Something I have been thinking about a lot this year is how to be what rabbi and psychologist Edwin Friedman called a “non-anxious presence”. Friedman observed that tight-knit communities like families and churches often had such complex networks of relationships and emotional histories that addressing one relational issue was often difficult because of all theContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: I am not a calm blue ocean”
Tag Archives: anxiety
Retreat
…you will not find my actual life in these pages so much as my thoughts on the graces Our Lord has given me. I have reached the stage now where I can afford to look back; in the crucible of trials from within and without, my soul has been refined, and I can raise myContinue reading “Retreat”
Resolution: No Clutter
Too fidgety the mind’s compass (R.S. Thomas, “Adam Tempted”) I pile books on books and thought on thought. I pile obligation onto guilt, and duty onto resignation. This is panic in my breath and limbs tingling with the pace of things. There is no end, the wise teacher said, to all flesh-weariness of thought. IContinue reading “Resolution: No Clutter”
No Ghosts This Year #9
No answer was forthcoming simply from passing the crime scene. Nor did his family know anything about it when they came home. It had to wait until the six o’clock news for anything official, though Pa had a friend visit his caravan out the back with word of what had happened. The story was thatContinue reading “No Ghosts This Year #9”
No Ghosts This Year #8
That lunchtime, before Drama class, Philip had nearly lost a prop that he’d brought from home for the performance they were doing, and had spent so much time running around looking for it – opening up and emptying the contents of his bag and locker, checking his home room, everywhere he could think of –Continue reading “No Ghosts This Year #8”
No Ghosts This Year #7
“Hey,” called a voice from the other side of the road. Reluctantly he looked over. It was Laura. She was crossing to meet him. But what was she doing here? She didn’t normally walk this way to school. “I slept over at Stacy’s,” she said, as if she knew that an explanation was needed. “AreContinue reading “No Ghosts This Year #7”
No Ghosts This Year #6
The day after, he always felt like a wounded soldier. And, while there was a certain manly glory in the feeling, it was hard for others to see or understand it; and what good, really, was there in having survived a battle that no-one else knew you had fought? As a younger child, he hadContinue reading “No Ghosts This Year #6”
Mental Health November Week 2: Prayer
Mental Health November Week 1: Anxiety
This year, the people behind Movember are having a particular focus on men’s mental health, a topic close to my heart. So, while I won’t be shaving off my beard to grow a new mo from scratch, I have decided to take a handful of my old poems on mental illness and give one ofContinue reading “Mental Health November Week 1: Anxiety”
Hidden Grace
Senseless acts of beauty went unnoticed as the runners ran and golfers golfed and my head span. Full of self I stormed upon the beaten earth and missed the shades of microscopic brown and green, the flower hidden in the leaves, the pounding in the runner’s ears, the grace which binds me to these yearsContinue reading “Hidden Grace”
The Consolations of Writing 