Photographed by myself Jan 2022. A lonesome tree on the top of the hill
How often do we feel like that when we are going through something awful? Something tough? Like we are exposed and alone?
He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley
Psalm 23:3b-4a
Do you know we only split the Bible into chapters and verses because some bishop decided it? The divisions started to happen in the 9th Century but really came into their own in the 13th Century. David, when he wrote this Psalm would have just written it as a poem with the lines as they are but to be read as whole.
For some reason this jumped out at me – of us being guided along the right paths for God but that sometimes they would lead us through a dark valley – through the valley of the shadow of death, as it says in the NKJV. For those who have gone through dark times, whether the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a redundancy, a lost opportunity, etc, it can feel like walking in the shadow of death. I believe any time of grief is a time of death – death of a dream as much as loss of a person.
Someone I care about deeply is going through a dark time but, standing back a bit, I can see that if they don’t go through this dark valley they will never be freed from certain things. This dark time for them will cleanse them.
I can’t find it but in one of this last week’s Henri Nouwen meditations he talks of how grief can be a place of growth. In Richard Rohr’s blog someone talks of how in our culture we try to ignore grief and dark times and run away from them. That we just want to get over it. But here if we run these verses together and don’t allow for the verse break it says that God, our Shepherd, will guide us this way. So does this mean that it is good for us?
Perhaps this is why we we are lead in those calm quiet places first – so we are refreshed but also have developed our relationship with God. Dark times are hard if we don’t know we are loved unconditionally and don’t know that God “has our back” so to speak. We need to get to that place where we can trust that we are being led – that we will be led through not left there. But that in the going through we will …
I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Psalm 23:4b
Maybe then we can support and lead others through their valley of the shadow of death at God’s pace rather than rush them through because we don’t like them being sad and depressed.
God lets people grieve so should we – and that includes ourselves.
This quote from Henri Nouwen’s meditation for today really brought me up short today and got me thinking. There is always something thought provoking in them but, for myself as a youth and children’s worker, made me ponder.
To care for the elderly means then that we allow the elderly to make us poor by inviting us to give up the illusion that we created our own life and that nothing or nobody can take it away from us.
How much of any church outreach is directed towards the elderly? The focus is generally on the young with the tag of bringing in new people and families; often with the hope that they will then volunteer to do things and so ease the burdens of church ministry.
Working with young people does help to give a young attitude to life but can it also help us pretend we’re still young, and not having to admit to the inevitability of death. . There’s that phrase about being “seventy years young” or whatever, rarely admitting to the fact that life is passing us by and we aren’t going to live forever.
I know there are some people who will feel this is not a “good” topic to speak of and that we are to almost pretend it won’t happen rather than be preparing towards it. I know people in their 70s and 80s who still don’t have a funeral plan or have put in people to be powers of attorney over their estates, as if by not doing it one can avoid the conversation.
Even as I got more and more involved with youth work I did wonder why there was never much out there for older people. Most of the charismatic churches I was involved in had no elderly ministry at all. And even some of the more established denominations, even though they did many funerals and taking communion to the housebound, had no form of outreach to the elderly. Nothing where they were taking Jesus to those whose end of life was definitely getting closer.
I love Nouwen’s idea that by caring for the elderly we minister to ourselves by helping each of us realise that we “create our own life” and that “nothing or nobody can take it away from us.” That we can do all these mediations, well-being courses, fitness regimes to “stay young” as if that is going to stop you from eventually getting old and dying.
Perhaps as well as keeping our bodies and minds as fit as we can we also need to be keeping our spirits and souls clean and ready to meet with God. As I watch my mother’s husband descend into dementia and his body deteriorate it does make me think about how, before that happens to myself and to those I love, I want to be “right with God”. I want to have a pure heart and clean hands [Psalm 24:4] so that whatever happens I am ready to meet with my God.
I may carrying on doing the youth and children’s work that I do and may not get into working with the elderly but I do hope that I can let go of “the illusion that [I] created [my] own life and that nothing or nobody can take it away from [me]” and can keep God dead centre no matter what.
Quarr Abbey grounds, Isle of Wight. Photographed by myself 9th March 2024
Back in 2012/2013 we had what can only be describe as a “series of unfortunate events” – feel free to read about them on – End of Year Round Up and this from the end of 2013. [Please don’t sign up for this blog as I don’t write on it any more!]
When I remember March/April 2012 and Sept 2013 I remember those times with a lot of pain and a lot of anger. As it came round to the anniversary of my friend Tessa’s death this January I did feel sad but not that angry painful sad. It was definitely a grief but not like the feels I have around memories of 2012/13. So this got me thinking.
It came to me after I posted Roadside Shrines the other day – what I was feeling from 2012/13 was the trauma of grief which then clouded the grief itself. I was not able to really mourn the loss of whose who had died in any real sense without seeing/feeling the trauma of it all.
By being able to recognise that what was going on was that I was dealing with the trauma of the respective deaths I have been able to let go of that. I have been able to be healed of the trauma of the events. I can let go of the how and why they died and grieve the loss rather than the “what could I/anyone have done to make things different/to stop it from happening?”
I am now free to miss each person and grieve for them as individuals.
I do wonder if these roadside shrines help one to deal with the trauma of the deaths and so move on to being able to deal with the loss of a person – friend/family member/colleague/someone of your community?
Who knows. But what I know is that being healed of the trauma has helped me see the human beings who I have lost. And, for me, that is a good thing.
I could have added more – the Dunblane school shooting of 1996, the UKs only school shooting thankfully, or the floral tributes for Princess Diana back in 1997, and the many tributes that are now found in the UK on roadsides, beaches, and other public places.
The first time I saw a roadside shrine was when I visited the South of Ireland in 1980. There were not things like that in mainland Britain at that time. The next time was when I was in Greece in 1987. That was quite scary because I had hitched a lift in a truck carrying potatoes across the mountains of Pelaponese. The truck was speeding along and the driver was pointing these small shrines out and telling me in broken English that this is where people had died and of how their families would come to pray leave flowers, light candles, leave trinkets and pray for their souls. Well I must say it got me praying that I would not join them.
When I first got to really know God in 1992 the small charismatic Christian group I was part of said these shrines were Catholic or Greek Orthodox superstitions and that one did not pray to ones deceased family or friends once they had died. Dead was dead so to speak. At the time I hadn’t really lost anyone I was close to so I just accepted their word for it. So even though I found these shrines beautiful, moving and fascinating I allowed myself to dismiss them as superstitious nonsense like the good newbie Christian I was!
Then came the school shooting in 1996 where people from across the country, myself included, were sending flowers to be laid outside the gates of the school. I don’t know why other people did it but I did it because my son was of a similar age and at a school whose building looked similar. It was my way of expressing my grief and solidarity.
Princess Diana’s death followed close of the heels of the school shooting and the streets of not just London or the place she died but across the country were littered with flowers. I did not get involved with that, probably because it did not have the same effect on me as the school shooting.
Now it is not uncommon to see wilting flowers on the side of the road or on a park bench. Or like the above picture which shows the boy’s football shirt plus flowers, photographs, etc. Especially when grief is fresh this is what people need to do. They need to find a place where they can show their grief.
My pondering is – why have things changed so much? It is like that stiff upper-lipped Britishness of holding everything in is morphing into a more open Mediterranean show of emotion. Death is no longer something that is hidden behind somber church services and quiet tears. There is no longer the embarrassment of showing emotion.
I feel too as if we are moving away church involvement in death and so we need these places to focus our grief. Now. for whatever reason, a funeral can be up to a month after the death of someone. In the case of a roadside trauma it can be months or even over a year until the inquest can come to a conclusion as to what happened. Until there can be closure.
When theses roadside expressions of loss and grief started to appear on roadsides I found it odd and wanted to look away. Though in both Ireland and Greece I enjoyed looking. Perhaps for me it was that here, in a place I knew, someone was saying “look someone I loved died here” and that frightened me of my own mortality. I don’t know. But now I say a prayer as I go past for the person who has died and all the family and friends they leave behind.
Perhaps also as we go for more natural burials and more cremations and there are less and less gravestones we need a focus not just for our grief but for the grief of our fellow human beings?
A nice piece of Medieval art work. I wish the Openverse [which is where I got the picture from using the “openverse” button on WordPress] would give a reference!!
Anyway why the Four Horsemen on this pleasant Monday morning? Well it comes about because on Saturday night we watched Now You See Me 2 on Netflix. A nice bit of easy listening with good morals, a bit of fighting but no horrid stuff and no sex. Yes there are only two female actors in the whole main cast, only three ethnic characters in the main cast, and other issues but that aside I found it a good easy Saturday evening watch.
But what struck me is the four key characters are known as The Four Horsemen – and automatically I’m thinking “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” from the Bible – the white horse often interpreted as Pestilence carrying a bow, the red horse of War carrying a sword, the black horse of Famine carrying scales, and the pale horse which is Death. One of the interesting things that the leader of these Horsemen in Now You See Me says as they are performing their final tricks of the film – [paraphrased] “We are the four horsemen. Our job is to reveal what is“
That really struck me. Often it is interpreted that the biblical horsemen are sent as a punishment, a judgement but what if they are there to reveal what is, to reveal what is really in our hearts. There are multiple interpretations even in the short piece from Wikipedia that I’ve shared. So I might be as “right” as anyone else.
We live in a time when we see the horrors of pollution, over mining of our plants resources, mass scale farming with its pesticides and fertilizers, plastics filling our oceans, climate change. There are wars and the mass migration of people groups caught in the horrors of war which are then rejected from the countries they run to. Again there is the migration of people due of famines which have come about because of over farming, climate change and wars. The scales are very much tilted towards those with money and not to a fair shared world. All of this leads to death. There are many colours that death can be but I like pale best because it is insipid and can fade into the background. But as well as those who die in wars, from famines, from trying to cross to safer countries, there are those who feel so hopeless they take their own lives, who die of cancers because of the lifestyles now led, who get killed by cars, planes, etc. Death is all around and much of it is violent and unnecessary.
Ok so The Four Horsemen in Now You See Me were not just about revealing corruption and bring things into the open but were about putting things right. So we can sit and bemoan the state of the world. And if you come across any group of people in the pub, on a dog walk, in a cafe, at home with friends, etc they/we are bemoaning the state of the world. Bit by bit it is revealed to us. But we need to do more than moan.
A while ago I wrote about how the world is caught up in logic and not listening to the heart, the deep heart. [Check out this post but also search “logic” on my blog page to get other posts that all roll together] And I think that is where the problem lies. Logic causes us to panic, to become overly anxious but kicks in the “freeze” mode of our automatic nervous system. So we don’t act. We get increased mental health and learning difficulties because we are focusing on logically trying to sort the situations and so our anxieties levels are running on an all time high and then we are logically trying to get them turned off!!
So how do I listen to what I hear these four horsemen reveal in my quiet little North Wales seaside town and know where I fit into the picture of not only revealing but of changing?
Firstly I can breath, ANS regularly, and keep my energy levels calm so that when I go out into the world I take a pool of calm with me.
Secondly I can pray. Not telling God what to do but by quietly listening to what God is saying. Quietly really hear in my heart not what I want the answers to be but what God, the Creator of this Universe, really wants in these situations. Some of what I hear won’t make sense to my logical brain but I have to trust the Creator that they know what they are on about.
Thirdly I can do those things that will help; turn off lights, think sustainably, buy ethically, be kind and generous to others, love my neighbour as I would like to be loved, believe I have everything for my daily needs, forgive and know that I am forgiven, not put things into judgemental good/bad boxes, etc. [ I say “etc” because I know there are so many other things that are relevant for each of you reading this. For some it is to write what they are called to write, to paint what they are called to paint, to work at the jobs they are called to work out. And sooooooo much more]
I just want to share this YouTube video from The Grays Haven Music called REST. God’s work is done and we just need to Rest, to know our part and to trust in them. I don’t in anyway think this means do nothing but, I think, it does mean don’t fuss, don’t worry, trust and listen to what your part is in the already done work of God, Jesus and Holy Spirit.
Tessa at Weymouth beach, October 2022, photographed by me
I haven’t posted for 10 days because I have been down South visiting this friend here who is in her last days now of cancer. She is more than ready to go and is just waiting. I’ve also been staying with my Mum and her husband. Mum is 83 and her husband is 88 and has Parkinsons and is moving into early dementia. Mum is his chief carer.
I’ve had a few dear messages from people regarding my friend, most of which saying a version of “cancer is the worst”. Then I talk with my mum who is deal with deterioration of her husband and has seen other friends lose husbands to dementia and she is saying a version of “dementia is the worst”.
I think if we worked on it we could all come up with a way of seeing a friend or family member die as being “the worst”. Those poor people who got shot at that Chinese new year party in LA might be thinking that’s the worst.
But from watching my friend who is dying well I would say the worst way to die is to not be prepared and to fighting it all the way. My friend is at such peace, as is her husband and her son, and so that radiates on to the rest of us. She is calmly saying goodbye, tidying up her possessions, doing what she can and sleeping a lot. She isn’t of any faith at all but she has made her peace with the world and is ready to go.
Of course I am going to be sad when she goes but she has set me a good example, in her life as in her death. I don’t know when my time will come, though I am planning to make it as near to 100 as I can get. But when my time comes, whether it is slowly like cancer, quickly like a bullet, or many of the ways in-between, I want to meet it with peace, with knowing that all will be well, knowing that my estate is in order, that I hold no grudges, that I am at peace.
So I would say the worst death is the death you aren’t ready for whatever that is, which is also why I think we should keep short accounts, try not to hold on to anger and resentment, try not to spend our time going over our past and wonder what we could have done differently,trying not to put too much hope in the future, and just be our kind, open and naturally authentic selves.
And for myself to keep as close to the God of Creation as well as I can.
A skeleton found on a dig at Lindisfarne. Probably 700-1500 years old. Photographed by myself Sept 2022
I start with the archeological dig’s skeleton, because we are all going to die And as an old dog walking colleague once said, his Mum died when she was in her 90s and it was still 10 years too soon for him. And I was reminded of the shortness of life last week when my daughter messaged to say her ex-boyfriend’s current girlfriend had died suddenly in the night, probably of meningitis. This girl was only in her mid 20s. Too quick and too soon.
But there was a quote a read on Instagram, which I can’t find again, about how life is short and yet we learn to fear each other rather than love each other. I wish I could find it again because it is really good. Then I heard on Cunk on Earth’s Faith episode, about how Christianity preached love and forgiveness and then killed anyone who would not practice it!!!
These things over this last week have left me wondering why we do not love and forgive more than we hold grudges and fear people. I think it is fear rather than hate. Hate I believe comes from fear. As I keep saying the more I do QEC counseling the more accepting I can be of others, but also the more I see that it is my traumas and fears that used to hold me back from forgiving and accepting people than the people themselves.
This isn’t to say that I am swinging my doors wide open to fill my house full of people. That is something I have learned that I do not like and find hard. That is not to with others but to do with me. But it does mean that I can smile at people when I’m out, engage in conversation where I am listening to them, where I am not worrying about how I will look or if they might “get one over on me”. Instead I am accepting myself and them, giving us both/all our space to be who we are, realising when I react to something someone has said it is as much my issue, if not more so, than their fault.
I think, as I get older, my greatest wish is to be accepting of myself fully, forgiving of myself fully, accepting of others fully and forgiving of others fully. Some of these issues I will have to work through with QEC and other stress/trauma calming techniques. But that is my greatest wish to reach a point where I can appreciate all people and myself, and that all people can do that for each other.
I’m ending this now as I can feel myself going into a rant about governments, etc and I want to keep this post free of that. Maybe next time?? 🙂
Above Abergwyngregan taken by myself 22nd March 2022
I am always amazed at my body when I listen to it. At the point when this photo was taken my heart was pumping and my breath was ragged. But that is to be expected.
I had chosen this path on a whim, though had had a bit of a look at the map the day beforehand, and I had walked the opposite way with my husband many years ago. But as I was going down the path from this point I noticed the pylons and I was very high above them. I could see the popular path to the waterfalls way below me but things seemed all wrong. So I sat down, got out my phone and tried to work out where I was. I couldn’t get a good signal and started to panic. I was on the top of this mountain surrounded by sheep and thought the path I was on could be wrong. My heart started racing and my stomach cramped and then my legs started to ache. I was at a point where I could convince myself that I could not go on. So I remembered my QEC work, got my autonomic nervous system [ANS] away from fight/flight mode, listened to my heart, put my phone away and continued along the path. This was about 45 minutes into my walk. The path curved left in a while and I went under the pylons and along to the waterfalls and back to my car.. I had been on the right path all along.
But what surprised me most of all was that as soon as I got my ANS calmed and started walking again my legs stopped aching and I did the next 75 minutes of my walk with not an ache. The pain in my legs was due to my fears. Interestingly my sister-in-law says she knows when she is nearing the end of a walk, no matter how long, because her legs start to ache. I know it is often seen as a form of encouragement to say “nearly there” but maybe that makes our bodies start to ache thinking we are nearly there.
I remember years ago when some famous politician’s car was blown up in the tunnel under the Houses of Parliament. One thing he said after was that even though he could not feel his legs he believed that no major blood vessels had been damaged and that he would survive. He said he had seen many young men on the battle field die because they had believed the injuries were fatal when they weren’t. Ok so different to my aching legs from fear that I was on the wrong path but also similar.
Another interesting thing with my body is that from Thursday or Friday I felt short of breath and it stayed with me till Monday. I even did a covid test to check I was negative. As you know from the My Sister post it was 10 years ago that my sister died. Well also 10 years ago a really close friend committed suicide. Eight years ago this same time period my son broke his collar bone playing rugby. Six years ago the same weekend my daughter had a major break up with a boyfriend and I helped her move from London to Cardiff. And then of course 2 years ago this self same time we went into lockdown. It was only when I was catching my breath at the top of yesterday’s climb that I realised over that whole period of last weekend I was holding my breath waiting for something bad to happen. Nothing did so now I can breath again. Again fascinating how my body remembered those incidents and was preparing itself.
I do think too often we are too busy and don’t listen to our bodies. Or we have so many other things piled around us that our heads are making too much noise to be able to really listen. Listening to our bodies takes time. Listening to our bodies means slowing down. Listening to our bodies takes understanding. Listening to our bodies means not judging them. Listening to our bodies means having a sense of awareness. It also means not being afraid to look back and ask “what happened then?”
I know this is a question I keep asking but – are we willing to slow down and really listen? to ourselves and also to the world around us?
Swallow Falls, Conwy, taken by myself on Sunday 10th October
I’ve been having a quiet rant to God on behalf of a friend. I’m not sure if she’s ranting too but I am. Last week her youngest daughter gave birth to her first child in her early 40’s after years of trying; miscarriages, IVF, etc. But then at the start of this week my friend’s dad died suddenly. It isn’t fair, I am shouting into the heavens. Why can’t her and her family enjoy the awesomeness of this miracle baby just for a few months without having to deal with grief? Why???
The season in GodspaceLight is gratitude, and I know I’ve also written about gratitude on here in various guises, but my thought for today is “how can I/we be genuinely grateful when life is being unfair? “
But then as I walked the dog in the park this morning I experience the second awesome sunrise of this week and also had a heron fly from the pond almost directly in front of me. It got me thinking – I only get to see the sunrises on my dog walks now because the days are getting shorter, daylight hours are getting less. And I can marvel at how there are amazing colours in the sky for a good 20-30 mins before the sun rises officially. Even if I get up in the summer really early the sun doesn’t do that same thing of filling the sky with colour and light earlier than it pops its head up. If it wasn’t for that shortening of daylight hours I wouldn’t get to see this. So a place to be grateful when the dark is getting more?
Also what I felt when all this was going on around me is that yes life isn’t fair but there are good things going on in the unfairness. It reminds me of the fact that the trip to Paris to launch my daughter into university was marred because my father-in-law died that same weekend, so when I look at the picture of her grinning over a very very frothy cappuccino I think of his death too. Life throwing one of its unfair curve balls.
So all I can say about how to be grateful when life is being unfair is to accept and grieve in the unfair bits, the death bits, the darkness, but also be grateful in the sunrises, the births, the trips to Paris.
Both are allowed. Both are ok. It is not ‘either or’ but ‘both and’.
A few years ago I supported another friend though the first year after her husband’s suicide and we cried lots but we also laughed lots. We were able to be ‘both and’. Even now when we meet we do both – laughing and crying – more often than not in a public place
So I will hug my friend as she grieves and laugh with her as she delights in her new granddaughter. Together we can accept that life isn’t fair and that there are sunrises and there are sunsets. Somethings are beautiful and some things are tragic. That we do not live in a world where only good happens and somethings we have to deal with both things at once. But we can do it!
And for that whole humanness of who we are I will be grateful
I woke this morning thinking I should write a blog piece about Prince Phillip but what do you write about someone that you don’t really know that so much has been written about – also by people who don’t really know him.
Well it turns out the news of his death was announce on the anniversary of my stepdad’s death, which was sixteen years earlier. My stepdad born two years after Prince Phillip so the Queen and her family have been lucky/blessed to have him about for sixteen years longer than we got my stepdad. I’m sure that doesn’t make the loss any less for them though.
So this got me thinking about loss and death and when is a good time to die and how should one die. All those who’ve followed my blogs and my old site Diane’s Daily Thoughts, you’ll know that I’ve walked through a few untimely deaths. More than some and not as many as others!
We were talking with friends on Monday – our first friends this year who’ve been able to visit and sit in our backyard to eat lunch – and we were saying about dying well. As Christians we believe that we’ll go to be with God when we die and maybe even catch up with those who’ve already gone. [My hope there is too that God will have everyone who’s died with him whether they professed a faith or not. But that is for another blog!!] So if we believe that we’ll be in heaven then surely we should be preparing for it now. How? I believe by living to our fullest,which does not mean being busy all the time but being present all the time. Being here in the moment. Being content in the moment. Being at peace with ourselves and the world around us. And as I said in my last blog living in kindness and grace.
Death is one of the few things we can be certain of; that we are going to die, that those we love will die – and we hope and pray that it will not be too soon. But then maybe even 99 is too soon.
So for me as a ponder Prince Phillip’s death which is a form of public mourning, because, whether we like it or not, like him or not, he was a public figure who has been part of the UK’s psyche for over 70 years, I hope he died well. I hope he had time to say his goodbyes I hope he was reconciled with his regrets. I hope he was at peace at the end.
Aspirational Adventures 