Yearly Archives: 2011

Overcome Difficulties

Good Complaints

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Sometimes it’s good to complain. To make an official complaint because that needs to be done to highlight a mistake, or negligence, or the like. The heart that does that can be altruistic, not vengeful. I believe this is what Edera, the wife of the late Iain Robinson of Little House In The Paddy, has done. Her letter of complaint is an altruistic act. I particularly like this sentence:- To keep my mind in peace I would like you to investigate Dr. A and require him to really reflect on his own practice.

There is an interesting comment to the post mentioned above in which the writer talks about grief. I’ve taken the liberty of copying it here.
I am glad you wrote the letter Edera you will be helping others. When I studied grief and loss I heard something different to those stages of grief that really helped me with my own losses – instead of seeing grief as a process from which we recover, it sees it as a process by which we develop a different relationship with the person who has died. This helped me so much because it gave me license to keep having a relationship with my friend but to see that just like in life that relationship changed as I changed. It was true I could not see them in a conventional way and I missed them because they weren’t in my life in the same way, but that I still had a relationship with them. Just as I talked in my head to those people when they were not with me when they were alive, so do I continue to do so now they are dead. This way of looking at it helped me see my grief as an on-going process of developing a different relationship with them, through which I have grown.
Written by Bay.

As in life so in death. Relationships can be testing. I can attest to that.

Daily Life

Hardship

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Out walking this afternoon. What’s that I hear? A sound remembered from long past. Rhythmic rumbling. Could it be, could it possibly be…a steam train? And looking through the trees and to the distant horizon, yes indeed! Steam rising from the engine gasping it’s way up the track bound for Settle in Yorkshire. It probably came through from Carlisle.

Yesterday I walked close to the line of the Settle-Carlisle railway, once called the Midland Railway, as it passed up through the Mallerstang valley. What a bleak place. Full of wild beauty. The waterfalls on the high edge where pluming upwards in the winds, the Eden boiling and rushing along. My first stop was the small church in the village of Outhgill. A treasure trove of history. The hassocks depicting rural life in and around the village are splendid. I’ve a passion for hassocks valuing the hand-work and dedication that’s gone into their making. I took photographs of them for use in a future poetry series. Here’s a steam train. They must have been regulars on the line above the church in the 1970’s, when the hassocks were stitched.

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Hassock – a cushion for kneeling on for prayer. Also known as a kneeler.

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St. Mary’s Church, Outhgill, Mallerstang, with thanks for your trust in keeping the church open. And for the peace to be found therein.

At the back of the church I found this list of those men, women and children buried in the church yard who had died during the construction of the line. They lived in huts. So many of them were babies and young children.

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The rest of the walk followed the Eden up stream. Goods trains and passenger trains were my companions. I waved as they went by. Goodness, what a life it must have been to labour on the line or farm the land back in the 1870’s.

But would life have been regarded as hardship by those who lived it, back then?

Overcome Difficulties

Going Deeper

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Blackberries. Releasing themselves on the vine.

This ‘going deeper’ is often misunderstood. One might think of that more as listening deeper. Being prepared to listen to what’s actually there, only more carefully. Then following with tender attention to detail. With expectations and outcomes, releasing. Work for you?

My whole system is booting down after all of the activity over the past weeks. The weather has put a crimp in my walking activities ‘though I am still getting out, but just locally. No striding across distant green hills.

Partly taken from an email to a friend who is having physical difficulties. A thought 4 u here.

Daily Life

Keeping In Touch

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Front of postcard: The San Juan Islands at sunset.

Iain Robinson, OBC
and Family
October 20, 1998.
Hi! Just on the ferry from Friday Harbor to Lopes Island. Beautiful fall afternoon. Great to be on a cruise if only for one and half hours. Hope you are all well. I think I’m almost at the end of my tether regarding traveling having been on the move since I left Throssel early August. Oh and I’m now on e-mail so-help-me I feel sick with the possibilities. We will be in touch. Mugo

Front of the postcard: A train in full steam on the Ribblehead viaduct

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Remembrance of things fast. The Guardian On-line, 2001.

September 4th, 2011.
Hi! Just sitting here by the gas fire late in the evening. Relaxing. I know I have some important emails to write, emails to answer that are days old. I hope people understand why I’m a bit behind. What I said back then about being sick with the possibilities was a positive by the way. I think you know that, right? It’s madness now to think I actually had to ask you and Dave to write a report making a case for me being on email. And now look at us, pushing messages and reports back and forth at the speed of light! As you well know I was the first monk to officially have an email address. All due to your encouragement and Dave’s hand-me-on laptop. I was both proud and scared to be the first. Those early days traveling, hooking up to peoples phone lines and constantly changing my smtp settings. Now we catch a connection out of thin air! Goodness, and I stuck with my original compuserve address for TEN YEARS. Did I ever tell you that my very first email was a phishing one? Jane was beside me when it came in and was so ashamed, she was involved in the engineering of the Internet. They all had high aspirations for the Internet and were saddened by it’s miss use.
I might write, Wish you were here but I won’t, because I don’t. Sitting here on my own, with the gas fire hissing and the clock ticking, I’m happy as things are. We must not lose touch though. Mugo

This and That

Saving Grace – Humour

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Now for a bit of fun – with food. Or about food. Specifically about factory farming pigs. Too good to miss animation

The video features the story of a farmer seduced by profits into large-scale unsustainable and unhealthy farming practices who decides to go “back to the start”, ridding the farm of its factory machinery resulting in happier and healthier animals.

And there is more fun as you scroll down the page to see other creative takes on grub. I particularly like the Embroidered Toast….

Clearly I am, as my mother would say when I’d scream into the night, you are over tired dear! (Which made me scream louder!) Enjoying these wacky takes on food this evening is my adult equivalent of letting off some steam – with laughter. Always good to remember how humour can be a saving grace.

Yes, I am tired and the plan is to rest. Hopefully this will include hiking, if the weather holds.