06 Jun

Posted at 18:21h in Faith
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What follows are some thoughts on moving from one place to another. We are living in Anglesey at the moment (for a three month sabbatical) but these words are not about a literal move, but a metaphorical one. The past few years I have been on the border, crossing from one way of life to another. My blog is subtitled 'Learning How To Live' because this is what I have been doing: learning how to live in a new way, in a new space. I have been transitioning from one way of thinking about myself, my life, my faith and the world in which I live, to...

30 May

Posted at 19:52h in Faith
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I recently wrote a post about freedom. This post was a starting point for re-articulating my faith. If you haven't read it you might want to check it out before reading this. The ideas contained in these posts are fresh, and like wet paint have the potential to make a mess. I am stumbling towards truth, inarticulately. I am starting to write about some new truths. Some things my younger self would probably call heresy. There is nothing safe or tidy about this. --- I am good. I spent many years believing the core of me was bad. This idea sounded plausible and reasonable because, like every other sane person on the planet,...

03 May

Posted at 19:45h in Mental health
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I had my first panic attack at 22. Except I didn't know that was what it was called, or that it was symptomatic of the fact I was suffering with a mental illness. Mental health was not on my radar. At all. I didn't think of my brain as being healthy or unhealthy. I didn't think about it having moving or corruptible parts. It just was. It existed and enabled me to get on with life. When I did allow myself to think about these panic attacks (mostly I liked to pretend I had imagined the whole thing) I believed these aberrations were caused by...

13 Apr

Posted at 19:55h in Mental health
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Two weeks ago I opened my notebook and wrote this to you: --- "I'll level with you. I'm feeling anxious. Right now as I write this. I was fine and then all of a sudden I was aware of the tell-tale signs: the increase in temperature, the noise of my heart beating, my stomach bubbling. My anxiety manifests itself as illness. Or maybe I should say, it provokes the same symptoms as illness. I feel 'not quite right', 'not myself'. I feel I am slowly moving away from my body, like a camera panning out. I am dangerously aware of the ticks and whirrs of...

15 Feb

Posted at 15:05h in Family
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There was a time in my marriage when, in amongst the normal and the good, a space had started to open up.  A distance was widening between us. My plan was to ignore it. If I busied myself with the day to day I assumed (I hoped) we would one day naturally regain our previous ease, our relaxed intimacy. While I waited, I held Matt at arms length. To protect my heart, I hid how I was feeling. Matt tried to talk to me about how things were, but I refused to acknowledge it. I had neither the time nor energy nor courage to...

18 Jan

Posted at 11:52h in Living well, Mental health
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I can't remember a time I did not know the lyrics to the theme tune of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Throughout the early '90s the song wormed its way into my ear, remaining in my head long after the show had finished. And, kudos to the song's composers, years later as my children grew up unaware of the origins of this piece of musical genius (heavy on the irony), we have on occasion found ourselves singing it to the kids, mock-rapping in the kitchen, initially thrilling and later totally embarrassing them. Last week my ten year old discovered nearly 150 episodes of Will...

28 Nov

Posted at 19:05h in Faith
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I struggle to articulate the discoveries I have been making about my faith, in part because what I believe cannot easily be squeezed into language. It cannot be condensed and compressed into words, black and white on the page. I am only ever able to scratch the surface, if I am lucky. Even if I had all the time in the world I would still remain unable to articulate the breadth and depth and complexity, the clear and pure simplicity, of the faith I am discovering. This was not always the case. I used to find my faith far more straight forward. For every question there was an...

11 Sep

Posted at 18:00h in Family, Living well
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Learning to love someone is like poetry. I don't mean that it is beautiful and full of romantic imagery. I mean that it is hard. Poetry is hard. When I was 17 I went on a school trip to a day of talks about literature in the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. There were many speakers. They talked about their favourite texts, or about their own work. Some of it was very boring. But two of the talks have stayed with me, and I remember them all these (nearly 20) years later. Germaine Greer talked about her favourite Shakespearean sonnet and Simon Armitage unpicked his poem, Kid. I happened...