tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14568570684760952252024-03-14T06:33:02.295+00:00mindfulness and mortalityThoughts about mindfulness, mortality and how we deal with it. There may be some funeral thoughts, including practical ideas from my own experience of many funerals, but there are other 'good funeral guides.' I want to offer branch lines rather than the express route from midwife to funeral director. I want this to be about mindfulness, life and mortality, not about dying. But...gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.comBlogger319125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-34450963175026427702016-05-28T17:53:00.001+01:002016-05-28T17:53:14.395+01:00Thank you!<span style="font-size: large;">Just a little note en passant to say thank you to those people who visit this blog even though I haven't posted on it for nearly a year. I'm really pleased that there's stuff here that some people </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">(you can't all be robots, surely??) </span>might find interesting.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I don't log on very often, so I was very surprised to see the number of visits people have been making. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">You might like to know that similar preoccupations to the ones you're finding here also crop up on my current blog, </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> http://whatthewatersays.blogspot.co.uk/</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">where you would of course also be very welcome. I write less there about funerals, rather more about meditation, being in the moment, and the world around me, and of course, occasionally about mortality. So you can stay with my journey if you'd like to.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">all the very best, and do comment if you'd like to.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">gloria/cerrig1 </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-51823564799157502072015-03-02T15:48:00.000+00:002015-03-03T22:10:18.044+00:00Goodbye and hello<span style="font-size: large;">I feel this blog is coming to the end of its days, so I am going to sign off in a mo. All my mighty words will still be here until...? Google kills Blogger off? The End of Time?</span> <span style="font-size: large;">But my very close friend Tim Clark, aka tcerrig, is going to carry forward the role of blogging thoughts about mindfulness, mortality, and the other things I've been bending your ears with over the last few years. Gloria is done. She's taking the cure, handing the Grand Prix du Cote du Rhone to Tim. Please visit his blog, "What the Water Says." No, I'm not sure what the hell he means either, but anyway, he'd be pleased to see you at:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">http://whatthewatersays.blogspot.co.uk</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">which he is just getting going. The title to this post will take you there, via cursor-magic and clicking. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here's a few bridging words from my successor:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">"Blessings upon your</span> <span style="font-size: large;">retirement Gloria. I shall endeavour to share worthwhile thoughts with the world, on subjects related to mortality, meditation, silence, the natural world, but possibly not Hornby Double-O trains sets, nor Aston Villa.</span> <span style="font-size: large;">I do hope your readership, which probably thought your unusual silence meant you had kicked the bucket, keeps an eye on my ramblings. I think I may have useful things to say to certain sorts of people. Give me a try."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So there you have it. Thank you for reading my words, thank you for comments. The Queen is dead, long live the King. Of what, you'll have to decide. </span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-6525993606135247232015-01-11T13:50:00.001+00:002015-01-11T17:13:02.025+00:00"Je Suis Charlie" says Gloria Mundi - part 2<span style="font-size: large;">Will Self put it neatly on Channel 4 TV news the other evening. He pointed out that if you make freedom of speech (and drawing)</span> <span style="font-size: large;">a universal, non-negotiable right, you are turning it into something like a religious absolute, something to be seen as the same everywhere. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The murderers in Paris last week were, they said, acting in the name of a religious absolute.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Self pointed out that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, in a French concept, are directed not at those in power, but at the relatively powerless French Muslims. I suppose you could argue that those cartoon aimed at the Prophet were aimed at a very powerful figure, but in the context of France today, I can see his point. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Typically, political and social satire/caricature has been aimed, in this country at least, at those in power. The great caricaturists of the 18th and early 19th century attacked the Establishment, including at times the monarchy (if with a degree of caution) No-one murdered them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Freedom of speech must be continually re-assessed in the societies in which it occurs. We do not and should not tolerate words and images designed to stir up anti-semitism; that is not necessarily to say we should automatically outlaw cartoons about Jews or Jewish matters.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And incidentally, "we must respect all religions." I don't know about that. It depends what religions and their followers say or do. The Christians have a saying: "by their fruits shall ye know them." Respecting religion, whatever it advocates; caricaturing anyone, in whatever fashion? H'mmm. I'd rather satire served its ancient purpose of making the powerful loook ridiculous when they are being ridiculous. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> A cartoon would need to be examined for its intentions, as it were, and likely effects - the sort of thing that happens in a court of law sometimes. The difficulty seems to arise when the view of what is acceptable, "fair game," as it were, collides with an absolute, of the sort that characterises doctrinaire religious or political beliefs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">No-one in the Soviet Union of the 1940s got away with satirising Stalin for long. Absolutists have little sense of humour and take themselves absurdly seriously.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So the issues around Charlie Hebdo may be more complex and challenging than many on the streets of Paris today would accept. But the cartoonists drew pictures, and they were met with cold-blooded murder. The asymetry horrifies people around the world, and whatever the cartoons were like, today, it is simply and I feel rightly a matter of "Je Suis Charlie."</span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-29062811198294496142015-01-08T18:14:00.001+00:002015-01-08T21:46:35.053+00:00"Je Suis Charlie" says Gloria Mundi<span style="font-size: large;">So, big deal announcement, but:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We must all be Charlie, now and always.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Such lethal derangement cannot "win" anything. What have these psychopaths achieved? They have caused death, grief and suffering to a group of people. They have put French Muslims at risk from "revenge" attacks. They have provoked strong condemnation from Muslim organisations in Europe and elsewhere. They have united the French people - almost all of them - and strengthened their determination not to give way to panic.</span> <span style="font-size: large;">And they claim this has "avenged the Prophet?" </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Like most people with totalitarian mentalities, they are stupid as well as vile. In their own terms, they have achieved nothing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">They have achieved nothing of any significance, any more
than the psychopaths who burst into schools and murder schoolchildren
achieve anything. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Nous sommes Charlie, maintenant et toujours, or we give way to murderous fascists. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-20056046347584605002015-01-05T09:09:00.000+00:002015-01-06T09:09:17.214+00:00Celine Dion and me - funeral music<span style="font-size: large;">The impossibly wealthy and successful Ms Dion</span> <span style="font-size: large;">is not really my thing, to put it mildly. The whole big voice power ballad overwrought style leaves me cold. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But. Many a British funeral is for, or is organised by, men who don't like to talk much about their feelings. There are often comments about how he loved banter and leg-pulling, how dry his sense of humour was, how his children knew he loved them even though he didn't tell them often. (Or ever....)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">That's how these chaps are, or how they were. We celebrants serve them, we don't criticise or judge, I hope. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Enter Miss Dion (or Houston, or Carey.) Enter Andrea Bocelli duetting with Dion or Brightman. Enter the big throbbing ballad, the singers for whom "I" must be delivered as "<b>H</b>I.."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">If pop music is the soundtrack of our lives, these belters are the soundtrack of the grief and the love that Britchaps/chapesses are unable to express.They licence the evoking of powerful feelings in a reserved and semi-formal context. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I'd sooner give up red wine than buy a Celine Dion CD, but in this context I say: "Brava, Celine!" Hit it, kid. Not a dry eye in the house - you've done your job. </span><br />
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<br />gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-6498478425061086552015-01-01T14:12:00.001+00:002015-01-01T14:12:56.183+00:00Language Follies and a HNY<span style="font-size: large;">First off: A Happy 2015 to my reader, and thanks for stopping by.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Wouldn't it be good if we could clear away some linguistic clutter in 2015? I don't mean the simply daft stuff, I mean the misleading phrases and euphemisms. Here's a few:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Future-proof.</b> On the cover of "Broadleaf," the Woodland Trust magazine, I read "Future-proof: building a blueprint for the woods of tomorrow." Well-meaning, successful organisation - it doesn't need to write such bollocks. (Apart from any other consideration, a blueprint is a drawing, from which you create a building. You don't need to <i>build </i>a blueprint...)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The idea that we can proof anything, especially the natural environment, against future changes is foolishly misleading. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">An ex-Snowdonia National Park environmental officer made it clear to me that the natural environment never keeps still. Conservation doesn't flash-freeze things as they happen to be at that moment</span>. <span style="font-size: large;">We can of course protect our woodland, in the here and now.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The reason why I think this nonsense is misleading is because if we cannot accept, indeed live in and with, the understanding that everything is always changing, we stand no chance of leading sane and rewarding lives. The more we cling, the faster we will perceive "it" as changing and the more panicky we will feel, whatever "it" might be. "It" will flow away from us even more quickly. The phrase "future proof" comes, I think, from the computer industry. "nuff said. Let's bin it.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Saving the planet</span></b>. <span style="font-size: large;">Whatever <i>we</i> do, the planet will be fine, rolling on through space for billions more years, unless there is a truly vast collision with something much bigger than it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>We</i> won't necessarily be fine at all. Hubris doesn't help. We need to live with natural systems, degrade our support environment less</span>,<span style="font-size: large;"> and so on, if we are to save our civilization, and ultimately the species, from premature wipe-out. But saving or destroying the planet is beyond us. Even a nuclear war wouldn't destroy it. It would simply destroy us, and very many other life forms.</span> <span style="font-size: large;">We need to keep our actions in sharp focus, within the limits of what we can do, if our civilization in to thrive and continue, until - ha! You can't, ultimately, future-proof our ways of life.</span><br />
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gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-49837807674373509592014-12-10T16:01:00.000+00:002014-12-10T16:01:15.903+00:00"We never keep to the present," said Pascal<span style="font-size: large;">I can't remember a better description of the destructiveness of ignoring the present moment than this: </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of time that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.</span>"<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Written a long time ago by someone who I doubt ever heard the term "mindfulness."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">With thanks to Sarah for chasing down the whole passage, quoted to us during an excellent day with John Peacock.</span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-87588605006247769152014-12-03T11:38:00.001+00:002014-12-03T17:20:01.938+00:00Digital cloning - mortality awareness, artificial intelligence and the end of the world?<span style="font-size: large;">This remarkable human being:</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oawKsKVzeBo/VH7x_n75p-I/AAAAAAAABHM/0zVnakYJmfc/s1600/stephen-hawking.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oawKsKVzeBo/VH7x_n75p-I/AAAAAAAABHM/0zVnakYJmfc/s1600/stephen-hawking.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">has warned us that artificial intelligence (computer power equal to the human brain)</span> <span style="font-size: large;">could threaten the survival of homo sapiens. He's a smart bloke and we'd do well to listen and think, though another prof calmed us a bit by saying that it's a 100+ years threat, not an "AI and Ebola too, which to tackle first?" sort of threat.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">One aspect of AI</span> <span style="font-size: large;">which I find immediately worrying is the idea of a computer cloned with a digital facsimile of a person.</span> <span style="font-size: large;">I think it's worrying not because Apple might include it in their next upgrade, but because of what it tells us about mortality unawareness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I'm someone who has lost a partner in mid-life. I set up a digital clone of my beloved. This clone talks to me as he did, answers questions, chats, the whole bit. Maybe the imagery of him is avatar-like, or better.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So instead of mourning my beloved, I spend a lot of my time with "him." Instead of grieving for him, enduring pain, moving onwards, I stick in a digital version of the past. Not, note, my memories, but an updateable mock-up of him. If I meet someone else, after a decent time interval (I'll check with the kids - they'll tell me) what do I do? Ask my cloned beloved if that's OK? Compare digital nonperson with actual bloke I've met?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">YUCK! </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm avoiding the pain as well as the joy of being human. I'm pretending death doesn't exist. Don't tell me death and life are the same thing, and we need death to be alive. I'll stay enmeshed with my dead person, who can now talk to me, offer comfort, be soothing and.....</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What a horrible temptation for a grief-stricken person.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> But my dead dear one belongs here:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">and in my heart. Not here:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">AAAARGH!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">(Or is it just me?)</span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-75520539022562825422014-11-19T19:28:00.004+00:002014-11-19T19:29:47.063+00:00Mortality: if you're mortal, this book should help. If you think you're not mortal, seek help....<span style="font-size: large;">This man (surgeon, researcher, teacher)</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p-SLNgLVBwA/VGzNGg69JbI/AAAAAAAABGo/hFE5SfU0Xlw/s1600/gawande.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p-SLNgLVBwA/VGzNGg69JbI/AAAAAAAABGo/hFE5SfU0Xlw/s1600/gawande.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Atul Gawande, has written a really important book. "Being Mortal" pulls together a lot of what many people have been saying for quite a long time: late and drastic medical interventions in someone's last days can be dreadful failures, in terms of what the dying person has to go through. He says a lot more than that, and he bases what he has to say on detailed accounts, including the last weeks of friends, and of his own father.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's not always a jolly read; he goes into detail on the sort of ailments that are likely to afflict most of us as we age. One of his aims is to make us think and prepare for future difficulties, ours and those close to us; he wants to change how we view - or try to avoid viewing - the last stages of life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The book is about much more than medicine. He finds ways round the usual terrifying conundrums of the terminally ill, with regard to possible treatments. In doing so, he re-defines the role of doctors in such times.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because a hospice nurse had sat down with Atul and his father and had a direct, careful sort of conversation, his father was able to surprise himself and his son with what he could still do.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I was almosty oversome just witnessing it. Here was what a different kind of care - a different kind of medicine - makes possible, I thought to myself. Here is what having a hard conversation can do."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The conversation isn't about a menu of marginally effective and deeply horrible treatments; it's about asking the patient what matters to him, what are his fears, what is non-negotiable - all questions that acknowledge that he is going to die, and fairly soon. And then making the medicine serve those ends. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It is very hard for doctors to do the best for a dying person if the person and those close to him can't acknowledge that they are in the last days, or weeks, or months of a life </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">It's easy to say that the quality of a life is more important that it's length, at the end - unless, of course, it's your life. Here is a sensitive, emotionally honest, well-informed guide to a way through and round the horrors of futile (and very expensive) treatments. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He writes with compassion and clarity, and he wears his learning lightly. It's a very, very good book about dying, so it's also about living. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Contemplating, through this book, the end of life has made my immediate life richer. Can't say fairer than that!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Atul Gawande is giving this year's Reith lectures, BBC Radio 4, 09:00 next Tuesday 25th November. Should be good.</span><br />
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<br />gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-51260658820195628432014-11-10T12:10:00.001+00:002014-11-10T12:13:53.563+00:00Funerals: Give them what they want?<span style="font-size: large;">This is a "funerals" post, so if you'd like to side-step it, that's fine by me, though Andrew Marr's BBC Radio 4 programme this morning made it pretty clear that thinking about death - yours - from time to time is a positive thing to do for your life.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Anyway: as a funeral celebrant, I spend much time ensuring people - families, friends, mourners - get what they want. That is surely a large part of the rationale for a ceremony that does not need to follow the rituals and structures of an organised religion (for better or worse, of course. Come on, own up - which of us does not have a bit of an aching hole where the finer elements of those rituals used to live? Whatever we believe?) </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">So a while ago, that's what I did. He who had died was a big character, the crematorium was packed twice over. His family wanted to accentuate the positive, celebrate the life, didn't want it too sad and gloomy. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After my customary warning that it would be sad, but that we would make sure it wasn't too sombre or gloomy, we went ahead and planned it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">It wasn't very sad, that's for sure.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The gathering loved it. Plenty of smiles, some big laughs. Off we went.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And I'm left thinking "was that "right?" There wasn't much mourning there, not much room for grief. Very few signs of grief. Not much acceptance or acknowledgement of the power and mystery of death to enrich our lives and help their grieving. And yet he was a greatly valued man.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Was I helping them to avoid the issue, skate in a superficial way over what had happened to them?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Maybe I still have a model of what a funeral "should" be, instead of letting it be what it is. I was pleased by how it went, but troubled by the thought that it may have lacked what many people see asone important function of a funeral - to help people through a physical loss, however much they want to enjoy memories of his life.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">They got what they wanted, but probably not what what I wanted for them. I'm sure that's better than the other way round, but still...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">Codicil</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1049bc;"></span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">Hang about Vicar, let me interrupt. </span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">Having been full of life you say, I'd want a party. </span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">Yes, but I'm full of death now and see things differently.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">You say I wouldn't have wanted folk to grieve for long.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">No - but with infinite death ahead of me, </span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">a few months being alive and fed up </span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">doesn't seem much to ask of my friends.</span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">OK, some of you wear the bright clothes I admired -</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">but you lot with less taste, give us a break</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">and wear dark colours please.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">No flowers? Donations only? Hold your horses. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">I could never have picked one charity </span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">and loved buying and looking at flowers. I'd like to give</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">my mourners that opportunity.</span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">True I liked food, and would like to see most of you </span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">tucking in. But I'd also like to do some good - </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">and some of you who could do to lose a pound or two</span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">should surely be too upset to eat.</span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">Smile by all means, remember my gaffes </span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">and share a careful laugh -</span></span></span></div>
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</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">but then it's my funeral, fuck it - </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353;">some of you ought to go home and WEEP BUCKETS.</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1049bc; font-size: 19pt;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353; font-size: 11pt;"> <i>Julie Deakin</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;"></span></span></div>
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</span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-72172261655295040282014-10-22T09:21:00.004+01:002014-10-22T09:21:53.418+01:00Harmony, and that Stephen Taberner live magic.<span style="font-size: large;">Singing as well as you can, with a goodly number of other non-professional singers</span> <span style="font-size: large;">who were almost all strangers until the previous morning; singing a simple but powerful little song in the mighty caverns of Liverpool Cathedral; now that's a mindful activity. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Life-enhancing, nothing to do with the trappings of funerals - it was a lovely change and maybe even a wee bit transformational. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Harmony seems to me to have the power to carry the beauties and pains of life, to accommodate both being alive and acknowledging life's transience. Perhaps that's why it fills people up. (Well, me, anyway!)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Your cursor over the title will take you to a YouTube clip of "Soyewela," a South African (Xhosa) freedom song. Four other songs from the same performance are also on YouTube. The most ambitious is Stephen's arrangement of an Australian rock anthem "Throw Your Arms Around Me," by Hunters and Collectors. It's not perfect, but it sure is live. Before we went on, Stephen advised not to worry about ourselves, just to let the song be. It's hard to describe that feeling, but it is very presentmoment, very communal, deeply refeshing.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The man is a magician, no question.</span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-11480370512428914462014-10-12T15:00:00.002+01:002014-10-12T15:00:34.342+01:00Dying with dignity, funerals with dignity, depend on uniqueness<span style="font-size: large;">Your cursor over the title will take you to a BBC "Points of View" transcript of today's broadcast. Don't be misled by the title, it's not part of the assisted dying debate, it's simply about how difficult it is to feel that someone is dying with dignity.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">To summarise clumsily: it's difficult for hospital staff, however compassionate and caring they may be, to provide i</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">n the environment of a modern hospital, </span>that sense of a unique event happening to one individual. I'll leave you to read the whole thing.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Hospital staff do their best, some do extraordinarily well. But the bed in which she is dying is a bed amongst many; her death is one in a progression of deaths; and perhaps, somewhere in the hospital, someone is looking at spare beds, incoming patients, and thinking, with however much compassion that can be brought to bear, "the lady in no. 20 probably won't last the night, so..."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">If you die at home, no-one is going to be waiting for your bed to be ill or die in. (Unless your family is exceptionally unlucky!) There may be one of those wonderful Macmillan people there to help, or someone from Hospice at Home. Hopefully, there will be close relatives there too (as there may well be in a hospital, of course.) But it's a unique event; it's your bed, and you're dying in it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So if a dignified death depends on a sense of uniqueness, that is surely just as true at a funeral. That's why families hate it when there is another family visibly and sometimes audibly waiting for their turn; when an FD behaves as though this is just another job; when a celebrant minister or priest is doing so many funerals that he hasn't really made himself part of this family's feelings, hasn't done more or other than what he usually does. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The deathly production line. We must do better.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Of course, if you die in one of the hellish killing fields in the Middle East, or Africa, or... then all this is pretty marginal. We are a fortunate culture still. But I can't imagine there's any bereaved family anywhere that doesn't want, somehow, to feel that the uniqueness of the person they loved has been part of the death, the funeral and the grieving.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-89593111042157890082014-10-10T08:44:00.005+01:002014-10-10T08:44:47.060+01:00we are pluralities - meditation and the striving ego<span style="font-size: large;">It seems to me that we are not single
entities, but pluralities, full of the voices and gestures of people we
have known, the places we have lived, and then some. We are unfolding
processes, and our present moment, our “now,” is arrived at from “them”
and “then” and “there.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">During meditation, it is possible, even for an inconsistent lightweight of a meditator like me, to let go of the trains of thought that usually occupy the mind, and be in the present moment; to drop concepts and judgements, and just be. It doesn't last long before the scripts start running again, and I need to bring the mind back again to the present - often to the breath. </span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gOGWuIkPU4Q/VDeNi1awYsI/AAAAAAAABF8/CcQLTcLWxcM/s1600/meditating_guy_in_chair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gOGWuIkPU4Q/VDeNi1awYsI/AAAAAAAABF8/CcQLTcLWxcM/s1600/meditating_guy_in_chair.jpg" /></a></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">This to and fro motion is, of course, what a meditation is, for most of us. The Balance is never static, as a tightrope walker might tell us.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">For those moments of presentness, them then and there fall away. When I return to my plural self, it is with more calmness and a better balance. Perhaps for a while I am more fully a plurality, and happy with it; I am not struggling so much to sustain one single "I," worrying about claiming things for my ego. It's easier then to accept change, uncertainty, provisionality.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Meditation, like exercise, can be addictive! </span><br />
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gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-19434225661591093832014-10-06T22:02:00.000+01:002014-10-06T22:03:31.229+01:00Serenade - a poem by John Fuller<i><span style="font-size: large;">This poem links in my mind with my post about the fear of death, 02:10:14; I hope Mr Fuller doesn't mind my reprinting in full his fine poem, which I found in The Spectator, 4th October 2014, page 24.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Come to the garden, that familiar place</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Where life renews itself against all odds.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Untightening buds act out their memory,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And dying seems a momentray pause.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Our star that took an afternoon to sink</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Hangs in reluctance from the darkening tree</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Like an amused and philosophic eye</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Penning his treatise of the out-of-doors.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">We are the topics of his arguments,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Enduring his extemporised revisions.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">We are reminded of our natural ends</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And of our origins and of their laws.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The knotted plum has dared at last to bloom:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Its blossom has no other mind but yours.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The yellow spray will lean down just for you</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And though its petals scatter, they are yours.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Twisted wistaria unfolds and falls:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Its violet is a passing thought of yours.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The carved magnolia tilts its head and lifts a cheek</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">That mimics the expressiveness of yours. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The visited and swooning clematis </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Climbs like a conscious eagerness of yours.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Yours are the flowers dimmer than their air,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Whose perfume lingers like an old desire.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Come to the garden, where two glasses wait</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And there's a chair beside another chair.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The liquid lifts and widens as it pours,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And evening has no other end but night.</span><br />
<br />
John Fullergloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-63775864306065403302014-10-05T14:50:00.001+01:002014-10-05T16:19:20.920+01:00The psychological appeal of polarised views: adolescence, The Process, jihadism - ?<span style="font-size: large;">I had two good friends at school who became heavily inolved in what became a full-blown cult. This cult, originally called The Process, and later the Process Church of the Final Judgement, was why I lost touch with them both.</span> <span style="font-size: large;">At one point, I was quite interested in The Process myself. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I realise now it was feeding on the common adolescent uncertainty about personal identity, and the longing to belong to Something - and of course in 1967 that Something had better be strange and exciting. It mustn't be part of what Processeans charmingly called "the Grey." (i.e. you and me.)</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uRjoc9Pbt8g/VDFDoSA1vwI/AAAAAAAABFs/OHrQYanZdVw/s1600/ZINEprocess31.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uRjoc9Pbt8g/VDFDoSA1vwI/AAAAAAAABFs/OHrQYanZdVw/s1600/ZINEprocess31.jpg" height="320" width="239" /></a></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Well, that was a long time ago. Here's something more recent; from "The Spectator," 4th October, page 17. It's a woman describing how her stepson became a radical Islamist, and how he is now beginning to return to his family, leaving behind the influence of his frightening friends:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">"He is maturing. He no longer needs the support of a tribe, which is what attractes Muslims from all backgrounds and nations to the idea of jihad. I've come to think that it is youth, not presecution or poverty, that these Islamic State groupies have in common, an embryonic sense of identity. For them, blaming America for the world's problems is the equivalent of shouting at their parents that they 'never asked to be born.'"</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I think that my young friends back then in the mid-1960s felt that at last they had an identity that had nothing to do with their parents</span>, <span style="font-size: large;">that simplified their lives, gave them a new identity and a tribe. Thus were they pulled into the vortex of The Process.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It provided absolute and polarised answers to the frustrating complexities of life, it broke down their previous sense of who they were and where they belonged, it made them vulnerable to manipulative people. And as usual with such cults, guess what? There was, allegedly (!), sex and money in it for the leaders. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Would that Western jihadists had fallen for something so ultimately ludicrous and relatively harmless as the Process Church, rather than the terrifying simplicities of jihadism. The Process had its nasty side, in my opinion, but it didn't involve hacking people's heads off and it had no power base in regional religious sectarian conflict.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So when desperate parents tell us that they can't understand why their middle-class privileged children start to talk in scary slogans and attack everything their family stands for, I think that, unlikely though it may at first seem, there may be something in common with my two schoolfriends, both from comfortable, apparently stable middle-class backgrounds. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">They both became relatively suddenly alienated, energised, very strange, and figuratively and then literally, distanced from all they had known, all who knew them. They had a tribe. Than God it wasn't Charles Manson's tribe, or Jim Jones down in Guyana. </span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-65895957801196891762014-10-02T22:12:00.000+01:002014-10-02T22:12:11.186+01:00The Fear of Death - mindsets that might help.<span style="font-size: large;">I don't mean the natural (biologically-wired) drive to avoid death. Neither do I mean fears about the nature of our individual exits. I mean the sort of out-of-balance existential terror that some people feel deep down about the fact that </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>(plot spoiler alert...)</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">everyone dies.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B7lkoHMGamA/VCw8gKviZxI/AAAAAAAABFM/G43Sbzu5KpY/s1600/angel-of-death-16541.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B7lkoHMGamA/VCw8gKviZxI/AAAAAAAABFM/G43Sbzu5KpY/s1600/angel-of-death-16541.jpg" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">"What, me? Now? But...<span style="font-size: small;">but</span>...<span style="font-size: x-small;">but...</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It seems to me natural to have some fear of death; one philosophical response is that of Epicurus: "where I am, death is not; where death is, I am not."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">So the state of being dead should have no fears for us. But then Epicurus was evidently brilliant, with a strong mind, and he didn't seem to trouble himself about the ending of his consciousness, his personality, in death. What might help us lesser beings?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I have a friend whose practice is to be as close as possible to nature, all of it, natural forces, seasons, plants, animals. Not as in "oh what a lovely view," nature as a pretty backdrop.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">More like Dylan Thomas' "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees/ is my destroyer./ And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose/ I am bent by the same wintry fever." This helps her to see her own life and death as part of huge natural cycles, which may not ultimately be eternal but are as close to it as we can imagine. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Another friend thinks we should make more of ancestors; our current egotiscal rage to "individualise" everything reinforces the view that we are alone and unique in time. Perhaps if we could see that we came from our forebears and pass on what we were to those who come after, we could feel readier to let go, to feel part of a pattern.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet another friend believes the ancestors are Right There with us. I don't, in any literal sense, but I can see the point.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I think many of us probably need something to help us relinquish our lives with the feeling that we are part of a pattern, a process, a reality greater than ourselves. There are those who say, again, along with Epicurus, </span><span style="font-size: large;">"I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care." I haven't come across many who truly feel that.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I don't know if believing you have an eternal soul helps you to fear death less. I would guess that for some it does, and for some it doesn't. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I hope, whatever you believe or think you know, that you find some way of reducing you own fear of death, because excessive death-fear can really mess your life up. Happily, it can be treated (see the excellent "Staring At The Sun," by Irving D Yalom.)</span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-90140504234970400632014-09-27T16:42:00.002+01:002014-09-27T16:42:27.798+01:00Mindfulness and depression: Anthony's wisdom and courage<span style="font-size: large;">If you hover your cursor over the title above, it will take you to a blog post that is a bulletin from the front line of using mindfulness to help with clinical depression.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Anthony's honesty and insightfulness </span><span style="font-size: large;">need no further words from me.</span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-40193422062761661302014-09-24T10:06:00.002+01:002014-09-24T10:06:34.831+01:00They shall not grow old" - the British Legion is mis-using these words.<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">This excerpt form Lawrence Binyon's poem "For the Fallen" is frequently used at the funerals of soldiers, and at memorial ceremonies for them such as Armistice Day:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old;</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">At the going down of the sun and in the morning</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">We will remember them. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The poem is called "For the Fallen," i.e. for those who die in battle. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">These words, followed by the Last Post bugle call, are profoundly moving when uttered at the funeral of a soldier who has died in action, or on active service. It is not to glorify war to observe that these simple lines have rung eloquently and painfully true to generations of English-speaking people around the world. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">However, the British Legion uses them in the funerals of old soldiers. A while ago I attended one such funeral. As a national serviceman he had fought bravely in one of the small but nasty wars during the twilight of the British Empire. He died in his mid seventies, over fifty years after his military service.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">It abrurptly dawned on me that the first two lines of the Exhortation, as the Legion calls it, were wildly inappropriate for this man. He had, I'm pleased to say, grown old; he had survived the patrols and ambushes of his youth, raised a family, enjoyed the rest of his life. Age had wearied him, in the way that it wearies anyone who lives out a reasonably full life-span.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The last two lines, "At the going down of the sun..." were entirely appropriate, and could be used at anyone's funeral, especially if you subsitute "him" or "her" for "them."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It's about time the British Legion stopped mis-using these words; the worst thing that could happen to them is over-familiarity. We need these words in the full form, for the dreadful day when a family has to say goodbye to a young man or woman who will not grow old. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-36539986700117285472014-09-16T08:29:00.000+01:002014-09-16T08:29:55.962+01:00GET RID of us professional funeralists.<span style="font-size: large;">If you let your cursor hover flirtatiously over the title above, it will take you to a BBC website article about printed houses, for people to live in on Mars and the moon (uhuh. Why? What's the point? Enlighten me someone please...) It then goes on, much more interestingly, to computer-printed houses right here on earth. Houses built at a fraction of the costs and the time of your standard housing estate box.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The article mentions the hostility of some architects, who claim it debases their professional skills. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - Frank Lloyd Wright is a design hero now, but he wasn't always, and as for Le Corbusier...And there are those of us who marvel that the National Theatre must surely have been designed and built by a robot, or a very angry person. Opposition to printed houses via aesthetic arguments would need some careful thought. How lovely a sight is a contemporary suburban housing estate? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Construction firms will no doubt also be pretty hostile. It would be a huge upheaval. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What's this got to do with funerals, Gloria? I can hear you ask. (I hope...)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">If computer-printed houses dispense with most of the skills and labours of professionals, then a truly co-operative, community model for living with the end of life would get rid of most of the paid work of celebrants and undertakers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">BRAVO!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Just to repeat it again: a community (adjoining villages, small town, city district) has in it people who would occasionally give their skills to supporting people who are dying; to caring for their bodies when they are dead; to carrying out a funeral ceremony, and to supporting the bereaved. They wouldn't expect payments, except sometimes - for expenses involved in body care, for example. This would build community relationships (deaths bring people together) and save people a hell of a lot of money.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Never mind (for the moment) the Scottish referendum; devolve funerals to the community, not the governing elite of undertakers and celebrants. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">GET RID OF US! (mostly.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I would work locally for expenses only, if I were helping with ten funerals a year instead of fifty, if I were helping to organise and co-ordinate something people were doing themselves</span>,<span style="font-size: large;"> saying what they want to say, doing what they want to do, and holding that ceremony where they wanted.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">DOWN with gruesome crematorium chapels, neo-Gothic "chapels of rest," rushed half-hour ceremonies.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">ALL POWER to the dead and the bereaved.</span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-77651983107763774072014-09-15T22:04:00.004+01:002014-09-15T22:04:31.376+01:00Denial vs consolation, depression vs mourning, funeral poems<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Edward Hirsch lost his son Gabriel in 2011, and recently published a long eponymous poem about Gabriel's life and his death. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the interview I mentioned in my previous post, he says:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">“I think ancient cultures incorporated death into the experience of life
in a more natural way than we have done. In our obsessive focus on
youth, on celebrity, our denial of death makes it harder for people who
are grieving to find a place for that grief. There is a big difference
between depression and mourning. Depression is a feeling without a
cause. Mourning has a cause. Many of us are carrying the dead around
with us. We should not feel ashamed of that.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I'm sure the second sentence carries a sombre truth for our culture and our times. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">He also says that what he wrote about elegy in "A Poet's Glossary" would be less about consolation, </span><span style="font-size: large;">had he written it after his son's death.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I sometimes wonder if I try too hard to find consoling words for funeral ceremonies; it seems to be what people want, they seem to find it helpful. Is it a fine line we walk between denying death and offering a consoling thought?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The last line of the much-used poem "Do Not Stand By My Grave And Weep" is: "I did not die." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">To which Spike Milligan might have said "then what the hell are we all doing here dressed in suits?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Brian Patten's "How Long Does A Man Live?" (out of Pablo Neruda, btw) I find a lot more substantial, with a much better balance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> It doesn't seek to deny the reality of a death, and the consolation it offers seems to me much more substantial. </span><br />
gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-46468071697698415532014-09-15T21:39:00.000+01:002014-09-15T21:39:02.467+01:00Words, ritual, ceremonies - making wordless anguish articulate<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Interesting article in the Observer yesterday and online, about an interview with Edward Hirsch. Thanks to Katherine for the tip-off. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The article made me think, which is a bit hard on a Sunday morning, a</span><span style="font-size: large;">bout the words funeral celebrants write and speak</span>,<span style="font-size: large;"> in what is often loosely called "the elegy."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Celebrants scratch their heads an excess of words, words, words....</span> <span style="font-size: large;">I think we sometimes get fed up with the sound of our own voices, which is in its way probably a good sign. Some of us want more ritual and less wordage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We may be doing ourselves down unneccessarily. Hirsch wrote this entry in "A Poet's Glossary:"</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> “elegy”: “A poem of
mortal loss and consolation...The elegy does the work of mourning, it allows us to experience mortality. It turns loss into
remembrance and it delivers an inheritance. It opens a space for
retrospection and drives wordless anguish, wordless torment toward the
consolations of verbal articulation and verbal ceremony.”</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-45eK2S3CYhc/VBYEfJuYmNI/AAAAAAAABD4/3wbdmbsTDSY/s1600/Hirsch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-45eK2S3CYhc/VBYEfJuYmNI/AAAAAAAABD4/3wbdmbsTDSY/s1600/Hirsch.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">If our words, whether in the form of elegy (i.e. reading a really good poem or passage) or our own efforts, "turn loss into remembrance" then they may be creating the "verbal ceremony" he refers to. We may sometimes under-value that power. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I'm reminded of what has been said about really effective popular music: it gives voice to the feelings millions of people have but can't articulate so well themelves.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Sometimes, of course, bereaved people do articulate well for themselves, or they do so for us to read out for them. Other times, we have to find the words with and for them. It's a difficult thing to do. "A raid on the inarticulate, With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling..." as another poet, TS Eliot, wrote - about his work. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Our successes are never total. I guess - hope - our failures are only partial too.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">It's a great thing to try to do.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">You can read the article here:</span> <br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/14/edward-hirsch-gabriel-poem-interview</span><br />
<br />gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-33500466072108750542014-09-08T22:49:00.000+01:002014-09-08T22:49:10.039+01:00Being a funeral celebrant<span style="font-size: large;">I've posted on this before - a good while ago - and this one is likely to be just as opinionated as the earlier ones. But it's only my opinion, so just step over it rather than let it spoil your morning, or even two minutes of it!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Being a funeral celebrant is:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-size: large;">a community service not a job. You may get some money for it, but if you are not primarily committed to being at the service of your community, then clear off out of it, because y</span><span style="font-size: large;">ou're part of the problem, not part of the solution. (The problem is expensive funerals unsuited to the families who book them.)</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-size: large;">being part of a movement. Not the movement you might think it is. It's not the Atheists Militant (or otherwise), nor the New Age, nor the Green Funeral Movement, or any other pre-committed label. It's a movement working to find ways of "doing" funerals that suit the families you work with and their cultures.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-size: large;">not being anti or pro the status quo. There isn't a status quo. It's all on the move.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-size: large;">demanding and draining, though not depressing. </span></li>
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<li><span style="font-size: large;">really rather wonderful </span></li>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We come in all shapes and sizes, and we work in all sorts of places.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">If you think it suits you, come and join us, but if you just want to earn as much as you can as quickly as you can - please don't.</span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-13428339964739116642014-09-08T14:28:00.003+01:002014-09-08T17:27:28.927+01:00The Mother of the Sea - Kathleen Drew is a Shinto goddess<span style="font-size: large;">Here's what seems to me a remarkable and moving story. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Phycology is the study of algae, and Dr. Kathleen Drew was a phycologist at Manchester University. In 1949 she published a paper in "Nature" which for the first time made clear aspects of the reproductive system of a certain seaweed. </span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XlBmTGWJnIk/VA2ttsr2hBI/AAAAAAAABC8/HezpskRa8Sc/s1600/Kathleen2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XlBmTGWJnIk/VA2ttsr2hBI/AAAAAAAABC8/HezpskRa8Sc/s1600/Kathleen2.JPG" height="224" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The seaweed is porphyra laciniata, and it grows along the North Wales Coast.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Gosh this is riveting, you're thinking. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Hang in there. You're reading about a Shinto goddess.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The seaweed is closely related to Nori, the black seaweed they wrap round nori rolls, eaten all over the world but especially in Japan. It's a very healthy and nutritious food. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Her paper was read by a Japanese scientist, </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sokichi Segawa, who was gracious enough to pass all the credit to Dr Drew, although it was he and colleagues who</span> realised that her discovery would enable the harvest of nori to be much more predictable and very much larger. In effect, it could be seeded and sown.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Japan was close to starvation in the aftermath of the Second World War, and the seaweed industry in particular was close to collapse. Drew's discovery revolutionised the production of nori, saved the communities that harvest it from great suffering, and contributed to Japan's resurrection as a prosperous nation. It's unlikely that any of us outside Japan would every have heard of nori were it not for her. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Every year on April 14th, there is a ceremony by the sea in Japan in her honour., in gratitude to her. She is called The Mother of the Sea, and is regarded as a spirit, a goddess, in Shinto.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There was a lovely BBC Radio 4 documentary about her this morning, you can get it on iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04g7rd5</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I just love the idea that someone unknown to almost all of us, I suspect, could be seen as a goddess in a far distant and very different culture, and built into their traditional annual celebrations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There she is, peering down her microscope in Manchester in the Thirties, little knowing she is going to be pantheonised in Japan twenty years later. Blessings can emerge from unlikely quarters!</span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-75281750656408481422014-09-03T18:28:00.000+01:002014-09-03T18:28:35.841+01:00Multi--tasking and mindfulness<span style="font-size: large;">It seems clear that women are better at multi-tasking than men. Whether that's because they have to be, or whether that's a good thing for any of us, is a different matter.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This woman seems quite cheerful about it all, though her little spud may be just about to delete a morning's work....Three people close to my heart have to do a lot of this sort of thing these days.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">One thing is pretty definite; mental multi-tasking is not what you want in meditation, nor, says Larry Rosenberg*, in life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"People sometimes ask "how can I get anything done if I do only one thing at a time?" Actually, we can be more effective. There is better attention and less tension when we do just one thing, and these factors more than balance the time that is saved by doing several things at once."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> I think he's not necessarily right in the short term - we're social animals, and sometimes our social (work) environment demands multi-tasking, but I'm sure we should avoid it when we can. I'm also sure he's absolutely right in the long term, because multi-tasking is a strain. It wears you out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What he does urge us to do is to be pliable as well as steady in our attention. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">If a child runs into the room with a nasty cut and you're just filling the teapot with boiling water, it's multi-tasking time - no good saying "I just need to be mindful of the moment, and I'm making tea. Be with you in five." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But even in this sort of instance, it's down to the <i>quality</i> of attention we bring to what we're doing. In fact, crises, even mini-crises like this one, often result in our being very firmly and clearly in the moment. But multi-tasking when you don't really need to, out of habit?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">TS Eliot nailed it: "distracted from distraction by distraction."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sounds to me like a definition of much of what's on Facebook....</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">* "Breath By Breath," Larry Rosenberg with David Guy. </span>gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1456857068476095225.post-8605818368270802712014-08-25T17:33:00.000+01:002014-08-30T22:56:38.975+01:00Balance, in meditation, in our bodily systems, in the weather.<span style="font-size: large;">More wisdom from my Cropredy friend.</span><br />
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(it's a very nice village, by the way, as well as a festival. Here are the good people of the village hall serving their excellent breakfasts:<br />
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which are a very good preparation for:<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">To the point, Gloria!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was saying that equanimity seemed to me a goal of meditation - the effort to achieve a balance</span>. <span style="font-size: large;">We talked of systems out of balance, and I suggested diabetes and tornadoes, when one of a person's bodily systems is out of balance, and when an entire weather system is out of balance. Balance is what meditation aims at.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">His response surprised me. It was along the lines of "balance is the last thing we want to achieve, because it's static."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Like this, I guess:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A bit more thought - the kind that hurts and brings you out in spots - made me realise that I didn't mean balance = stasis either.</span> <span style="font-size: large;">All the good advice I've read on meditation insists that bringing the mind back to the breathing, or whatever the focus in the present might be, is exactly part of the meditation; we shouldn't expect to achieve a perfectly mindful half hour entirely still and present, because we won't, and then we get frustrated and chuck it in. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The equanimity, the better sense of balance, comes from having meditated, it's not a perfect stasis achieved during meditation. So I said to my friend that I realised I didn't mean a static state, either.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">He went on to say that looked at on a larger scale than the tornado itself (admittedly hard to do if it hits you, of course) makes us realise that a tornado is a weather system seeking a better balance. And the body's systems are always and continually moving into and out of all kinds of balance. Diabetics, and to a lesser extent all of us, never have a static state between too much insulin and too much sugar. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So balance, in the sense I mean in when discussing meditation, is a constantly dynamic state, just as a tightrope artist is making tiny movements (or larger ones) all the time. She is balanced. She is not static.</span><br />
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<br />gloriamundihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12476712899700515223noreply@blogger.com0