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.