Friday 24 November 2023

Holy Moments

In Cross Chapel this morning for the final rehearsal for the lunchtime Advent Concert. Listening to Robert the tenor do a solo with lovely piano and flute playing. Spirit rises in me and I am weeping with joy and appreciation. It's a holy moment. I haven't earnt these moments (unless in a past life!) them seem to be part of how I am wired. Again and again I am blessed with such moments; they have changed my life for the better. I am grateful.

Sunday 15 October 2023

Richmal Crompton and I

Richmal Crompton who wrote the Just William books – who I was named after at it was on the radio when my mum was pregnant with me(!) – always wanted to be a serious novelist. She did have one such book published, which I have read and it is OK, but it was the William books that hit the spot. As a teenager I wanted to be a poet and fiction writer and have written off and on ever since but never with any great success – a few poems published and the odd short story mostly online. I have enjoyed at times reading my poems and getting immediate audience reactions but it did take it out of me so I stopped doing it. Anyway instead and almost accidentally I became an academic aged 43 and to get and keep a full time post I had to have stuff published in academic journals. At the time I got some great support from my PhD supervisor Prof John McLeod. And more recently, now no longer in post I just write on request, usually the odd book chapter and paper. A new voice has emerged from which is more personal, more autoethnographic and less referenced. Curiously this part off me feeds over into sermons and homilies when I am asked to take a Unitarian Service at Cross Street. 2 of my favourite recent papers, which I enjoy re-reading, were published by the extraordinary Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy are ‘On becoming (a) patient’ which draws on my 13 days in hospital with a broken leg in 2014 and ‘Hymns to the silence’ 2021 about my spiritual experiences and music. So, I have learnt that my conscious ambitions are not necessarily what happen to me but are general pointers. A writer Yes but probably not fiction. In the late 1980s I wanted to run some therapy groups in the USA. I sent about a dozen letters to contacts there but nothing happened – probably coals to Newcastle as it were. But I also wrote to an American contact in Japan. He replied that he was about to write to me to invite me over. I had 3 lovely visits over the next few years. So perhaps I can honour what I have done and the good ways I have been put to use; not about my personal ambition but about what is needed from me.

Thursday 20 July 2023

Lets grow

During Covid, Brexit, Ukraine War food supplies to the UK have been disrupted as has harvesting. Climate change is going to make all this worse. So we need to grow and harvest more locally and eat less meat. Ideally our government would set targets and support this. We can grow more in our back gardens and in pots and more allotments would be a good thing. Dig for survival! And we need a different better relationship with each other and with our planet. If you like a Buber I/Thou relationship. So there is a need for a healthy and inclusive spirituality to be part of this new life.

Monday 5 September 2022

Poem for Chris

Poem for Chris// I am sure the time/ Was just right/ For your soul// But you left us/ Way…. Way too soon// We still re-member you/ There is a Chris shaped/ Hole in our hearts// (Amen)

Tuesday 30 November 2021

Expresso Cafes

As a teenager growing up in the 1960s in a small town where everyone seemed to know me and when I was out and about on a Saturday night people would tell my parents all about it until I got to drive and hang out in the big city - Birmingham. I used to hang out in cafes in y home town on Saturday mornings with Chunky and Ziggy. These were safe places and usually had expresso coffee, juke boxes and pin ball machines. Imagine me hearing Pete Townsend of The Who singing My Generation – ‘Why don’t you all f-f-f-f fade away?’ Of course it was obvious he wanted to sing ‘Why don’t you all f*ck off?’ I needed this safe space to be in and to be with who I was. That has not changed for me. I still use cafes this way, alone or with safe friends. You know who you are. This was because I did not really feel that I belonged in my birth family. Not that unusual a feeling. I thought I might have been adopted but my mum told too many stories about me as a baby. I also did not like some aspects of what young men were supposed to be and still don’t. I wanted to be free to be me but without a fight just to sit with the realization. What is clear to me now is that I can choose how I present myself – and that can be real fun – but I can not choose who I am. It’s an ongoing process of discovery and coming to terms with being human and not an angel

Friday 24 September 2021

Hair today - poem

Went to my hairdressers a few days ago and noticed how thin my hair was. So: Hair Today/ I am developing a tonsure/ But I don't have the wisdom/ Of a monk or a holy man/ In fact/ I am no wiser/ Than the hairy young man/ I used to be.

Saturday 22 May 2021

The Boss meets Q once more

The Boss meets with Q once more - Hi Boss. - Hi Q. There was a silence that the Boss was unwilling to break. It just felt so good to be sitting quietly in the presence of Q. But he had come to Q with something on his mind, indeed on his body – he could feel the tension in his guts. - Oh Q, I am still wrestling with suffering. - Hmm. - Yeah…. Two old friends of mine are both getting slowly frailer. At least they have each other and their son does live nearby…. And I have a delightful neighbour who keeps getting strokes…. It seems so unfair for people, for anyone to suffer so but especially those I care about. And don’t get me started on my family and close friends. - Sounds very troubling. - It is… and I used to think we had more agency, more choices, more responsibility. And I guess we do but some of this just seems to come from nowhere which makes it even more scary… - Hmm. - Yeah. Hmmm… Yet I still cling to a benevolent Creator despite all of this. Which means I can’t understand suffering. - Maybe you need not so much to understand it as to find a way to make your peace with it. The Boss snorts. - Oh really! Q smiles. - Yes. - And how might I do that? - Well it is a process that might never end but I know that there are times when you are at peace with this. - I am? - Yes… when you are in a deep contemplative space or in the high of a mystical experience. - True but I only wish I could hang on to that…. Bring it back into my ordinary life. - I think you do! - Really? - Yes, really. Otherwise you would be weeping even more than you usually do…. And who knows what a state you would then be in! The Boss sighs and they both find themselves in a comfortable silence.