Like many others I watched the Para-Olympics this year and was hugely impressed by the ability, courage and tenacity of the athletes. Despite overwhelming problems caused sometimes by birth defects or by a trauma during their life, the athletes had made something against all odds, sometimes doing better than they would have done had they been able-bodied.  They can never get away from their impairment.  It will always be with them, but in no way was it dictating to them who they were and undermining their ability to live and achieve.

At the same time as I was watching the Games, something happened to remind me of a traumatic childhood incident. I was invited to help at something and my immediate response was one of dread like a great lump of stone in my stomach.  I felt slightly sick and depressed as well.  Suddenly, within this dark reaction, a window of understanding opened up and I saw that when I had experienced this feeling in the past – and in my twenties it was often with me – I had blamed myself for not being strong enough to cope, weak, a failure.  Now I realised that just like a physical disability, this memory of past hurt is part of who I am.  My emotional reaction was a strong and true one, a recognition deep inside me of what happens when life goes wrong or is wrong: a drawing back from the wrongness, which is a sign of health, not dis-ease.  The experience will always be with me, although I barely think of it nowadays.  It does not dictate in any way who I am.  Rather it has helped make me who I am for a lot of good stuff has been born from it.

As if to emphasize that I was on the right track a few days later someone spoke to me of the echoes of their own childhood trauma coming up out of the blue to affect them. Again there was a deep shock felt emotionally and physically, a sense of surprise that this incident long past and seemingly worked through could suddenly take them unawares and propel them into dismay; and then, finally, a working through to a place of steadiness again.  Despite our reaction, in exchanging notes both of could see how far we had come over the years.

So where is God’s healing in all this? I am healed; so is my friend; so are those disabled athletes who so impressed us at the Para-Olympics.  We are not cured, we are healed.  Healing is about wholeness, about being reconciled to God, our friends and families, our histories and ourselves.  It is about forgiving and knowing you are forgiven.  God’s love has helped me come to terms over the years with what happened, but more than that his presence has allowed me to make use of the experience on behalf of others.  Yes, every now and again the old feeling will suddenly wind me, but recognising it and standing back from it, I can now say –No, Alison, you are not weak or a failure.  You are slightly disabled.  All human beings are disabled in one way or another.  Live with it and make something of it.

It is interesting how we can say the same thing over and over again – as we do in the repetition of The Lord’ Prayer and even read commentaries about it, but not ‘get’ for ourselves what the passage is offering.  It is also interesting to go back and see how a biblical passage gives and gives in different ways according to where you, the receiver, are at any given time.

This week I was reading and praying through Luke’s Lord’s Prayer (11: 1-6) and reading the notes at the bottom of my bible.  Not for the first time I came across the note that goes alongside, “Give us this day our daily bread.”  Another way of interpreting this line was, “Give us this day our bread for tomorrow.”  For some reason, known I am sure to scholars, the first interpretation has become the one we all use.

But the second is very powerful and it got me thinking about a book called “Sleeping with Bread.” This book has this title because after the war when orphan children were collected together who had lived wild amongst the bombed out buildings of many major cities, it was found the children could not go to sleep at night unless they had a hunk of bread to clutch in their hands.  They had so often gone hungry, so often been really afraid of starving that despite now being in a safe place, they were unable to trust that they would be looked after when they woke up: that there would be food on the table.  As soon as they were given a hunk of bread they went to sleep, comfortable and confident.

Asking God for the bread we will need tomorrow is not about greed or wanting to rush things. It is about asking Him to give us today the trust that we need to face tomorrow: the trust in Him.  At certain times this need is more powerful as we face life-changing experiences – illness and its treatment, bereavement, redundancy, retirement, the birth of a first baby, the children leaving home – and many other things.

So sometimes I will use, “Give us this day our bread for tomorrow,” because sometimes I need God to give me more trust in the future – the future I am walking with him – than I can find in myself.  I need that bit of bread to clutch in my hand.

The Americans have a phrase that they sometimes use when saying “Goodbye” and it is “Missing you already.” This is a bit how I feel as I slowly watch the seasons change in this beautiful place in which I have been so privileged to work for the last four years, and know that I will never again have the opportunities I now live with daily.

Ever since the late spring when I knew I was retiring, I have been very conscious of the passing of the days; the subtle movements through the seasons. I am aware that I am living through many of the things that give me so much delight at Launde for the last time.  For example, the house martins and swallows who come with such joie de vivre and energy to Launde in the spring have been practicing their breath taking aerial acrobatics for the last few days.  I know that this is a sign that they will soon be gone.  Sky bombing, wheeling and climbing, they give us such delight before leaving for their long pilgrimage south for the winter.  I don’t like it when they go.  The world seems a slightly less joyful place.  It is easy to get maudlin.

About two weeks ago, I realised that a beautiful bush which I can see from my office window and which slowly turns red and gold and then into a dazzling fire; this had already begun its seasonal change. What with this and the swallows, I had to admit that:-

Autumn is coming and I am missing Launde already.

But then, I woke up. As I “turned aside” to look at my burning bush, I realised that of course that turning aside is the moment when we stop what we are doing and in the present moment see what is in front of us.  The phrase, turning aside, means just that.  We stand aside from out busyness, from our routine, from our driven-ness and hurry; we pause and wait and see now.  My melancholic wrapping everything around with a future sense of loss means that I am not able to be very simply here in the present.  The invitation, to paraphrase the words of poet, Mary Oliver, is mostly to stand still, learning to be astonished.  So I need to learn to stand still.  I need to learn astonishment at all the beauty I see because, at present, I take it all so much for granted.  I need to stop thinking about what I have to say goodbye to and trust that God has other wonders to show me and other experiences I need to learn for, in the words of another poet, Robert Frost there are “miles to go before I sleep.”

‘So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Luke 11: 9,10

These words were part of our gospel reading a couple of weeks ago and as I first read them I had the usual feeling of comfort, security and hope. But this was not a casual reading, so I asked myself the spiritual director’s question, “What do you really want deep down; what do you want to ask for?”  If asked what are you really searching for what would be your response?  What door are you knocking at?  Who is to open it?

At first glance these three questions can be taken as saying much the same thing but all ask subtly different questions. If we take the last one, for example, believing that God is a loving father who made us for relationship with Him, then the question arises, “Why is the door not open?  Is it me who is actually keeping the door closed against God?”  There are visual memories here of Holman Hunt’s painting, “The light of the world,” in which Jesus is shown as being on the outside of a door (supposedly of the human heart and soul) on which there is no handle (so he cannot force an entry) and knocking on the door to be let in.

The other two statements of invitations of Jesus feed into this last question of the door. Suppose what I ask for, is to have a heart full of love and gratitude for God and my neighbour?  Suppose I am seeking simply for God – although I know that I have found Him or He me, there is still so much hunger and desire for a closer relationship.  If these two desires are explored I come up against my own habitual response of selfishness and meanness of heart, my own lukewarm commitment to my discipleship, my own lack of care for others.  So I realise that it my door that remains closed to God and the qualities of compassion, gratitude and the desire for justice that at one level I so dearly want.

C.S. Lewis was once asked why he prayed because he could change God’s mind. His response was that he didn’t pray to change God but to change himself.

So the invitation is to keep on knocking, like the woman claiming justice from the unjust judge or the friend at midnight asking for the loan of bread from his neighbour; but to realise I am the unjust judge and the woman who wants justice.  I am the friend who wakes his neighbour because he needs bread and the neighbour who wants to ignore him.  When I realise this I know that what Jesus is inviting me to do is to go on knocking against my own hardness of heart.  I ask, seek, knock – in other words I pray, not to change God’s mind but to change mine; to be more in line with what God wants for me.  God is already there for me one hundred percent.  He doesn’t have to change.

Two of the readings today (the eighth Sunday after Trinity) are about hospitality. The Old Testament reading is the story of Abraham welcoming the three strangers who come to him when he is encamped at the oaks of Mamre, and who tell him that Sarah, his wife, will bear a son.  The New Testament lesson is the famous one of Jesus being welcomed into the home of Mary and Martha and then Martha getting very cross because she is doing all the work whilst her younger sister sits at Jesus’ feet.

Hospitality was very important in the world of the Middle East, not just for Jews and later, in the Christian tradition, but for all cultures. It might have had something to do with the distances people had to travel or, if you were someone like a Bedouin, how seldom you actually saw people other than your family.

In the story of Abraham and the three visitors, the feeling we receive from Abraham is almost one of entreaty. As soon as Abraham sees the men he runs to them (it was not dignified for an old man to run – and Abraham is old at this stage.)  Abraham bows to the ground, which I presume means he gets on his knees and bends his forehead to touch the earth in front of them.  He offers food and water modestly and humbly but the actual meal, which is produced with as much speed and care as possible, is as good and as generous a feast as could be created in the circumstances.  And then Abraham stands by waiting on his guests whilst they eat.  In all this Abraham is only doing what would have been expected in the culture of the time.

Fast forward to Mary and Martha and Martha’s frustration with Mary for not helping prepare the meal for Jesus. When the men came to Abraham it took Abraham, Sarah and a servant to produce the repast.  Martha is not then being unfair when she wants one other person, her own sister, to help her and complains to Jesus.  But very gently and compassionately (this is the meaning of Martha’s name being repeated twice by Jesus) Jesus tells Martha that “Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”  Jesus is not telling Martha off.  He is not trying to make her feel small.  He is trying to open her eyes to a new way of looking that is a break with her cultural norms.  In this case, Jesus is saying, in this one unique and particular case, Mary has chosen to do the right thing and that is to sit at the feet of Jesus, like a disciple, and lap up the food of everlasting life, the Word of God, the presence of the Christ.

This story reminds us that our actions need to flow from our interior relationship with God. It is extraordinarily important that we should practice hospitality but if we want to grow truly hospitable hearts they will need to be nourished beforehand by the hospitality God first showed us, in his gift of Jesus Christ.  We need to feed on and be refreshed by his presence deep in our hearts.  Then we will learn to look on all people, of all faiths and none, as precious, honoured and loved by God, and we will be able to welcome them in our hearts.