Thank God for Ashan

Ahsan Nadeem Sheikh and I used to dance at a ballet class together, for a few weeks one random year while he was here from a country I had never visited and a culture I would probably never understand. Sometimes Ashan writes to me and now he is living far away from the West Midlands and I know much more about him now than I did stumbling through my clumsy ballet routines trying to be graceful then. We never met for coffee as far as I remember or went for a walk and I know so little about his life that I was deeply moved to realise that this man (who I only know as a petite performance dancer from a faraway land where no one does ballet) remembered me and I remembered him just from dancing in a class together in the silent way that dance unites people.

Today he reached out in a strange instinct across the world and made me write again on a very specific day in my life and I wonder how on earth we forget what amazing creatures human beings are. How is it that we know to reach out to people at such significant moments? I had written an article that had touched him called 'unfamiliar faces in unfamiliar places', and because it had moved him he wrote to me to let me know that it had moved him. This is the kind of thing that Ashan would do. This is one thing of a handful of things I know about Ahsan, that he is the kind of man thoughtful enough to make sure that someone knows when they have touched his life. People like this invariably touch our hearts in return because they make us realise our own gifts and values.

I found his message just now while still thinking about a conversation I had today. I had chatted with one of my most favourite people about us both being paralysed by fear over our desire to write and be published. I came home wondering why I had stopped blogging and lost my confidence. When this message reached me via the miracle that is Facebook from this kind man I hardly know I genuinely thought he had got the wrong person because I had forgotten that I had ever written a piece called 'unfamiliar faces in unfamiliar places' and went on my blog to check.

Thanks to Ashan I read it again and it moved me too at a time when I am moving from a familiar place to an unfamiliar one, leaving familiar faces and seeking new ones. I think God had a hand in this. Thank God for Ashan, he made me write again.

unfamiliar faces in unfamiliar places

If baby Tom, Phoebe and Amelie, who were all born to people dear to me in the past week, were to be told of the life before them they wouldn't believe it. Would you? Even now?

It is a huge adventure into uchartered territory and I really think that 'journey' is the best word to use for it. I know its a cliche but nothing else will do. If you think of a better word to describe life, please let me know. Life is a journey of a very specific kind. It starts somewhere we don't remember and for privileged people it ends somewhere we can't predict. For people living in deprivation it can be all too predictable. But the emotional and psychological journey of our inner lives is the really interesting bit for me. What the outcome of these inner journeys of discovery might be is less certain. We are all unique and we all respond entirely differently to our birth, our life experience and our death.

Tom, Phoebe and Amelie,( in no particular order) are so, so perfect. I don't mean only physically, all babies are perfect, whatever their illnesses or physical problems. I don't mean 'faultless', I mean 'complete'. They are born complete. God knows who they are, and they don't think it matters. They don't know what has happened, why things are different, where they have come from or where they are going. They don't know what is past, or present or future. What alien land do we arrive in when we leave our mother's wombs? These babies have all been born into good natal units in comparatively well-funded hospitals, they have mothers with maternity nurses and great midwives, pain control and support throughout their pregnancy. They have home visits and are nourished enough to produce their own milk. They have food, safe houses and they have been born into prosperity and peace in a temperate climate in a country relatively free of natural disaster or famine.

But this won't protect them from their own journeys. Their lives on earth should, statistically be long and healthy compared to people grown in poverty, but they will still be human. They will be sentient beings, they will experience compassion and joy, creativity, imagination and play, they will love and laugh and they will face trials and hard times as they learn to live fully. Just like you and just like me, just like our parents and our siblings they are learning to live fully.

What is so hard to comprehend is that they are born 'complete', with their microscopic eyelashes and fingernails and their craving for milk. They are so human and precious. They have everything to teach us about hope and about living in the present with trust. What can we teach them? They remember what we have forgotten. That life is unpredictable, that we have come from somewhere unseen and unknown and incomprehensible. That we are miracles. That we are torn from the comfort of the womb. That one by one and God smiles and celebrates and lets us go. There are so many other types of 'births' afterwards as we continue to seek nourishment for survival. There are many movements from one safe, dark space to a light open dangerous territory. In both places we depend upon the love of others to nurse us into freedom and independence again.

We have already named these children, they already belong to this society, they are English and Welsh, they have blood relatives, they have been labelled 'Boy' and 'Girl' and been showered with pink and blue cards and presents. They have no idea why, they have no idea what this will mean for them. Their paths are mapped quite carefully already, but one day these paths will take unexpected turns for them and they will find themselves in unfamiliar places. Just like me, and just like you.

moving on

There are so many decisions made in one lifetime. There are so many factors which lead us to make them. There are so many responses to our decisions and so many factors which lead to the responses to our decisions that in the end some people just give up trying to make them. Every decision has consequences and risks.

There are many occasions in my life where I have wished I had decided to act differently or to do the same thing in a different way. There are decisions that I have made which people have found very difficult to live with and accept. There are decisions that people have tried to get me to change. There are times when I have decided to change my decisions.

But sometimes there are decisions that we take in order to preserve our own lives. Perhaps these are the decisions with the most brutal consequences of all. In extreme situations this can be the choice between taking someone's life or sparing it. In our interior worlds sometimes our emotional and psychological safety is at risk and we find ourselves making decisions for our own mental well-being which other people find shocking or incomprehensible. If they thought of it as a life-or-death situation in a field of war they would see it differently. I am sure of that.

Sometimes I am shocked in Pastoral work when someone is in need and the Church Community are providing support and people say that someone 'has a family and they are not doing anything for their parent even though they live locally'. There is usually a judgement being made that the son or daughter who lives in the vicinity should visit the elderly relative because they are the closest relative and the Church has other work to do with those who are totally alone. But I think differently about this. There is always something we don' t know. People are different behind closed doors. We all keep secrets, we all have complicated experiences. When someone becomes old it is considered a basic courtesy to consider them elderly and therefore vulnerable and in need of our pity and compassion. This is all true but the fact of this rarely diminishes the truth of who they were in their prime of life.

I am thinking this morning of who we are in essence. Can the monstrous mother really become a quaint and eccentric old sweetheart simply because years have passed? Can the person I was at 19 still be the same person I am at 37? Can it be that those who knew us in infancy also know us in our maturity and our old age? Can anyone speak with authority about who a person is or who they are likely to become? Our responses to our experiences and the decisions we make to ensure our survival all shape the path of our lives and they can lead us to places we do not always want to go, leaving people we do not want to leave.

I do not think I am the same person now that I was then. I would find it depressing if I were. The hopes and dreams and aspirations I held dear then would not fulfil me now. The relationships I had then would not be fruitful now. The unhelpful things I left behind me would be impossible to pick up now because I do not have the room to carry them.

Lent, Holy Week, Easter

Lent and Holy Week and Easter Day are all over now. We have all worked really hard. No one got killed or divorced. It was quite difficult at times. Much to tell but not enough words. More to follow.

Straight-talking

You will never be a truth-teller and have an easy life. Your friends will never stay friends with you and also enjoy an easy life. Arguably, you will have few friends left if you are a truth-teller and an e-mail user. It doesn't matter how sensitive and thoughtful a person you may be, put the truth in an e-mail and it can be the end of several beautiful relationships in a nanosecond. No amount of :), or o) or whatever other combinations of colons and open brackets you choose to soften the message in cyberspace they will never represent the open-arms of honest friendship, however much you try. So there is evidence to suggest that the old-timers out there who disapprove of e-mail communication as damaging to relationships have got it right. But are we just afraid of truth, preferring palatable nonsense to hard facts?

To say that being an honest person has draw-backs would have to be an understatement like no other. The spectrum of collateral damage it causes ranges from causing slight offence through annihilating an entire system of family relationships to finding yourself murdered by your enemies in cold blood or being fed to lions in a Roman ampitheatre. By far the worst consequence of possessing a 'truth valve' is that friendships of infinite value can almost collapse overnight and are often beyond retrieval.

If you suffer from Straight Talking Disease you will know that however well-managed your condition occasionally you inadvertently eat something which contains truth serum. The result of this is that you start looking like a figure of ridicule in a Shakespeare comedy, running about telling people every innappropriate thought you ever had in your head. Something occurs within you and you are suddenly a vivid adult version of the little boy who tells the Emperor he is naked while everyone else is saying how marvellous his clothes are. Randomly your mouth will open like a trapdoor and horrible stored vignettes will tumble out into the ether. "You really don't suit blue hair, bare scalp would be preferable." "God knows why you wasted your life on that, it would have been less of a waste building model aeroplanes", and so on...

Yes, we have our advantages. There are two sides to every coin. We do, like lambs to the slaughter, martyr ourselves for the sake of all the lightweights out there who don't have the guts to speak out. There are many people considered brave heroines and Saints in retrospect who were simply pains-in-the-arse in real time. Suffragettes often suffered from Straight Talking Disease. Jesus clearly had a bad case of it. I have a severe and terminal infection and nothing will ever save me or anyone else from it. It is, in short, a nightmare. I thought I had it under control, but, and here is the truth, I haven't even come close. The experience of managing the condition is a little like wearing a muzzle on my mouth like those used to quieten a yapping dog. I spend a great deal of time corsetting in all those honest remarks. I wish people knew how hard I work at it, how much worse it could have been. Although sometimes I wonder whether it is this very inhibiting of wayward truths that causes them all to come out in a rush like a guargantuan fart. Those appreciative of them are far fewer than those braced for another fall-out. Countless times I have ruined a beautiful career. When you look at our poor figures from history who didn't mince their words you can see how common an outcome it is for the straight-talker.

There are ways and means of telling truths. Most of them are uncomfortable. Climate change experts who dared to say 'the ice-cap is melting', were viewed as lunatics because we didn't want to hear it. The early re-cycling fanatics were seen as quirky eccentrics. Poor old Charles Darwin is still seen as a bit 'off the wall' by some. There was the poor fellow who said 'hmmmm I think the earth might well be round'. I seem to recall he was ex-communicated, and probably incarcerated or tortured. The now deceased man who spoke the resounding line 'There are no weapons of mass destruction' subsequently took his own life in the telling. With all of these people there is a serious case of Straight Talking Disease and I doubt whether the medium used would have affected the outcome that much. If Darwin had e-mailed a mate and said 'Hi Erasmus Junior, I think we were all once invertebrate lizards, LOL Charlie :)'...he would have been taken no more or less seriously than he was when proving it by cataloguing every species of invertebrate creature in the globe. The Suffragettes would have done themselves few favours using the internet, www.throwyourselfunderhorses.com would have done nothing to increase or decrease their popularity, although perhaps they would have seemed even more ridiculous. Whilst I find the 'e-mails texts and internet use are bad for communication' argument peddled by the older generation a bit insubstantial, sometimes I think they have a point. Although the jury is out on this.

The 'modern communications lead to misunderstandings' brigade may be right. Although 'a truth-told is a truth-told', it may be made more palatable by softening language and cuddly lighting cushioned by wine and song. On the other hand 'you are an ugly bastard and I don't fancy you' is the same in any setting. 'I'm not sure that you are really my cup of tea' said whinsomely over a flickering candle lacks the savagery of a text. Consider this example: 'nt intrstd, L8r Fatchops. u UgLy bstrd lol xxx'. It gets to the heart of the matter doesn't it? Tell me? does it leave any room for doubt? None whatsoever. At least he won't be confused or left hoping. Likewise, at least put in an e-mail the message is short and sweet and you save on the ordeal of sharing a pizza with said turn off. I think modern communications are, like their latter day hand-written counterparts unequivocal clear indications of 'where its at'. The candid e-mail is the new version of a 'Dear John' letter.

Example

a) My Dearest John, it is with utmost pleasure that I write herewith to announce to you my hitherto unspoken loathing of your attire, physiology and general air of invertebrate lizard. I cannot see that there is much to mis-understand my sweet Johnnie when I disclose to you that the invertebrate lizard, no matter how slimey and pert, flicking his tongue this way and that, can charm and woo a lady, the invertebrate is simply not likely to swim in my pond. Please accept this letter with my undeniable joy at being at last free from this undesirable acquaintance.'
NOT yours Lydia

b) E-mail
Hi John, got a bit pissed last night...lets forget about it yeah? Lyd

c)Text
Dnt cll me...

d) Face to Face candlelit dinner
Er...yeah, so, er, shall we have some more wine? Er, yeah, well, why not? Er shall we have some more wine:...

c)Text following dinner the previous evening:
Sht

You see my point?

lucky

Its been a wonderful day, spent with wonderful people who inspire me with their courage, friendship and honesty. Sometimes I think I am the luckiest person alive.

Lenten Journey: Ash Wednesday Confession

It is Ash Wednesday, a fitting time for a confessional: I am a fraudulent Church-goer. Confession is much more to do with the need to unburden ourselves than to recieve forgiveness I think. Although it also contains the search for acceptance of how we really are as people, underneath. On Sunday I had to run away in frustration from the morning service. My need to flee from Church Services has not diminished as much in five years as I had hoped it would. I thought it would be easier than this by now. It isn't just me, Graham has the same problem, but his is more excusable somehow, what with me being the one who works as a Pastor. I love the people, my glimpses of God are in the ordinary exchanges and communal activities. Sunday services fail every time to give me the same experiences and what we do on Sundays never seems to link up with my experiences of God during the week. It is as though there is an unbridgable gap for me between what we do on Sundays, something which more often feels like 'what they do on Sundays', and what I do during the week. The times I spend with people outside of Sunday services are shot through with miracle. There is dramatic courage and a complete unawareness among the people I serve that they are the ones that show me God and not the formal services in Church.

My dilemma is that I love the people who do the Sunday Services. I find it so hard to tell them how I feel about something so precious to them. I go out of duty and loyalty, out of respect and pious as it sounds, I do not go for myself. The worst part about this is that it makes me a martyr and I am continue to simply view Sunday mornings with dread and resentment. I used to think this was due to some disobedience or rebellion within myself. The first reasonable question anyone might ask is 'if it is so bad, why have you persevered for so long?'. It is a question you would ask of someone filing for divorce. We always hope for better times. It is a basic human need to hope for improvement and when we want something to work out, we keep believing that it will. I thought at first that Church services would change and become more bearable. I also thought that perhaps it was possible to be instrumental in that change. I came to believe that I could be instrumental in that change. But like any relationship which begins with a premise that one person can alter another this was a doomed endeavour. Once I had realised this I embarked on a long period of soul-searching, reaching within myself for all the resistances and prejudices and barriers which were a result of my own being. I looked to my childhood and to other aspects of my life which may have led me to feel alienated from others. I looked at my propensity to compete and to improve and raise standards. I questioned my motivation for being in Church services. Seeing that this seemed equally unchangable I began to think that I must simply attend and block all thoughts of needing to change things and accept things as they are. This worked better than anything and I devised more and more strategies for blocking out the experience. I got very involved with baking cakes, reading Bible passages, doing the prayers and reading around the subject of Church services. I believed that if I read lots of books and tried really hard to grasp at the roots of this tradition and respected its value as something that had lasted and stood the 'test of time', that I would be less conflicted about it. But this is not sustainable and does not nurture a soul. By now I had been battling for years to overcome my issues with Church Services, I believed that something would heal within me and the bad memories of Church services I carried with me would dissolve leaving room for positive ones. The healing took place but the services continued to depress and frustrate me. I devised a new method, one which has been by far the most effective. I started to see the services as the rites and rituals of another religion. I tried to realise that what was being done was 'other' to any other experience and must be treated as such. I went to a service as an onlooker trying to observe dispassionately what was going on and I detached myself to a respectful distance so that I could feel as I did when I watched my Muslim sisters at prayer. This was much more comfortable. Seeing traditions as the traditions of others makes them seem much more valuable. But nonetheless it seemed like cowardice and even seemed patronising to attend services like a sociological experiment.

Something wonderful did happen though, and this is the thing which has kept me attending despite all my tortured confusion. Communion began to matter. I found it really helpful and a point at which I abandoned reason and thought and entered into a different world. I thought that this would help, and to a certain extent it did because it motivated me to go to services and endure the rest of it. This was a positive development and at least at one point in the hour and a half proceedings on Sunday mornings I was engaged with what was happening. But it had its downside. The moment of transformational experience was five minutes long in a one and a half hour ordeal and then I became very confused about why we needed to do the rest of it. I began to wonder if I was an Anglican at all. Or whether it was an accident of birth. So the torment began afresh with me going out of necessity for about five minutes of an entire morning, and the exquisite intensity of that moment made the rest of that time interminable and excruciating. It was like taking a masterpiece of art and rolling it up and putting it in a corner and putting a blanket over it.

Now I feel I am back at the beginning of my five year journey. It is a feeling of complete failure to live up to my own expectations. It is also a deeply frustrating sense of having put heart and soul into trying to acknowledge the need for Sunday formal worship and trying every possible means with which to engage with and tolerate it, with a disappointing outcome. I am an Anglican and this means that I am part of a tradition which values consistency and repetition. I long for variety and the tradition imposes regularity. I long to be involved and use my skills to frame this beautiful thing, I want to be able to hear a voice that is a different voice. Anglicanism is an Episcopal religion with a comittment to Ordained ministry. I must accept that my place is to sit and endure it and to attend on behalf of those who cannot, or to go at a different time in a different context.

The worst time for going to a Church service is when we are most in need. Those desperately depressed or anxious will never go to formal services. It is too hard. Those who have been abused will never risk The Peace which involves physical contact with strangers. Those with claustrophobia will find there too little liberty with which to flee without making account of themselves. Those with secrets will not want to spend time with people asking 'what is wrong'? Those who cannot engage with what happens in Church on Sunday morning will mostly be kind honest people who would not want to offend those who need these rituals. Those with consciences will not be prepared to say things they don't believe (something which to my shame I do every Sunday).

I feel such terrible shame over my feelings towards Church. Most of the people I deeply love have dedicated their lives to this passion. I don't want to hurt them. But when I sit week after week, desperately trying to distract myself, thinking of all the contributions I might never be able to make, with skills I desperately hope one day to use I am on the verge of tears most of the time.

Am I such a total fool not to have embraced my own difference? I think so. I think I am on the edge of a wonderful discovery that it is not a thing of shame to be unable to relate to this thing that is of such an alien texture in such a foreign language. It is a wonderful pleasure and privilege on the few occasions when I do not feel despair at spending yet another hour and a half of my life watching people I love enjoying a banquet which is not to my taste.

Sometimes following the teachings of Jesus is sacrificial in ways we might not immediately suspect. For me, my cross to bear, is the formal proceedings which those I love hold so dear. What I must remember is that they will forgive me. I have given it my best shot. I am not a coward and I am tenacious. The people who love me acknowledge that and might even be pleased for me that I have reached a point in my life at which I am no longer going to beat myself up for being someone who is alienated by Formal Worship. They have always known that I can't help it and that it is who I am. My Church-going friends have always known better than I have that it is that very isolation and marginalisation which makes it so instinctive to me to insist upon proper unequivocal hospitality. That hospitality is to the stranger in myself.

The dreaded word

I had a discussion with some friends on Wednesday about many things but what sticks in my mind is the sheer horror that the term 'Christian' evokes. Hardly anyone admitted to ever using it as a term. One friend said she thinks Christian is a term attributed to us by other people. It is not, for us, anyway a way of referring to ourselves. Most of the people I know at Church, or involved there, would genuinely never use it, those that do would be in the minority. Among my friends it is not a way of referring to ourselves, even the Vicars wouldn't do so.

We established that there is a vast difference between following Christ's teachings, 'being a follower of Christ', or 'being a follower of The Way', or 'being in Christ' and being referred to as a Christian. But despite all this, some of us would put it on a form under 'Religion', because it is then generally understood that we are not following any other Religious system. As always with labels it is more effective in defining what we are not, than what we are. Speaking for myself, filling in a form is the only time I would use this term and this is because there is no room for lengthy sentences in those little boxes. I might put 'Anglican' though, because this gives an even clearer idea of what I am not.

The word 'Christian' is now popularly understood to be synonymous with brutal bigotry, hypocrisy and a general rejection of Christ's teachings to 'Love one another as ourselves'. It makes people cringe and flee. My worst nightmare is the person who announces their arrival with 'Hello I'm Johnny...and I'm a Christian', as though anyone were remotely interested, or worse still, the person who pronounces that 'because I'm a Christian I care about 'x, y or z', as though no one else is capable of any form of caring.

The term Christian has been hijacked by the loud-voiced Fundamentalists who peddle ignorant their ignorant, cruel creeds of discrimination and terror. Although clearly this is not new, because throughout history the loudest voices have been the ones we have heard. The Liberal Philanthropists, the transformative musicians, the architects and charity workers, the willing volunteers, the kind, the compassionate, the human have largely lost their claim to be Christian. They are not remembered as motivated by Christ's teachings in the way, for example the Crusaders are remembered for being motivated to kill by a mis-reading of Christ's teaching. We have had Christian Suffragettes, Christian Anti-Slavery campaigners, Christian hospital builders, Christian University establishers, Christian artists, Christian Sculptors, Christian Composers and Christian Reformers. The work Christian has largely been taken from these people who openly and proudly proclaimed themselves Christian and given to people whose view of the world narrows with time. The deep humanity and contribution to society that Christians have unarguably made along with our other Religious brothers and sisters eclipsed as it is by Conservative, prohibitive, inhibiting legalism is largely considered to be the result of secular rationalism.

My own religion in the media is presented as representing the things I most despise. There is good reason for this and it makes it very difficult to be proud of our label.

I would settle for being a Follower of The Way or In Chirst...but that makes me sound like a freak as well.

Off for a massage...

Banners

My lovely friend Pauline, also known as Aunty P, 'P' or Brown Owl, depending upon how you know her, did something wonderful yesterday. She organised a 'banner making' event in Church. There were young people and their Mums. No Dads unfortunately. The children were absorbed in the crafts but the Mums were equally drawn into the simple act of being creative. We don't do enough of these fun creative occasions. There were three banners being created. One banner that was being made was for the new area of the Church created so the children can have fun in a safe space. Another was a 'Welcome' banner. The other is an 'Allelluia Banner' which involves loads of decorated paper eggs created by various members of the Church as well as people who 'don't do Church'. It is an ancient tradition which Pauline has revived for us. The banner will be hidden for Lent and re-appear at Easter.

It was a lovely couple of hours. There were feather rainbows being made in all the colours of the rainbow, including indigo and orange and violet. There were coloured ribbons and buttons, strips of organza and linen. There were hands coated in poster paints of lilac, yellow, green and any other colour you care to mention. There was gummy glue sticking everything and everyone together. We were glittered, and beaded. There were animals for Noah's Ark, including a fish called 'Bob' (because fish go 'bob, bob, bob' when they are swimming. There was even a duck with a pearl necklace. Noah's Ark had a little purple glitter door. All the eggs had the children's names on them declaring their belonging in the community. These are the sort of occasions that organisations like Brownies and Churches have licence and opportunity to do, where others don't. We have the space, we have the legal status, the certificates to prove we are safe to ensure Child Protection. We have the time, the resources and the inclination. For me, it is at times like this that it all seems worth it, not in Church on Sunday mornings. I see God in the children and I see God at work in my friend Pauline, although she will never forgive me for saying so.

The children and their trusting little faces full of laughter and their stories speak to me powerfully about why I do this work. I heard about a fish called 'Brian' who died and had a Fish burial ceremony in the garden. There were other fish stories, brought on by the presence of the lilac-glitter encrusted 'Bob'. Some, less fortunate fish are unceremoniously flushed down the loo I'm afraid. One little girl, to her own embarrassment asked me 'what do you want to be when you grow up?'. Not knowing the answer, I said 'oh I think I will be a funeral director for fishes'. 'We are going to be comedians' two little girls said, 'we are going to stand here and amuse you.' I thought it seemed like a worthwhile cause and so did they. Hopefully our Government won't impose a 'target' for them to reach where they have to make us laugh ten times each so that we can quantify and justify the investment.

If as Religious people we forget that God is not contained to Church and if we forget Jesus' words of being 'like little children' in order to 'inherit the Kingdom of God' we lose sight of God altogether. Many of the Mums of these children and the children themselves would not normally step inside a Church. My friend who 'doesn't do Church either has brought them there. With them, these people who don't understand why we go to Church at all, God speaks to us of the enormous capacity for human thriving. I sense the love of God in their peaceful sense of the importance of living, laughing, dreaming, trusting, creating, dancing, singing, munching chocolate, friendship, love, telling stories, amusing and entertaining one another. For me this is what God is all about.

'I could have been really thin, if I didn't love food so much'.

Having lost a substantial amount of weight and breathing the words 'only half a stone to go' every Monday after a year of sensible eating I have realised why I never lose that last half a stone. Everytime I breathe those words I subsequently eat like a pig. No one needs to get a degree to work this out.

I have spent the weekend gorging on lemon meringue pie, chicken in cream sauce, cheese and biscuits, nuts, chocolate cheesecake, chocolates, hand-made luxury butter, home-made fruit tea cake and probably even worse. These are foods whose sole purpose is to make us fatter. They are designed to round our hips, increase our cup size, bloat our stomachs and make our legs rub together. How I can justify the complete bewilderment every Monday morning that 'I've put it all back on again and simply cannot understand it' is anyone's guess. I am starting to think that I am afraid of the substantial cost of replacing my substantial lingerie collection with a less substantial cup size. Either this or I have convinced myself that Mr B will stop loving me if I'm skinny. Fond as he undoubtedly is of my substantial nature. Or, more likely still, I won't know what to do without the anxiety of 'needing to lose that extra half a stone'. It is quite ridiculous. I am intent upon locking myself into this discontentment.

I don't think I really am unhappy enough with my body. This is practically a crime these days. We are supposed to have 'issues with our body image'. We are also supposed to have a 'target'. This target consists of being something we are not. Then we are supposed to move the target even further away. I wasn't prepared to be happy with an easier more achievable target, namely the one I've already reached, and I can't be bothered to set another one. Originally I set myself a target, yet another stone away from this one. But it never appeared on the horizon and now I have made friends with my hips, am enjoying my over-enthusiastic breasts and don't particularly mind having a bit of a wiggle. Climbing the stairs is no longer hard work because I now walk for a couple of miles each day and this makes me feel self-righteous enough. It never occurred to me that staying at this weight and fluctuating around it would satisfy me. I didn't even once think I might grow 'cool with my BMI baby!'. Weighing the size of a small aircraft wasn't pleasant but I can now walk up a hill now without collapsing.

Someone pointed out a simple truth to me, and if he was an 'ex-friend' before he assaulted my vanity, he's a triple ex now. He suddenly said 'you've never been exactly slim'. I was a bit put out by this revelation. I was quite sure that I had been...once. But he did me a favour in the end because its absolutely true. Even as a toddler I had chubby little thighs and, though I know I will regret sharing this, my nickname was 'Pud'. On really bad days the long version was employed. Yes, I was known as 'Pudding'. This is my gift to you today. Please enjoy it.

At one time I was a very balletic character. But I was turned down by Elmhurst Ballet School because 'I wasn't the right shape'. I always assumed it was because of my rump. Or simply because I had curves that wouldn't go away. I have always longed to shop in the 'petite' section of Monsoon. I have longed to wear size 3 shoes instead of my flipper-shaped size 8 (and a half). I have always wondered what it must be like to wake up in a size 8 body instead. The odd thing is, that when I tried being a size 10 for a solitary Summer it just didn't make that much difference to anything. The down-side being that I had to buy a wardrobe-full of clothes that I wore for the same solitary season.

I don't think I'm going to worry about it anymore. I am who I am. I am no more likely to suddenly be wearing my shoe-size as a dress than I am to be wearing size 3 shoes. The problem is, I don't really want to. I am reminded of my sister-in-law who once said 'I could have been really thin, if I didn't love food so much'. She's a genius.

Laughter

In England many of us Religous types have been watching a series called 'Around the World in 80 Faiths'. In said programme a particularly eccentric Church of England Priest is literally travelling the world in a floppy hat experiencing 80 different faiths. If I'm honest, I feel jealous. Anglicans in particular are not renowned for our capacity for having fun. Even when we are trying to be 'lively' it takes a superlative effort and has a forced air about it. Anglicans in English society are stereotyped as seriously humourless. While the Hindus in India are having dung fights and dousing each other with Vermillion paint and the Sufis are whirling... we aren't.

The most exciting it gets is our wild use of a limited pallette of liturgical colour. Every now and then we go crazy and swap purple altar cloths for Scarlet. Recently I have become very enamoured of sitting in silence. But it has its limitations. Yesterday three of us met for our half hour of Silent Prayer. This is really a form of meditation. It is like a Quaker meeting. We sit in a semi-circle in silence around a candle. This form of prayer can become desperately serious. In fact a great deal of religious activity can become a very serious matter. This is generally thought to be a good thing. We want to take what we do seriously. The danger comes when we start to take ourselves too seriously.

Which is why yesterday afternoon and the day before that was so good for us all. In Churches there is great focus on prayer and silence and listening intently to each other, God and ourselves. There is earnest commitment to transformation and growth. We are always striving to do things more effectively and to improve what we do so that it is more helpful. There is relentless work to be something a skeptical population can take seriously. It can make for sombre weeks. We have many meetings with intense discussion. We are always looking out for people and, as you know, dealing with traumatic realities. But yesterday and the day before we simply laughed and laughed and laughed. It was such a relief.

For me there is a tendency to take life and myself too seriously anyway. This tendency is exacerbated by being a religious person. It is intensified further by spending so much time with religious people in religious settings. But I have always loved a laugh too and was very prone to giggling as a child. Children understand about laughter. They know it is necessary. They are right. When we were children we knew how to laugh out loud for hours on end about absolutely nothing.

On one occasion of hilarity I was sitting in a circle trying to take myself seriously, and pulling my face into a pious, earnest demeanour. On the other I gave up trying.

On the first occasion I was in a setting with people I didn't know, being watched from a distance by friends who knew I was trying to keep a straight face. On the second I was with two friends who are both very funny, our Silent Prayer meeting ended up being a 'Laughter meeting'. My friend suggested that we advertise future conventions in the Newsletter as 4.00pm Silent Laughter, 5.00pm Raucous laughter and 6.00pm Hysterical Laughter.

On the first occasion my friends had abandoned me to my fate. I was sat with many earnest characters perpetually singing one line chants and interspersing them with tightly choreographed silences. There is a limit to how much time we can spend singing 'The Lord is My Light' whilst sitting in the dark. I couldn't meet the eyes of my mischievous friends and so I was pretending to pray fervently about important matters. What I was actually doing was fervently praying that the laughter wouldn't spill out in a torrent. Eventually it did after a torturous Forty-Five minutes. I had to walk away in a calm and ordered manner through the cavernous space, seeking a private place where I could release the illicit humour. I tried to be meditative as I fled and not click my heels on the tiles. I walked into the little room at the back and silently laughed and laughed until my sides hurt and I started to make little snorting and squeaking noises. I hid with a friend and was unable to speak. There had been something about the piety of those around me. All those eyes closed with beatific smiles and eyebrows slightly raised. There is an unwritten law that when we religious people pray together we place our hands on our laps facing upwards and together in an attitude of 'recieving'. I have always resisted the urge but it is contagious and I caught this disease. I find that I sit raising my own eyebrows expectantly, my own face smiling beatifically, with my hands placed accurately on my lap. It is a matter of time before I am wearing a knitted , striped hand-knitted jumper with motifs all over it and a strange fish-shaped necklace. This I have so far resisted but I know I am far from immune. By Summer I am likely to be wearing open toed, sensible, velcro-fixed, practical sandals and ear-rings in the shape of crucifixes. As the Piety Syndrome becomes more advanced I will be using words like 'challenge' and 'radical'. There is no medication for this disease. It is inevitable. What concerns me is that the disease at its most severe actually robs us of our sense of humour. People forget that God gave us laughter. God didn't ever give us a commandment that said 'thou shalt sit in circles wearing odd clothes with not even a twitch of humour in your soul'. Unfortunately we seem to have made this 'no amusement commandment' up. It is inscribed in Pious Law along with all the other odd conventions which have crept in: wearing beards and sandals among them. There is a new tradition of wearing odd plastic bangles with coded inscriptions like WWJD embossed into the wristband as though we live in such persecution in England that morse code is the only way. I assure you that my time spent in a room of twenty such characters all sitting mute with hands in a scooping motion waiting to catch the Lord's grace recovered my sense of humour. As I surreptitiously looked up during an accurately timed 'Long Silence' I caught twenty pairs of eyelids closed lightly in adoring contemplation, fish-necklaces twinkling above the neckline of a hand-knit jumper and I lost it completely.

I made the fatal decision of checking that it wasn't just me. I glanced sideways at my friend who has the odd defect of being a religious person possessing an outrageous sense of humour. Mistake. Big mistake. My stomach started involuntarily jumping and I started making tiny coughing noises, air escaping accidentally from my nostrils. It was unbearable. The more amused I became the severe they all looked. The more laughter that came the more disapproving they all felt. I didn't know what to do about it. But the situation was about to worsen. Two other friends, not infected with religiosity had decided to observe my humiliation from a distance. These grown adults, regressing with the classroom atmosphere had hidden behind some pews in the children's area. I couldn't see them committing their crimes. But I could hear them. They started to titter. At my most desparate they became unable to contain themselves. The tittering became muffled squawking. They began to sound convincingly hysterical. Mr Hand-knit to my right obviously fancied himself as Priestly Male and took on the responsibility of managing what increasingly sounded like two people having nervous breakdowns. He took a break from showing off his middle-class Latin, while the rest of us continued to sing in English and loped into the darkness in search of his opportunity to display his pastoral expertise. I was too helpless to concentrate on this activity at the back of the Church. I couldn't save them from him. He returned looking bewildered after some time using his Vicar voice. I was to find out later that he had found two adult women lying on their backs on the carpet doing 'Meercat impressions'. Evidently they had originally been 'playing meercats' by peering secretly over the pews and bouncing up and down. Unfortunately he found them embarrasingly lying down, losing the plot in full character as Mr and Mrs Meercat. "Are you alright?", he asked, in what was possibly the most unneccessary sentence uttered. My wonderfully honest, un-infected friend still resisting Piety Disorder was frank with Mr Handknit. She replied honestly to his unsubtle request for her to shut up which had been neatly disguised as deep concern. She wasn't sure, she said. 'Not really' she said. 'I'm not sure whether I'm hysterical or not' (she'd had a bad day). The fact of her meercat impression in the children's area probably could have answered his question. Mr Handknit faced with two hysterical Meercats was, surprisingly, inclined to return to his Latin, apparently less concerned for her welfare than he had initially declared. The Vicar voice is clearly not adequate for dealing with hysterical women. He absented himself and at this point a secret sqeal emerged from the gloom. I thought it was going to kill me and the heaving in my stomach muscles began again, little spasms that I couldn't contain and I was convinced the little group of good people were going to think I was having a 'Harry met Sally moment'. But it was never going to be an orgasm in an atmosphere like that. The worst of it was that laughter was much more outrageous than sexual ecstasy in a Holy Place. At least Latin-speaking Vicars could refer me for medical treatment for being too fleshly. At least he could have quoted Theresa of Avila and the sculpture of her at the climax of her 'rapture. But I was not in rapture, I was in carnal torture. I eventually fled when the final silence fell. I went into hiding in the Vestry weeping with slapping my thighs like a lunatic and banging my head on the table, wheezing and gasping while the unsuspecting Ann looked on in surprise.

Yesterday it still hadn't worn off. I met with another Syndrome-free friend and the anomoly from the night before with the outrageous humour. We met, ostensibly, for Silent Prayer but it never happened. The outrageous anomoly, it transpired had been seated in the circle the night before concentrating on the dial on her watch while I was in spasms and our Meercat friends were acting out their bizarre therapy on the children's carpet. The other Syndrome-free friend had stayed at home while we suffered, she had not, she declared, been able to face it.

As we discussed the Meercats, the Latin-speaking hand-knits, the squealing in the Vestry we moved onto even worse memories of Pious gatherings and the totally unacceptable moments when our humour got the better of us and we had met the twinkle in another's eye.

moody blues

The new night light in the dining room has upset the cats. Mr B, feeling seasonably climate aware, decided to do the moral thing and get a low-energy one when the last one died on us leaving us stumbling around in the dark. Since I had an insomnia night last night at 4 am I stumbled into the dining room to find the cats not neatly curled up on their special cushion. Not snoozing and dreaming their noses scrunched into the hand-woven fabric. Not twitching their paws with imaginary mice in their claws. None of these. The cats greeted me with wild panic in their eyes. Anyone would think they had suddenly become aware of the Financial Crisis and that they had realised that they could be meat-free and facing starvation. They pleaded with me and ran to my ankles, tripping me up and screeching at me. They looked really confused and blinded and kept staring at the new eco-friendly night light as though it were a UFO re-fuelling on its way from outer-space. They kept wailing in cat-speak 'what the hell is that?'. I have never seen them move so fast and they fled upstairs to crawl into bed with Mr B, racing past another terrifying alien monster on the landing.

It is true that it has an alarming quality about it, though I thought they were being a little over-dramatic. It is neon-blue which screams melodrama and catastrophe. I hate eco-friendly light bulbs. By night they reduce our lovely warm-toned house to a space with the feel of a Crime Scene Investigation. I keep expecting to see areas of the living room cordoned off with striped tape and unreasonably attractive pathologists pulling on rubber gloves. On positive nights it is more industrial kitchen than mortuary which has more promise as an ambience. Even the ostentatious 'bought on a whim' lamp once referred to by an ex-friend as a 'pair of tart's knickers' hasn't been spared by global warming. Mr B has really gone all-out for the environment and now the taut leopard-skin and feather boa boudoir lamp has a strange coil-shaped device inserted into it. This 'ex-friend' once famously said of this Burlesque lamp that 'he didn't know whether to sleep with it or kick it out of bed'. Now I think he would find this a much easier decision since she is reduced to blue-green toned sanitised utlitarian appearance. More operating theatre gown than negligee.

When people look back on the 'noughties', they will remember it not in black or white or in flamboyant colours but in a strange bluey-greeney sallow sickly tone. Films of 2009 will be characterised by this melancholy bleakness. It is strangely symbolic that the 'depression years' will be remembered with this textureless flat sooth-saying doom-laden light. Cats are creatures of instinct. I am sure they would want to save the planet as much as the rest of us but even so they will never compromise on the mood of a night by the fire.

The mother of all depressing weeks.

Well.

Depressing is an inadequate word for the past week. There are apocolyptic fires in Australia. Terrifying warfare in the Holy Land. Turning on the news makes us whince and cry. Turning it off leaves us with so much guilt that we turn it back on again. There is a Global Recession, which in Britain is now referred to as a 'depression'. This seems much more apt. Everyone I know is depressed. It is hardly surprising. The devastating stories of our brothers and sisters in Australia, Israel, Zimbabwe, The Congo and many more all living hellish nightmares in real time. The overwhelming sense of the betrayal by our banking system. The suspicions we had that the promises of Materialism, Consumerism and Captialism were not quite the whole truth are now more than paranoia. We are realising more fully that our entire society is based around a fantasy of greed and deception. We feel duped here. We never believed in our financial institutions without cynicism but we had little choice but to rely upon them. To add insult to injury our recently unemployed redundant population are forced to listen to Banking executives defending their rights to 2.5 million pound bonuses for annual performance. Our suicide rates are predicted to soar here in the UK and possibly globally. Given that we Churches are in the business of burying our dead and listening to trauma we are finding it hard to contemplate the future. Our Priests buried 240 people in the last year alone. This was before these gloomy predictions. This was a light workload, much diminished from the usual number of around 300. We work in areas of already existing severe urban deprivation, the Jobcentre is already one of the most frequented places, and one of the most disappointing.

Yesterday we had to bury a couple whom we married in August last year and who died the day after New Years day together whilst enjoying her Christmas present of a flight in a light aircraft. After six months of marriage, they leave an 18 month old baby, and a ten year old from a previous relationship. They didn't even have much time together as a couple before they married. I have never been to a funeral with two coffins and two eulogies where six months beforehand we were waiting for the bride to arrive clutching her bouquet only to find ourselves waiting for her coffin to come through the same door with a wreath in place of a bridal bouquet. I should point out that this a high profile incident, reported in the media and so I am not breaking any confidences in sharing this.

Being a lover of words doesn't help much in situations like this. They are too inadequate, everything said seems insulting, nothing does justice to the pain. It has been an awful week and because, to my Swedish cousins' amusement, England completely shuts down after two inches of snow we have all been boareded up in our houses alone watching this endless footage of everything falling apart, watching it in isolation. All of us independently wondering what was wrong with us when we couldn't face getting up in the morning.

Human survival and strength being what it is I am feeling unaccountably upbeat this morning. It is a very inappropriate feeling but I have only listened to accounts of bombing in Gaza and the election process in Israel so far this morning. Oh and a little more about this being the worst Economic Crisis in living memory. I won't be watching the news tonight.

snow

When it snows in England there is always a strange panicky excitement not easy to define. We love it and we loathe it. Some of us love it. Some of loathe it. Some of us love it and loathe it at the same time. Given our prediliction for talking inanely about the weather, no one is surprised to hear that we have plenty to say about the snow. It gives us a new topic of conversation, especially in February. It staves off the boredom. We have been talking about 'this bloody rain' for approximately ten months by the time we reach February. Twelve months if its been a 'bad' Summer.

You are unlikely to meet an English person who is indifferent to snow. "I like it... when I'm inside', is a common sentiment on the first day. "I think it is magical...until it turns to slush" on the second. "I'm bored with it now" on the third. "I hate this [expletive of choice] snow, its so [expletive of choice] cold" by the fourth. The "its so [expleteive of choice] cold" is said with a deadpan seriousness as though no one had ever noticed that before. When we declare that "its so [expletive of choice] cold" we look each other directly in the eye, shaking our heads in bewilderment, eyebrows frozen in shock. It is as though the great thermostat above the English Isle has 'packed up again'.

This year our weather people have started calling it 'The Snow Event'. It is as though it is a Government-funded experiment. Another one. 'The Snow Event' depending upon which end of the 'love it or 'loathe it' spectrum you are sitting will not escape you if you are English. In fairness to Gordon Brown, he is a Scot and a smattering of snow might not be seen by him as an event. On the other hand, he isn't well-known for his imagination. The £1.2 billion loss of income today resulting from The Snow Event should be proof, it isn't just a bit of fun for Gordon at this boring time.

But it is so beautiful and mesmorising. I think it is eventful, in a different way. It does disrupt normality for us in England. It makes us think and it changes our perspective. It also makes us remember. Snow, in England, is out-of-the-ordinary. Snow is a remarkable type of weather that is sporadic and unpredictable and forces us to lose control of our environment. Because it is relatively rare, compared to rain, we remember the times when it happens. Snow unsettles us as it settles, bringing back our own personal 'snow events'.

It unsettles me because Snow makes me nostalgic, even a little sentimental. Each snowflake dances another feeling into me from nowhere. A need to cry. A buzz of excitement. A feeling of joy. A sigh at the beauty a slick white lick of snow can create from a featureless urban landscape. The joy and the tears jumble, I don't know what they are, or why they are visting me now. But then the memories come. Now I am five and riding my new bike for Christmas, my brother lets go, there are no stabilisers, I fall into the soft white coldness. Now I am older, holding my white fluffy stray rabbit in the moonlight and the thick snowy landscape. The rabbit bites me and runs away and I am bleeding into the whiteness. Now I am with my friends thick icy lumps sticking to my gloves, we are soaked with thawed snow laughing helplessly on a sledge or a tea tray, racing down a slight incline over the bald spots where the grass shows through. We are thawing out, our hands looped around hot cups of home-made chocolate. We are treading delicately on thick ice and whacking each other with snow balls. We are standing in snowdrifts so big we can hide in them, dwarfed by the magnificent sculpture of nature. The days when overnight everything transformed into a wonderland of play.

Some of us can become children again when it snows. We remember the need for play, for fun and for laughter. There is that magic and we rediscover it, melting as soon as we catch it like a snow drop on our tongue. Poor old Gordon, I bet he wishes it was his idea.

Divine threads

oh dear, lagging behind on my promise to write once a week, so it is a good thing I didn't promise a daily enterprise. I have sent some articles to the Guardian magazine because Graham nagged me into it.
Yesterday I heard a profound phrase, two actually,
'all, in the end, is harvest'
and
'they' (an Aunt and her neighbour) had 'vacancies' for one another'

I thought 'all, in the end, is harvest' was brilliant. I find 'everything happens for a reason' hard to swallow, though many of my friends believe this, but 'all in the end is harvest' makes for an easier way of making sense of trauma without it seeming divinely intended. The awful things in my life have been rich in 'harvest' and that 'harvest' has been of good things. I don't believe God gave them to me or intended them, simply that he has harvested my experience of a real human life.

Someone suggested I was 'the divine thread in lots of people's lives' which made me squirm because anybody's response would be 'oh, no, not me' and nervous laughter, which is of course what I said and what i did. But I think we under-use 'divine' as a term for God. It is a good 'catch-all' way of talking about Holy things without them becoming set apart qualities which belong to Saints. When I think about it I see 'divine threads' in all of the people I love. It set me off thinking about how we are all 'threaded together' like a big woven cloth. So being 'a divine thread in lots of lives' isn't so improbable, it is just a question of looking for those threads in each other.

This leads nicely on to the second quote, which is about the same aspect of life. Our relationships are the harvests of our lives and the idea of having 'vacancies for each other' flies in the face of some negative associations of being needy for unhealthy motives. It occurred to me that being needy for something lacking which might be met in another human being is what makes our woven fabric in life. A red thread is needed to compliment a yellow one and they need each other to create a whole. The absence in the yellow thread's life of the red thread is simply a matter of fact and for the yellow thread to take her whole life saying just because a red thread is missing doesn't mean I should look for a red thread seems a bit wasted when a red thread is out there looking for a home.

So...a post for this week, that wasn't too painful.

If you can walk you can dance.

Well, I've run out of conditioner for my hair and lost my hairbrush and I look like a tramp and I crawled out of bed really late. Today was supposed to be my new routine morning and a blew it by ignoring Graham's advice to 'put that book down' and didn't sleep until 2.30am. The book is called 'If you can walk you can dance', but could more appropriately been called 'if you can pick this up you can also put it down'.

Reading books is like different relationships. They can be warm and satisfying with potential to transform everything and everyone. They can be dull. They can be exciting. They can be dull and occasionally exciting. They can be exciting and occasionally dull. They can be wildly exciting and easily spent. They can also start well and end badly. The book I stupidly read until the early hours was being read simply so I could finally get to the end and be put out of my misery. Graham doesn't understand why, for me, even really irritating books need to be finished. If he gets bored with them he just dumps them. I think this is because he doesn't really believe you can have a relationship with a book.

So this book, was love at first site, a grand passion and I bored people to death with my enthusiasm to start with. Unfortunately this rapidly slid into dissillusionment.
The odd thing about it was that it was that I picked it up in our very limited library because was the only book in sight with a decent cover and title. I was amazed to find when I started reading it that it was not, as the title indicated, about dancing but largely about 'ethnomusicology'. This is odd because one of my Swedish relatives introduced me to this unheard of phenomena because he is coming to Goldsmiths university in London to study it. I thought this was weird because I had never heard of 'ethnomusicology' and neither had anyone else I knew.

This book started off with the most wonderful concept, a woman exploring her life through a radically new approach to music and music as a form of survival. It explored her development into emotional, psychological, sexual maturity through music. Half way through the book I realised that I really wouldn't blame her if she leapt off a cliff into the Niagra Falls. Then I realised that I thought the doomed and complicated relationship around which the story evolved was not really worth the perseverance. Then by the third 2am ordeal in Part Three I realised that this was the last time I was ever going to read a book that had a Part Three. Then by the fourth 2am reading I realised that I couldn't understand what she saw in him anyway. I decided that if he had treated me like that I like to believe I would have knocked him over the Viagara Falls first and put an end to the whole sorry business. Then by the fifth 2am endeavour I realised that for several days all my friends had been asking if I was alright because I kept blinking at them and rubbing my eyes because they were blurring at the edges. I had eye strain. Well last night was the final episode of all night reading vigils and the final revelation. I realised that the author should have just written a reference book. Then we would have been spared this ludicrous proposition with which she decided to showcase her enthusiasm for her specialism. If she had just written about it, albeit briefly, I would have found it fascinating.

I am well-known for my own propensity to analyse and de-construct my own emotional state and living with myself is boring enough. Having to suffer the additional burden of another woman's issues with every imaginable scenario she encounters was really tiring. Anyone can tell you that living with one person that you love for fourteen years can take its toll on conversation from time to time. These two hadn't spent more than a few hours at a time in each other's company until about a decade into their 'relationship'. The conversation centred almost entirely on their inability to have relationships, least of all their own. I had difficulty imagining what they would talk about when she finally moved in with him and his wife and step-son, her bereaved South African Mother and his senile Scottish one. The only vocabulary they had was littered with phrases like 'Jennie, I'm emotionally blocked at the moment', and 'Neil, you are retreating'. The only successful communication seemed to take place between his cello and her Viola. I had visions of his mother screaming out to be taken to the loo in a broad Glaswegian accent. I imagine the Chilean Political refugee 'marriage-of-convenience' cancer patient wife tending to the mother-in-law. I imagine the son of the Chilean Political refugee (not from the marriage of convenience but by a Political exile of unknown origin) walking in on his Composer step- Dad of convenience with his equally emotionally-blocked wife who he married in a strange African ritual in the Nyika Plateau. I imagine them making up for ten years of snatched sex by having sex (in an emotionally blocked way) with an oboe in the attic while the South African not-mother-in-law but Mother-in-law by strange African fertility ritual does the crossword in Afrikaans wondering what on earth she got herself into.

Parrot-cat hybrid

Well
I don't think this counts as blog entries go, but when me and the cat have finished our morning ritual I will get going on something worthwhile.
She has been sitting on my shoulder like a parrot

being not doing

Sometimes I think I have the weirdest vocation in the world. It seems to be that I constantly have to 'not do things'. This is why my calling in life is a difficult thing to label as 'work'. I am called to do little and listen a lot and plan really carefully so that I can do even less and we can all listen a lot more.
The oddest experience is realising that I am active in my 'not doing'. I do actually work really hard at saying and doing very little so that other people around me can do and say a lot.

I have a realisation that I still need to be there, not doing but listening and planning for more not doing but listening so that profound moments then have opportunity to happen. I am aware now that this curious experience of feeling that I have no need to be somewhere is not the truth. People I trust tell me that it is vital for me to be there...doing nothing and saying nothing. But it is still a bit hard to accept a role in life which is all about encouraging others and just humbles me every time I am moved to tears by someone else's offering of themselves.

If you were at Candlelit Church tonight you will know what I am talking about. If you are not religious and you got to the end of this blog entry then you are charitable or amused.

I am personally completely bemused because although I am not actively doing... I know that my actively being and specifically actively being in that place at that time allows others to do the same. It is the most rewarding work in the world, as you can see it isn't really work at all. It is just fab.

Not doing stuff and not saying stuff all the time so that other people have a chance to give us all extraordinary gifts of kindness and healing is very powerful. The hard part is constantly trying to bite my lip and sit on my hands...or put bluntly to sit down and shut up.

the other one

It is the other cat tonight. She is playing 'over-familiar' and drooling all over the laptop on the kitchen table. But she is more polite than the other one and knows I that I am now working so she is sitting neatly with her paws together like a doorstop.

Cat

You know those 'Mystery Shoppers'...they are paid by large Shops to visit and pretend they are shopping. They take notes and tick boxes on a sheet of paper which say things like 'did the shop assitant come and 'ask if you were alright' within the three minute deadline?' Did the assistant return to you within the next two minute deadline and 'ask if you were alright' again (in case the customer is stupid I assume). They have a list which evaluates the qualities of the poor unsuspecting Shop Assistant.
Well...I believe my cat is concerned that I might be a 'mystery cat visitor'. She appears to be over-doing her role. I think she belongs to a Secret Society who have workshops on 'being a senile cat' and is trying to be as authentic as possible as an 'elderly' feline.
She appears to have her own standards. They seem to involve a relentless routine of squawking at me. There is a distinctly choreographed 'walking in front of the person who feeds you and loves you and tripping them up as they go down the stairs' dance. There is the 'screech for food for several hours and then take one look at it with disgust and walk away' task. There is the 'sit on the dining table while friends are visiting putting your bum in their faces and knocking over their drinks with your tail' game. This morning she is being over-zealous with the squawking and tripping up tasks. I wish I could explain that she has already passed her 'Being a Cat exams' and can now relax a bit. She is not being scrutinised to check her authenticity as a cat. I KNOW she is a cat.
Got to go...the cat...

Swedes

The first thing I am inspired to write about is my Swedish relatives. We had largely lost touch and then my cousin Fredrik got in touch via Facebook. He has been completely brilliant putting all of us cousins together and linking us all up with e-mails.

I had already decided that I needed to do something in Mum's memory. I felt absolutely sure that I needed to go to visit Mum's two remaining sisters. One lives in Aberdeen and one in Sweden. I am planning Sweden first and then Aberdeen second.

We are going to Sweden this June in my Mum's memory to visit her sister, because it is the most appropriate way I can think of to honour her on her birthday. While we are there I am planning to meet with some of my cousins. None of us know each other really, but we are starting to get to know each other by e-mail. We have various random memories of each other and of our respective parents. One cousin remembers me when I was one year old and she was 16. I have a horrible feeling that there is a picture of me in a yellow bucket and her being 'Miss Elstead' in the carnival.

The exciting thing about it is that it is about Mum's family and about new relationships and possiblities. She always loved new possiblities and was a person of relationships, but most of all she loved these sisters. She was particularly close to her sisters Barbara, and Betty and also to Jennifer. Betty also lived in Sweden, but she died from Motor Neurone disease. Mum was heart-broken about this and although the three of them had some really good times together in Sweden I know Mum missed her terribly and was devastated by the suffering she endured. Jennifer is in Aberdeen and that is another planned visit.

My Mum came from a family of eight. I never met her parents Lavinia and Robert Swanston, or her brother Bobby who died in a drowning accident aged 14. They had a childhood fragmented by the war. They were Londoners and nearly all evacuated to various places around the country. They would all laugh, I am sure, to think that they are now the subject of the English school curriculum in history lessons about World War II. Initially I think Barbara, Betty and Mum were moved to Brighton together, but were later separated. So they went on some formative journeys together and were closest in age within the family. Large families seem to develop clusters of intimacy within them. Presumably this is because it would be hard to have such close relationships with all eight of you across the age range. Mum's family consisted of Pearl, Irene, Betty, Barbara, June, Bobby, Anne and Jennifer. I understand that Betty, Barbara and June (my Mum) were much older than Jennifer and effectively adopted her and felt responsible for her after their parents died. Jennifer was very young at the time, possibly as young as 15. She and Barbara are now the only survivors.

The reason for all this detail is to explain my motivations for developing the connections with my remaining aunts. Mum always loved her visits to Sweden.She associated them with joy and fun and friendship. She married into the May family. They are a very loud family. Her own family seems to have been somewhat drowned out. My Dad's Mum had 'delusions of grandeur'. She was convinced that Mum was 'not good enough' for the May family. In England at the time, the class system remained highly significant. It still is highly significant but it has become unpopular to talk about it and its powerful impact upon us. People could be persecuted all their lives for their 'background' or 'upbringing'. For reasons known only to herself, my Paternal Grandmother thought she was classy and was a therefore a terrible snob, particularly with regard to Mum and by implication her family. The truth was that Mum came from a poor family in the East End of London. Winifred May only recovered from the shock of her son marrying someone of this background towards the end of her life. But as my Mum was always quick to point out "Darling...there are two different types of East End...there's East End and there is 'East End'...and we were a respectable family".

I think that her Mother-in-Law put further distance between June Swanston and her immediate relatives in addition to the already significant chasm of geographical distance and death. I knew that their bonds were stronger than she admitted. She always knew when one of her relatives was in pain or trouble. This happened on the day that Bobby died. She cried all day on a 'day out' until she drove my Dad crazy and they came home. She couldn't explain her behaviour but kept saying 'something terrible has happened, something terrible'. There were no phones and there was no way of contacting her with the bad news. When they were at home someone called or visited and she simply said 'its Bobby, isn't it? Its Bobby, and he's dead', before they had even opened their mouths to speak.

My point is not that she was psychic, though I think she might have been, it is that she never lost that deep connection to her family. I am not trying to romanticise her family or over-sentimentalise them. This isn't an exercise in sickly-sweet nostalgia. She wasn't close to all of her sisters, it wasn't an idyllic family but my Mother always remembered every single one of her siblings birthdays. She knew the names of all their children and their partners and their children too. She remembered the details of Bobby's death with deep sadness with vivid clarity 'as though it were yesterday'. I don't know whether, in the end, she ever forgave God, because at that time a 'boy' was a very important thing to have in a family comprising so many girls. She thought it was grossly unfair of God to take their only boy. She used to say 'we used to say to each other...why couldn't he take one of us, there are loads of us, it should have been one of us girls'. Even in the last years of her life talking about their collective loss as a family would make her cry. She showed me a picture of my Grandmother (her Mother) shortly before she died. She was deeply disturbed by it and cried even though she was well into her seventies by then. She felt that she had allowed Dad's family to 'take over'. She said that she wished she had made more time for her blood relatives and her parents. She said that she felt very sorry for her Mum and wondered what on earth she must have felt seeing her daughter moving on into a new society trying to impress this new family by giving them everything she had.

She had lists and lists of extended family, and she also traced her ancestry. Being an evacuee has subsequently been extensively researched. That research demonstrates that being wrenched away from home and family to live with strangers in an equally strange geography during wartime certainly had a dramatic impact upon these children. Apart from the practical implications of living miles away from one another and starting new lives apart, it also significantly altered how these children formed as adults. I came to think that her interest in her ancestry and her sister's lives lived out as far apart as Sweden and Australia and her interst in all her extended family stemmed from that sense of dislocation. She kept contact with many of them, some more than others. With her closest sisters in particular there was a bond there which was treasured. I think it would be sad for her and for us if that connection was completely lost. The family she married into has no greater claim on her. Neither did they have a lesser or greater claim on her affections. Her birth family and the shared trauma they endured were very dear to her, even though some of those relationships were more significant than others. She did treasure these relationships and I want to honour that. Even if realistically that honouring only takes the form of sending a Christmas card once a year or chatting on Facebook periodically, it will be 'something', which Mum always said was ...'better than nothing'.

Many of my cousins are a generation older than me and I am nearer in age to my second-cousins, apart from Fredrik who is younger than the others. I get a real buzz from having this contact with them. I intend to make more of an effort to discover the English cousins and what is going on for them.

I hope to compile a family tree developed from her existing list. I know Fredrik is also interested in this, so I will take her work with me when I go to visit them. I don't know all her sister's grandchildren's names. But if you are one of them...she had you on a list, and she knew all about your life. I became acutely aware when we were preparing Mum's funeral of the way in which our relationships vary. I am a wife, a sister, a daughter, and a friend, I am a Pastor and a cousin and I am also an Aunt. My nieces and nephews are important to me. When we thought about Mum we realised that she was all of these things and a Grandmother and a Mother to many more than just her own children. I thought then about her role as an Aunt and thought of her nephews and nieces, and felt the need to acknowledge the importance some of them held in her life, simply by virtue of being the children of her closest sisters.

Since she died I have been quite alarmed at the long list of relatives as well of friends who seem somehow through distance and time to have become a bit forgotten and their relationships and the nature of them somewhat overlooked.

Hopefully if you are reading this and you are one of these people you will find this consoling. She would have.

TERROR

So
I have now put my blog link onto my Facebook page and made it public knowledge. It has been a relatively well-kept and slightly embarrassing secret until now. If you have decided to have a glance at it, be gentle with me. I am determined not to start apologising for it, but it is intensely personal. Some articles have been removed to protect those I love but otherwise it is fairly raw material. Don't expect anything 'polished'. Most of the time when you read my material you are seeing it as it is created. You are entering into the creative process with me and it will mostly have an immediacy about it. There are exceptions. Some of my work has been created on retreat and then typed up on my return. Some has been developed online, taken off and re-worked and put back on. Some is hand-written and added.
This blog is part-journal, part stream-of-consciousness, but mostly confidence building and motivating. I needed to start being more public with my writing. I have been writing all my life, but only recently listened to people I trusted who have relentlessly encouraged me to let more people enjoy it. If you enjoy it, please keep logging in and reading it.

New Look

So, at last the cat allowed me to work. It was more like play actually. I have given the blog a fresh look for a fresh start. I plan to re-vamp it every year. This is symbolic of new beginnings, fresh stages on a journey. I hope you like it.

at last...

Well, with the cat ritual out of the way and her settled with her sister on the bed, and with two door stoppers wedging the sliding keyboard and the heating back on and a freshly re-heated coffee and a cement-encrusted bowl soaking I might be able to do some blogging....and then the phone rang!

no...that doesn't work either

and don't suggest shutting her downstairs because then she scratches at the door indefinitely. The only way that works is if she is allowed in the front roon where the sun is, but she isn't allowed unless we are in there because she shreds the sofa covers using them instead of her redundant scratch post.

Cat

Every morning the cat goes ballistic at me until I pick her up. Nothing else works. She must be picked up. She also goes crazy with rage in the morning if I'm not up by 9am, which these days, sometimes I'm not, especially during the holidays. The annoying thing is that she will leave Graham asleep but thinks it is out of order if I am not up, feeding her or putting her on my lap. Currently I am touch typing and the cat is nudging my hands and knocking them off the keyboard. She just can't help herself, so now I have a wet nose lodged between my thumbs, drooling and sniffing and nudging at me and purring. This is better than putting up with her yelling at me non-stop. Now she has decided to rest her head on my left hand like a pillow. I am readying myself to move the hand so I can eat my porridge (New Years resolution).

She knows what she wants and nothing, no porridge or computer or housework will stand in her way. She is so clingy that she would sit on my shoulder while I mop the floor if I found her a harness.

Moving the hand was unsuccessful, so I am eating my porridge with one hand and the bowl on the ironing board, leaning across her with my right hand and balancing her head on the left which is making it slow progress.

On top of it all, since my laptop died I have been using Graham's which means that I am using his computer cabinet with the slide out key board rest and it keeps sliding in taking my hand and the cat's head with it. I think I will give up for now and take the cat to a psychiatrist.

On top of it all...if I were to relinquish the hand, which I just tried, so I could pick up the bowl, she then nudges the bowl out of my hand. Countless outfits have been ruined in this way with cups of tea and coffee and food ending up all down my front because she got jealous of them and knocked them out of my hand

using this blog

From time to time as you read this blog you will see chapters of stories developing which will then be removed and replaced by a fully developed story. So you are watching the process of its construction. This is what happened with Nameless, parts of the story when it is finally pieced together will be familiar to you but probably altered. With Nameless I experienced that rare phenomenon where the story writes itself and I heard one author talk about this quite well-known experience as 'like being visited'. That is why it felt like sacrilege to alter it once it had been completed. I was just a vessel for its development. Apparently not all writers have this experience but when they do it is the exception to the rule, so I was lucky it happened to me at all. The rest is likely to be discipline alone.

Not Bad for a first attempt

Resurgence Magazine actually liked my short story and this is what they said: I'm quite proud of it because it is my first rejection letter!

Dear Jess,

Unfortunately this piece is not quite right for us. We had the feeling that the story was ended rather abruptly, and almost violently – the narrative was also a little unclear in places. However, our short story editor very much enjoyed reading the piece though, as did I – the language you use is almost musical, very eloquent and we an interesting turn of phrase.

I am sorry to disappoint you, in the sense that we won’t be publishing it, but please rest assured that we all enjoyed reading it. We hope this has not put you off sending submissions in to us in the future.

With kind regards.

Nameless: A Short Story developed for Resurgence Magazine

He turns. He stares. It is the flat-eyed stare of the startled. There is fear in the brown flecks of his grey eyes. There is a hint of confused panic in his frown. There is the beginning of a smile. It grows wider on only one side of his mouth. The other fixed in a dreadful resentful grimace.
She waits. She grows impatient for a word, stands frozen on the flagstones. He stares and she waits.

"Is you", paralysed speech.
"It is"

"How di you kno where do find m-me?"
A paralysed answer.

The effort to bring the tap into full song is the cause of his current exhaustion. Since his sculptural fingers show no real enthusiasm in coaxing the torrent out of the drip he tries persuasion. She finds him serenading the tap's silver neck.

"A l-little w-water, a l-little w-water, sing to m-me the river's m-melody"

"W-wet m-my lips and s-sing like a s-stream" he mumbles and his voice rumbles like stones in a leather barrel.
He is frail, crumpling, curled and greying, a fragile relic of parchment inside his tired stature. If he were in a scrum now his head would snap off. In his old age a game of rugger would leave him shaken out like a Russian doll. Inside and inside and inside again there would be a small foetus-like creation. There he would be, vulnerable without his skin. He is thin in a way that wounds. He has a hungry kind of thin, an alarming stark quality. The hollowness and the paralysis are framed by a tight silver mesh of curls. His smashed nose leaves little room for breath. His ears are disproportionate. He has a mythical outline. His gigantic stature reduces him still further. The remnants of his resolve to live are engulfed by his redundant frame.

The flagstones absorb the ensuing silence and the evening light is sheening everything up. The tap is in its best light and still isn't singing to his melody. Benedict turns his resentment away from her towards the tap. She is waiting now for her own answers.
She moves away from the flagstone which seems as though it might lift suddenly and topple her over. She waltzes oddly to the tap. As she walks past him she can feel his fear in her chest bone and it lodges next to hers. The anxiety is making her unsteady. Each step takes another two to sustain it. He watches, bewilderment descending. She turns with strong and dignified hands the cold metal grip, grapples shakily with the smooth surface of a clear glass. She is on the wrong side of his resentment now.
She drinks and he is thirsty. He waits and she stares. Her hand reaches out. The glass seems to glide across the air alone. The water is moving at its own pace. He is drinking. She is shaking.
"W-why?" Benedict speaks.
Her heart beats too many times. She can't sustain it. If it carries on beating so fast something will crack apart.
"Because "she breathes sharply upwards, her shoulders lift.

“…cause why?”

The clock taps out his rhythm until her shoulders drop, her head lifts and she sees her own reflection in the glass of his eyes. She says simply

“I have lost all of my rage”.

He nods with the slowness of retirement. He is resigned to the time it takes for each vertebra to creep into action. He finds his eyes suddenly reluctant. The lids close without him, reptilian in their lethargy. These eyelids capture something he has not known in sixty years.

He cannot name the constriction in his throat, the sharp pain in his eye sockets. It reminds him of the scars of his sport. The lids enclose him, there is darkness. He cannot look at what it might contain for fear that it might captivate him. A cough erupts, and another and another, he hears gasping noises. Someone is wailing deeply the notes of a song sung within the depths of a barrel. His face wet, his shoulders shifting up and down, up and down. His body convulsed by a primal involuntary repetitive shrug. Slowly his body loses its construction. An unseen weight presses him downwards. He is weak and he is trembling. He feels like a bird. He finds himself seated. He is in a hard, waxed chair. It is rigid against his tender flesh. As mucous streams he is not self-conscious and no one wipes away his disgrace.

“How”, he gasps, “How d-did you l- lose your rage?”

“I forgave and I turned away”.

“W-what-t ‘appen? Howw? B-beginning…” he tries again to ask the biggest question. “W- where beginning?” and again: “H-How did it b-egin?”


The morning had been fragmentary. Piercing winter light, particles dancing like Parisian Spring. Everything had started to come apart. Her mind disintegrating as she tried to concentrate.

"Hurry up, they have come, they are coming in, hurry!" her mother's voice penetrating the present moment.
She packs the strange grey textured suitcase. It is striped along the centre of its crocodile-skin back. She clicks the small metal buckles, checks the torn leather trim. She piles random patterned skirts, crumpled and ironed together. Squeezes the red Moroccan slippers and still thrills at their glitter and pointed toes even now, even here.
She scans the room. Apricots, peaches and ragged oatcake carpet. She calls out.
"Mum, Mum, I'm ready".

As she turns she goes to speak and opens her mouth to breathe. She pushes the hollow door. She finds herself standing on the edge of an open French sliding door. The metal cuts into her tender feet. The plump soles flush with pain without her Moroccan slippers. She raises her eyes. No corridor, no bathroom, no spare room.

She is on the edge of a vast expanse of water. It is edgeless, mirrored in the glass door, permutations in the sheer gossamer surface. The wide and inky watery darkness merges with the wide and inky absent sky. Where one ends and the other begins she cannot tell. It is a lightless box. It could be glass. It could be frameless and infinite or mirrored and complex but limited. There is no one on the edge of the precipice but her in her tender naked feet clutching a battered suitcase full of ageing photographs.
It happens sometimes, the nameless stuff. It happened in childhood too.
Her life along with the lives of everyone she knew had not turned out as she planned it or as she imagined it. There is no name for that either, the way it all changes shape, all the ideas that weren't and the surprises that were. As children they were all 'going to be' when they grew up. As if 'being' was a thing for the future. Here on the edge of this infinite expanse she wondered if there was any distinction between the past and the future. She couldn’t be sure there was a beginning or an end. In the ice sharp air in her night dress she stood, feet throbbing, shaking violently with cold. Here in this moment she was a young woman of twelve. Her journey had started with an imperative to flee. She had responded to her Mother’s call, packed her memories and started out only to find herself at an apparent end. Now her only hope is the invitation of the water.

In this inarticulate moment, the silences stretching out across the spaces where nothing can be said speak so loudly to her confusion. Loudly they sulk, loudly they swear, loud the whisper into the hush. The tongue sticks, the throat gasps and the teeth clench. Gridlocked the words, louder the whisper, silence speaks to the silent. The silence yells of the future, it sighs, breathes and dreams of poetry, and of the capacity of this silence, the power of the things we never say. The silence is saturated by all the images she cannot paint. She feels her toe dipping into the liquid. It shimmers outwards with the disturbance. She looks up and her eyes adjust to the darkness.


“H-how d-did it b-egin?”

Frustrated and grimacing with the effort of speech and the exhaustion of waiting and the shock of her appearance the contorted man bellows into her strange detachment.

“H-how d-did you l-lose your rage?”

He is flashing with the effort to suppress a rage all his own through gritted teeth and spitting features.

“H-how c-could you? H-how c-ould you? After all they d-did to us?”

“I had a vision.”

Stillness

“…of water”

He tries to create a dismissive expression.

They plunge together at the word

“W-water”

“Water” nodding, calming.

He is captivated and she is tranquil. She is still as she describes.

“In my vision the water’s melody captures me. I find myself moving with it. The river flows through our lives. I see us bleeding, pleading. The machetes mash flesh. The severed heads slung sideways. The sound of our sisters being torn apart penetrates louder than their screaming.”

She breathes deeply, swallows and begins again.

“The water is red with blood Benedict. It is innocent blood. It is your blood. It is my blood. It is our sisters’ blood. Our rage colours the water bleeding into the current. The water carries crimson fury.”

Her eyes are liquid now and different water spills.

“The water sings to me.”

He nods less slowly, his movement more lyrical.

She grips her mouth together with the effort of the word she must name.

“Forgiveness”

The silence is followed by a sigh.

“Forgiveness… is what the water sings.”

She fills her lungs.

“I hear the word and the disgust drowns me.”

He catches her hand and pulls it to the scars of his resentment.

“But under the water there is light. It shines through crystal waters. There is warmth and something nameless.”

The sun stuns them with a final dance before it leaves for sleep. He weeps and she does too. “Let the water sing to you”.

Jessica Boulton

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