A Prayer of Consolation

We are known
You, lover of our souls, know our resting places
Our rest is in the healing heart of God
The God who is our sleeping and waking
Our God of mercy and compassion
Whose nature is never to blame
Heal our broken hearts
it is your promise
And you will not let us go
Our wholeness is your embrace

Penitence and Confession

I am sorry for nt wanting to enter the darkness
For being afraid to stay there
For forgetting that darkness is a shared space
That we must visit it so that no one goes there alone
For not wanting to accept that communal confession is concerned with healing
For not wanting to enter, to share that room full of brokeness
I am sorry, and I do repent with my whole heart
For not wanting to cry before others when the tears of others heal our own wounds
It is part of the running - this remorse
This fear of sharing more and more deeply
The mutual darkness
I confess to you, Loving God, God of Mercy
Compassion and Kindness
I have nt done what I ought to have done
I have not stayed with the darkness for long enough
Without the depth of it
I cannot be dazzled by your healing light
Forgive us; for we know not what we do

Lectio Divina

Quakers have borrowed from St Benedict's ideas about meditating on the Word of God
I took Psalm 139 and studied it out loud and in meditation.

I took one message from it, but it had a much deeper resonance than it would have if it had simply been said. I found it written, three simple words circled

You Know Me

Intercessory Prayer: A prayer for my husband

29 September 2008

My prayers for you are always for your happiness
For your freedom, joy, fulfilment and fullness of life
I pray for you to have courage
For you to live
For you to stay, here, happy and with me

reflections on my thanksgiving

29 Sept 2008

I notice:
The absence and inadequacy of words
Reaching for non-verbal mediums
The extension of prayer into life and movement
The recurrence of healing

Is there a link between healing and gratitude
Is gratitude in itself 'healing?

A Prayer of Thanksgiving

29 September 2008

You astonish me God
This nameless shapeless enormous space
Filled with something like liquid
Gratitude is a luscious, moving expansive form of poetry
Thankfulness is a meaning which emerges
Slowly
Gently
In increments
And then suddenly swallows us whole

Thanksgiving doesn't welcome structure
It delights in surprises
Creates mischief
Leaps up and blocks our throats
Smarts our eyes
Shivers our spines

Feeling grateful is a movement with a life which cannot be accounted for
It will never stand up and be counted
Will not stand still and speak up
It isn't even eloquent

When I am thankful I am suddenly afflicted
I am brought closer to God and myself and those I love
Without warning, speechless, voiceless, amazed
Gratitude is an incarnation of love
It beats in our hearts, takes that beat to its wings, flies and carries us beyond a million thank yous into an unspoken sky

Perhaps laughter is a form of gratitude
It is a volume of celebration
A claim to life and vivacious spirit

and maybe song is also thanksgiving
and music
and other wordless offerings and words which reach beyond speech
giving something back in exchange for a gift

A clasped hand
An embrace
Tears of relief, of joy, of healing
A simple touch, a flat hand on a shoulder
A smile
Even memory
Even dance

My Gratitude Journal

If you are not on the 'friends' list, please don't think I'm not grateful (and you are in no particular order, these were just the people for whom I was grateful at that particular moment)!

Areas of life...Home, Church, Friends, Writing, Health, Work

Home:
Graham
Graham's smile and soul, his laughter, joy and care
I am grateful for his constant un-relenting love and devotion
I am grateful that I married my soul mate

The cats and their comedy and simplicity
The beautiful home I live in
For having money for food, lighting, heating
For luxury and contentment

Church:
For...
Freedom
Healing
Beauty
Spiritual formation
People
Prayer
Candlelit Church
For constantly being humbled by astonishing people

Friends:
Graham !
Pauline
Rob
Mina
Myra
Camilla
Catherine
Steve
Ann
Anna
Crystal
Anne
Christian
Pamela
Rebecca

For shared sorrow and hilarity
For acceptance
For being cared for

Writing:
For release
For healing
For truthfulness
For Pam Lunn and this course
For poetry
For prayer
For creativity, imagination, pen, paper, computer and keyboard
For Blogs
For writers
For Freedom of Speech

Health:
Bliss, Bliss, Bliss
For my recovery from fits and despair
For my happiness
For my body
My teeth
For good dentistry and a fantastic GP and medicine and money

Work:
For my vocation

A prayer inhabited by Joe

Walk with me Joe
You have left me with a memory of a life lived in God's presence

Share my ministry Joe
I would be inhabited by Christ as you were
Would be genuine as you were

I share your intentions, I am continuing your work
You would understand how small that privilege makes me feel
Walk with me until my tiny-ness is God's greatness

Bring me laughter Joe
More of your joy
Something of God's smile

Listen with me Joe
Teach me more of compassion and kindness
Walk with me through this open door
Accompany me on my walk
Shepherd me as I shepherd others

The Rule of St Benedict

Our retreat took shape around the Rule of St Benedict and the shape of life in monastic communities and so around each of these journalling sessions we spent hours in silence, alone and together. We also followed a liturgical form of prayer and so we worked with concepts such as gratitude and thanksgiving, penitence and offering.
As part of our response to the idea of gratitude we were encouraged to keep a daily journal of our gratitude on that day. Then we were asked to follow a process of thinking of someone to whom we have never expressed our gratitude in person. The person 'chose you' from our list of people, who might be dead or alive or just not the kind of person to whom you could write or speak in this way. We were encouraged to write a prayer and reflection around the person who jumped out of our list and demanded attention, however uncomfortable.
I was totally unprepared for the person who chose me. His name was Joe Foster and he was one of the first people in my life who made Church seem like a good idea. He worked for our Anglican Parish Church but I think he worked in a 'Lay'capacity i.e. like me. He worked with young people and established a youth group with my friend's Mum. I don't know how I had forgotten his influence, but he recently died and I was sad not to have been there at his funeral. As you will see he has been a great influence.

Silence and Stillness

The silence and stillness needs to somehow encourage a pace of life where stillness, attentiveness, patient listening guides everything else

A Prayer for what I want and need from this workshop

29 September 2008
This prayer is distilled from this journey of writing. It is authentic for me.
I prayed this prayer twice a day for the entire retreat.

Plunge me deeper than my breath will allow
But float me safely on your own breath
Stretch your arms widely so that I can see your embrace from a distance
Envelope me
Each step floating on your tide
Until I know that the door is on solid ground
and you will keep me still
listening

Reflections on Memories of Prayer

Woodbrooke 29 Sep 2008

As I read it I felt calm, amused, happy and excited
It seems that prayer is linked for me with acts of trust and a feeling beyond control

Falling, sinking, floating, moving, suffused, overwhelmed, enveloped, plunged, embraced, 'last breaths underwater'

and

it is intrinsically linked to my Mum. Which is an extraordinary and wonderful discovery because it means that a part of her is always with me and within me

Perhaps teaching me to pray was the greatest gift she ever gave to me

It is forever connected to her embrace

Memories of Prayer

Woodbrooke 29 Sep

Depth and sinking
Floating deeply, moving and falling
God Bless Mummy, God Bless Daddy, God Bless

Our Father
Who Art in Heaven
Hallowed moments
Hollowed moments
Times of desperate moaning, pleading, begging
Answers and questions
Calm in the chaos
A last breath underwater

The Lord make his face shine upon you
and
Grant you His Peace
The Lord Bless you and keep you

Kept safely in his keeping, alone beneath the stars
Pining for mercy, longing for justice
Calling for comfort

Recieving a gift

My Mum taught me to pray
She taught me to pray in company and alone

I have never been able to stop
Prayer is remembered lots of ways
it is most profoundly an experience of being held

Prayer in the ancient stones of Iona Abbey contained me
Prayer in the eucharist consumes me; for gratitude is all i feel
Prayer is a person held tightly in the form of a hand-picked pebble, wrapped in my thoughts, love, connections and tears
Prayer is remembered as connecting to God, to others

It is wholeness and it is healing, it is being allowed to hold our questions, and to scream our 'why'

My memories of prayer are of moments of utter clarity of being overwhelmed, enveloped, plunged into otherness and enormity with every thing I am being plunged together.

Before my Mum's death I sat before the cross in the hospice in the chapel
I was suffused with peace and wholeness
I felt the hands of the people praying with me
The Holy Spirit embracing me
My Mother slipping away from me
and I knew that everything would be alright
Prayer in my memory and now is what allows me to be human but not to be overcome by it. It is reaching out with my soul to touch another so that we can be human together and held in God's exquisite embrace
It brings me the tears of others
The pain of others
The joy and excitement of others
It makes it impossible not to connect
As it shows us our humanity it also shows us the humanity of others and that we share it
As long as I pray I am connected to God and to those God loves

The Retreat!

I have decided to share step-by-step in date order the journey of my retreat

Woodbrooke Quaker Study Journalling Course
Monday 29 Sep 2008Hopes, Anxieties and Fears

I hope that I will not walk away from the light of the open door
I fear that I might stand still and walk no further towards the door
I pray that I will push the door wider with confidence in the steps that lead me there

I hope that I won't use more words than I need
I fear that I am greedy for words to fill the space which should be still

waiting

I pray that I will have the courage to be

still

listening

I hope the words I use are worth it
I fear that silence is better
I pray for the right words when silence is not enough and something needs to be said

Commissioning

For a person who likes words, it is hard when I don't have anything adequate to say

Last night was so completely 'other'. Some theologians argue for talking about God in terms of what 'he is not'.

There were a lot of things that last night was not

There are few words worth using to describe what it was

But it was a moment in time which stood outside of time and brought the past and the present together. A moment which made sense

In that moment everything made sense in ways that it hasn't before and mostly won't in the future

I have felt very small before, but that moment made me feel smaller still

It was an unbearable sense of the enormity and ancientness of God which I felt before whilst looking at the sky on Iona

It is odd to feel so insignificant in such a significant moment. It was my own insignificance and the thought of what God can do with that which made me feel so tiny

The only word worth using is gratitude

writing lull

The temporary unwelcome guest called The Migraine has significantly reduced writing output. The even less welcome guest called Paranoia reduced it even further. The new 'role' officially starts this Sunday, but then I am going on a course in Benedictine Spirituality and journalling at the Quaker Centre. I will write to you about it on my return, quite brilliantly if all goes well, disastrously if it doesn't. The course pack advises taking a favourite notebook or 'whatever you write with at present'. I thought about causing a stir and looking fantastically cool by taking my laptop and saying 'I Blog Darling'. Seemed a bit hypocritical since I've only just stopped referring to my Blog as my 'WebLog' and only learned what one was in April.
Anyway the official 'role' as Lay Pastor, already the subject of much confusion and mis-understanding and even some derision, starts on Sunday. The first week will be a bit of a flop, given that I will be 'comissioned' and then will disappear into the bosom of the Quakers is 'neither here nor there'(to borrow one of my Mum's favourite phrases). Full-scale psychological meltdown...and resultant Migraine already discussed swiftly followed glimpse of newsletter with my name on it under 'Team' as 'Hon. Lay Pastor': Mrs Jess Boulton.
You may remember a Post on here about something I couldn't share with you at that time, following the untimely conversation with God on the number 1E bus about boats, sea and fishes. You probably don't but my new 'Role' is its direct descendant. The pronouncement of Mrs Jess Boulton being a Lay Pastor has been met with a mixture of delight and dismay. The Verger thought that perhaps I was secretly affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventists or the 'American' Church. This was because she had been Anglican and in this Church 'from the cradle', but had 'never heard of such a thing'. Would I, she wanted to know, 'be wearing Robes? would they, for example, 'need to refer to me as Pastor Jessie?'. I broke out into a sweat. I had the previous weekend been to a wedding of some Seventh Day Adventists, albeit in an Anglican Church, it was my first encounter with them and they were fabulous. However, I am not a Seventh Day Adventists. My contact with Americans is non-existent, dreadfully ignorant in fact. I know George Bush and now Sarah Palin, I've seen Michael Moore's documentaries, I'm not keen to be one. This enquiry into my credentials was the least of my worries. It was kindly meant. One man who shall be nameless but whom you have previously encountered with his Belgian/American ancestry and a wife from Hull was particularly unpleasant. Before admitting that he was 'picking on me', he grilled me mercilessly. Would I, he wanted to know, 'be preaching from a soap box on The Green'? Would I, he persisted, be 'taking Candlelit Church on tour and going global? Even this was preferable to the blank face and the 'whats that?'
Not only am I an object of mild but not particularly rivetted curiosity, it seems I am to be permanently associated with the one thing I would most have wanted to avoid. The Conservative American Right. Hallelujah Sisters!

.

feeling ill

A migraine, a slight cold, a runny nose and my medication doesn't work too well. My Temporal Lobe epilepsy flares up, I get migraine-like symptoms and dis-orientation, a bit of paranoia and an inability to do anything but sleep. For me this is a nightmare, I become convinced that I am a breath away from being locked up in a psychiatric ward, I lose perspective on everything. Soon my medication will be doubled. I will never recover. I will never live a normal life again.
Of course, two days later, a lot of sleep and some migraleve and I am back to my usual self. It is hard to for adults who have lived with ill health in a traumatic way in childhood to understand that ill-health is a sporadic and ordinary part of life. It doesn't always progress or become very particular to you. It just has to be lived with for a few days or weeks. I have learned that the only helpful thing to do is ring a friend and check my perspective. That usually takes two days anyway by which time I am convinced that the friend will bundle me in a car and take me to a doctor/psychiatrist/behavioural therapist/you name it...So I am usually almost better before I ring the friend who says 'its normal', 'you have a migraine'.

Forgiveness

Last night in our group we talked about 'forgiveness'. We based our conversation around Matthew 18. I found it really hard. Because I am reading about self-harm and all that it entails and when I think of my own story and the story of others I begin to worry that my own wholehearted approach to forgiveness could be seen as immoral. I sometimes think that my behaviour is immoral.
We talked very openly and very diversely about the centrality of forgiveness to the Christian Faith. We talked about how we marry these ideas to real life situations.

We all have known unforgivable things. All of us had slightly different take on the practical application of the commandment to forgive to our own situations, the people involved and those of others. One person, whom I shall call Penelope had a wonderful, moving story which made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. She had a Godfather, a Jewish man who embraced Christianity. He had been in Dakau Concentration Camp until the end of the war. I don't remember at what point he was imprisoned there. I think it was towards the beginning because I think he remained there for three, possibly four years. At the end of the war he was handed a gun with which to shoot his persecutors. He handed back the gun. He had told his God-daughter that revenge and unforgiveness is the beginning of hate. He didn't want his tormentors who were full of hatred to turn him to hatred. His forgiveness of them was a way of preventing the hatred from perpetuating. Penelope therefore grew up with a passionate commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation. She had even worked in Germany with various people who during wartime did terrible things to others and had terrible things done to them. She sees no way out of a commitment to forgiveness for any Christian. For her the distinguishing feature of a Christian is his or her determination to be open to forgiveness in any given situation. She extended this to being open to forgive those who are not repentant and indeed even forgiving them in our hearts regardless of their awareness or contrition. We all have a central tenet around which all aspects of our religion move. This is her immovable point. Forgiveness. She says none of the other religions have this concept as a central commandment. For me, this is what makes us complicated, I am ashamed of our decision to forgive unforgivable things, she declares it as the single thing that keeps her publicly proclaiming herself as a Christian.

This was a helpful revelation. What one woman can see as a shameful theology, another can prize as her salvation. She had an abusive Mother with psychiatric issues, mental health problems triggered by wartime circumstances. Penelope forgave and continues to forgive because she sees this as a consequence of her Mother's experience of life. She employs the 'to understand is to forgive' motto.

I did this for years, I had the same conviction for years. My family has been described by my sister-in-law as 'the most forgiving family' she ever knew. What she loves about my family, who are actually also her family, is that infinite capacity to forgive unforgivable behaviour. I think it is our downfall. The interpretation of the commandment to forgive in our family is that 'everything and anything will be alright.' It has been applied to eradicate rules of conduct. When everything is forgiven then nothing really matters and consequences are not considered.
We have an elderly man in our group, I'll call him Frank, who keeps us on our toes. He thinks it is all baloney, Christianity full stop is just total nonsense. The aspect of Christianity he most despises is the emphasis on forgiveness. He thinks it is immoral to forgive unspeakable acts. 'Why', he argues, 'should they get away with it'?

Our Priest, lets call him Bob, had some fascinating arguments. Forgiveness in the Jesus stories of Matthew is concerned with relationship, with the Church community, with unity and accountability. It is a corporate and not an individual matter. It is also concerned with justice and witness. Forgiveness is contextual. Forgiveness also includes an attitude of the heart, and a readiness to forgive should repentance ever be apparent. Not only this but he argued that we depend upon the grace of God to give us the capacity to forgive. In God's time, God will make it possible for us to forgive. It is not a quick fix and can be a lifetime commitment to be open to forgiveness and the possibility of it. He also argued, with Penelope, that we cannot forgive on behalf of another person or community. Their resentment, pain or experience is theirs alone or together and we cannot make that decision for them.
Bob has thought through the possiblity of going to the Palestinian border when he retires (although he hasn't talked it through with his wife!). There is a group of retired priests (mostly men I would imagine, since women have only been ordained for just over a decade...but we forgive them of course!) who stand between Israel and Palestine, taking no side simply being there as a witness. This is a unique opportunity for the Christian Church because of our theology of forgiveness in place of revenge. This presence leaves an openness to reconciliation an example of the choice which can be made.

A woman we shall call Pru, a good friend of mine, who knows many of our stories, spoke of the propensity of society to see those who forgive as easy targets. She spoke of the vulnerability involved in that decision. How easy it has been for us to become doormats. This led us to a view from another friend that the converse was true. We agreed that although this might be the case, we are still viewed as 'weak', as Jesus was when he refused to fight back and argued that those who killed him 'did not know what they were doing'. A lengthy discussion ensued as to the legitimacy of forgiveness when the person concerned does not understand that they have committed an act of cruelty. How do we forgive those who are not sorry, or are not aware? We were brought back to our attitude of mind and to prayer, to commitment to the potential of the human to forgive. Penelope even equated her humanity with her capacity and willingness to forgive. Inhumanity stems from the unforgiveness of communities who have never let go of old resentments. Inability or unwillingness to forgive led to war, she said. There was no justification in pullng people from current day into previous conflict. Controversially, given recent discourse around the Holocaust and the need for apology from people who were not there, she argued that we cannot legitimately apologise for something we did not do or forgive what we did not experience.

For me the prevailing question is what to do when a culture of abuse is living with abuses from the past which are dictating our behaviour in the present, and threatening through the continual forgiving of unrepentant abusers, to continue in the future? If I forgive the abusers, what becomes of the abused? Bob helped with Penelope by arguing that forgiveness can be important in our healing, in 'letting-go'. Here the healing of new relationship can take place. Any forgiveness is not an act of an individual in isolation but both a confrontation of an offence, an acknowledgement of that offence and a decision and willingness to start again. It is about new beginnings. The person forgiven must agree not to commit the same offence again, must acknowledge their own wrong and be willing to find new ways of being in relationship in the future. If this cannot happen then the relationship must be left in the past but we must continue to pray for our offender.

Our own relationship to our own personal behaviour was then examined. If we have 'sinned against another', which we inevitably have, we are called first to remorse, second to repentance and thirdly to new relationship and reconciliation. This is the pattern of the Christian life and is linked to the Crucifixion. Our own sin is forgiven and this sets us free from the life bound by the cruelty of our common humanity into a life which acknowledges human cruelty but tries not to participate in it.

I saw this as my own identification with the abuses and cruelties of others. We had a corporate responsibility to forgive, because we sin corporately too. Christian Theology will argue that we are set free by Christ's death from that pattern of revenge and hatred which binds us to war. Forgiveness as demonstrated on the cross is an unarguable part of this. I need to find ways in which I cherish and am grateful for Christ's action in my life which has given me a different way. I cannot judge people who have not been given another way. We concluded with the well-known idiom 'there, but for the grace of God, go I'

Evil

The worst thing about evil is the way in which it seeps underground and nourishes its plants, watering its roots. Evil doesn't kill things before it comes into bloom itself. It fosters its own growth until it kills healthy plants suffocating them with its tendrils.
Evil attempts to pervade healthy things, it desires to infect healthy people, tries to seep away nourishment from healthy landscapes poisoning the rivers as it does so. Evil stops at nothing. It spreads underground in a network of open sewers leaking effluent into our taps and the very food that we eat, it tries to enter our bloodstream. Before we can understand how or why our relationships begin to falter, evil has begun its attempt to ensure that trust is destroyed, it seems we betray each other but we don't know why. The worst thing about evil is you cannot see where it came in and you cannot make any claims with any evidence about where it started. It is deception and delusion and calculated dishonesty. We do not see where the contamination starts, until it seems as though it is too late. It has crept in stealthily through the back door, tried to steal your friends. A convivial gathering in warmth and safety, and now the room has gone cold, the warmth evaporates but you can't find the draft, can't blame an unclosed door for the dispersal of all that joy.
Evil is known by its successes, by the triumphant theft, it gains its joy from the demise of others. It gloats over futures thwarted, talent supressed, relationships destroyed and delights in depriving people of their own happiness. It will soak into our shared existence without us knowing. It is invisible until the lines show, the faces crease, the bitterness and resentment begins to develop. We have bile in our mouths instead of sweetness. We notice it when we start to look at people differently. We are shocked to realise what has become of us.
Hannah Arendt speaks of the banality of evil. I am rarely so persuaded by theological arguments so wholeheartedly. Evil is banal. Evil breeds in the most ordinary places. It is made from the stuff of our lives and what people choose to do to them without our consent or knowledge.
We shouldn't ever berate ourselves harshly when we come close to evil. Most people would have run from it if it didn't wear such friendly disguise or such a banal demeanour. Evil decieves us by hiding behind something innocuous. If something creeps up unexpectedly upon us in disguise as a friend or a lover, a parent or a priest, a teacher, or any person we respect then we cannot be expected to know that here is the leak in the vessel. This can be the open door, the cold wind blowing. How can we know where trust is in danger? We leave it exposed because that is the nature of trust. It thrives in open places. We risk everything when we trust and that is why we honour trust left in our safekeeping.
If our trust is almost destroyed, its lifeblood nearly drained we have not chosen this. It is removed, snatched from our possession without our permission. What can we do with evil. How do we point at it and say it started here, this is the hole through which it crept?
Sometimes we do find the leak, we do see, we realise. When our eyes are open and the evil becomes transparent it often looks so ordinary, so well-meant, so charming.
But evil is not charming. Evil is pernicious, vile and banal. It is there in the middle of an ordinary day waiting for us, in a phone call, a devious lie, an anonymous letter, a tiny theft which is the precursor of another. Evil is a thief. Evil is a common or garden thief. It is so hard to acknowledge it that mostly we don't. I have never been keen to discuss evil before. Hannah Arendt knew about the Holocaust and she knew about the evil use of banal things. You can, after all, foster evil by refusing someone food, by stopping them from drinking. You can choose evil by ignoring an injustice. You can steal a letter, write libelous things under the guise of a kind warning. You can choose to believe a liar by ignoring your God-given instincts because you choose the fantasy first and the reality second. Evil is on our doorsteps. Evil appears in anything as simple as a bottle of milk. A poisoned bottle of milk; a stolen milk bill which leaves it unpaid and the person without milk and labelled irresponsible. It is a sharp knife deliberately left in the washing up, a severed tendon, a careless stitch, a tetanus infection and an invisible culprit.
This invisible poisoner, thief, planter and cruel plotter has followers who do the same, this kind of evil depends upon denial and accusations which distract. To you: "Who would do such a thing? Poisoned milk? Are you sure? You must have left it in the heat. "Poor you, how sad, you have been poisoned!" and to another "poor thing, she thinks she's been poisoned!" and to a group, "I must look out for her, she is poisoning herself, How needy she must be that she is deliberately going to hospital.". To you: "I must buy you a special box for your milk!", to the group "I have bought her a box for her milk, poor thing!, to the public: "Don't praise me for buying the box for the milk" I am only an ordinary person, looking out for a vulnerable soul." To you: "there you can see, you are not being poisoned, your box has been protecting it from intruders, it has a key and everything!". All the time the box is contaminated by poison by the poisoner themselves. To you: "poor thing you are in hospital"; to the group:" she is vulnerable, even though she has a special box she still thinks she is being poisoned.", to the public "paranoia is a terrilbe thing'. And so on, and so on, until this sustained poison does indeed poison us, we no longer know who is poisoning us, we think perhaps we are imagining it. We had thought we knew our adversary but we cannot be right, this person is so kind. Soon, everyone pities you for your madness, they no longer trust your judgement and you no longer drink milk though it sustained you for all of your life. You stop eating anything at all, no longer able to trust it, you become frail, weakened, the people around you stop eating too, they become frail and weakened. The poisoner starts to sell these milk boxes in bulk. To you: "I have paid with my own money for some more boxes, you never know where or when the poisoner might strike". As the poisoner sells the boxes, they are taken as gifts, taken in trust, their milk is poisoned. To the group: "you can never be too careful, when people are delusional", the public "a mad person is on the loose, the devil is at work'. slowly all the milk is poisoned, we have been deprived of our life blood, our sustainance. We no longer eat together, in case it has been poisoned, in case one of us is the poisoner. The giver of gifts at least cannot be the poisoner, and so we join the poisoner, sure of our safety, they at least know where it began.
Whole communities are starved slowly, allegiances to the poisoner formed, innocent people secretly, covertly, invisibly violated in public in an apparently legitimate way for apparently legitmate reasons. They have been played with, lied to, stolen from, they have been cleverly manipulated because of their trust, power has been abused.
All evil starts with this tiny banal deliberate innacuracy, the slight intonation, the tiny double-meaning which can be taken anyway you choose. Evil makes us think we have chosen it. But it has poisoned us.
So far, so bleak, but the banality of evil is nothing next to the triumph of the human spirit, the courage of faith, the insistence that we should foster trust, truth and feed each other regardless of the risk. We should never honour evil with claims that it is powerful. There is no power so strong as a shared human desire to trust again and to point at the evil in all its weak, self-concerned despicable stench. Evil violates us, it takes us to places that we have not chosen to go and gives us no way out. Human love gives us a way out of that imposed exile from our homeland. Love thrives with truth, honesty and trust, seeking the joy of others, the fruition of lives, the unity of communities. Evil is banal in comparison.

Good news

Jan is coming out of hospital probably today. I was so relieved when i heard that I burst into tears and couldn't stop crying.
We have more time.
Relief