So much for my resolve to write on here regularly. The thing is, I have been overtaken by this fantastic life I was planning on having! I can walk without pain, I love my work at the moment, my daughters are happy and I feel more fulfilled than I have in years.
I'll update soon! For now, just be glad for me! ;)
Saturday 11 December 2010
Are we there yet??
This is a re-post from one of my other blogs.
"We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey."
(Stephen Covey/Teilhard de Chardin).
I just found this quote. I like it, though the nit-picking part of me wants to say, "I think we're both, actually." But enough with the nit-picking! I like the way he has flagged up our spirituality.
Some readers will already be wondering if they need the sick-bucket. That word 'spirituality' pushes so many buttons, doesn't it? To be clear, I'm not talking about anything imposed on us. Systems, beliefs or practices - they are all ways to manage humanity's awareness of The Numinous. What I'm interested in is where that feeling comes from.
Just as most of my gay friends were aware of their orientation well before puberty, I knew early on that I was (for want of a better word) spiritual. My family never went to church yet when I was about 9 I became aware that I wanted to learn to pray. I decided that I needed candles and a crucifix to do this - I have no idea where that came from. So I bought a tiny standing crucifix, some very small candles, shut myself away in the attic and sat absorbing the peace (I was a very troubled little girl).
My first prayer was a shining example of Science meeting Faith. I wasn't quite sure whether you were meant to leave a gap for God to answer, and it would have seemed rude to talk through Him; so I left pauses just in case - until I realised He probably wasn't going to say anything just then, when my prayer took on a fluency and urgency as I needed to get out and spare myself more embarrassment. This was it:
"God..? God... Um... I feel a bit silly... ... ... I don't know how to pray... But then, you know that already... if you're there. (Brightening) And if you aren't there, then nobody's heard this! Help me believe in you. Amen."
I blew the candles out and scurried downstairs.
I'm not sure how long I continued going to my little Chapel, as I called it - I think I'd probably got the idea from one of the 'Katy' books although the rather Roman Catholic slant was all my own. (Ah no - I think it was Louisa Mae Alcott's tale of Amy praying for her ill sister). It was a place of peace for me, until one day presumably it wasn't, and I became a Lapsed Attican. I thought no more about it for a few years, until my friend asked me to join the Church Choir. This in turn exposed me to Sunday School and, having grandly told the Professor of Astrophysics who ran our class that at 12 I considered myself too intellectual to be a Christian, I eventually came to believe in the God of the Anglican Church, and had a very dramatic conversion at 14. I firmly believed that this was an answer to my prayer in the attic years before.
Now I'm going to cut a VERY long story short. It includes my realisation that there were other ways to be Christian (it was years before I realised I had become not just a Christian, but an Evangelical - and that possibly it didn't fit my spiritual personality), my involvement in the Charismatic movement, and twenty years as a Vicar's wife during which I broadcast, wrote articles for the Parish magazine and helped many people come to a faith in Jesus.
Fast forward past the divorce (amicable) and the realisation that there were other ways to be spiritual, and the excitement at escaping the confines of The Church and being able to choose what worked for me. Others who have trodden this path will know that it takes a long time to shake the conditioning, to stop feeling guilty for daring to question, and to look at what exactly was going on at conversion.
I can't shake the belief that there's Something More to life, however I no longer have any conviction that it's the God Christians have made in their own image. My very brief toe-dip into Neuro-Linguistic Programming led me to the conclusion that my dramatic conversion was indeed profoundly healing, but that it was explicable in various ways, only one of which 'proved' there was a God. I had always said, right from my arrogant Sunday School days, that God was my Working Hypothesis - that I would change my beliefs if I ever found the evidence pointed in another direction. At the time I said it, I never thought that it would, but the spirit of enquiry was genuine.
And over the years I became less and less convinced that the Church had The Truth. It wasn't just a case of seeing many good, altruistic people who worked tirelessly for the good of others with not a shred of religious faith. It was many things. I think in the end I could no longer go along with telling people that prayer 'worked' when I had to go through so many mental gymnastics to believe that.
"God ALWAYS answers, but sometimes it's 'No'."
"There is some deeper purpose to this that we don't know about."
"You need more faith." (To be fair, I always spoke out against that one).
"Prayer is a mystery."
That last one is true. But nobody ever addressed the uncomfortable truths, such as people in other religions also praying in tongues, or the fact that other faiths also prayed and ascribed answered prayer to a different god.
I set time aside to wrestle with the concept of prayer. My problem was that it was held up as something we ought to do, handing all the results over to Someone who Knew Better than us. At best it seemed feeble to spend time on something which might not get results whilst teaching people that it did. At worst, I began to see people all around me happily refusing to take responsibility for their lives:
"Well I've prayed about losing weight, but nothing's happened."
"I'm very unhappy with X but I know God wants me to stay."
"I'm waiting for God to give me the go-ahead to apply for another job."
etc, etc, etc...
Suddenly, just as I had had a blindingly dramatic conversion, I had another experience of seeing with an outsider's eyes how ridiculously naive it all seemed. A Deconversion, if you will.
Which as you can imagine, presented me with a problem. What had happened to me at 14? Well, at the time of my conversion, I was deep into self-hate. And in NLP terms, I connected to the strongest anchor imaginable. The Creator told me He loved me. If that was good enough for Him, it was good enough for me. The waves of relief and joy as I accepted myself were real enough - and they were profoundly linked with Church (I 'prayed the Prayer' in a Choir stall).
Now, I began to wonder if I hadn't given a lot of the credit to God when at least some of it ought to go to me. I had perhaps tapped into my own inner resources, but believed myself to be so powerless that I had to ascribe those resources to some external person.
Hmmm. This currently works for me - it's still a hypothesis, though. And it is hugely important to me that I don't diss others' beliefs. I quite accept that other people can believe in Christianity with full integrity - it's just that I can't any more.
As for all my Christian experiences, they weren't a bad thing in many ways - except that I had given away a lot of my own power. Not only to God, but also to the Church itself, which influenced my actions, thoughts, feelings and even (as clergy) where and how I lived. I became aware, too, that there had been a lot of 'choosing what's difficult because it's what God wants' in my life. Development or self-punishment? The jury is now out...
I still don't see religious faith as a bad thing - I doubt I'd even be here without it, I was so screwed-up as a child. But I do feel that I've been robbed of faith in myself and that's unforgivable. Wow - even typing that word was a challenge. I've been so forgiving down the years. Who would have thought it might be damaging?
Well it is. I'm currently working hard to get in touch with my anger. I know it's in there somewhere but there is a veneer of saccharine lovey-doveyness stopping me accessing it. I have a horrid suspicion, you see, that anger needs to be visible. It needs to be heard. And then it can be released. I don't know where mine is, or what it's eating away at, but I know I need to get to it and allow it to have its place in my emotional world. Lots of people lose touch with their anger, but in my case the Church buried it for me. I don't NOW see a contradiction between love and anger coexisting, but I was taught for years that they couldn't.
To get back to my original theme, I see life as a journey. Nothing original there - religions down the millennia have all used that metaphor. Spirituality is how we make that journey. I'm eclectic now - I take what works for me. I doubt I'll ever go back to Christianity in its pure form, although never say never. I do believe in the Numinous, in some kind of order to the Universe, and I'm fascinated by all the Quantum Physics stuff which seems to me to say that we're made of nothing but energy. That opens up all kinds of metaphysical possibilities...
"We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey."
(Stephen Covey/Teilhard de Chardin).
I just found this quote. I like it, though the nit-picking part of me wants to say, "I think we're both, actually." But enough with the nit-picking! I like the way he has flagged up our spirituality.
Some readers will already be wondering if they need the sick-bucket. That word 'spirituality' pushes so many buttons, doesn't it? To be clear, I'm not talking about anything imposed on us. Systems, beliefs or practices - they are all ways to manage humanity's awareness of The Numinous. What I'm interested in is where that feeling comes from.
Just as most of my gay friends were aware of their orientation well before puberty, I knew early on that I was (for want of a better word) spiritual. My family never went to church yet when I was about 9 I became aware that I wanted to learn to pray. I decided that I needed candles and a crucifix to do this - I have no idea where that came from. So I bought a tiny standing crucifix, some very small candles, shut myself away in the attic and sat absorbing the peace (I was a very troubled little girl).
My first prayer was a shining example of Science meeting Faith. I wasn't quite sure whether you were meant to leave a gap for God to answer, and it would have seemed rude to talk through Him; so I left pauses just in case - until I realised He probably wasn't going to say anything just then, when my prayer took on a fluency and urgency as I needed to get out and spare myself more embarrassment. This was it:
"God..? God... Um... I feel a bit silly... ... ... I don't know how to pray... But then, you know that already... if you're there. (Brightening) And if you aren't there, then nobody's heard this! Help me believe in you. Amen."
I blew the candles out and scurried downstairs.
I'm not sure how long I continued going to my little Chapel, as I called it - I think I'd probably got the idea from one of the 'Katy' books although the rather Roman Catholic slant was all my own. (Ah no - I think it was Louisa Mae Alcott's tale of Amy praying for her ill sister). It was a place of peace for me, until one day presumably it wasn't, and I became a Lapsed Attican. I thought no more about it for a few years, until my friend asked me to join the Church Choir. This in turn exposed me to Sunday School and, having grandly told the Professor of Astrophysics who ran our class that at 12 I considered myself too intellectual to be a Christian, I eventually came to believe in the God of the Anglican Church, and had a very dramatic conversion at 14. I firmly believed that this was an answer to my prayer in the attic years before.
Now I'm going to cut a VERY long story short. It includes my realisation that there were other ways to be Christian (it was years before I realised I had become not just a Christian, but an Evangelical - and that possibly it didn't fit my spiritual personality), my involvement in the Charismatic movement, and twenty years as a Vicar's wife during which I broadcast, wrote articles for the Parish magazine and helped many people come to a faith in Jesus.
Fast forward past the divorce (amicable) and the realisation that there were other ways to be spiritual, and the excitement at escaping the confines of The Church and being able to choose what worked for me. Others who have trodden this path will know that it takes a long time to shake the conditioning, to stop feeling guilty for daring to question, and to look at what exactly was going on at conversion.
I can't shake the belief that there's Something More to life, however I no longer have any conviction that it's the God Christians have made in their own image. My very brief toe-dip into Neuro-Linguistic Programming led me to the conclusion that my dramatic conversion was indeed profoundly healing, but that it was explicable in various ways, only one of which 'proved' there was a God. I had always said, right from my arrogant Sunday School days, that God was my Working Hypothesis - that I would change my beliefs if I ever found the evidence pointed in another direction. At the time I said it, I never thought that it would, but the spirit of enquiry was genuine.
And over the years I became less and less convinced that the Church had The Truth. It wasn't just a case of seeing many good, altruistic people who worked tirelessly for the good of others with not a shred of religious faith. It was many things. I think in the end I could no longer go along with telling people that prayer 'worked' when I had to go through so many mental gymnastics to believe that.
"God ALWAYS answers, but sometimes it's 'No'."
"There is some deeper purpose to this that we don't know about."
"You need more faith." (To be fair, I always spoke out against that one).
"Prayer is a mystery."
That last one is true. But nobody ever addressed the uncomfortable truths, such as people in other religions also praying in tongues, or the fact that other faiths also prayed and ascribed answered prayer to a different god.
I set time aside to wrestle with the concept of prayer. My problem was that it was held up as something we ought to do, handing all the results over to Someone who Knew Better than us. At best it seemed feeble to spend time on something which might not get results whilst teaching people that it did. At worst, I began to see people all around me happily refusing to take responsibility for their lives:
"Well I've prayed about losing weight, but nothing's happened."
"I'm very unhappy with X but I know God wants me to stay."
"I'm waiting for God to give me the go-ahead to apply for another job."
etc, etc, etc...
Suddenly, just as I had had a blindingly dramatic conversion, I had another experience of seeing with an outsider's eyes how ridiculously naive it all seemed. A Deconversion, if you will.
Which as you can imagine, presented me with a problem. What had happened to me at 14? Well, at the time of my conversion, I was deep into self-hate. And in NLP terms, I connected to the strongest anchor imaginable. The Creator told me He loved me. If that was good enough for Him, it was good enough for me. The waves of relief and joy as I accepted myself were real enough - and they were profoundly linked with Church (I 'prayed the Prayer' in a Choir stall).
Now, I began to wonder if I hadn't given a lot of the credit to God when at least some of it ought to go to me. I had perhaps tapped into my own inner resources, but believed myself to be so powerless that I had to ascribe those resources to some external person.
Hmmm. This currently works for me - it's still a hypothesis, though. And it is hugely important to me that I don't diss others' beliefs. I quite accept that other people can believe in Christianity with full integrity - it's just that I can't any more.
As for all my Christian experiences, they weren't a bad thing in many ways - except that I had given away a lot of my own power. Not only to God, but also to the Church itself, which influenced my actions, thoughts, feelings and even (as clergy) where and how I lived. I became aware, too, that there had been a lot of 'choosing what's difficult because it's what God wants' in my life. Development or self-punishment? The jury is now out...
I still don't see religious faith as a bad thing - I doubt I'd even be here without it, I was so screwed-up as a child. But I do feel that I've been robbed of faith in myself and that's unforgivable. Wow - even typing that word was a challenge. I've been so forgiving down the years. Who would have thought it might be damaging?
Well it is. I'm currently working hard to get in touch with my anger. I know it's in there somewhere but there is a veneer of saccharine lovey-doveyness stopping me accessing it. I have a horrid suspicion, you see, that anger needs to be visible. It needs to be heard. And then it can be released. I don't know where mine is, or what it's eating away at, but I know I need to get to it and allow it to have its place in my emotional world. Lots of people lose touch with their anger, but in my case the Church buried it for me. I don't NOW see a contradiction between love and anger coexisting, but I was taught for years that they couldn't.
To get back to my original theme, I see life as a journey. Nothing original there - religions down the millennia have all used that metaphor. Spirituality is how we make that journey. I'm eclectic now - I take what works for me. I doubt I'll ever go back to Christianity in its pure form, although never say never. I do believe in the Numinous, in some kind of order to the Universe, and I'm fascinated by all the Quantum Physics stuff which seems to me to say that we're made of nothing but energy. That opens up all kinds of metaphysical possibilities...
Saturday 6 November 2010
Things I've done in my fifties that I've never done before...
Taken a boat trip on an underground river... Been in the audience on Question Time... Stood in for Jack Straw on the pre-show panel whilst they did sound and camera checks... swum in an open-air pool in the Peaks... had great fun doing things during work hours which I couldn't have done if I'd stayed in my previous job... signed up for NaNoWriMo and begun my second novel... been to the local firework display and chatted on the free bus there to some very entertaining young men (high as kites and profane language, but rather likeable somehow).
The list goes on.
Just wanted to touch base!
The list goes on.
Just wanted to touch base!
Sunday 17 October 2010
Pause for thought...
I haven't written anything on here for a while, despite my best intentions.
There is a simple reason for this. It isn't that I have nothing to say, it's that I have too much. I know how difficult it is to read overly long posts, and yet once I start thinking and writing, it's as though floodgates have opened up; I have so many opinions, but I'm unsure that they merit any more space in the world than anybody else's.
Still, here I am again. And I can report that so far, fifty IS fantastic! This is partly because I am still, despite not yet having a regular income from Supply, so relieved to be out of my last job. It's hard to explain but I felt that it was sapping my very soul, and it was obviously right to leave because people keep telling me how 'good' I look - or 'how much younger' and so on.
And I do feel very, very happy. Sure, I have the occasional moment of panic when I wonder just how sensible it was to give up a highly-paid job in a recession - but the signs were there that if I'd stayed, I might have paid my bills more easily but I would certainly not have been in brilliant mental health. It was time for me to put my [lack of] money where my mouth was. I can honestly say that I have not ONCE regretted leaving. The weeks before I went were spent dodging the beginnings of what looked to be shaping into bullying. A much-needed reference was promised, and lied about, and possibly cost me a few weeks' work this term. No matter. The person involved left for the summer holidays fondly imagining that I believed she had done my reference - but I knew she hadn't, and got an alternative. I have no idea why this happened, or how long she had been harbouring such negative feelings towards me, but I am so relieved to be out of there!
So - since then, I have done some teaching, which I have loved. And I've relished every free day as an opportunity to make the most of the beautiful area where I live. I have taken so many photos that my daughters have nicknamed me the Mamarazzi. And I love it. Perhaps that is going to be a part of my work someday?
I've written poetry and a play, and had loads of ideas for stories. I have signed up to the 'NaNoWriMo' site, and that means that during November I have to write a 50,000 word novel. I know I shan't have too much difficulty producing the word count, it's just a matter of how it reads! But it looks fun, a challenge, and an opportunity to meet people.
One resolution I HAVE kept so far is to go for new things, not to let myself listen to that voice which whispers, "Hold back!" Not in a silly way, but if something strikes me as possibly fun or interesting, I'm doing it without making excuses not to. So far this has seen me take a spur-of-the-moment trip down an underground caver in the Peaks, drive to some lovely places for the day, go to a party in a pub where I knew nobody, and accept a couple of invitations which shyness would formerly have prevented me from doing.
So far, so fantastic! :)
P.S. Last time I put up photos I was able to drag them round, this time I can't seem to! I'll get round to it!
Tuesday 28 September 2010
My first week as a Supply teacher!
I wanted to tell you about something I think you will find very funny - I bought a cheap, smart skirt at Tesco's before going into the RC school so that I could make a good impression. It is a very nice grey tiny-herring-bone pattern skirt (almost looks plain). I arrived at school at 8.10 and sorted some things out, and then thoguht, "Ooh, best have a wee before the kids come in!"
So off I went, pulled up the skirt, had my wee - and then found coldn't get it back down over my hips! I grinned at first, and then began to panic as, with only about four minutes left, I realised I simply could NOT get it back down! I dunno how I got it up tbh! I quickly ran through the alternatives, dismissed the idea of someone having a spare skirt my size in school, and in any case thought it might not look too professional arriving at the Head's office with my skirt up round my waist and pleading for help! In the end, I decided I HAD to get my arse covered, and see what happened after - I'd just pretend the skirt had been ripped and I hadn't noticed, or something. I yanked it determinedly down, and felt/heard a loud rip. I went cold at the thought that it might be the flap at the back, preparing to give the kids a great view of my bottom all day - felt it, and it was fine. Then I remembered this had happened once before with a Tesco skirt, the lining had been too small and when I took the skirt off at the end of the day, it was ripped to shreds (but the skirt was wearable).
So - I went through the day, trying to wee as few times as possible, and when I got home that evening, gingerly removed the skirt (no problem with that, thank goodness!) only to discover - Nothing! I can't find a rip ANYwhere but I heard it. All I can think of is that the lining was anchored to the skirt somewhere and I'd pulled on that,. Perhaps I just haven't spotted something really obvious. But - once I knew it was ok - the mental image of me struggling in panic to appear fully-dressed on my first full day of Supply teaching was very funny.
So off I went, pulled up the skirt, had my wee - and then found coldn't get it back down over my hips! I grinned at first, and then began to panic as, with only about four minutes left, I realised I simply could NOT get it back down! I dunno how I got it up tbh! I quickly ran through the alternatives, dismissed the idea of someone having a spare skirt my size in school, and in any case thought it might not look too professional arriving at the Head's office with my skirt up round my waist and pleading for help! In the end, I decided I HAD to get my arse covered, and see what happened after - I'd just pretend the skirt had been ripped and I hadn't noticed, or something. I yanked it determinedly down, and felt/heard a loud rip. I went cold at the thought that it might be the flap at the back, preparing to give the kids a great view of my bottom all day - felt it, and it was fine. Then I remembered this had happened once before with a Tesco skirt, the lining had been too small and when I took the skirt off at the end of the day, it was ripped to shreds (but the skirt was wearable).
So - I went through the day, trying to wee as few times as possible, and when I got home that evening, gingerly removed the skirt (no problem with that, thank goodness!) only to discover - Nothing! I can't find a rip ANYwhere but I heard it. All I can think of is that the lining was anchored to the skirt somewhere and I'd pulled on that,. Perhaps I just haven't spotted something really obvious. But - once I knew it was ok - the mental image of me struggling in panic to appear fully-dressed on my first full day of Supply teaching was very funny.
Thursday 23 September 2010
On with the show!
After a fabulously glamorous, glitzy Fiftieth Birthday Party, I'm back in the classroom and loving it! :) On Wednesday I had a morning with several mongrel classes who were mixed around to accommodate a Choir rehearsal - PPA teacher was away so I stood in for her half day. I was ushered into the room and told (in front of the pupils) "We do Assertive Discipline here. These are all the children's names, and as soon as they do something wrong, we move them onto the cloud."
The class eyed me miserably, and I said I was sorry to disappoint them, but I didn't really like moving names so would they mind behaving instead? Which seemed to do the trick; we had a happy morning as I explained my total knowledge of the art of Kandinsky (which took about thirty seconds) and talked them through producing abstract art. It was VERY abstract, I'm afraid, but the Head didn't care - he was just glad I'd arrived I think.
Today I've been in a mixed Y4/5 class and I have had a brilliant day. The teacher had been called away suddenly earlier in the week and there was NO planning, which I discovered when I arrived, and I've winged through the day - including an impromptu PE lesson - great fun, and the children thought so too. Mid-afternoon, someone came in to ask if I could return tomorrow and when I said I could, the class began cheering, Very heartening - the sort of feedback I never had in my previous job. Tomorrow is a spelling test and I have no idea what the words are - hopefully somebody will know!
I had an email from the Supply agency saying well done, they'd had good feedback. It struck me that this was the first praise for work well done I've received in about - ooh, eight or nine years. I have to admit, it felt good.
In fact, I feel good. Full stop. I have not ONE regret about leaving. And getting back into the classroom feels like being on a wonderful run through the countryside.
Tonight I've been a PROPER teacher and have been planning till after ten, but I don't mind. Hopefully it will be like having been on crutches - just as I'll never take walking for granted again, so I shall remain grateful for being able to stand in a classroom and teach, nomatter how difficult it might be at times.
So - very happy, particularly as I have belatedly discovered the lido at Hathersage, and spent my last free afternoon swimming in the most beautiful surroundings... a warm sun on my back and the scent of the Peak District trees wafting over the water. Just wonderful! There were about twenty of us in the water, a real camaraderie to be had in the chats as we relaxed after every few lengths of the pool. It was one of those golden afternoons I store up and treasure for future use.
The class eyed me miserably, and I said I was sorry to disappoint them, but I didn't really like moving names so would they mind behaving instead? Which seemed to do the trick; we had a happy morning as I explained my total knowledge of the art of Kandinsky (which took about thirty seconds) and talked them through producing abstract art. It was VERY abstract, I'm afraid, but the Head didn't care - he was just glad I'd arrived I think.
Today I've been in a mixed Y4/5 class and I have had a brilliant day. The teacher had been called away suddenly earlier in the week and there was NO planning, which I discovered when I arrived, and I've winged through the day - including an impromptu PE lesson - great fun, and the children thought so too. Mid-afternoon, someone came in to ask if I could return tomorrow and when I said I could, the class began cheering, Very heartening - the sort of feedback I never had in my previous job. Tomorrow is a spelling test and I have no idea what the words are - hopefully somebody will know!
I had an email from the Supply agency saying well done, they'd had good feedback. It struck me that this was the first praise for work well done I've received in about - ooh, eight or nine years. I have to admit, it felt good.
In fact, I feel good. Full stop. I have not ONE regret about leaving. And getting back into the classroom feels like being on a wonderful run through the countryside.
Tonight I've been a PROPER teacher and have been planning till after ten, but I don't mind. Hopefully it will be like having been on crutches - just as I'll never take walking for granted again, so I shall remain grateful for being able to stand in a classroom and teach, nomatter how difficult it might be at times.
So - very happy, particularly as I have belatedly discovered the lido at Hathersage, and spent my last free afternoon swimming in the most beautiful surroundings... a warm sun on my back and the scent of the Peak District trees wafting over the water. Just wonderful! There were about twenty of us in the water, a real camaraderie to be had in the chats as we relaxed after every few lengths of the pool. It was one of those golden afternoons I store up and treasure for future use.
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