Soggy Bears

Another rainy day... I am beginning to think I should build an ark! Drew and I have just being out to deliver a birthday present to a buddy, and walked around getting wetter and wetter (wind and rain join forces to defy even the strongest brollies). Finally we surrendered and called off the planned hike in the moors (Bronte-land). Instead we returned our soggy selves to our cozy little basement flat to drink tea and study. (This last sentence carries the risk of provoking Hannah's 'boffin' accusations. However, I regularly am the recipient of the cheeky suggestion as to 'do you colour your hair?' To this insinuation that I am blonde, thereby dumb, I usually causally mention that I beat the president of the Leeds University Chess Society at... chess.
Enough blowing upon my own trumpet... as I remain dangerously dizzy - Drew has saved my life a dozen of times whilst crossing roads (not entirely my fault - British drivers are fairly mad). So yeah, Uni has injected a dose of boffinness in me, how to listen, how to finish what I start (half finished essays do not go down to well!), how to critically assess things- not just absorbing pre-formed thought patterns. Besides! education can make mischievous plans and pranks all the more efficient and effective!
Nevertheless, I am through with theories. I am not cut out to be an academic (unlike my darling clever tiger). Nope, I am ready to do something more vocational, work with people. It is individual stories that really excites my creativity. Every life has a story of design, is a narrative of brokenness with the potential story of healing.
My favourite poet that I encountered this year is the Caribbean Derek Walcott. In his essay The Antilles: Fragments of an Epic Memory he describes how his nation can claim a beautiful history from the pain of the past through a image of restored vase:
'Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape. It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments, the cracked heirlooms whose restoration shows its white scars.'
I know I am rudely mis-appropriating his images... but the symbolism in these words has comforted me so much in this spiritually difficult year. I feel like I have the white scars that display the healing and grace of Christ. He lifts me out of the soggy puddles where I fall and hangs me on the line to dry. Now I can be huggable again.

On a lighter note, here is my scrumptious smoldering bloke, looking cool. The picture was taken the summer after we left Thetis Island, and moments before Drew was to get well and truly beaten by his wife-to-be, lose his cool, and throw the pieces across the Ruby's lovely garden in a pouting rage! Haha! I can say all this because Drew is cleverer at absolutely everything else!