“I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc. don’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence.”
CS Lewis, Letters
Friday, 13 November 2009
Thursday, 29 October 2009
A day in the life of a GP registrar in Scotland.
Written for the YLCF "A day in the life of..." Carnival (http://www.ylcf.org/)
I have just got back from a 2 week holiday in India, so still in that strange state of having passed between 2 worlds. The journey took 30 hours from door to door with not enough sleep so passed 12 hours on Saturday night in deep slumber and slept very well on the Sunday night too. Today as yesterday the sun is shinning, and it is a beautiful autumn day with some trees already bare but others covered in glorious reds, oranges and browns.
But Monday morning sadly, it is grey, but not raining, with that coolness in the air, that is so very refreshing after the hot stickiness of South India (but I still miss it!).
I wake up at 7:15 am, wash my hair, get dressed, dry my hair, eat some breakfast, make sandwiches, put on a necklace and earrings and head out the door just after 8 am. I have a little second hand green Corsa with a lovely dent in the side and it makes all manner of funny noises but it gets me to work and it start thankfully despite the previous 2 weeks of non-use.
I listen to the Today programme as I drive, some politician being ruthlessly interviewed. Arriving, at work I have forgotten my password for the computer so phone the help desk and my first patient is seen 10 minutes late but I catch up. The morning is full of variety as it always is, different faces and problems, prescriptions and health advice leaflets, compromising and advising. I finish my surgery/clinic at 10:30 on the dot but not all the paper and computer work, but make a cup of tea before embarking on my dictation and case notes. I miss the doctor's coffee break partly because there is so much to do but so does everyone else as far as I can see. I am doing visits with my GP trainer, and so we jump in her car head first to the house of a 99 year old and then to a Nursing Home to see five of the residents. We discuss my holiday in India, and then on the way to the Nursing Home, a book based on the diary of a lady who was born in 1900 and died at the age of nearly 100 and all the changes she would of seen. The Filipina Nurse at the Home is full of the cold, but she directs us here and there and all is done by about 1:30 pm but we are still late for the doctors meeting arriving at 1:45 for the last 15 minutes. I eat my peanut butter and marmalade sandwiches and drink tea as talk shifts around the table.
I then have an hour to do more paperwork before a tutorial at 3 pm. I make a list of issues and questions I have, but before starting make more tea for us both. Later we set up a video camera that I will use later in the week for a video surgery. I dash out of the surgery leaving some things to be sorted the next day, as I drive to a friend's house prior for dinner to a missionary ( OMF) prayer meeting. The speaker works for OMF in Singapore advising parents and families in regard to home-schooling. The hostess and my other friend are both teachers so discussion focuses around this and other OMF chit-chat. We eat spaghetti bolognaise and a fruit flan and then Linda and I do the washing up and Sheila (the prayer group leader) and Moira (the speaker) set up in the living room. Everyone starts arriving, different voices mingling including that of Quest, Meryl's faithful guide dog.
Moira speaks in 20 minute sections, rewarding us with a prize for a question in each section, but they are all rather obscure. However I manage to win a batik cloth with Emmanuel in Chinese and English for pointing out Swine Flu to be the likely cause of a Giant Teddy Bear with a mask sitting on the pavement of Orchard Road, Singapore. Health Promotion Exercises in a country understandably frightened after SARS. And we pray for missionary kids and how they can be educated in the situations where their parents work.
I drive home as everyone starts to drink yet more tea as am still tired and jet lagged. I shower, watch some Spooks (a BBC drama about MI5)and then fall into bed with a John Simpson (BBC journalist) book but so tired read only a few pages and then fall quickly asleep.
I have just got back from a 2 week holiday in India, so still in that strange state of having passed between 2 worlds. The journey took 30 hours from door to door with not enough sleep so passed 12 hours on Saturday night in deep slumber and slept very well on the Sunday night too. Today as yesterday the sun is shinning, and it is a beautiful autumn day with some trees already bare but others covered in glorious reds, oranges and browns.
But Monday morning sadly, it is grey, but not raining, with that coolness in the air, that is so very refreshing after the hot stickiness of South India (but I still miss it!).
I wake up at 7:15 am, wash my hair, get dressed, dry my hair, eat some breakfast, make sandwiches, put on a necklace and earrings and head out the door just after 8 am. I have a little second hand green Corsa with a lovely dent in the side and it makes all manner of funny noises but it gets me to work and it start thankfully despite the previous 2 weeks of non-use.
I listen to the Today programme as I drive, some politician being ruthlessly interviewed. Arriving, at work I have forgotten my password for the computer so phone the help desk and my first patient is seen 10 minutes late but I catch up. The morning is full of variety as it always is, different faces and problems, prescriptions and health advice leaflets, compromising and advising. I finish my surgery/clinic at 10:30 on the dot but not all the paper and computer work, but make a cup of tea before embarking on my dictation and case notes. I miss the doctor's coffee break partly because there is so much to do but so does everyone else as far as I can see. I am doing visits with my GP trainer, and so we jump in her car head first to the house of a 99 year old and then to a Nursing Home to see five of the residents. We discuss my holiday in India, and then on the way to the Nursing Home, a book based on the diary of a lady who was born in 1900 and died at the age of nearly 100 and all the changes she would of seen. The Filipina Nurse at the Home is full of the cold, but she directs us here and there and all is done by about 1:30 pm but we are still late for the doctors meeting arriving at 1:45 for the last 15 minutes. I eat my peanut butter and marmalade sandwiches and drink tea as talk shifts around the table.
I then have an hour to do more paperwork before a tutorial at 3 pm. I make a list of issues and questions I have, but before starting make more tea for us both. Later we set up a video camera that I will use later in the week for a video surgery. I dash out of the surgery leaving some things to be sorted the next day, as I drive to a friend's house prior for dinner to a missionary ( OMF) prayer meeting. The speaker works for OMF in Singapore advising parents and families in regard to home-schooling. The hostess and my other friend are both teachers so discussion focuses around this and other OMF chit-chat. We eat spaghetti bolognaise and a fruit flan and then Linda and I do the washing up and Sheila (the prayer group leader) and Moira (the speaker) set up in the living room. Everyone starts arriving, different voices mingling including that of Quest, Meryl's faithful guide dog.
Moira speaks in 20 minute sections, rewarding us with a prize for a question in each section, but they are all rather obscure. However I manage to win a batik cloth with Emmanuel in Chinese and English for pointing out Swine Flu to be the likely cause of a Giant Teddy Bear with a mask sitting on the pavement of Orchard Road, Singapore. Health Promotion Exercises in a country understandably frightened after SARS. And we pray for missionary kids and how they can be educated in the situations where their parents work.
I drive home as everyone starts to drink yet more tea as am still tired and jet lagged. I shower, watch some Spooks (a BBC drama about MI5)and then fall into bed with a John Simpson (BBC journalist) book but so tired read only a few pages and then fall quickly asleep.
Thursday, 17 September 2009
Inspired by CS Lewis and Esther Bhasme
I am the product of ...
humid hot weather
inventing of imaginary places
far too many notebooks
mango and sticky rice
inky fountain pens
musty libraries and
the smell of rain on hot concrete
Rebekah Dickinson 18 September 2009
humid hot weather
inventing of imaginary places
far too many notebooks
mango and sticky rice
inky fountain pens
musty libraries and
the smell of rain on hot concrete
Rebekah Dickinson 18 September 2009
A product of endless books
"I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books." -C.S. Lewis
Monday, 31 August 2009
Ruth Myers
When I was at University, a friend gave me a copy of a prayer from Ruth Myer’s 31 Days of Praise. I have often come back to this over the years.
“I’m so grateful that the Christian life is not a rigorous self-improvement course or a do-it-yourself kit...that it is not a call to prove myself or improve myself by overcoming my own shortcomings and failures, in my own way, by my own resources. Thank You that, instead, You are at work in me and in my situation to break old patterns of thought and action, to create within me both the desire and the power to do your gracious will...and to make me a joy to You in new ways.
I praise You that “Jesus Christ is able to untangle all the snarls in my souls, to banish all my complexes, and to transform even my fixed habit patterns, no matter how deeply they are etched into my subconscious” (Corrie Ten Boom).Thank You for the many ways You use other people to counsel me and help me grow..and yet that Christ Himself is the Answer to my hangups, the one Source who can meet my deepest needs. How I rejoice that He is wonderful in counsel and mighty in power, and that He heals from the inside out. Thank You, too, for the Holy Spirit-the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength. I praise You that He is in me to enlighten me through Your Word, to flush away my anxieties and fears, my resentement and hostilities, my guilt and regrets, as water flushes away dirt and trash..to keep me filled with Himself and to flood my heart with Your love..to produce through me that fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control..and to enable me to give thanks for all things as the hours and days and weeks pass. I rejoice that You are able and do far more than all I ask or think, according to Your power that is at work within me-the same power that raised Jesus from the dead!” Ruth Myers 31 Days of Praise Page 74-75
“I’m so grateful that the Christian life is not a rigorous self-improvement course or a do-it-yourself kit...that it is not a call to prove myself or improve myself by overcoming my own shortcomings and failures, in my own way, by my own resources. Thank You that, instead, You are at work in me and in my situation to break old patterns of thought and action, to create within me both the desire and the power to do your gracious will...and to make me a joy to You in new ways.
I praise You that “Jesus Christ is able to untangle all the snarls in my souls, to banish all my complexes, and to transform even my fixed habit patterns, no matter how deeply they are etched into my subconscious” (Corrie Ten Boom).Thank You for the many ways You use other people to counsel me and help me grow..and yet that Christ Himself is the Answer to my hangups, the one Source who can meet my deepest needs. How I rejoice that He is wonderful in counsel and mighty in power, and that He heals from the inside out. Thank You, too, for the Holy Spirit-the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength. I praise You that He is in me to enlighten me through Your Word, to flush away my anxieties and fears, my resentement and hostilities, my guilt and regrets, as water flushes away dirt and trash..to keep me filled with Himself and to flood my heart with Your love..to produce through me that fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control..and to enable me to give thanks for all things as the hours and days and weeks pass. I rejoice that You are able and do far more than all I ask or think, according to Your power that is at work within me-the same power that raised Jesus from the dead!” Ruth Myers 31 Days of Praise Page 74-75
Sunday, 19 April 2009
Blotted out.
This was on Facebook daily bread and a great and timely reminder.
The Best Eraser
READ: Luke 16:19-31
“ I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions. —Isaiah 44:22 ”
What is memory? What is this faculty that enables us to recall past feelings, sights, sounds, and experiences? By what process are events recorded, stored, and preserved in our brain to be brought back again and again? Much is still mystery.
We do know that memories can be blessings—full of comfort, assurance, and joy. Old age can be happy and satisfying if we have stored up memories of purity, faith, fellowship, and love. If a saint looks back on a life of Christian service and remembers the faithfulness of Him who promised: “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5), his or her sunset years can be the sweetest of all.
But memory can also be a curse and a tormentor. Many people as they approach the end of life would give all they possess to erase from their minds the past sins that haunt them. What can a person do who is plagued by such remembrances? Just one thing. He can take them to the One who is able to forgive them and blot them out forever. He’s the One who said, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Heb. 10:17).
You may not be able to forget your past. But the Lord offers to blot out, “like a thick cloud, your transgressions” (Isa. 44:22). — M.R. De Haan
The deep remorse that’s in the soul
No human eye may trace;
But Jesus sees the broken heart,
And can its woes erase. —Bosch
The best eraser is honest confession to God.
The Best Eraser
READ: Luke 16:19-31
“ I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions. —Isaiah 44:22 ”
What is memory? What is this faculty that enables us to recall past feelings, sights, sounds, and experiences? By what process are events recorded, stored, and preserved in our brain to be brought back again and again? Much is still mystery.
We do know that memories can be blessings—full of comfort, assurance, and joy. Old age can be happy and satisfying if we have stored up memories of purity, faith, fellowship, and love. If a saint looks back on a life of Christian service and remembers the faithfulness of Him who promised: “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5), his or her sunset years can be the sweetest of all.
But memory can also be a curse and a tormentor. Many people as they approach the end of life would give all they possess to erase from their minds the past sins that haunt them. What can a person do who is plagued by such remembrances? Just one thing. He can take them to the One who is able to forgive them and blot them out forever. He’s the One who said, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Heb. 10:17).
You may not be able to forget your past. But the Lord offers to blot out, “like a thick cloud, your transgressions” (Isa. 44:22). — M.R. De Haan
The deep remorse that’s in the soul
No human eye may trace;
But Jesus sees the broken heart,
And can its woes erase. —Bosch
The best eraser is honest confession to God.
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Ahl al-Kitāb Book Club
This is currently just a germ if an idea, but watch this space for further developments and watch out for more writing on new blog www.ahlal-kitabbookclub.blogspot.com (Ahl al-Kitāb means People of the Book in arabic).
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