If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
Please sponsor me! I am raising money for Tearfund, a brilliant aid agency. They work hard to support the poorest people in our world. Now also supporting people fleeing Ukraine, providing food and shelter. Your donation can be part of that.
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
I have divided Psalm 22 into segments, one for each day in Lent. Lent has 40 days, but Sundays are not included (don’t ask me why, sounds like cheating to me!) I have therefore divided the poem into 40 segments, and Sundays can be our recap days, when we relax and enjoy what we have learnt so far.
I suggest that you read/learn one segment each day, learning as much (or as little) as you can. If you have signed up to follow my blog, a new verse will be sent to you each day (so it will be very easy to learn—simply read it every time you check your phone, or wash your hands, or have a cup of tea).
You can choose whether to learn the poem in English, or a different language. I have included Mandarin and Spanish versions. I am going to attempt to learn it in Hebrew. I found the words online at stepbible.org so if you want a different language, check there. It’s a brilliant resource. At the very least, if we read a little each day, the poem will become very familiar, so we recognise it instantly and can join in when we hear it read. But learning it by heart would be fabulous.
As this is something of a challenge, I am going to ask people to sponsor me, to raise money for Tearfund. If you would like to sponsor me, please go to my Just Giving page:
I have received the result of my Greek exam, and despite my worries I did unexpectedly well. In September I start an MA in Christian Thought and Practice (which is basically Theology for people who didn’t do theology for their undergraduate degree) and I hope to choose Hebrew as the optional subject. It’s validated by Manchester University and is all very exciting and scary.
One of the worrying things about exams is that anything can happen on the day, and if you wake with a headache or the roof falls in, then it’s tough—you just have to make the best of it. I am someone who likes to plan ahead, so that whatever happens, I am prepared. Perhaps having animals has taught me this, because if I leave things until the last minute, an animal is sure to upset the plan.
I love an excuse to read a new book.
As soon as I was accepted for the MA, I looked at the books in the pre-course reading list. How exciting! I love an excuse to read a book. Some were expensive, so will have to be loaned from the library (or not read) but a few were within budget (ie, wouldn’t be commented on when the credit card bill arrives!) so I ordered them—three paperbacks and one on Kindle. I will write a review for you when I have read them (unless I hated them, as I don’t review books I dislike).
They arrived quickly, and my main surprise was the size! It seems that the price of theology books is not an indication of their size. There will certainly be room for them on my bookshelf…
Another plan is for Lent next year. Yes, I know that Lent is ages away, but I also know that I have a slightly compulsive personality, and when term starts in September every moment and thought will be taken up with study plus family commitments, so anything extra should be prepared now, while I have time. Don’t stop reading, because this involves you too.
I decided a while ago, that for Lent 2022, rather than give up chocolate or alcohol or whatever, I would give up some time and learn a Psalm by heart. Good for the brain. Psalm 22 is basically a poem about what happened at Easter.
I hope you will join me, so this week I wrote out the Psalm and divided it into 40 segments (one for each day in Lent) ready to post on my blog. I thought it would be good to learn it in another language, so also wrote it out in Hebrew. This looked rather daunting, but achievable. I decided that I will do it as a sponsored event, and raise money for Tearfund. The easiest way for people to give is via either a Just Giving page or a Facebook Charity page. I decided to use Just Giving, looked on their website, and discovered it was very easy to make a page. I made one, which will sit there, like a lemon, until next spring. I think Tearfund will be alerted that the page has been made, so they will look at it and think I am Billy-no-mates because I won’t start collecting sponsors until next year! In 2022 I hope lots of people will generously sponsor me, and each day I will learn a few lines of the Psalm.
Now, you would think that dividing a poem (because a Psalm is basically a poem) would be easy. I knew that Lent started after Ash Wednesday, so began distributing lines of poetry across the days. Then I thought I had better check my dates, because I wasn’t raised in an Anglican church and the dates of Lent are fuzzy. My dates were wrong. Lent begins ON Ash Wednesday. I rewrote the distributed lines of poetry.
Then I mentioned to my family what I was planning. Son 1 informed me that Lent doesn’t include Sundays. That sounded wrong. I checked. He was correct—Lent is 40 days, beginning on Ash Wednesday and not including Sundays. I rewrote the distributed lines of poetry again. This was proving harder to get right than learning the thing will be!
I added the Hebrew version underneath. I will upload it on my blog, so next Lent, all my followers will receive a snippet of the poem to learn each day. Learning things is achievable if they are broken into little bits and read often. I will write out the lines and stick them on the fridge, and the mirror in the bathroom, and next to my bed. It will be good for my brain, fun to achieve, and hopefully raise some money for Tearfund.
Now, here’s the thing—will you join me? I can add another language if you fancy learning the poem in French or Spanish or Mandarin, or whatever. You just need to let me know. The aim will be to try and learn a small section every day (if we don’t manage the whole thing, then it doesn’t matter).
If you want to be sponsored, which I think will be very motivational, then you can either make your own sponsor form, or use one of the online ones, or if you want to be added to mine, I can edit it so it shows other people too. If you want to be added, let me know your name, the language you plan to learn it in, and how much you think you will raise and I will add it to my page.
I realise that Lent 2022 is ages away, but now is the time to plan it, and then it will be put in your diary and it will actually happen. It doesn’t matter where you are, you can learn a poem anywhere. Things that are ‘left for later’ usually never happen in my experience. Plus, it’s better to plan ahead, because it’s so far in the future that it isn’t scary at all (I suffer a lot with ‘scary’!)
So there you are, a challenge for you to think about. Which language would you like to learn the poem in? I am excitedly waiting to hear from you…
Hope you have a motivated week. Take care. Love, Anne x
P.S. I have now read ‘Enduring Treasure,’ the first book on my list. I will post my review of it next week, so be sure to look for it.
Thank you for reading
anneethompson.com
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Did you have a nice week? I managed to remember both Husband’s birthday AND Valentine’s Day last week. This is surprisingly difficult because they come so close together. I did one year forget the Valentine’s card completely. I didn’t realise until I was going to bed late on the evening of the 13th. We always exchange cards first thing in the morning, so there was no way I could make an excuse and say I was giving him my one later – he knows me too well, he would know I had forgotten. What to do?
Then I had a brain wave. Husband is a very organised person. He always keeps everything in tidy places, they are easy to find. He is also quite sentimental, he keeps all the cards that he is given. These traits provided an excellent solution. I sneaked to the cupboard where he keeps his old cards and found a Valentine card that I had sent him a few years previously. Popped it into a fresh envelope and there you are, all sorted. The next morning, there was his card waiting with his morning tea, just like normal. (Yes, I did admit to it, but much later, after it wouldn’t matter. He wasn’t surprised.)
I have never claimed to be a saint, (and people who know me have also never felt tempted to give me that title.) With this in mind, you will understand why I have decided that our church’s plan for Lent – to do one random act of kindness every day – is beyond me. I am just not that nice. I have therefore decided to lower the bar a little. I am going to try and not be bad at least once every day during Lent. So far this is going okay.
It means I have to do things like change light bulbs sometimes. I hate doing this. We keep the light bulbs in a cupboard that is very awkward to reach, between a chair and a bookcase behind a table. Getting new light bulbs is a hassle. Now, our bed has two reading lights in the wall behind it. I like to go to bed early and read for hours, so my light often needs a new bulb. Husband rarely reads in bed, his bulb hardly ever gets used. It is much easier, when my bulb runs out, to just swap it with the one in Husband’s light. He did comment last week that the bulbs don’t seem to last very long because he never uses his light but the bulb frequently needs replacing. I just smiled. If my bulb goes during Lent I will replace it properly. Probably.
I also have to try and not laugh inappropriately. This is very hard for me. I am someone who laughs a lot – it is my default reaction. I even laugh when I am asleep sometimes, which is very annoying because I wake myself up giggling and then cannot even remember what I was laughing at! Husband also complains.
The thing is, I do find rude jokes funny, ‘The Inbetweeners’ was my favourite programme for a while, which even my children told me was inappropriate for a woman my age. When someone drops something or falls over or says something wrong, I feel those giggles bubbling up inside and the more I know I must NOT laugh, that they will find it hurtful, the harder it is to stop.
I am making a special effort for Lent (though actually that bit is not going so well. Someone told me this week that their neighbour had been found dead in their car. They were waiting for the AA to arrive. They had a flat battery. Something about it just struck me as hilarious. I’m not sure I managed to look sad and caring, but I did try.)
It was always a problem when I was teaching – I was never very good at telling off the children because I always wanted to laugh.
I remember once a thirteen year old boy came up to me very pale faced and told me that he had swallowed the end of his crayon. He was obviously terribly worried that he would die or something. I’m afraid I wasn’t the sympathetic caring adult that I should have been at that moment, partly because it was stupid for a boy that old to be chewing his pencil anyway.
I also remember when I was teaching infants and a little girl came to the front and said she wanted to sing a solo to the class. All very good for building confidence and allowing her to express herself. Except that it was terrible and by the end I had tears running down my cheeks and was hidden in a hanky pretending to blow my nose so the class wouldn’t realise I was laughing. It was not my finest hour as a caring primary school teacher.
Anyway, hope you are managing to laugh at the right times this week. Sometimes it’s a life saver.
Take care,
Anne x
PS. You do realise that Mum cycles on the path, don’t you? Why does she need a BACK light??
PPS. I feel you need more veterinary practice. You can take daughter’s cat (who hates me) for her jabs while you’re here.
Anne E Thompson 