Prayer

Prayer: the bridge between longing and belonging

This is my favourite quote from John Odonohue and I have hardly ever really meditated on it is such but it has been on my mind several times this week.

In the summerhouse I am sheltered from the strong wind that is sweeping over the garden.  It is 10.45 pm and the sky has just got dark though it hardly feels like summer. I’m wearing a padded shirt and a warm coat. I love the sound of the wind, possibly because it is a natural sound and it masks most of the man-made noises that seem to dominate living in a town.

A bridge spans two places and is a form of connection between them. Things may or may not traverse the bridge in either direction. Longing is looking at our desires - our wants wishes, needs, expectations etc. It is about the future. It is about us wishing to change or to understand that which we cannot control or know nothing about. Longing takes us from the present and our memories of the past and seeks to bring the future closer to us. We seek knowledge, answers and more enhanced awareness of what might happen to us. It is about relief from the present - the place we are in, the thoughts we are having, the pain we are in, the problems we face etc.

Belonging is the place where we find our home. It is where we expect to be in a better place of health, security, knowledge and understanding. A sacrifice might be involved in getting to that place. 

In prayer, we build a spiritual bridge through the use of words, thoughts, images or music etc that takes hold of what we long for and tries to form a connection with our desire to be in a place of belonging. We feel we are unable to do this work alone because what we desire is often not a matter of a simple physical task but it involves connections between unknown, psychological and temporal things. It is greater than our ability to do. We have to transform ourselves or be transformed into pray-ers that can begin to do something other-worldly.

Watching the Rain

I'm sitting at the dining room table on a cold and wet June evening looking out at the grey sky and the rain pouring onto the garden. I love watching the rain and often feel so detached from the elements now that I am working indoors so much of the time.

It has been several weeks now since I looked out one warm evening at the tall lombardy poplar tree just beyond the back of the garden and set myself on a new course for self improvement. It reminded me of the trees my father planted and I have since been back to the farm where I lived as a child and looked back on my childhood to see how it might have affected me as I grew up. With the help of an excellent book on anxiety management I thought I was getting somewhere and saw a significant improvement in some areas, but after a rather traumatic week at work all the good work seems to have been undone. The changes there have been deeply unsettling and I feel I have lost me way, but I know I have to be patient and see what path will open before me.

Building and maintaining strong foundations to life can be easier said than done. I have found psychology and self-awareness incredibly painful at times because everyone views things differently and other people are usually completely unaware or oblivious to the paths that others take. Fundamentalism in belief can alienate. Business pressures in the work place can enhance a feeling of transcience, impersonality and the need to succeed regardless of human costs. Relationships with others can throw up interesting conundrums.

For me, I have been thinking about a model or framework of male archetypes that identifies my strengths and weakness and formulates an understanding that can be healing, progressive, inclusive and natural. I'm exploring that in my own personal writings.

Why bother? Is this all just self-centered navel gazing? Possibly. But there are issues in my life that I know I have to deal with - mainly anxiety (I think). I have a deep need to work through something which I believe is holding me back and it is taking a while to work out exactly what it is. It may be just that I was born to be the way I am, but could there be something else to it...?

I could go and see a psychologist but that is expensive!

The Farm

Today I went back to my birthplace. It was, quite literally, the place where I was born, back in 1965. It's not far from Tenbury Wells, in a fairly isolated place down a long steep hill and with extensive views over towards Clee Hill. It is no longer a working farm as such, that all came to end when my father pulled out of farming in the early 1970's. The large acreage of apple trees was pulled up and the greenhouses full of tomatoes and lettuces were dismantled. It never really became profitable and my father then left the family to pursue an isolated career as a painter and shunning all mod-cons.

The landscape here is beautiful and the photo doesn't do it justice. There are steep hills, old apple and cherry orchards and steep sided wooded gullys full of wild garlic. All on a deep red clay soil that is characteristic of the area.

Although the place still carries a sense of isolation and long lost rural idyl, it has changed. All the old tumbled down cottages that I remember as a child are now more like executive dwellings. An old road we used to drive down over a stream is almost undiscernable beside a newer crossing. I can still find the dam my father built across a stream to provide a source of water for irrigating his crops, though it has all silted up. A row of lombardy poplar trees planted as a windbreak for an apple orchard still stands as an unusual looking hedgerow in the middle of two fields of sheep.

I go back there every few years or so. I wanted to go back there again now because I knew it would look wonderful in the spring, but also because I have been trying to look back at my childhood as an aid to sorting out a few things from a psychological view. I thought it might be an emotional visit, but somehow it wasn't what I was expecting. In a sense I feel I could be 'returning' here for while. My mother is returning to Tenbury Wells to live in a retirement home and so I might be spending a bit more time re-visiting this area when I come up and stay. It feels odd in a way that I remember a landscape here that younger people or those moving into the area will probably not be aware of. I am aware of my age and sense of history and how my father worked and changed the landscape here and his legacy can still be found if you look hard enough.

More Rain and the Challenge of Change

April has been the wettest on record I think and the first week of May has got off to a cold and wet start too. I spent most of the first bank holiday weekend out on my bike getting very cold but enjoying new sets of gear and chain cogs and a new chain. I did some sketching on the iPad but it was a struggle to keep warm in the wind. Seeds that I have sown seem to be having a slow start and are barely moving but my potatoes have just broken through the surface of their buckets or on the allotment. I sowed some more parsnips as there is still no sign of the ones sown a few weeks ago. Oilseed seed rape and bluebells are in flower and May blossom is just beginning to break bud.

My boss at work has decided to move on to pastures new and this is rather sad and upsetting for me. I haven't ever met anyone who took me on such an encouraging and supportive journey with my artwork before - we had an excellent rapport with each other. I have certainly moved forward hugely in my creativity and become (I think) a valued part of the company with whom I work. There will be significant changes and I am not sure how it will affect me but then that is what happens in work. There is always change and people are often transient. Friendships can be made, links are broken, seeds are dispersed and new beginnings made. Business is hard and I will have to keep focused on my future, my self-awareness and my ability to find strength and security in my path of belonging. Although I will be grieving the loss of a highly valued colleague, I must look upon the situation as a new place of learning, a new place in which to build relationships and a new place to develop my creativity.

Pain, Rain, God is Female, Healing and Resurrection

Pain
Writing seems hard work these days. Too many other things seem to grab my attention and it all seems like hard work and rather a chore to sit down and be philosphically creative. I have to find my own inspiration too, and sometimes I just want to give up and possibly return to private journalling. Work takes much of my energy and I haven't been feeling too well recently. Somehow I feel that life is an uphill struggle and just keeping on top of day to day things is difficult. But then perhaps I just want to do too much. Some people seem to have endless energy - why can't I?


Rain
April showers and more showers - for about a week now. Cold nights and variable days. The soil is now wet and workable. I planted my onions, potatoes and sowed some parsnip seeds and a few other bits and pieces a couple of weeks ago but it has been too cold to get much else going.

Oilseed rape is colouring the landscape yellow and bluebells are appearing. Blossom is everywhere. Blackthorn is fading now but apple blossom will be out shortly. Have seen brimstone, peacock and orange tip butterflies. Chestnuts and hawthorn are well into leaf and tulips look stunning in the garden.


God is Female
There is a good tv series on BBC2 at the moment called Divine Women. It is basically about how ancient cultures were more female orientated and this was swept aside by more patriarchal systems such as Christianity which has continued to the present day.

I like the idea of exploring the more feminine side of God and even perhaps acknowledging there could be a She rather than a He. From a nature based creative viewpoint this is a rather pleasant idea. The universe is all about giving birth to creation; the nurturing of life on this planet; the protection of ecosystems; the caring of people etc. Male paternalism and domination seems exploitative and devoid of the awe and beauty that sustainable and resilient societies need. It may be just romanticism, but perhaps that is what we need to survive these days if we want an alternative to consumerist post-modernism.

Anyway, I have always related to women better than I've related to men. So a female God is fine by me.

 
Healing and Resurrection
My drive for self-healing from the acid-reflux problems I get is high and I was out last Friday morning for a walk before work to get a bit of fresh air that I feel I am severely lacking. I contemplated the idea of the resurrection and prayed about it, wondering how it could relate to me, to healing, to nature, to creation etc. I was walking down a path I hadn't been along before and as I approached a small 'interesting' place of trees and hedges at the corner of several fields I decided to ask for a sign to do with resurrection. To my surprise I came across something unusual and out of place in the context of where I was walking. It was a branch on the ground with some blue twine tied round it. Wood and binding - symbols of the cross and the ropes used to bind Jesus. This was a rather surprising find. Meaning: not sure. I am rather inclined to take the resurrection story as a myth because science, logic and my experience of the world leads me to be sceptical of taking the Biblical account literally. And I don't need to at the moment because I can take its meaning in a more mystical way and see it as a symbol of transcendence. Can I transcend the pain and discomfort I feel? How can I find healing? What is the cause of the burden I carry that I can rise above? Resurrection gave me thoughts to ponder.

Interestingly I then found myself walking directly across the fields to a church and then saw another symbol: a perfect wooden cross in a back garden. Perhaps this was a message from above telling me to repent and go back to church! Perhaps I read too much into what I was seeing as my mind was attuned to a particular line of thought. Perhaps church would be my healing... but this sounds too much like pandering to the Christian mindset I have seen in people and it isn't what would be true to me. But the idea of resurrection is there and needs exploring.

Paths

From 'Creation Spirituality' Matthew Fox, 1990.

'The Spirit is life, rush, breath, wind. To be spiritual is to be alive, filled with rush, breathing deeply, in touch with the wind. Spirituality is a life-filled path, a spirit-filled way of living. ... A path is a meandering walkway-you do not rush or even drive down a pathway. A path is not goal orientated. A path is THE WAY itself, and every moment on it is a holy moment; a sacred seeing goes on there.'

On Spring, iPads and Atheism

Spring is arriving. The days are a mix of warm and cold with still no sign of any significant rain thus much of the east of the country is suffering from a drought. Plants in flower at the moment: coltsfoot, violets, snowdrops, daffodils, wild plum, dandelions. Saw a comma butterfly in the garden last weekend and the occasional bumble bee and wasp is about. Ladybirds can be found in odd places too. Oilseed rape is growing quickly but it isn't warm enough to start doing any planting in the garden or the allotment.

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Just a couple of days before the release of the iPad 3 I decided to buy an iPad2 - mainly because the price had dropped by £70 which made it seem more affordable.  I was inspired by seeing David Hockney use one and got quite excited about the possibilities it could offer. After trying several drawing and painting apps, Artrage and Sketchbook Pro are my favourite and these are very versatile and great fun to use. I went out on the bike today and spent some time 'painting' out in the local countryside. I was really pleased with the results though it wasn't really that warm and my hands froze.

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Reading 'Creation Spirituality' by Matthew Fox. Excellent.

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Just been to Hitchin Christian Centre where the atheist philosopher Julian Baggini was being interviewed. An interesting evening, not much of a debate - just an armchair chat. Think that if I was standing in the middle and had to decide which way to lean it would be towards the atheist side with a faith that was far more holistic in content.