im still here!.

Ch-ch-ch  Changes. So sang David Bowie on the opening track of Hunky  Dory album it was arguably the album where he had finally arrived. Bowie had to rely on 'novelty songs' such as The Laughing Gnome. my profile has somewhat changed over the past few months. I have had the hardest three years of my life and  I have had to give work up as a Psychiatric Nurse, Due to.difficulty standing up, falling asleep in handovers etc, Each year of the last 3 has been harder than the previous one. Not necessarily the worst 3 as perhaps I have grown through them. But I believe that I am getting to the age where I need to be exceedingly quick if I am to make anything of my life. I tend to take the view that everything that happens, happens for a reason.I hope that very soon that I shall have something happen that will make the hardships of recent times make sense!
        

stages in life's way

No matter how 2010 ends up it will have been an eventful year for me. There have indeed been a good number of setbacks - not least the unexpected worsening of my Parkinson's Disease. This, in turn have led me to have to give up my nursing career which was a really long time in coming, giving up much of the leadership in the writers group and an uncertainty regarding leadership of the Clarke's missionary exploits. In addition the prayer and support group at Treena's appears to have run its course.

But in spite of all of this I somehow remain hopeful. I seem to get the feeling that I am in a temporary vacuum. That out of the hardship will burst much fruit - that God's plan is unraveling as it should and I just need to be patient. The problem is that I am 45 now and am wondering - how long O Lord?

Life's Illusions

The singer Joni Mitchell once penned a song with the lyrics: it's lifes illusions I recall/I really don't know life at all. Indeed I suppose we have all been disillusioned in our time. In many ways I have felt disappointed in people when I have had higher expectations than they can live up to. Another thing I have felt is that I become less certain of myself as I grow older.

Do to others as you would like them to do for you.

It means a great deal to me that I am unique, that I don't have a clone, that nobody can make quite the same kind of contribution to the well being of the human race as I can. I suppose one of my significant aims is to fulfill my potential or come close to it. I am not especially in pursuit of popularity as I know that it is both fleeting and superficial although I suppose I want to understand people and feel that I have something worthwhile to learn from everyone I meet. I think that it is no coincidence that each of us are born with two ears and a mouth. One of my greatest desires is to be understood and I think everybody wants that. If I try to make it my aim to understand people then hopefully they might return the favour. But even if not I desire peace of mind and a clear conscience.

If I desire something from others then to be that for them would be a good starting point.

Superficial Judgements

In society we are taught to label people according to their disability. I have a good friend that is blind I have known her for over 20 years and know so much about her. I recognise that her disability is only a very small part of what she amounts to. But in terms of classification she is seen in terms of the one thing she can't do which most people can and not the many things she can do that most people can't. She's not my friend because of this disability but for the many things she is good at like being down to earth, a good listener and memoriser, a confident, having a vast array of knowledge that she can apply appropriately, an ability to grasp my rather offbeat and complex sense of humour, the fact that I feel able to show more sides of myself towards her than perhaps anybody. She even managed to hold down a job as a computer programmer for more than 20 years something which even with my sight I couldn't manage.

As a worker in mental health I am especially aware of a tendency to label individuals in terms in terms of their illness. A common phrase is to say 'this person is schizophrenic or this person is autistic in the same sense as someone would say the food is horrible. Having spent a good part of my adult life working with people with Schizophrenia and Autism. I have come to realise that there are vast differences and complexities in everybody alive. It would be true to say 'this person has Schizophrenia or Autism although even wording it like this could lead to an array of wrong assumptions. Even intelligent, sensitive people seem to assume a kind of Jekyll and Hyde syndrome for the condition of Schizophrenia hence popular humour that comes out with such witicisms as 'you are never alone with Schizophrenia'. Having spent extensive time working in the field of Mental Health I haven't really ever seen that although I have seen a lot of depression and fear.

One of the great things I find about being a Christian is that I am never regarded in a knee jerk, superficial sense not even in terms of my many failings and weakness's but in terms of my potential. I am so glad and blessed that when God sees me he regards my abilities and he is far more patient and hopeful about me than I am about myself.

Legacy/Destiny

There is a thought that the person that we are today is to a large degree the product of all our past decisions and what we choose today will be formative in who we become tomorrow. Even from the perspective of this life being our only life based on the notion that the universe is ulltimately a meaningless accident, the decisions that we make are terribly important (if we care at all about our legacy.) But if there are even the possibility of such things as a God, design, immortality etc then we have to reckon to an eternal dimension to our decisions.

This perspective is very sobering indeed.

Coincidences

Yesterday afternoon I called on my next door neighbour and asked if she could have my second flat key if the circumstance arose that I locked myself out. She was quite willing to take on this role only she asked me, almost half - assuming, if I knew about her current circumstances. When I assured her that I knew nothing about them she then informed me that she had just locked herself out of her own flat and that the timing of such an intervention was rather comical. She further emphasisied the irony of the whole situation and mentioned a similar kind of occurence recently with another friend. My natural inclination is to put such events down to God's grand scheme of things, which could still be true only this lady - although sharing a basic faith with me in an 'otherness' didn't have anything approaching the comparatively clear cut and fixed view of God that I held.

Such coincidental occurences have happened to me before sometimes in clusters such as the occasion that I climbed on to a train and found myself sitting next to my best mate from university and then on arrival at my intended stop met my second best from university, unexpectedly at the station (perhaps less strange but after the first event I was more open). There was a third event that was more complex to explain than the previous two during the course of my visit that further added to my sense of things happening that transcended comprehension.

One further event that comes immediately to mind in this context is that a former home group leader at Church not only went to school with my brother but was one of his 'best mates.' Has this achieved anything lasting and noteworthy for him, me or my brother? Well not that i'm aware - it is just that I put it down to the workings of a mighty God that goes beyond my understanding.

Maybe one day it'll all make sense.