Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

New Life

Our fostered daughter has told us she has had a baby son.  I am so pleased for her and thrilled that one of his middle names is after our adopted son, his uncle!  Much celebration.

I am now a fostered grandmother.  I think we should be called Grandiose and Grandimose!  Realistically I think I will most likely be Jane!

Mum and baby sound as though they are doing really well.

My son and I were talking about whether to buy a small gift for the new baby.  He favoured a tiny set of combat fatigues.  I can see he will want us to check out Mothercare tomorrow!

New life and such opportunities.

So much to give thanks for.

Purple headed Gremlin

I have a manuscript to finish and I am now seriously into negative time completing it.  Detention and one hundred lines.  No one is pressuring me - and that's half the problem - I am lousy without a do or die deadline!

The summer stretches ahead with a mixture of folk using The Sanctuary Retreat Space here at Alturlie Point and I have a diary full of activities and little hope of settling down to the concerted effort I need to put in.  Referrals come and go and others join us as family and friends.  Some we support and journey with for a while - others are here and we may never really know why.  Whatever, we try to operate at a level of hospitality and at times extreme discretion so that the needs of those in residence are met.  We are very flexible in our understanding of an extended household or family - and for some who come it is important they feel a sense of belonging.

We had planned a trip to the Black Isle Show this afternoon - but things are backed up - and I need to get on (boring).

More assignments to mark.  I feel in good form though as I have really enjoyed double-marking these essays as the assignment task is inventive and the tutor - imaginative and committed to the students' learning.  Once these are done I must print out various items for a meeting tomorrow in Oban and get on with some report-writing.  Still all valuable and rewarding work - but I MUST get the novel finished too!

Feel great too after a hair cut at lunchtime today.  Short, feminist and with my usual hint of purple - I am much more myself - a morbidly obese Gremlin with attitude.  My stylist is a young woman with genuine ability and a smashing chair-side manner.  I ended up in a fit of giggles having prattled on for some minutes about a new film release called Shampoo.  Eventually she located it much more correctly as Hairspray - and I was away - I just couldn't stop laughing.  Typical.  We both agreed the received wisdom was that it is worth seeing and deals sensitively with issues concerned with diversity and difference.  Her advice was that my son went to see Simpsons: The Movie while I watched Hairspray.   Wise woman - my stylist.  After much snipping and puffing - she added the purple dye in two spots instead of the usual one.  Inspired.  Fun.  Just right.  I love her willingness to delight in the playful and mildly incongruous.  It's very liberating and encouraging.  She resisted commenting on the t-shirt I was wearing "I have issues"!!!!  Enough said!

Needs and Diversity

One of our guests has left a book of reminiscences published about his memories of his home area.  I had a good look through, as you do, while the eggs hard-boiled for the lunchtime sandwiches. 

It is amazing and awe-inspiring the extraordinary diversity of human being; how we interpret our experiences and make sense of our stories; how we intersect with others and in turn, attempt, at some level to make sense of others - what motivates; what another's dreams are made of. 

We all have our different preferences and preoccupations and so much is determined by the life choices we are offered - and I guess those we engineer.  Fascinating the premises on which we interact and place our understanding of our identity and purpose in life. 

We have made a commitment to a religious life; others to the pusuit of power or influence; some to simply not being disturbed too much.  I can see great benefits in all approaches - and the tapestry of life would be poorer without the subtlety of texture and nuance that the differences cause when they are entwined and blended.

We are blessed with fantastic support these days for our son who has special needs.  As I sat in a meeting this afternoon to update and review, I wished there was a way to just quite simply say a heartfelt thank you to the two people who now hold this responsibility for care - and who seem deeply committed to seeing our son realise his fullest potential.  There is much to celebrate as our son's life chances have now improved dramatically with the continuing provision of appropriate schooling.  I did say we were fully paid up members of their fan clubs - but somehow that really does lack gravitas.  These guys are slowly healing us and giving us life.

Encouragement throught the post

A shaft of luminous, white light has illuminated the morning in the form of the totally unexpected, open-handed kindness of another.  I was touched and delighted.  Through the post came a parcel with the most beautiful card - with a gorgeous cross stitch celtic cross on it - created I have no doubt by the sender.  Accompanying the gentlest of sentiments, was a gift - and the choice could only be made by someone who knows me very well indeed.

Into Great Silence - a DVD about a monastery which has also become quite a commercial success was duly unpacked and very much admired.  The community who made it are Trappist and I had to smile as I read that the out-takes are in the form of written notes!!!

I have to work this evening after almost three days off - but I will settle to savouring it on my next day off.

The funny thing is that we are great ones for giving things away and tend to groan inwardly when we are bought things because we are now so committed to travelling lighter and getting rid of what we seem to have spent our lives so far wasting energy accumulating!  Of course we hold tight to things which speak of history and continuity between the generations; and those things that touch our heart at this time - but we are trying to recycle and charity shop the numerous items which we have kept just in case. 

This gift is in a slightly different catergory as it will be something community will enjoy and some of the folk who come and stay, may find moving and touching.  Pertinence personified.

The angels were looking on.

The timing was perfect too.  With a busy weekend of work ahead - it was just great to receive.

Jubilate Deo!

PMT and a sense of humour deficit

There are days when being even remotely charitable is an effort.  Today I could pass for a cross between Voldemort and Genghis - much maligned I gather after watching a recent documentary.  Bad hair day doesn't touch it.  This is Premenstrual multiplied by volcanic activity of an evacuate the area kind.  This is - "Who said anything about a warning?" mode - and "What part of No don't you understand?"  This is when Charity is a girl's name and Generosity is a hybrid rose. 

I am essentially ratty, restless and sporting a particularly bold, garish sense of humour deficit.

I was talking last week with someone who very much had my best interests at heart - and sensing an underlying rodent quality emerging in a normally ebullient individual, recommended an hour to myself each day.  My laughter was hollow - but partly because I knew just how wise and true the advice was.  Partly because I just didn't have the time! 

I have been burning the candle at both ends - and there has been less and less down time in recent weeks.  When this happens my sense of irritation grows palpably.  I resent the time everything takes and I tend to beat myself up with the efficiency of a trained assassin.  Time to take my time doing nothing seriously.

With guests needing to be settled and fed this evening in the retreat space - it won't be this evening - but I have a cunning plan.  I am hoping to escape into the caravan I use as an art studio.  I haven't done any serious painting since before Easter and this is undoubtedly one of the reasons why my spirit is doing a passable impression of a toddler's rusk.  I guess because I work with words all the time, painting has a special place in my heart as I find I genuinely think differently and relate to the task in ways that seem to clear my mind and invigorate me.  My plan is to sneak in there after morning chapel and re-emerge to a coffee and a natter with our guests an hour or so later.  Bliss.  I feel better just think about it.  Where's the hollow laughter now, bitter and twisted one?  Excess to requirements I think!

Our son has been home for the summer holidays for a week or so.  He is growing up fast and we are very committed to honouring that - but he is impulsive - so we are trying to keep our boundaries consistent.  It's amazing how quickly we get out of practice now he is away at school, at the whole business of parenting a special needs child.  As I write he is out in the garden with a huge, bright red hard hat on, ear defenders in place and is wielding a massive petrol driven strimmer- his first go before he helps out with his preferred occupation - mowing on the ride on mower called Ermentrude.  What else?  Like most thirteen year olds he struggles with the concept of helping out around the house - and with his added idiosyncracies grapples with the business of staying on task.  Oh, dear, the door has banged.  Shorter than even I anticipated.  He now thinks he may have repetitive straininjury.  The strimmer was a bit heavy.  I wonder aloud if that means he won't be able to use the computer to play his games?  I am reassured that it will help heal it.  Not.

(Just a hint of grummmph creeping back in!?)

Deep breaths and counting down from 300, 299, 298, 297...

Nelson Mandela's Inaugural Address:

I found this when I was browsing my Common Place Book:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that frighten us.

[Nelson Mandela's Inaugural Address]

Dramatising Religion and Death

I have been re-reading the script of Once a Catholic.  It's a rather dated take on a Convent Education, but it still bounces off the page and made me smile.  I've never directed it, apart from a small junk when I still taught Drama at a gal's independent school in Cambridge.  It's hard to imagine me doing all that now.  Teaching in an independent school etc...  Still a woman's got to live!  I think the school must have been pretty desperate to have appointed me.  I wasn't very happy there - but some of the youngsters who came through the system were truly outstanding and the small GCSE group who performed a scene from this play were exceptional.  At least one has gone on to become a novelist.

Another life.

I tuned in this morning (any excuse) to a new comedy series set in a monastery on Radio Four. I had high hopes.  It may warm up in future episodes now we have established the characters, but it sounded a little trite on first hearing.  Very good to hear Roy Dotrice taking the lead.  He has an extraordinarily rich voice and can capture diverse emotion with his cultured inflection.  I'll listen again for him I suspect - but at the moment I won't be rushing out and alerting friends to tune in!

Couple of days to do housekeeping things and catch up with chores.  Caught an interview with Barbara Pointon while I slurped my porridge this morning.  Barbara taught music with her husband at The University of Cambridge. 

Malcolm developed dementia and Barbara gave up her own career to care for him.  I remember watching a very challenging documentary about their lives, coping with dementia, some years ago.  It was profoundly moving - and I think at that point Malcolm could still occasionally sit and play the piano even if so many other aspects of his quality of life were very seriously impaired.

Malcolm died last February.  At the time of his death it sounds as though a follow up programme was being made and in this documentary which is to be aired on 8th August, we will see Malcolm die on screen.

I knew them a little, in their academic life, as I was an undergraduate at the same college.  I am pleased and utterly supportive of Barbara's honest and at times, courageous campaigning not just on her husband's behalf but to raise society's awareness of the actual emotional and financial cost of dementia.  I am not sure I am so comfortable watching a person breath his last who has been unable to give his permission to be filmed.  I am not sure if I do think a carer has the right or can be given the right to make this decision on behalf of the person they care for.  It could be, and of course we are not privvy to this information in a short TV interview, that long before Malcolm became incapacitated, he made a Living Will - and his personal wants and needs as he approached death were fully complied with.  I am surprised the relevant bodies who monitor the ethical implications of such documentaries haven't had more to say.  Perhaps we are now happy to allow the media to decide on our social, emotional, spiritual and ethical values - and watching a person die who is no longer himself because of a degenerative brain disease is acceptable.  I am not entirely sure it is to me.

St. James and Work Avoidance

Do you ever have one of those days where you are caught out doing a thousand other things and realise it is after 4pm in the afternoon and haven't really started 'proper' work yet?  In the days when I was an employee this would be a day when I would be less focused and probably hoping for a knock on my door and a legitimate interruption!  These days when I am self-employed it is all too easy to start the working day when other things are done.  This is especially so during the summer holiday period with my son home too!  Today I took my husband shopping for clothes.  Something we both hate doing and I shaved the Newfoundland - bottom half (horizontally not vertically).  Now waiting, literally, for the tide to come in at the bottom of the garden so that she can go for her skin invigorating swim!  Now I've settled down to work - what do I do?  Blog!  Has this woman no personal discipline?

St. James' Day today.  Fishermen have it right - intense periods of work and then time...  for family; the mundane business of maintaining boat and equipment; for self.

I always imagine James as a man of few words, but I read that his martyrdom was partly in an effort to shut up the evangelists proclaiming faith in Christ - so if the words were few they were certainly effective!

Sun, sea and intuition

Delightfully mixed up day.  Although mostly focused around Theological Institute business, I travelled across the Highlands to a small village to visit a candidate for ministry.  After an excellent meeting, I was picked up by my partner and son and we went to a Perfume Workshop for lunch and a mooch round.  I was all set for aromatherapy oils and massage creams - but no, it was pretty much a fairly standard Highland eaterie and wee shop.  They all seem so similar - few rows of not always gifted artists' dabs; some smellies and scarves (why import from Italy - have we no notable local weavers?  Probably not); the inevitable luxury pots of mustard and chutney and a pricey restaurant.  The view, on one of the few beautiful days this summer was breathtaking.  We sat outside with Coronation Chicken open sandwiches which required a second mortgage and were lost in the shear beauty that surrounded us.  The light played on the water in an incredible way.  It truly did glitter.  Tiny, ever changing jewels, shimmering and quivering.

Jessie (Newfoundland) and Rainbow (Guide Dog) kept us company at our picnic table.  Jessie seemed to yearn for the water - and I will let her swim tomorrow on the shore if the weather holds.

Stunning drive home through more breath-taking scenery.

Back to work with a bump.  Calls and reports.  Supper to cook and shopping to unpack!  Still feel as though I have been on holiday today.

Themes around for me today:

Enjoy the moment.

Delight in what is given.

However hard - stay authentic - be what you are and don't try and be what people would like you to be.  It's a much harder life in the long run.

Never judge a person on what you have heard; talk to them and much, much more important listen.  Have the courage to connect.

Use your intuition and don't give people the benefit of the doubt when you know they aren't for real deep in your heart.  Authenticity is about recognising and owning your insights not just your actions.

Old friends who encourage and engage are worth their weight in gold.

Old School Friend, Kindness and Anal Glands

Brilliant to intersect briefly with an old school friend today - we are spending time together this summer - and we are going to a gig at Nairn Jazz Festival - both families.  Excellent.  Good to have a wee blether and prepare for her and her family's trip North.  It's thelittle things that count and I am excited to see her and her husband again - and meet their daughter.

A wonderful poem arrived today from a friend from my under-graduate days who now lives in the States.  I have been blessed with attentiveness:

  Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye, from her book, The Words Under the Words

The sentiments expressed touched me deeply.

Less work achieved today than I would have hoped, but I enjoyed a trip to our local vet as it was a chance to touchbase with people who are important and precious to us as a family.  Jessie, our Newfoundland is suffering with her skin and is to go and be shaved and shampooed.  Vet's orders!  I suppose she will look like a feminist dog after this - and take after her human mum in this respect!  Maybe she should have a touch of purple hair dye too - and we can look like a related pair of Gremlins after the transformation!!!  Jo - our rescue collie is older than expected we heard today - thought now to be about 8 instead of the 5 we have been taking him for!  He has had blood tests.  Mungo - our in your face collie x, had his anal glads expelled and I learnt how to do it!  The latex glove nearly set me off - but it was actually quite interesting once you thought about the mechnics of it!  Poor lamb - the indignity of the practice with mum rather than the much more skilled vet!  Still, he got his own back - a projectile spray over my hair, glasses and left shoulder.  Just as well we came home by car - I would have been trailed half way around the Highlands if I had walked by a pack of dogs! 

Shower.  Hair wash.  I am forgiven.  Mungo is fast asleep with his head keeping my feet warm.  If only it was this easy to let go, forgive and experience restoration within our human relationships!