mr B

Mr B is, as I have doubtless whined before, HOPELESS at understanding insomnia. He doesn't get it. His 2am bathroom visit used to raise my hopes of him tending to my needs by warming my milk and renewing my hot water bottle. Years of experience have taught me to stay disillusioned. He will, he just did, emerge from the loo looking like a mole fresh out of hibernation, squeak an odd noise at me and then pat me on the back. He usually manages a brief mumbled random and useless jumble of words before sloping back off to bed and leaving his 'mouth guard' (which is supposed to stop him grinding) spat out on the bedside table.

married life is so romantic

Blogs are great

The wonderful thing about a Blog is you can bore your audience to the point of insanity and not end up in a divorce court for 'irreconcilable differences'...a Moose-hair flannel being a case in point. If I was a Moose I wouldn't want to end up as a flannel.

Sleep continues to elude me, crafty little creature that she is creeping away from me and hiding in a corner behind a tempting midnight feast, saying 'eat me and then I'll come back to your pillow'. She has even convinced me that if I write endless, inane monologues about The History of Moose-flannel manufacture in Alaska
she'll come back...but she won't...because she is

Out to Get me

Last night was another one of her little games. The 'just watch a little bit of Psychic for the Stars'...it surely can't do any harm' revelry. So I snuck downstairs and thought, Sleep is right when she says 'you can't go to bed now, you haven't 'wound down', a little Psychic for the Stars is what you need. I sat guiltily watching in disbelief morphing into convincement (yes it is a word,I borrowed it from the Quakers) listening to this nauseating bauble of a woman blowing bubbles of artificial sweetener into innocent fake-tanned faces. She was so atrociously awful and in the end I loved her for being so unashamedly appalling. Then, as sleep sat mocking me in the corner I started to believe her. Then all the spirits started creeping into the room.

Well, as spirits go they were a bit rubbish. The main one kept pretending he wasn't really pushing the door, it was just 'caught in a draft, honestly'. I wonder why these spirits have got nothing better to do than pretend to be drafts that slightly rattle doors at midnight. You'd think if you were a spirit you'd be in California on the beach not lingering around Linda Lusardi wittering on about David Seaman.

Spirits these days...

Back to life...Back to reality

And now I am chilled out no longer. Sooooo NOT Zen. Stillness and listening my arse!
Am totally unable to sleep or to stop beating myself up. My mind is in chaos and I'm convinced its a full moon but I can't see it because you can't see the sky in Birmingham.


Nothing works, if I go and make hot milk I'll get bad breath in the morning and if I make chocolate I will have to deal with the guilt on top of it all.

Its all hormones and hysteria round here. Why, pray tell, would the good Lord in all his wisdom pick me to be still, peaceful etc etc? I feel like I just stuck my finger in a socket

Total paranoia set in without warning about 12 hours ago and seems to be currently resident. This makes me behave like a strange, badly house-trained puppy scratching at the door to go out and then beggin to come back in.

I started feeling persecuted about church chairs this evening, you could make up the most random thing, select anything and i would turn it round to some kind of failure on my part. All the Moose in Alaska are catching foot and mouth (for example...and no, I had no idea...I thought I'd made it up). It isn't that I would blame myself for the plight of the Moose with immediate effect, I would just convince myself that you had a point and that I was partly responsible. I would somehow turn it around. I'm not sure how I do it in theory, but in practice it works. I might (for example)assume that you assumed that I had a Moose flannel with which to lather my Radox. I would argue that you had been shocked that I would use a Moose-fur flannel and should be ashamed of myself for lathering my Radox with it. Especially when that poor Moose had been battery-farmed in Alaska, the source of the outbreak of Moose disease. I would then be perfectly at ease explaining to the long-suffering Graham that I thought maybe you were right and that my flannel really was developed from Moose-hide in an appalling fashion resulting in a foot and Mouth outbreak in Alaska.

Furthermore...it would seem reasonable, until the next morning when I read my Blog and wondered what on earth was going on...in Alaska, with a Moose taking a shower with my flannel.

...I've lost it

Odanadi-uk.org

Last night we went to the official launch of the charity which my niece helped to set up. She is now a trustee. It was a fabulous occasion in London's Docklands/Canary wharf at the Docklands Museum which has been concerned to address the issues of Slavery in the past. It was particularly apt as this charity Odanadi-uk.org is specifically concerned with present day Slavery. Odanadi-uk is set up to fund-raise and awareness-raise for Odanadi-India who work with the results of Sex-trafficking, sexual exploitation and abuse in India. The charity works with women, girls and boys enslaved to the sex-industry, exploited and then subsequently destitute in Mysore, India. They house the children of women forced to become prostitutes.

The evening was very moving because it was intensely personal, we had a very positive and affirming photographic exhibition to look at. We were even given the names and stories of the women. We had a photographer's commentary of the experience of photographing some of the young girls in India. We watched a film of the place and heard more heart-wrenching stories. We were inspired by the founders of the charity in India, listened to a speech by Katherine Hamnett and all the time were reminded of the charity's name 'odanadi' which means 'soul-mate'. The charity has an ethos which is concerned with equality, it is not patronising, does not put any conditions on the money given and insists that people work in a voluntary capacity for the organisation. Therefore all the money goes directly to India without being wasted on admin costs. The venue was given free-of-charge, and everything was done at minimal cost.

What impressed me most was that the founders of Odanadi-India and Odanadi-UK all insisted that this kind of work is concerned with global-solidarity. Words like 'brotherhood', 'sisterhood', 'soul-mates' and other words concerned with intimacy and relationship were used frequently. The founders of Odanadi-India had flown over to speak to their UK fund-raisers, and there was a film made of the charity by a woman who had visited the area to witness for herself the work being done there.

At the end of the evening we were given some little bags made from re-cycled newspaper by the women in India and on each bag was a photo of the project. We were constantly reminded of our connections.

I was also particularly impressed by the aims of the Charity which are to rehabilitate not to encourage dependency and therefore further enslavement and inequality. The charity uses a lot of highly creative ideas, a photography project developed from our discarded cameras, an interactive theatre project, and funding to set up small businesses to encourage and enable the women's independence. The project is passionate about stopping the cycle of abuse which is developed when these people are exploited, working with the children and in training the people in counselling and support work. The families are supported as a whole where appropriate, the children are housed as far as the limited resources of the charity will allow. The consequences of sexual exploitation such as physical illness, mental health issues and the difficulties faced by these women when they wish to get married are all confronted and addressed. The charity is also working tirelessly to raise awareness of the all-pervasive culture of social stigma associated with sexual exploitation.

I left feeling a powerful need to 'do something' and hope to compile a list of contacts for Odanadi-uk so that they can develop links with the Asian community here in Birmingham. I am also going to pray for them daily and ask others to pray too. We have set up a standing order but cannot currently afford to give more. We are thinking of creative ways of supporting this charity.

The heartening thing about this charity and the location of its launch in the heart of our capitalist, finance centre in the middle of a credit crunch was that many of the women who had developed Odanadi-UK had reduced their working hours, taken pay-cuts to work in charity work, even a top clothes designer had designed a t-shirt for nothing. The launch was filled with young middle-class well-connected Londoners and they have a social conscience which many people of my generation are only just discovering.

They are absolutely determined to change the world. They are not religious or pious or pushing an agenda they are just so entirely human. The founders of the UK branch of Odanadi are all gutsy, strong women, feminists at their best determined to fight for their fellow women and bring justice. Idealism is not dead. Thank God

Please visit odanadi-uk.org and see what I mean

my prayer before leaving

This is a prayer which I prayed before leaving the Retreat. I prayed it in front of a small ornamental lake and threw something into the water as a symbol of that comittment. It was, sadly, a stick...not an attractive rock, but it was all I could find and it made me laugh. I cried a lot as a I did this, it was a significant comittment and I knew what I was getting into, it was as if I was finally standing up and being counted, finally deciding to serve God and the Church graciously, without moaning about it or pretending I can't do it.
As the pitiful stick hit the water it caused ripples which extended out and touched he ripples of the other objects and rivulets spilling into the water. It was a glimpse of God in that it caused a movement on the water and represented to me the way in which all our different gifts ripple against each other to create a beautiful pattern.

This prayer is based on an exercise where we were asked to make sense of our journalling exercise from beginning to end. We were asked what God might be saying to us, where God might be leading. It became clear from my journal that I was called to a role of listening in many senses. I was called to being still and at peace, present to God and others and listening, but I was also called to laughter and prayer. Most of all I was called to listening in whatever sense I could to God. This was a revelation to me, but not to anyone else, mostly people sighed with relief when I told them. "At last, she finally 'gets it'"

It was news to me really, I think most people would have expected a more tangible idea with goals and objectives and purpose, but this is a strange role to be given and although I am already developing it and enjoying it it never seemed to me like a vocation in itself. I have never heard of such a thing! Anyway, here is the prayer:

God
You
Know
Me
I
Know
You
Use me to hold others in your embrace
To show them your smile
To trust you
To be unashamed
Bring me to accept
That I must be still
Be listening
Be present and at prayer
To claim my gifts with gratitude
And to use them with humility
To know that you will be present
To accept that I too must be present
and bring healing through your presence
With your people
I pray that I will trust that
What I have been given I have responsibility to share
and what you ask of me
I must do
Use all of me Loving God to your Glory
Amen

At the end of the retreat we sat together and shared. I made a gesture by laying down my journal in the centre of the room next to another woman's work. It was a form of gratitude, we had been pilgrim's on a journey together and we had changed each other, for that I am eternally grateful because they helped me to be fully myself and to start enjoying being Jess simply for who I am