There are dear ones on that Friends list, people who I once shared life and community with and who now live way beyond my doorstep. I love to hear about what their kids had for breakfast because it’s hard not to be there any more to watch their kids grow up and I love getting the feel for their day. Some on the list are people I once knew and am nosy about what they did with their lives, some are there because it would just have been rude to ‘ignore friend request’ and quite a few are people who, while not round the corner still make up the broader community of my life.

But here’s the thing, I am not convinced any of it does me any good. I love community, I was created for it and I am most blessed and at my best when I am in the thick of it. It’s the water I need to grow and flourish. Facebook, for me, is like Community Lite™ with added sweeteners – it slakes my thirst for a while, makes me feel like I am part of a something, like I am engaging with people but doesn’t deeply satisfy my need for friendship and holistic community.

Maybe I’m  becoming a grumpy old woman but I am noticing as I get older that my instincts, instead of getting bigger and broader are shrinking when it comes to what it means for me to be in community.  It was something I had never thought about until I had depression when, through necessity, the amount of people who I could be in contact with shrank radically. I have become convinced since then that, global village or not, what we are created for is the small and the local. To be present to where we are right now. Which for me usually means the kids hanging off my legs demanding food, the husband across the table making me think, laugh and sometimes cross, the neighbours in the cul-de-sac who I am trying to get the guts up to be more engaged with, the parents at the school gate who I’d like to run past, the people in my church who I love dearly, the town I live in whose joys and sorrows I need to pay more attention to. Being present to my present means getting my hands dirty with the complexities of the people and the place I find myself.

So I was curious to see what would happen when we logged out for an extended period, if my theory would hold up. I’ll let jayber speak for himself but for me life without Facebook has been both harder and better than I expected. I didn’t realise how addicted I was to all those little doses of Community Lite™, how they provided an escape from the dull moments of home-making and child-rearing (it doesn’t surprise me that the biggest group of internet users are housewives). Now maybe it’s co-incidence but with the computer off more and my kids and home having a little more of my focus there is more satisfaction in my days, more appreciation of where I am and what I have.

So here is what I am NOT saying : that facebook is bad, that the internet is the work of satan and that we all should disengage from all people that don’t live within a 5 mile radius.

No.

Come Easter I will in all likelihood log out permanently from Facebook or maybe just reduce my list to 10 or so of those dear ones who live far away and check in once a week. Because I am not saying that living a life that is small and local means no longer investing in those friendships – but does reading a status update every now and then really do justice to an important relationship?

One thing Jayber and I have been talking about is returning to the blog world. We have been remembering the time just before Facebook exploded when a number of friends had blogs and there was great chat and discussion and a real opportunity to be known and heard. Most of us since then have been fairly feeble at blogging (apart from the very prolific Zoomtard) but I wonder if it isn’t a better, deeper way to engage our brains and hearts in virtual friendship. Whatever we do I think the way Jayber and I use the internet needs to become much less of a default activity, forming the backdrop of our family’s life and more like a well loved board game,brought out regularly to be enjoyed and then put back carefully in the box

Jayber may need a little convincing. Might wait til after the Heineken Cup.

Monday was summer solstice.

It’s a day I always itch to celebrate. There’s something about nature turning, reaching its fullness, telling us to savour these long sunny days, to saturate ourselves in fleeting warm rays and roll around in the violent greens. Because winter is coming and we will go from running and playing to sitting, risking a quick dash from car to door. We will move slowly once again, reach for our coats, knitting, a warm cup to bring us comfort. But this long day of light is a timely reminder to dance, to play, to soak, marinade in abundance, colour and beauty for as long as it lasts.

So I always mean to have a party. Come June each year I have a bevy of plans rumbling round the back of my mind of who to invite, what I might read to mark the day or perhaps I could find a babysitter who would let us out way past bedtime. Could we cycle to the coast to toast the ebbing light? However, none of these ever come to fruition because I do what I do every single year. I get the date wrong. Seriously, every flippin’ year I think it’s on the 23rd of June.

So Monday night, I’d locked up, face washed, jammies on, Jayber gently dozing on the other side of the bed. I mumbled something, mostly to myself about how light it still was and Jayber said the fateful words,

‘Well, it is the longest day.’

‘WHAT?! No, no it can’t be – it’s on WEDNESDAY. Noooooooo.

- Come on, we have to do something.’

Jayber risked opening an eye to see how serious I was. The eye opening was taken as a fair indication that he couldn’t be that tired. I sealed the deal by mentioning wine and next thing you know, there we are at 11 o’clock sitting at the bottom of the garden in our jammies, drinking wine by the light of a couple of garden candles I found in the back of a cupboard, eating stale tortilla chips.

We whispered and supped and christened the pipe Aaron bought Jayber, until the light was as gone as it could be this far north. Venus was out, a lone star twinkled and it was good to put the world to rights as only Jayber and I can. To bless the light that pushes itself so far into the darkness only once a year and to remember how blessed we are.

I’ve great plans to do the same thing next year, perhaps ditch the jammies (for CLOTHES, we’re not doing a proper pagan celebration [ yet] ) and get better snacks. In the meantime I will bask and delight in the light that gives me pink cheeks, dirty/happy/sleepy little boys and a garden that whispers the promise of a full belly.

We’ve been downsizing christmas for quite a few years now: in both our families we’ve all agreed you pick one name out of a hat to buy for, we’ve banned presents for the kids other than from us and the grandparents and JM and I just do something nice together rather than forage for gifts. All of which is great, not least because xmas shopping takes about 2 afternoons and I get to feel very smug watching all those stressed shoppers zip around town. Except that the whole point of downsizing wasn’t to kill xmas it was to ditch the consumption and reclaim the celebration and that’s the bit we haven’t figured out yet.

I want to make xmas a time that is magical and fun for the kids, full of traditions and meaning and not about just getting stuff. Good intentions haven’t got me very far in previous years because by the time December comes we are much too busy to give it the time and attention and planning that it needs. So here’s where I need your help: tell me the things you have done or heard of other people or families doing which make it special/magical/meaningful/fun.

To start you off, here’s a few I found on the internet:

* Celebrating St Nicklaus day (5th Dec), telling his story and putting shoes out for small gifts

* Reading The Grinch/Night Before Xmas on Xmas Eve

* An advent candle

Ok, so they’re not earth-shattering but it’s a start. Over to you…

For the first 18 years of my life I was a singer. It was a massive part of my identity and activity – singing lessons, school musicals, festivals, competitions, church solos and then all of a sudden it stopped. I moved to a new town and was too busy to practice or join groups, I got rusty and embarrassed that I was rusty. I got fed up too of my competitiveness,of comparing myself to anyone else who could string a few notes together and getting smug or insecure, it was all a bit exhausting. It was easier to just shut my mouth than to challenge the proud monster within. But I lost quite a bit of who I was, of who I was created to be and have felt myself to be not quite all there these silent years.

Don’t ask me what made me do it. Literally one day I said to myself ‘Enough’. Enough remembering the glory days, enough ignoring the disappointment inside. I picked up the phone and booked my singing lessons. I am amazed how alive I feel for that half hour a week when it is me, a piano and a captive audience of one belting out some tunes. I am both better and worse than I thought I would be but man does it feel good. Life right now is a lot about being present for my nearest and dearest and all their nappy/culinary/theologising needs so this is a little chink in my week which quite simply is all about me being me. I am working for my grade 8 in Musical theatre in the spring and then the diploma after that which I can hardly believe. That darn monster still needs tamed but I think it’s high time it got taken head-on.

So, coming to a street corner near you this festive season it’s the rusty warbler! Not bloody likely, need a few more lessons ( and a serious amount of wine) before I expose the public to this work-in progress. But do you know what? Life’s too short to piss around ignoring the good things in your life all because of a wee bit of wounded pride.

Now, excuse me while I go force Jayber to watch ‘Calamity Jane’……

We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

I think the term is ‘strong-willed’ but we prefer to say he has great spirit; Caleb loves life, people and adventure and has energy that could solve the oil crisis. This child was born for wide-open spaces and so he pushes every boundary he comes across. I am so proud of him and so exhausted by him. Even the laid-back, extraordinarily patient Jayber gets pushed beyond endurance as time and again Caleb cartwheels over the lines we draw for him.

It’s hard on the firstborns. They may get more one-on-one time than any other child in the family but they also get all our ‘practice’ parenting. Let’s face it, we’ve never done this before and we haven’t a clue. Seems like we spend a lot of time going back to the drawing board as each new discipline strategy bites the dust. We dip in and out of countless parenting books, swop battle plans with other maxed out parents, consult our child psychologist and drink a lot of wine. It’s trial and error and we just pray that the errors don’t leave too much damage.

It’s hard on the parents. We have these 2 paradigms of parenting that we try and steer a course through; if I’m too tough with him I’ll crush his spirit, if I am too lenient he’ll get out of control. It’s fear based parenting and I’d like to dump it please. I end up dis-empowered and second guessing myself whatever I do.

And so here we are with the current working theory. I try and be firm with Cabes and make the boundaries clear (which is good), but I’m also trying to learn to treat him with compassion, (which is really, really hard when he is driving me nuts and I could cheerfully put him on the next plane to his grandparents), to pay attention to his heart and what he is feeling underneath all the behaviour, to respect his needs and desires more than my need for perfect behaviour and control.

Parenting is a journey of repentance and grace. Of getting it wrong and starting fresh. I’m not good at it. I prefer to keep thinking I’m right until I feel really guilty and then beat myself up about it: woe is me, I’m the worst mother in the world. So I’ve thought of another mantra that every parent needs to get tattooed somewhere, right alongside “This too will pass’ :

‘My love is more powerful than I know or understand’.

It is the soil in which they grow and flourish, the wall that protects them from the worst of their mother’s legalism and perfectionism. It is the covenant I made with them when they were in the womb with God himself as the witness. I will fail them, I will fuck it up but I will love them and that will be enough.

My love is more powerful than I know or understand.