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Setting the Scene 2: To medicate or not?

I'm very aware that in the West, pharmaceuticals are an integral part of our medical treatment. And I am grateful for that in all the forms it comes in to assist with quality and length of life. Working with my GP, I was not surprised that he considered an SSRI as an adjunct to my work with the Psych. Anti - Anxiety meds work well to help calm the fight and flight reflex so it made sense as part of the over all treatment plan. Nonetheless I still nurse some reservations about this. I'm not sure why  - after all much of my work has a mental health and pastoral care focus and I would recommend to people seeing their GP and having a conversation about this very thing!   So after trying a very common anti-anxiety med for three days . . . .  pretty much nothing to report. I felt a bit nauseous and hot for the first two days and today that feels pretty much gone - but I feel like I've just got over the flu. All pretty normal effects apparently and will pass soon wi
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Setting the Scene 1: Dorsal Fatigue

So after actually realising that things were not going so well I spent some good time with a psychologist friend. After a few sessions, over a long lunch, in a light bulb moment, she gently says " I think you might have dorsal fatigue" Dorsal Fatigue  (to my understanding) is when the para sympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems  - the fight/flight reflex which  is an ancient way of protecting us - either goes into overdrive or shuts down. In my case it seems that I have just learnt to cope with levels of stress and anxiety rather than letting them go - and my body (as they do) reacted by saying "enough!".  The affects of not really relaxing or getting into flow are that the subconscious pushes to restrict activities so that I can conserve the energy that is being eaten up elsewhere - energy that in the face of my dads passing I no longer had available to control the anxiety and fight/flight. So clear now - but not then!!! So although this is not a perfe
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Rebooting the blog and most of me

So I thought I'd finished with this blog but the universe seems to have conspired to line up events in such a way that I couldn't help but to write about it . . . .  October 2016 I'm in Caen, France, after spending 4 glorious days in Paris seeing the sites and eating some great food. Caen is a wonderful small town where I wander with my friends, enjoy the history that I am there to learn and reveal in the experience of travel. Early one morning I awaken to missed calls and texts messages. My Dad is fatally ill. Can you come home? 36 hours later via trains and planes, some sleep, much wine, I am down in Mandurah  sitting with Dad, listening to him breathe gently and then finally, with a slight dramatic flourish, dying. The usual chaos follows - family, funerals, fights, and then suddenly . . . . its back to work.  February 2017 I'm exhausted. In such a way that I have never experienced. The summer slipped by in weariness, books and not much else. A go
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Come

O Key of David Come Mystery beyond my control Come Who cannot be boxed Come Who seeks my all, and nothing less Come who comes on the late afternoon breeze in the quickening pace of last minute shopping in excited squeals and overwhelmed tears Who comes in the midnight silence of those Keeping vigil the cloistered ones the mothers the ill in ancient words of emmanuel come.
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Advent 3

blurry mornings  weary bones days warm  m inds slow  sitting  waiting longing heart needing  warming despite the weather that day which dawns everything still comes too quick it's surprise leaving  me breathless  solitary as if there is just the child and I as if we two can make the world whole through our shared gaze i have no gift to bring but this torn  tired  soul bent out of shape  a year of encounters leaving their mark  the child  has no wealth nothing    but love
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Beginning Lent

Like many others, Lent seems to have arrived a bit by surprise this year. As I wrote on the usual social media site, I have been looking for what discipline I was going to embrace for the next six weeks. I really wanted to avoid the "give up chocolate, television, trashy magazines " mentality which seems rife at this time of year, looking for something bait deeper and life-giving. The Spirit seems to have ideas for me however, as bed bound with a virus this weekend, I rediscovered two of my heroes - John Henry Newman , Cardinal and Anglo Catholic convert, and Mother Maria Skobtsova , Paris living, intellectual, mother, and Russian orthodox nun. So using this reading plan , and the Skobtsova page above, spiritual reading along with saying the office (morning prayer and compline with the family), and making an effort to be very good and kind this Lent, seems like the way.
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tidal waves from behind . . .

joe cocker and the mad dogs grace the player saturday night was bowling lanes with les enfants fedoras grace the hat-stand black for winter straw for summer my t-shirt advertises long since forgotten japanese rock shows skinny ties are worn for formal occasions along with ancient doc martens princess collects tea set antiques while the prince pursues futuristic eighties cartoons ancient liturgie s are celebrated with passion latin is beginning to be understood books from childhood are revisited. i cook from elizabeth david and consider riding my bicycle more this retro life- is it escape from our modern madness malady by retreat to an idolised past? a passing fancy? or is dwelling in the present moment  only possible whilst looking behind?
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