Look Up – to the Shed, the Manger and Castle,

I often enthuse about our Men’s Shed. Yesterday I read Riley’s account of a Canadian Men’s Shed:

‘While we’re sanding or assembling, the real stuff starts to surface stories of MS, diabetes, chronic pain, and dementia. Grief. Change. We don’t force it. It just happens because people feel safe… every man can feel useful again, no matter his history, health, or heartache.

Some of our guys are carrying heavy loads, cancer, dementia, and profound personal loss…We’ve created a rare space where men can laugh without pretending. Where they can build without being perfect. Where they can heal without ever having to say the word out loud.’

This morning, on ‘Lectio 365’ I read words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, reflecting on advent and Christmas:

“Look up, you whose gaze is fixed on this earth… Look up to these words, you who have turned away from heaven disappointed. Look up, you whose eyes are heavy with tears and who are heavy… Look up, you who, burdened with guilt, cannot lift your eyes. Look up, your redemption is drawing near. Something different from what you see daily will happen. Just be aware, be watchful, wait just another short moment. Wait and something quite new will break over you: God will come.”

Yesterday, reading ‘Once Upon a Wardrobe’… Megs, George and Padraig, visiting Dunluce Castle in Ireland, the inspiration behind C.S. Lewis’ Cair Paravel in the Narnia stories, are seeking deeper insight. Padraig says:

George knows that you can take the bad parts in a life, all the  hard and dismal parts, and turn them into something of beauty. You can take what hurts and aches and you can perform magic with it so it becomes something else, something that never would have been, except you make it so with your spells and stories and with your life.’

And somewhere, in a Canadian shed, in a Bethlem manger, in an Irish castle, I can look up from life’s pain and problems to see security, wholeness and hope.

Quotes from: Riley, Shed Leader at Strathcona County Men’s Shed, in Canada. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), ‘God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas (2012). Patti Callahan: ‘Once Upon a Wardrobe’ (2023)