and trees of the genus Commiphora) used in perfumes, incense, and medicines for thousands of years. The word comes from an Arabic word meaning “bitter.” It has been valued for its aroma as well as for its use as an antiseptic, analgesic (topical painkiller), and other medicinal qualities.”

“Myrrh was used in ancient Israelite temple worship as an ingredient in the holy anointing oil for consecrating priests, the tabernacle, and kings (see Exodus 30:23–25). It was used in the purification of Queen Esther (see Esther 2:12), and it was also used in embalming (see John 19:39).”

So myrrh very likely grew where Balthazar was from. The gift itself told of Yahshua’s kingly status and could be used as anointing oil for kings as well as predicted Yahshua’s death and the need for embalming.

The picture above is The Adoration of the Magi, about 1495–1505, Andrea Mantegna. In it Balthazar is shown as holding the myrrh in an alabaster pot. Alabaster is a semi-precious stone which is highly valued and comes from Africa. Balthazar brought to Yahshua the best of gifts from his country, the things that were available to him. He also got on a camel and travelled hundreds of miles over many months following a star to go to worship Yahshua….that’s a pretty intense commitment!

Going back to my study of prayer and the idea of worship, first of all I’m hoping I never get called on to carry a Welsh dragon, whilst sat on a welsh cob horse, for many miles, over several months. When you imagine the commitment that this would have taken, following nothing more definite than a star in the sky..no email received, no WhatsApp message, to then invest in those expensive gifts, pack your suitcase, call your camel and head into the distance….! I wonder what would happen if I was asked?…whether I would have enough faith? A king of Ethiopia, Balthazar, did that. He brought his best gift hundreds of miles following a star to worship Yahshua. It was an incredible act of worship that those kings made. I wonder what will be asked of us in worship this year.

Closing Prayer

Happy Christmas!

This is a difficult letter to write well to you all. I do wish you all a happy Christmas, because the opposite is not good. It’s a Christmas closer to out for you all. It marks a happy time for your loved ones, and so I pray with you that their day is blessed. It’s also not Ethiopian Christmas, so its an odd one to mark for a Rastafari group. It is possibly the worst day, other than the very first, to be in an establishment like Berwyn.

So the best I can do is send you a Blitherings to keep you company, some of the things we usually read together to feed your minds, some prayers to keep you focused on blessings and to share with you some strangenesses that are my Christmas and also why its so important to me.

I thought we would start with a prayer…

Oh Jah, our heavenly father, Guide us on the path of righteousness, And protect us from the temptations of Babylon. Give us the strength and wisdom to overcome adversity, And to stand up for justice and equality. Bless us with your love and mercy, And help us to spread peace and harmony throughout the world. Jah Rastafari, hear our prayer and guide us on our journey. Amen.”

I borrowed this from a blog by Brian Ka and thought it was a good one for today, to sit and meditate on the words, to chant, to drum to…even if only in your mind. I think what is being prayed for in this prayer amounts to the best person we can be and I think that is what we are all trying to do in our group…I see that in all of you! This prayer will keep us focused on that ‘best’.

The next bit is the Kebra Negast…

4. CONCERNING ENVY

And when they had grown up together, Satan had envy of him, and he cast this envy into the heart of Cain, who was envious [of Abel] first, because of the words of his father Adam, who said, “He who hath the good-tempered face shall be the heir of my kingdom”; and secondly, because of his sister with the beautiful face, who was born with him and who had been given unto Abel, even as God commanded them to multiply and fill the earth—now the face of the sister who had been born with Abel resembled that of Cain, and their father had transferred them (i.e., the two sisters) when giving them [in marriage];—and thirdly, because when the two [brothers] offered up sacrifice, God accepted the offering of Abel and rejected the offering of Cain. And because of this envy Cain killed Abel. Thus fratricide was first created through Satan’s envy of the children of Adam. And having killed his brother, Cain fell into a state of trembling and horrible fright, and he was repulsed by his father and his Lord. And [then] Seth was born, and Adam

p. 4 looked upon him and said, “Now hath God shown compassion upon me, and He hath given unto me the light of my face. In sorrowful remembrance I will console myself (?) with him. The name of him that shall slay my heir shall be blotted out, even to his ninth generation.”

Next, the psalm…

Psalm 8

1 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory in the heavens.

2 Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?[c]

5 You have made them[d] a little lower than the angels[e]
    and crowned them[f] with glory and honor.

6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under their[g] feet:

7 all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,8 the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

9 Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

I thought this was a beautiful psalm, one that will make your hearts overflow with blessings. I thought as well that it is one that you can remember when you look for the stars and meteor showers. Do you remember a few weeks ago we talked about the meaning of the word ‘fathom’ and we got into discussion about it?…Some of the descriptions and explanations for that word that you all gave are ones I come back to now. The idea that JAH is too big to fathom the whole of Him, that some bits of overstanding were kept in some people’s minds, some bits in others, so that if everyone talked and learned from each other, exactly what Reasoning is, that the whole could be seen. I use the word ‘overstanding’ here, mostly because I love the image of it, and partly because that’s what Reasoning and fathoming seem to mean….Reasoning seems like going to climb a mountain (with discussing) to be able to see right to the horizon, all the surroundings so that the whole view can be seen (or fathomed). That’s what this psalm feels like, that if you Reason and pray and try to understand it, you will be able to fathom JAH’s creation. The words of the psalm sound so simple but have the whole of Creation in them.

Now, a prayer to finish on and then I will write you some Blitherings.

O God of Ethiopia, thy divine majesty;

thy spirit come in our hearts to dwell in the path of righteousness,

lead us,

help us to forgive that we may be forgiven,

teach us love and loyalty on earth as in Heaven,

endow us with wisdom and understanding to do thy will,

thy blessing to us that the hungry be fed, the naked clothed, the sick nourished, the aged protected and the infants cared for.

Deliver us from the hands of our enemies that we prove fruitful,

then in the last day when life is o’er, our bodies in the clay,

or in the depths of the sea,

or in the belly of a beast,

O give our souls a place in thy kingdom forever and forever.

Amen.

*. *. *

A celebration filled with family weirdness….that’s one of the things I love about Christmas. I love how Christmas, as part of being a Biblical celebration, has evolved in most families to be a collection of family rituals and oddnesses. It’s so interesting to see where things have developed from, who in the family’s past brought that particular tradition in and how old is it, and what new things have my generation and my children’s added. Some of them come from different countries, some from different generations, different amounts of spare money, different availability of treats….One of the first ones to spring to mind is probably held by many families still, and that is finding a satsuma or orange at the bottom of your stocking because in the past oranges were rarely brought into the country and so were a treat. Then there’s the ones that go back generations, I don’t know how far back and I don’t know if all families do this or not, but my family always cut crosses in the bottom of sprouts to help them cook more evenly. For one lucky sprout, for one lucky person, there is a star cut instead, to represent the star in the East that shone over the stable where Jesus was born. That’s all very well, but….a sprout!! Not many people feel lucky to have a sprout, with or without a cross cut in in.

We always have new pyjamas on Christmas Eve. Usually they are the sort of pyjamas that are a bit out of the ordinary, so for the children they have nice onesies or a fluffy dressing gown. Often they are animal onesies, so we have had tigers, unicorns, gorillas, Scooby Doo, cheetahs, a shark, reindeer over the years. The children then change into their onesies and we go off to Midnight mass. We go to an old, very traditional church where the congregation always do a double-take when a shark, a bear and Scooby Doo walk into the church, especially as they still do that to this day and my son is now 6 foot 5. It always gives them a moment of pure panic when they see a very tall gorilla walk into church. Luckily he is so tall that his ankles always stick out a fair way, no onesies are built to the proportions of a very tall and gangly farmer, so its only seconds before they realise who it is.

Then there is the conglomeration that is our Christmas dinner, another one where some of the traditions are old, some are weird and most are inherited. We have turkey for the main, but then with it we have a strange sausage meat, grain mustard and onion roll, baked and cut into pinwheels, which is a recipe passed down from my uncle from Belgium, from his grandmother who lived in the Black Forest region of Germany. We have a feta, butternut squash and pomegranate bake that was a recipe given to me by one of the nurses that looked after my daughter, that is traditional in their house. We have a green bean casserole with crispy onions, that came home with us from America and is traditionally a Thanksgiving dish eaten in New England. And then of course there’s the lucky sprout!

Next, there are the presents. My mum and dad join us for Christmas Day, and so do various of the spare teenagers that have been part of our family over the years. We never really know who is going to turn up on the day, so there are little stockings made up for them, with a pair of festive socks, some candy canes, a Christmas decoration, a Christmas pencil and some other odd bits and pieces. Last year they all had strange sweet-flavoured bath bombs, so cheap I’m surprised it didn’t make their skin fall off.

My mum and dad always have a stocking made up too. My Dad’s favourite sweets are called midget gems, little fruit flavoured chewy sweets with the black ones flavoured with liquorice. His favourite ones are the black ones and I always make sure he has a mixed bag of these in his stocking.

On Christmas Day, we start by opening stocking presents and then have our Christmas dinner. I get up early to put the turkey in and most of the dinner is prepped the night before so it only takes about an hour to pull the whole thing together and then we sit down to eat. My mum and Dad bring their dog Maisie over, who is Dilys’s sister. They each have a stocking to open that has a new blanket, a toy and a chew to keep them busy while we eat our meal. We light the big stove by the table and the two dogs sit in the basket in front of it and eat their chew…usually. Not always!

One year Dilys crept back in to the room where all the stockings are and rooted through my Dad’s stocking until she found the midget gems….and ate them all! Even worse, she didn’t like the flavour of the black liquorice ones so, to add insult to injury when my Dad found them, all that was left was a pile of chewed up and spat out liquorice midget gems. My Dad was horrified at missing out on his favourite treat and Dilys was in disgrace. So now, somewhere under the tree, there is always a small parcel of midget gems wrapped up, with a label on that says ‘To Grandad, with love from Dilys’.

Talking of Dilys, she has her own little Christmas tradition. At the beginning of December, when all the decorations come in from the barn, Dilys gets all excited. She sticks her nose into the boxes and starts rooting around. Her very first Christmas, when she was only 6 months old, I bought her a red velvet ruffled collar with bells all round it. The bells were quickly pulled off by her, but ever since, every day of December, Dilys wears her collar….and doesn’t she think she looks beautiful! She insists on greeting everybody to show off her new collar, so she races to answer the door to carol singers, delivery men, nurses, the lot. At night we take her collar off and hang it on a hook above her basket which is in front of the fire in the kitchen, then in the morning when we get up, she barks at the collar over and over, until we give in and put it back on her, so she can go and show a whole load of people what a beautiful and festive sausage dog she is.

I hope that in sharing some of this with you it will keep you company through the day. I hope that the day passes swiftly, that it is not too hard on your minds. I will see you in the New Year in time for Ethiopian Christmas. And remember that somewhere out there, there is a strangely shaped sausage dog wearing a Christmas collar and thinking that she is the most beautiful being in the world.

Blessings,

Elizabeth

Hi,

I hope you are all managing to avoid the horrible illnesses that are going round…there are some really nasty bugs. If you haven’t managed to avoid them, I hope you are recovering. I hope you are all keeping warm as well…I’m sat here with Dilys cuddled up with me so there’s not much chance of me feeling cold.

Poor Mali is sat shivering in front of the fire, looking bedraggled. She has had…I bet you guessed it…a bath. She went for a walk earlier and was the very stinkiest spaniel ever. I dread to think what she had been doing but it smelled like forty different kinds of grimness had attacked her from behind, held on tightly to her whilst they rolled her in evil! She was eye-wateringly bad. Now she’s a clean spaniel, she has to sit and dry off in front of the fire instead of running round the house like a muppet.

Did any of you manage to see the meteor shower the other night? I didn’t manage to see it that night, it was too cloudy, but on Saturday night it was really windy but there were clear skies and a managed to see a couple of meteors. They weren’t very impressive ones, were very small and their colours couldn’t be seen but I saw some which was enough to make me happy.

The next meteor shower after that is the Ursids meteor shower, which has already started and carries on until the 24th December. These peak on 21st-22nd of December and, for those of you who have a pad on the ground floor, some of these can be seen during the day (hopefully, if you are outside during that time) so you might manage to see them. For those of you that didn’t see any, I borrowed an image of the meteor shower this time, taken from a landmark that I think is near Berwyn…

I think its such a beautiful picture.

This week is not so much about the dramas with the animals,

more about the dramas with the humans.

A few years ago, when my son was just starting doing summer jobs in farming, he went to help a local farmer with bringing the hay in. He was part of an ever-changing group of teenagers who go to the different farms and make up the cheap labour of hay time. It’s a sort of farm boy rite of passage, where you get to learn from the older farmers in return for £20 for the day, a fish and chip dinner and their body weight in cans of monster and packs of haribo. The day usually starts at 6am and can continue until the early hours of the morning if there’s rain heading over. It’s fun, frantic, driving ancient tractors and barely-running quads, sometimes a bit of bad temper that blows over fast…time is too precious in the race to get the hay in, weather-watching, bale-throwing, something always goes wrong type of weeks. This particular year it was towards the end of the dry patch of weather, with rain heading towards them when the bale slide blocked. My son decided in the adrenaline of the moment to unblock the bale slide with his foot….bad idea!

I think he realised straight away that this was a problem, but of course getting the hay in comes first, so he kept on going. When he finally got home after a long day he was the same colour as the new growth grass…bright green and feeling very sick. The following day was another long day, but this time sitting in the accident department of the local hospital….he had managed a total of 8 breaks in his foot. He had a plaster cast on, crutches and found baling hay much slower for the rest of the season. I threatened, being a kind and sympathetic mum, that I was going to make him write (in his own blood) “I will not be the sort of wally that unblocks farm machinery with body parts”.

So…fast forward a couple of years until this week. I think I have told you that my son does lots of different work for different people, and one of those is someone who sorts and sells firewood. He also has sheep, so sometimes (like today) they are working with the sheep…today they have been dipping the sheep to get rid of any ticks or other parasites on them. Earlier this week he was helping his boss process firewood. They were in a rush to get the logs processed before it went dark and the weather got too bad. The wood processor blocked. Guess who’s son was the wally that unblocked it, whilst it was still running, with his hand? Yes, that would be my son.

He still has his hand…which is lucky. He still has all his fingers…which is more than he deserves (said his kind and sympathetic mum). He has quite a lot of skin missing and 2 fingers that look either broken or dislocated. Has he gone to the hospital?…he went to the little local hospital to have them checked, who said he needed to get them sorted at the main hospital, so he came home. He has carried on working and, as every kind and sympathetic mum should do, I’ve promised him arthritis and generally creaky fingers for his old age. How do I know this?…because I was just as bad when I was his age. 😊

Now the only thing left to answer is, will he be the wally in future who unblocks farm machinery with body parts?…what do you think?!!!

It’s been a really busy week, with all the prep for Christmas. Shopping, wrapping gifts, collecting my middle daughter from university with all her washing…and flu, so she is currently on lockdown in her bedroom with strict instructions not to breathe in public or anywhere near her sister. My eldest daughter has had her operation this week. It went well but it always leaves her painful for quite a while, so she’s watching films with Carrie, her assistance dog. I think they are working their way through all the Marvel films…Carrie loves watching films and quite often makes little barks and squeaks as she watches. She has lots of opinions.

Original readers of the Blitherings might remember that it is not one of my best skills to do paperwork. What I am really good at is finding a way of avoiding paperwork…hiding it, ignoring it, persuading Pete to do the paperwork for me. Writing Christmas cards, in my head, is way too much like paperwork…so I have developed a paperwork avoidance technique which, bonus, I also enjoy doing. For the last 10 years instead of writing cards I make Christmas decorations. I then hang them on a lit Christmas tree and when people come to my house they get to choose their own Christmas ‘card’, one of the decorations on the tree. That way people who have been in our lives for a decade have a decent collection of decorations and no cards are written or get thrown in the rubbish afterwards…that’s my excuse, cards are bad for the environment….see, I get to pretend that it is because I’m eco-conscious and get to not have to do paperwork!

Each year I buy a couple of extra beads and I always choose a few new charms to put on the end, usually to represent people or the year that has just gone. So last year we got Mali as a puppy, so I bought little spaniel charms. There are retriever charms to represent Gwen and Carrie. There are sausage dogs to represent Dilys and I still have Staffordshire bull terrier charms to represent the bestest Lenny. There are zebra charms to represent Gwen’s boyfriend…I will tell you about him one of the letters in the future, hedgehogs to represent my middle daughter. There are snowflakes, bells, Christmas charms, all different colours and different beads, so people very rarely just take one, they always tell me that they can’t choose between this one and that one and take both.

I always bring them into Berwyn for the Chaplaincy staff to chose one each instead of Christmas cards and this year one of the new charms is a lion…can you guess what that represents? It represents our new start! It represents, for me, coming back to Berwyn to this job, the learning I’m trying to do to make our group the best I can and the faith I have in our group for us to all gain overstanding and knowledge, as H.I.M. Halie Selassie I instructed us to.

So for the Berwyn staff I made the decorations in black, gold, red and green with a lion charm at the bottom. I really wish I taken photos of them before I distributed them, so I could show you all. I took these photos just now so you could get the idea of them but the tree looks a bit rubbish there because the lights don’t show up. I will see if any are still in the staff room to show you when I get in there, but I think they all went home. Somewhere, on Christmas trees all around our area, there are little lion decorations…a representation of our new start! I like that thought! 😊

Blessings,

Elizabeth

Kebra Negast

3. CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF ADAM

And I go up from Adam and I say, God is King in truth, for Him praise is meet, and He appointed under Him Adam to be king over all that He had created. And He drove him out of the Garden, because of his apostasy through the sin of the Serpent and the plotting of the Devil. And at that sorrowful moment Cain was born, and when Adam saw that the face of Cain was ill-tempered (or, sullen) and his appearance evil he was sad. And then Abel was born, and when Adam saw that his appearance was good and his face good-tempered he said, “This is my son, the heir of my kingdom.”

Psalm 148

1 Praise the Lord.[a]

Praise the Lord from the heavens;
    praise him in the heights above.

2 Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his heavenly hosts.

3 Praise him, sun and moon;
    praise him, all you shining stars.

4 Praise him, you highest heavens
    and you waters above the skies.

5 Let them praise the name of the Lord,
    for at his command they were created,

6 and he established them for ever and ever—
    he issued a decree that will never pass away.

7 Praise the Lord from the earth,
    you great sea creatures and all ocean depths,

8 lightning and hail, snow and clouds,
    stormy winds that do his bidding,

9 you mountains and all hills,
    fruit trees and all cedars,

10 wild animals and all cattle,
    small creatures and flying birds,

11 kings of the earth and all nations,
    you princes and all rulers on earth,

12 young men and women,
    old men and children.

13 Let them praise the name of the Lord,
    for his name alone is exalted;
    his splendor is above the earth and the heavens.

14 And he has raised up for his people a horn,[b]
    the praise of all his faithful servants,
    of Israel, the people close to his heart.

Praise the Lord.

This psalm is for thinking about when you look for meteors!