Listening Space

Brushing up on a classical education

2012-01-29T23:51:00.000+11:00

I read a great letter last week. It was written by a specialist, when he saw a patient again after many years. The patient had a particularly bad injury but it had healed with resulting eye problems.

The specialist commented on his difficulty remembering the details where once he would have remembered every 'slice of the scalpel'. He was self-deprecating in reflecting on his increasing age. And then he said...

Tempus fugit.

I wish I could see Latin (or French, or Greek etc.) phrases and know what they mean. Oh, for a classical education, and the chance to go up or come down at Oxford (yes, I've read too much Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh in my time).

Praise the Lord for Google, I did a little wiki-research, and I discovered that tempus fugit means 'time flies' (or flees - which I like a little better).

It is from a poem by Virgil,
"Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore"

which means,
"But meanwhile it flees,
time flees irretrievably,
while we wander around,
prisoners of our love of detail."

Wow. How does he know us so well?

A faithful life

2012-01-27T23:23:00.000+11:00

The funeral today was for a woman who has lived a faithful life. She has been having palliative treatment for cancer for six months and, four weeks ago, the funeral was for her husband. I can only imagine what it is like to see both your parents die within a month.

Her sister's husband looked stooped and worn today, his smile broad and sad-eyed. Her son's ex-wife will be more alone without her. She was praised by her doubting son for her faith in God and His love for her.

This family draws people from all through our community together. Gathered today, I saw the butcher who retired last year, the 'girls' from the chemist, people who've moved away from our church many years ago. They are well known for their extended family meals, their camping adventures and their loyalty. There's a prison officer who mows their lawn regularly because he remembers the years they let him live among their family.

The couple, who had been at our church for forty years, had loved many people, through youth groups and boys brigade, sporting teams and after school care, neighbourly love and inviting homeless young people into their family. They had seen the boom times and the broken times of our church and had served on, despite many people moving to bigger or newer churches.

They are well loved, because people had felt and seen the generosity of their love.

They were never celebrities and they lived a quiet life. They faced many hardships, losses and disappointments, particularly through chronic illness. But they didn't let those hard things shape them, they never became bitter or angry. Instead they continued to praise the God who loved them and to love people around them.

Sometimes I long to be recognised and for people to know the good I do. But that's not what a faithful life is about. I hesitate to start a heresy, but perhaps the most famous Christians are not necessarily the most faithful.

It may be faintly cliched to wonder what people will say at my funeral one day, but I do hope that however quiet it is, that people will say that I have lived faithfully.

Listen to the Light

2012-01-23T23:00:00.000+11:00

I've talked about feasting on truth and I heard a couple of Sundays ago that reading the bible brings 'light in a dark place'. I'm going to spend some posts letting Romans 8 savour. I want to help it settle in my memory, like we did more than 15 years ago on a Summer Mission I went on (We learnt Romans 12 in 10 days). I'm going to take it a little slower than that, but I'll be trying to memorise it as I go. Join me?

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:1

It's so easy to define myself by condemning someone else. To comfort myself by consigning someone else for falling short. I inflate myself by letting the air out of someone else.
And when I think I am condemned by my behaviour or by another person's opinion, my perspective narrows. I respond defensively and I refuse to see possiblity.
Condemnation makes me bitter and pessimistic, and it draws the hope out of me. It shrivels me.

Belonging is the antedote. When I am part of the tribe and I know I am accepted, then I don't have to condemn to prove myself. And belonging frees me to accept, rather than condemn others.
But the final piece to the puzzle is who we belong to. To Jesus, the one who chose not to condemn an adulterous woman, as those around her wanted to do. Instead he called her to live as one who belonged to Him.

Belonging to Jesus is my identity. Not just me, but 'one who belongs to Jesus'.
And it frees me from the ultimate condemnation - death and separation from God.

Listen to Romans 8:1 and remember to whom you belong.

On answers to prayers and One Word 2011

2012-01-22T23:24:00.001+11:00

We are a small church in a poor area and we're struggling.

A woman came in this morning, responded to a smile, joined us. She was anxious afterwards, needed a cigarette. She's just got out of custody and she's getting back to a life. She knows God and says he's led her into a ministry to lost, broken people. And that He's brought her to us today. That she's a way for us to reach out, to touch people who don't usually go to church.

Where is this leading?

Perhaps she's come to tell her story and find her place. Maybe this is just one Sunday morning and by next week things will be different and we'll never see her again. We've met people who promise things and disappear, before.

But she might just be God's answer to our prayers. We've prayed that God will use us, that people will come into his kingdom here, that we'll be light in the darkness. We've prayed desperate prayers. The prayers of a small and limping church. We've prayed that He'll be known and glorified.

Maybe that insignificant oddness of her arrival is God's miracle for us. His answer in the midst of struggle. How can we know?

Some of us already expect disappointment, some of us are eager to hope. Humanity mingles both. Can cynicism neutralise a miracle, or can fearless hope bring it into being? Perhaps. These questions will only be answered later.

Tonight I am in thrall to the idea that God's answer to our pleas will be someone we could not have imagined.

Last year, I picked a word for 2011, and joined with a group of people who blogged about their words for 2011.

Commit, was the word I chose, and I have managed to do some things that needed to get done. I handed in my case reports in February and they both passed. I sat my clinical exams in October and passed one of them. I've been training since 2004, and 2011 was definitely a year of getting important things done. This is good, and definitely a result of that decision to commit to and complete some key tasks. I recently spent three months working on the mid north coast of NSW and ticked that off my list, too.

Other things have had less attention, though. I am starting to realise that being a psychiatrist is not a part-time thing. That I need to be careful that I give enough importance to the central things in my life - my family, my church and community. The internet and blogging are interesting, but not essential. That makes me sad because interracting with people and ideas on-line is fun and a little addictive. But I also realise how few real connections I have made beyond reading other people's opinions and experiences.

Recently, blogging has become me sitting in front of the computer wondering what to say. I suspect I may be overthinking it, but I've decided to try doing things a little differently. Just how that will work out I am not sure yet. I would be sad to stop blogging, so (although this sounds a little angsty) I am not currently writing My Final Post or anything like that.

Frankly, I'm not really sure why I started blogging. I don't have friends who blog and I have not got a strong network of friends online. But I do enjoy the comments I receive and there's a few blogs that I love to read. I'll hang around while I have the occasional thing to say. I was reading an old post the other night and came across a comment from a lovely friend of mine who said that I had encouraged her. It made me realise that I have lost a little of that purpose recently. Perhaps that's just what I need to recover.

Anyway, I am in a similar paradox to where I started tonight - am I hopeful enough to believe that writing here can be encouraging despite its oddities? or am I so cynical about my insignificance that I feel unable to see any value in continuing? I am, at heart, a hopeful person.

So... There is not one word for 2012. Not for me.

One Word 2011 - Commit, has served me faithfully (thanks Alese)

2012 will bring lots of words, that's what I'm looking forward to. Hoping for.

If you have read all the way to the end of this rambling post, you truly are my friend. Bless you.

2011-12-27T00:54:00.001+11:00

When we theorise about emotion it is simple. Clean. Definable.

In the midst of life, it's more complicated.

I sat in church on Christmas morning and we prayed for the newest widow in our family. He died at 9pm (ish) the night before. While I stood in the kitchen rolling last minute Christmas rum balls, his breath stilled and he went home.

We sang Angels from the Realms of Glory and the 'Come and Worship' beckoned me. I love Christmas songs that unfold the story. I had never seen before that the chorus starts with a call to worship the newborn king, but ends with worshipping the risen king.

I can be joyful and sad together. And that's not even mentioning tired, excited, and slightly guilty.

Christmas has so much expectation. It's not surprising that it's an emotional day, when there's so much preparation. When having things a certain way and having so many traditions can seem so important.

Sometimes I'm just glad we survived.

Sneaking up on Christmas

2011-12-10T00:05:00.001+11:00

There's a whisper of advent, but somehow the shop decorations and the christmas music just drift past me this December. We are living out of suitcases for these two months and we'll drive home a couple of days before Christmas. The kids bring some hand made decorations home but the tree is packed in a box, in the garage, five hundred kilometres away. I don't tell them I'm relieved, but I am. I suspect that putting it up the day before Jesus' birthday will be joyous.

We drive along the broad river's edge and they beg me to listen to 'Mazing' and 'Holy Moly', so the car and my ears are full of praise songs. I even sneak a carol in but that's not on their list of favourites. I don't have any Christmas cards and I don't have any guilt about that, because "this year's different". I've permission to sneak up on Christmas and I wonder about making a habit of it.

In being away and in travelling home, in not having all the paraphenalia, there's a glimpse of Mary and Joseph's journey. In this year's novelty there is a freshness to Christmas. I'm not dragging myself to the finish-line, I'm stealing quietly in at the back of the celebration, and finding welcome there.

Needing mercy

2011-12-06T22:45:00.000+11:00

^{Irritation makes her bark and bristle, so I lean closer. I speak softer and I skirt raw spots as we trace her story. She lived a childhood unprotected, and has lived it over and over again. She's not the only one who teeters on the edge of shouting or shaking. They are here, drowning in a welter of loss. Everyone seems to have lost. A husband, a childhood, peace of mind, safety. Gone where?}

^{His polished smile and prepped answers draw me in. It's a performance he's perfected. He's saying its all OK now, but is it? Does gut-tearing shame heal like changing the TV channel, or from reading inspiration in the Women's Weekly? He almost convices me that it does. But when he speaks real, honest words, I can see he's on the edge, too. Of tears. Of giving up. Of seeking real change.}

^{This place of pain and of struggle and the wrestle between life and death. The mingling of despair and hope, where all I can add is my pittance that 'it will be OK'. And this says nothing substantial, or solid, to cling to.}

^{I can listen, too. Especially to the feelings and thoughts that we're not supposed to have. Like being angry at your husband who just died, leaving you to mop up his life. Or that you wish you were dead because the hole you are in feels endless, and dark, and crushing.}

^{So many rules about how we should feel, how we should act, how we should live. I think about religious men questioning why Jesus didn't follow certain customs or rituals, and his answer I'm reading over and over. Puzzling how to absorb it and live it.}

^{I desire mercy not sacrifice.}

^{It's not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick.}

^{What does it mean to live a merciful life, and then also know that I'm one of the sick, too? A merciful life, but not a proud one.}

^{Remembering that I'm welcomed in the same way - embraced with my messy heart and unruly feelings - needing mercy too. Us and them just doesn't work. It needs to be me among all of us. All of us sinners who need mercy. All of us lost, needing to be found. Everyone sick and needing a doctor.}

^{linking with emily...}

I'm so not going to Pinterest, but...

2011-11-29T22:25:00.001+11:00

Source: Uploaded by user via Jewels on Pinterest

Wondering...

2011-11-15T21:26:00.001+11:00

(Yes. I drove past this bilboard. And took a photo.)

I'm wondering how they do it?

How can someone keep all the things up to date that need to be up to date?

When I consider the following list that one woman might need to get done

going to the dentist regularly
getting regular pap tests
staying healthy in other ways - doctor/chiropracter/counsellor/whatever
keep leg hair waxed
getting haircuts
getting hair colours
taking children to the doctor/dentist/hairdresser
I'm sure I've missed some - what is on your list?

How do people do it? How do they get their children looked after for one thing?

Just thinking this, as I realise that I haven't been to the doctor other than for pre-natal visits for the last ten years (possibly indelicate to tell you how long since my last paptest?). That I ignored a reminder from the dentist twelve months ago, that I wear long pants for 80% of the year due to unsightly leg hair and that I stopped colouring my hair (myself admittedly) when I was 25.

Is it just me?

Feasting on truth

2011-11-14T21:24:00.001+11:00

It still surprises me when time speeds up. I swear it accelerates. I've got one thing I need to do tonight, and I'm sitting here perusing what the webosphere has to offer. Was that just an hour? It felt like ten minutes.

We had spaghetti for dinner tonight, and I just can't leave any in the pot. Seconds is not very elegant, but don't tell them that I had thirds over the sink. Don't even mention the white shirt I've spattered with bolognaise.
I lose myself in things I enjoy. You too?

Interests and ideas flicker and evolve. Today's thoughts give way to tomorrow's inspirations, and I drop truth amongst thousands of other pretty, glittering concepts under my feet. Perhaps I disguise it when it doesn't suit and ignore it when it accuses me. It's hard to cling to truth when it's not politically correct or when it's dowdy.

But can you furnish a heart without truth? Can your heart function if the truth is buried under all the unnecessary clutter?

Truth allows a heart to have purity and clarity.

A vexed concept, truth, when we look with human eyes that want to prove our points of view and justify our own behaviour. Who can we trust to vouch for truth?

The popular answer is to say that each one of us needs to discover our own truth.

But the bible points to one truth. Jesus, who proclaimed himself God. Jesus, who is our window to see the truth of God. Jesus, who said truth was the road to freedom.

Paul wrote to tell his friends, "And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise" in Philippians 4:8.

What is more lovely, true, pure and right, than the story of God in our lives? Jesus and his words, on paper between us, sharing bread between us, sparking our memories of him, seeing the grace of Jesus echoed as people live his truth.

I picture feasting on truth. I see myself engaging so deeply in the truth, in reading it and listening to it, seeing it, that the hours seem just like minutes. It drips from the tip of my chin because I am savouring it so deliciously. It spatters on my shirt as I suck it between my lips like spaghetti. Messy but so satisfyingly good.

It makes me regret the snacks I make of truth. Like accepting a couple of crackers and a piece of cheese rather than a steaming platter of my favourite spaghetti.

Purifying my heart, getting rid of the clutter, means feasting on the good stuff and leaving the non-delicious fillers.

A Better Story

2011-11-12T01:41:00.001+11:00

I read this book the other day. That is the first attractive point of many about 'A Million Miles In A Thousand Years". It is eminently readable. Hence I read it in less than 24 hours (and I did other stuff, too).

This is not a book review. I just want to tell you what this book inspired me about. I have been encouraged to live a better story.

We are all living stories. We face conflicts, decisions and choices and then we go on the resolutions. Not always Hollywood neatly tied bow resolutions, but outcomes, all the same.

I actually think that most of the time we feel that we stuck in certain stories or we lack awareness of or perspective on our stories. Many of us feel the choices or the pressures are outside us, in someone else's hands.

Miller talked about a friend who chose to live a better story by deciding to start building an orphanage overseas. His decision, and talking to his family about it lead to changes in his marriage and in his daughter's life. He chose 'a better story' for the family. And he was deliberate in his choice.

Part of choosing a better story is knowing where we fit in the metanarrative (if I can use a buzz-word correctly?) The big story of the world is in relation to God - creation, fall, redemption and hope. And if I keep that in mind, I can be more deliberate in choosing a better story. I want to live a story that embodies redemption and hope.

Sometimes I wonder if my life is too safe and middle class. That I work and spend time with my family and my church. But where is the sacrifice in my life? Where is the taking up my cross? I know we all have these fears. Most Christians wonder 'Am I doing enough?' in some form or other. Because we want to make sure God will love us or that other Christians will acknowledge our salvation.

When I think like that I'm in a tough story.

A redemptive, hopeful story is different to that. Sometimes I glimpse it, but most of the time I'm still trying to puzzle it out.

Miller made the point that we can do all sorts of things, live all sorts of stories in our imaginations, but what really matters is what we say and do. So much of my thinking remains unsaid, and undone. And as a consequence it is unreal. It does not really exist. The first step to living a better story is to talk about hope and redemption, to start doing hopeful and redemptive things.

To be practical - I need to pray instead of thinking about praying.

Failure

2011-11-09T22:28:00.001+11:00

I did an exam a few weeks ago and last week I was anxious about the results. It's part of getting my professional specialty qualifications. And it's work that I have found myself pretty suited to.

Before I went interstate to do the exam a kind, faithful man said, that because God was calling me into this particular work, the exams would go smoothly for me. He wanted to reassure me and help me not to worry.

I wish he was right. If only faithfulness or obedience, or even just a desire to be good, were enougn to make life smooth. If only God's call or blessing would guarantee a straight and comfortable path. But that's not what I look around and see.

What if God wants me to get through this exam, but he wants me to learn from the steps I take to get there? What if I haven't studied hard enough? Or if I have a difficult day? Is there a way for me to even know what God wants in regard to an exam or a choice of profession?

I wished my friend was right.

When the results came and I had passed one exam and failed the other, I really, really wished my friend had been right. I can reply to him that even if I don't pass I'll trust that God will look after me. But can I live it?

Can I put aside the embarrassment or disappointment of failing and get up and try again? Can I persevere and study, again, all those papers I was looking forward to shredding? Can I walk into the exam and be confident of passing when the possibility of failure is now more real?

Part of me would just like to go and do something else. And I know this will take energy and effort to stick at what I have set out to do. I need help to stay faithful to this.

I have the relief of knowing that this is not a right or wrong decision. I could walk away and it would not be wrong. But I think about people facing all sorts of roadbumps in their plans and having to persevere, because they know it is the right thing to do. It is human to want to give up in the face of struggle or failure. In the face of loss or betrayal or deep fear of the future. Especially when our hope of success or change falters. When we lose hope, the journey becomes so much steeper and rockier.

I see, in my current roadbump, that I will not be able to persevere without knowing grace and finding strength in God. I struggle to pull myself up by my own bootstraps and I need help. The moment hope has flamed for me, I was realising I don't need to find all strength within me.

I wish I didn't need failure to be reminded of my inner depletion. That I am insufficient in myself. But the deepest surge of joy and life within me came with remembering that God is longing to be my sufficiency. He delights in me remembering that.

Sharing with Emily,

My mind, recently.

2011-11-03T23:11:00.003+11:00

Anxiety is all-consuming. I worried over my exams so much that I woke up at 4:30 every morning, and I'd love to blame jet-lag, but Adelaide is only half an hour behind. It took three days of work and sleep to recognise myself again. I'm expecting an original thought to cross my mind by some time in March. If I can collect myself.

Tomorrow night at five I've got to check the results and frankly I'd rather not. I'm anxious and I want to stop not knowing. Then I could think about something else besides distracting myself, from thinking about not knowing. Yet.

It makes no sense to me that I can be thinking all this (and more), and I can still enjoy the walk over a low-tide river. I can drive for thirty minutes between fields of cows and horses and explain again the difference between a pony and a foal and love the conversation. While I'm knawed at by the worry I'm ignoring, or denying.

Truly, minds are extraordinary things.

Declutter (part 3)

2011-10-17T23:47:00.000+11:00

I started to write a series about decluttering my heart. I wish the ideas would roll out comfortably, into a clear, neatly spaced list (perhaps in a cool font).

But my heart is much more complicated than I planned. The phrase "pure in heart" weaves in my thoughts, conscious at times. Sometimes it is the inconvenient heaviness at the back of my head as life crams out contemplation. Is purity possible?

So much of my life is all about maintaining. Making sure the need-tos happen each day - food, clean clothes, and, let's face it, TVs don't watch themselves. Conversations get caught in details and I run out of time to share dreams.

I read bits in wide-ranging places and respond to the beauty of phrases that make pictures. I see glimpses of others drinking in the intimacy of living the grunge of life side-by-side. It is liquid down a dry throat. It clicks that I had ignored my thirst, perhaps so I would not be overwhelmed by it.

My heart is buried deep beneath skin, muscles, ribs and lungs. Absorbed in its task of relentless beating. Much of the clutter is actually around it rather than in it. Briars grew over many years around a sleeping princess's castle and this is what we do to our hearts. It's protection - so that we hurt and bleed less. An unbriared heart can be cut and bruised by debris.

I cannot have a pure heart, until I begin to dismantle the fences I've built around it. My heart cannot do it's task properly until it can connect more directly with pain and joy. Because when my heart is engaged, then I listen, then I pray, then I puzzle out how best to love.

Light glancing off a blossom

2011-10-11T01:03:00.000+11:00

Because some things exist purely to delight the eye.

Grace is an ocean

2011-10-01T23:19:00.000+10:00

Walking over the headland to the beach, we string out. Beads scattered along a draped necklace. I linger with the shortest-legged, absorbing his natter and his delight. Looking down, the sand stretches flat and wide from rocks to frothing white, like a six-lane highway.

We take off our shoes and the sand exfoliates our winter feet. He sits, patiently peeling oranges, and they are hastily divided between hungry hands. Apples follow and a packet of rice crackers. Water bottles empty. Paddling at the edge turns into wading. Getting wet is the funniest thing ever.

I stand ankle deep as the waves push on up the sand. Lines of gold light are drawn across the ripples in the water, and the sand holds them gently. Things I long to say lump at the base of my throat. Are they stuck because I should not say them or because they need to be said? I can never tell.

I think about grace, unceasing and repeating, rolling in again and again like waves. God's grace, a mighty ocean. An immensity that can stretch to fill any emptiness. Cover any indignity.

I am smothered. I long to escape because I don't want to have to reach inside myself to find more grace. I want it known that I am right, that I am misunderstood, that I sacrifice and don't get heard. I hesitate to let my resentment trickle away. Dwarfed by the ocean, I'm scared of being swallowed.

It takes at least two more days to immerse beyond my ankles. Another walk across the sand, my ears filled with pounding. I need reminding that grace makes all fresh and new. That the ocean will carry away the mess that clings to me, the meanness I cannot shed.

We've sold our birthright

2011-09-19T23:43:00.001+10:00

There is so much choice in life. You can be what ever you want to be. Dream and you can do anything.

It's so close to the truth that we can get distracted by it. In fact our hearts get cluttered with all the possibilities and the responsibility of making sure we don't waste an opportunity. The message to absorb is that `I am the master of my own future' and that `I decide what will happen'.

But what do we abandon to follow this pursuit of success and opportunity?

What are we born with? What do we overlook when we have stars in our eyes, when we are absorbed by the image of our own possibility?

There's a story of twin brothers who fought for their parents' favour. The elder was in the line of a promise - given to his grandfather - that they would be a chosen nation. That they would bring blessing. He underestimated the power of the promise and sold his right to receive it. He sold the right of first birth - the right to live the promise - to eat a lentil stew, one day, when he was famished.

How could someone give up being chosen to live in God's blessing, just to have a feed?

What is my birthright*?

What do I sell to pursue my own possiblity? What do I give up to feed my appetite?

I am made for relationship, to be a cherished child of the creator of the universe. I am made to be traced in God's nature and his action in the world. To bask in the illumination of his truth. To feast at his laden table. To call the God-man Jesus, my brother. To be an articulation, a sinew, a participant in God's living, active body. I was born for this.

I undervalue this purpose. I am blind to how fitting and right it is, and the wild possibility of it eludes me. I sell it without a moment's regret, for some immediate, transient pleasure.

Foolish and short-sighted, I seek my own fulfilment. I miss the gift inherent in my own existence. I sold my right to live in communion with the one who knows me best and loves me best.

The grace of God is him restoring me to that birthright, without asking me to buy it back. He gives it to me. Again ( and again...)

* Philip Jensen preached about selling our birthright, and that started these thoughts.

linking with Emily at Imperfect Prose.

Unblogging

2011-09-14T00:34:00.000+10:00

Here's my plan. I'm carving out a new artform in blogdom...

Unblogging

Here are the features that make an unblog:

Pitiful stats - I still look at them, just not very often (my ego cannot bear much)
Undersharing - a beast rarely seen in social media and blogging
Reluctance to give advice
Allergy to lists
No posts about blogging - except the odd ironic one
Inability to stick to a blog genre
Erratic comments - my policy is, comment if you have something to say
Refusal to post about topical issues or important dates
Failure to find an audience
Images only barely related to the text
No bloggy friends, a complete reliance on real life ones
Random, unplanned posts at irregular intervals
Half-baked series ideas that rarely get completed

Now all I need is a thingy (you know, a button) that says "I'm an unblogger" and you could all join the revolution.

OK it's not really a button, it's just a picture. But go on, steal it anyway, just make sure you point the way back here.

It goes without saying...

2011-09-13T23:41:00.000+10:00

The important stuff is hardest to form into sentences. For introverts. Probably for all of us.

My regard and warmth can be so comfortable, so integral, that I forget you are unaware of its presence. I neglect to say it aloud.

I'm pretty sure I didn't tell you that the possibility of talking to you is enough. That your very existence, and the repeated intersections of our lives are with me every day. That the times we laughed, or sorrowed or shared have worn grooves in me. The good kind of grooves, like smile lines etched around my eyes, or the hollow made by my elbow tucked around a child.

I'm doubly sure you've no idea that you are in my thoughts regularly. That for every time I speak to you, there's been a dozen when I pictured you and blessed you. My cards don't get written, or if they do, they don't always get sent. And I'm not excusing my disorganisation. Just letting you know I haven't forgotten.

I examine myself and know that the here and now absorbs me. I struggle to think in more than one dimension. And I'm sad that I don't respect and serve long-standing friendship faithfully enough. Because I don't want to leave important things unsaid.

I have wanted to trust in the economy of friendship. Being a faithful friend earns me good friends in return. I realise that this is another way to measure myself and strive for good enough.

It's that feeling at a party. When the celebration is for you and you worry that you're not enough reason for all the fuss. It creeps up at my fortieth when precious friends bring good wishes, presents and smiles. They while time with me. I fear you're wasting it but actually you've wrapped it and proudly given it to me. Because you love me.

There is no economy in friendship. I cannot buy it, or earn it, or store it up for later. Friendship is an extravagant, generous gift. You bring grace to the table, my friend. Thank you. A big loud thank you.

Sharing with Emily,

A shadow of the truth

2011-09-13T00:43:00.003+10:00

"One of the things that the local journalists had to do was cover the coroner's courts and it seemed to me that we never ever got to the truth. So there was this kid and he'd beaten up some bloke and stolen his money and there was the kid standing there wearing the first new suit he's ever had and there's his mum and you think where did this story start? It made me restless about journalism because whatever you got was only a shadow of the truth. Perhaps the greatest crime may have taken place long before the boy had been born but you could never track [it] down the universe." (Terry Pratchett on All In The Mind)

Where does the story begin? And will we ever really know?

I see a facet but there are so many other angles to look from. It's so easy to judge what I see, forgetting there's more to it. I only see a "shadow of the truth". I'm interested that it turned Terry Pratchett from journalism to writing fantasy books. He explained that he used the fictional world to illuminate our experience of human nature and truth.

I suspect he realised that stories are much more complicated than good guy vs. bad guy and that people who are in the wrong can be deeply wounded, too. Despair is not knowing if anyone really knows the truth. That it is all, deep in the centre, relative. Or worse still, that there is no centre.

Courts may not find the central truth of a story, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Truth is not bound by the perspectives of those who look at it. There is an objective truth in existence. Sometimes it is hard to see clearly, but it is still there.

It's a real challenge to see beyond the first impression and look for the kernel of truth, the more complicated story.

Stories and Illness

2011-09-05T23:39:00.000+10:00

I have borrowed a book from my mother-in-law, and I need to give it back. I'm finishing it as fast as I can. It has got me thinking about the experience of illness and how it grows fascinating stories. Stories that give us a glimpse into unique struggles and amazing perseverence.

Jill Bolte Taylor wrote (and spoke) about her experience of having a brain haemorrhage, and what she learnt about life as a result. She trained at Harvard in Neuroscience and worked to promote the American Brain Bank. Her brother had developed schizophrenia and this fact inspired her to learn more about the brain.

She explores the idea that her left (dominant hemisphere) brain was the centre of her language and the source of order and sequencing in her experience. She had a big bleed into her left hemisphere and describes what happened when her right brain became the primary source of her cognition. At one point, she equates her perception and sense of deep peace and timelessness with nirvana.

Interestingly, there was a recent BMJ editorial which commented on Taylor's book and highlights its basis in personal experience rather than scientific truth. Although there is evidence for complementarity and difference in the cerebral hemispheres, Taylor describes a deeply personal, subjective experience.

That said, her story is powerful. She relates the experience of being unable to think logically or retrieve memory intricately. The description was vivid and drew me in.

I couldn't help wondering how she was able to recall it so clearly and neatly. Was she able to form this memory in that period of acute stress, or is she creatively imagining it? Was the trauma of the experience enough to indelibly carve it in her neuronal circuits, despite their distress? Taylor's conclusion is that inner peace is contained in the circuitry of the right brain. That peace is located within ourselves, if we know ourselves (or our brains) better.

Other stories have come via All In The Mind, a Radio National podcastable show which explore all sorts of ideas in psychology and neuroscience.

I recently hear (Sir) Terry Pratchett talk about his experience of a type of dementia, called Posterior Cortical Atrophy, which has resulted in the degeneration of his visual memory. He cannot type his books any more, but uses voice recognition hardware to write. He made an interesting comment about truth and perspective - which will make this post too long, but will turn up another day.

The dementia theme continues in this novel, recently written by another neuroscientist, turned writer, Lisa Genova. She has also been interviewed on All In The Mind. Her grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Diseaase, and as she researched the disorder, she wanted to know more of the experience of a person with Alzheimer's. When she couldn't find first person accounts, she wrote this book - creating her central character, a fifty year old Harvard Psychology professor who gets early onset Alzheimer's. I haven't read the book, but heard the extract below, in the podcast, and the loss and bewilderment became tangible.

"She sat in a big white chair and the man who owned the house sat in the other one. The man who owned the house was reading a book and drinking a drink, the book was thick and the drink was yellowish brown with ice in it. She picked up an even thicker book than the one the man was reading from the coffee table and thumbed through it. Her eyes paused on diagrams of words and letters connected to other words and letters by arrows, dashes and little lollipops. She landed on individual words: disinhibition, phosphorylation, genes, acetylcholine, demons, morphines, phonological.

'I think I've read this before,' said Alice. The man looked over at the book she held and then at her.

'You've done more than that. You wrote it. You and I wrote that book together.'

Hesitant to take him at his word she closed the book and read the shiny blue cover From Molecules to Mind by John Howland PhD and Alice Howland PhD. She looked up at the man in the chair. He's John, the words she read seemed to push past the choking weeds and sludge in her mind to a place that was still pristine and still intact, hanging on.

'John,' she said, 'Yes, I wrote this book with you,' she said. 'Yes, I remember, I remember you, I remember I used to be very smart.'

'Yes, you were, you were the smartest person I've ever known.'

This thick book with the shiny blue cover represented so much of what she used to be. She wanted to tell him everything she remembered and thought but she couldn't send all those memories and thoughts composed of so many words, phrases and sentences past the choking weeds and sludge into audible sound. She boiled it down and put all of her effort into what was most essential, the rest would have to remain in the pristine place, hanging on.

'I miss myself.'

'I miss you too, Ally, so much.'

'I never planned to get like this.'

'I know.' "

From Still Alice, by Lisa Genova.

The fodder of textbooks and newspapers becomes immediate and personal through life stories. When I hear your story, I can enter it alongside you. I can start to understand your experience a little more, and understanding someone else's struggle, even just a little, is a doorway to compassion and empathy.

Stories and Death

2011-08-29T23:57:00.001+10:00

Image from here

I have a generous friend. She loves to give gifts and cherish those around her. She makes soap and needlepoint, collects old books and loves to watch movies. She has colourful flowers tattooed on her ankles, and wears eye-catching shoes.

Seven weeks ago her husband died and she is busying herself with sorting collected treasures. She is sharing stories of the objects she discovers, the boxes she delivers to the op shop, the friends who come and remember with her. She lays the story of his failing life out before me, too. As she talks, I see the strength in her. Telling is a balm. A millimetre of smoothed protection from the burn of loss.

We meet on Mondays and each one marks another week since he crept away from his worn, overwhelmed body. Today, she smiled just a bit easier, and the shoulder weight of his long illness is lifting. She asked about my baby, and we marvelled the passing time as I said, "He's two and a half."

It is easy to spectate in the story of death. To visit someone who is dying, and expectation makes the room into a mausoleum. To forget to participate in the mingled sad joy of still being alive. I imagine cancer-ridden friends seeing the speechless sorrow in my eyes as I meet their gaze. Am I sad because I do not know what to say? Am I that self-absorbed? The pain of others refracted in my lenses, filtered to become my own pain.

I listen as she shares the story they had hidden. He feared those sympathetic spectators so he made sure they never knew. He dreaded having to bear their distress as well as his failing health. Her story is unadorned, love-worn and hopeful. She carves out life without him - carefully but purpose-gripped. She tells, as he did not, because she must. He lives in her story.

Her story changes me. I vow not to spectate. Not to let my uncomfortable sadness darken the process of dying. In real life, death is not purely dour or hallowed. The howling sadness of death is born out of the shared enjoyment of love and friendship. The laughter and being understood are the absence we miss. It is because we live, that we seek these in the aftermath of loss.

Sharing with Emily at Imperfect Prose,

Declutter (part 2)

2011-08-19T00:58:00.000+10:00

It's a late night question. We ask it in the moonlight, when the talk is meandering. Regrets, longings, and the barely spoken plans. 'Can people really change?'
Doubt and hope line my answer. I waver, through the years of asking that question. I love the mornings when the answer rings out 'yes'. Someone said, last Sunday, that he used to think he knew it all but now he hungers to learn the truth. Is that change?

The first step to clearing out my crowded, fickle heart is to see the breadth of what I do not know.

I discard the pride of having to be right or knowledgeable in everything.
I open vessels ready to be filled with wisdom from another.
I let go of anxiety. The anxiety of relying only on myself.
I open the door to someone bigger than myself.

I don't have tips for decorating or simplifying your house. But I'm searching for ways to spiritually declutter.

Step #1 - stop needing to be right.

Errant lettuce

2011-08-15T22:59:00.000+10:00

Take a packet of seeds and empty them in the garden. That's right, just there on the path, under the clothesline.

Three or four trips to the line before I realise that we have lettuce in our lawn. And it's not long till we'll be enjoying the tender leaves.

Unplanned, impromptu, unexpected. My teeth grit when I'm not in control. I shout and criticise as my grip slips on the situation. The blossoming lettuce laughs at my rigidity.

Anger about spilt seeds - it would not be a surprise. I know it, grateful that I missed that opportunity. I don't want to uproot lettuce because it isn't in a garden bed. I want to stop and see fresh things. To control my anxious reaction and enjoy.

How many fresh joys do I destroy, do I miss, because I frame the world in certain patterns? My small mindedness is a box that needs splintering.

And then I realise that I didn't shout at the seed spillers. That I did give thanks for the buttery round leaves. Perhaps I am learning. Maybe there's a crack in this container, and I can stop catastrophising today.

Riots

2011-08-13T01:00:00.000+10:00

Macquarie Fields riots from heraldsun.com.au

Riots in Britain. About a day later, the radio news became more than just background noise. There are riots in Britain. Remember our riots?

It made me think about people living trapped by hopelessness. I read a book that tried to understand the poor, and it still felt like just another judgement. But at least the writer had met the people he described. It is easy to have an opinion about poverty and the poor, but some of the loudest opinions are made without meeting anyone who is poor.

Laurie Penny wrote an insightful piece about the riots and the media attention they have garnered. Peaceful protests have been ignored, but the media can't get enough of riots and looters. And we love simple explanations like - 'a small group of criminals are making everyone else look bad', or 'Twitter is the reason for the spread of violence'.

This extract from Penny's blog is telling,

'In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ‘’’

What sort of behaviour does media attention reinforce? Perhaps those who feel powerless and ignored will try anything to be heard.