backagen...

the lost post of earlier....

yesterday.. the pinched pennies...

i finally go shopping though not before ... sometimes you are forced into something that is beneficial .... i told you i opened my fridge cupboard bare! and in that moment panic resignation as well as ... well i've been at a few places where the cupboard is literally bare ... and that is after a night out... money spent all on the night out beer fags maybe transport .. come back to mine so we do .... booze but no food.. one finds out at some point that person with no food in the house has one or other health condition... maybe that's part of the journey of life... booze and social life come first and in that a forgetfulness of the basics.... although my cupboard was bare and i felt a moment's annoyance .... the lack of money as staple meant i did not go forth in search of something i was hungry but resigned to... then i remembered my freezer and actually found something more nutritious than what i was planning which made me think of cuba and the fertilizer crisis imposed by usa which meant they turned to organic farming... sometimes a crisis can be resolved into something better... well me i could have gone to the takeaway but then i would have eaten a loadofrubbish and spent the bulk of my pennies with not a lot left for the remaining days of the week ... i would have been satieted for a couple of hours and that's that... i had actually been prepared not to eat anything... it felt unnatural but that's what loads of folks do out of inconvenience out of necessity... i was delighted to have something to eat but it didn't really make up for anything i was feeling bad guilty about having something where others had nothing....

so when i finally get shopping there i am in the shop scouring for reduced items (this in itself is not unusual) until i get to .... a number of iterms are reduced and i am hungry and  salivating then GOD decides to get involved.. there's me all poiised to shop items according to reduction and treats... i end up buying some bread that i would not dream of buying i know GOD is testing me on this ... i don't get a reduced treat and i am feeling annoyed!....   but this is the reality of life... i don't need the treat but i sometimes indulge GOD allowed treats... but i do need to eat ... in retrospect is GOD not telling me something about mannah from Heaven that i did not quite understand at the time? i am standing in the shop miserable deliberately ignoring the shopping of everyone else cos that would feel humiliating everyone else buys necessities in forms they like and treats and the poor buys what's not quite good for them and treats ....  education or habit? you don't want to end up like that stuck up .... no we are all in it together..that we don't get to buy food for pleasure .. we buy pleasure .. and survival... earlier in the week i had bought sojme processed food on the hoof ... it was cheap and i would normally ignore it cos it was processed food and look for alternatives... but cos of this project i did buy this puffpastry effort with cheese and onion.... the one thing it was was filling.... it tasted unpalatable but it stopped  a hole... and i did it simply to sample the food for the poor unhealthy and cheep i felt a degree of camaraderie and that was it... it was a strange experience... i was active so thankfully did not need to savour the ucomfortable afterflavours of digestion something about it makes me in no hurry to repeat the experience... somehow the solitude of the bare cupboard almost felt like a salvation in comparison...

it's weird to reflect on food and the poor in this way .... it's not quite like famine affecting whole communities... it seems quite frivolous... malnourishment comes in as many forms as diet is in imballance with bodily need.... we seem helpless to find an integrated view and solution to the various crises forms... not having food is one thing in a community experience of cuisine develpment ... being overwhelmed by choice for the individual caught up in fractured cultural social historical journeys is quite another..... when food is scarce we got to come up with plan B but when food is plentiful we are left with the dilemma of choice .... and how do we make those choices personaly and culturally; and if we get into bad patterns how do we remove ourselves from these or others?.....   the processed food revolution has somehow added to and confused the issue..... we can no longer hold the ingredients in our hand and think hmm let's actually thow that one out and start again.... we want things to feel easy we want some exotic something a bit extra we want to be fed and we are being fed by an invisible hand at a price.... this brings back to the mystery Mannah from Heaven where is GOD in all this is this calling out to GOD ... calling out to the great unknown to entrepreneurs relying on them all?... the urban experience is to think outside of logic outside of good sense outside of actual busy need to develop taste opinions judgement based on flavours what sensations does one need to get through the day? in community based poverty there is a searching for a comminal wisdom 'the right thing to do'... is not necessarily the best solution but it is a convention...

it's hardly felt freedom of choice this visit to the supermarket never mind the peniless state ... i have been feeling overwhelmed and oppressed by choice ... this week i am feeling frazzled with in the face of so many people i have felt lost... if i cannot see me then how can i trust my senses.... when senses are preoccup0ied with everyone else and bombarded with possibilities and advertising? so how do we actaully manage in the urban environment....  ?  shoping in the poor area has been an eye opener.. to be honest one does not know the real state of finances of the folks around one the fact that young men and women and kids look terribly frazzled doesn't mean he isn't on good money... other social aspects and practises come into play AND diet.... families mum and the i lost count at 4 kids someone to organise all the food where does dad or dads come into this? kids is it undernourished or not quite thriving... family outting in supermarket doesn't sound like fun i remember it well being along not to help with the shopping as such but to be there cos you couldn't be left at home... great! other families kids having pandies and adults just not thinking about anything but response to kids as in treats ... some trolleys do look like every day a party... unthriving kids unthriving parents... no wonder the poor can be pretty defensive about the middleclasses nosing about their business... not managing not coping is well humiliating to the vulnerable being inspected by the colonials.....

but it was another hook that had me there thinking... earlier that day i had been summoned for a coffee... i really did not enjoy my companion's choice of meeting place.. a showy expensive chain... i have arrived without having left the house properly i have not had coffee ... my coffee is paid for for which i am grateful.... the highlight is when talking about Jesus Healing and a woman with sticks suddenly appears and sits for a while and goes... you know i wanted to pray for her go up to her and pray... instead a carry on conversation as soon as it verves she's off i feel disappointed something has not happened there that must!... my companion gets another tea.... now this is where normally i wouldj be pleased to buy that drink me i am still ok on the not quite pleasantry of late coffee with a glass of water ..not at home... and you know what ... i shock myself with what i am thinking... i'll say nothing! what am i thinking? i am remembering someone we used to know who had an air of a poor thing and indeed was a poor thing of sorts who was very used to christians buying drinks and meals for them... and christians were very generous in many ways ... so how was this person poor? they were from a working class family of industrial workers able bodied and able minded but they had not turned out as the rest of the family and the adventures of life had ended in culdesacs of hardship that the limited edition mollycoddling of middleclass christians who could afford to throw a bit of money in that direction and so did in a modest but dedicated fashion including the plight of the poor in those middleclass christian activities and going out of their way when the chips got rough... so this person was born again amidst the mollycoddling but there was quite a bit of brokenness that got discussed in separation somewhat from these good mollycoddlers.... and the things that they did kindof went well..... money went on booze ... structures to manage limited finance were non existent.... the person's Spiritual desires were not realised or guided.... they distanced and then they died sadly and unexpectedly....   as they were about to embark on a very different form of christian mollycoddling... this person wanted to be taken seriously as a middle class person even though they had a lot of learning... they loved GOD but they loved to talk in that middleclass context with middleclass language and well something was missing rather a lot of broken handles needed fixing and the middleclasses were content to do the decent thing and include the broken person in their activities occasionally barbs would emerge.... having that ability to socialise though on the level of being and listening and occasionally speaking was mistaken perhaps for something beyond what it was.... after the shock death the word 'pride' was used a lot.... the truth was none of us knew about the potential of the Gospel beyond what we had seen ... there was a real social context to what had been and that crumbled with folks going elsewhere.... one way or another and nobody was left for the high maintenance extraction of life that GOD had begun.... pride was not a helpful descriptor... i felt...  and the word broken is not touching the nub... seems we all had opinions about what was best for them but nobody to put their life where their mouth is ... 'cept Jesus... i have spent a lot of time blaming others and myself in truth we were not equipped though we had all the tools in the bag and a paid for account with the suppliers we weren't looking for the training or the contracts


GOD BLESS!

Peace and Love,

when you say ... something is unacceptable you put your body on the line but that's not the point at which to sit down again but the time to get ready GOD to go ready