Look here

when I read the task today I thought it would be lovely - what nicer than to NOTICE THE WORLD, go for a walk and notice what's round you ?

On a day like today almost anything. It is so flaming cold that I have been out to Asda and noticed the things on the shelves, and at home noticing the dust. I did go out in the garden to put the bin out and noticed that the poor crocuses, peeping out quite beautifully last week, are frozen like the rest of us.

So I'm not going for a walk. I'm huddled up in front of the computer wearing two pairs of warm pyjamas and a pair of bedsocks. I might go and look for a hat soon as well. I shall try though, for the rest of the day to LOOK properly at what I am doing. To concentrate on one screen at a time. To appreciate the pictures and messages on the computer and maybe even remove the dust and look at the wood and carpet and fabric underneath with a fresh and appreciative eye.

Finally the one that I've been waiting for

since Ash Wednesday. The opportunity to say "thank you".

There are a lot of people I'd like to say thank you to, and I've been trying to do it fairly regularly, although I'm sure there are lots of opportunities I've missed too.

For now, I'll say thank you to Leah for some very sound advice , thank you to Kathryn for some beautiful meditations both here and in song posted on facebook, thank you to all who make me smile, whether intentionally or otherwise, and an especially warm thank you to Cynthia who took the time to share good memories of my daughter's childhood with her and with me, just because she wanted to.

curiouser and curiouser

Today I am supposed to be more curious and to wonder about something.

I am guessing that this doesn't mean read some paper about the same old subject and bang on with the same old ideas, which leaves me with a first question for the day, what should I wonder about?

I will have to keep my eyes and ears open during the day and find something. 

Tell Laura I Love Her

Well no, I'm going to have to tell her myself.

Today's task "Be More Loving, Tell Someone You Love Them"

 With some people this is easy. Our neighbours and their children are extremely generous people who share their home, their food and their words of love very easily. It is great to be told by 9 year old E that she loves you, and to say it back. It doesn't even come off badly when the words and sentiment are shared with their teenage son.

As a more middle-class, stiff upper-lip Brit, I find the words more difficult, especially with my family.

It is easy for the sentiment to be stilted, qualified, especially if the person I'm speaking to is diffident, unsure, troubled in his/herself.

So my challenge is to say the words to my immediate family. I'll start with the easiest who may be physically furthest away but is no problem, and work through the list. If I manage it with my parents I'll really will have achieved something.

Oh yes, but Laura, I do love you, and Irish I love you too,

Turn that light off!

Today's task is to help save the planet. Apparently I can do that by turning an unused light off. In a house where I am only one of the occupants and we tend to keep to separate rooms this could involve turning the light off on someone else, which doesn't seem fitting for Lent. Therefore I've decided to make things much more difficult for myself and turn an otherwise VERY used computer off. Instead of debating finer points and getting into interesting discussions I'm going to sit and knit that cat toy in the room where my husband already has the light on. Wish the poor man luck.

Be creative - make something

The task today is to create something. At work where my job is to look after the accounts and data "making something" might be thought a little suspect. In campaigning all I am tempted to do today is to make a stink with MP for not attending the Parliamentary Debate on Eating Disorders. Therefore I am going to try to make a hat. I have the wool. I have the needles. I'm not sure about the patience and the time.

Plant a seed

The weather has made the challenge to "Enjoy your world, plant a seed, a very easy task, although I think it probably is too early to plant the sunflower seeds that I bought especially.

I have scattered some wildflower seeds in the "meadow", and planted a bean in a jar in the hope that I will be able to see the roots grow. As an addition I've "planted" the new spider plants growing from my two old ones hoping to be able to use them as bedding plants in the summer. 

Everything's News

Today's LLLL instruction is to watch the news and to choose one item to pray about.

Awkward as ever I don't tend to watch the news but rather to read it on-line, but with a little modification I've managed the task. My e-mail provider attempted to help by telling me what the most popular news items of the day were:

•	Fashion Priest's take on Leather Heaven and Hell
•	Hague to announce human rights programme
•	What's Clegg's Valentine's Day surprise for wife?

• Jobless man sets fire to himself in France
• CCTV shows driver hit woman and toddler

Hmmm, the BBC tell me that a sportsman's private life and the content of "beef" burgers are more likely to be of interest and certainly items one and three on the list above remind me that, in the words of Martyn Joseph, Every Thing's News However I was moved to look at item four, not so much by the sensationalist headline as by the quiet presence of someone with, perhaps, a similar lifestyle. "The Tramp" often sleeps in the car port at work. He was there again tonight. He must be freezing cold but he probably doesn't notice because of the drugs he takes. His task, each night, is to be alive in the morning. I pray that he will be.

Be More Giving

is today's challenge for Lent

The suggestion is to give money and I have. It was easy. I texted a number and hey presto (after three attempts at getting the message right) I'd done it. Whew! I can forget about LLLL for another day...

Well of course not. It isn't a licence to give away a little cash and then forget it.

I had to think carefully as to where to give the money. I am not 100% happy about my choice. There are other charities doing the same work  who I could have sponsored just as easily if I'd done exactly what I was told in the LLLL booklet and saved up my spare pennies for the whole of Lent.  As with any donation there is the worry about how much will go on administration (funny how, as a pen pusher in the NHS I don't whinge too much about money meant for bedpans going to data clerks instead) whether it will be money well spent. I have friends who have used the helplines being sponsored who have got very bad advice. There is genuine debate about what constitutes the best or even adequate advice to give, among specialists and parents and even parliamentarians.

I think however that, on balance, I have done more good than harm with my deed and after yesterday's soul searching am certainly not going to waste any more time in saying sorry if I haven't. Instead I have tried to be more giving in praise as well as in money and continue my daily attempt to say thank you to someone. This was made very much easier by, of all people, a Tory MP.  Thank you Mr Newmark for your moving speech in the House of Commons today. I didn't agree with it all. I don't think it will save the world. I do think though that it has done CONSIDERABLY more good than harm.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry

I've been prompted to say sorry by the Archbishop of York, so if it goes wrong I can blame him can't I?

You see, for Lent, I've decided once again not to give up chocolate or "The Archers" or go to a serious discussion group where a worthy tome is discussed, but to follow the Love Life Live Lent booklet and do something straightforward and positive each day.

Today's task is to say sorry to someone.

Easy enough and quite fitting for Ash Wednesday you'd think. But I've struggled with it. What should I say sorry for? And HOW?

Together with some friends I have been reading some literature which, among other things, encourages mothers to say sorry to their children. Fair enough you'd think if the things they have done have harmed their children and who hasn't inadvertently done the wrong thing by their child once or twice (a day)? I know that I've done things that have upset my children, and more often failed to do things that might have upset them at the time but would have been good for them in the end. But in doing these foolish things I have NOT caused one of them to become unwell any more than I have caused the other one to become a nurse. I'm not that powerful. To think so would, in the words of the CBT-ites be "personalisation" . If I thought it and wallowed it that would be "expressed emotion" which is also a "bad thing" although the number of people who do wallow has probably been exaggerated. Even if well intentioned and justified, if the apology doesn't come with remedial action then it can be hollow and distressing for the recipient. Badly done, blanket apologies whether you have caused the problem or not can just anger and cause real distress, or at the very least make you look an utter pratt.

So, in the absence of any opportunity to make a grovelling apology, I have said sorry to someone whose birthday I missed, along with belated good wishes, and sorry to someone who I didn't make a cup of tea for and given them a fresh cup.

MUCH more enlightening for me was working out how to acknowledge and accept an apology from someone vulnerable who said sorry to me for a very small mistake. That was when I was able to think and work out how I could start to Love Life and Live Lent.

I wonder if tomorrow's task is to say thank you to someone?

Adiaphora

One of the many advantages of blitzing my blog and starting again is that I can repeat old posts with the same names and much of the same content without being caught out! This post will quite possibly be followed by a few on Anosognosia or Alexithymia or other things beginning with "A" but the A word for today is Adiaphora.

I haven't actually seen the word repeated by others recently but it surely can't be long before someone somewhere on the Church blogs and facebook pages I seem to have been drafted into uses it. It probably won't be used on the other sites that I frequent but the concept has been discussed over and over again. What are the REAL issues and what are the less important matters that it is safe to disagree on?

On the Church sites the big news is the appointment of the Archbishop. Of course it hasn't actually happened yet, but in advance there is much discussion as to whether Bishop Justin will be "a good thing" and uphold what is necessary and banish what is harmful. There doesn't seem to be much consensus on what "a good thing" would look like. Is the "churchmanship" of the new Archbishop worrying? Does that matter, or are the gripping social issues that have, according to the press, ripped the CofE apart  (something that the growing Thursday congregations locally, be they of toddlers at 10:15 or the elderly at 11am, seem blissfully unaware of as they contend with the far more weighty issue of whether the verger is around to open the doors to the toilet) much more important. 

It's much the same with commentary on the American election . It's not really that friends are divided on whether the result was a good one. I have few friends who aren't thoroughly relieved that Obama won, but the reasons for that relief and the concerns that the results won't bring perfection are different in each case.

The news item that has struck me most in the last two days isn't about either the Presidency or the Archbishop. It is from the business section of the papers and matters to me because it concerns the NHS and its future, or lack of it. By next year two of the three areas of the local NHS that I care most deeply about could be being run by this private, for profit, company. Maybe the third could too although I really can't imagine any business wanting it. It matters to me, I think it should matter to all citizens that our NHS is being b*&&ered about in the biggest reorganisation since its inception and the politicians aren't even having to say they are sorry for their lies.

BUT while all these issues are worth debating, worth working on, worth prayer and reflection and sweat and tears they are, in the end, adiaphora, yes even the fate of the NHS. Life and death will still go on and we will still try to make sense of it . I rather suspect that the Established Church will plod on, like a mighty tortoise, for centuries to come, but if it doesn't God will still find a way of reaching people without a Church just as he does despite one now. Physicians, whether un-mercenary or not will continue to try to heal our bodies and minds however their payment is organised. Research will go on, politicians will be elected or forgotten. All will be well even if it doesn't look like it at the time.

Secret Sins and Much Much Worse

I recently reserved two books from our local library. The first was a light detective novel of no great merit. It was called "Secret Sins". The second was a venerable (28 year old) text book on an important medical subject that I openly campaign about. Naturally on leaving the library and walking onto the main street I tucked the textbook behind the novel and while I have read the novel in public and openly at home, except when reading it in total privacy I have kept the text book pretty well hidden ever since.

I have though, managed to get through quite a bit of it. It is Jill Welbourne and Joan Purgold's "The Eating Sickness" and it IS incredibly dated. There is no talk of randomised controlled trials or evidence based medicine. The clinicians have learned by observation and discussion and hope to impart their wisdom through the medium of case studies and persuasive argument rather than via graphs and statistics. They thought Marjorie and Violet were reasonable names to give their case study patients. The Family Therapy they talk of as being so trumpeted as cure all (which they doubt) was probably Minuchin's rather than Dare and Eisler's. I personally think that, particularly in the case of the anxiety they observe in families, they may have confused correlation with causation and their assertion that this is a disease of the middle classes is frankly laughable. I know that many of my friends would be cross at the slow pace of treatment and recovery suggested and the emphasis on restoring mood before restoring weight and physical health.

All these drawbacks aside, I'm going to be able to finish reading the book in time to get it back to the library without a fine and without getting caught. Unlike other publications it's not going to be found in my bed as I fall asleep  in boredom over chapter 8 AGAIN and I'm not going to be found trying to throw it out of the window in a fit of guilt and shame. All in all I like it. It's readable and despite the addition of poetry the prose isn't as flowery as some. The case vignettes are realistic and detailed rather than simplistic and infuriating and the the observation of both patients and their families is done with care, consideration and compassion. Oh, and yes, this quote resonates in buckets with me "more than one attempt to help families by formal, albeit legitimate, means have in our experience been ineffective because of the additional unhappiness caused in the anorexic by her guilt at being the cause of further trauma for her parents".

I will of course be tucking it firmly behind the detective novel when I go back to the library. I may even deposit them both through the "returns" letter box under cover of darkness.

Place your bets

Learned writers, and journalists for the more serious papers, and those within the Church for whom it really matters, will have been swotting over the writings, musing over the sayings and/or praying hard about who will become the next Archbishop of Canterbury. A few of them may have placed a bet, along with those who like to put a bet on most things.

 I planted sunflowers.

 I have to say that ALL the "Archbishop" sunflowers, i.e. those specifically named after known candidates for the office, got eaten by slugs. Many of those named after other clerics did too, but a faithful few survived. Of those, only one has a name in common with any of the in any way serious candidate for the office. So, based on the preferences of the slugs in my garden, and the fact that on reading I find that we have some things in common, including an incontinent cat, my candidate for AB of C is the Bishop of Bradford.

Starting Again

Technical problems led me to close this blog for a while. I decided to take it as an opportunity to cover my traces and delete the old posts. This has allowed me to open the blog up and make it public again. Mind you, since there's now nothing in it that may be slightly pointless. Oh well. It's a new clean slate. Like my newest little tree it may eventually grow into something