Final post

After considering the matter for a long time, I now sadly acknowledge that the time has come to lay this blog down. I have not been well enough to blog here or on my Doodles blog since last December.

My faith is unshaken. It is so much a part of me that I could not imagine what my life would be like without it. But for now, my thoughts must remain private ones.

Thank you for reading and replying to my posts, and holding me in the Light. It means so much to me.

Here we go again

Sorry, gentle reader - no entry at all last week and not much this week. I'm a bit under the weather again, but I'm sure it will pass. I'll be back after Christmas.

Have a good holiday, however you celebrate!

Thankful

It's easy to forget to be thankful every day, and having a special day to say thanks - even if it isn't my own country's tradition - seems such a wonderful idea.

This year I am thankful for my faith, which permeates my whole life, even when I am feeling as though I am not being 'Quakerly'.

I am thankful for the new friends I have made, and for the old ones I have kept.

I am thankful, as always, for the roof over my head, the food on my table, the plumbing in my house, the health service, the electricity supply.....

I am thankful for my family, and that, despite the times when we thought we were going to lose family members, we are all still here again.

I am thankful for my broadening musical and literary taste, and that I have now discovered the beauty and strength of Tennyson, Arvo Part, Benjamin Britten, Philip Larkin and Henning Mankell.

I am thankful for the internet allowing me to socialise, worship, shop and stay independent in so many ways.

Happy - if belated - Thanksgiving.

Simple Living

This article was brought to my attention a couple of days ago. Journalist Liz Jones, of the UK Daily Mail, attempted a week on unemployment benefits:

http://tinyurl.com/ybvgkwt

I was delighted that she seemed to get so much from the experiment, but astonished by her lifestyle prior to it. I can't imagine having that much debt on top of a mortgage.

If the economic problems help people realise how much they are spending on inessentials, then it will have been a good thing.

Explaining God

I re-post this blog on three other websites, and from last week's entry I have had a number of responses, all asking me to clarify what I meant in my description of how I see God. I still don't have the mental energy for replying to each one individually, so I am putting my reply into this blog post, and I hope it will explain what I mean.

Firstly, I have for a long time been a kind of Unitarian. The way I understand the Trinity is that, just as I am simultaneously mother, daughter and friend, depending on who I am interacting with, so God is simultaneously Father, Son and Comforter in one Being.

I also believe that God is the ultimate Truth, beyond and above time. Whenever someone finds Truth in their hearts and minds, that Truth is of God. That person might say the Truth has been given to them by any one of a number of names - Yahweh, Allah, conscience, Inward Light, Jesus, Buddha, or a bolt from the blue - but Truth is Truth and is indivisible.

We all listen for Truth in our Meeting for Worship. In that context, I don't mind whether you say that you are listening to God, Mother Earth or the Flying Spaghetti Monster - your name for that Truth does not alter the fact of it being Truth.

Our names for whatever reveals the Truth to us are ultimately completely arbitrary, and depend on our upbringing, beliefs and world view. This is why I say that I believe everyone is listening to the Christian God - but if I were Jewish, I would probably believe that we are all ultimately listening to YHWH.

The point is, the names don't matter. They get in the way of our understanding that we are all listening to the one Truth. And this is why I say that Quaker worship is the best chance for peace between the world religions, and between believers and non-believers - because in silence, we are all listening to the same Truth, and we're not upsetting each other and causing rifts by using different names for that Truth.

This is the Truth as revealed to me, and I hope I have been faithful in my description of it.

Quaker Quest: Quaker Worship

I thought it might be interesting for people to see what I said at Quaker Quest about Quaker Worship.

We three speakers had to speak twice during the evening, once on Faith and once on Practice - broadly, what we believe and what we do.

In the Faith section, I started by saying I love Quaker worship because it is unique. I came to Quakers because of the worship - I used to be an Anglican, and then a Methodist, and in both denominations I used to feel that I was just settling into the time for silent prayer when it would be time to sing another hymn.

Another reason I appreciate the Quaker way of worship is that I am rabbiting on to God all day in my head, and it gives me a chance to sit and listen for a change! I also explained that I don't mind what other people say they're listening to - God, Yahweh, Allah, the Earth, their own conscience - as I believe those are all names for the same thing : Truth. I believe that Truth comes from the Christian God, and, if pushed, I would say that all other believers (and non-believers) are listening to Him/Her too - they just have other names for Him/Her.

Because we are all listening together, with no words to cause divisions, Quaker worship brings people together in a way that no other type of worship can. We may not agree on the words to use in worship, but we can all listen together in silence. It can also be a very healing time for people who have had bad experiences in more traditional churches.

Later I spoke to the idea of the practice of Quaker worship, although to be honest my ideas were pretty well entwined between the two parts! I explained that a Meeting for Worship is not like a dentist's waiting room, with a whole load of disparate people sat in silence - there is a palpable air of expectancy and of a gathered community. I always get very excited when there is ministry, as you never know what is going to be said, and whether it will be pertinent to you, or even to the whole Meeting. I also explained about online Meetings for Worship at Quaker Faith and Fellowship, which no one else in my Meeting has experienced; and about the smaller MfW held at my home every month, and how it has a different atmosphere, more intimate than the weekly MfW at the Meeting House.

We had a lot of questions about how you know when you are supposed to give ministry, why we don't discuss ministry when it is given, and how to settle into the silence and prepare our hearts and minds. The room was about three quarters current members/attenders and one quarter new visitors, with between 40 and 50 attending in total. Everyone said they had got something from it, no matter how long they had been a Quaker - we so rarely discuss the finer points of our beliefs that it was interesting to hear what different people actually thought.

If your Meeting is considering running a Quaker Quest, I strongly recommend it. There is a certain amount of work in setting the course up, but it benefits everyone who attends (including the speakers!) so much, that it is well worth it.

What a month!!

Well, October turned out to be the most stressful month I've had for ages. Unfortunately nice stress tires me out as much as nasty stress, so even the good stuff just made me more tired. It has been one of those times when everything that could happen, did happen - and I ended up not getting a proper afternoon rest till almost the end of the month (instead of almost every afternoon), which meant my night-time sleep was disturbed, too.

That meant I began having nightmares. Initially they were things like still being married to my alcoholic ex, but eventually they morphed into the standard scary monster nightmare. (One was that Daleks had invaded Earth - and banned knitting!!!! Terrifying....)

To give you an idea of what I mean, this all happened between October 1 and October 27:

1 theatre trip
1 trip to Quaker Quest - on the same day Richard was out all day,
travelling to Manchester and back to the funeral of one of his uni
housemates. It wasn't a good month for him, either.
4 visits from friends
3 visits from Richard's grandfather, who is very difficult to talk to
1 visit from both his grandparents
1 visit from Mum and my sister
3 visits from new carers
1 5-hour excursion to A&E at the eye hospital - I'm OK, so don't
worry, but apparently I'm starting to get cataracts :(
1 Quaker Meeting here
1 newsletter to write and send round, during which....
Our Broadband started falling over for hours at a time
1 failed delivery of necessary medical stuff
1 delivery of oxygen canisters
1 visit from Social Services
1 visit from a care company team leader
1 visit from the other care company's admin assistant (1.5 hours)
1 service of my oxygen machine
1 visit from the GP
2 visits from the District Nurse
1 blood test
1 flu jab (different day from the blood test)
1 visit from the Access Bus team to make sure my wheelchair will fit
on their minibus (then I can go shopping occasionally!)
....and then the clocks changed and completely mucked up my body clock, as usual....

As you see, it was a fun time :)

I'm not complaining one bit about the nice stuff - ever since I first got ill, I've had the view that nice stuff is worth recuperating from! But every day seemed to bring a fresh reason why I couldn't have a rest, and by the end of last weekend I was feeling quite desperate.

I'm happy to say that I have now had a week asleep, and I feel much better, so I hope to be a much better blogger again now.

Next week - what I actually said at Quaker Quest.

Excursions!

I'm not blogging this week, for a very nice reason. I am recovering from a trip to the theatre last week - my first time out of the house for over a year!

As always, I never do things by halves: this week I am speaking at our Quaker Quest evening on Quaker Worship. I was so pleased to be asked, and I am really looking forward to it. I know I will be shattered afterwards, so I'm announcing now that there will be no blog entry next week either.

Accounts of my expeditions will be forthcoming as soon as I can write them :)

Music

I listen to a lot of music, and I am quite eclectic in my tastes. I grew up on the Beatles and the Stones, followed by Bowie and Roxy Music. I have a good chunk of prog rock in my collection, especially the wonderful Pink Floyd. I think Jarvis Cocker (in and out of Pulp) is absolutely brilliant. I can sing along to most of the Great American Songbook, and I love all kinds of jazz. I can listen to anything, really, except rap, and drum & bass.

The thing I always stick with, however else my tastes may change, is baroque music - Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Telemann, Corelli.... As a household we didn't listen to much classical music. Mum is a big Bing Crosby fan, and Dad was tone deaf. I can still remember the joy that came over me when I discovered Bach, on a second-hand record - 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring' and 'Sheep May Safely Graze'.

Music can lift me whatever my mood. I recently heard this on BBC Radio 3, and wanted to share it with you. I hope it lifts you, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsQmIRS3gTc

Good news - of a kind

I am feeling huge relief today. I received the results of my application for renewal of my disability benefits, for which I had the recent medical.

Last time I was awarded high rate mobility and high rate care (the top awards) for a period of two years. This has been the norm for the past ten years. This time I received the same award - for an indefinite period of time.

I was shaking so much I could hardly show Richard the letter - no more renewal forms (30 pages of tricky questions), and no more worry!

When the euphoria wore off a bit, I saw the other side of this. Indefinite means they don't expect me to improve substantially from where I am now. As I have lost weight, I have noticed a difference in my ability to breathe, and to walk - but although they feel like big differences to me, in the overall picture of my health, they are fairly insignificant. I've been ill so long now that I have lost my yardstick of what being well feels like, and sometimes a good day feels like more of a step forward than it really is.

Certainly the expression of shock on the doctor's face, when he came in to do the medical, should have said volumes to me. His first words were, after all, 'Well, I really don't know why they've sent me out to you - you're clearly very unwell.'

See, inside my head, I still feel like me. I'm so used to making accommodations for the things I can no longer do that I kid myself I feel no different from when I was working, studying, swimming, singing and acting, back before I got ill. Then I get a reminder like this - and it hits a little hard.

I don't believe in giving in, and I won't let this get me down. But maybe I should take a little more care to make sure that I don't get any worse.

Show us humanity

There have been several programmes on BBC Radio recently about Tennyson, as this year is the 200th anniversary of his birth. In one, a modern soldier read part of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. He explained how well Tennyson captured the confusion of battle, and how he emphasised the bravery of the soldiers and the stupidity of the generals. The young man seemed very touched that someone outside the battle had cared enough about the disaster of it to commemorate it in verse. Paradoxically, it is only because of this poem that anyone apart from military historians knows the battle today.

Similarly, what would our images of World War I be without poets such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Edward Thomas? We would have the photographs, films and other archive materials, but nothing gets across the horror and the human tragedy of life in the trenches with the immediacy of the poetry.

Modern wars still seem to be about the ordinary soldiers taking the risks, while the generals stay well out of the firing line. We are sending children into battle, children who are fighting other children. We are bombarded with images and footage of war on TV, but we rarely hear from the individual soldiers about the horror of their daily experiences. The more film we see of explosions, and the less we hear from the combatants, the more modern warfare starts to resemble some huge video game.

We need people who remind everyone of the human cost and the barbarity of war. We need to be reminded that the little figures we see running on the news are individual people, with lives and thoughts - and emotions which are being crippled as much as their bodies are by the horror of their experiences.

A better day

Things have slowly improved over the week, and now I feel just about my old self again. Part of the problem was that, the previous Saturday, I was putting together my Meeting's newsletter, to a deadline, and had as usual left it to the last minute. My computer went on a go-slow, and what should have been a happy couple of hours, cutting and pasting and popping in bits of clip art, turned into a six-hour slog.

By the time I switched off the computer I literally could not see straight. Any noise was painful, and I had trouble moving. I slept very badly, and the next day, although my hearing and vision were more normal, I was still very foggy-brained. I announced that my CD player was broken, because it was too quiet and wouldn't respond to the volume control - and realized on the following day that I had been turning up the volume with the radio tuning knob.....

I had to have a medical at the end of the week to assess my ongoing eligibility for disability benefits, and this bad turn did at least remind me what a fragile hold I have over my health. (The medical went very smoothly, by the way, although it also reminded me how ill I am, which was not so good!)

The whole episode has left me with two abiding thoughts: don't leave all the newsletter stuff till the last moment; and don't overdo it. Not cheerful, perhaps, but very necessary.

I Don't Like Mondays....

My laptop has some major problems, plus all my symptoms have flared up. Not a good combination. Back next week, I hope.

Justice

It was the monthly Meeting for Worship in my home yesterday. After we had shaken hands at the close, we began discussing the case of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the 'Lockerbie bomber', who has just been returned to Libya on compassionate grounds due to his suffering from terminal cancer.

My F/friend Michelle brought the topic up. It has been much on her mind. She said the thing that kept coming back to her, among all the hurt and anger that his release had stirred up, was:

Revenge is not justice.

It is so difficult, when someone does something to harm us, to keep a clear head. Our immediate instinct is to hurt them in return. That may be a natural reaction, but we know that it is not the best outcome. We know, as Ghandi said, that 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.' Forgiveness is such a hard, hard thing to achieve sometimes, and there will be times when we feel we will never get there. But it is also healing, for the person harmed as much as, if not more than, the perpetrator.

We also need to remember that our forgiveness is not dependent on their remorse. We can forgive, and let go the hurt, and refuse to give them that power over us any more. Although I have never been involved in a tragedy such as Lockerbie, I can speak this truth from very unpleasant and dangerous personal experience.

Revenge does not heal; forgiveness does. I hope that all involved in this terrible tragedy will be able to find the truth of this for themselves, and not let it warp their whole lives.

Here we go again

Yet again the humidity has beaten me, and I am unable to blog properly this week. The lack of sleep (and presence of unpleasant and disturbing dreams) is really starting to annoy me now!

I'm used to having quite a narrow life, but having it narrowed even more is very irritating....

Further thoughts....

Last week's post generated some very interesting responses and reactions, not only online but in person.

One F/friend told me that she liked that fact that, when she comes to Meeting, she knows she is with people who have thought about their faith, and that our beliefs are not 'dumbed down', and I know just what she means. I think part of the reason for the current Quaker demographic is the tendency for people only to find us after some kind of spiritual search, after a lot of thought about what they believe, and how they wish to connect with the Light they seek. People don't attend Quaker Meetings because they are the nearest on a Sunday morning, or out of habit, or because it's 'the done thing', and they don't attend if they have never considered their own spirituality.

As a religious group, we do not tend to proselytise, and many members (including me) found that comforting when we first encountered the Society. I know that many members and attenders (again, including me) come from a negative experience of evangelical Christian experiences. So I am not suggesting we go out and tell every person in the world that Quakerism is the only true way - that would run completely counter to the idea of respecting the Light wherever it comes from, and would be totally inappropriate.

However, I believe strongly that Quakerism is an ideal way to foster ecumenism and interfaith dialogue - no matter what words we all use to speak of God, or whether we are atheists, we can still all listen together and seek the Light.

Another F/friend suggested that perhaps it might not matter if people do not have any kind of view on the existence or non-existence of a spiritual aspect to life, but I cannot bring myself to agree.

I can only say that I believe everyone should know about us, so that they can make an informed choice - and I believe that, if more people knew about us, our numbers would be rising and our Meetings growing.

Patrick Gale, a non-Quaker, summed up what I feel in his excellent novel about a Quaker family, Notes from an Exhibition:

"When they took her to her first Meeting for Worship, and she witnessed the potent combination of quiet contemplation with the lack of Christian paraphernalia she had long dismissed as nonsense, she found herself marvelling that Quakerism had not become the dominant world faith. It seemed so accessible, sane and adaptable."

Are UK Quakers elitist?

Something is bugging me, and has been doing so for a while now. Are we (especially in Britain) elitist? I don't mean intentionally - quite the reverse! - but from what I read, see and hear from other Friends, UK Quakers are predominantly white, middle-aged, middle-class, educated and left-wing. I include myself in this - that describes me absolutely. But Quakerism has so much to offer everyone, and I am concerned that we're not getting the message out beyond our own circle.

We have Quaker Quest, which is excellent, and I would not think to criticise it. My Meeting is running one in the autumn at which I have been invited to speak, so it would be pretty hypocritical of me to pull it down. But are all the people who attend just more people like us? Are we just continuing the status quo by inviting our friends and colleagues? By all means, invite them - but how do we reach out to other people who may not even be aware that we exist?

I live in a small ex-mining village, with on odd mix of inhabitants. We have University lecturers and post-graduate students, because it's only a short commute to Durham, and we have a group of artists and writers. Then the majority of people come from families who have lived here since the village was founded in the 1870s, people who would be described by themselves as working class, often poorly educated and with complex family trees, as families intermarry and relationships can sometimes be of quite a short duration. Their lives usually revolve around the family, their often unskilled jobs, football for the men and shopping for the women, and drinking on a weekend. They expect to be able to buy pirate DVDs and dodgy cigarettes from their neighbours, and to settle arguments with their fists - without involving the police. Green concerns, ethical consumerism, politics of any kind don't engage them at all.

This is difficult to write about without sounding condescending, and I really don't want to. I am describing my neighbours and my carers, and they are good people. But they know nothing about Quakers, and are usually quite turned off from religion in any form. For example, one of my carers describes any churchgoer as 'all Goddy-Goddy' - with a hastily added, 'Not like you, I don't mean!' I think it's meant as a compliment...

I talk about Quakerism and my faith when the opportunity arises, so at least the people who know me know a little about it. But how do we reach out and explain, to people who are so dismissive of any kind of personal faith, that our way is different? Are they even looking for another way? And would they stay if they came to a Meeting, or would they feel out of place and unwanted?

I have no answers to any of these questions. But they worry me very deeply, so I am putting them out here to see whether they worry you too.

Strangers in a strange land

I recently managed to find a copy of Jessamyn West's A Quaker Reader, a collection of all kinds of classic (and more unusual) Quaker texts by one of my favourite authors. I've been reading a lengthy extract from George Fox's Journal, and these few sentences struck me very forcibly:

...as I was walking upon the top of the bank there came several poor people, travellers, that I saw were in necessity; and they gave them nothing but said they were cheats. But when they were gone in to their breakfast it grieved me to see such hard-heartedness amongst professors [ie, believers] that I ran after the poor people a matter of a quarter of a mile and gave them some money.

I read this the day after putting together the newsletter for our Meeting, which included a very moving report from a Friend who works with asylum seekers in Sunderland, UK, and who is supported by our Meeting in this. Her report drew my attention to the release of a document prepared by the Quaker organisation, The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

"Still Destitute" brings attention to the appalling conditions experienced by people who have been denied asylum in the UK, often for entirely incorrect reasons, but who cannot be returned to their home countries. They are stranded here without the right to housing, education, work, benefits, healthcare or legal representation. Please read the report - it is shaming that such a situation should be allowed to build up in a country which is almost entirely populated by the offspring of asylum seekers, economic migrants and outsiders.

Regardless of what the far right may think, we are not a 'pure race'. If you are not of unmixed Celtic or Pictish blood, you are not an ethnic Briton. We are all mixtures of so many people - Angles, Saxons, Danes, Romans, Normans, Huguenot weavers, displaced persons from all over the world. Our very language shows that.

Asylum seekers are not 'other'. They are not 'cheats'. They are us. They are human. And they deserve to be treated as human.

We can't all work with asylum seekers, but we can all give financial support to those who do. And we can remind people who speak of them as though they were little more than animals that there, but for chance, go you, and me, and our families and friends.

Back soon

The last couple of weeks have been very stressful for a variety of reasons, so I'm taking this week off from blogging. I'll be back next Monday, though!

I love it when a plan comes together

I am a great believer in Romans 8:28 - "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God" (KJV - I usually use the NIV, but some phrases from my childhood with the KJV just stick!). Time and again I have found that apparently unpleasant things that I have experienced have helped me at a later date, or have enabled me to be empathetic (or even positively useful) to other people.

I've had two excellent examples of this today. My brother has been awarded a benefit he was entitled to, and one of my friends has had her benefits and level of assistance reassessed, in her favour. Both of them came to me for advice and support, and, because of all the pitfalls and problems I have experienced while trying to get the correct benefits and level of help for my disability, I was able to be really helpful to them, and enable them to get the help they need.

I've also been asked to speak on my experience of Quaker Worship at the Quaker Quest my Meeting is running this October. I may be speaking via webcam, but it's possible I may be able to get there in person :)

It's wonderful to find I can still help other people, when so much of my life is about having to accept help from others!

Also, many but not all of my readers will be aware of the One&Other project currently taking place in London. The artist Anthony Gormley is organising 100 days of public participation in art, by randomly selecting applicants for one-hour stints, 24 hours a day, on an empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. Between 5 and 6pm BST on July 16, the occupier of the plinth will be Rosemary Rimmer-Clay, a member of the QuakerQuaker networking site. She has written a poem about her participation here.