No Diggers Allowed! with Hannah Lamberth

[Music]. Welcome to the Loved Called Gifted podcast. This is your place to come for musings about spirituality, identity and purpose. I'm your host, Catherine Cowell.

C: I'm really, really chuffed to be joined again by Hannah Lambert. Good morning, Hannah.

H: Good morning. Nice to be back.

C: It's really nice to be with you.

We are back in Hannah's shed come recording studio in her garden, which my editor will be delighted about.

Apparently, Hannah, the only recording he's not had to sound treat was the one that we made last time in here.

H: I am glad that my husband's work and hobby and this thing in our garden that takes up a lot of room is a blessing to Stephen.

I'm really pleased about that.

C: You sort of make it sound like it's not always a blessing to you.

H: It's just quite large, isn't it?

You know, think of the flower bed.

Think of the flower bed that could be here.

C: Yes, although it is for our purposes, it's rather good.

H: No, ideal.

Absolutely ideal.

C: So since we last met, we've both had, we were chatting this morning and we've both had a slightly interesting couple of days and I was going to tell you my sheep story.

H: Yes, please.

I want to hear it.

C: The sort of God in the details kind of thing.

So I was away last week in Wales, partly for a bit of a holiday and partly because random relative was having a christening.

So we needed to get to the christening.

Not people that I know particularly well, but we needed a card and a present and because I was not super organised, I hadn't gone to Wales with the card and present.

We were camping for a couple of days and then we were going to the christening.

And a friend of mine who used to live in Cricketh and always goes there on holiday - Cricketh in Wales.

So she knows it really well.

I said, are there any Christian bookshops in Cricketh or gift shops?

She said, yes, there was a Christian cafe/gift shop.

I thought, excellent.

H: I've been there.

C: Aha, you have number 46 in Cricketh.

H: Yeah, Lovely.

C: Yes, very lovely, but entirely lacking in the kind of very tacky christening gift stuff.

Like she said, gift shop.

I was thinking, you know, I don't know, a cross or a mug or a random piece of crystal with a Bible verse on it.

H: A wooden rainbow or...

C: Yes, absolutely.

A wooden rainbow that tells you that God loves you.

That'd be great.

But no, there were handmade bits of pottery and aprons and this is not, it doesn't scream christening.

H: What every one year old once for their christening presentation.

An apron.

C: Yes.

There are a couple of gift shops nearby and we'd been in a couple, we were down to our last gift shop and we both walked in and I saw this cuddly sheep and I thought, oh, that looks really cool.

That could be the thing.

And then got distracted by something else.

Turned round to find Stephen and my husband holding up the sheep and pointing at it.

So I thought, right, that is a sign we should get the sheep.

We arrive at the christening the next day and say hello to the vicar because we were there really early and she'd got one of those, I think they're called stoles, aren't they? The thing around your neck. And hers was obviously a kind of a bespoke one with lots of little sheep on it.

So I said, oh, you've got, I like your sheep.

And she said, oh, there's lots of sheep that will be turning up in our service today.

And I said, we've brought a sheep with us and showed her this lovely cuddly woolly sheep that we'd brought.

And then for various reasons, we attempted to give it to the little girl who's christening it was and it ended up, my son ended up putting it kind of at the front of the church because there weren't very many people at this christening, next to the vicar's kind of books and stuff.

Well, she had planned to tell the story of the lost sheep.

H: Brilliant.

C: And she used our sheep.

H: I love that!

C: As a prop.

And she was obviously really, it was obviously it had really touched her that we hadn't known that there was going to be anything about sheep.

And she'd got this book and this story and this Bible reading all about Jesus finding the lost sheep and we provided a prop.

And that really felt like kind of God in the details of stuff, which sometimes happens.

H: Two times ago we met, we chatted about your wedding dress and it being a similar total God story.

I feel like I never want to go shopping without you, Catherine.

I feel like what wonders could we experience of Jesus and Tesco the next time I do my big shop?

I love that.

That's really, really lovely.

C: It was very sweet.

It's a very soft, woolly cuddly sheep.

So yes.

Anyway, I thought I would tell you that story.

H: Better than a wooden rainbow.

C: Absolutely. And better than some piece of Christian tat. Sorry - Carefully crafted.

H: God loves you apron.

C: Definitely better than an apron.

H: Oh, brilliant.

C: So yeah.

So you've also been out and about on a boat in the Mediterranean and you've got something that you wrote the first morning thinking about what might God be up to on this trip?

H: Yeah. So yeah. Eight of us on a boat in Croatia, which I highly recommend. I'd never been to Croatia. Absolutely delightful. Highly recommend.

But yeah, so we were bobbing around on the boat the first morning that we'd woken up there and we had an hour of silence to just all have a bit of a chill and take some time out.

And I scribbled some stuff down that I'm going to share with you now.

C: Excellent.

H: So I've written,
"As I settle on my beanbag on the deck, I try to still my racing mind.
I begin to focus on a building site on the shoreline.
It's surrounded by lush trees and beautiful sea and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
It's fenced off and has a big warning sign with six hazard preventing specifics on it.
It's in the process of being created to fulfill its purpose.
It's full of potential, a work in progress, a construction site, but it's dangerous.
The only people allowed in are those involved in helping it to become what it should be.
And even they may get hurt if they don't come prepared.
Building sites are also the place of hard graft and great banter.
They're not where you go to rest.
They're where you go to work.
It's a helpful metaphor of hope for me.
This is a stage I'm in.
I'm in a process and one day I'll be finished like everyone else.
Then it'll just be maintenance, just like all the other buildings dotted around the bay, like all the other people on the boat living their purpose and here for maintenance.
Thanks, Lord.
That was quick and you know I love a metaphor, so that's ideal.
I'll go for a swim.

But they're manmade, I hear in my thoughts.
Well, that's fine.
It's a metaphor and it doesn't have to be perfect, but they're manmade.
Find the things I've made, I hear.
I look around at the view, the sea, the hills, the sky, all God made.
I focus on what looks like an island in the distance.
It's hilly and rugged and dense and wild and it's beautiful.
It's not finished because it's alive and it's growing and things that are alive and growing are never finished.
It's a place of adventure and potential, but it's perfect as it is.
And it's dangerous.
If you go there, you may trip and get hurt, but it's not a construction it's a growing place.
In Genesis 1, God asks humankind to cultivate the land, not on their own but as his people made in his image to be like him.
And so this rugged, beautiful, dangerous, bountiful land is to be cultivated.

I'm aware that some of what I'm hoping for is like the houses.
Things are fixed addresses with postcodes and clear purpose for neatness and order and a place on the map for deconstruction and total transformation to not look like how I started.
But a lot of that sounds like deforestation and turning me into something at the hands of man that I was never made to be.

The rugged landscape that God made is less tidy, less defined, doesn't have a start and a finish.
The God made is continual cultivation.
So here I am, rugged, wild with the capacity to hurt, but the capacity to be enjoyed for all the beauty and adventure that he created in me.
And it turns out I'm not an island.
I'm out on a limb, but I'm connected to something much bigger than me and I always have been.

C: Mmm, I really like that.

So what were the thoughts that were kind of kicking around for you as you wrote that?

H: Well I think I arrived on the boat having had a really, really busy few weeks and beginning to sort of come to terms with and begin to process this desire to know more of God who made me to be and kind of thinking I'm so busy and I'm so imperfect.

And I think I, you know, I walked onto the boat tired and just feeling a bit like, oh, there's so much that God needs to do in me to change me.

And, you know, I'd been invited on this wonderful opportunity to go away for a week and enjoy the sun, enjoy the sea and enjoy some time and space to think.

And so what I wanted was to, within that first hour, is really get an idea of what I was there for.

And I saw this construction site and I thought, that's it. That's it.

I am a mess at the minute, you know, I'm so deeply unfinished, I'm hurtful to other people, but I've got so much potential and, you know, so much that God can do with me and he's building me into something.

And I thought, great, you know, there's a metaphor.

I'm a work in progress and at some point I'm going to reach that kind of holy grail of who I'm meant to be and then it will just be maintenance.

But I've got this place, this destination to reach in order for life to fully begin.

So I think when I saw that building site, I thought, yeah, you know, I do. It gave me some language around how I felt. Building site, dangerous, potential, all of that.

Brilliant, lovely. I love, I love a metaphor. I find metaphors really helpful. I find imagery really, really helpful. And that's often how God speaks to me through kind of metaphor and imagery and how often he speaks to us in the Bible. So, you know, it's handy.

It's handy that I find that helpful.

C: It really strikes me that there are quite a lot of occasions, aren't there, where we think that there will be a thing that will sort it and that idea will, and this very broken construction site and it will get mended.

H: Yeah. Yeah.

And it's destination perfection.

It's destination finished.

And, you know, there's something that's going to happen, a great work that's going to happen.

This weekend.

And then this week, or, you know, as we had coffee before we started recording, I said, you know, this festival that I go to or this retreat or this conference that I go to, this Sunday morning service, you know, the speaker will give an opportunity to respond and God will do a, you know, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am kind of transformation.

C: And it's not just in Christian circles that that narrative happens actually.

So when I was training to be a coach quite a number of years ago, I was very aware that within that realm, there are people who put on courses and things, and it's like, you go for five days, it'll be very intensive and you will come out completely different and entirely successful at the end of it.

And I actually got invited on one of those by a friend and went and it was really intensive. And I think she had an opportunity to invite somebody. And there was a lot that I got out of that, that was really quite helpful.

And there were things that I took away from it.

But this underlying narrative of we are going to take you through this process in these three days, or four days or whatever it was.

And at the end of that, you could make a million or you could have the most successful coaching practice in the UK or whatever it happens to be.

And there's a kind of you were broken and now we will mend you and it will all be better.

So I don't think it's just Christians.

I think it's quite a seductive narrative.

H: It is and I think you know, and it's a narrative we're used to, you know, if you want to become a doctor, you sign up to a training course to become a doctor.

We're used to that idea of an intensive period of training in order to do something.

And that's right and proper, isn't it? You know, if I want to become a fire person or a doctor or, or any, any job role, which requires you to undergo a certain level of training, then it's right and proper that you do that.

But I think that's often task related and position related and, you know, to achieve a specific goal to do something, but when it's intertwined with your whole person, your who am I and your identity is rooted in that I must become something. And in order to do that, there has to be something big and major and specific that needs to happen.

Then I think for me that it just put in me a longing that was misguided.

C: And it sounds like that longing was based in this idea that you were this fairly disastrous construction site that somebody external God needed to come in and sort out.

H: Yeah.

And I think that there was so much, you can't, if you are building a house, you can't live in the house, can you, while it's a construction site until it's almost finished or, or there's room safe enough for you to be in.

And I think I felt, I felt like God cannot use me for the purposes he's made me for until I am more finished and more constructed and less dangerous and safer.

C: Even though going back to your comparison with something like training for medicine, even that is not a case of you, you put to the doctor in the, in the training pot and take them out finished at the end, there will be a lot that's happened before, before somebody becomes a medical student that enables them to get to that point in the first place.

The training itself is over many years. And then you, it's actually quite a good analogy because you become qualified as a doctor, but you continue to develop. So a person's first job as a house office or whatever is not where they're going to land up.

Your trainee GP is not, is still not finished, but that doesn't mean that as a human being, they're not finished. Of course they are both finished and unfinished.

Which is sort of where your island comes in.

Doesn't it?

It's both finished and perfect and beautiful and becoming something.

So I've just been on holiday with amongst other people, gorgeous, gorgeous 20 month old boy, and he is complete and perfect.

He runs around ordering people about. One of my favourite moments was when he fell asleep. We went to look at cricket castle and it's, there's a place where there's sort of grass and stuff and it was time for his nap and he'd been a bit grouchy, but he suddenly fell asleep at the top of this castle.

His falling asleep meant that the most sensible thing for the rest of us to do was just to chill on this castle mound on the grass with these glorious views around us and we probably wouldn't have stopped if that hadn't been the case.

So him napping on the one hand, it doesn't feel like a particularly productive thing, but his napping, him just being him was a complete gift to us.

And him being him chasing kite tails and running around the place and being delighted by puddles and just generally gorgeous.

He's complete like your island. It's already perfect.

H: Yeah, absolutely.

And I think it was that picture of cultivation and that gardener sort of thing.

You know, 99% of gardening is cultivation, you know, it's weeding, it's kind of turning soil and I'm not a gardener, so can you tell?

Don't go into my garden, the rest of my garden that doesn't have a big shed in it with a recording studio inside is full of weeds.

But there are periods of great transformation, but most of gardening, most of the way that God takes care of us is gradual cultivation.

It's the everyday popping out.

I had a friend who got me a book once, I think she was trying to inspire me to be better at gardening, but it was gardening in pyjamas and it was the whole sort of thought that people go out in the morning in their pyjamas with a cup of tea and do a bit of weeding and a bit of that and it being a lovely, lovely start to the day.

I haven't embraced that yet, I've got to be honest.

I'm more a somebody bring me a cup of tea and don't talk to me for an hour kind of a person in the morning.

But yeah, it is that gentle, gentle cultivation.

It's not this sort of backbreaking work that you do, but just a little bit every day, a little bit of cultivation and just a lot of it's just letting nature take its course.

C: Absolutely.

And a wild island doesn't need a lot of cultivation.

H: No, it doesn't.

C: A lot of the changes and the growth will happen naturally through the season, I think.

H: Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that it was that picture of just a more gentle pace of transformation and cultivation rather than this kind of big project and this big, you know, and a building project is wonderful, isn't it?

You know, we're at our house at the moment, my parent in-laws bought it off plan and we've got photos of my husband as a little boy sort of coming onto the building site with a hard hat and seeing over a few weeks it going from a patch of land to this fully fledged house.

And it's striking and it's impressive, isn't it?

It's impressive when you see that big, grand change.

And when we see a big, or what I've been looking for is some sort of big, grand, very obvious change like, "Oh my goodness, what's happened to Hannah?

She's reached her destination and she's who she's meant to be."

And it feels ridiculous to say it, it feels laughable, but I think that really is what I've been longing for is that kind of great, "Whoa, she's doing what she's meant to do. She's arrived."

I think a lot of the things that have been spoken over me in the past has been a kind of so much potential, but I read my school reports the other day and it was kind of all this so much potential, but just not there yet.

And so actually that kind of picture from God of going, "Hang on a minute, we've already arrived."

It's already as it should be.

It's already a million different things, but it's just this continual work of cultivation and growth and things die, don't they, in the forest.

Some stuff dies, some stuff grows, and it just being just a far more gentle picture of how God is working in me and how he works in us.

C: Yeah, yeah.

I've been remembering an occasion when I went to Tésé.

If people don't know what Tésé is, it's a monastery in France that some monks started back in the '50s, I think, after the Second World War. And it kind of exploded and lots of people go.

So you can go and have this sort of fairly peaceful time with many, many other people.

But I remember on my way to Tésé praying about what I wanted this to be like.

And a bit like you, I was very much saying to God, "Bring in the diggers, sort me out.

I don't mind what you do.

And that might be big and scary and I don't care what you do, just do it and sort it."

And I'm absolutely willing for you to bring the diggers in and do some pile driving.

And it was really interesting because none of that happened.

So one of the things that they did was they would do a bit of teaching in the morning and that was quite slow because the guy who did it would do it in English, which was his least good language.

So he would say something in English and then he would translate it into French and then translate it into German.

And I remember him saying, "So it will be very meditative for you."

And it kind of was, it gave you lots of time to write notes.

And then we would get into groups and you'd end up with a group of people and have a chat about it.

And a lot of those people didn't have the same kind of faith outlook that I did.

So that was quite an interesting sort of dynamic.

And in my youthful arrogance, I thought quite a lot of them didn't understand things.

But we would have some discussions and then there was quite a lot of free time and the whole thing was really gentle and nothing particularly seemed to be happening.

But interestingly, by the end of it, something had shifted in me, but it had happened really gently.

There was something about simply being in this place where there was space in God's presence.

There were quite a lot of things that went on that were a bit frustrating, but it was also a time of just sort of stopping.

And on the way home, I had quite a lot of encounters with people where I realized that spiritually I was in a much more kind of open space than I'd been before I started, but it was so sort of gentle.

On the way back, I ended up having a sort of a faith conversation with the Muslim taxi driver that I was with.

I had a chat with a homeless guy on the station.

I ended up having some really good chats with these Polish women. I think their parents had been refugees or they'd been refugees. I think their parents had been kind of Jewish refugees during the war. And so they were talking about some of their experiences.

And then ended up back at Stafford station praying with a bunch of teenagers who'd spotted this prayer stall thing that I dragged all the way back from Tezing. And they talked about their faith lives and we ended up standing just on the platform in Stafford station praying together.

And so there was a real sense that God was flowing through me and it wasn't that I could notice any particular change, but just walking with God meant that something had shifted.

But it was the gentleness of that and the contrast between my prayers at the start where I'm kind of saying, bring in the diggers and the reality of God just being there while I was there.

H: Absolutely and I think it changes how you interact with other people when you don't see yourself as this finished article.

But you're just on this kind of place of continual responding to invitation and growth and just existing as something God has made and continues to create and cultivate.

I think it just changes the way you interact with people because you're not saying come and be finished like me, but you're saying let's journey together in our constant state of growth and exploration and discovering God and who we are in light of that.

C: Otherwise we can be like a Christian version of those manufacturers.

You know the ones who they produce something and then there'll be a new version and then there'll be the new improved version of the washing powder which washes much much better.

I have been in seasons of my Christian life where that has very much been the case that every meeting you go to they're kind of offering that you could become the new improved version if you just did this or you just did that or you just go to the front and let somebody pray for you.

H: Which is basically telling you that you're a bit rubbish all of the time.

You're a bit rubbish and you're in need of improvement.

You know you're rubbish come forward and be less rubbish until the next time when you'll be new rubbish and you'll need new improvement and yeah and it just is yeah I mean I could bang on about that.

I won't but I think you're absolutely right.

C: Thinking of our little friend kept calling all of us friends when we woke up in the morning in a camping trip yes we'd wake up in the morning and he would come out of his tent and say there's my friend.

Oh my friends are here again.

He's perfect.

Yeah yeah he'll be a different perfect as he gets older.

I have a and I have an 18 year old son who's just passed his driving test and he's driving around now and really really enjoying it.

He's a completely different stage of life.

You know it's not it's like your island picture.

The island can change and grow and develop and new things can appear on the island but the island is still good.

I love the fact that God was basically saying look look at that rugged island.

Look at the gorgeous beauty of it Hannah.

It's great.

H: Yeah and it's both finished and unfinished.

C: Yeah

H: Yeah it was just such a you know something I wrote and I then got distracted for the rest of the week and actually I didn't I probably missed out on the invitation that God was giving me because I think my default is to go back to something big.

C: You know the other thing though is that we often find ourselves around people who are working from that building site metaphor and who appear with diggers.

Yeah I'm going to pray for you now and I'm going to I have a I've got a word for you that says this needs sorting.

H: Thus saith the Lord.

C: Yes yes I think this needs sorting out in you or that needs sorting out or there's this that needs doing and if your default's to feel well I'm a bit rubbish I probably am a bit like a building site that's broken down if somebody arrives metaphorically with their prayer digger it's very difficult to say not here not now thank you.

H: Yeah yeah yeah and I think I think for me that's what I guess why why journaling and sort of quiet time is so important and there's this little book that I've Catherine's read it a few years ago you were saying but it's called Finding Your Hidden Treasure by Benignus O'Rourke.

I mean what a cracking name that is and he's an Augustinian friar but he's just written this beautiful beautiful little book and it's it's basically about this hidden treasure within us all and and often it's cultivated through just rest and not doing and not having some well-crafted prayer and these kind of you know fixed Bible in a year you know do basically tick off everything on this list and you will reach your final destination what what he's talking about is giving ourselves permission to rest and it talks about a lady who'd gone to a retreat and every day he says go and sit in the garden and admire the budding blossoms and so she does that and then the second day he's like go and do it again and then the third day he says go and do it again so by the fourth day she's a bit naffed off she's like why do you just keep making me sit in this garden and and I think you know the the idea is that there's that what she has gone to her retreat with was a bit like you were saying on yours was this expectation of here's a program of activities that you're going to engage in and stuff that's gonna happen and actually God was just saying just just rest come and rest don't don't pray these big clever prayers just sit in the Priory Garden quietly absorbing the sights and sounds of early spring and that was the perfect way to start a journey into deeper silence for her.

And then he goes on say Augustine who a lot of his theology comes from St.Augustine says found ego a problem all the time I wanted to stand and listen to listen to your voice he told God but I could not because another voice the voice of my own ego dragged me away once we become aware of the wiles of our own ego we shall find it easier to do nothing but rest in the Lord without feeling guilty and I think I've had to sort of come to terms that actually my ego when when God's saying come on Hannah let's have a nap or come on Hannah let's just go and get a coffee just for the sake of it there's no big spiritual quest than this.

When I was away there was an opportunity to do some snorkeling it had been a heavy morning you know there was I just felt tired and but I went to go and have a nap and I couldn't nap because my brain was buzzing and so I grabbed a snorkel and I just sort of shoved this snorkel on and I started swimming and I was like right well God is gonna talk to me about so much all of this like rocks and fish and sand and bits of you know there's rubbish in the ocean and what's gonna talk to me about.

C: You were snorkeling for metaphors

H: Snorkeling for metaphors I was like hit me Lord now's as good a time as any and I just felt like he was like Hannah just go and enjoy the fish and so I found this fish I named him Brian and I was like come on Brian let's go for a swim and so I followed Brian and then we did this lovely thing he was sort of going in and out of all these like little rocks and and swimming around and then suddenly there was about 20 Brian's they all look the same I was like which one's Brian which fish I lost Brian and then one of the fish went off broke away from the other fish I was like that's Brian that's a Brian thing to do so but you know it was it was just the dropping my ego of going the Lord is going to speak to me in some big dramatic way which was totally well intentioned you know you're going off and you're going Lord speak to me I want to hear I want to hear your voice I want to hear what you have to say to me is not a bad thing but then him just saying just just stop being so dramatic just enjoy the fish.

Just enjoy enjoy the walk enjoy the coffee and stop making it so so heady you know like so cerebral just sit in a place of enjoyment so I think massively for me this is not me writing one piece about how I'm no longer a building on the side I'm I'm more like you know a natural forest but it's it's really something that God is asking me to invest in is to stop with the building project stuff and exist in his presence and enjoy what he has made yeah and it feels hideous you know it feels so unproductive.

C: It's really interesting because recently I did a podcast with Margaret McGregor about play.

H: Yeah

C: And one of the things that we were talking about is the fact that we are made to be and we are made for this loving relationship with God and actually play like going and snorkeling and watching Brian is one way of really determinedly saying perhaps determinedly is the wrong word for play but it's a way of saying this is not about being productive this is about being.

H: Yeah

C: Because you play with people that you like God plays together with us because he likes us he likes our company.

And you look at all of the fish and the birds and the ducks you can see God's playfulness in all of creation all of the animals like to play don't they when they're little they all do.

Finding that in ourselves again I think is one of the ways of allowing that that slow growth to happen.

H: And Jesus asks us to be like the little children doesn't he knows it's like look at the little children.

And look at your sort of grandson, whatever relationship, you know he's like my friends let's play let's play let's play let's sleep let's nap and you know and it just I mean it's just absolutely beautiful isn't it.

C: It is.

H: I think and it's so easy and I say you know Catherine go and go and enjoy yourself you know go and do that we're really good at imploring other people to just be but I think you know that I certainly find it much harder to to do that for myself without feelings of guilt.

C: Yeah

H: I think what God's asking me to do is move to some Mediterranean island and just snorkel all day do you want to let my husband know or shall I?

Sounds ideal I'm just gonna go hang out Brian my new friend.

C: It's interesting isn't it that we kind of carry these scripts around it will all get sorted and that's not quite how it works.

And I think it takes quite a lot of strength to know that:
(a) you don't need to fix yourself but
(b) you don't need to put yourself in a situation where other people are gonna come and do the fixing.

H: Yeah absolutely.

And I and I think if you are feeling a sense of unfinishedness or brokenness or insufficiency of I am not who I meant to be.

C: Yeah

H: I can be very susceptible to people with diggers you know and can be drawn to people who go do this program or do that you know pray this kind of prayer or do this whatever

C: I've got the best digger

H: I've got the best digger I can help you become the best of yourself and you know be who you're meant to be previously I've been very drawn to people with big diggers.

C: Yeah

H: And so to have the confidence to go actually God's doing a different thing in me thank you for the offer of your digger but no thanks.

C: Yeah I'm not a building site.

H: Yeah

C: I'm put in mind of Jeremy Clarkson you know that his farm program there's a point at which he buys a tractor and of course he buys a Lamborghini tractor because it's called a Lamborghini

And the person and there's this guy with him whose name I forget there's this guy that works with him who really he's just he's a farmer he's very good at what he does but he's absolutely down to earth and he's not afraid of telling Jeremy Clarkson that he's been a twit.

And he's like well that Lamborghini tractor is useless pointless it's much bigger than you needed it's not what's required but this picture of Jeremy Clarkson on his enormous Lamborghini tractor is vastly expensive utterly pointless.

H: I know it's true but it's big and it's shiny and it's impressive isn't it.

C: And if you're in that place of feeling quite insecure then I think the danger is that you think I'm going to be betraying God if I don't let this person.

H: Yeah

C: with there big diggers they've

H: But look how shiny it is, surely it's from the Lord

C: And particularly if you've had I'm thinking of the kind of the meeting scenario you go you're ready as I was when I went to Tessa you're ready for God to do something you want to be humble you want to be surrendered it may be that you spent quite a lot of time singing together which again puts you into a place of being quite potentially quite quite vulnerable.

Or you go to a conference or something you know you go away and you're kind of like well I think this is what I'm here for.

H: Yeah

C: And then it's very easy to be susceptible to somebody turning up with a digger and then feeling like you can't say no.

H: Yeah absolutely and I think it's difficult isn't it because I think what I don't want to do is sort of decry everyone who's.

There are periods where God does do and do a number on us aren't they you know and there is some kind of instant healing or instant release of something but I, I think for me my desire for that instant something really tangible really obvious really evident really describable had probably robbed me from the deeper less obvious the more narrow the more long term work of cultivation and and rest and and that being a thing where I am not required to do anything.

C: Yeah a lot of that will be in the doing though you know as you kind of go about your everyday life it's a bit like there will be the business of the island that's going on.

H: Yeah

C: So it's not that there's no doing and it's always about respite it's not about striving.

H: Yeah

C: I like you would say that it is the case that's sometimes something happens fairly immediately but very often there has been a long period that runs up to it.

H: Yeah yeah yeah

C: So you know the instant healing,

H: Yeah

C: and then you ask the person so how long have you been praying for this? oh well 15 years

H: yeah

C: it's kind of

H: yeah yeah

C: So sometimes there are those moments.

But if you are struggling with feeling that you're all right then you're likely to step into those spaces thinking, I need somebody to fix me, or I'm the kind of person who needs fixing. And so the first person who says I will pray for you and fix you you're like yes absolutely bring it on.

Yes I will let you do that.

But it's about listening to what's going on in us internally isn't it.

So there will be times when going up to get prayer is absolutely the thing to do because it's the right moment as part of that process, as part of that long journey there are moments.

But it's about listening to what's going on in us and not allowing the hype to do the talking.

There was a film years ago and if I could remember the name of it I would but it had Steve Martin I think as a kind of a preacher and absolute charlatan. This little boy gets healed in a meeting. He went to the meeting needing healing but you kind of see him praying to this kind of statue of Jesus on the cross and that's where his eyes are, and the fact that Steve Martin happens to have been there is kind of coincidental.

H: okay

C: I was thinking is it's that thing about - our journey with God sometimes God does bring people alongside us who have things to say and there is stuff that happens that is happening in that moment. But actually they are accompanying us for a little way on a journey that we are having with God.

H: yeah

C: It's not that they are making it happen.

H: yeah

C: It's that they are sometimes the person alongside.

And we are all called to sometimes be the person alongside.

But I think when I did my spiritual direction training one of the phrases that the tutors often used was "remember that you are standing on holy ground, take your shoes off". You like a metaphor, metaphorically take your shoes off tread gently this is not about, this is not about you coming in and doing - it's about you journeying very gently with somebody who is already journeying with God.

So if you're taking your shoes off you're definitely not bringing building equipment, 'you might you might drop them on your toes'

H: Don't recommend hanging around near a Lamborghini tractor with with no steel toe cap boots on

But yeah yeah absolutely and I think there is that I think there's just this there's ongoing prompts from the Lord for me is to say to come and rest

Stop trying harder and actually do do exactly the opposite of that try less hard come and come and stop come and be still come and just be in my present.

Drop the ego of thinking that something that you do is going to result in me bringing more transformation to your life

It is just come and be cultivated be loved, be continuously transformed and in the process of continual transformation... It is such a simple invitation is so glaringly obvious but it's it's really countercultural and goes against all the ego within us.

It's been an interesting few months and you know and that and that metaphor thing I had with the building and the and the island was like you say it wasn't just a sudden thing, that I arrived on this boat and suddenly it was like boom here we go. You know this has been out of months and months of of God saying "stop trying harder".

C: "Because you're already okay"

H: "You're already", "I already really like you"

C: Yeah. We're all humans

H: Yeah

C: At the end of the day we're all humans

H: yeah

C: God works with us and loves us as we are.

H: absolutely

C: and yes there is growth and things change and things shift and we grow in wisdom and all of those things

H: yeah

C: but the island is already great

H: yeah

C: the island has been great from the beginning

H: yeah yeah yeah

C: Thank you thank you very much for that.

H: Thank you great chat as always .

[Music] Hope you enjoyed this episode of the loved called gifted podcast if you'd like to get in touch you can email loved called gifted at gmail.com you can find a transcript of this podcast at loved called gifted.com and that's also the place to go if you're interested in the loved called gifted course or if you'd like to find out about spiritual direction or coaching thank you for listening.