Emotional flurries amid study angst and home-sickness

It’s a month before Christmas, I’ve just had Thanksgiving, and yet I feel angry and irritable and a little low. I guess it’s probably a range of things, from lack of exercise, to the fact that I have so much work – maybe it’s just that I want to get home; all these Christmas songs are making my heart ache for home.

But a heart filled with joy is no impossible thing, and so I’m striving for that. Hoping to be suffused with the pleasure that comes from learning, expanding my mind and further understanding this miraculous life through the reading and the work I have to do (forgetting the stress and the despair so richly intertwined with fast approaching deadlines).  After all learning about humans and their relationship, perceptions and similarities with wolves is, in my opinion, really quite a rewarding and fascinating topic.

So here’s to perseverance, patience and peace – that pointed towards productiveness, I may avoid procrastination and find pleasure in the purity of honest studying.

I decided to collect three proverbs to present; for people to ponder, and to enrich them in mind and soul.

29/09/2013 - weekend in College Station

I'm writing this from Texas, College Station to be precise, and to be even more accurate sitting on my couch. It's been an overcast day, following the wettest night which was full of lightening. I've been achy all day after spending the day in the woods with Hart Hall Hellraisers Bonfire crew yesterday: pulling out trees up to 6 feet with my bare hands (or should I say BEARR!!) and then the rest having a role in swinging an axe against. That's not to mention hacking a machete through most of the underbrush and then moving the damn trees with the team when they're felled. Exhausting but endorphin-inducing, for an activity of cutting things down it's incredibly edifying.

Today has been a long, tired day. I went to church at St Mary's this morning in College Station town. Disliked how people were chattering through it, disliked the sermon and the smug pastor, disliked the songs which insinuated salvation for all Christians and pity, at best, for everyone else. Instead of grace and contentment I felt filled with an irritation that arose to anger at how proud it all seemed and how the sermon instead of upholding Jesus' teaching of the rich needing to give to the poor, instead talked about giving time to a shelter and giving to a local community; this concluding remark was followed by the collection baskets. The songs were excellently executed with an almost professional orchestra and choir but the moment which really made me feel at peace was during communion. At the moment I'd just made up my mind to not get up and thus to reject the proceedings and my commitment to the symbolism, a song from Taizé = "nothing can ever come between us and the love of God". And with that peace-inducing thought, and my events and thoughts on the last two days recorded I am finished with this blog.

A brush with grace - a night of lovely dreams

It was a gentle face, with a warmth like fire and the sensitivity of bird-song in the morning - the touch of grace which was a balm to my anxious mind.

"I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us." Anne Lamott

For the last few nights I have had really horrible dreams. I have woken up feeling down and miserable. I have found it difficult to get to sleep in the first place, and often tried a film or listening to music to distract me.

 The power of a good sleep, a really good beautiful sleep is the best tonic of restoration. I went to bed at greater peace, and decided not to look at my laptop once more after my bath. In its place, I switched on my bedside lamp and opened a Michael Morpurgo children's book, The Butterfly Lion - I slept like a happy child.  Last night, I had a series of powerful, lovely dreams. I woke up this morning feeling blissful, energized and I looked at things freshly. I cannot describe the sensation, other than it felt like the touch of grace.

I cannot explain it. It is impossible to capture in words. It was so much more colourful and beautiful, and I am already forgetting parts. But I wanted to share the experience. There were other cool dreams. In one dream I met my favourite musical artist, Macklemore, in a small gig. I was near the front so I got to shake his hand after one of his sets. I also was on holiday with my mum, and one of my old friends, in some seaside resort. But the encounter with a man in white, who took off his hat and looked at me gently, has instilled in me a renewed soul.

In this one, the most impressionable,  I came face to face with Pope Francis, as he was descending from a staircase. Any tension within me was immediately dispelled, and I was bathed in this sense of peace, love and kindness. I cannot say what it was, but there was a great, beautiful presence emanating and contained in this figure: He was close to God. Being a dream he changed form, and became someone I knew - a kindly soul from my Catholic community - nonetheless in the the logic of the dream he was still the Pope. Or another way of sharing this feeling is that the external face had changed; but it was the same person or presence in front of me. He talked and reassured me about something I have already forgotten; and then all I could see were these oval, large, old eyes: calm as the sea. It wasn't an actual event but it did marvels for my spirit, it was like a holiday.

Nothing like this has ever happened to me. Never are they in that much clarity and rarely do my dreams feel so real. I don't know why it happened, or why it has moved me as profoundly as it did. But I would like, no love, to believe it was the touch of grace coming to me at a moment when I had felt lonely, down and anxious for coming exams. Gotta love the little things in life: My heart is thankful, and content.



Psalm 23
Yahweh is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
In grassy meadows he lets me lie.

By tranquil streams he leads me
to restore my spirit.

He guides me in paths of saving justice
as befits his name.

Even were I to walk in a ravine as dark as death
I should fear no danger, for you are at my side.
Your staff and your crook are there to soothe me.

You prepare a table for me
under the eyes of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup brims over.

Kindness and faithful love pursue me every day of my life.
I make my home in the house of Yahweh
for all time to come.

A haiku written whilst gazing out of the library window

The green trees flutter

In the breeze outside - I wish

I had that freedom.

first ever post:- Why Am I Here?

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies...The man who never reads lives only one".  This timeless advice re-circulated from the great fantasy epic writer, George R R Martin, reminds me of St Augustine’s maxim “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” I am a great fan of both reading and travelling, although I have yet to travel much beyond Europe or read many of the texts considered ‘classics’. The ‘cannon’ of English Literature, I perceive as like a high shelf which I have yet to go to the effort of finding a stool for: not only is it caked in the dust of a previous time, but I naively assume it will always be there and thus it is not worth all that trouble it would require to take it down just right now. Nevertheless I do travel - I had an incredible journey hitch-hiking to Croatia last year - and I love to read, and now I am here to re-energise my pleasure of writing.

I have always liked to write. When I was younger under the encouragement of my Dad I would describe, usually in a satirical style, about the holidays we would go on as a family: Unfortunately the pages would be soaked with ink and enthusiasm in the first couple of days, but invariably were put to one side in favour of other curiosities after day 5 at the latest. Nonetheless I wrote in a fresh journal every time I went away for over 10 years until I was about 17, finding a delight in extended caricatures and the fusion of moaning, albeit humorously, and flamboyant imagery. When I was in my mid-teens  I practiced a secret joy of poetry. I liked the craftsmanship of creating images, and bringing out the dark, troubled emotions of my psyche at that time. I was always a little embarrassed and so my anthology of around 15 poems was sadly never published, or even shown to anyone except my parents and my sisters. And that brings my literary career – excluding necessary school and university assignments – to date. So here's hoping that I will keep this one going for the forseeable future. As an enjoyable past-time for me and for others, a repository of thoughts to be shared: for those I know; for strangers who find in my writing a vicarious reflection of themselves; and indeed also as a record which I hope will be illuminating for myself to look back on.

That which inspires my key enthusiasm is the striving towards peace. I believe that the reality of peace is something which, like a plant or a tree, requires the sunshine (external; one of joy) and a watchful diligence (internal; the work of the gardener, to prune and water). Love is best when shared, and the greatest love is arguably peace: serenity. My own journey has been inspired by people I know, momentous places I have visited and what I have read. In a short list I would ascribe the monastic community of Taizé and the spiritual writings of Eckhart Tolle, as well as the influence of my girlfriend in who I am as a mind and soul today. I am very aware that I have a long way to go.

Finding peace for me starts with the realization of how wondrous it is to be alive right now. A way to cultivate this appreciation of life itself, and also any gifts which are given is developed through looking at death. We could die at any point. This may seem overly dramatic and poignant but in fact, seeing this does put things in perspective.

For me the marvel of life, and the power of love, are the tangible ways to perceive God in the world; to recognize our own divine spark, that of those around us and an appreciation of the subtle enlivening power. A quiet stillness is at the heart of how I think I should live. This is what galvanizes me: a desire to be a happier, fuller, complete human being.

The brilliance of the written word is that it is both intensely private and also creates a union with another mind, another imagination: a bridge to another world; or even, a fresh way of looking at our own life. I love to share the beautiful thoughts which have been articulated in such a way as to be truthful and universal. Reading is an incomparable medium, which can stimulate the growth of the mind and soul. Here are some quotes which inspire me no matter how many times I have seen them before: 

• Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)

• We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves. (ascribed to the Buddha)

• With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. (William Wordsworth)

• Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.  (Ralph Waldo Emerson)