For My Favourite Uncle And For All The Happy Times Spent With Him

On Friday it is the funeral of my favourite uncle. I can't be there but I am thinking of his widow and children a lot, and thinking of him too.

This is a photo from 1983 and my mother was amazed at this technological scenario. She captioned it "3 computers in one room!"

 

 

In the foreground from left to right there is me, my cousin - son of favourite uncle, and my brother. We have Sinclair Spectrums. In the background my favourite uncle sits with his Acorn computer.

I remember on that day that my uncle challenged each of us to write a program called "Traffic Lights."

It was a great day, like so many others we spent with him, his wife - my favourite aunt, and their children.

I thought of this photo when visiting the South recently because my brother and I visited them. It was very good to see my aunt and her children. But my uncle was missing.

 

 

The garden where we shared so many times and so many games.  

 

The garden from which we have eaten so much home grown food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We enjoyed good family conversation.  But he was missing.

There's Blob Thing engaged in conversation with the cat.  I am not sure what Blob said to make the cat wear that expression.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We walked on paths and roads we have walked many times as an extended family.  But he was missing.

 

We visited the museum he had poured so much love and enthusiasm into.  But he was missing.

 

 

And, like so many times before, we ate great food.  But he was missing.

His death was sudden, a few days before. A big shock to everyone. He's going to be greatly missed by family, friends, and the whole community of the place where he lived. His blogs will be greatly missed too by those people across the world who read them.

 

Why did I think of the three computers photo?  Because at one point five of us were sitting in that same room with laptops in use.  Another laptop sat open on a table.

 

Yes, SIX computers in one room.

 

And that doesn't count the mobile phones we all had close to hand each of which are far more powerful than a Sinclair Spectrum.

 

Times have changed.  But I confess that I now lack any knowledge to program any of the computers with even the simplest program called Traffic Lights.

Times have changed.  This is a photograph taken a little over three years ago when we visited Avebury Manor.

My parents are seated.  From left to right standing are my child, me, my uncle and my aunt.  My dad was already very noticeably ill but that day was an excellent one, full of smiles and laughter.  So many days with my uncle were full of smiles and laughter.  If I picture him in my mind he is smiling.

 

Another Avebury Manor photo.

 

 

Smiles.  Yes, we smiled for the camera.  But when visiting my uncle we all smiled.  And we enjoyed being with each other.  I will return to his home again and stay there with my aunt.  Maybe it'll be during a family gathering and I will see cousins too, and a half-aunt and half-uncle and all their spouses and children.  I had been half planning to get there next Summer anyway.  That plan still holds.

 

One final picture from that day three years ago.

This photo calls him king.  He truly was the king of uncles.  Anyone from my mother's side of the family who reads this will know that to be true.

 

Farewell uncle.  We lived far apart but I will miss you.  We will all miss you.

And on Friday I will find time to raise a glass to you and in your memory I will smile.

Days Of Gratitude - Boxes and Beacons, Cemeteries and Chai in Crawley

Hard days.  I have been visiting the town where I grew up.  It's the last time I will ever stay in my childhood home.  Being there is hard but I have found the setting easier than expected.  The house is nearly empty so it doesn't feel much like my parents' house.  It feels more like a shell.  There aren't things everywhere that speak of them, just bare walls, bare shelves - at least where there are still shelves.

My brother and I have a table.  We have a chair each.  A bed each.  A fridge.  A kettle.  And not too many other things.  Once we're gone everything else will be cleared.  The house will be sold.  And hopefully someone else can enjoy living here.  It's a good house.  If it was in Newcastle rather than Crawley it would be a much better house!

I knew the visit would be difficult for quite a few reasons and as I type this, a couple of days before I leave this town, my head is struggling to keep going.  I'm glad that today is quieter.  And I am glad that it's a sunny day too.  It means I have a day when I can be quiet and be out doing things on my own.  I've been masking like crazy, hiding my head and forcing myself to be appear functional and happy.  I hope that I won't be collapsing afterwards, especially since it turns out I have a single day to recover when I get home before going to spend a few days somewhere else unexpectedly.

Hard days.  And there was some shock family news too just a few days ago that has hit everyone pretty hard.  But there have been plenty of good things.  Today there will be more, especially as I go and visit the nicest park in the town.  I am looking forward to that.  I always liked wandering there.  Today I can take Blob Thing and Winefride with me and they can visit the nice animals.

September 5^th

Grateful to have made it here without melting too badly.

Grateful that I won't be here for very long.

I grew up in this house. And this is my final visit to it.

Grateful to have brought down a few little happy making things from home.

September 6^th

I am allergic to Crawley. Not grateful for that!

Grateful that I won't be here long.

Grateful too for unhealthy giant chai latte.

For wandering in a Catholic cemetery.

And that my friends enjoyed the driverless train at Gatwick Airport.

And for cheap eyebrow waxing and a pretty roof in the shopping mall.

September 7^th

Grateful to have sorted out my travel arrangements to leave here next week.

Grateful to have sorted boxes to be couriered back to Newcastle.

Almost my entire physical inheritance from my parents in two boxes. That's okay. There isn't a lot from my past that I want to take into my present, let alone my future.

[Note - I've since sorted out two more boxes that should be in Newcastle by the time this is published.  They're mainly filled with photo albums.  There were many photo albums.  Between the four boxes there are some old things I'm glad to have and some useful things too.  Forks!  Because for some reason our forks keep vanishing.  I'm also taking back some pictures in my case and a very pretty piece of wood if I can get it to fit.  Some of the pictures are prints my dad made when he was entering photographic competitions.  They are good prints and some of them won prizes.  I think these pictures will finish my job of filling the walls of the new art room.  I'll have filled all the walls with good things for less than ten pounds including a very expensive picture that cost me three pounds!

We visited a relation last night (as I type this) who now has quite a lot of furniture and useful things from my parents' house.  She is very welcome to it all.  It's good to know that they will have a life there rather than being thrown away.  It was nice to use the plates I grew up with for one last meal.  My relation has also been able to take some furniture and household things for refugees who have moved into the area.  I think that's pretty brilliant and I know my mother would have completely approved of it.]

September 8^th

Grateful that today we went to the South Downs and managed to do something we've needed to do for a while.

[Panorama of a view from Ditchling Beacon.  Last time I was there was with my child and my parents.  That was a happy day - at least, that's what the photos suggest.  I'd post one but my laptop is missing three or four years of photos from my parents.]

Later we saw my dad, who was able to say some words. Just knew that even at this stage of his dementia he would still have opinions on the best route to an uncle's house.

Remembrance of Times Past: How The Living Earth and The White Lodge Saved Me

Thirty years and a couple of months ago I was in a mess.  I had been talking about committing suicide and my parents didn't know what to do so they sought medical advice.

I was taken to see a child psychiatrist who said I needed immediate long term hospitalisation, a range of drugs and ECT. Urgent.  She wanted me placed into the child psychiatric hospital in the county.

Somehow that didn't happen. I didn't want it to even though the psychiatrist had pretty much built up the hospital as a fun place to be.  Hey, fun.  A child receiving ECT in 1985.  Fun, fun, fun.  I realised that the good things she had said were not that good and that the experience would be hell not help for me.  I was totally distraught the next day.  I've cried a lot since that day but probably never as bitterly and uncontrollably.

In a state of complete worry my mother asked some people we had met that year for advice. They recommended that I be taken somewhere that might help me. It was called White Lodge.

The woman I met there was named Judy Fraser and she counseled me and led me to a place where I could lead myself out of the darkness and survive and find a way. There has been a lot of darkness since then but I firmly believe that without White Lodge and without Judy, I would have died.

Plain and simple.  If we hadn't found White Lodge I would not have reached adulthood.  I would have committed suicide.  There is no questioning that.

The cover of this little book shows one small part of the place that used to be White Lodge.

The first time we met I somehow knew I was in a safe place. At the end of that session Judy gave me a few things. I have none of them now. Among those things was a cassette of "new age" music. I played it a great deal. I lost the cassette a lot of years ago but I've thought of it often because the simple, peaceful music helped me in bad times.

This post has arisen from thinking about that cassette.  I saw some CDs by Medwyn Goodall in a charity shop today.  I have some others by him that I haven't played in while and rather than buying more CDs I wondered if his music could be found on YouTube.  It can.  Lots of it.

And then my brain asked.  "What about that cassette that Judy gave me?  That cassette which stayed with me through that deathly dark period.  It was never released on CD.  But is it on YouTube?"

And yes.  It's there. Yay!  I looked a couple of years ago and it wasn't there but someone uploaded it last summer.  Since then it has received 115 views.  Popular music.  But more so than something else I looked up once.  That had received a total of zero views before I looked at it.

It's simple. It's probably nothing special. But listening to it now takes me back to listening to it then.  It's not the best instrumental music ever created.  And there is background hiss from the transfer from a maybe thirty year old cassette.  But these simple notes and melodies take me right back to a place of comfort in my pain and a place where bright light shone into my blackness.

I am grateful for the cassette. Grateful for Judy. Grateful for White Lodge. Grateful that I didn't die at the age of fifteen. Grateful to be alive.  I am so grateful.

And proud too that I have got this far.  Proud that I have got through all the dark years of self hatred, all the years in which I didn't know whether I would make it.  Proud that in the last few years I have been learning to accept myself.

Annie Locke has a website.  http://www.innerharmoniesmusic.co.uk/  The tracks are available to buy.  It's tempting.  Because they are an important part of my own history.

I bought a book of daily readings today too - for fifty pence - by a woman I had not heard of before coming to White Lodge.  I hastily disposed of her books when I became a Christian.  Unchristian!  Unclean!  Satanic!  [yes, I did used to think that way.]  That woman is Eileen Caddy, one of the founders of the Findhorn Community.  The circle turns, the paths lead to the beginning.  I now have many of the books from my White Lodge days again and approach them from a very different place and perspective than I ever could have done thirty years ago.

Eileen Caddy writes, as part of today's reading:

Do what you know you must do because it is something which has been revealed to you from within, not from without.  Always know from within that what you are doing is right; then you can go right ahead and sweep all obstacles aside with real strength and conviction. Know that I AM your compass, I AM your guide, and I will lead you to your goal, no matter how difficult the path may appear to be.

Now that's a challenge.  But it's one that I am increasingly determined to commit to.

Clare's Story - Christianity, Sexuality, Transgender Life, and The Struggle to Self-Acceptance

There's a new issue of "Franciscan" out.  Normally I wouldn't be commenting on that.  But this issue was edited by a Franciscan brother I know.  The article that begins on the front cover is by Professor Helen Berry, one of the preachers at my church.  And inside there is "Clare's Story".

I wrote it six months ago and I have to say that such a lot has happened in the last six months that some of my perspectives on my own story have changed.  When I say at the end that "surprises keep coming," well they really do and they seem to happen with increasing regularity at the moment.  My faith is very different to how it was six months ago and at this point it could go in almost any direction - although I don't think it will ever move back to faith in the literalistic truth of the religious stories.

Also, six months on I do not identify as a lesbian.  I've been able, thanks to a lot of thought and discussions with friends, to be able to accept that I am asexual.  And when you're ace, words such as heterosexual, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual and so on kind of lose their meaning in your life.  Yep, asexual.  This is me, coming out, yet again!

So this is Clare's Story.  I think it was edited a little to fit into the journal - I sent them something about 50% longer than the submission guidelines requested.

My name is Clare. I am transgender and lesbian, truths I only accepted in 2013, a process including great highs, difficulties, triumphs and an examination of every part of my life.

At an early age I knew I was different and didn't fit into the life I was meant to be living. It wasn't long before I'd worked out that I wasn't just different, but what was thought of as bad – in my gender and also in my neuro-diversity. From early childhood I knew shame about my identity and attempted to suppress everything I believed to be shameful, to create a persona to imprison the one already there and live as the kind of person I thought would be acceptable.

I managed to suppress myself so far that I didn't even know that I am female. Clues arose sometimes and because I felt so guilty I hastily squashed them. I would try make up, cross dress and have all kinds of dreams, desires, interests and fantasies but I'd learned such things were evil so I came to intensely hate myself. Inevitably this contributed to decades of mental health problems.

My upbringing was outwardly normal and balanced, a stable home with two parents and a brother. But that balance could not compensate for what was going on inside or for the way I was consistently told that certain things were wrong; the times I was told “Don't be stupid, that's for girls.” Life as a teenager became inner torture. Life cannot be good when every day there is an enormous shadow blocking out the sun. I turned from being a child who didn't smile much into an inwardly bound person with constant low lying depression and major depressive episodes.

Then I discovered Christianity. Or at least one version of it. I converted through an evangelical, Pentecostal, born-again experience. I hadn't expected that but it gave me much that I'd never had before: solidity, meaning, hope. But it wasn't all good. I didn't convert based on the conviction that God loved me. I couldn't really deal with that concept. I converted largely because that brand of evangelicalism was pretty much the only religion that agreed with what I already believed – that I was evil, some kind of monster, an aberration. My new faith taught me that I was right, that I was so evil that I deserved to burn painfully for eternity. But it gave comfort because it turned out everyone else deserved that too – but there was hope for all of us.

That form of Christianity wrecked any self-esteem I had left. When somewhere deep down you know you're transgender, queer, it's hard to be part of a faith that teaches how evil that is. Many can tell stories of how churches – not Jesus – have hurt them greatly. My first church had many ministry tapes from a so-called gay cure ministry. As a young, enthusiastic convert I swallowed the message and didn't dare to question it – because that would have been to question “God's word”, to despise God, to despise that one hope. I became thoroughly Biblically (as we saw it) homophobic and transphobic, hating myself even more. I don't condemn myself for my homophobia because with the inputs I had I couldn't have believed anything else. But I deeply, deeply regret things I've thought and said.

Coming to terms with accepting myself as female and lesbian took a long time and a series of near miracles. I almost don't know how I got from there to here. When I came out I had good and bad experiences in churches. The people in my local church were supportive, though I was told it would be “inappropriate” for me to continue to preach or lead anything. That hurt, but it worked out well, causing me to walk away from that life and find a wide open space to learn more about myself and about my faith.

I'd been attending another church too and got called in for a “talk” with the pastor. He called me an abomination (based on Deuteronomy 22:5) and said that he couldn't conceive that I was any kind of Christian at all unless I repented of my gender. He said lots of other things that were highly unpleasant. But by that time I was secure in myself and certain that I was not condemned for being who I am and his words did nothing to destroy me. In a way I'm glad to have experienced that because it gives at least some insight into what other people have gone through and continue to suffer in many churches. But I do worry and weep for LGBT+ people who are raised in places like that and endure sheer hell.

Overall I've been very fortunate in faith. My wife sent me to get support from Northern Lights Metropolitan Community Church. So in June 2013 I went to a service, one of the many scared people who come through the door. It's one of the best things I've ever done. MCC is now home and the people there are cherished family. It's been very difficult at times and through everything MCC has been a rock of support. No matter how low I've been, no matter how much I struggled with faith and dealt with the pain I'd lived in because of my faith, the people there have stood by me and held me.

I spent a year preparing to leave MCC and to walk away from Christianity forever. But in October 2014 that changed. I surprised myself and formally became a member of the church, publicly renewing my baptismal vows a week before, something that for me was a necessary step.

I needed this renewal for two reasons. Firstly, I was baptised under another name, another gender, and was a very different person then. My present is a changed life from my past. I'd love to be re-baptised as Clare but of course that's not a theological option because baptism is a one time event. I couldn't be baptised again but I needed to publicly express that, as Clare, those vows I made as “him” still stood, more firmly than they ever did in the past.

The second reason was even more important to me than the first. Over the previous eighteen months my Christian faith died a slow and painful death. Church services were torture for me. The church put up with my many words, my complaints, my deep pain through that process. I cannot thank them enough for supporting me through the death of my faith and through everything I said, and felt, and did.

My faith deserved to die. It really did. Good riddance to it! Not because of any doctrines or dogmas that were or weren't attached to it. But because the root of my faith was self-hatred, self-denial, self-rejection – arising from a firm belief that I was no good. Much of that came from received beliefs about my gender and consequently my near-constant urges to self-destruct. My faith helped to destroy me, helped me to eradicate myself, for twenty-three years. It was immensely important to me but it crushed me.

Eventually I was able to leave that faith behind, and rest secure in a faith that excluded any personal God. The plan was to leave MCC and never look back. That was the only future I could see. But throughout the whole journey I still believed in MCC, her vision, her people, and the place of healing that the church is. And, solely because of certain of the people, I stayed.

Many people noticed a not so subtle change in me since the start of October 2014. At church one evening everything suddenly clicked. I could sing the songs, pray the prayers and knew it was OK to receive communion again for the first time in a long while. And I was extremely surprised that night to find myself on my knees, hands in the air, lost in worship and thankfulness to the God I didn't believe in. The “God of Surprises” entered again and renewed my world, my heart.

Faith returned. It's a new faith. Brand new. It's a far healthier faith, one that accepts the love of God, and one that can honestly say with the Psalmist;

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.

As I renewed my baptismal vows it was my freedom to be Clare, to be authentic, that I celebrated. But more than that I celebrated my return to faith. A purer faith. A very different faith than that I had before. Based on self-love rather than self-condemnation, on authenticity rather than self-squashing, on freedom, on love, on grace, on hope, on acceptance, on inclusivity, on joy, on light and life and on so much more.

The story continues. Surprises keep coming and my faith is going in unexpected directions. I am wildly unorthodox, have a spirituality that embraces all kinds of things that I would have condemned in years gone by. And yet I now seriously call myself more of a Christian than I ever have been. A Christianity of love, light, and life not constrained by dogma and doctrines. A Christianity of freedom and joy rather than my previous false Christianity of law and self punishment. In short: Hallelujah! For I am set free.

18 Months - The Best of My Life

Eighteen months ago tonight I came out to myself as transgender, as a woman, in a way which left no possible room for denying the truth about who I am.  That night was the end of a process of finding space, of allowing myself to explore my thoughts and feelings with an honesty which had not been possible before.  On that night I stood in front of the mirror in a skirt and blouse, for the first time able to dress in such clothes without feeling great shame.  And I recognised myself for who I am.  I spent much time talking with myself as I stood at the mirror, and welcomed Clare into her existence - I already knew my name through dreams.  Until that night I could, had I so chosen, locked everything away again and gone back to the way things were, put the recent thoughts and experiments down to an aberration, a mistake.  After that night there was no possibility of going back.

That was the end of a process of experimenting with self-honesty but it set the course for the rest of my life.  Eighteen months on I look back and can say that it has been the best time of my life.  The best.

Here are just some of the things that have happened:

• My mother died of cancer.
• My father became seriously ill with dementia.  He's now in a care home having spent several months in hospital.  He broke one hip while in a different care home.  He broke the other hip while in the hospital.  And being hundreds of miles away I've been able to do nothing to help him and have had to leave everything to other family members.
• My cherished Christian faith died, very painfully, over the course of a year.
• We've had all the usual sort of family problems here - plus a few more.  But I don't talk of those online.
• I have been sexually assaulted.  The police couldn't find the assailant.
• I have received much verbal abuse in the street for dressing as I dress.  Thankfully that's pretty rare now but to being with it happened pretty much every time I left the house.
• I've spent sixteen of the eighteen months waiting for medical treatment.  That treatment has only just begun.

Yes, plenty of horrible things have happened.  Most people would say that the year in which they basically lose both their parents, their faith, and undergo abuse and assault would be among the worst in their lives.  Circumstances have indeed been pretty poor in many respects.

So how can I say that the last eighteen months have been the best of my life?  How bad must the experience of my first forty years have been if so much can have happened and it still be my best time?

It's simple.  I have lived these months as myself, free.  I have learned to love myself.  I have learned that the truth of who I am does not to be utterly crushed, despised.  I have learned that I am not a thing of shame.

And I've remembered and healed a lot of my past.  All the clues and thoughts and acts that I'd suppressed for so long.  Many painful memories and many confusing memories.  They're still coming to light now.  Just this week I remembered things from my childhood.  Words said to me by my parents - who were of course doing their best but in the 1970s couldn't see past their little boy.  But words that led me further into Hell and the long attempt at self-annihilation.  Remembering them hurt.  A lot.  But now they can be left behind and peace can be found.  Some of that language may sound over dramatic.  I promise you that it isn't.

It's been the best eighteen months of my life.  And that brings my past into sharp relief.  I knew it was bad.  For thirty years even the best of days contained the shadow of depression, ever felt.  So many episodes of mental illness.  So many years of not knowing if I'd be alive by Christmas.  So many years in which others had to suffer through that uncertainty.  Looking at photographs from my life is hard as there are very few in which I cannot see signs of that shadow.  Even on the days of many smiles those photos display pain, if you know what to look for.  Comparing my present with my past shows me just how awful my inner life was for all those years.

There are a lot of challenges involved with being transgender.  But the chance to be who I really am outweighs pretty much any rubbish that life could throw my way.  Because, accepting myself and being Clare took away the cause of that shadow of depression

I've lost friends.  But I've gained more friends.  And my wife and child stand by me giving full support for me being who I truly am.  I am truly fortunate.
I've lost that faith.  But I've gained a better faith.  And have written much about that wild journey.
I've cried many tears in the difficulties.  Many more tears for my parents.  Many more tears as the past has come to light and been grieved for and healed.  But I've also learned the meaning of crying tears of joy.
I've suffered transphobic abuse.  But I've grown stronger through battling onwards regardless.  And I've been fortunate.  The abuse has only been verbal.  I know others who have been less fortunate.
I've been sexually assaulted.  There aren't many "buts" to that.  But it could have been a lot worse than it was.  Many women are sexually assaulted.  I don't want to belittle what happened to me but so many women have suffered far worse assaults, or repeated assaults, or rape.  I count myself fortunate.
I've experienced fear as I never felt it before.  But I've overcome that fear in walking into freedom.
I've lost my mother.  But that last year was precious, to be able to share just that short time with her, knowing she was proud of her daughter.
I've lost my father - though he is of course still living.  I must admit that the silver lining is harder to find when I think of him and the sadness we all have for everything that his illness has brought to him.
I've remembered much pain from my past.  But I've been able to clean those events and words, repair wounds, and leave them behind so the future can be better.
I've waited so long for treatment - for the physical help in being who I am, having transitioned mentally and socially last year.  But the treatment has begun, just about.  I'm now on the lowest dose of oestrogen and waiting for my next appointment which should lead to increased hormonal treatment.  Waiting impatiently - as every timeline I've been given in the last eighteen months turned out to be a false expectation.  That next appointment, from what I was told, should have been this week.  It will be next year.

I know who I am.  And I accept who I am, embrace myself in love.  That in turn enables me better to receive love from others and to show love too.  The changes are immense.  I find myself doing things, frequently, that the old me wouldn't have done.  I'd either not have conceived of being able to do them or felt great shame that I couldn't do them.

I know that there is still quite a way to go.  The healing is not complete.  And without too much trouble I could make a long list of things I don't do but would be better for doing.  And a list of things I do and say that would be better left undone or unsaid.  A long way to go but the difference between now and then is to me nothing short of a miracle.

Yes.  The past year and a half has been full of the most difficult things I've ever faced.  Full of pain.  Full of challenge.

Yes.  Those months have also been the very best of my life so far.  The very best.  By a very, very long way.  Simply because they have been lived free.

The Past Made Present - Glastonbury, 1985

On a family holiday, when I was fourteen, we visited Glastonbury for the day.  After a visit to Glastonbury Tor - where I had a most interesting talk with a stranger about how he liked to levitate there - we visited the village, including some of the more spiritual shops that have boomed there.  If I remember rightly I bought myself a book about occult exercises and practices. 

After lunch we visited Glastonbury Abbey which was unsurprisingly packed with tourists and coach parties.  Why shouldn't they be there - it's famous and a beautiful ruin.  Wandering off alone down some steps I found myself in St Mary's chapel - cooler, deserted at that time and with an atmosphere more powerful than the Tor.

This shouldn't be a surprise given the Christian and pre-Christian history of the site.  Looking online a moment ago I found this statement:  The Mary Chapel in the Abbey lies in the Vulva of the Birth-Giving Goddess of Glastonbury. This is one of the most potent places on the Island.  Make of that what you will!  People write all kinds of things about Glastonbury, based on all kinds of spiritual belief and practice, which is appropriate for somewhere that was such a centre for both paganism and Christianity.  I will leave it up to you whether Glastonbury really was Avalon, home of the Goddess.

Last week I was thinking about early experiences of "the sacred".  Without defining "sacred" I am pretty certain that I experienced it/him/her/them that day in the few brief minutes that I stood, alone, before the altar of that chapel.

Writing came as I sat in a cafe.  It's in the form of a sestina.  Six stanzas of six lines and an extra three lines at the end, with the last words of each line rotated through the different lines of each stanza.  There's an official way to rotate them but I was sitting in a cafe with no access to anything that told me the "right" way, so this may all be "wrong".  In any case it's not good poetry.  I hope next year to write far more - to learn something of the art - and eventually produce something decent.



Abbey of noise, far from Cistercian silence
Hurrying coaches, camera snappers seek the common view
Japanese tourism - the south-west in a day.
Here stood Arthur; Joseph planted his tree.
We must see it all, rush, rush, rushing
This, no holy hour of freedom to seek the monastic.

Abbey of noise, I seek God, I, monastic,
Walking alone, from tourism, tack, time, into a silence.
Underneath, under the crowds, root of cloistered tree.
Above, the teashop calling, the people still rushing
Below, place of prayer, of silent, silenced voices singing: God in view.
Below, presence of lost centuries manifests this day.

Away from shallow, short life, the longevity of the tree,
The chapel altar stands stark, a remembrance of the day
Monkish voices were squeezed, squashed, quelled in the rushing
Of a King seeking to rule God, abolishing the monastic.
The chants, the rich intonement, God's praises turned to silence.
Five hundred years, God unchanging, time cannot shroud the view.

I stood in profound riches, feeling guilt for not rushing,
Alone with the alone - but why not with camera pointed at that tree?
Inside, impulse escapes, birthing the thrill of the monastic.
In quiet, in immense living atmosphere, the sacred opened my view.
Minutes, just minutes, stretched like chant memory into a day.
Above, above, bustle, noisy chaos; but for me, long silence.

I would have stayed, could not stay, force to leave that view.
Moments of a life, just a glimpse of the eternal monastic.
Moments of a meaning, brief, all changing, revolutions in silence.
Come back, return to the wells that enabled this day,
Back to family, to that other deep rooted tree
Back to above, we too were tourists - more to see, onwards, rushing.

Years pass but still present to me are those moments, that day.
A moment of calm, stilling the rushing.
Whatever darkened horror appears, the beyond comes to my view.
In the deafening noises, a present past, a moment of silence
That set in place a yearning for a life monastic,
For timeless prayer roots, deepening of the tree.

Abbey of silence.  Gone but called to view.
I was not there a day but it's strong seeds became my tree.
I've lived, rush, rush, rushing.  But ever inward, turning to monastic.

The Distraction of Ra, Disappointment of Apollo

What was a spiritual seeker to do having rejected the church at an early age?  It's a common question, asked by many who never had a religious faith and many who lost their faith.  Outside of God, where is meaning?  Philosophers ask it - Nietzsche found meaning, others found none.  My faith at that time said "There is a sacred beyond appearances.  But it's not to be found in a church."

I'd been reading books on spirituality and the occult from time to time for a few years.  Now my reading and collecting became more enthusiastic.  By the time I was eighteen and converted to a personally held Christian faith I had over 1000 books on themes related to the occult, the new age, spirituality, world religions and philosophy.  Most of them I hadn't read.  Nearly all I threw out or sold: my new Christian faith urged me to cleanse my life of all these supposedly unclean, evil things.

Where was a young person to go, having decided Christianity to be based on a false story but having a yearning for something beyond this world?  I looked into lots of things.  Vedic wisdom.  Meditation.  Astral projection.  Yoga.  Cartomancy, chiromancy, lots of mancies!  Many other little obsessions.  And magic.

There's not a lot of old ritual magic that a young person can do in the comfort of their own bedroom.  The Golden Dawn rituals aren't designed for a few square feet of space, or to be performed as a solo endeavour.  But there's some ritual, proper ritual - not the books of invented "spells" that are now so common on the spirituality shelves of bookshops.  I've forgotten most of what I ever read about magic but remember part of a ritual that I tried each day for a while.  Not for too long, nothing seemed to come of it, so I moved on to other things:



In sadness, turned from a religion without meaning,
I turned, turned, turned again.
Where is hope, truth, peace?
Where is that God, that promised life?

I turned, incense burning, held tight in hand, widdershins turning.
Give me reason    -     Hail Ra
Give me purpose     -      Hail Mithras
Take my dark agony      -      Hail Apollo
Light bringers come      -    I welcome thee
I turned, turn, calling      -      Into the light of my life

Turning, burning;
        felt my fall, called, pulled by dreaming.
Turning, turning;
        from empty God to godly life
Hail Ra, Mithras, Apollo, I welcome thee,
Turning in holy ritual, come, come, light beings come.

You came, if you came, in silence.
I heard.
Nothing.

In sadness, turned, lost again,
Spinning, direction free,
Turned, turned again.

Sing, Choirs of Angels - more childhood minutiae.

Desiring to sing, Melody in my heart

I became churched that I might cry out the word.

Beyond the song, a story that gave no peace.

Seeking, seeking, but finding nothing for my spirit.

Entering in tranquility, destination looked empty.

I left that place, some inner light turned to darkness. 

I liked to sing.  That's all that lay behind it.  I liked to sing.  And I wanted to sing.  I was ten and the idea formed in my head, "I want to join a choir."

I was quite surprised by the reaction when I mentioned this at home.  The idea didn't suffer immediate rejection like other ideas - tap dancing, for example, was both silly and just for girls.  I'm not sure Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly would have agreed with that view!  My mother knew someone who ran a choir, someone I knew too.  I found out when they met and went along - not knowing beforehand that it was a church choir.

And so began my first experience of the Christian church beyond the odd Christmas service and one Easter service that we really only went to so that the Easter Bunny could hide her eggs.

A child friendly version with an evening children's group that didn't mention God too much but did play silly games and set challenges to make egg box monsters or fill match boxes with as many things as possible.  We did do one God related activity - beyond the forgotten prayer that must surely have started or finished each evening.  We performed a dramatised version of the story of Jonah in a Crawley Festival, open air in the main shopping square.  I played God.  Typecast at an early age.  My little self had a crush on one of the other people narrating the play.  I hope she is having a good life.

A child friendly version with a Sunday school that did mention God all the time.  I'm sure we talked about the Bible every week but most memories now are of dull worksheets and learning the names of the first eight books of the New Testament.  That's not the most impressive feat ever achieved by a Bible scholar but it's the one bit of Sunday school knowledge I never lost.

And the choir.  Quite enjoyable - and I could sing.  Plenty of practices for Sunday services - though we only sang some Sundays, a special occasion choir.  I ended up singing some solos.  We weren't a rich, high church choir - we had no robes.  We just sang.

I was seeking - I'd been seeking something more than earthly life, in little ways, for years.  Seeking, disquieted within, long before devouring a dictionary of the occult when I was nine.  I wanted more and I hoped I'd find that more in the church.  In God.  I'm sure that others in that church found something - a number of them are still faithful there, thirty years later, and it was good to meet some of them again on a visit last year and see that church so lively and enthusiastic.  But all I found was silence.  Stories from the past that did not gel with my young life.  I got bored in the church - apart from the singing and developing worryingly good skills in locating Bible passages in the traditional Sunday School game of "Bible Sword".

I was seeking.  "Seek and you shall find," said Jesus.  I did not find.  For me there was just emptiness - and with eleven year old priorities a great chasm when a previously faithful Sunday School boy stole a Lego figure from me and then stopped coming to the church!  My interest waned.  I stopped attending the church - absent most weeks unless the choir was singing.  And I dropped out of the evening group having previously been proud of my metal badge gained for regular attendance.

And then I was thrown out of the church choir because of my ecclesiastical absences.  The only reason I was still involved in the church, in some Christian religion, was taken from me.  I was sad for a while but it was fair enough - how could I sing in the choir of a church I didn't attend?

Yes, I was seeking.  I wanted this Jesus teaching to be true.  I wanted meaning.  But I wasn't given meaning.  Nobody ever told me what Christianity was about - they just told me the plot of old stories from an old book - and then told me that all the stories meant that we had to be nice.  Yes, I sought.  I was so, so proud to have my Bible as a birthday present.  I read it frequently but could not find the promised abundance of life in its pages or in the organisation that represented this God.

_______________________________________

This week I've been thinking about my past - having been asked about experiences of the Sacred.  I've looked at those but also found myself remembering the times of seeking the Sacred and finding nothing but disappointment.  So I've looked back on that church life, what I can remember of it, and the emptiness it brought.  Had I found God I can see that my entire life from that point on would have been very, very different.  But I didn't.  I found only people.  Nice people, but not people able to show me a path to faith.

I left the Church, not to rest, but to search elsewhere. But that's not a tale for today.  Maybe tomorrow, one piece of the search.  Another fruitless effort.

I still search - even when you do find truth, you find it points to bigger truths.  The quest, the searching can and will never end.  You cannot rest, you cannot proudly assume that you've reached the destination.

Desiring to sing, Melody in my heart

I became churched that I might cry out the word.

Beyond the song, a story that gave no peace.

Seeking, seeking, but finding nothing for my spirit.

Entering in tranquility, destination looked empty.

I left that place, some inner light turned to darkness.

A Psychotherapist, a Poem, Pythagoras, and a Publication

White Lodge went by several names.


It was known as The College of Psychotherapeutics.  White Lodge had several aims.  One was to help others become healed and live unfractured lives.  Another was to train others to help others become healed and live unfractured lives.  The ultimate purpose behind those aims at White Lodge was that they would work themselves out of their jobs, that those jobs would no longer be needed.

As part of the work of White Lodge, a little magazine journal was regularly published, The Psychotherapist.  I received that journal for several years but, as with everything else from that time, I destroyed them, threw them away or sold them in my Christian evangelical zeal.  The journal contained articles from the staff and students at White Lodge, poetry, stories.  Always an interesting read, if issues were still available as a bumper compilation volume or a digital file then I'd get hold of them.

I wrote poems.  I submitted a couple informally to The Pyschotherapist.  Very informally, as I probably had never been intending to submit them for anything.  And I think they both appeared in print.  The short one certainly did - a triolet.

I'd been taking an adult education writing class in the evenings - I'd had to get permission from the school headmaster to take the class because I wasn't an adult.  An entertaining class, we were set homework each week to write very different things in very different formats.  One week had had to write short poems - haiku, clerihews, triolets, and a longer poem, a sestina.

Until this moment I had forgotten the word sestina.  But I wrote one.  I have no idea what the 39 lines were about but seem to recall it had minor merit.  Perhaps this week I should write another.  It's a disciplined form.  Six stanzas of six lines followed by a three line envoi.  The words that end the lines of the first stanza also end the lines of the other five stanzas, but they are rotated to appear in different lines.  Lots of people have written sestinas.  Here's a link to one, The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People by David Ferry.  I'm a poetry ignoramus so hadn't heard of Ferry but am impressed by this poem.

The sestina is lost.  If it did turn up I'd probably be very embarrassed by it.  But I still remember one of the clerihews.

Pythagoras, Pythagoras,

You'll never quite catch up with us.

Most of your rules are out of date,

But your rule of the triangle still works great.

Very silly - but that's normal for clerihews.  Some are much more clever than mine - but I was only sixteen.  That's my excuse anyway!

And I still remember one of the triolets.  It's not exactly to the level of Thomas Hardy's triolet but, as I plead, I was sixteen.  And I'm not a poetic genius.  So this is the triolet that turned up in the pages of The Psychotherapist.  Since that time I have rarely written poems.  The only poetry I've tried this decade has been written in the last six months and is already on this blog.  And since that time I've certainly not been a published poet!

Why am I here?

I'd quite like to die.

If I did, people would cheer.

Why am I here?

Why won't people hear

When I talk and I cry?

Why am I here?

I'd quite like to die.

I knew depression.  I knew about feeling bad.  And a memory came out as I wrote.  By the time I wrote it for the class and then took it to White Lodge I was happier and did not want to die.  Later the school English teacher set us homework to write a suicide note.  We had such joyful school lessons!  Fortunately the teacher didn't turn out to be an evil cult leader, "Bring in your suicide letters children, and then we can enter into the spirit of things."  I began my note with that poem - and my note received an A+ grade.

My experiences of depression were awful.  Later experiences were worse.  But I can't claim it's all been worthless - they did at least give me good marks in an English lesson.

(This has been written without aim or plan and without any conscious memory of words like sestina)

The Pilgrim Hymn of Dedication (A Half-memory Restored)

I haven't written of White Lodge yet.  That will happen soon and put this post into some context.

In my teenage years I took a couple of courses at White Lodge.  After that I converted to an enthusiastic form of Christianity that quickly became narrow in its outlook.  That's not a surprise - a teenage convert swallows whatever preaching they are exposed to, no matter how odd or extreme or even abhorrent it may seem to the non-convert.  In joy, in zeal, in the thrill of new meanings, the convert can forget to think - or even be encouraged not to think.  Sadly my experience of embracing things I now regret is a common one.

To digress, by leaping forward to this morning:

I popped into the local Christian bookshop.  I'm not quite sure why as there is very little there that appeals to the person I am now.  But I picked up a book called "Christian Philosophy."  A good title.  An exciting title.  I hoped the book might be as intelligently written as something by Aquinas or one of the more modern Christian philosophers and it might be a stunningly challenging read.  I was quickly disappointed

The book contained nothing that I would call philosophy and nothing that any philosophy student or teacher would recognise as part of their subject of study.  Instead it was a book that promised to tell us "This is what the Bible means."  Worse, the author didn't start with the Bible and honestly seek to ask what the Bible is.  He started with a preconception and so explained "This is what my preconceived notions say that Bible means."  He had a literalist, fundamentalist preconception - so creation happened in six days and there is no evolution, homosexuality is great evil, without personal faith in Jesus you're doomed to Hell, and so on.  I was the teenage convert who swallowed teaching like that.  At least for a while.

Returning to the topic.  I took courses at White Lodge.  At the end of each course all the students gathered in "The Galilee", a chapel there, with the course tutors.  Each of us received a personal blessing, a couple of paragraphs, from one of the tutors.  I wish I still had those blessings but in evangelical post-conversion zeal they were destroyed.  We had a service.  And we sang.  I have never since experienced anything so warm, so love-filled as those services.

At the close of every course at White Lodge a particular song was sung.  It was written by Ronald Beesley, the founder of White Lodge, a man I never met as he died some years before I first visited.  The words at that time were printed on a sheet that I'm semi-sure said "Words by Ronald Beesley and The Dalai Lama, written on the shore of Lake Galilee."  We sang it to the tune of the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.  Just in case anyone doesn't know it, here's a version from The Proms.  (You do know it - even if you don't know what it is)

  


Those little services of blessing were a wonderful experience.  Pretty much everything at White Lodge was a wonderful experience.

So why am I writing about this?

This year I've found myself singing the hymn.  Regularly.  As I've wandered around it has kept coming to my mind and I've started singing - sometimes out loud in the street!  But all year I've been faced with a frustrating problem:  I only knew the words to three-quarters of the first verse.  I'd get there and be stuck, either getting annoyed or just starting again.  The words have been quite prominent in my life, especially in the last six months.

Last week I asked online - there is a small facebook White Lodge group.  Does anyone have the words?  And yes, someone did.  The words were posted within hours and then someone posted them with the original tune they were sung to.  I am so thankful for those people and for those who still store the archives of White Lodge - though White Lodge itself is no more.  I am so thankful that I can finally finish singing the song that I've been singing for months.

 The Pilgrim Hymn of Dedication - White Lodge

      Oh, teach me Lord to know Thee,

      Thy wisdom to reveal,
      And place Thy mantle o'er me,
      And guide me how to heal.
      Thy footsteps I would follow,
      Thro' rock or barren waste,
      To dry the tears of sorrow,
      Thy Kingdom here to haste.

      By Galilean mountains,
      By shore and quiet sea,
      O'er stony paths and desert,
      You paved The Way for me.
      I would my Lord and Master,
      A Galilean be,
      To share Thy Hands in serving,
      And set the prisoners free.

      My life is Thine to do with
      Such as Thou would'st name,
      From now I am Thy servant,
      Thy blessing I would claim.
      To serve the need of others
      As Thou hast done for me,
      For all men are my brothers,
      To serve eternally.