Just show up and watch what happens!

Hi,
well - not had a lot to say really, so haven't! But just so you know, I'm still feeling enthusiastic about my year, if rather surprised at how it's turned out so far!

I'm still waiting to see the specialist about my knee - there was a brief flurry the other week, when I thought I was going back to work, but the GP said I shouldn't really go back until I'd seen the specialist. As far as I know, that's going to be in about three weeks... I'm having another chat with the GP tomorrow - my main concern is that I haven't yet had physio, and the other knee was very sore for a while (until I switched how I used the crutches to support it for a while instead). I've fallen through every gap in the system but - I can't help feeling there is some purpose to it all somehow. Anyway I can't change anything by worrying, so there's no point is there?!

Meantime I've been doing lots of reading and meditating. I grow more and more fascinated by the thought that nothing is solid - I mean, obviously it is, but it isn't, not at the molecular level. Just as I have always been stunned by the fact that all the things I do online which look so real on screen are fuelled by a series of ones and zeros, so my 'real' life is basically a load of energy pulses at various frequencies. On a sub-atomic level we are in constant motion, as are tables, plants, mountains and planets. I find that mind-blowing.

As I've read about meditation, I've been interested to come across the concept of the sound of 'Aaah' as the Sound of God. When I was a little girl, I had a phobia about this very sound - and I could never quite put into words the feeling it evoked in me. If people were chatting and I could see one of them understanding a point and getting ready to say, "Ah! I see what you mean!" I would shiver in terror, but couldn never explain properly as I couldn't say the word. I came to know it as my 'Ah!' feeling but even saying that frightened me.

I wonder now. I wonder if that feeling (as though the whole world was in my chest, spinning around out of control and so big I would explode) isn't a little akin to the feeling people in the Bible had when they were struck dumb by the presence of angels. I wasn't in a place to give it a spiritual interpretation back then, but now I wonder...

For the first time, I am living in an empty nest - my daughters now both live abroad. I was fairly sure I'd be fine, but having never lived alone before (I don't count student digs, where there is always someone around!) I didn't quite know what to expect.

The first couple of days were a little strange, a definite feeling of bereavement and emptiness - but it happened to be when the snow was at its worst and I was pretty literally stuck in the house. As I'm still using crutches and feeling quite disabled in some ways, it was a very strange time, as though Someone was saying, "Your nest is empty, and you are going to have to sit in it all week and think about it!" Which was actually quite a good tactic for me - it's how I used to deal with all my old phobias; I've always faced fear by mentally picking it up by the scruff of the neck and facing it until it holds no more fear. (My theory is that there are two types of people - the ones who react to toothache by booking the earliest appointment possible, and the ones who put off the dentist as long as they can. I'm the first kind - I see procrastinating as prolonging the worry of the inevitable!)

So - I sat in my house (feeling quite trapped, I must admit) and Faced it Out.

And I feel fine. I'm enjoying having my own space. I can be quiet when I want (which is a lot) and I can read, and I can fill the fridge with things I love to eat but wouldn't necessarily impose on my daughters. (Although I have discovered I've developed an allergy to lychees, which is really annoying - since I started with hayfever I have become allergic to some fruits and nuts, fortunately not majorly, but enough to stop me enjoying them).

I went for a walk in the park a few days ago and was suddenly overwhelmed with memories of being there with my daughter, and the time I ran a race there and she popped out of the crowd to take a photo - and I did stop for a cry, but that's okay. I've worked for many years to get in touch with my feelings; I'm not going to stop them coming up or be afraid of them. Anyway some of those tears were for my knee I think! I can't quite imagine ever running again, although I think it's highly likely I shall.

I've always had moments where my heart has been gripped by a sudden nostalgia, when I walk past an Early Learning Centre, for example, or see someone with two little girls in a cafe... in French, 'nostalgie' is 'homesickness' - and I think that's a very good description of those feelings - homesickness for the past. I suspect a lot of the Empty Nest stuff people go through is about realising just how far away that past is, a country they can't ever visit again. We are all refugees, in a way.

And yet - what about the present? The future? I can't help feeling excited about what my life will be in 6 months, 6 years from now... After all, if it's all down to bundles of energy shifting around in some incomprehensibly intelligent fashion, then there is A Purpose to my life, and all I have to do is show up every day and watch what happens!

Global Warming...???

I just found yet another site linking to sceptics commenting on the climate debate. Very interesting; yet another case of, "You pays your money and you takes your choice".

Which caused me to smile to myself - for many years I have been convinced that Science is as much a matter of faith as Religion. It's all very well for someone to say, "The numbers PROVE theories about gravity/virus replication/etc." I have to have faith that the numbers prove it. I suppose the scientists' answer would be, "Ah - but theology can never be KNOWN - whereas if you were a good enough mathematician, you would understand the figures PROVE these things."

However - I'm not. The fact that the figures work if you are good enough at Maths is something I've always had to take on faith.

I suppose I was an iconoclast from an early age, what with a mother who steadfastly refused to believe in gravity. ("So why do things fall down when you drop them?" Mum: "Because they're heavy." "WHY are they heavy?" Mum: "Because they weigh a lot") It was perhaps this background that led me to be uneasy at school when, as in variably happened, the Science teachers would review our carefully-planned experiments and instruct us to put in the results we ought to have got. Nobody will ever convince me that this doesn't happen on a larger scale, especially when grants and funding are involved. You can call it a lack of trust in the scientific community, a lack of faith, if you like...

I am no longer a Christian. There came a point where my observations led me to believe that, like my schoolteachers, the results were being fixed. I still have a spirituality, though, and some of that has come from learning about science - the way we are all interconnected, the wonderful way we seem to bring about change by observing the world at sub-atomic levels, research into memory... all of which, of course, I have to take on faith.

Now - this might not have mattered very much, One woman's view of the world is perhaps not that significant. But the current crisis for Science surely has to be that the Global Warming issue is NOT about Progress versus Ignorance, it is about two sets of people with diametrically opposed views, ALL of whom can 'prove' they are right. Mathematically. Which to choose? How does the average person know which to believe?

The Global Warming bandwagon is a heavy and expensive one. It is now beyond thinking that it should be shown to be based on incorrect science. This, of course, doesn't mean that Global Warming is not happening, even though it seems more and more counter-intuitive.

I have to hold my hand up here as someone who never quite believed in the 'New Ice Age', which some of my readers may be too young to remember. Over thirty years ago, we were terrified on a regular basis by warnings of the New Ice Age. Funnily enough, I don't remember there ever being an announcement that this wasn't going to happen after all; I think the scientific community just cast the belief aside, and - like an embarrassed teenager being reminded they used to believe in Santa Claus - never really talked about it again.

Well - I have the luxury apparently not afforded to scientists of being able to say that I simply don't know what the truth is. It's a shame they have painted themselves into the corner of Infallibility - it would be so much easier all round if they were able to utter those humble words, "We don't know."

Faith and Science are not that far apart...

Happy New Year!

Hi, sorry to be a little late with this, but it's All Go at my house. My younger daughter is getting ready to move abroad, a HUGE and exciting event for all of us (she was very ill for a long time and this wasn't even dreamable for years) and we threw her a surprise party - great fun when it happened but a bit of a logistical nightmare, which ended up in me (on crutches) going to a supermarket on the day to get everything that had been promised but not delivered by various people! So blogging wasn't the first thing on my mind!

Anyway - last night I had a random thought which felt blogworthy - so here it is.

I was talking to my daughters and said, "The Church should be thoroughly ashamed of itself for letting the Diet Industry steal the concept of Sin."

By which I mean this: Sin is about selfishness, hatred and destruction. It is NOT about one extra sandwich, or a Snickers bar, or wanting a hot chocolate. The greed which leads us to overeat is NOT a sin. It is a misreading of our needs, a means of comforting ourselves, or protecting ourselves, or of being a Bigger (and therefore safer) Presence in the world or - God forbid, maybe we just enjoy food - which is after all an important part of life. Sometimes we eat to stuff a Food lid on uncomfortable feelings, or because the act of eating was our only pleasant part of childhood (everyone was too busy to argue) so we recreate our own little emotional food-cocoon. There are as many reasons for overeating as there are overeaters - and it's good to gain control, I'm not saying just go ahead and be obese, but...

It is an insult to the raped, abused, murdered, pillaged, slaughtered, bereaved, disenfranchised, disinherited, deceived and despairing throughout history to allow people who get fat on the misery of the overweight to call their appetite 'SIN'.

It makes me sick to think that as well as already low self esteem, people are persuaded that they are overweight (if indeed they really are) because they need to stop sinning. Because everyone knows, deep down, that sin is serious stuff.

Hitler ordered the murder over 6,000,000 people. THAT was sin.
And yes, small things too, like allowing ourselves to habitually lie, steal, cheat... they too are sins because they don't add to the overall well-being of humankind.

So if someone eats a bit too much and lets that be associated in their mind with Hitler at some level, what is that going to do to them?

Probably make them feel so bad that they reach for another biscuit...

I feel really, REALLY strongly about this, because I see so many lovely people who are convinced they would be fine a little lighter, then perhaps a little more, then maybe skeletal... and paying good money to organisations who basically exist to make them feel bad about themselves so they can rake in the money.

FOR GOD'S SAKE! (Literally)

It is not a sin to overeat. It's not a good choice - it doesn't help you to be healthy - but it is NOT a SIN! We sin in many ways at many times, I'm sure - but eating a bar of chocolate does NOT put you in a bracket with Adolph Hitler!

Get a sense of perspective, and stop paying other people to make you feel bad about yourself!

Thanks. That's better! :)