friarmike

Garden of Tranquility

After yesterday's blog and the constructive interaction I did think I would blog a response. Grateful for the suggestions about what to do on October 14, I can let folk know that plans are afoot for some notable 'markers'. 

The decked front garden designed to facilitate Katey's wheelchair and love of engaging passers by in conversation has now been torn up. It had provided many happy hours for coffee drinking for us both. As Katey deteriorated it was also the place of learning and laughter as yours truly sought to master the skills of carer and attempted to assist Katey with her feeding and drinking. 'Canteen Medals' appeared a plenty as random food and liquids squirted back out of her mouth to cover both her and me - and the laughter that followed only exacerbated the situation. 

St Farncis out of his love for the animal kingdom, dubbed the human body as Brother Ass! How right he was. When we lose the ability to manufacture cool we quite simply manufacture humour a plenty. And so that garden was a place of many happy moments, some of laughter, some of deep conversation, some of rich silence. However, once Katey finally had to progress to a nursing home the garden, symbolic of her physical life, deteriorated.

Now, one year later, decking removed, trees and shrubbery gone, a new carefully designed garden of tranquility is being laid and will be completed before the anniversary of her departure in the arms of angels. It will provide a haven of peace and a source of rich memories. It is the first part of a major household refurbishment as a home of hospitality and hope is constructed - values Katey epitomised from the moment I first met her. 

The daily household rhythms of praying together, eating together, conversing together, and working together will continue with certain pilgrims stopping by for encouragement and refreshment. Not sure when the transition will be completed but I shall certainly keep reflecting upon it.

So the day will be richly marked ritually - my thoughts are more around the feelings that will flow through and around my physical, emotional and spiritual self. As ever these I know will be rich even when acute. It's never what life throws at us, but always about our chosen response.

Unanticipated Debris

Well the first anniversary of Katey's departure to glory fast approaches. People ask me what I would like to do on the day - I cannot make a sensible reply for my blood turns to ice and I feel petrified both in the sense of fearful as well as frozen to the spot. What to do? However, as with all of life the day will come and go and I will somehow emerge the other side. That is the reassuring thing about life. No matter what our hopes or fears, time passes, we survive extreme moments, and we continue until summoned home to our final resting place.

Strangely these feelings of uncertainty were highlighted at a recent event. I had the most wonderful opportunity to participate in mediator training run by CEDR and held in Malta. What brilliant training and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. However, in the week leading up to departure I near fell apart as a person! I did not understand what was happening to me because I am generally Mr. ego on legs and have not, in as far as I can remember, suffered something my friends describe as insecurity. I am sure that is an overstatement but does nicely highlight the point that I do naturally carry a lot of self esteem and confidence.

The thought of meeting people I did not know, introduce myself as a widower, find space to establish relationships - well all this played on my mind and near wrecked me. I arrived exhausted emotionally and somewhat akin to a rabbit caught in the headlights of a fast approaching juggernaut. It was my very first venture into unknown territory without my lovely Katey beside me or at the end of a phone. She was so much my anchor and confidence, and how little I had realised it. Also how quietly she had been willing to fulfill that role in support of me (what a generous, kind, and practical expression of love - I am forever grateful).

This feeling and experience I named for my own benefit as 'unanticipated debris'. I am nearly one year on from katey's sudden death, but yet the debris from that shipwreck of my life still surrounds me, now lurking just below the surface and waiting to wound once again. Now do not get me wrong, I am not locked away in mourning unable to face the light of day. I would describe my journey over the last year as a gentle but constructive moving forward. No! The point is debris lies beneath the surface and you never know when you will encounter it. And in encountering it you face yourself, the ghosts of your life, and decisions you need to make.

All I can say having processed thus far is that I am grateful forever for the warm welcome of the CEDR faculty running the training, and for the gracious welcome and many kindnesses extended by the wonderful learning community of which I was a part. I felt included together with my story and I have not the words to express how healing that all felt. 

Another experience and another step - walking back to happiness is an eventful, yet privileged, journey. 

"Le Pissoir"

Walking in Southsea last Saturday, a host of childhood memories flooded back. En route to the super market, or in keeping with the feel francaise, supermarche, I had that urge to relieve my coffee laden bladder. Fortunately there was nearby a public urinal and as I entered memories of childhood holidays flooded back.

The reason was quite simply the overwhelming and slightly nauseous smell. I well remember as a kid being whisked off the beach in my swimming trunks to make the journey to the toilets that were situated just behind the sand dunes. The floor coated in a light layer of sand and the urinals and cubicles looking distinctly unloved and uncared for.

Aided by my dad the visit was as brief and functional as was necessary before returning to sun drenched sands, bucket and spade, and floating amidst the waves. The real joy of a beach holiday. 

The question that pooped into my mind as an adult now quite some years after such memories were created was simply this. How can it be that in a world that has given us Concord, moon landings, digital TV and the Iphone, the smell of the public urinal or pissoir has not changed? It would appear that some things are caught in a moment in time and cannot step forward from their imprisonment whilst all around them things grow, develop and transform themselves. 

I wonder what else is lost in time - I have a few ideas but it would be uncharitable to name them in public at this time. Without a commitment to transformation and change we will only be left with an aging pissoir to mark our passing. Believe me that is not the aroma of Christ!

What a difference a day makes

Yesterday was a big day in British sport. It marked the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster when 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives in a tragic incident at their team's FA Cup semi-final held in Sheffield. The constant words from commentators leading up to this memorial were about just how hard it must be for families who suffered bereavement on that day. I, no doubt with countless others across the UK, understood the sentiment intellectually but got nowhere near emotionally.

For me, how that all changed within 24 hours. Today, April 16, would have been my wife's birthday. However, Katey sadly passed away last October. I did not know how I would engage with this day and it has proved an interesting learning curve. As with all these experiences, negotiation is only available live. There is no appropriate 'Grieving for Dummies' that cuts it. Somewhat like sailing around the world solo, the moment Katey died I cast off and left the safe haven of a comfortable harbour and have had to rely on my learnt skills and inventive genius to handle what the weather throws at me day to day, even hour by hour.

Today was the first day which completely transported me to the self same emotions I experienced walking away from the hospital moments after Katey departed. Numb, uncertain, isolated, and blearily observing the world through eyes that constantly filled with gentle tears. 

I had thought maybe I was well on the way to managing this loss, but what a surprise. I was literally ambushed by my emotions and could just about navigate my way through the day hour by hour. This I did as honestly and constructively as possible. The wealth of memories that raced to fill my mind, the sound of her voice, her smile of enjoyment, the scent of her perfume. How much more powerful are our unconscious senses to our conscious ones.

Yet I realised this is indeed a journey I must take alone. Disappointed, though not at all cross, I had to come to terms with the fact that not one member of my blood family remembered - or if they did no-one picked up the phone, dropped me a card, or sent around flowers. The loss of one's spouse is a very isolating experience, the more so when one's loneliness is emphasised. I am not cross because I know I have failed to remember or connect with friends at important times. So I am talking to myself as much, if not more than to anyone else.

So we need to remind ourselves again that, 'no man is an island'. We are built for community and companionship. I for one continue to work to secure my place in such a creative community, both freely to give of myself in the support and service of others, as well as to become a beneficiary.

But just as I sit down to write this there is the sweetest moment of the day, a sign of fresh growth in the abandoned landscape around me. One of Katey's oldest friends, Candy, drops a note through on Facebook just to say she has noted this day and sends her love. It is like a cool bottle of water in an arid desert after a days trekking. Someone who I am sure has also struggled especially with this day. I retire to bed encouraged and grateful for this voice of compassion and warm embrace of understanding. What a difference a day makes!

The Loneliness of Loss

I have written about the departure from this world of my lovely wife Katey. Following her death there was much activity as people expressed their grief and solidarity and a funeral was planned and executed. Then came the silence, as eerie as that silence that follows a heavy fall of snow.

Such a silence is profound. Listen as hard as one can there is no sound that penetrates its blanket cover. It is all consuming, overwhelming, and quite intimidating. Oh, and of course so cold that it takes one’s very breath away. However, one imagines that just as after the snow has ceased to fall the natural order of things will slowly reassert itself. As the clouds break the birds will start to sing again, the small animals will emerge from their sanctuaries and forage for food afresh, the cycle of nature will somehow reconnect and resume its timeless rhythm.

How surprisingly different the reality is. The rhythm of life does not resume its old familiar pattern – it is broken forever. A new rhythm must be found. The birds that once sang a familiar tune appear to have migrated never to return. The woodland remains strangely silent, no disturbance of the undergrowth, no pad of paw or scratch of claw from recognizable creatures. One world it seems has ended whilst one still waits to be birthed.

And so it is – the dawning of the reality that is the loneliness of loss. Old friends have emigrated, the familiar has failed to resume. My loneliness is now forever and it rests with me to wrestle with this new creation that waits upon its birth. I am in some way both the source of that birth and I trust will become a beneficiary from it.

I have concluded, six weeks after Katey was borne away on angels wings, that a rhythm died with her on that day, a rhythm that will not be returning with all its familiar faces and voices that once filled our world together. It is a rhythm that is no more and never more will be so again.

I must begin afresh, begin as a new born, a hermit, alone, who once again must learn to walk, to talk, to understand, and once again must find the faith to be born again, again. This to make sense of a faith that could be described as insubstantial once tested beyond the familiar litany of self maintenance; a faith that may need to plead guilty of exchanging the organic for the mechanistic.

Maybe it takes a death, and an introduction to the loneliness of loss, to grow sufficiently dissatisfied with only the verbalisation of an ancient faith, or excusing it of failing in its Christ given mandate. So much of our current Christian obsession is superficial and consumed with the need to bolster itself with wacky supernatural experiences, ‘significance’ expressed through ‘global movements’ or through building ‘global platforms’, a cry for solid rational Christian apologetics. However, without an apologetic that clearly differentiates a life devoted to Christ to one that is not, the jury is out on the validity and viability of our Christian faith and tradition. An apologetic expressed through life’s choices rather than reasoned argument. It’s fine to assert something with confidence, but does it have any substance once the talking stops and the living starts? I don’t see huge amounts and find it difficult to distinguish between a Christian and someone who is not one.

Well I can assure you I shall co-operate with the spirit of God in the birth of the new created order into which God is calling me. However, I am far less certain whom I will share it with. For all who have migrated may God bless you and thank you for all you have contributed. We shall no doubt meet in eternity; if in fact God deems our walk of faith to have had anything to do with the faith the scriptures describe and invite us to embrace. Until then… 

Retirement

I was watching 'South Today' last night. The story is told of a 70 year old fitness coach who Worthing Council are forcing into retirement. She didn't look from the pictures I saw that she was in much need of retirement. And her class members were in full agreement they did not want to lose her. And why should she be forced out? Employer's insurance, health and safety, I am sure there are a dozen legitimate reasons the Council can give why they need to take this step. However it is unreal. Shouldn't someone be able to work until they choose not to or are unable to continue?

There is a short sightedness in all this. We are told regularly that we in the UK are an aging population. We also once retired will all be sitting like a dead weight on the shoulders of the declining younger generations still in work. They we anticipate will pay our state pensions or keep working to sustain the companies that those fortunate enough to have invested in a private pension can still function as a viable economic unit. Why not remove the age of retirement and leave it to the discretion of the worker and their employer in constructive conversation. But remove a final date from the contract when a worker must leave. I for one enjoy work and do not enjoy holidays now. So the thought of endless cruises or tiresome trips to famed beauty spots already depresses me.

Surely a nation that keeps its citizens at work must generate a higher GDP. Surely there would then be more consumer spending which from my amateur's perspective is all that keeps an economy functioning. Come on let the 'wrinklies' keep working.

Sex Trafficking

I have the privilege of being a member of the Board of LOVE146. This was formerly known as Justice for Children International. The team are enthusiastic and tremendous and the work heartbreaking yet rewarding. I received a Board letter today in my email and want to take todays posting to reproduce the substance of that letter. It is calls for both tears and joy.

                                      The Joy of our home…
Joy was 8 years old. She lived with her father in a small hut. There was a fire. Joy was 8. Her father could not be woken up. She screamed. She dragged. She was 8. Her father died in their home, in that fire.

Joy went to her mother and step- father. Joy was 8. Her step-father raped her. Her mother sold her for sex three times a night. Her home was a plastic bag.
Joy was taken to a government home. She was addicted to drugs and alcohol, she attempted suicide many times, she was highly sexualized. After rehab the government didn’t want her. She was too hard of a case.
                                                        A hut -A plastic bag -An institution

Joy is 14 years old. Joy is the first girl to be a part of our new Love146 safehome in the Philippines. Our “pink home” (named so by one of Rob’s daughters) opened in January of this year. Our home does not take “cases,” we take girls. We take girls that no one wants. We take hardships, struggles, confusion. We take laughter, hope; we take Joy.

The day after Joy came, one of our caregivers asked her “What is your wish in life?”  Joy answered, “My wish has come true. I am home.”

                                                       

A hut - A plastic bag - An institution

                                                                           

A home.

                                                                           

A home.

                                                                    We are the home for Joy

This is a worthy meditation. It raises the challenges we have in an iniquitous world. It calls upon us to consider how seriously we take our commitment to sow justice and righteousness. It calls for courage in the face of overwhelming odds. And reminds us that hope is a gift each of us can bring.

Where is my joy and your joy? We need to make life decisions with great care.

Visit the website www.love146.org

Time to reflect and be silent

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."

                                                                                       G. K. Chesterton

Enough said!