Luke 8.21 "My mothers and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice."

He's right, of course. Obedience to our Father above all, the Holiest of Holies, the one who inhabits the darkened temple, the hushed veiled mystery beyond all our chatter. The Father who created us all and sits in judgement on our children as ourselves, is He not worthy of our sacrifice, our blessing, our awe and holy fear?
Mothers and brothers are important, yes. But only to the young and very old, those who cannot manage by themselves and need help. A man grows up and leaves his family, his wife likewise. This is the Law, the way the world happens, the way responsibility falls from one generation to the next. You cannot stay in your mother's bed all your life. The preacher is right.
And yet, I could not help but feel a pang for the young men with the strong labourers' build who waited so patiently for so long at the edge of the crowd. And I was not sorry to see the way they spoke of their mother, pleaded her case in thick Galilean accents until they saw it was no use. They were politely turned away with the news that the preacher was tired now, perhaps they could come back and visit another time - no one had the gall, or cruelty, to tell them what had actually been said - all was done with tenderness, with the greatest of care - if she wept, she did so quietly, behind her veil, so that we could not see or hear - Sons do grow up and leave home. That is the way of the world.
And although the preacher is of course right I could not be sorry that, one by one, as they took the long road home, I saw these strong young men taking turns to comfort her, whispering in her ear and awkwardly patting her hand.

Luke 8.20 "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, waiting to see you."

I see him a long way off. Addressing a large crowd. My son has no time for me any more. I know I should be grateful that he is so precious, so special, and I am. But sometimes I feel God has granted me a gift that is larger than I wanted.

I tore when I gave birth to him, and now I am torn in pieces again. Even before they come and give me the bad news, that he doesn't want to see me today, I am in pain: not because I am angry, but because I know he is right. We had our years together, I wiped him clean and taught him to count, giggled at his smiles. He has work that is more important than me now.

Luke 8:18b

Whoever has will be given more: whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken from him.

So I left the bitch, and moved in with my new girlfriend. Love, at last. After fifteen years of pretending to enjoy life I suddenly had the real thing, a loving kiss, great company, a warm bed at night. And after a few months some of the sheen had worn off, I'd found she did her hair with highlights and was a bit older than she'd made out, but still, she was a better bet than the other one. And it lasted that way, her saying that she loved me and me like a fool believing her, until the details of the divorce settlement came out and she discovered that my ex-wife was keeping most of the cash. She hadn't bargained for that, she'd wanted to give up work.

She didn't leave much in the flat, when she moved out. Not even a sofa. I had to start all over again, a third time. But, as it happens, I still have her shoes. Old-fashioned things, stilettos with super-high heels. Six inches, like women used to wear when I was young. "You fool," said my mother when she saw them. "Only prostitutes and gold-diggers wear that kind of thing now."

Luke 8:18 "Therefore consider carefully how you listen."

I'm sitting in a classroom, and my hands are dangling over the edge of the old-fashioned wooden desk. From somewhere outside the noise comes of laughter, cheers, a thudding ball. Sports time.
At the front of the class our teacher, small nose, glasses, slightly furrowed forehead. I think of him as old, but he's probably quite young. The chalk squawks slightly as he demonstrates a quadratic equation on the chalk board.
He tells us once how he wasn't always a teacher, how when he left university he went to work for a few years on an oil rig. It's good work for boys, not for girls, he tells us. You get paid for the whole month, but only work two weeks. It's hard, long shifts and no outside time, alcohol is forbidden. But people pay off their houses in a few years that way. Work's not as easy to come by as it used to be, he adds. When I was up there in Aberdeen they were crying out for young men.

Funny. I never excelled at maths. I was in his class for two or three years, but of all the serious lessons I listened to, that is the one that I remember most vividly. The idea that this dull, respectable, prematurely elderly young man could once have been so daring as to work on an oil rig. And that women couldn't do it. That stung.

Perhaps he wasn't all that dull after all, I remember thinking. Now I look back, and wonder if I confused the dullness of the subject with the man. Whether he was probably quite fun, quite dry and witty. And I wonder too what my oil rig is, what when I look back and tell tales to my children will be the wildest, craziest story of my youth. It will probably be something quite mundane. Like bothering to continue with the walk to ordination.

Luke 8:16 A Lamp on a Stand

No one lights a lamp and hides it in a jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, he puts it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light. For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.

I run, I hide. The men behind me are chasing me. Their faces are dark, like the night. I wake up, shaking. It is just a dream.
How often do I dream this same dream, and why does it haunt me? My wife is still asleep. I reach for the bedside lamp. It is out of oil. I stumble to the door of my room, and open it. A little starlight trickles in. Not much, but at least I can see where I am.
Since hearing that man's teaching I have been haunted by the night. I never used to mind it, but now the thought of darkness fills me with fear. A jar, a bed, who would put a lamp there? But they took him and killed him, the men of darkness in my dream, and although I have heard wild rumours since of a mistake - many claim to have seen him since his death. Some say he was never crucified at all, others talk of a resurrection. But I don't believe that twaddle. So I am left with the nightmares, the thought of a lamp snuffed out in the darkness, hidden under my bed. I dream that the men will come for me, that they have already come and that I am dead, buried in a tomb in the ground. Some nights, my wife tells me, I scream in my sleep. Other times I wake up in tears.
It never used to bother me before, this darkness. The place where everything hides that does not wish to be found, wish to be seen. I look at the lamp on my stand, but without oil and flame it is nothing, puny and small. The shadows crowd around. I wish I'd never heard of this man, this preacher who came promising that there would be light.

Mark 6: 45-52 Jesus Walks On Water

I see the feet above me. I have seen human feet before, but they have been different. Splashing on the edges of the world, where the water becomes so thin it is hard to breathe, great trunks moving through the water. Sometimes a hand reaches down and takes a fish. We never see it again.
Other times we see human feet on a drowned man. They cannot survive in this world, they come down from the heavens above us where they live and gasp, choke, turn blue and mottled. After a while they fall to the bottom. Then they are eaten. A gift from the heavens to us, perhaps. So the sight of a human foot was not a surprise to me. But what was surprising was how strong and soft it was. A child’s foot is soft, if you nibble at it it feels like seaweed. A man’s foot is hard and calloused. It is like eating mollusc shells.
But this foot walked across the water, stronger than any man I had ever seen, and yet I saw it was soft and white like a child’s. And I wondered how tender that man was, whether he had ever truly stepped on the hard ground of the heavens where humans live, or whether he came from somewhere else entirely. But that was impossible, of course, because there are only two worlds, heaven of the humans, and the real world, the ocean one.
I was puzzled by him. Not frightened, puzzled. He was only there for a few moments, you see, he ran across the water and climbed into the boat. There, from heaven, we heard his friends shouting. They seemed afraid, although I could not imagine why. No reason to be afraid of any creature with such pale tender feet. All a great mystery. I never saw it’s like again. And the fact that he strode across the sky of our world without falling in? Yes, now you ask, that puzzled me too.