Tuesday 26 April 2011

Let me not forget by Rabindranath Tagore

This poem is a bit at odds with the liturgical season, but it is oh-so-beautiful it would fit in any season:

If it is not my portion to meet thee in this life
then let me ever feel that I have missed thy sight
---let me not forget for a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours.

As my days pass in the crowded market of this world
and my hands grow full with the daily profits,
let me ever feel that I have gained nothing
---let me not forget for a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours.

When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting,
when I spread my bed low in the dust,
let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me
---let me not forget a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours.

When my rooms have been decked out and the flutes sound
and the laughter there is loud,
let me ever feel that I have not invited thee to my house
---let me not forget for a moment,
let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams
and in my wakeful hours


Read the full of Tagore's Gitanjali (meaning: 'Song Offerings') here.

Monday 25 April 2011

A beautiful quotation

It would be downright embarassing to reveal just how much of my existence and how many of my better choices have been motivated by that single quotation by Henri David Thoreau:

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

Sunday 24 April 2011

Fragment of a love letter

Like a ten months old baby who wants to walk, I pull up on anything and anyone that’s remotely stable in order to get on my feet and to either walk or die trying.

Like an adolescent who’s got a crush on someone five years older, I spend hours upon hours trying to find out everything about them in order to quietly emulate all I can, every music track they listen to and the brand of deodorant they use. I despair of ever being this cool.

The mark keeps moving and I keep reaching for it, weeping with frustration, but with an ever more dogged determination. Life is meaningless without you.

Friday 15 April 2011

Volunteers in the Big Society

I really wasn't in the zone yesterday on my volunteering shift. Term is off so all the students are gone. In addition, quite a few paid staff have been permanently axed by funding cuts within the last two weeks... So the remaining volunteers are asked to do more and more by a management team that seems increasingly stressed out and desperate.

I moderately enjoyed being asked to be there during my maternity leave "if I'm feeling well". I'm already in the third trimester as it is, and I wasn't feeling particularly well on that day. I also sense that compassion fatigue is starting to kick in. It does affect me when little kids are visibly hungry and Eastern Europeans are so skint they can't afford a 50pence cup of coffee. Some days I'm just not in a place to brush it off and I want it all to go away. It seems to me that I might be in need of some TLC. I'd better ditch Barbara for a while, dig out my copies of Regena and Debrena, buy some posh make-up and get into a pink bubble bath.

The reason I'm letting myself be so uninspired in here is that there is no point in pretending that I don't sometimes operate according to common cultural standards that are miles away from what I would like to be about...

So hang on a minute... I don't have to be there and I'm not at all interested in propping up the a**holes we've got in government, especially when the people whose job it was to do what I'm doing for free are now at risk of losing their homes. I still cannot believe that those millionaire b**tards would so shamelessly highjack the goodwill of lefty idealists while doing no amount of volunteering themselves.

On another level, I'm only just realising that I do like to feel valued. Even though I should know better than feel entitled and expect others to do the emotional work of patting me on the back all the time. I don't enjoy new expectations being placed on my shoulders when not a moment of attention is being paid to how I'm feeling or to my physical wellbeing. If management doesn't provide the warm atmosphere we need to thrive in, maybe I could find the resources to help.

Everyone can have bad days. It's just bad luck when we have bad days at the same time but it's nothing to worry about for the long term.

So I'm typing this here, not because I'm right, but because I want to keep it in mind that we can't always function as if we've just gotten drunk on communion wine. Some days the assumptions of the culture we grew up with will get the best of us. When this happens, it's not such a terrible idea to get into a pink bath, or browse the Book of Common Prayer, or both.

Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us, and to all men. We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all, for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And, we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory, world without end.

The Book of Common Prayer, "A General Thanksgiving".

Sunday 10 April 2011

The grey book

One of my work colleagues is my all-time hero. She's got a fantastic attitude when it comes to making the voluntary sector great and she sets up charities left, right and centre whenever she sees a need. The last one she set up was for dads who, through false allegations made by a former partner, were prevented from seeing their children grow up. In three months she had them organised and had supervised Saturdays set up. This means that, provided someone else is with them (unobstrusively), the dads can be with their kids. Julie is A-MA-ZING.

Once, she told me something along the lines of: "Look Dany, it's our job, we're getting paid for it, we're knowledgeable and we have great networks. If we can't do it, then tell me who the hell can."

Let's not kid ourselves though. She is also very much the exception and most third sector professionals, while reasonably efficient, are nowhere near displaying this level of enthusiasm and hard-headedness. But some are, I'd say maybe one in ten, one in five if I'm optimistic... By working in this sector, you do end up meeting them.

An interesting thing to note is that Julie is not great at everything she does. She sometimes "signposts" people to complete dead end services that may not be all that useful to them. Her signposting drives me crazy. Still, if she were perfect she'd be unimitable. As it is she's not perfect, she makes mistakes, she sometimes lacks reflexivity, but she get things done like there is no tomorrow.

Her signposting is not such a bad idea though, if it worked. It acknowledge the fact that one person or organisation cannot do everything and that the service user might need to be signposted to another person or agency which can be trusted to do a great job. For a while, I've been thinking that the medical first aid training I received should be complemented by some form of social first aid training. I received a tiny bit of it as a Niteliner, mostly to to with exam stress, HIV, suicide and bereavement.

I'm thinking that I need a "grey book", with a couple of paragraphs of best practices under each heading, and the best people or agencies that people could be signposted to if I or the people around me do not have the capacity to help. This is becoming quite pressing now as it's only a few month until H. has to be the visible face ot the Church in a middle size town. My thinking is, if you're going to walk around in a dog collar, then you'd better put on a damn good show and not ignore the needs around you, especially when approached directly. He agrees.

So now grey book will have to be compiled and fast. Fortunately, I've just spent two years as a third sector professional, I love collecting information and I enjoy networking with cool people. Here are the possible headings:

Advice and information

Animal welfare

Armed services

Arts and Community Arts

Bereavement

Carers and Carer respite care

Careers and worklessness

Childcare

Clothing

Counselling

Crime prevention

Education (adults)

Education (children)

Environment and conservation

Ethnic minorities

Families

Finances (personal and family)

Foodbanks

LGBT

Health promotion

History

Hospital visits

Housing and homelessness

Libraries

Listening services

Learning disabilities

Loneliness and isolation

Lone parents

Marriage

Meals-on-wheels

Mental health

Mediation

Older people

Overseas aid projects

Perinatal support and young children

Physical disabilities

Politics, democracy and campaigning

Poverty (hidden)

Prisoners and past offenders

Prisoners' families

Recreation and leisure

Refugees and asylum seekers

Road safety

Safety in the community

Substance abuse

Toy libraries / toy buses

Transport issues

Women and girls

Young people

Thursday 7 April 2011

The work of trusting again

Appointment with the midwife today. Twenty five weeks and a textbook perfect pregnancy so far. Our son is the right size, has no detectable anomalies whatsoever, a regular heartbeat and he energetically kicks around all the bloody time. I've got no complications apart from an oddly reassuring nausea (hormones pumping and all...).

I'm starting to think that it's time I started to trust again, that I can, again, just rejoice in the fact that I'm alive, healthy and happy. But I can't help thinking that I'll believe it when I see it. I wonder if I'm on to something here...

What exactly is the process of beginning to trust again? I wonder if again we need to liftour understanding of the Gospel a bit beyond Sunday school level... Does "men of little faith" mean: "you clearly haven't got a lot of faith and you'd better find a way to muster up some". Or does it imply a question along the lines of "what hurt is killing your trust? How can it flow again?".

It strikes me me that Jesus does not condemn Thomas' "lack of belief", but provides the experience that enables Thomas to start trusting again after the trauma that he has been through. Same with the Emmaus guys...

Now this raises some issues as well. I'm not saying you can only "trust" or "have faith" when things are going well for you. Instead, as I've stated before, I believe that one can have a terminal illness and have this trust. To some extent we all have it, it's just a matter of tuning into it.