Days of Gratitude - Freedom and Friends. Failure and Falling.

It's time for another blog post with entries from my Gratitude Diary from the Sunday Assembly Newcastle group.

There have been good times and tough times.  Today my head has rather fallen apart and just getting through the day feels much like swimming through quick drying cement.  I need to be doing things.  And I just can't do them.  On days like this it's important to be able to remember the good things and to know not only that there will be good things again but that even on the bad days there are good things.  If they are "good" and "bad" at all - are those words just value judgments or are they objective realities?

What a difference from yesterday when my brain worked and I was able to be out and pretty free and even the noise in the pub and cafe and main street was not too much.  It took some work but I could do it.

And what a difference from a month ago.  A month ago today - as mentioned in the gratitude diary - this happened.

It was a day on which we did nothing very special together.  Ordinary things. And it was very, very wonderful.

A day on which just being together and holding each other on a beach as it snowed and the tide came in was a heaven.

But not every day can be heaven.  Many of my days are like this one when my head can hardly function.  These are days of "Yes, this is really very hard, I really am disabled, and I do need support."

Thankfully, not every day is like this one and there are the days and moments of wonder and free joy too.

Image from http://emilysquotes.com/

9th February

Tough day mentally.

But grateful to have had the spoons remaining to get out to something this evening.

And grateful for a feeling I had while I was out: Freedom! It's a commonly used image - but it is like a massive weight and burden has been lifted.

Yes, that's related to yesterday's grateful post which I copied as a blog post yesterday too. Get the word out! Tell people what's going on. And get pretty much no reaction (yet) from church people. (Eight words from the pastor and a response from someone I specifically asked about it)

10th February


Grateful for the little things on random doors, walls and windows at Broadacre House. Anyone else read the haiku on the 5th floor?

Also felt grateful last night because the days countdown until I am with Amanda dropped below 10. At last. Single digits are easier to cope with. 9 1/2 days to go by the end of yesterday.

These words are on a wall by a lift door at Broadacre House.  Sometime I need to do blog some photos taken there during the last six months.

11th February

Get in early today. Grateful that in the next hour this lot will be collected for charity. Loads went to the tip at the weekend too.

Truly we have a super-abundance. What we are clearing is far more than a lot of people could ever dream of owning.

Maybe it's time to learn to use this abundance better. For joy, people, relationship, love, creative passion, for being all we can be. All the things I think God is, rather than god being an omnipotent bloke with impressive facial hair. My heresy has very much in common with committed atheism!

12th February

Totally failed to get to a social event tonight. Not for lack of trying. She left a crucial piece of information out of her address.

But the view over Newcastle from the Trinity Square student accommodation was worth seeing.

 
And though the lights and escalators are too loud in different ways, it was good to look at the art at Gateshead Metro.

For anyone interested, the mosaics are by http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/keith-grant

13th February


Grateful that somehow I mustered up some extra spoons today and got out when all I felt like doing was sitting on the bed.

Grateful that when I was getting severely overloaded in town I decided not to go straight home but to go and see if a cafe I'd passed was quiet enough for me to cope with.

Grateful that it turned out to be a very cool place. Very cool.

(My grateful post contained more photos but since I've already written about the cafe I'm only including two photos here.)

14th February

First Sunday of Lent. No church. Because this is my Lenten fast. Not just to stay away from church but to explore the physical, temporal and inner space created by no church. To learn to walk more in my own freedom.

No church, but the Shamanic Sound Journey tonight was quite stunning. Grateful for the person who said they were going - which meant I spotted it - even though they couldn't get there in the end.

And making that conscious choice to let go of church, at least for a while, possibly much longer, feels so liberating and absolutely the right thing to do.

It was the last of these journeys because the person leading it moves away tomorrow. I could moan and say "Why didn't I know about this sooner?" The truth is, if I had known, I wouldn't have been ready to be there.

Anyway, grateful for tonight. And grateful, so grateful, for being able to intentionally choose
differently than the circular habit of so many years.

The lovely changing colours light at The Vault, Wallsend

15th February

Having a day when my brain was deciding to behave and shine and smiles could fall out and even the noise and haste was reasonably easy to cope with.

Meeting a friend at Tea Sutra. Great time. And I spent rather longer with her than planned discussing all kinds of things.

Also great that she's a stunning Christian friend of the kind who cheers and gives big hugs when she learns I've given up church at least for Lent. Glad and fortunate to have met her last year in unlikely circumstances.


(Tea Sutra addicts will not that this picture was not taken yesterday. But it was taken from the spot I was sitting yesterday.)