Foe or Forager

Hi everyone - and what a glorious autumn we're having in the land of the long white cloud! 

Meanwhile, my writing once again takes me to Belfast, Northern Ireland.

In famine-ridden Belfast 2079, edible harvests are rare and wild fruit even more so. 

The perfect reason why two young men go head to head over... a plant.

Please go ahead and grab yourself a free copy of this short story at the following direct download link:

http://dl.bookfunnel.com/crwizlaisx

The Real Story of St. Patrick by Christine Lindsay

Just like all holidays, St. Patrick's Day takes on some ridiculous forms of celebration from green beer to dressing up in silly clothes.

There are some fantastical legends about St. Patrick, such as him banishing all the snakes from Ireland. While it’s true there are no snakes there, it wasn’t the saint to the Irish who managed that. Ireland is like New Zealand, Hawaii, and Iceland in that regard--just no snakes.

There are certain truths though that we can rely on about St. Patrick, from some of his own writing, The 

Confession and A Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. It is true that Patrick was born around the year 389 and into a Christian family in Britain. His family were Romanized Britons and not nationals. His father Calpurnius was a magistrate and a deacon in the local church. 

Patrick was indeed kidnapped when he was around 12. 

He'd been out on his father's farm when Irish raiders captured him. He was taken to Ireland and sold as slave, spending the next 6 years as a sheep herder.

But like many of us, when bad things happen we often turn our sights toward God. It was while Patrick was a captive that his nominal Christian faith grew deeper. As a teen and a young man Patrick tried to shared his faith with his captors. Eventually Patrick did escape and made his way back to Britain to be reunited with his family. 

He was not a highly educated man, but did go to France and spent time as a monk in the Abby of Lerins in Gaul. One night Patrick dreamed that he heard a voice calling to him in the Irish language (Gaelic), “We beseech you, holy youth, to come and walk among us once more.”  

While Patrick was not the first missionary to Ireland, he did return to Ireland as a bishop in 432. For the next 30 years until his death, his preaching and baptisms strengthened the already growing church. Due to Patrick’s promotion of the ascetic life of worship, he boldly went into areas that were firmly pagan, teaching the Irish Druids how to worship the Creator instead of His creation.  

He died and was buried in Downpatrick in N. Ireland, and I have been to his grave. 

My aunt, me, and my daughter Lana 2006

Like many ancient cultures, Ireland has a rich oral tradition, and while there is nothing in Patrick’s writings to confirm this, he probably did use a simple shamrock to explain the Trinity. Tradition says that St. Patrick picked up a shamrock, which in the Irish Gaelic language means diminutive clover, and explained that this little piece of flora was one leaf and yet it was made up of three leaves. 

The shamrock helped the Irish, including me as an Irish child, to understand an amazing aspect to God’s person: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the Three in One.

Click on this link Londonderry Dreaming to hear some toe-tapping Irish music.

Irish-born Christine Lindsay is the author of multi-award-winning Christian fiction. She is currently writing her eighth book. To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, why not read some of Christine's books set in Ireland or that feature an Irish hero, check our Londonderry Dreaming and Sofi's Bridge coming May 2016.

Londonderry Dreaming available as an ebook, and Sofi's Bridge coming out in ebook and print May 2016.

Raspberries After the Storm

"Rain, rain,
Rattle pane."

So said the old Irish shopkeeper when we bought a kettle from her shop one wet summer's day in Co Roscommon. And indeed, during the storms in my home country, South Africa, the rain, accompanied by lightning and thunder, does rattle panes, and drums on the roof with so much force that we cannot hear the TV.

But this was not the case when Storm Clodagh recently passed over my sister's house in County Carlow. We watched the wind whip trees into a frenzied dance in the rain, but the double glazed windows and the thick insulation muffled the sound of the wind to a barely audible murmur. The central heating kept us snug and warm. The wind and rain did not disturb our sleep that night. In the first light next morning we saw that huge bare branches, ripped from a sturdy ash tree  in the back garden, lay strewn on the ground.

The fallen branches had narrowly missed the autumn raspberry canes growing nearby. They stood proud and tall, bedecked with fruit jewels glowing  in the morning sun, beckoning hungry blackbirds.

I couldn't resist eating a few raspberries.They were delicious! Tasty reminders that even though terrible life storms have lashed me during the last few years, I can cling to God and He will never fail me. I will survive by his grace and will not be not be destroyed. He will enable me to bear friut for Him

Strawberry Dreaming

It's time to return to Belfast of 2079, where Mariah is dreaming of strawberries. After several years of famine, it's been a long time since she saw one - but the day may yet hold a surprise or two for her.

I am still having a grand old time drawing the covers for these short prologues. Now there are four of them!

The novel itself, Mariah's Dream, is now up for pre-order on Kindle and will be fully available - also in print - by the end of July.

Here is an excerpt of Strawberry Dreaming:


It is a warm summer day. Layers of wispy clouds do little to obscure the sun, for once. These temperatures are rare in Ireland—but all the more treasured for it. The air carries wondrous scents of flowering things and the promise of tree fruit in autumn: apples and pears and plums now ripening, the unborn ghosts of their nascent aromas already filling the orchard slopes.

Railway tracks border the green area, with rows of brick houses beyond. Farther still, to the north, are the tall chimneys of an industrial area nearer the city, and on the left hand looms the dark shape of the Black Mountain that overhangs western Belfast. A train rattles by, its wheels screeching, the commuters gazing with longing at the paradise that is lost to them a few seconds later. In the midst of the city the allotments bloom. Tired brick and old streets have given way to a space between the walls where determined gardeners have staked a claim and worked the land.

Even now there is a harvest of other crops, the summer vegetables and early fruit. The little girl stoops, reaches into a tangle of leaves, and twists a strawberry from its socket with a pleasing pop. Her sharp eyes watch to confirm what her fingers have already told her. When she brings it out into view, it is intensely scarlet and fills the palm of her small hand, a thing of beauty with a drop of juice barely clinging on at the recently detached summit. She breathes its essence, warm and ripe, a storehouse of sunshine and satiety, the secure anticipation of how it is going to feel on her tongue as she savours it and her tastebuds will explode with simple happiness.

You can read the whole story free on my website here!

I'm a Rock

"Why is your one eye bigger than the other?" asked six-year-old Erin. 

 

"God made me like this," I said.

She ran off to play with no further questions or comments.

Her observation was spot on, but she was the first person to ask about it. My husband was surprised when I mentioned it to him later. He had never noticed the difference in my eyes, even though we've been married for over 41 years. Well, they do say love is blind. . . 

 

My brief conversation with Erin came to mind as I thought about what to write for this blog post. Even though I don’t know His reason, I do know God created me like this. Psalm 139:13 says that He created my inmost being and knit me together in my mother's womb. 

My thoughts drifted to the beautiful dry stone walls which I love in the West of Ireland. They always fascinate and inspire me.

An Irish field demarcated by dry stone walls

A dry stone wall

Dry stone walls were first built many many centuries ago as a way to clear the ground for farming, and to mark out the fields. Rocks and stones were taken from the land and fitted together, each one being chosen for its size and shape to fill a specific niche in the wall—it had to be exactly right as no mortar or other building materials were used. The stones were put together in such a way that their connection with each other made the wall structurally sound.

Today dry stone walls are not just lifeless structures, but they abound with life as they mature. They provide shelter and homes for small creatures. In winter they glow with lichens and mosses and in summer they  blossom with wild flowers.

Flowers growing on a dry stone wall in summer

 That's it! As a Christian in the church, I'm like a rock in a dry stone wall. God made me the way I am, with my personality, gifts, talents, weaknesses, and even my small eye, specifically to fit the niche He has prepared for me. As Paul explains so clearly in 1 Corinthians 12:27, Christians make up the body of Christ "and each one of you is a part of it." (NIV) Wouldn't it be wonderful if we each slotted gladly into the space shaped just right for us and played our allotted role, all the while glowing with life as we gave more and more of ourselves to Christ?