Yearly Archives: 2011

Daily Life, Overcome Difficulties

Julie’s Story

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I was sent the link to The Julie Project a week or more ago and had half decided not to post on it. Then as the days went by the images and the story kept coming back to me. Disturbing images of a woman going down, down and down. And images of her children too. As Darcy Padilla says below, I hope you can’t stop thinking about Julie’s story. In my case her work has succeeded.

The purpose of the project is to take the disparate arguments about welfare, poverty,family rights, AIDS, drug and sexual abuse by looking at one person’s life, Julie.

Julie’s story matters and should make a difference to us the viewer in our
understanding of the fractured world that many poor people struggle to exist in.

As a friend said, “I realize this type of story plays out constantly in the world for many, many families. The pieces slip away or no one cares to remember the details. We see the summation of cause and effect in a homeless face on the street every day. It can be too complicated, uncomfortable and painful to ask why.”

I hope you can’t stop thinking about Julie’s story, I hope it makes you feel.
I hope it makes you look at the world differently.

The Julie Project.

Thanks to J for the link.

The Guardian On-Line Review of Darcy Padilla’s Julie Project – when photography becomes humanitarian.

Teachings

When Making And Taking A Phone Call

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When I am about to make a phone call I pause. Sometimes I dial and sometimes I don’t. I don’t because I get the decided sense that now is not the time or the urgency of the call simply passes. What ever the prompt I follow it, for the most part. At other times I’ll find myself drawn as if by a magnet to phone somebody. Unplanned and with no apparent reason, I phone them. Quite often I’ll catch the person I’m calling at a really good time, which is always gratifying. Or perhaps that person was about to phone me! This method is not universally applicable nor 100% reliable.

So communicating by phone, even just the matter of to dial or not to dial is something of an art and a matter of divining if it is good to do. Calling for train times and other utilitarian reasons for using the phone is obviously straight forward. Or so one might think.

In hospitals for example there are many high value calls. Utilitarian ones. This is nurse X, patient B has moved to ward 67. Impacted Nurse, in his blog post Phone etiquette for medical staff there is advice on making and taking calls in hospitals. The basic etiquette can be applied anywhere.

I am proud to see that Ian of Impacted Nurse still lists Jade Mountains, under Non Medical.

Films/Books

Zen – The Movie

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Zen tells the story, the film version anyway, of Dogen Zenji. I watched it several times while in the US last summer. It is worth a watch. I understand it’s been hard to find copies so I’m glad to point you to a site where Zen, the movie, can be bought.

Zen is an elegant and fascinating look into the life and times of 13th-century monk Dogen, founder of the Soto sect in Zen Buddhism. Offering a fairly faithful depiction of what is known of the monk’s life, the film follows Dogen, handsomely portrayed by kabuki actor Nakamura Kantaro, from an orphan child inspired by his mother’s dying words to a young monk wandering in China where he experiences his awakening. After reaching enlightenment, he returns to Kyoto to spread his teachings of silent meditation, attracting both dedicated followers and fierce detractors who cast him as a heretic. In his travels and teachings, Dogen encounters many different people. Some guide him, some follow him, and some test him, but all become crucial figures in his spiritual journey of peace and meditation.

Thanks go to Rod in Canada for the link.

Daily Life, Teachings

With Confidence – Speak!

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If they could speak what stories they might tell. Confidences on sunny day walks. Tears and laughter – children playing – adults booted and gloved, gossiping. Soft clouds of vapour issuing forth on a chilly afternoon. Words harsh, whispers and shouts enter alike the walls ancient ear.
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Moss holding a secret spoken in confidence, last century perhaps. Don’t breath a word of this, she whispered. And the moss grew in a spiral and the wall remained still. And silent.
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If walls had eyes! Peeping out through elegant moss-lashes. Watching the passing by. Fashions change. Sheep and cows have been ever thus. But we know walls don’t have eyes. Right?
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On the field side, unconcerned. Indifferent sheep feed. What they say is anybodies guess! The wall has heard it all before…many times.
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At the end of the day what’s the message in this whimsy post? Well I have been thinking lots about confidence, and confidences and confidentiality. All linked together. And in the end my thoughts on this subject tend to alight on two old fashioned words, honour and respect. Here is my favorite quote on the matter.

‘Respect for others begins by not ignoring their words.’
Elias Canneti
From: ‘The Torch in My Ear’

And I continue that quote thus;

Honour others by not repeating their words. Thoughtlessly.