Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Balance

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Yesterday, while walking the dog, I noticed some early signs of spring. A few daffodils were out, there were catkins on the hazel, and the buds were swelling on the willow, whilst in our garden the snowdrops were beginning to show their white heads.

I'm not the sort of person who enjoys winter, especially this period after Christmas, when I start to tire of the dark nights. People tell me that I should enjoy every season for what it is but, try as I may, I just can't get enthusiastic for this time of year, so promises of good things to come are important to me.

Often I hear phrases such as 'live for the moment,' and 'enjoy the now,' and in some ways I agree with those sentiments - 'now' is the only time we have. We can't change the past and we can never be sure what will happen in the future but we can set out to experience the 'now' to the full .

My work includes some teaching of disaffected young people in the inner city. Just after the holidays I tried to engage them in conversation about their Christmas. Surprisingly none of them could remember what they had done. I know from previous conversations that none of them had any thoughts about their future, and here they were not even remembering the past! It seemed that the only thing that mattered to them was what they were doing there and then.

This got me thinking that there is a danger in living just for the ‘now’ – doing so denies both the experience of the past and hope for the future. My problem, however, is my tendency to live in the past, to look upon the good things that have happened to me and think that things will never be as good again. Some other people I know spend all their time thinking about the future, hoping that will be better than what they have now.

Perhaps what I really need in my life is balance – an enjoyment of what I am experiencing now, balanced with thankfulness for all that I have experienced in the past and hope for the future. Just as a balanced diet is good for the wellbeing of my body, so a balanced outlook on life is good for the wellbeing of my mind.

So, in walking the dog it is right to get excited about the promises of spring and the warmer days ahead - but that should not distract from the beauty of what is there now nor the memory of springs past.

Dave

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

This year next year

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This year, next year, sometime but probably not never.

I quite like reading New Scientist. I bought it quite regularly with the daily papers. Then we went through a patch where money was tight. It got cancelled along with the papers. Money is still tight, but when I read the ‘headlines’ on this week’s issue I felt I could justify buying it.

Sometime ago, perhaps around the time of 9/11, I arrived home needing a cup of tea. I went to put the kettle on only to find no water. I cannot remember what emergency forced the water board to turn the supply off without notice, but that is what happened. It was inconvenient, nothing more. However, with the somewhat far fetched talk of dirty bombs and the like, made me realise just how vulnerable we were. We have a combi- boiler which heats up water as we need it. We have neither, a hot water nor a cold water tank. This means if the water supply is cut off there are no reservoirs of water in the house. Had I been at my daughters house I would have used the ‘hot water tap for tea. After all I would be boiling the water!

As a consequence, I bought some supplies of bottled water and filled some empty containers so that I would have something for washing. I also tried to move away from the modern it JIT approach to supplies. (JIT stands for just in time and in business it seen as an important way of avoiding tying lots of unnecessary money in stock) JIT on the domestic front means I call in at the supermarket on the .home to buy the things I need to cook for tea.

I do believe that we have a responsibility to do what we can to help ourselves. This may not be much but I know that there were food shortages during the 1918 flu epidemic, so having a well stocked food cupboard does seem something that I can do, and perhaps the only thing that I can do. It is against this background of ‘I aught to stock up and prepare in case…’ that I read these particular headlines.

Bird flu know your enemy
How serious a threat is it?
How bad would a pandemic be?
What can you do to protect yourself?

I found the first page rather incomprehensible but the rest was good. I think that I was beginning to persuade myself it was not going to happen. Of course it may not be nearly as life threatening as is feared. The page on how to protect yourself was informative. That bit is excellent but it has made me realise how ineffectual my preparations are so far.

Gill

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Don't Forget the Batteries

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At the moment, one of the draws in my office is full of batteries. There are AA’s, AAA’s, D’s C’s -1.5 volt and 9 volt batteries. Why? Because we wanted to be sure that when our grandsons opened their toys at Christmas, they would not have the disappointment of having a toy that would not work for lack of power. Even, with all our careful planning we nearly got caught out when we found that one toy needed some obscure button type battery. Fortunately, we were able to buy one in time.

For a child there can be nothing worse than opening some marvellous present on Christmas morning only to find that it is useless because there is no power.

We rely on power, without a charged battery, that mobile phone in our pocket is just an expensive piece of junk – totally useless as a communication device. At least when mobile phones first came out once the battery was flat you could use it as a door stop! We can spend thousands on the latest new car, but without that small box of lead and acid, it's not going anywhere.

We too need power. There is the power we get from food, and that keeps us moving, but there is also another power that comes from outside ourselves - a spiritual power that drives us and makes us more than just a machine. Christians would call that power the Holy Spirit; other religions may know it by some other name. I suppose that Star Wars die hards would call it the 'force'.

Some years back I remember struggling with one toy which refused to work, even though I had the correct batteries. In fact, I had tried more than one set of batteries. I was about to take it back when I remembered an old, little used, rule of mine “If all else fails, read the instructions.” Hidden away, where I hadn’t looked, was a very small on/off switch. For the power to work the switch must be on.

Over the years I have come to realise that the best way to switching the power on is to get away on my own to somewhere quiet where the pressures of life can be put aside for a while. There I can find the power.

The weeks leading up to last summer gave Gill and I very little time and space. Our second daughter was married in June and we were taken up with a lot of planning and preparation. For me the summer term had proved less than easy, so come the holidays I was exhausted and it was beginning to show. We had the chance of a ten day break in Northumberland, but even that did not go to well at first. We were camping and for the first couple of days the weather proved both cold and wet and I was getting quite grumpy.

On the Tuesday, Gill suggested that I went off on my own to Holy Island (Lindisfarne) which I did. Despite the summer tourists, I was able to find the quiet I needed. In a few short hours between tides, I had become fully recharged and a longstanding question had been answered.

We took extra care over batteries this Christmas; the events of summer have taught me that I need to take the same care over my own batteries. We have made sure that, in the office draw, there are plenty of spares. At the beginning of 2006, we need to make sure that we sort out both times and places where we can find a recharge - and make sure the switch is set to on.

Dave

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

If at First You Don't Succeed

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I once had a small plaque, which was attached to the wall in my porch. It said ‘If at first you don’t succeed you’re running about average’. That somehow seems to highlight how I feel, with the emphasis on not succeeding.

Like most of the population, I decided that, come the New Year, I would make changes in my lifestyle. These are changes that I have known about for quite a while. So, New Years morning, bright and early, I decided to make a start…

Well, it went ‘pear shaped’ right from the start. One thing I have to admit is that I am not very good at communicating. Not only am I not good at this, but the more important a thing is to me, the more ineffectual I am at explaining. There is one memorable occasion, when I repeated the same sentence over and over again, each time louder and louder becoming more angry and frustrated at my friends inability to listen to what I was saying. When I had calmed down my friends repeated to me the actual sentence. I then understood why they did not listen. What I actually said did not make sense.

Over the years, one useful habit Dave and I have developed is to begin each day with a prayer time. This is quite ad hoc, a mixture of liturgy and personal routine that we mostly manage to sustain and, perhaps more importantly, seems to work for us.

So here we were New Years morning, sitting down, a cup of tea at hand, ready to begin. As a preliminary, we look at three aspects. We list things we are glad about, the things we want to do that day and lastly, the things that concern us. These I write down, for later in the liturgy. It is not the best time of the day to think any thoughts, never mind reflect on what was good about the previous day and what we plan for the present. Mostly, we are so brain-dead; we cannot even recall what concerns us. It was probably a mistake not to make some attempt to communicate to my husband that come New Years morning we needed to have a radical shake up of our lifestyle.

The prayers were abandoned, the tea drank in ones own company. Twenty years ago there would have been no tea to drink as I would have thrown it at him. Today, we tend to resolve such difficulties by quietly spending time individually with God. To help us focus, we often write down our thoughts as a dialogue with God. This is how we continued.

I wrote ‘…Resolve is not always an option. Failure to reach a satisfactory resolution is as much part of everyone’s life as successful resolution. You must accept yourselves. You are both the people I created. The ‘negative aspects’ of your life are there for a reason. They make you that total person. They balance and promote those aspects of you that make you unique…’. At this point I had in mind the gene that can protect from malaria. I understand it works well for those people who have one copy but in people who have two copies it causes sickle-cell anaemia. With modern medicines we forget how devastating this disease is, yet in some places the human race must have survived only because of this gene. Some years ago, Dave and I visited Ostia Antica. If I remember what I read correctly,

This, once thriving port for the city of Rome was abandoned in the space of two years, as a result of malaria.

So Dave and I talked through that upset and decided to have breakfast. During this time it became increasingly evident that one of the big hindrances to communication was the emotional baggage we carry. Things like anger, hurt, guilt and fear. It was one thing knowing what we should do, but when we started these emotions seemed to take over.

Some time ago, Dave and I went to Iona. I was going through a very difficult time. It is all very well knowing you should not stay angry. Knowing one should forgive people and oneself. But the reality of emotions is that they cannot be easily switched off. I was awash with unresolved hurt and anger. For many years I likened myself to an old fashioned house with a cellar. This cellar was kept very tightly barred as it was flooded with these horrific monsters of uncontrolled emotional baggage from my life. By the time we went to Iona this cellar door had given way, with all the subsequent destruction to the unaffected parts of the house that was me.

The visit to Iona was not a happy one, nor easy for those with me, but I was able to deal with the worst of the emotions that reeked such havoc in my life. I discovered that some people found it helpful to pick a stone and on it name the difficulty or such and throw it into the sea; this being a physical action signifying giving the problem to God. Of course, being difficult, I missed the opportunity to do this with the group, but the next day I asked a member of the group to come with me and act as both priest and witness as I gave into Gods keeping my hurts.

At first I was very careful not to take back this hurt. In fact, my actions were most singularly successful. It was this then that came to mind as we discussed the problem of emotional baggage hindering our communication and hence our relationship. But it would need to be something much more accessible than a trip to Scotland.

On New Year’s Day we discussed emotional baggage with two other people and were encouraged to pursue, finding an effective but local equivalent to the throwing stones into the sea at Iona. It seemed somehow that this involved writing down and sharing some of our own experiences. Now if it’s difficult for me to express myself orally, expressing myself in the written word takes some considerable time and effort. However bright and early on the morning of the second of January, I spent a couple of hours writing down the series of events that had led to this quest.

Mindful of the pitfalls of losing work on the computer, I carefully named the file at the beginning, knowing the machine was programmed to regularly save what was being typed up. I was then somewhat mystified to find that the carefully set up file was completely empty. Not even my clever husband could find what was lost. Although, without doubt, I must have done something wrong, as far as I was concerned the loss was an ‘act of God’ and I was pretty miffed. Especially as I felt the writing to share was something I thought He wanted me to do.

At one level I felt He had ‘kicked me in the teeth’ and at all levels I was angry.

When I returned to the Me – God dialogue I wrote as His response to my rather off hand opening gambit of ‘well!’.

Good, you have come to tell me what you think of me.’

I responded. ‘You know that I know, it must be more complex than that. Either that, or you do not actually exist.’

Perhaps you are becoming more adult in your relationship with me. Perhaps you need to learn how you react to put downs, so then you can change.’

I had written on an occasion before all this happened. ‘…How can I learn new ways to react to discouragement…’.

Somehow, in the two days between the first futile attempt at writing and today’s attempt, the audience has changed from a few friends and family to a Blog.

More than anything, it was the futility of that first attempt that brought to mind that plaque, ‘If at first you don’t succeed you’re running about average’. Thinking about it again, average is actually rather comfortable.

Gill

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Tuesday, January 03, 2006

First Post

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Ok, so two fifty-something’s have decided to start a Blog! For us this is a crazy idea. Being dyslexic we both have a difficulty in getting ideas into the printed word - and our spelling can be very creative at times! However, we do feel that we have things we would like to share with family, friends and anyone who wants to take the time to read what we have to say. We hope to get things up and running in the next week, as soon as we get all those initial thoughts out of our head and in to print!