Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Psalm 22

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,

by night, and am not silent.

I've been crying and praying on and off most of the last hour or so...
Please come back.
But nothing.
All is straw.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Message to a friend

Someone sent me a lovely message and this was my reply. I just wanted to reproduce it here, because it expresses how I am thinking at the moment about missing my faith...

"What I miss is quite simple, it is the presence of my faith in my life and the extra dimension it brought.
I felt secure and loved by a wonderful creator and overwhelmed by a God who became man and died for me.
I had what was for me a relationship with that God- and let no one deny that.
I miss that at times terribly and my birthday brought it out.
Just because a person was once in love with a cheating man who they thought was in love with them, does not mean once they find the truth out, the loss of the love they believed was there does not hurt.

Every now and then this surfaces...and lately, probably because I've been in pain and tired and emotional, it has surfaced with a bang.
But I know feelings do not facts make and as much as I want God back, I know that my wanting cannot make him any more real than Santa.
That hurts like heck at the moment, but sometimes, I have found, I have to let things hurt so I can work through them to the other side."

I cannot just take God back, make myself believe because I don't.
I want to believe as I did before but I can't.
So I just have to work through my hurt and come out the other side, a heathen, as I believe the term is, one of the great unwashed.
And it hurts to know that is how I am thought of, but it is, I guess, what I now am.

Thank you for all your support, my dear friends, I am sorry that it has not succeeded.
*hugs* to you all...

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Pity Party

It started because I decided to look back at last years blog to see what I was up to...
And read this... (post 255, 16th Sept 2005)
Funny, the tune was going through my head again.
And I read on, through the months that followed and suddenly saw how far away I was.
And thought of this time last year- of having a "Happy Birthday" thread in OBOB and being part of something that now I am so far from.

Martyrdom by pinpricks
Can't remember where I read that
Rumer Godden?
But pinpricks, continual, persistent, can be painful and hard to
endure.
How difficult to hold back the words, the retorts, the anger!
Leave me alone!
I just want to be alone and live my own life, my way.
But he looks on, smiling at my weaknesses
Look through the forest, work your way through the maze, ignore the
pinpricks, the dross, the padding and go to the heart of the matter.
That God is love.
Active, real love.
The love of God will defeat the pinpricks, the dross, the
superficial.
It will pull the mighty from their thrones and raise the lowly.
It will fill the starving, send the rich away empty.
If love is not there, He is not either.
Remember!


Where did that go?
Why did it go?
And a forum without a birthday thread reminds me I am a branch cut from the vine that has withered and died inside...

If I could turn back time and become just 21 again....

So this is my little pity party
Mourning the loss of my faith
Because it is a loss
It was a positive thing for me
It helped me and made me grow

Well, there may have been negative bits too, but tonight all I can see is loss and I'm weeping.
Boy I hate these hormones...
I want God back.


Sunday, September 10, 2006

9/11

Some events imprint themselves on your memory.
Aberfan was the first such memory for me, even though I could have been no more than 7 or 8.
My father had worked down the Merthyr Vale pit during the war, the pit which produced the dust which went on the tip which slipped and killed a whole generation of children.
I just remember it being a dark dark day, my mother crying, my father going to take things needed to a depot.
And being aware that if I had gone to school that day in Aberfan, I would not have come home.

9/11
Coming out of the lecture theatre to be told "there's been a terrible accident"
Only hearing accounts till I got home then watching in tears and horror as people fell to their death, were crushed by the falling towers.

For what?

No words to answer, just Max Boyce's poem on Aberfan.
Wherever we are tomorrow, let us bow our heads and remember all those whose autumns came too soon.

Aberfan
A shy fragile leaf now greens
In a bright and plastic room
On tender stems it offers forth
To cast its earthen womb
Fed by a valley's tears
That watched it leaf and grow
To tell of ones that sleep the night
In Aberfan below

One day those sleepy flowers
Will leave that sunsealed land
And wink away the night
That no one understands
To tell us why that summer fades
In a single afternoon
And why that day in Aberfan
Did autumn come too soon.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

The life that I have


The life that I have is all that I have...

Words that rang through my head this morning as I did some reading.
Try as hard as I can, I just cannot believe in an after-life.
That is scary.
Because one day, inevitably, I will die and be no more.
Buddhism suggests meditating upon death as a preparation for it- but they too believe in something continuing after death.
Which I cannot.

Should that make a difference?

The next line of the poem reads...

The life that I have is yours.

If instead of looking for a physical or mental continuation of my life, I give my life and the love of my life away now, prepare for the death and separation that will come and then live joyously with those around me, then death will not be the end of the life that I have lived.

And what better way to do that than by following the path of those wise men and women who have touched so many through the years?

"Unless you forgive from the heart..."
"Love your neighbour as yourself..."
"Go and do likewise..."

Just a thought.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Moans and groans


I had a virus infection about four weeks ago and it has left me with an "inflammatory arthritis" or so the doctor put it so nicely yesterday.
Should be gone in another month or so (didn't like the "or so" bit.)
Meantime, I take some anti- inflammatories, have a whole load of bloods done (yikes!) and suffer in not quite silence for the next few weeks.
I'm not looking forward to my return to work on Monday like this, and I have a peer group meeting and have to cope without my wonderful old ward...
I'm in self pity mode big time.
Added to which hubbie has had a crisis (no details, but extremely worrying and stressful) son1 keeps bursting into tears because he wants a girlfriend like son2 and son2's affairs of the heart are causing me more stress than the rest of them put together.
So I felt close to packing up shop at the begining of the week.
Putting an answerphone message on my life.
"I'm sorry, Cath is not available at the moment, she has left the planet in a cloud of angst."
But I would never do that, too much pain and heartache.
Nice to think of a thought-less stress-less place to be sometimes though.
A day out might even be nice...

OK, moan over.
Today we are going to a bird sanctuary and I will take more photos to bore people with and hopefully have two mminutes to sit and enjoy the atmosphere without son1 sounding off in one ear, son2 in the other and hubbie in the third...

Oh and the pic was an icon I saw in a Church in Abergavenny.
Taize icon.
brought back memories, so I took it with me in my reclaiming quest...