self care

another tough week / worked hard / we're in better shape than we were this time last week ...

important, I think, at the weekend / to incorporate some self care / doing stuff which is inherently relaxing ...

battle

Jesus told a story / about a man / from whom a demon was cast out / but who, sadly, ended up hosting seven demons ...

This past fortnight, I have had the privilege of following a series of bible readings, with notes by Rachel Boulding, inspired by the life, sermons, and poetry of John Donne. Under God, coincidentally, a fierce battle has been raging / it has been either, or ...

For better or for worse / I believe that the battle is over / and has been won (time will tell) / and, inevitably, there has to be a mopping up / a new world / the demon is cast out / and neither he nor his friends / are welcome, any more ...

I should try to get to know Donne's poetry better / it would have been nice to have ended this post with a quote / instead, as an alter ego has said:

to win, at least, to survive ...

successes and failures

I probably tend to dwell more upon failures / than I remember succeeding ...

Just an observation / possibly to stimulate some (constructive) thinking ...

loneliness

What happens if you say to a psychologist: I think that the primary problem is not stress, it's loneliness. How can you be lonely in a room full of a hundred or more people?

Having Asperger's Syndrome (or something that in some respects looks like Asperger's Syndrome), my answer would be along the lines of: Communication! but it's more than that. I suspect that people generally find it difficult to relate to one hundred people at once. That the occasional unfriendliness I encounter is just overload. And that I, also, need to adapt. My first response was to live in a bubble. To shut out the noise.

Or to run away - but that isn't allowed. And I do have conversations. Good, interesting conversations.

Over lunch, generally, I read. Somehow, the books that have landed on my in-tray are challenging: The Street Bible (now called Word on the Street, I believe), by Rob Lacey; One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey (which I've paused, having reached the end of a chapter - it doesn't help that I've seen the film, which doesn't exactly have a happy ending); and, currently: unApologetic, by Francis Spufford ...

changing the script

of course, the script is there to be adhered to / I've just been handed a script for 'me and my girl', as I shall be playing the part of Sir Jasper in a production taking place in May / and no-one would thank me if I decided, instead, to improvise ...

when I started to work in what we then called computing support / we had to improvise / there wasn't a script / nowadays, still having to improvise / or to follow a script which has been cobbled together / and is not supported by the software supplier / or, to be honest, sometimes resenting having to follow a script which has been devised by somebody else / and which doesn't appear to me to be the most effective, appropriate, or efficient way to deal with the situation / I would welcome a clear, well-documented, official script / offering reassurance ...

but not every script is helpful / our brains, naturally, develop habits / ways of coping / and it can be difficult to develop new, better ways ...

mindfulness

have been advised by a psychologist to practise mindfulness / at the same time, my bible reading notes are focusing on contemplative prayer / are these two sides of the same coin ...

being mindful (as I understand it) / involves quietness / awareness (of breathing, particularly) ...

contemplation (for me) / is actually more difficult to grasp / it depends on God playing ball (as it were) / being there / showing up ...

are we thinking about readiness? respecting God's timing / his initiative ...

challenge

we are agreed (I think) that one of my coping methods (it doesn't deserve to be called a strategy) is unacceptable. and that the approach of Lent makes this a good time to stop.

it's hard, because change requires effort, and where am I going to find the resource?

there and back

a family celebration (we took Sapphire / she had to wait inside while we got the car ready) / 120 mile round trip / there, we had a nice walk, and a nice meal / on the way back, we encountered the snow, and roadworks, and traffic ...

update

it's always chilling (in a bad way), to see the words: could we have an update, please? in a work communication / it always implies that the sender is less than happy with perceived progress / and I quite enjoyed replying to one of these messages recently with: yes, I sent you an email a week ago (haven't you read it?) ...

as the light returns / and the evident untidiness of the garden becomes more difficult to ignore / it seems to be, mostly, business as usual / and I'm trying, with the help of a psychologist / to be more positive about that status. it's always difficult to meet with people, roughly contemporary with me / who have somehow managed to retire, either fully or partially. I can't help feeling envious. As another birthday approaches, my best estimate of time to retirement is six years / which is far too long to be counting days ...

the old adage / a day at a time / usually helps / whether the source is Jesus, or Dale Carnegie / we've been designed, it appears, to inhabit the 18 hours or so between getting up and going to bed / to make each cycle a story / which makes it especially pleasant to be welcoming a new blog - the bad day blog - by (I hope that she doesn't mind me calling her a) seasoned blogger, Josie George / looking forward to hearing from someone who can aim for 'a bloody good bad day' ...

information

our puppy (now around 7 months old) is a border terrier / we love her to bits (obviously) / the cats aren't so sure ...

what the MRI scan (of my brain) showed is 'a small lacunar infarct' / I have been told that it indicates that I have had a (small) stroke / they can't say when / I'm seeing my GP in a couple of weeks' time, for a chat ...

first week back at work has been challenging (to say the least) / quite important, I think, having reached the weekend / not to think too much about it until I have to ...

bleak midwinter

Christmas is a receding memory / the credit card bill is a present reality / a recent brain scan has shown that part of my brain is damaged / back to work on Monday ...

Christmas Day

puppy's first Christmas ...

managing fear

this week, I received an MRI scan (that is to say, my brain was scanned) / the experience was instructive / I'm pretty sure that, by default, the reaction of a creature to being enclosed / is to want to flee / so / while I was inside the machine / my conscious mind was continually reassuring the part of my mind that was afraid / saying: it's ok ...

ailments

monday / daughter has to go into hospital / for a planned operation / thankfully, home by the evening / but a long day ...

tuesday / daughter, recovering / I, foolishly, tried to catch up with tasks ...

wednesday / daughter back to school / having to sit a chemistry test (which has been brought forward a day, at short notice) / she fails the test, and is subsequently told that she isn't working hard enough / I go back to work ...

thursday / wife is feeling the effect of stronger antibiotics / the medicine is making her more ill than she was / son goes back to school, having been at home since the weekend, coughing ...

friday / wife is told that she can switch to different antibiotics / I make it through the working day, just ...

challenges

November - autumn has truly arrived - Christmas (dare I say it) isn't far away - and, it's the month of people on the internet setting themselves targets - write a novel, make progress on a thesis, publish a blog post every day - a year ago, one of my alter egos managed to upload a photo to blipFoto every day for a month ...

and, no / I'm not rising to the challenge this year / but (surely) it won't do any harm just to put a photo here / taken this morning as we took the dog (now 20 weeks old, we reckon) for a walk:

the good person

I remember, as a teenager, reading Bertolt Brecht's "the Good Person of Szechwan" (although I remember  her as the Good Woman of Setzuan) / what struck me then (and seems still to apply to-day) / was how the heroine found it impossible to maintain the good side of her nature, and had to call upon a more ruthless alter ego in order to survive / it's all very well / being told to trust God / to put the Kingdom first / but for most of us there has to be some compromise / in order to live / to be effective citizens / we have to spend some of our lives putting our employer first / doing what the world requires / expects ...

recognising that even within ourselves / there's stuff we want to do / to prioritise / which doesn't come straight from the Bible ...

place in the kingdom

a bit of a grand title / trying to address a (not particularly) simple choice / which church do I attend?

when one's wife has decided to start attending a different church / should one follow her / if one's daughter still attends the place where we (all) used to go / except that one's son hasn't attended church in years ...

the world (in this country) has changed / many people do other things on a Sunday morning / they even wash their cars (for some reason, an early memory of mine is of our minister berating his congregation / how awful, that people would spend Sunday morning washing their cars, instead of coming to church / his audience, presumably, agreeing with him) / it is more difficult, nowadays / pressure of time / both parents working / the case for spending Sunday morning worshipping God / is no longer self evident ...

and if the churches are competing / not easy for an individual ...

would it help

if I started attending a different church ...

I guess

that we tend to think of Jesus' encounter with the rich young ruler, as recounted, as the beginning and end of the story / he had his big moment / and he blew it ...

but we know that other people who were associated with Jesus / managed still to own a house (Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, for example) / they couldn't have sold everything / surely it would have been unfair of Jesus to lay down a condition for one person (which that person found difficult), and not expect the same of everyone ...

let's look on the bright side (of life) / let's imagine that the rich young ruler didn't just give up / what could he have done? could he have been one of the early Christians, who did sell everything ...

very few people nowadays give up everything to follow Jesus / even missionaries have a career / arrangements are made for their children to be educated / Church of Scotland ministers don't get to own the house which they live in while they work / but they can save (actually, I don't think that it's right that Church of Scotland ministers are put in this complicated and anomalous position / and, anyway, it doesn't help to make sense of the original question / it implies that some Christians are expected to follow the path of not owning stuff / while others aren't) up / or the church makes arrangements so that when they retire they have somewhere to live (what's the difference between a minister relying on his or her employer to take care of what happens when he or she retires, and me paying into a workplace pension scheme) ...

the rich young ruler

sell everything (give the proceeds to the poor), and follow me ...

or not, in which case you are not a true Christian, and will spend eternity suffering in hell ...