Facing Defeat

Norwich City lost to Swansea on Saturday – their fifth successive defeat. They’re second from bottom in the Championship. American owner Mark Antanassio is flying in this week; Head Coach Liam Manning is under pressure.

Manning says: ‘I want to keep fighting . I want to get the lads on board in terms of them really owning it and stepping up… I can’t concentrate on uncontrollable and what it looks like. So for me, my default position is to keep fighting and keep scrapping.’

In this weekend’s ‘Fabulous’ magazine, bypassing fashion advice, beauty tips and celebrity news, I read: ‘5 drinking styles that mean you have a problem’.

Recovery coach, Elizabeth Walker, says: ‘When alcohol is the answer to every emotional state, it’s probably less about enjoyment and more about dependence… problematic drinking doesn’t always look like hitting rock bottom. Often it shows up in those subtle patterns: the justifications, the rituals and the way alcohol slowly shifts from being a treat to becoming the crutch holding everything up.’

Recalling Siegfried Sassoon’s “Soldier’s Declaration”, read in parliament, published in The Times, in July 1917: ‘I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it… I believe that this war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest…’

Liam Manning faces defeat in football with determination and fight; Elizabeth Walker advises those who face defeat by alcohol to be more mindful; Siegfried Sassoon, facing defeat in war questions the political insincerities of those in power.

Yesterday in church Esther talked about Jesus as ‘The Gate’. The picture is of sheep and a shepherd. Jesus is the gate, the point of transition between the security and safety of the sheepfold, and the freedom and food of green pastures.

Musing… Transitional points in my life… health, relationships, finances, work… particularly… Jesus is at the transitional ‘gate’ between winning and losing, success and failure, victory and defeat… present, protecting, providing…