New Year , new start same old feelings

Well I enjoyed Christmas for a change and actually felt quite uplifted  by it. The downside for me is always the fact that the main emphasis appears to be on spending a load of money that most people can barely afford and being cheered on doing it by an ever more cynical and greedy retail sector.
The aftermath though does leave me feeling depressed and although I have actually been at work for 3 days over the Christmas period I still feel a great deal of anxiety about the main return to work tomorrow. Actually it feels like I am playing Russian Roulette with a 9mm semi automatic in terms of my stability.
I just hope I can weather this period again and come around.

Black dogs

Deep shades of despair haunt me,
Night and day are an endless drudge.
There is little joy or hope around me, darkness follows me like an infernal shade.

Brexit

Well it would appear that the UK had a collective blond moment last Thursday and allowed small minded nationalism to win the day.
That out and out lies were told there can be no doubt. That some people tried to use the situation for their own agrandisement has become evident by the events of the last 24 hours.
Get over it we are told , well I for one will not get over it as I have a son who has had a whole potential future stolen from him by the selfish small minded actions of my countrymen.
Get over it - not when this has brought out the vile racists spouting their bile and their vile beliefs on the street corners of this country.
Get over it - not whilst ignorance and stupidity stalk the land.

It's Snowing!

The incessant rain has finally given way to a cold snap here and about 17:00 it started to snow. Lightly at first but then with greater insistence.
I was concerned that a night out with a good friend would not happen but then remembered his desire to play with his 4wd monster truck. So we had a nice couple of hours in the pub and  couple of drinks to pass the time befote heading home in the snow.
Time to take my dog out for a last walk.  He enjoys the snow with a wholw load of fresh scents to keep him amused.
I found mysekf thinking that I actually love snowy nights and the thing I like most is the profound silence I can hear.
Bit of a contradiction that but its true I love to hear the silence.  No cars,  no sirens, no people just the gentle sound of the falling snow. However in that silence I can hear the sound of eternity and it brings me an inner peace that I rarely find outside of nights like this.

From the mouths of babes...

Come the most interesting questions..

Today's late evening question from the enquiring mind of my 11 year old was
"why don't people believe in God?"

Phew that is a deep one - mind you it followed shortly on the heels of
"where does my consciousness come from?"
earlier in the evening.

Both of these are not easy questions to answer and both of them have taxed the minds of philosophers, sages, doctors and psychiatrists for centuries and to date I am not certain if anyone has come up with a satisfactory answer.

Certainly among the answers to the first one of these is one of choice, people choose not to believe in a God for a variety of reasons, they see the ills of the world around them and find it hard to believe that a caring and compassionate deity could allow them to happen. Some lose faith over a period of time believing that other ways may lead to a more caring and compassionate world and that by their actions following this path, they will help achieve this. Others don't even see a God in this world, all they see is themselves as their own God in their own corner of the universe selfishly believing that they are right to do as they see fit and be damned to the rest of the world.

For myself I have both lost and found faith over the years and take some small comfort in that faith.

Not of picturing a saintly looking bearded man in the sky, smiling benevolently at his creation, but of looking around me and seeing the wind, the skies, the stars , the plants and the animals and yes the other people around me and feeling that this is the true nature of God in creation. I do wonder at wars and the unfortunate ills of the world but I also acknowledge that God gave us free will and we use that to the good or ill in the world which we inhabit for such a short space of time.

I hope that I am using my time here to the good!

Back to the grind?

Here I find myself again sat in the office I share with my colleagues, although at the moment I sit here alone. 
I happen to like the quiet time of  the office almost if not more than when the office is busy and noisy.
It gives me a quiet space in which to think what the day and at this time the coming year will bring.
I know I am going to find the next few weeks a bit difficult personally as it runs up to the 10th anniversary of my fathers passing.  I miss both my parents immensely especially at this time of year.
So I take comfort in the silence around me that gives me time to think and remember and to quietly thank God for all the good memories I have of this time of year.

A la recherche du temps perdu

This year has really taken its toll following Colin's passing and it really took me a long time to come to terms with the reality of it.

In some respects it did raise doubts with me for a while, however I feel that it has strengthened me in other ways in that I perhaps value the life I have and the people around me more than I previously thought I did.

When someone passes it leaves a void for a time that you think it is impossible to fill and to a degree it is impossible to fill it - mainly because the person who has passed is no longer there as a physical person, so you have no one to interact with and get a response from regarding what they think or how they feel.

What is left to you though is a memory of the personality and a rememberance of their persona that allows you to think the thought "What would X have thought of that?" or "What would Y have said about that". Sometimes this can be a positive feeling and help you gain another perspective from a point outside yourself but within your own persona, which has taken an imprint of the other persons attitudes and beliefs.

It helps me sometimes to do this as it helps in the rememberance of the person who has passed.

Strange Emotions

This week has been one of the strangest I have encountered in a very long time and has left me feeling quite sad, confused and to a large degree very depressed.
Sadly I had to attend the funeral of a very dear and close friend who, at the same age as myself, succumbed to cancer after a very short but ultimately courageous fight, at the end of March. I saw him a few weeks before he passed and we talked, all too briefly to be sure, and it was is we had never been apart.
We had been friends for about 36 years, meeting on our first day at university and keeping in touch despite the distance between us ever since. We would talk every so often and meet on occasions and yet it never felt as though we were apart and could pick up where we left off.
Bizarrely our career paths sort of shadowed one another although with slight nuances between them.
Now the earth has borne my friend away and I feel like I have abandoned him even though my own beliefs tell me that he is in safe hands.
The funeral service we held for him was full of rejoicing and thankfulness for the life he had lived and the lives he had touched and the contributions he had made. Everyone who was there had only wonderful things to say about him and I was happy he was remembered fondly by so many.
I don't think I previously understood the concept of 'Anam Cara' - the soul kinship that some feel until this moment but I do now and my heart feels torn in two by the loss of the brother of my soul and I pray that you rest peacefully till we meet again.

A Woman Bishop

And about  time too.

Today's consecration of the first woman as a Bishop here in England is something of a turning point here in England.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30984743

Actually I think personally this is a great day only marred by someone who let their own prejudices ring out in an unseemly fashion which did nothing to improve the validity of his case or his arguments against this historic move.

A Turn Up

About ten days ago I discovered that I had lost a gold chain that I habitually wear around my neck. More importantly, to me at least, was the fact that I had also lost the gold crucifix that was on the chain and which was my promise to myself about my renewed feelings of faith when I was deep in a crisis of personal despair about four years ago.
I think I had effectively gone into a period of mourning about this loss and was just about over the loss, mainly due to my wife realising how much the chain meant to me and her buying me a replacement as a very early and very welcome Christmas present, when, whilst cleaning up some things in my sons bedroom the cross made a very welcome reappearance.
How it got there I can only speculate - probably I had been cleaning up previously and had lost it - but the fact was that I had got it back again. It felt once again like a promise renewed and the hand of an old and trusted friend was back where it should be. All my other burdens seemed to have been lifted by finding it and putting it back where it belongs both around my neck and in my heart.
I have to say that this episode also reminds me of how I felt when my christian beliefs also became important in my life again and it makes me remember how much the knowledge that I am never truly alone because God is always present with me even when I despair.

The Failing Year

Strange title for a post this time and to some extent its a bit of a summary as to how this year has been with this blog.

I have manifestly failed to make many entries - mainly due ot my own laziness I suppose but also because I have failed to do a great deal.

The latter is mainly due to a knee injury in April whilst cycling to work where I pulled or strained a ligament in my knee that was extremely painful to say the least and which only seemed to come right towards the end of August to early September.

This has hindered a lot of cycling, mountain biking  walking and climbing and in some part has contributed to me being on downward spiral for the vast majority of the year and so I have not felt like (metaphorically) putting pen to paper.

October was marginally better and I managed a couple days in Scotland's mountain bike heaven - the 7 Stanes (@7Stanes) with a good friend and colleague which helped recover some of my confidence in my abilities.

Work has been insanely busy and this has prevented me making my usual midweek visits to the church in the town centre here and which I was beginning to miss quite keenly. Happily this situation seems to be resolving itself now and there is a sense of calm returning and this has enabled me to actually make a couple of services over the past two weeks. I actually feel quite excited about the prospect of Christmas and the Christmas story now and there is a sense of anticipation building that the season is coming towards us.

So maybe the failing year in terms of the amount of time left in the year is bringing to an end a failing year for me with the hope that seems to be being born with the approach of Christmas and a new hope for the next year.

Seasons moving on

The last time I wrote it was the start of spring and now we are standing on the threshold of Autumn.
In terms of it being a personally successful few months I would say it was not good.
The problem with my knee cast a shadow over most of the spring and summer as all my plans  for walking, climbing and biking went by the by. Needless to say this set me back quite badly and I am only now getting back to some level of fitness and with that a level off mental health that goes with it  for me. Lets just hope that the Autumn gets much better.

Its Spring

Well here we are in Lent and it feels awesome this year. Spring has also made an appearance to coincide with it and so although its a time for contemplation it feels like lefe renewed and reinvigorated already.
I managed a really good ride on my road bike this morning and could see amd hear spring all around me- glorious!

Time flying by

I can hardly believe that we re only 2 weeks away from the end of February,  this year is moving far too fast. The one thing that I welcome coming quickly is a weeks break from work although, with the floods in the south on England it is a bit unclear what we are going to do. We had planned to go to the west country but at the moment this is looking a bit doubtful. Still you never know.
If one good thing comes out of these floods it may be that it draws communities together again and out of the me first culture,  as people find that they need their neighbours and their neighbours need them.

Accidents Happen

Today I got to the office to find a number of work colleagues stood over anothe friend who was lying on the deck,  his bike having slipped on an icy corner and he fell off breaking his femur in the process. He was inly yards away from the end of 10 k journey.
Once I knew he was ok and the ambulance had taken him off to hospital I began to think about the moral in this story such as is and it basically came down to you can never be sure what trials life has in for you when you least expect it.

Another Wednesday!

Hump da,y but a good day today. Even though the weather here is changeable to say the very least this could not dampen the feeling that today was a really good day.
It just so happens that Wednesday is also a day when there is a lunchtime service at the church in the centre of our town which I have been attending (work permitting) over the past couple  of years. Every once in a while the minister presiding comes up with a really good sermon and today's was about family and for once had the congregation laughing in the aisles with some of the comments. It made me think quite a lot - yes my family can by trying at times and my extended family and friends too - but I would not be without them because they make me smile so much with some of the things they do.
It also made me think about the family that have passed and even though it is sad at times I can still smile at the memories of the good times we had as a family.
Thank you Lord for the pocketful of sunshine memories that brightened the rainy skies!

Where does your faith come from?

I suppose mine came originally from going to church and sunday school from a very young age at the request of my parents. Typically I rebelled against this in my late teens - being sure of myself and not wanting anything to do with something as staid.
During the intervening years certain aspects of the past came to the fore and my views on organised religion hardened as I could perceive more of the hurt that was done in the name of religion than the good that was being done.
I don't think I ever lost a feeling of spirituality, I just think I channeled it through other things like my love of the moors and mountains of this country and the feeling of oneness and unity that I got from being out there. There was always something there.
This is part of what allowed me to see God in this, that and a hymn, "How Great Thou Art", which speaks movingly of the mountains and forests and how God is in them all. This allowed me to believe again and to see God in them and to feel my faith again.
This is the version I heard that allowed my to feel this again, a wonderful hymn with a true sense of appeal to those of  us who love the great outdoors and all it means to us

Its the weekend!

Well we have been really busy so far doing loads of different things around the house. For once I find myself largely not stressed by this. I even found that I could be sympathetic to the sky engineer who came to install Sky+ only to get network errors.  He seemed upsrt about it whereas I was more relaxed about it which led him to comment that he wished more people were as understanding.

Calming and Spiritual Music

Wednesday at last , though time seems to have flown by this week. However I do feel quite upbeat this week so maybe that is the reason.

It was a nice calm church service at lunchtime and I was thinking about about what someone had said in a podcast where they described the homely and welcoming smell of a church. Something about the carpets or the books that generally made it feel at peace which is something I do get from being in church and a oneness with everything.

Because the podcast was on the Scotland Outdoors series I started looking for some Gaelic music to match my mood. I do like to hear Gaelic singing and as the Gaelic Psalm singers of Lewis were included I started listening to them. To my eternal sadness I only understand a few words of Gaelic but here is a link to a program about it.

http://youtu.be/w62TN2iCP1g

I also liked the song "An Innis Aigh" recorded on the Chieftains album - here is a link to the Youtube version

An Innis Aigh

And if you really get into it you can listen to the "Waulking Songs" sung by the people of Harris when they were "Waulking" the cloth which are really something that you can just listen to again and again

Try these

Waulking Songs

Wednesday calm

After a break of a number of months mainly due to work commitments I managed to make it to the Wednesday Eucharist at the parish church in town.
And I have to say I had forgotten what a moment of calm it can be during a busy week / life. It is nice to be able to take about an hout just to contemplate on a few things that have very little in common with the work I do.
This may sound selfish in some ways but having felt so down on and off for so long I will take any chance of a lift in my spirits.