friarmike

Where in the World?

There are times - increasingly frequent - when I am at a loss to know how to make sense of life. I know I am ageing and perhaps that makes a difference. For the scheme of life seems to be an endless repetition of irrelevant activities. Get up, eat breakfast, try to find enough work to pay for that breakfast - oh! and lunch and dinner as well.

 It matters little what the work is - just so long as one scratches out sufficient income to pay the tyranny of demands that are the price tag of democratic capitalism. 

 What to do? I don’t really have a tremendous appetite for living, working earning. Does that make me a reprobate or worse? Suffice to say I do work, many more hours than many of those I know yet such investment of hours produces little financial return. Perhaps I am simply inept, stupid and naive. Yet I don’t think I am alone.

 I am not that interested in becoming a waiter, bank clerk or company executive. Simply on the basis that I have little commitment to what such businesses deliver. The only purpose would be to keep me in coin so I can maintain the drudgery of the endless plight of humanity; awake, eat commute, work, earn, return home, eat, watch pointless TV & then sleep to generate sufficient strength to do it all again.

 My love for God is increasingly insufficient to enable me to find the will power to care enough to bother any longer. I am lost in this perennial tedium. Even stating it so baldly causes me to feel somewhat ungrateful - so be it. It is what it is and I am tired of manufacturing energy and excitement.

 Life is dreary - the outcome of very many decisions and, in my case, I can only conclude bad decisions. Well here is the challenge: to discover God in these collapsing inner recesses of my own diseased mind. May God have mercy - I know of no-one else to turn towards.

 

The Lost Discipline of Forgetfulness

I was unwinding in the hot and heavily scented water of my bath the other evening. I literally felt the stress flowing out of my muscles. It was sheer delight and wanton luxury. However, lest I offend a hapless reader let me pause there! The bath is really incidental.

It had started with the normal frustration of realising I had forgotten to remove my spectacles. I only remembered when lifting cupped hands of hot water to me face I collided with my glasses frame, now precariously perched upon my nose. No damage done. However, the frustration was less the fact that I had left them on than the fact that, once again, I had neglected to remove them.

Again somewhat of an unreasonable emotional reaction to something so insignificant. Yet here I was ‘stressing out’ over my lapse of memory,'stressing' over an irrelevance and only increasing the number of reasons I was taking a relaxing bath in the first place.

Now if the very action embraced to reduce stress becomes in and of itself a source for further muscle tension what’s the point?

Well this is not the point. I got to thinking as I was soaking. Why are we so harsh upon ourselves when we are forgetful? I notice it in older people all the time, forgetting names, locations, TV programne details and the like. All of no real import save in the eye of the oublieux. Yet often creating quite an acute and negative personal reaction within them. So here I was getting older and more forgetful and more stressed, fulfilling the stereotype - now that is not a good idea!

Then the moment of realisation. This art of forgetting is in fact not a curse but a sign of emerging spiritual maturity. It is in fact what I have now named the ‘Lost Discipline of Forgetfulness’. And before I receive too many criticisms it is quite evident as such.

Those followers in the way of Jesus will be familiar with the fact that God both forgives and forgets our shameful acts of disobedience. Hebrews 8:12 is explicit in this regard - ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more’. 

If this is the practice of the triune God than I guess it is something I too must master. Both forgive and forget my momentary lapses of memory and travel on celebrating the forgetfulness as a sign of spiritual growth.

Forgetfulness as a spiritual discipline is something I shall now practice vigorously! I shall celebrate each memory loss and respond with a smile.

Now where did I put those glasses? I do believe I am beginning to laugh!!

Living Lightly

Just came across a useful site today facilitated by the Arocha community. The precise internet location is found here.. I immediately registered. As a friar this is a subject that interests me considerably. However, I have probably done no more than entertain radical thoughts and engage in rather fruitless academic discussions until five years ago.

My dad, who had been diagnosed with a terminal dose of prostrate cancer some 20 years earlier, had just received the news that his years were indeed now fast ebbing away. Mum and dad finally accepted my invitation to move closer, having put  up a most excellent fight to maintain a wonderful garden and allotment for over 60 years. I think it was growing up and having to spend every free hour tilling the ground and growing fresh produce for the kitchen table that most likely created in me the desire never to own a garden - and eventually I achieved that laudable state!! However, I am a happy purchaser of others’ home grown harvests - and indeed the best chef I know!!

To return to the main thread. Having been instructed to find a suitable apartment, my father set about ‘downsizing’ his post-war, suburban collection of things. The two conditions were almost as terminal as the cancer. First the post-war mentality had created in him (as well as my mum) a commitment to never throw away anything ‘just in case’ it  came in ‘handy’ at some future time. The suburban factor meant he had more than sufficient space - garage, sheds, large loft - to store it all in. The fact that he still had his 1920s touring bike that I had never in my lifetime seen him either ride or maintain in a roadworthy condition together with a Honda 90 spare engine from my student days reveals just what a hoarder he was. And the thought of ‘freecycle’ would never have occurred, if indeed it had been invented!

Fortunately I was delivered (together with my siblings) from having to ‘deal’ with all this since the time factor meant that dad simply had to ring around and find someone who cleared the lot. The joy of this was that there were no unhealthy sentimental conversations in any of our heads about ‘heirlooms’ or other such mechanisms that weigh us down and distract us from treading lightly. We could not move the ‘horde’ to a new location.

In watching him downsize - all he and mum had accumulated plus most of their furniture - helped me reflect upon how much of my father had transferred itself to me. I recognized that I could ‘talk a good game’ but really needed to downsize my own life - whilst I still had mobility and the opportunity to benefit from a reduced urban footprint. So I set about turning theory into practice - but it was hard.

I had accumulated a massive library as I love books. The majority were read once and carefully shelved. More and more walls called for shelving, whilst other books remained boxed in the loft. Now books are for communicating with the general populous and here was I selfishly preventing books from being enjoyed by anyone other than myself. I fought many battles but over five years I have reduced my books by 90% and still probably have around 500. 

The battles in my head as to why I should NOT release my books were endless, subtle and deceptive! Yet as I moved them on I found it easier each time to return to the books I had saved in the previous purge and, often just a few months later, move them on as well. I now have my extensive Syriac collection of primary and secondary sources,  a shelf or two of books on spirituality, my mediation tomes, and of course my various birding guides. The next challenge is to shift my extensive poetry collection.

I am helped in that many books are free online as e-books, and also the arrival of my Kindle has also helped reduce my spend, carries my PDFs in a readable form (oh the joys of ‘e-ink’) and means I can pass this around the friary for others to read. Also with Universalis providing offices throughout the day online together with the Daily Lectionary direct to my inbox, I do not need my liturgical books nor a hard copy of the Bible. This is also really helpful traveling - I never need to check luggage if I fly!!

One cautionary note, and I may return to this at some point, living lightly for me is about obedience to a sense of call I have and is not a general principle. Each of us must live according to the light we are afforded from whatever is our ultimate reality - for me the Christian Trinity. It is easy to become shrill around this as a single issue - and single issue approaches are far too narrow and lack the color and complexity of the substance of life itself. It is as easy to become a fanatic, damning all who are not true ‘disciples’ in the school of simplification. This reminds me of the terror during the French Revolution and I am not a supporter. 

For me the end is obedience as I say, and a recovery of so much more time for gentle pursuits with people I love and respect. I am looking at the necessity of TV next and my spectator sport addiction!! Is there no end to my diseased life?

Receiving an unexpected good

Fortunate is a word that can mean 'receiving some unexpected good'. I am struck by the fact that those of us, and I include myself, who enjoy the privilege of life and a good life, are so often consumed with criticism as opposed to thankfulness. As I consider my own experience, I cannot but reflect upon how kind life has been to me. Not simply having found peace with God - a rich spiritual experience and practice - but also having a life free from major conflict or challenge. I have not found either my faith nor my expectation to exist challenged at a deep level.

Today I have heard how a teenage elation of mine faces possible a major challenge to her health and future. She awaits medical reports that could mean that she faces the most challenging battle of her life so far. her family face uncertainty, emotional pain the depth of which I doubt they can begin to imagine, siblings who will need to observe and find the courage to walk through their parents' pain and confusion.

I have watched the person closest to me navigate her life through pain and disappointment. I am the richer for the way she freely invited me into the depth of that experience. And yet how seldom do I celebrate that my life is marked by fortune that lies beyond my ability to secure. Whilst I am somewhat judgmental as I observe the rather superficial benefits individuals seem to seek from life, I want to increasingly celebrate my good fortune, what I see as God's grace, and invest who I am in seeking to become a source of good fortune to others I see around me.

http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/review.asp?ID=977 

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.