return to something harder. something better.

Thanks to those of you who have read, commented or sent messages. All your kindness is truly appreciated.

The five of us – Emma, myself and the three little Borlases – returned home from a few weeks away in France at the weekend. It was late – 2am, I think – and despite the pep-talk in the car about how this time we really weren’t going to do anything other than just put the kids and ourselves straight to bed… I was still up at 3.27am checking emails. Ever since I returned home from a week away a couple of years back to discover that I was about to be sued by an irate fellow-author, I’ve been nervous about opening up the inbox after a long absence. Perhaps that’s why I always seem to do it when everyone else is asleep.

It turns out there was no need to be nervy this time (or, in fact, last time either; the threat of litigation never came to anything, in case you’re wondering). But as I worked my way up the column a sense of familiarity settled uneasily next to me. Old feelings – and recent ones too – told me I was home; the sense of time stretching out in front of me and a past now partially boarded up with mum and step-dad now gone… the sense of there being so much life to be lived ahead of me, but without so much of that which sustained me up to this point.

This was outside one of the gites we were staying in. I guess you could make it into a visual representation of how things are these days – the fact the influence of life carries on long past the actual business of being alive is over, the way that the new growth at the bottom seems so fragile and temporary by comparison to the weather stone and wood.  But I think it’s probably better seen as just a boarded up window.

What I am sure of is that there are some broader reasons to be genuinely excited and optimistic these days, as well as plenty of the personal stuff that requires a deep inhalation and determined step forward. It seems like we’re in the middle of a subtle yet potentially significant shift… a slight move away from the corporate and commercialized Christianity towards a more authentic, less impressive way of putting this faith of ours into flesh and blood. Little by little I wonder whether we are getting less impressed by the people we are following and more inspired by the change we are making.

I hope so.

Filed under: new normals