The Eye of the Silence

There has been a period of silence on the blog, which this post obviously is breaking.  There will be another period of silence following it.  The silence up until recently is related to falling behind due to the choice to move, change jobs, and visit our parents in the good ole US of A, each right after the other, none of which I have blogged about yet.  However recently the continued silence has come for another reason.  We have found the holy grail: my beloved has landed a permanent job.  WOOHOO! And now in the midst of moving again and changing jobs again, the blog will have to return to silence for a while.  Don’t worry, there will be the usual amount of painstaking detail from the other side.

Photo Credits

The Holy Grail:  intriguing.com

Stone Circles and Sacredness

Stone circles have always fascinated me. The sheer amount of work needed to make them considering the resources and technology available at the time and the mystery surrounding their purpose combined with their alignments with various solar and lunar positions make them for me monuments to wonder itself. The complexity and intricacy of Stonehenge is a large part of its character as the interpretive image (below) from a 2014 Guardian article illustrates. But Castlerigg’s charm is in its comparative simplicity: from the lack of horizontal lintels to the flattening of the northeast arch of the ‘circle’ which makes it more of an oval, this monument gives me that feeling of amateur love and enthusiasm that sometimes can fade in professional execution. It’s like the difference between an under-21s and Premiere-football match, or like the difference between a International and Major-League baseball game. There is just something fresh and hopeful about Castlerigg. The stunning peaks circling the monument add to the sense that anything that humankind will ever build on that spot will be but a shadow of what nature has already provided. Somehow, the oval with its asymmetrical sanctuary stones are just right.

Yet again I am nattering on about our recent visit to the Lakes. There was a sign at the entrance stating that a famous poet whose name I have forgotten visiting Castlerigg some years ago was disappointed by the large number of tourists. The large crowds apparently spoiled the atmosphere of sacredness for which he was searching. I have to agree. Although the numbers present on the day of our visit could hardly be said to constitute a crowd, their tendency to drape themselves and their belongings on the ancient stones carried with it a certain lack of awe and consideration for what might be experienced at this monument that I too felt disappointed. I remember having a similar feeling at Stonehenge. Although, there, ropes keep visitors from the sacrilege of indifference, I did have this urge to wait until everyone was gone and sneak a cheeky glance at Mother Gaia from that most intimate of perspectives: from inside the circle!

Reading about the disappointment of the poet from another time got me to thinking about sacredness. I suspect now that sacredness is not something we find when we go to mystical locations. It is something that we bring with us. We make these spaces by our behaviour in them. And because sacredness requires vulnerability, it only comes out when it is quiet. It reminds me of something that acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton said about deer drinking from a creek: the noise of the creek blocks its ability to make surveillance, so…it drinks and then it moves back into a quiet place so it can continue to be secure. Because sacredness will not come out in the noise of other’s indifference, it can only come out when we are alone or if the others with us are also bringing the vulnerability of sacredness into the space as well. No matter how thirsty we are for sacredness, just like Hempton’s deer, it will not linger in an unsafe space.

Photo Credits

Looking up at Castelrigg: My beloved
Me at Castelrigg: My beloved
Stonehenge Interpretation: The Guardian

Fruit, bread, cheese, and a tarn

One of my favourite moments of our recent holiday was after we got our tickets to Hill Top House and we had a four hour wait as they used timed entry to control the crowds. The ramble in the intervening time suggested by the woman at the entrance turned out THE recommendation of the trip. A 30-minute uphill walk through field and fauna led us to not just a physical location, but seemingly another realm, large expanses of quiet and peace: just landscape, sky, and an occasional farm animal.

We had packed a lunch earlier that day, stopping at a local bakery for a freshly baked loaf and a local grocer for some fresh fruit and a small hunk of cheese. When we purchased these flavourful morsels, we did not know that we would be eating them nestled by a quiet tarn. Occasional aquatic fowl landing and taking off. An occasional cloud slow dancing past the warm sun. The vibrant, many hues of green from the regular rain that this habitat normally receives, glistening in the bright rare long stretches of sunshine. That sit was serenity manifest. The vastness of the space and the intensity and freshness of the flavours in our lunch mixed to form an intoxicating multidimensional atmosphere.

And I love the word tarn. It reminds me of crosswords with my Putney workmates, which we did standing in the basement workshop. II’s one of those short English words that hints at something that I might have known had I been born and raised in an earlier time that was intimate with nature instead of the urban and virtual one with which I have become familiar.

Photo Credits

Moss Eccles Tarn:  My beloved

Did it rain?

Recently my beloved and I went on a short holiday to the Lake District or as it is referred to here: The Lakes. It is interesting how experience and perception shapes our reality. Only a few hours drive from our home on the edge of the beautiful Yorkshire Dales, The Lakes immediately transported us to a much more distant, even more beautiful world. We happened to go during the hottest part of the sunniest summer we have ever experienced since coming to England nine years ago. The rolling hills and lakes, the sudden change in landscape, and the alien weather transported us to another country and time, perhaps Vermont or upstate New York from summers of our pasts. The uniqueness of our experience became particularly apparent in the weeks following. The first time someone responded ‘Did it rain?’ to my mentioning our first visit to The Lakes, I did not take notice. But it wasn’t long until that I learned that this response is apparently obligatory when someone tells you that s/he went to The Lakes.

We stayed in a sleepy town called Grange-over-Sands, which is located on a bay. At high tide, it looks like any other bay, but at low tide, it becomes a giant shoal. It looks like someone drained the bay.  There is a lovely, quiet promenade that we walked several times.  But even that is not the typical Lakes experience as we discovered driving through Windmere on our way to Hill Top (Beatrix Potter’s Farm), where we saw Disney-sized crowds and traffic. The people in Windmere were in The Lakes too, but they were a world away from us. We drove through serene passes, no other vehicles in sight, that were once or twice interrupted for just a few seconds by a Tornado fighter jet zigzagging aerial acrobatics and then it was gone. One of the passes that we drove through, the road was called ‘The Struggle’: my little Corsa’s 56 horses concurred. We drove down this country lane that was literally a few centimetres wider than the car and then we found ourselves face to face with a tractor coming toward us. The lane got even skinnier in reverse so that we could turn into a side lane to let the tractor pass. Each day, the 14 hours of August Cumbrian daylight, unencumbered by the blanket of clouds typically present in the northern skies, brought a level of warmth and light to the air reminiscent of the Mediterranean.

In one sense, this holiday was the shortest and the closest to home that we have ever been on. But in another, we have never travelled so far. Or, put another way: No, it didn’t rain.

Photo Credits

Panorama: Wikipedia
Beatrix at Hill Top: The Telegraph
My Beloved at hillTop: Me
Me: My Beloved

Did it rain?

Recently my beloved and I went on a short holiday to the Lake District or as it is referred to here: The Lakes. It is interesting how experience and perception shapes our reality. Only a few hours drive from our home on the edge of the beautiful Yorkshire Dales, The Lakes immediately transported us to a much more distant, even more beautiful world. We happened to go during the hottest part of the sunniest summer we have ever experienced since coming to England nine years ago. The rolling hills and lakes, the sudden change landscape, and the weather transported us to another country and time, perhaps Vermont or upstate New York from summers of our pasts. The uniqueness of our experience became particularly apparent in the weeks following. The first time someone responded ‘Did it rain?’ to my mentioning our first visit to The Lakes, I did not take notice. But it wasn’t long until that I learned that this respond is apparently obligatory when someone tells you that s/he went to The Lakes.

We stayed in a sleepy town called Grange-over-Sands, which is located on a bay. At high tide, it looks like any other bay, but at low tide, it becomes a giant shoal, like someone drained the bay.  There is a lovely, quiet promenade that we walked several times.  But even that is not the typical Lakes experience as we discovered driving through Windmere on our way to Hill Top (Beatrix Potter’s Farm), where we saw Disney-sized crowds and traffic. Those people were in The Lakes too, but they were a world away from us. We drove through serene passes, no other vehicles in sight, that were once or twice interrupted for just a few seconds by a Tornado fighter jet zigzagging aerial acrobatics and then it was gone. One of the passes that we drove through, the road was called ‘The Struggle’: my little Corsa’s 56 horses concurred. We drove down this country lane that was literally a few centimetres wider than the car and then we found ourselves face to face with a tractor coming toward us. The lane got even skinnier in reverse so that we could turn into a side lane to let the tractor pass. Each day, the 14 hours of August Cumbrian daylight, unencumbered by the clouds typically present in the northern skies, brought a level of warmth and light to the air reminiscent of the Mediterranean.

In one sense, this holiday was the shortest and the closest to home that we have ever been on. But in another, we have never travelled so far. Or, put another way: No, it didn’t rain.

Photo Credits

Panorama: Wikipedia
Beatrix at Hill Top: The Telegraph
My Beloved at hillTop: Me
Me: My Beloved

Reculver Towers

I recently found myself with an unexpected opportunity to visit Reculver Towers. The current towers are a rebuild from the 1800s as a navigation aid. At the time, the existing church was rebuilt on safer ground as coastal erosion encroached. The church that was relocated was built in the 1100’s.  There is also a partly exposed foundation for an Anglo-Saxon church from the 600s in the middle of the newer one. All of this is in the middle of a former Roman fort from the 200s. Parts of the wall are still there. Sanctified ground fading into the sea.


Photo Credits:

Towers from a distance: Panoramio

Drawing of fort: English Heritage

Towers in 1913: shelf3d.com

The democracy-liability complex: Brexit & Iraq explained with a chocolate cake analogy

The inability or unwillingness to reason critically plays into a host of problems. We all are too quick to accept blindly information that matches our own desired narratives. It is so easy to see when our adversaries fall into this trap, but it is so very difficult for us to consider that we ourselves are also prone to this behaviour. I was thinking recently of a report that Cornwall voted to leave the European Union, then made an immediate appeal for replacing the millions of pounds of subsidies it gets from the EU. At a casual glance, the vote with the aid plea seems a paradox. But actually, this case is classic thinking within the confines of a distorted narrative. The Leave campaign did make vague references to placing EU funding lost, if it were in the UK’s interest to do so. There was also the now infamous Boris battlebus (pictured below) with the quite explicit statement ‘We send the EU £350 million a week, let’s fund our NHS instead. Vote Leave’ Of course, those two positions are incongruous. Journalists, reluctant to screen such contradictions from their content by way of informed analysis, favour instead entertaining us with spectacle by regurgitating viewpoints sourced from those with a particular agenda. The result is, of course, confusion. Despite wide spread coverage of the rather specific and explicit battlebus promise that seems to suggest that all of the EU withdrawal ‘spoils’ will go to the National Health Service, in the confusion, a Cornwall voter can convince him/herself that the NHS promise is hyperbole, while the Cornwall funding prospect is reasonable: surely Westminster cares more about Cornwall than Brussels. Likewise, another Leave voter, maybe completely unaware of the EU Cornwall subsidies, may have had the NHS in mind with his or her vote. Wide scale dissemination of conflicting information lead to people with conflicting goals to voting in favour of the same outcome.

It’s not just Brexit. This kind of thing happens all too frequently. It is so easy to construct flimsy narratives based on selectively chosen, unchallenged details, especially in an environment where journalists amplify rather than screen out distortions. The recent release of the Chilcot report echoes a similar theme. Blair’s opponents and critics are falling all over themselves to level blame. I am no fan of Blair. In my own biased narrative, he destroyed the Labour party. The criticism being levied against Blair in the report is largely along the lines of failing to scrutinise information that supported his favoured narrative: why didn’t he question the accuracy of the intelligence. Well, why would he? That intelligence was exactly what he was looking for. If I am in the mood for chocolate cake and on my way to the fridge, my brother walks up to me, hands me a slice of chocolate cake, and says there’s more in the fridge, I don’t then go and check the fridge, I just take the slice and eat it. If I am unwilling to scrutinise my own biased narratives, why would someone with a rival view? This is why I think it is so important for us as voters to scrutinise our own narratives if we want effective democracy. The question we should all be asking ourselves is not 'why did Blair do what he did', but 'am I doing the exact same thing right now'.

I have a supposition. If you find yourself blaming everything on the one politician you love to hate over and over again, or if find yourself labelling those with rival views with monolithic slurs like lunatic, racist, fascist, commie, (insert a slur of your choice here), then you might be a victim of selectively chosen and unchallenged information. We cannot rely on so-called journalists. They are much more interested in appealing to an audience demographic than in educating. If we keep pointing fingers at the ‘other’, we will continually find ourselves in these predicaments over and over again. I think the answer is for each of us ourselves to look at all information with a discerning eye. The next time a slice of cake magically materialises exactly when I needed it, out of nowhere, maybe I shouldn’t just gobble it down. Instead, maybe, just maybe (brace yourself now), I should scratch the surface myself so that I can draw my own conclusion rather than allow myself to be emotionally manipulated by stories intended to amplify my own distorted narrative. This is not something that the ‘other’ has to do. We have to do it.

Photo Credits

Cake: ode to goodness

Battlebus: Harrogate Informer

Blair: BBC

How to be in a slim minority

I voted Remain and lost along with 48% of my fellow citizens. Whilst it may appear tempting to block the outcome of democracy by calling for more referenda until we get the outcome we want or to interfere with the will of the electorate in Parliament or to tear our country apart so that portions can remain, such approaches are ultimately toxic and erode the integrity of our democracy. If Leave had lost and they were attempting to undermine the result in the ways many of us are now engaged in, we would be crying foul and telling them that they had their referendum and now it’s over. This double standard is ugly, wrong, and mean-spirited. It is also tempting to get caught up in the drama of the individuals grasping at political power in the aftermath of this upheaval. Whilst entertaining, boiling this event down to battles for party leadership is a wasteful distraction that we can ill afford.

As unpleasant as this event is for those of us who voted to remain, it is an opportunity. Rather than putting our energy into obstructing democracy and creating division, we should instead embrace the opportunity to build a better UK that we all want. We can start by holding the next government accountable to the promises repeatedly touted to us by the Leave campaign including replacing funding lost from our leaving the EU and a significant increase in funding to the NHS. We all heard the promises, and every presenter that repeatedly broadcast Leave's promises of millions of pounds for ‘other priorities like the NHS’ on their shows to the millions of voters is responsible for making sure those promises are kept.

Now it is our responsibility to hold our presenters and our government accountable to what we were told. There is much to be done: our MPs need to be focused on bills in Parliament that will codify and specify in detail how the promises we all heard will be delivered. We do not have time for power squabbles. If we all work together, maybe we can actually accomplish these things and more. We certainly are not going to accomplish anything with obstruction and division, however emotionally satisfying.

Photo Credits

Brexit Result: Wikipedia

Battle Bus: DailyMail via ixquick

Dual citizenship: like being a son and a husband

It is interesting how a view changes with perspective. As a citizen of the country I was born in, I imagined that taking on a new citizenship was like remarrying. But after living here for a while as a dual citizen, I understand it differently. It is much more like having a mother and having a wife. Born of one and living with the other, the love for my wife in no way diminishes the love for my mother. I love them both, not in the same way, not one more than another, but both very intensely and loyally.

Photo Credits

Sky from city street: ugallery

Sky from aeroplane: pexels

Exciting Times Episode 15

So this last week has been full of excitement. On Monday night whilst getting ready for bed, we heard two very load eerie noises that we could not figure out from where they had come. We learned the next morning that they were sonic booms from Royal Air Force Typhoons that were scrambled to collect an unresponsive off-course commercial jet that had flown over Leeds. Normally there are restrictions about breaking the sound barrier, but in this situation that restriction was disregarded. It was the first time I have ever heard a sonic boom from an aircraft. It was something.

Next, we surpassed 15 years of marriage, which was exciting in an entirely different way.

Finally, my wife, on Thursday, got to vote in her first UK election since becoming a citizen. As the UK is a member of the European Union (until June anyway), I had been allowed to vote in local and regional elections, which is what this was. But this is the first time we got to vote together in the UK. Very exciting times indeed.

Photo Credits

RAF Typhoon: WikiMedia

Leeds Ward Map 2015: Wikipedia

Smell: the most spiritual of the senses

Today i am cooking my grandmother’s chicken and rice recipe. It has many fragrant ingredients including saffron, cinnamon, paprika, lemon, garlic, vinegar, and onion, and when preparing it, the essence of my loving and gracious grandmother fills the house. In my mind’s eye, I can see her inviting smile and her kind and gentle eyes.

Smell can drift in and out of our presence, like it is there and it is not there at the same time. It can drift around unseen, unheard, untouched, and it can mysteriously appear out of nowhere. And there is so much weight of presence attached to it that it can bring other invisible, silent, intangible apparitions into existence.

Photo Credits

Smoke: ajbarickman.com

Peak District

The Peak District is about an hour's drive away. We spent our Saturday driving around looking at the beautiful views. We stopped at Haddon Hall, a wonderful medieval house. It was the first time I have experienced a fire going in the hall that I could walk right up to. The kitchen is the most intact I have had the pleasure of visiting. The sun was out for most of the morning and afternoon. We got to spend a little time just doing nothing. It was a nice change.

Photo Credits:

My beloved

Three Hours Devotion, Yorkminster

So I went to the Three Hour Devotion at Yorkminster again this year. I took the precaution of reviewing some of my previous Good Friday musings for fear of repeating myself. Too late though, it seems I already have.

But I guess that is the point of a calendar. Each year sort of repeats. It is a cycle, and again, I am drawn to the image of the suffering deity on Good Friday. I have noted before that our culture urges us to turn our gaze away from suffering: out of sight and out of mind. Everything is in terms of victory and battling to victory. And for those who do not achieve that victory or make every effort toward it, well… we eye them suspiciously as flawed and perhaps even undeserving. I am certainly not berating those who overcome. My heart glows when I witness someone overcoming adversity. It is wholly inspiring. But the human condition is not victory after victory. There are dark days of defeat. And sometimes, we must yield to horrible and unfair situations. Not because it is right… but because we do not always get what we would hope for.

I remember the story of one of the victims of the Boston marathon bombing returning to dance after months of gruesome rehab, a truly inspiring story. But I work in this field. I know that for every person like that dancer, there are ten that will not return to a previous activity. The nature of some injuries or illnesses means that some will just never have the opportunity. But that makes them no less human. And it is not helpful to hold them and their loved ones to an impossible standard. We are not all getting the Hollywood ending.

We are addicted to victory and the illusion that everything can be defeated with enough willpower and devotion. We battle everything. But the truth is, victory is not inevitable. Real humans lose battles; real humans are in situations that require accepting adversity. We all must tread the adversity path at some point.

On the first Good Friday between 12 and 3, for the family and followers of Jesus, there was no battling to victory. A person nailed to a cross in Roman-occupied Judea meant only one thing. Even Jesus saw no way out at the time according to his words from the cross. There was no battling to victory on the first Good Friday. There was no Easter Sunday on that Friday afternoon. That day was all just horrible and horrific.

To me, that moment is the most authentically human one in the whole of the gospel story. There are injuries and diseases we cannot fix. It is part of the human condition. And even when we can fix them, it is not instantaneous paradise for the survivor. There is still loss and adversity. For me, the true potential of Christianity is not invoking a set of rigid inflexible laws and beliefs to bring about paradise. It is the recognition that true compassion, true gratitude can only exist after admitting that we cannot always achieve victory… and our humanity continues regardless of whatever losses or adversity we face.

Photo Credit

The Darkness Wall: Internet Monk

Holiday

I don’t know if it’s a healthcare thing or every business does this, but in every job I have had in England (all five of them), the fiscal year ended on 31 March, which means we all have to use up our annual leave (that’s ‘vacation days’ in American) by 31 March or lose them. Even though I have lived here the better part of a decade, I still have not quite adjusted to the amount of leave we get. My leave, not counting bank holidays (that’s ‘federal holidays’ in American) has ranged between 22 and 27 days per year, which straddles 5 weeks. Whenever I tell my colleagues how much holiday (that’s ‘vacation’ in American) we get in the United States, they give me such a look of dismay. I get the distinct feeling they don’t believe me.  Prior to my occupational therapy days, I was an environmental engineer.  Nearly all of those jobs offered 10 days. I also remember getting 5 days somewhere, and I distinctly remember negotiating for 15 days when being offered jobs at the last two engineering firms before I switched careers. But now that I am writing this, I wonder if the English are also not adjusted to the leave they get because it seems we are always in the same boat: using up our days left in March before we lose them.


Photo Credits

Old English Beach Holiday: HQWallBase.pw

Orlando Vacation: Entertainment.ie

Before there are words to put to it

When you see an empty thought bubble, what do you imagine is in it.  I don't know about you, but I usually imagine words in there.  But, I am coming to a slow realisation that I do not think in language. Maybe none of us do, but for whatever reason, I have come to believe that it takes longer for me to move my thoughts into language than most other people. Actually, it is more than that. I actually do not naturally move my thoughts into language at all. Into doing or action is the first place I put my thought. It isn’t that I do not appreciate language or that I have not learned to operate language. I love a good speech or story or film. I love to play with language and to put words into unexpected contexts. But on a deeper level, language is just an overlay, and a rather limited and imperfect one, where much is lost in translation.

I get frustrated sometimes when people misuse language or fail to consider that language and thought are not synonymous. And as I reflect on why I change what I am doing in response to something my wife says before I verbally respond, sometimes even neglecting to verbally respond, not out of malice or out of some need to obscure my motive but simply because the language overlay does not engage: my mind just skips over the unimportant bit. Or when in the midst of a sequence of activities and suddenly asked for verbal information, my first reaction is to perform to the request rather than to construct a linguistic response. Not because I do not want to explain it in words. It is just that when I go for that kind of explanation, if find myself stopping to sift through language. But in fraction of a second I can just perform it, and it is done, no sifting.

As an experienced COTA, it is tempting to throw a label on this, perhaps even hypothesise a language deficit. But that would ignore that I have been like this all my life as well as my high level of academic and public-speaking performance.  Whatever this is does not reach the level of a deficit. My language is not broken, it just is not my first stop. I wonder if my infatuation with ballet and my subsequent passion for occupational therapy were somewhat informed by this predilection toward nonlinguistic thinking. I still can recall how overwhelmingly satisfying it was to express myself with life force through my entire body in the medium of dance. Just using my lips and larynx to express myself is so pale in comparison, like the the difference between the memory of a dream and the actual full experience of sentient reality. And although many therapists dare not to venture past physical and linguistic aspects of occupation, I would argue that the most beneficial outcomes in occupational therapy come from those difficult to quantify levels of acceptance and confidence in the latest and different incarnation of ourselves following a devastating event that comes from being and doing way before there are words to put to it. It has always been these aspects of the therapeutic process that I have found most intriguing.

Photo Credits

Thought Bubble: The Jason Jack
European Day of Language: Istanbul'daki Yunanistan

Now and then

So there is this street name plate that I used to walk past on the way to church. Something about it calls me. I had this idea that I had loads of photographs of it because each time I walked past it I wanted to take a picture of it. It is not unique in anyway. It looks every other one in Leeds. Maybe it is because it isn’t on the side of a building or wall, like most others are. But it turns out, I had only taken the one photograph, left. It was about a year ago; a layer of frost was covering everything.



At least three months ago now ...I know because I’ve since changed my route to church in favour of a muddier path through a little copse of trees and so I am no longer tempted by the allure of the street name plate... it was lying on the grass as I walked
past. Based on the condition of the nearby wooden barrier meant to keep us off the grass and the debris, I surmised that it was knocked over by a Saturday night motorist gone astray. On my return trip, thinking of what it is like to be driving in an unfamiliar area without confirmation of what street I am turning into or driving past, I decided to balance it against its former posts. I drove past it yesterday and against the odds, it is still balanced there. So today I walked past for the sole purpose of clicking a second, less alluring, and likely final photograph: no frost this time.