How the mighty have fallen

I’ve just walked from Baker Street tube station to Manchester Square for the last time. Or at least for the last time to the ICI Head Office. The office closes this weekend and I’m redundant from today.

I’m not sure the new Dutch owners have done a very good job of managing the acquisition, but I wish them well. For me it’s been a frustrating job, joining just 18 months ago. The clouds of being bought as a company gathered soon after my arrival and any worthwhile work stopped soon after.

I’m sure I’ll find another job, though I could have done without this after such a short time! What I will miss most is what I always miss on a job move- the people. Now scattered to the four corners of the job market, I hope to keep in touch with my former ICI colleagues.

ICI, once the ‘bellwether’ of British industry. How the mighty have fallen.

30 years and still going strong

Roh and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary in style at the weekend. Around 140 friends and family gathered for an evening soiree (didn't know that was what they were called until someone told me at the weekend- I was just calling it an evening do!).
It was a great time. We hired a band called Sejuice, up from London. A mix of swing, jazz and easy pop, they were a real success. I was so proud of Roh, she did a fantastic speech. And after 30 years, I love her more than ever. My contribution in my speech was a poem by E E Cummings. A bit soft and sentimental, but it says all I wanted to say:

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear;
and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)
i want no world (for beautiful, you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Climbing the mountain of forgiveness

I read an amazing thing the other day. At the point that East Germany became free from communist rule, they had their first free elections.

The first thing the newly elected politicians did was to make a statement, part of which follows:

‘We, the first freely elected parliamentarians of the GDR… on behalf of the citizens of this land, admit responsibility for the humiliation, expulsion and murder of Jewish men, women and children. We feel sorrow and shame, and acknowledge this burden of German history…. Immeasurable suffering was inflicted on the people of the world during the era of national socialism… We ask the Jews of the world to forgive us….’

Having read the statement, there was spontaneous applause throughout the parliament, and then a period of silence as they remembered those who had died.

Such forgiveness will not bring back those who died, but it builds bridges of friendship and a release of forgiveness. As Lewis Smedes says, ‘when we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us’.

Climbing the mountain of forgiveness is always worth it.

Living above the clouds

A stressful day and a glorious day. I was over in Munich, undergoing three interviews for a job I may or may not want- and may or may not be offered! It was a gloriously hot day, so despite the stress levels, I couldn't but enjoy it!

Coming back on the plane, the sun was shining in through the window most of the way. As the plane went through a cloud, it caught the suns rays in a hundred different colours.

The Psalmist says (Psalm 139, Amplified Bible) God has embroidered our lives in various colours- I caught a glimpse of some of them today.

I got home and went running round the lake- a good stress reliever! The sun had gone down but was still casting light on the horizon, causing the clouds to turn beautiful shades of red and gold.

Solomon was having a bad day when he wrote in the Bible 'there is nothing new under the sun' He's right of course- if we choose to live under the sun! But I chose to live above it- or at least above the clouds!