Saturday, May 30, 2015

Know Your Place

What's your natural habitat?
I've been mulling over the word "place" this week. We use it in lots of different contexts or ways. If something's lost it's misplaced. We may have a favourite place and we each have a birthplace. Things can be in the right place or the wrong place. Many people aspire to a place of their own. There are sacred places and fireplaces.

Working alongside ecologists on a daily basis I've learned a fair bit about invasive species. These are plants or creatures who's natural place is in a different habitat across the world but have, for whatever reason, been brought to the UK and have thrived. 

Japanese knotweed is one, Himalayan balsam is another. We have grey squirrels and american crayfish which have decimated our natural squirrel and crayfish populations. And this isn't a problem just here in the UK. In Florida escaped Burmese pythons have thrived so much in the Everglades that they've resulted in a drastic decline in small mammals and birds. The state now pays people to hunt them.

"Maybe like me there have been times in your life when you've felt out of place"
Maybe like me there have been times in your life when you've felt out of place, like a fish out of water. Out of your natural habitat. For me it's not something I experience all that often I'm relieved to say, although one of my more memorable experiences was attending a pilates class when I was in my twenties. Let's just say that didn't become a regular gym class of mine!

In many ways I think that a key part of life is finding the unique habitat that we thrive in. Learning to know our place. The place where we belong, where our skills, talents and personalities can flourish. And whilst it's important that we don't spend our lives in a place where we can't express ourselves or positively contribute, like a fish out of water, it's equally important that we don't spend our lives dominating an ecosystem like an invasive species, and displacing others.  

An important part of finding the right habitat is understanding what makes you tick. And we all tick in different ways. I love this quote: "Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by it's ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life thinking it is stupid".

"...a key part of life is finding the unique habitat that we thrive in"
Some animals are more adaptable than others, and that's true for us too, but none of us can do everything perfectly. Our challenge is to play to our strengths, to do what we're made for, to find that place where we feel most at home. Often it's important to find other people who call out the best in us, who chime with what we do, who recognise and appreciate our make-up. Finding a wolf pack or whale pod, or hive or tribe. We do better when we're in a place of community. Like a coal we can quickly lose our heat and go cold when we're not surrounded by other burning coals.


A key part of life is finding our place...
When I was 6 or 7 I was very briefly in a chess club at school. It was very brief because I was an inexperienced chess player and in my first game I was beaten in three or four moves - a classic "fools mate". I was very much put in my place by more experienced chess players, which put me off chess somewhat! 

Sometimes though I think we feel like we're stuck in the middle of a bad game of chess, we're not sure where we're supposed to be placed or how on earth we'll make it through to the end of the game. 

Or perhaps we feel more like we're in snakes and ladders, with that success ladder or failure snake tantalisingly close whatever move we make. Whilst I do think we should be more playful in our decision making and approach to life at times, I don't believe we're mere pawns in a cosmic game of chess. Instead I believe in a creator that has uniquely placed us and is keen to guide our steps.
"to know our place in a thriving, flourishing and life-affirming way"
Wherever you find yourself placed right now, whether you feel like a fish out of water or in your element, my prayer for you is that you'll increasingly know your place. Not in a negative "be quiet, sit down, know your place!" way, like being told off as a child, or being humbled by those more experienced than us. Instead, to know our place in a thriving, flourishing and life-affirming way. The habitat, the ecosystem we can fully inhabit and contribute to. That's the place I want to be.

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Thanks for taking the time to read  Know Your Place. If you've enjoyed it please share it with your friends on social media! Why not subscribe to The Potting Shed Podcast on iTunes for the audio version and much more (direct RSS feed is here).

I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to comment below or email me at stricklandmusings@gmail.com 

If you want to stay up to date please sign up to my mailing list, and do check out my book Life Space on Amazon.

Friday, May 22, 2015

I am, I can, I ought, I will

As our kids began to reach school age, like most parents we began the agonising process of considering what the best form of education for them would be. We visited local schools and talked to other parents we knew about their experiences and how their children were getting on at the schools they’d chosen.

Out of left-field came the idea about home educating, and after months researching the legislation, practice, meeting local groups and listening to stories from other home educating families we took the plunge and opted not to take up the school place our daughter had been offered. Instead we threw ourselves wholeheartedly into the world of home education.
"Out of left-field came the idea about home educating..."
There’s a huge spectrum of approaches to Home Ed. Some people purchase and follow comprehensive curricula, whilst at the other end of the spectrum are families who choose a completely unstructured approach. We’re somewhere in the middle, and our educational philosophy is based on the Charlotte Mason approach.

Love this motto from Charlotte Mason
Charlotte Mason was an educator in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She left a huge body of work behind on her approach, which was very literature based and outdoors focused. Many schools and educators across the world follow her philosophy. As well as very practical aspects about learning styles and practical skills, a key feature of her approach is to help children and young people develop good habits, cultivating curiosity and interest in the world they encounter.

This post’s title is from one of Charlotte Mason’s mottos for her students: “I am, I can, I ought, I will”. The phrase sums up her emphasis on making good choices which come from the inside out, working from a deep level of identity, and focusing on abilities and growth. We like it so much we’ve framed it and put it in our hall!
"...cultivating curiosity and interest..."
As you can imagine, it’s not just children who can benefit from thinking this way. Personally I find it really helpful, as so often I’ve lived or still live my life the other way round. Perhaps the opposite phrase is “I’m Not, I Can’t, I Wish, I Won’t”.

“I’m Not” – so often it’s easy to define ourselves by what we’re not. Especially when we compare ourselves with others. That’s not to say that we can’t be ambitious or want to improve in areas of our lives, but that we can so often focus on the negative rather than accepting ourselves as we are. Embracing our inner buzzard so to speak! As a young singer, for a long time I wished I could sing like Martin Smith or Bono, both of whom have a much higher range than I have. I was so frustrated I couldn’t reach the high notes they could! These days I’ve learnt to embrace and enjoy the vocal range I’ve got, even as I’ve also trained my voice to reach a little higher than I could when I was younger.

“I can’t” – how often do we spend too long focusing on weaknesses rather than our strengths? Or do we talk ourselves out of being able to act when daunted by the size of the issues or tasks we face. Perhaps we overestimatethe shadows and underestimate our abilities. Rather than focusing on what we can’t do, maybe we need to spend more time considering what we can do – breaking our hurdles down into small steps. I find a quote from Francis of Assisi helpful in this respect, especially when facing the weeds on our allotment: “Start by doing what is necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
"Perhaps the opposite phrase is: 'I’m Not, I Can’t, I Wish, I Won’t'."
Are we stepping closer to our dreams or just wishful thinking?
“I wish” – I’m an advocate of dreaming big, I really am – in fact the subtitle of my book Life Space is “Give your dreams room to grow”. I do feel that many of us need to reconnect with our dreams and passions and make space for them. But we also need to be taking steps towards bringing them into reality in some way – to be awake to them. 

If we’re not taking action then we’re in danger of wishing our lives away. Or perhaps “I wish” is a way we excuse ourselves from taking ownership rather than changing ourselves or adapting to the circumstance: “I wish that circumstance or person would change”. 

We could do with being a bit more heliotropic to our dreams. Rather than wishing and staying static, adjusting our position to follow the sun around.

“I won’t” – like, “I can’t”, often we focus on stopping negative behaviours, like I’ll stop eating this or I’ll stop doing that. And there’s no doubt that this is appropriate at times. If your habits are affecting your health, if you’ve developed addictions to nicotine, drugs, alcohol or food then you do need to have strong “I won’t” element to your thinking. 

During Lent there have been years when I’ve given things up like sweet things (2014), alcohol (2015), books (2013)… but other times when I’ve chosen a more positive approach to give more, or take specific actions each day. 

Rather than defaulting to taking things away from our lives, how about focusing on positive or substitutionary behaviours? I will do this more, I will do that more. Sometimes we need to exercise rather than diet! I love this quote from Steve Maraboli: "Think of what makes you smile, makes you happy... and do more of that stuff".

So let’s ditch the I’m Not, I Can’t, I Wish, I Won’t approach to life in favour of the I Am, I Can, I Ought, I Will approach. Perhaps it’s a motto for you to frame somewhere too! 
"We could do with being a bit more heliotropic to our dreams"
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Thanks for taking the time to read I Am, I Can, I Ought, I Will. If you've enjoyed it please share it with your friends on social media! Why not subscribe to The Potting Shed Podcast on iTunes for the audio version and much more (direct RSS feed is here).

I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to comment below or email me at stricklandmusings@gmail.com 

If you want to stay up to date please sign up to my mailing list, and do check out my book Life Space on Amazon.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Life Goes On

Time passes differently in Narnia...
In my family we’re big fans of the Narnia series of books by C S Lewis. Over the last year or so my five year old daughter and I have been working through the books at bedtimes, and we’re currently reading the Silver Chair which is the penultimate story in the series.

We love the drama, imagery and methaphor in the books, the simple truths and acute observations. We particularly love the character of Aslan, and my daughter confessed the other day that she’d tried getting into Narnia by climbing into her wardrobe. By all accounts she was pretty disappointed that it didn’t work. I suspect that many of us over the years have done the same thing!
"Life goes on in Narnia very differently to our own world"
A key feature of the stories is that Narnia time is not the same as time in our own world. When Peter, Diggory, Lucy or Eustace return from their adventures in Narnia they find that no time at all has passed since they left. But each time they find themselves in Narnia again time there has passed very differently – sometimes hundreds of years have gone by since their last visit. Life goes on in Narnia very differently to our own world.

Have you ever been so tired that you’ve slept much longer than you realised? It’s only happened to me a few times, mainly when I’m very jet lagged and I’ve woken up late into the day or even the evening! 

Funnily enough as I get older I’m becoming an increasingly early riser. Sure, I think having kids awake at the crack of dawn has something to do with it, but I do find that I’m at my most productive in the morning. If I’ve got a big piece of work to finish in the office I’ve learnt that it’s much more effective for me to go into the office earlier than stay later. I guess it’s a function of my circadian rhythms.

Are we sleepwalking through life?
As a student it was a different story – I stayed up later and got up much later. Sleeping in was the norm rather than the exception. As a result my productivity in the mornings was drastically affected. 

These days I have to hold myself back from mowing the lawn before 8am at the weekends and get frustrated when I can’t get going on my task list first thing – the day marches on, and while our neighbours sleep in I want to be making progress!

As much as life goes on while we sleep, there are times when we sleepwalk our way through life. Going through the motions and not necessarily paying attention to where we’re going. 

In a counter-intuitive way, we can often be so busy with the demands of our work or family that days, weeks, months and years can go by in a blur without us especially paying attention to our direction or to what’s around us. I hear stories of fathers who spend their lives working so hard to provide for their family that without meaning to they miss out on playing a bigger part in family life. Life goes on without them in a way. As Dolly Parton sagely said “Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life”.
"...there are times when we sleepwalk our way through life"
Rob Parsons puts it a different way in The Sixty Minute Father, saying that we kid ourselves into thinking a slower day is coming. The challenge for all of us is to wake up to the most important things in our lives rather than simply sleepwalk through our usual routines and busyness.

Are you frozen in time?
Every now and then a news story will catch my eye about something that’s been discovered that’s been preserved by ice. For instance in Siberia the other year a 39000 year old woolly mammoth was found remarkably well preserved, right down to hair, skin and muscle. 

Reading a book about climbing expeditions up Mount Everest I discovered that the frozen bodies of missing climbers are often found decades after their disappearance. It’s not quite Narnia but life also goes on while things are frozen in time.

There are times when my habits or thinking have been stuck in the past, somehow frozen to a particular set of circumstances. My most recent example has been what I’ve been clothing myself in for my regular run-commute to the train station. Over the winter I layer up with gloves, hat, coat and long trousers so that I stay warm for the 1.8mile journey to catch my train. This is fine during the winter, but I found myself this year wearing far too many layers as spring has blossomed and temperatures have been distinctly milder. 

Despite my circumstances changing I’ve persisted in my usual routine. Maybe you’ve found this too, until that alarm clock moment when you’ve woken up to the fact that life’s moved on, seasons have changed and you need to take action. Perhaps your dreams have thawed out. Practically speaking I don’t need my coat or gloves in the mornings anymore!
"There are times when my habits or thinking have been stuck in the past, somehow frozen to a particular set of circumstances"
I’m well aware that we all suffer loss, trauma and setback in our life which can leave us frozen and numb in many ways. As we go through the cycle of grief there’s a real tension between “business as usual” and allowing ourselves enough time to process and heal. Life does go on, but sometimes we’ve got to allow ourselves to go on a bit of a detour before we catch up with everyone else. For me, one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn is how to keep functioning well following setbacks and disappointments. That can be a slow process if I’m honest, but I think it’s ok and probably even healthy that we have wintry seasons in our lives. Hibernation is an important self-preservation technique for many animals, where life does indeed go on but at a much reduced metabolic rate. Watching a documentary about sharks last week I learnt that the Greenland shark (which lives in the extremely cold seas beneath the Arctic) has such a low metabolic rate that it can live for 200 years.

Whether you’ve been having wonderful adventures in Narnia, whether you’ve been sleepwalking through life, or even if you’ve been in hibernation, is there something you need to wake up to right now? Perhaps you’re still layered up for winter and the season has changed. There could be people, circumstances or opportunities that you need to pay attention to. Life goes on, and the more present we are in the midst of it, the richer life we’ll lead. 
"...is there something you need to wake up to right now?"


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Thanks for taking the time to read Life Goes On. If you've enjoyed it please share it with your friends on social media! Why not subscribe to The Potting Shed Podcast on iTunes for the audio version and much more (direct RSS feed is here).

I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to comment below or email me at stricklandmusings@gmail.com 

If you want to stay up to date please sign up to my mailing list, and do check out my book Life Space on Amazon.

Saturday, May 09, 2015

Bigger Big and Smaller Small

Our sun is big.. but Betelgeuse is much bigger!
On our way home the other day from a family excursion, somehow we got on to discussing the size of the sun. My five year old daughter was trying to get her head round how big it is:

"Is it as big as a double decker bus?"
Bigger.

"Two double decker buses?"
Much bigger.

"A ship".
Even bigger than a ship.

I suggested she needed to think bigger... there was a pause, then:
"Is it as big as God?", to which the answer is of course no.

Daughter 1, Daddy 0.

To be honest, even I struggle to get my head round how big the sun is, how far away the other planets in our solar system are and other gigantic things, like the number "a trillion". It's much easier to scale things down to a manageable size, something easier to relate to, like two double decker buses.

Whether I can get my head around it or not, our sun is really big - the internet says that you could fit about 1.3million earths inside it. But as stars go, our sun's pretty small. There's a bigger big when it comes to stars. Take Betelgeuse, a mere 642 light years away (a phenomenal distance). It's much, much bigger than our own sun - in fact if it were at the centre of our solar system it would extend right out to Jupiter.
"It's much easier to scale things down to a manageable size, something easier to relate to..."
Our tendency to scale things down in our minds also applies to our dreams and talents. Without even realising we're doing it, we can put an invisible ceiling on what we think we're able to achieve, like a height barrier on a car park. Not that I'm saying we should all become megalomaniacs, obsessed with being the biggest and the best,  just that we mustn't artificially scale ourselves down. We need a bigger big for our dreams - to raise that height barrier.

I think it was Bill Gates who said "most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years". Perhaps we think we can only achieve small things because in the past we've tried to do too much too soon and burnt out. When you need to go big, you need to pace yourself. For me I think this is a bit like running. The further I need to run, the slower I need to adjust my pace. My flat-out mile pace just isn't sustainable if I want to run a half marathon. If I want to cover a lot of distance, it's better to start slower.

Don't be scared of shadows
At the other end of the scale, sometimes we magnify obstacles and problems so that in our minds they appear much bigger than they are. There are moments when small things cast a big shadow, and we get more scared at the size of the shadow than the challenge itself. Often for me this takes the form of difficult phone calls I need to make at work - usually the thought of the phone call, the shadow, is much worse than the phone call itself!
"When you need to go big, you need to pace yourself"
If you've ever read The Gruffalo's Child, a fantastic children's book by Julia Donaldson, then you'll know that The Big Bad Mouse that the Gruffalo is frightened of is really just the large shadow of a small mouse.  When shadows are looming large in our life we need a better perspective - we need a smaller small, especially when the real thing is much smaller than the shadows it casts in our mind.

I've been guilty of overestimating the shadows and underestimating my abilities in the past. When I was 8 or 9 I started canoeing at a local club on the river Thames. Other kids seemed to pick it up much more quickly than I did. My confidence took longer to build up, and for a while I was petrified of falling in - worried about being bitten by a giant pike! I got there in the end, was even reasonably successful, but it took a few dunks in the river to realise that my fears of giant pikes were just shadows. The shadow cast in my mind by my fear of falling in was much bigger than the experience itself. Hopefully I'm more self aware these days, but the point is that it's easy to talk ourselves into not doing things when we talk up the obstacles and talk down our abilities.
"Sometimes small things cast a big shadow, and we get more scared at the size of the shadow than the challenge itself"
You're not a chicken!
There's a modern parable about an eagle that's brought up thinking it's a chicken. It spends it's life digging in the dirt with the other chickens, earthbound, and never knows the life it could have lived soaring in the skies.

In lots of ways I think this is a pretty unbelievable tale, but it does make a good point that we mustn't judge ourselves by the people around us or the circumstances we find ourselves in. We're each called to run our own race - we're each wired uniquely for a distinctive contribution - the challenge is not to spend our lives digging in the dirt or living in fear of shadows.

Maybe it's time to open yourself up to new experiences, to go public with your dreams. To take off the height barrier. Maybe it's time to get some perspective on those scary shadows, whether it's the fear of giant pike or something equally small. It could be that you just need to take the plunge - to fall in - to realise it's not so bad after all.

When you see the sun this week, remind yourself that there's a bigger big out there. And when you see your shadow remember that small things can cast big shadows but that the Big Bad Mouse is pretty small after all.
"the challenge is not to spend our lives digging in the dirt or living in fear of shadows."
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Thanks for taking the time to read Bigger Big and Smaller Small. If you've enjoyed it please share it with your friends on social media. Why not subscribe to The Potting Shed Podcast on iTunes for the audio version and much more (direct RSS feed is here).

I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to comment below or email me at stricklandmusings@gmail.com 


If you want to stay up to date please sign up to my mailing list, and do check out my book Life Space on Amazon.

Friday, May 01, 2015

Works of art, and artists at Work

Do we take too much for granted?
It's easy to take so many of the things in our life for granted isn't it? There was a cable fault in our area earlier this week which meant we were without broadband, landline and TV for five or six hours. Nothing big really, but something we take for granted which we only notice when it's not there.

How about clean water, electricity, food supply? One of the communities I visited in South Africa last autumn has no water supply. Water gets delivered by truck most of the time, sometimes it doesn't show up, sometimes the water is dirty... water is not something to be taken for granted in that community.
"Life itself is a fragile and precious thing which we can also take for granted."
If you've never come across Maslow's hierarchy of needs diagram then it's a triangle with life's essentials at the bottom (physiological needs) upon which other needs are progressively layered (safety, love, self esteem, self actualisation).

Apart from anything else, it's a way of appreciating what's most important and what needs building into our lives and communities first. Things like water supply and housing and safety that we often take for granted, or don't take seriously - like the edited version of Maslow's diagram I saw on social media this week which had two extra layers at the base.. wifi and battery - something which says volumes about our lifestyles and priorities in the west!

Life itself is a fragile and precious thing which we can also take for granted. A friend of mine died very suddenly this week. He was only a few years older than me, still in the prime of his life really, someone with plenty of life left to live. We mustn't take the precious gift of life lightly. We are masterpieces, but easily damaged and broken.
"We are masterpieces, but easily damaged and broken."
In Birmingham's museum and art gallery, which is just around the corner from my office, there are plenty of masterpieces on display. Priceless paintings, works of art, many of which have lost their original lustre or vividness due to light damage. Various rooms are tightly regulated for light, temperature and moisture to prevent further damage and to preserve the artworks for the future.

My daughter's feet as a newborn
As the psalmist says, we are "fearfully and wonderfully made"  (Ps 139:14) - known and loved even before conception. Elsewhere in the letter to the Ephesians we are described as God's masterpiece. We are works of art.

When my wonderful wife was pregnant with our first child, I found it hard to comprehend that there was a life growing within her expanding tummy. I was taken aback by the emotion I felt seeing the foetus bouncing around at the twelve week scan.

When labour finally began, many weeks later, and my daughter entered the world, I was filled with wonder to hold this precious and tiny life in my arms. Tiny creased feet, toes, fingers, nose. Unfocusing eyes, delicate ears. Fearfully and wonderfully made. It was the same with my son when he was born, and I still delight in them as they're growing up - whether it's watching them sleep, dance or play!
"I was filled with wonder to hold this precious and tiny life in my arms"
The title for this post is from Erwin McManus's book The Artisan Soul. Here's an extended quote: "Though we may create many beautiful works of art, the most important works of art to which we will ever give ourselves are the lives we live. The complexity is that we are both works of art and artists at work."

Elsewhere McManus reminds us that being made in the image of God means we're "created to create" and "imagined to imagine". I find this so freeing - we're all called to create something beautiful with our lives, whatever that looks like.

We're artists at work...
It's fascinating to watch artists at work. A friend of mine produces photo-real paintings and recently he released a stop-frame video of him painting. It's amazing to see how he starts, what changes and how the picture emerges.

The stop-frame video doesn't represent the true time the painting took though - it's exaggerated and accelerated. Like our lives, the masterpiece gets created one brush stroke, or for a sculpture one chip at a time. This requires great patience, and sometimes it's not obvious to us what picture is emerging!

Da Vinci once said, apparently, that "art is never finished, only abandoned". Taking our lives for granted is like abandoning the masterpiece we're becoming. Rather than putting the paintbrush or chisel down, let's instead embrace the challenge to create and become the most beautiful and authentic work of art we're made to be. We owe it to ourselves to make the most of the life we've been given.


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In memory of Navin Sukram, a true work of art and a much missed masterpiece.



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Thanks for taking the time to read Works of Art and Artists at Work. If you've enjoyed it please share it with your friends on social media. Why not subscribe to The Potting Shed Podcast on iTunes for the audio version and much more (direct RSS feed is here).

I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to comment below or email me at stricklandmusings@gmail.com 

If you want to stay up to date please sign up to my mailing list, and do check out my book Life Space on Amazon.