From isolation to a crowd

The problem with having three kids is that for eight or nine years you get absolutely no time to yourself. Every moment is spent attending to somebody else's needs and, unless you are disciplined and supported, you will never be alone.

Thanks to my supportive and disciplined partner, we did make time every week for me to read, write, think, study – or just potter round an op shop in the hopes of finding equilibrium, or at least a pretty plate. Time alone was immeasurably precious, and absolutely necessary for me to keep my sanity.

This year, my youngest is in kinder for fifteen hours a week, my partner is still doing some school pickups, and I have more time than I can shake a stick at. Meanwhile, my kids have passed some threshold of childhood and, rather than spend all their time with me in the kitchen, now play together outside or at the other end of the house; and so even when there are kids around I often find myself alone.

You'd think this would be fantastic; and don't get me wrong, I'm not ungrateful. And yet, after almost a decade of feeling mobbed, I suddenly feel quite isolated. I spent so many years seeking out and cherishing those precious minutes of solitude that I assumed I am an extreme introvert – but now I finally have the time I thought I longed for, my own company is driving me crazy. I am going round in circles in my head and am assailed by doubt and when I see friends I feel socially awkward – how anyone can do a higher degree without going right out of their mind, I don't know!

Today I was affected to the point that I struggled to concentrate, and I had to wonder if studying is for me; instead of reading and living in my head for five hours a day – something I'm not sure I'm terribly good at – perhaps I should get a job and interact with people. And yet, I didn't come back to academia lightly; it took six months of conversations and discernment with family and friends to decide that, while it may not be the easy thing, it is the right thing for me to do, for now.

So rather inchoately and desperately I prayed something along these lines: 'God, you are asking me to do this and I have no idea why – but I have agreed and will do it. But how will I cope with the loneliness?'

Five minutes later, my phone beeped. It was an invitation to dinner on Friday night. Half an hour later, it beeped again: do I want to go to a concert on Thursday? I finished reading a chapter and opened my computer, expecting no more than the usual slew of subscriber and advertising emails, but an old friend I haven't seen forever had read my blog, and sent a message; another long lost acquaintance had emailed out of the blue; and a close friend was touching base about our Skype date on Sunday. A bit later, my phone beeped yet again: still another friend, reminding me of a gathering tonight that, while not social per se, promises some dynamic conversation with a group of interesting and thoughtful women. And then I received an invitation to a relevant seminar from a lovely woman I knew last year, who thought I might be interested in going along with her, 'given research is a lonely job'. I haven't seen her for six months, but here she was reading my mind.

From total isolation to feeling ever-so-slightly mobbed: I think God was having a little joke.

Nothing to fear

Sometimes I am appalled by my fear. Take Tuesday. Tuesday is my big study day: I have the whole day to read, write and think. Because I study at home, I don't have to get anywhere before I can start work; and because my husband takes my kids to school and kinder, everyone is out of the house before eight o'clock. I don't want to waste time, so there I am at eight, in my pyjamas, reading at the kitchen table. I read hard, wrestling ideas out of academic articles, and making notes about which school of thought their ideas originate from, whether their arguments make sense, and what theses I can think of that might better fit their observations. I mine bibliographies, and track down articles which cite the articles I have read. I troll academic databases trying to locate research which might be interesting or useful; and I am always searching for the 'wormhole' article which will open up a whole new – but highly relevant – way of thinking, and conveniently list everything I need to read in its references. By noon I'm beat. My eyes are rolling uselessly in my skull; my brain is mush; my tummy is rumbling; and I realise I am still sitting in my smelly old pyjamas, at the kitchen table, yet feeling pressure to do more.

I take a shower, eat soup, and think about what to do next. Often I do read and write a little more, but let's be honest: after a four hour stint, I'm not taking much in anymore. The sun is shining, the breeze has a delightful autumn chill, the leaves are falling off trees and the avenues of our city, even in my suburb, are the stuff of picture postcards. I think sadly that I really must stay inside, reading; I have no right to enjoy this beautiful day…

Oh bother that grey old Protestant who pokes me in the ribs with her pointy umbrella! I am not trapped. Anyway, my brain is porridge, and we have run out of gluten free bread. There is one exceptional gluten free baker in Melbourne, and the nearest outlet is a few suburbs away. I ponder an elaborate scheme: I can get to the university library by bus and tram, thus justifying a late tram ride to buy bread before catching two busses home in time for tea. Then again, we're rather short of cash this year and I baulk at paying seven bucks for public transport… everything feels too hard.

But wait! I have a bicycle! I need exercise! I could take a lunch hour and go for a ride! But what route should I take? And then I am stalled again. Because I don't know how, exactly, to get there; I'll have to make it up. And this is too hard.

Every time I think of doing some even slightly out of the ordinary, my brain leaps ahead to worry about this and that; it shows me how difficult, even well-nigh impossible, it is. I dream up schemes, then block myself. Have you ever wondered what it's like to be naturally conservative? This is it – despite a lifetime of reflection, and despite a deep intellectual commitment to change my behaviour as necessary to reflect my ever-evolving values, I still feel anxious about the tiniest new thing: even riding to a place I have only accessed previously by car or public transport. I'm the person who'll meet you for brunch, and will eat to be polite; I won't tell you that I already ate at 7.30 the way I always do because I couldn't cope with skipping breakfast. And if such little things scare me, imagine how much moving house or changing school or learning about the way different people live make me feel anxious and afraid!

I have great empathy for other natural conservatives, even when I profoundly disagree with their ethics, their politics or their efforts to control the lives of others. People like us feel scared, even threatened, by difference and change; and this is why we can get aggressive about matters that are none of our business. It's no excuse, but maybe it helps if you understand that we are often acting out of fear, even when we are using the rhetoric of love. If you see a hint of aggression, an attempt to dominate, a truth claim brandished like a weapon, or violence, you will know: we are afraid.

The thing we conservatives rarely realise is that when we act out of fear we are doing damage not just to you, but to ourselves. When we box ourselves in time and again, we feel suffocated; yet out of fear we keep doing it, forgetting that new situations might be joyful, or helpful, or life-giving. My own truth claim, which I hope I share gently, is that we are called to act in love: love and respect for others, love and respect for ourselves – and we do this well when we step out of our comfort zones. What could we learn by stretching our wings a little? Perhaps we may learn a new respect for other people and how they do things. Perhaps we may learn that the world is far bigger than us and in that wonderful expansiveness there is room for many points of view. And perhaps we may simply learn that the sun is shining, our bodies are strong, life is joyful and we don't have to sit at the kitchen table in our pyjamas all day; we have time to do more than Get Things Done.

This Tuesday, I finally realised fear was trying to trap me, again; and then I admitted to myself that sore eyes and a mushy brain were not going to help me learn anything more. The sun winked through the window and then poked me in the eye, laughing; the wind called my name. I whistled at my fear, grabbed my panniers, jumped on my bike, and headed off. I rode through quiet streets, surfing over speed humps, then veered off into a great avenue of deciduous trees. For once, I wasn't towing a child; my bike flew through the orange and brown leaves dancing in the streets. I headed towards the creek and trundled along the bike path, standing on my pedals to power up each hill and then cruising down the other side. I rode past a school. All the kids were out, playing, and I grinned as I realised I was having so much fun, I had overshot. I turned off the bike path, and slipped back through a couple of streets to get to my destination.

I was heading to an independent natural foods supermarket. At one o'clock, it was packed, and I was elated to see that not every cent in Australia is going into the duopoly that dominates grocery spending. I roamed the store, greeting familiar staff and picking up bread, cheese, yogurt, cucumbers, and a few other things besides. Panniers stuffed to overflowing, I headed home a completely different, also beautiful, way. I realised I could ride there every day for months and go a new route every time; there was so much to see!

Less than an hour after I had left, I arrived home breathing hard and beaming. The sun on my back had relaxed knotted muscles; the wind had blown away all cares; my mind was as clear as it gets; my eyes were rejuvenated and ready to read; and I was in love with my life once again as I realised that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to fear.

The State Library and the Great Unwashed

I'm sitting in the State Library reading about public health, but it's hard to concentrate. Something smells, really smells: it is the penetrating odour of the great unwashed.

Stomach-churning tendrils ease their way up my nose and I push my breathing high to bypass the olfactory nerves. I look around, but there is no homeless person to be seen. No dreadlocks, no stained old coats, no sleeper at a desk hinting at the origin of the smell.

Annoyed, I turn back to my book. I have a few hours without my kids, and I'm using the time to learn about health and its relationship to social status; but this stink makes it impossible. How can I concentrate when the room smells of urine and muck? And where is the smell coming from?

I keep reading, and breathing carefully, and furtively looking round. Finally I realise that the person is long gone; only the smell remains. It rises from my chair. As my thighs warm the padded seat, the unleashed odours float upwards.

Revolting.

There are no other seats, and I need to read. My jeans are thick and easily washed, so I curse and turn the page.

There I sit: nice jeans, styled hair, warm leather boots, ethically made t-shirt; my heavy winter jacket is draped over the back of the chair; and I am reading that a poor black man in Washington DC can expect to live 20 less years than a rich white man living a dozen miles up the railway line in suburban Maryland.

As I tut-tut over the dying men of DC, a few real DC faces flash before my eyes. Uri, the lean Russian man who slept on the steps of our church. Miss Rosa, the recipient of a food charity program with whom I often chatted in a putrid stairwell. Melvin, the security guard, shot in the shoulder while patrolling our church car park, an injury so common in his milieu he never thought to mention it to his employers.

What a hypocrite! Here am I with all the money, leisure and opportunity in the world, thinking I have compassion because I will read about the social factors of health; but the latent smell of homelessness makes me outraged. Yet until I recognise that the smell belongs to a real person as individual as Uri, Miss Rosa, or Marvin, and as precious in God's eyes as one of my own children, my readings in public health will be little more than a self-congratulatory exercise; very much worse than useless.

In shame I say a prayer for compassion, inhale deeply, and stay seated.

An evening ride

The other night, kids in bed, I went to visit a new acquaintance. We had things to talk about over a pot of tea. At 8 o’clock it was becoming dark, and I wondered about driving. But for reasons neighbourly, political and environmental, I try to minimise my use of the car. I’ve given up waiting for everyone else to drive less. Instead, as much as possible in a city built for car travel, I ride or catch public transport to get about.

But when it’s dark out, I often find myself wavering. Too many of my friends have been hit by cars for me to ever feel entirely safe on a bicycle; yet the pot of tea awaiting me was a bit too far away for me to walk.

I thought of the car with longing: so quick, so comfortable, so safe. But with a sigh I recalled my commitment. I affixed my lights, strapped on my helmet, and headed out.

The night was cool. As I rode down the street, pedalling steadily, my limbs began to loosen up. The heat of the day was dissipating in a slight evening breeze coming in from the south. I rode along in a perfect state of warm body – cool air: utterly comfortable.

The night was quiet. Once or twice a car cruised by; once, I overtook a man on a squeaky bike. A couple of pedestrians were out walking their dogs. I passed a jogger and heard him puff. A fruit bat erupted out of a tree and flew away heavily. But mostly, it was just me. Me and the night and my thoughts.

The night was fragrant. Every block I rode into a new wall of scent, inhaled deeply once or twice then left it behind. Jasmine, fig, eucalyptus, and many I could not identify. I had ridden the same streets earlier the same day, and had smelled nothing; now, the air was redolent.

I arrived at a softly lit house pregnant with the hush of sleeping children. I parked the bike and locked it up – no engine noise, no big headlights, no electronic beep; then I softly knocked and tiptoed in. The mother made an evening tea. We sat and allowed the conversation to unfurl from the shadows. Small tendrils of talk floated into the lamplight then gently dispersed. It was good.

The night deepened and I left. I rode home a different way, zigzagging past the streets and homes of friends and acquaintances and nodding a blessing towards each one. A sense of exhilaration filled me as bone, muscle and sinew worked together to whisk me along. I revelled in the quiet and the dark, and my olfactory nerves delighted in every rich fragrance.

This, surely, is prayer embodied: gratitude and joy and delight; attentiveness to my body, this bike, and the world all linked in perfect union; and the sure and certain knowledge that I was in the right place at the right time, as I cycled through the night.

Insulated in the ton of metal that is my car, I would have travelled quicker. And the headlights would have seared into the darkness; the intake would have filtered out the scent of jasmine; the comfortable seat would have given me no sense of strength or embodiment; the speed and need to concentrate would have prevented me nodding blessings on my way.

They say life is a journey. I say the journey, done well, gives life.

Response: Little Bee

I don't know about you, but I am tired. I am tired of our government locking up men, women and children in immigration detention here and abroad; I am tired of our customs and naval services being implicated in the drownings at sea of desperate people who have risked death in a leaky boat over certain torture in their own countries; I am tired of having bits of our country excised into special zones no longer eligible for asylum claims; I am tired of members of our government calling people who make legal claims to asylum 'illegal' even as the government itself continues to break international laws and treaties to which it is a signatory; I am tired of hearing people who should know better telling me that asylum seekers are criminals in their own countries, and that they throw their children overboard; and I am tired of reading about it all. I have written letters and signed petitions and volunteered at charities which provide services for asylum seekers; I have written about media portrayals of asylum seekers in the newspaper; I have preached on the ancient prophetic call to care for the refugee; I support family and friends as they study and work with asylum seekers and refugees; I spend time each week with refugee children myself; I pray – and I am so tired.

I have been ground down. I still care, but I feel hopeless. And hopelessness leads to despair, and despair leads to passivity – and that's not a good place to be.

But last week, I read Little Bee. It is the story of two women: Little Bee herself, the teenage survivor of genocide who has fled to England seeking asylum; and Sarah, the Englishwoman Little Bee met on a beach in Nigeria and whom she has come to find. The novel alternates between their voices as their lives become intertwined; and it is the saddest, funniest, most compulsively readable story I have read in a while.

Little Bee is luminous. She has been through the fire; she is deeply traumatised; and yet she has decided to seek beauty in the world's scars. Meanwhile, Sarah is also deeply traumatised by the events of their first meeting and what ensued; but her trauma has been largely blanketed over by the comforts of wealth. Their reunion cracks her mask, and allows Sarah to return from moral death back to life.

Sarah doesn't particularly want to make this journey. When they first met, she made a significant sacrifice for Little Bee, but she does her best not to think about it. As the editor of a fashion magazine, she wishes fashion and make up were enough for her; she would prefer her life to be pleasant and fun. Despite her efforts to be frivolous, however, her deeper moral compass continues to bind her to Little Bee in ways that make her life decidedly more difficult. The novel is both the telling of Little Bee's story, and the chart of Sarah's journey.

The book is very hard going in places, particularly when Little Bee recollects what happened to her village. Horrific events are recounted calmly, but are, of course, deeply distressing. What makes the book manageable is Little Bee's generosity of spirit, and a good dose of black humour. As a coping mechanism to deal with her very reasonable terror of what will happen when 'the men' come, Little Bee works out how to commit suicide in any setting; many of her plans are decidedly comic. For example, she is fixated on Queen Elizabeth II, and in one scene imagines how she will commit suicide at the Queen's garden party.

A further note of humour is provided by Batman, Sarah's four-year-old son, who lives in the costume of the caped crusader and will only answer to that name. Like any four-year-old, he erupts into the most serious moments with 'mine done a poo' and other tricks; and any parent will recognise Sarah's voice as she struggles through a devastating conversation spliced with instructions to her son not to spill cornflakes on the floor.

This humour, and the human side, give the book the voice of authenticity. The story isn't perfect, and the dialogue is somewhat hackneyed at times, but it is a great read. Little Bee's story could easily have become a treatise on the experiences of asylum seekers, both abroad and in Western detention centres; and while these stories must be told, they are easily ignored and don't make for bestsellers. Splicing the story in with conversations about cornflakes on the floor make it both more shocking, and more real, because it brings it home.

As mentioned above, there are several very distressing scenes; as I read in a café in the spare hour between writing with refugee kids and picking up my daughter from kindergarten, I wept over my café latte. It aligned me uncomfortably closely to Sarah, also fond of a coffee, also the mother of a four-year-old – and it was a good place to be taken.

One of the curses of privilege is that one can fall into the trap of thinking that one has somehow earned it, and that one has the right to protect it. One can also feel affronted when other, less privileged, people make one's life uncomfortable – such as when one feels tired, so tired, when one thinks of asylum seekers. Me, I'd prefer they didn't make me so uncomfortable. If they need to come, then of course they should, but it would be so much more pleasant if we could just welcome them and they could then assimilate and become invisible. I am fed up with being made to feel morally uncomfortable because I belong to a society which treats asylum seekers like sub-humans, and has normalised that attitude to such an extent that when I wrote about refugee children in the newspaper, I received letters from people saying it was the first time it had occurred to them that they were just people (!). But somehow my feelings of frustration have spread from government, elected officials and the media to asylum seekers as well. Such are the poisonous times in which we live.

However, Little Bee makes the story of seeking asylum personal; and Sarah brings it home to the comfortable suburbs. As a reader, I am reminded that as a person of privilege I don't have the moral option of feeling despair. I think I'm tired? I should go live in a detention centre somewhere and fill in a form every time I need a new sanitary pad; I should try to sleep when I am tormented by violent memories of what happened to my village and my loved ones; I should live in detention year in year out with no visa and no hope; and then I might know something about fatigue and despair. Or I could read Little Bee again, experience life through her eyes, and then recommend her story to you. Any novel which makes nice middle class women laugh out loud and then weep and lie awake at night, confronted by their own complacency – well, that can only be a good thing. Read it.

(If you've already enjoyed Little Bee, you may also like Wizard of the Crow.)

Happiness

On a recent day off, I pottered around. I finished a novel, made soup for lunch, wrote for an hour, weeded the veggie patch with my sister, baked a cake with a daughter, blitzed some chickpeas into hommos for a school stall, and cooked dinner for friends. Late in the afternoon, surrounded by dirty dishes, I was suddenly suffused by warmth, and the words 'I love myself' filled me up like honey. Very surprised, and deeply happy, I ran the hot water, squeezed in the suds, and did the washing-up.

The moment came about not because I sought happiness or self-acceptance, but because I spent the whole day doing things I love for people I love: chopping and cooking, reading and writing, chatting and laughing, and anticipating dinner with friends. I felt competent, relaxed, and cheerful at the thought of the things I was making and those they would serve.

I tell you this because, a month or so ago, I was invited to be a blogging advertiser sorry pioneer for a new website. The website is devoted to making people happy. How ridiculous, I thought at the time; as if life is really about being happy, and as if one should seek happiness out. But I had a look, and my curiosity was piqued.

The site is a subscription service which guides the user through various mindfulness activities. As one works through the exercises, further activities are 'unlocked'. Activities include guided reflections, quizzes, and simple games. I signed up; and I'm writing about the experience because the sort of people who might use this site might overlap with the sort of people who read this blog.

I must admit here that I lasted only three weeks on the site. By that time, I was so infuriated that I chucked it in; but perhaps there are benefits that only a more extended trial would reveal. With that proviso, I will say that I think the site is deeply flawed, and in a number of ways.

First, the site encourages all users to do the activities publicly. When you sign up, you are given a profile drawn from your facebook account (and there are problems inherent in that, of course). Then your responses to and comments about the activities are public, listed facebook style under your facebook badge. So, for example, an exercise might ask you to commit to doing something for somebody else that day; do it; and then write about your experience. Other site users can read what you have committed to, and make comments. They can follow your progress, and if they like what they see they can follow you; thus it is possible to build up a fan base. (I gather there is a private option, but as a blogger pioneer I was pushed into the public stream.)

The problem is that I believe one of the things that make so many people deeply unhappy and dissatisfied with life is that they are constantly comparing themselves to others. The idea that people could comment on my responses, and follow me if they like what they read, made me nervous. I began to think about how to appear cute or intelligent or wise, and then loathe myself for that crawling obsequious bit of me that worries about what other people – strangers! – think.

I found myself self-censoring. As mentioned, one activity was to commit to doing a favour for someone. The thought crossed my mind that I have been pretty grumpy with my husband lately, and perhaps I should grant him a sexual favour. But I was hardly going to write that for all to see, so I put down something else – and then did that other thing, which was to cook dinner for a friend. My husband totally missed out (although he did share in the dinner!). Another activity asked me to list what I was grateful for. At that point, I was delighted that all my effing kids were out of the effing house; but I wasn't going to admit that. Instead, I wrote something completely anodyne: that I was grateful for my kids – which is also true, but not the truth of that moment, and hardly the type of revelation that bubbles out of good honest reflection.

Of course, the act of self-censoring, which was triggered by the public nature of the site, undermined the usefulness of the exercises. Readers of this blog will know that I can be blisteringly honest at times, but on that website I started trying to look like everyone else.

I also began fretting about readership. One of the ways that the site managers encourage bloggers to participate is the promise that early users will get lots of new readers. Now, my blog readership has always been relatively been small, and I'm fine with that. I'm not interested in reading hundreds of other blogs and regularly making soulful or witty comments in order to try and entice readers back to my blog. I pretty much fail Blogging 101 because I don't find social media sites very interesting, and fail to leverage them to create publicity for my blogs. I have never invested in a decent camera or learned how to take great photographs, and I don't really plan to. The blog is what it is, that is, independent, word-based, with the occasional happy snap at the request of some dear friends; and the cost is fewer readers, like it or not.

But here, I began to be tempted by the idea of more readers. I began making thoughtful comments on other people's activities and checking out their blogs; but really, I didn't care about them. I just wanted that elusive sign of 'success': a bigger readership. And then I felt ashamed of myself. In my experience, shame is not something that leads to great happiness; and it was when I recognised the shame that I signed off the site.

The thing is, I can't manufacture genuine relationships with constructed and highly edited identities on the internet. Sure, I have a couple of e-friends that I've never met, but the people who really matter are those who know me well, who like me when I'm striding out in confidence and sit by me when I'm crumpled in a corner of the pub, overwhelmed by my doubts and fears and that ill-advised third glass of wine. What also matters is that those same people trust me enough to tell me what's really going on in their lives and don't feel the need to edit, to make themselves seem more funny or intelligent or kind than they really are.

So I'm not interested in commenting on the reflective activities of people I have never, and will never, meet; nor am I interested in what they think. It's impertinent. We know nothing about each other's background, upbringing, values, or daily struggles; we have no idea if the other is being genuine and have no way to call them to account if their online presence has no continuity with their daily life. It is unreal and dissatisfying and makes me uncomfortable; I really only trust flesh-and-blood, warts-and-all, relationships.

The website sets a minimum quota of activities for the week. In good faith, I will suggest it is to inculcate the habit of daily reflection (I could be more cynical); practically, it means visiting the site at least three or four times a week. I found myself worrying about when to do another activity to get the week's quota, and it became another Should in my life, which is the last thing a mother needs. Worse, each time I turned on the computer to do those 'couple of minutes', I turned away from real people and real activities. It wasn't that the site itself takes much time, but once the computer was on, I would quickly move from the site to somebody's blog, and thence to… the massive time suck that is the internet. Best to stay away from the computer, and to use those five minutes for a quick cuddle or folding the laundry, a job I've always enjoyed.

My final point will sound like a quibble, but I think it's more than a stylistic difference: when you do an activity on the site, you get a little message like 'way to go!' or 'well done!'; you gain points for doing activities; and if you earn a certain number of activities in a week, you get a higher status. And this is ridiculous. I am nearly 40; I am highly self-motivated; I hardly need an electronic message of encouragement. I found these 'rewarding' aspects of the site infantilizing. Whereas some of the activities themselves could have been helpful, even maturing, exercises, when I was rewarded for doing them I felt like I was back at primary school. The very process of engaging in a reflective exercise holds its own reward; but the encouragements and gold stars built into the system undermined the potential benefits of doing the activities.

After all that, I must mention the plus side, which is that there is nothing wrong with mindfulness exercises in and of themselves. Anything which encourages people to stop and reflect has some merit; and so this particular website could be useful for someone who has no habit of reflective practice, needs some basic skills, and doesn't know where to look. If you feel in that category, a quick google should reveal the site and you might like to check it out (or check out the links below: simple reflective practice is really very easy). If you do use the site, I would urge you to use it only in private mode. No comparing yourself; no looking at other people's exercises; no commenting on other people's progress. You cannot do the reflections properly unless you feel safe, and that means keeping them to yourself; and you do not want to flirt with the demon of envy, which is fed when you compare what you do with the work of others.

If you feel the need for encouragement, sign up with a flesh-and-blood friend or neighbour, then catch up once a week over a coffee and have a chat about how you're both going. Real people, real relationships, real reflections that are difficult and surprising and make you angry and cause you to weep: these are what will make you feel connected and help you to grow up. This hard work can go on for months and years with no bright and shiny rewards in sight; but from time to time, in my experience, you might just stumble across happiness.

***

Reflective practice is very simple. Notice what you're doing or thinking, and sit with it. Practice saying thank you – to the universe, to friends, to God if you so believe. Listen to yourself and to others. Pay attention to the surprising thoughts and images that bubble up from your core, and ponder them. Be kind to yourself. Be patient with yourself. Tears are healing. There is no need to judge.

Many posts on this blog grew out of reflective practice; the following pieces are among the clearer examples. They do not form a manual. Instead, I hope they give you some hints or pointers as to how you might develop a practice of your own. I write from a Christian perspective and the pieces reflect that, but the methods – sitting, listening, feeling grateful and so on – are open to everyone.

Practicing Gratitude

On silence

Why not love

The voices in my head

Worship, work and play

Praying into the night

Folding Cloth

Peeling Chestnuts

Dreaming of home

I’m still here, still thinking, but the reflective writing has taken a backseat lately thanks to the combination of tomatoes, figs, uni, and school holidays. So here's something from the archives, a whimsical piece reflecting on a dream I had last year. It was first published in Zadok Perspectives No. 116 (Spring 2012).

***

One night recently I dreamed I was in my house when, just for a lark, my sister went for a swing on the ceiling fan. But the ceiling was rotten and fell in; and that is how I discovered that my house was built in the shell of a much larger house, eight or ten times as big.

I found myself in a magnificent dark timbered old hall. Wide creaking stairs rose to a mezzanine which ran around the building. The mezzanine was lined with timber bookshelves filled to overflowing with leather bound books; and glass topped display cabinets held stuffed birds, interesting bones, strange artefacts and other curiosities. Broken rafters dangled down, and through gaping holes in the roof I could see the sky.

I said we should rip out our house and live in this much larger space. How wonderful it would be!

But, said the everyone of my dream, we couldn’t possibly afford it; instead, we should just fix the ceiling of our little house, and ignore the big house in which our house stands. I was left with the sad feeling that this was sensible, but then I thought, Why not do it anyway?

Why not reach out beyond the ceiling, the roofline, the house I thought I had, and find something large and beautiful? Why not rip out the new little neat little clean little house and make ancient history habitable? Much better to have rooks in the tower and holes in the floor in an expansive old house than be limited by a tidy low ceilinged safe suburban home.

Upon waking I found myself wondering, have I made of my soul a suburban home? A pristine place with nothing to make me uncomfortable? Have I ignored the rumblings of loose rafters above my clean white ceiling, the quarrelling of ancient birds just out of hearing, the centuries of history and learning and stories that were in the old books? Have I settled for less?

This is a question of trust, of course; and I suspect that, for the most part, I have chosen to live comfortably rather than push out and discover just how deep is the Christian story, how vast is God’s love – and how exuberantly I could respond.

I don’t really know how to live in the house of my dream, but the vision grips me so fiercely I want to try. My hope is that if I read the old books and examine the bones; if I sit on the stairs and gaze at the sky; if I remove all the rot and listen for birds; and if I reflect on what these things have to say, then through dreams and play and work and silence, I might just find a way.