Category: Personal

Back

So I am back online. And I am no longer positive for Covid-19 and starting to return to my awkward self.

I have decided to start walking again – for exercise. Today I walked to the shops to buy chocolate! The irony!!!!

Emotionally I think I am improving. Being sick really did not suit me. But I think it gave me space to look at things. There is no need to be too legalistic about things: I am not recreating a medieval form of life but trying to borrow some of the insights for a modern age. And I do actually enjoy the life.

I have been praying the 15 oes in the afternoon. Very English! Also very personal.

I am reading Going to Church in Medieval England – so far all money and sex. I did read The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 and Marking the Hours – English People and their Prayers 1240–1570 both by Eamon Duffy. The second is a beautiful book full of illustrations. For me, the point is that what I assume is not always true when it is related to these topics. People did not pray in the past like people pray today.

Anyway …

Sick?

I am sick! I took a Covid test yesterday that was negative but today’s test was positive. Nothing much will change in my life – I remain alone, looking after myself, with only Fred for company.

Many people have offered help. I am so very thankful. I knew I would get sick sometime and I have been wondering how I might cope. While I have not been able to pray as much as I like, I am going okay.

Anyway …

update?

I thought I better add a quick post.

I have moved, I have settled in, I have no internet! That is about the situation. I am using the data on my phone. On a positive. I am not endlessly browsing the net to look up random facts. (Yes, I do that all the time.)

Beside that (and to be honest, it is the only problem I have) life is very nice. I pray, I read, I meditate. I have gone to two sessions of meditation a day that brings me almost to an hour a day. I have settled into a routine with food – no sugary drinks for two weeks.

I have a session of silence each day and two days of complete silence. I sit and listen to the birds on the roof and read a book. I am trying to be as environmentally sensitive as I can. Simplicity is maybe the third ‘S’ of solitary.

I guess the real victory (if there is such a thing) is that I am sleeping really well. I still wake in the night. But now I use that time to pray for people. Maybe it is God’s way to move me to pray for particular people?

I was prayed for by the parish last Sunday and then The Anchorage was blessed. It was very overwhelming. So I will have to write about it another day. It felt so right!

So a small update has become an essay! I am planning a podcast – Sunday Night @ The Anchorage. Anyway …

for you!

So go on, I beg you, with all speed. Look forward, not backward. See what you still lack, not what you have already; for that is the quickest way of getting and keeping humility. Your whole life now must be one of longing, if you are to achieve perfection. And this longing must be in the depths of your will, put there by God, with your con­sent. But a word of warning: he is a jealous lover, and will brook no rival; he will not work in your will if he has not sole charge; he does not ask for help, he asks for you.

Cloud of Unknowning

me?

Bill Goldberg

One of the issues I have struggled with most of my life is “who is this ‘me’?”. I tried (for many years) to take clues from culture, religion, and family. That just caused depression and anxiety. Here is one example:

The person on the right is Bill Goldberg – sometime NFL player, sometime WCW and WWE wrestler. I used to have a toy of him on my desk. It was the running joke that I have the complete opposite of me on my desk to inspire me – he is everything I am not. And I think I really brought into that view. I have always wanted to change “me” and this was the model that was placed before me. And, of course, a model I could never live up to!

It is very hard to escape the cultural and religious models forced on us from the outside. “This is what a man is!” I looked for models that I could live with but they are still “outside” of me. All of which is an escape from personal responsibility into the “crowd”. (Yes, an SK reference!) I am never ever going to look like Bill Goldberg – and neither do I really want to. I am always going to be awkward and a little (!!) on the weird side of life. I often really feel that weirdness – not in a good sense. Is that wrong? No! But I have to stop listening to the voices from outside that call it wrong. I have a choice to listen.

things

I wrote this a couple of days ago. I have not had the energy to publish – I have struggled to get out of bed for the last two days. Now I have a headache (again) and feel completely overwhelmed! I have done the things I need to for today but I have not said the Office. But I wanted to publish something today.

I was reflecting on this past week and what it has meant for me.

Sunday I preached. I would very much like to do more, but that is beyond my control. Somehow it is part of my vocation. How that will work out I am not sure?! In one sense it is the “future” for me which is not clear at the moment.

But there is always the past. I need to get control in the sense that I need to get it straight in my head and heart. I have had some battles to fight, which I hope are over, and so I can get back to the heartbreak. The past has this incredible pull on my life.

I feel overwhelmed. I have gone back a year. I feel stuck.

duty and relationship

Duty becomes duty by being referred to God, but in the duty itself I do not enter into relation to God.

Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), 59

I have been reading about the goings-on of Anglicanism. Yes, it is all about sex.

All the discussion has shown a fundamental problem with most modern theology: orthopraxy has replaced orthodoxy. To use SK’s language, we talk about duty while ignoring relationship. Some of the rhetoric suggests that I need to get to a place where God can love me. Religion has been transformed into a moral code.