Sure thing - the Boss meets Q again

Sure thing – The Boss meets Q once again

- Hi Q
- Hi Boss …… What brings you here?
The Boss sighs.
- Ah…. You know I have so many people around me chronically ill…. Not just old people – which is bad enough … but younger ones… their suffering gests to me.
- Hmm.
- And this dos various things to me…. Causes me to despair… to weep…. To doubt about God and creation…
- Ahhh.
- Yes, Ahhh…. And I know that when I have a spiritual moment everything makes sense …. And I can mostly hang on to the memory of that sense making…
- But?
- But in that moment of despair I feel things are not fair; it’s not just and I struggle to live with it…
The Boss sighs deeply. Q feels put on the spot by what the Boss has shared with him. He knows that any trite simplistic response will be rejected angrily. But what can he say?
- I do hear you.
- Thanks.
- It’s a difficult place to be.
The Boss nods vigorously.
- I God with you in this?
- Hmm… I don’t know…. (The Boss weeps)…. Maybe so…
He weeps some more and lets out a painful sigh. Q stays with him and the Boss feels his presence and somehow is comforted.
- Q your presence with me allows God to be present to me… just like in holy places God can be present… Thank you.
Q nods in recognition.
- You’re welcome.
- Now what about that cup of tea you usually offer me?
Q smiles.
- Sure thing.

Climate Change

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Poem for people who are disappearing

I have 3 family and friends who have dementia. I wrote a couple of fragments six months apart and realised that fitted together and added some more today.

Poem for people who are disappearing

Mist over the canal
Fog in the brain
When will it clear?

You were a shadow of your former self
But occasionally
You showed
Flashes of the man you had been
Witty, compassionate and painfully honest.

I am getting used to having
The same conversation
Over and over again
I try and live in the moment
When I am with you.

A sense of peace - poem

A Sense of Peace



It’s not been the easiest of days

Maybe just another Lockdown day

Maybe feeling ‘under the weather

Maybe growing too old too soon



And yet….

And yet….



I have family around me

And in the late evening quiet time

A sense of peace envelops me

It was my Seventieth Year to Heaven - poem

It was my seventieth year to Heaven*

 
It was my seventieth year to Heaven
And I cycled along the Bridgewater Canal
Marvelling at the waters     and the colours    and the light
 
It was my seventieth year to Heaven
And a neighbour smiled at me
And I was lit up inside
 
It was my seventieth year to Heaven
And my wife was ill
So I responded to her needs tenderly
 
It was my seventieth year to Heaven
And I thought about my late family
Mother, father, sister and the brother I never knew
 
It was my seventieth year to Heaven
And I biked along the Pennine Trail
And saw the wonder of the woods and water
With the sun shining through the bare trees
 
It was my seventieth year to Heaven
And I was on Malta
Dreaming of my death and talking of funerals
 
It was my seventieth year to Heaven
And my days are numbered
But thankfully I don’t know the score
 
It was my seventieth year to Heaven
And I felt good to be alive.
  
*With apologies to Dylan Thomas.

The Boss meets Q once more

The Boss meets Q once more

 

- Hi Boss.

- Hi Q.

They shake hands and the Boss sits in his usual chair in Q’s study.

- So what brings you here today?

- Hmm… as you know I have two in-laws with Dementia and also two good mates with degenerative illnesses and my best friend needs major surgery….

- Hm.

- And I find it tough to be at peace with this ongoing chronic suffering by these people that I love. I feel so useless and it seems so unfair. (The Boss buries his head in his hands.)

- Hmm, sighs Q.

- And please, please don’t tell me ‘All things will be well.’….or that “enlightenment is to be found in suffering”.

- I wont… I promise.

- Good, but it does raise personal theological issues for me.

- Which are?

- Why does God design us this way and allow this suffering to continue? I can accept short term acute suffering and the pain of bereavement, but this chronic pain as people I love slowly deteriorate and lose it, well-

- Well?

- Well I have no choice but to be with them.

- Hmm.

- Don’t hmm me!

- OK (Q holds up his hands in submission and then goes on to say) You are choosing to stay in touch with your ill family members and friends.

- Of course… What else could I do?

- You could walk away. And some do.

- I can’t. Indeed I wont.

- You wont?

- No I bloody well will not!

- OK then… You are choosing to stay in contact.

- I am!

- That’s grand.

- It is?

- It is. Who knows what will come out of this.

- Oh.

- For any and everyone involved.

- Oh.

- Oh indeed.

They settle down into silence.

Rise! Rise!

Some years ago I felt that all the working relationships I was in - with clients, groups, supervisees, academic supervision of dissertations and theses - that I was doing the same thing. Loving (agape I reckon) people, being with them and seeing what arose in me in response to them and choosing whether and how to share this.

 
 I haven't worked as an individual therapist since 2001 when my sister died and I took time off temporarily. I always assumed that when I (kind of) retired that I would work as a therapist again. But no says the voice inside even though I feel guilty (I know, I know but...) But stuff is still happening with me around people I met. It is stunning what a smile can do. So this apparently not doing much maybe being more(?) and the impact of small things on us seems to be the thing to me.
 
And now an old friend of mine is suffering from a degenerative disease and more. After speaking on the phone to him I felt a bit useless afterwards and how unfair life and God is. Then in the silent section of the Unitarian Service this morning I was, as I often do, saying the Lord’s Prayer to myself. Suddenly another voice told me ‘Rise, Rise!’. I knew what it meant. Often in the silence my body stretches upwards and sometimes thoughts and energies turn up. On this occasion it was all clear to me: to be present to my friend despite feeling useless!