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.

Horsforth

It has been about a year and a half so its high time to say something about the neighbourhood. Our experience of living in the North has some similarities with living in suburban Providence. This feeling probably comes from the relative lack of public transport as compared to Greater London, which has made us more reliant on our car.

So the area is called Horsforth, named for the convenient horse crossing on the River Aire. It has been around since at least 1086 because it is in the Domesday Book. One of the most distinct features of our block of flats is that it surrounds ruins of a old corn mill that was built in the late 1700’s (so yeah, not exactly old). Just down the hill, only a short walk away is our local pub, The Bridge. They are good about having local guest ales, and not always IPAs, which I consider a plus. They have decent pies but I am partial to the giant Yorkshire pudding filled with mash and gravy (so yes, I have reconciled with the savoury crust).

On most Sundays, I walk 20 minutes up the hill to St Margarets, which was built in the late 1800s (again not very old). And on my way I pass through the centre of the old village: Town Street. Krista Tippet and her various guests usually accompany me by headphone on my walks to and from church. Although I walk on Sundays, in true commuter fashion, any trips to Town street in the week are by car.

Oh, how could I almost forget the fantastic Chinese takeaway across the street, for shame.

Yorkshire people are very friendly. It is the kind of place that people will just strike up a conversation with you. And the best thing is it sounds like this!

Photo Credits

Cornmill Fold: Leodis.net

The Bridge: Geolocation.ws

St Margaret's: Yorkshirelife.co.uk

Town Street: Geolocation.ws

Jade Unicorn: Yelp.co.uk

'On Being' and my spiritual rebirth

Several years ago, it may have been in 2010, my best friend sent me a link to a conversation between John O'Donohue and Krista Tippett. It is an amazing conversation. The essence of it reminded me so much of conversations I used to have with this very same friend as it revived me, replenished me, reenergised me.

So I listened to more of Tippett's work, and it has been a wonderful experience. She approaches her work with an integrity and reverence that is so missing from the devoid-of-any-deliberation double speak that usually passes for journalism. But her real gift is to draw out echoes of a world I wish I lived in.

I recently had the joy of relistening to that conversation between O'Donohue and Tippett. For me, it is magical. And since that time, through my regular exposure to TIppett and her guests, I have been able to reclaim the infinite vastness in words like spirit, soul, and god again.

Prior to Tippett, I allowed these ideas to be hijacked by those who would hang overly simplistic definitions on them. Many of these hijackers are very loud and claim that their own very small, superficial, rigid and confining views are equivalent to god's. I used to believe the hijackers. But now, thanks to Tippett, I have the courage not only to realise that I can use my gifts of wit and reason to expose the hijackers as delusional people trying to wield power over others through the institution of religion but also to reclaim the language they have taken from me.

We cannot allow the vastness of the potential for terms like god, soul, and spirit to be commandeered by the small minded who wish to wield power over others. To do so is to miss an opportunity to grow into the huge potential that is humanity. In the past, I was willing to cede these terms. In the past, I was uncomfortable in claiming these terms for fear of being lumped in with the power hungry people who tend to abuse them and wield them as weapons.

People who want to hold power over others conveniently fit god, spirit, and soul into inflexible models that can be defined within the limits of language and intellect. To allow these concepts to be larger than language and intellect would be to yield control. Control is all the power hungry are interested in: Follow only their rules. Believe only their interpretation. Take this sentence literally, but not that other sentence. This writing is god, and that writing is not. Taking liberties with something from O'Donohue's conversation: I can wholeheartedly reject the delusional people who think their ideas are equivalent to god's without discarding the wealth of human wisdom contained in our religious traditions.

When religion becomes about separating 'us' from 'them', it becomes a bane on our humanity. When religion refuses to acknowledge verifiable fact, it becomes a perversion of our humanity. For me, Tippett's conversations search for the beauty of the human spirit often with religious wisdom as a conduit, which is ultimately more the point, I think. These conversations resonate with something that I feel like I already know deep inside me or maybe it is something that is deep in the social fabric that lies at the foundations of humanity. I cannot put words to it. Language is too confining to describe it. And this notion is one that exists within our religious traditions, a notion that is useful still, perhaps even more now than ever before.

Photo Credits (of stuff I saw on the way to other stuff)

Shrub:  Me on the way back from church (Horsforth March 2015)

Hyde Park Treetops:  Me on way back from work (Leeds March 2015)

Ice on windscreen:  Me before scraping (Horsforth January 2015)

Skipton

So the other weekend, my beloved and I went to Skipton Castle, less than an hours drive from home.  Usually when I'm at a medieval castle, all that's there is the outer walls, but this one has lots of the interior rooms still intact.  There are a few slight modifications here and there, but you can definitely get a feel for the medieval logistics. Look at me saying "Usually when I'm at a medieval castle." Well, I never tire of seeing old stuff. That is Anglo-Norman French on top of the gatehouse (left).  Well, OK, it's not Roman, but medieval is still kind of oldish.

I also saw my first Anchorhold in Skipton. They have one in the Holy Trinity Church just outside the castle. Anchorites were bricked into their cells so that they can "lead a Eucharist-focused life". This is my first so I couldn't say what they usually have, but according to Wikipedia (the font of all digital human knowledge) there was often a funeral like ritual as the person entered the cell, and the Anchorite received the Eucharist from a small window facing inside the church and food through an outward facing window.








Photo Credits

Gatehouse: My beloved

Conduit Court: My beloved

Anchorhold: Wikipedia