This is a copy of a post I have posted elsewhere but felt there was a relevance to it being here, please forgive the lack of personalisation in it but I don’t have the energy and patience to go through re-wording and personalising this item. I am interested in any comments that you might have on this post.
I have said in the past that my blog posts are a little like busses, none for ages and then loads at once, well I have not written much for ages but feel that there are a few blog posts coming for one or other of my blogs.
So, where to start, well a good place to start is with my mother! Always a topic to get me wound up.
I will input into this post some stuff I chatted over with my counsellor today about this subject, spent my whole session chatting round issues related to my mother.
OK so a few weeks ago my niece was staying with my mother, my niece is 15 and it was a surprise that she had wanted to spend some time with my mother, as they have never really got on together, mind you my mother doesn’t really get on with anyone.
We felt a little sorry for my niece so decided that we would invite them both to join us on an afternoon at a local country park, our son was in respite so it was only our daughter with us, my mother was her usual self, very self centred and whenever the conversation went to discussing anything other than her, e.g. when I asked my niece how school was going etc, she rapidly brought the subject back to herself, this happened several times.
Anyhow, whilst there, our daughter wet herself, as you will be aware she has learning difficulties and, at the age of 8, can still be a little unreliable with her toileting, but usually pretty reliable, my wife got on and change her and I alerted members of staff who cleared up the mess, with no fuss or problems. No more was mentioned and we didn’t think it was a big deal.
Right, now fast forward a couple of weeks to Saturday just gone, I had a phone call from my mother asking if I could check her oil and water on her car as she is due to go away shortly, during this conversation she asked whether I had heard from my sister, which I hadn’t, she then went on to say that she had fallen out with her, why? Because my niece has decided that she wants to change her name from her birth fathers surname to my sisters maiden name, you will need to read this carefully to follow it all, my sister is a divorcee, her ex, my nieces father, was abusive to the kids, and continues to be (verbally primarily) so there are good reasons why my niece might want to have little to do with him, my sister being a divorcee has taken her maiden name back, this is the name she acquired through her father, my step father, although I use this surname simply because its what everyone knew me as all my life, anyhow, my mother and step father split up about 22 years ago when he had an affair with a younger woman, he now lives somewhere abroad, America or Australia, with his second wife and their 2 children.
OK so my mother was upset that my niece has decided to take his surname because of the hurt he has caused her, now the only hurt he has caused my mother is to have an affair with someone, I do not mean to belittle this BUT it happens all the time! In-fact I have a suspicion, although my mother would deny it, that her relationship with my step father started as her having an affair with him whilst still with my birth father.
So, again considering the fact that my niece has suffered at the hands of her father I can understand why she might want to take the surname that her mother is currently using. Anyhow, my reaction to my mother was pretty swift and unusually assertive with her, she usually makes me feel like that little boy again and I find it difficult to be so assertive, but anyhow I simply told her that it was a silly thing to fall out over and my niece has the right to make this decision herself! My mother was hurt by this but I stood my ground and she swiftly turned the subject back to her car, I said I would get back in touch, but was already not very keen on doing anything for her.
Anyhow, I then rang my sister to discuss with her, I have found it pays to get her story ready for my next encounter with my mother. And had an enlightening discussion. Yes my niece did want to change her name and yes my sister had told my mother this was her decision and hers alone, so my mother put the phone down on her!
Ok so the relevance of the wetting incident? Simply that my sister, informed me that my niece really didn’t enjoy staying with my mother, surprise, surprise, but mainly because my mother was so critical of so many people, including apparently telling my niece that my daughter wetting herself was embarrassing! As was the fact that my daughter is so clearly over weight! Now this just about shows the level of my mothers selfishness ignorance and arrogance and made me see red! After all the times we have gone out of our way to take my mother out and al the hours spent with her saying how ‘lovely’ & how ‘sweet’ our daughter is and all the time she was embarrassed by things like that! Yes our daughter does have a weight issue and she does have bladder (and bowel) control problems, but that’s all part of the disability, as our niece pointed out but my mother apparently dismissed it and said it had nothing to do with it! Presumably she blames the parents!
So now I was faced with a real dilemma, do I go and sort my mothers car out or do I throw my dummy out of the pram and refuse? And if I do go, do I mention the matter or not?
Well, for the sake of good relations I choose to go, although we made pretty sure we didn’t have to spend long there, went on the way back from being out and had some dinner in the oven! So the kids and my wife stayed in the car as I sorted her car out, I also choose not to raise the subject although would have had a thing or 2 to say if she had mentioned anything along those lines!
Basically I am at the point where I am considering severing ties with my own mother because her attitude is totally unacceptable, we have chosen to give life and opportunities to 2 children with special needs and they do NOT need this kind of attitude from their own grandmother.
This raises again the whole, honouring your parents issue, which would be easy to do if she were keeping the commandments too as she wouldn’t be so awkward and difficult to be honouring to.
Anyhow, in chatting with my counsellor today we discussed some of the issues and reasons why I find it difficult to tackle issues directly with my mother, on this occasion it wasn’t that I found it difficult to tackle it I deliberately chose not to raise the issue myself but generally I always feel as though she turns me into a little child again, primarily because she has always, for as long as I can remember belittled me and run me down, she has always treated my views and opinions as if they don’t count and actually she pays very little attention to anything that I, or my sister say, as if our views are unimportant, also through my childhood she has pretty much made me feel as a small child, not allowed to have a view or opinion of myself, I have to listen to what my parents say as they are always right!
Another part of this is the whole honouring issue, how can you disagree with your parents and still honour them? Well I have good cause to disagree with my mother, she is so often wrong, and bigoted and ignorant and doesn’t listen to another persons opinion or point of view! But that doesn’t mean I don’t honour her, and respect her, as another human being that is! As my mother, no, all she did was to give birth to me and accommodate me for a few years, she has never earned the right to be honoured as my mother.
Anyhow, some of you might think that I am being rather harsh on her, well if that’s you feel free to contact me and you can take her as your mother! Lets see how long you survive!
Basically my mother falls out regularly with all sorts of people, for all sorts of silly reasons, this issue with my sister is just the latest (that I know of) in a long line of issues over which she falls out with people.
At the moment she is away on holiday (kind of!) with her sister but she has regularly fallen out with her too, my mum has said several times that her sister ‘always has to be right, she can’t accept that she is ever wrong’ sounds familiar to me!
Another example of how awkward and stubborn my mother can be is also connected to names, my sister has chosen, since leaving home, to be known by her middle name rather than her first name, I have to say I can’t blame her because in my view her middle name is much nicer, this again is a decision that she is entitled, as an adult, to make, its all part of her stamping her own identity and personality on her life but my mother refuses to refer to her by her middle name, this leads to a lot of confusion especially when my mum was living not far from my sister, everyone there knew my sister by her middle name so got pretty confused when my mum called her by her first name, changing your preferred name in this way, either using your middle name or abbreviating your name or taking on a nick name etc is pretty common place in society, but my mum just wants her little girl to shrink away and conform to her mums standards and expectations. In fact I think I am going to make a conscious decision to call my sister by her preferred name, at least when addressing her in person even if my mother is around, regardless of the consequences because this is what my sister WANTS! And she is old enough to make this decision, it might be difficult for a while as I am so used to her being called, and me calling her, by her first name.
Anyhow, at this point in time I am having to make a conscious decision that I will NOT be sucked into my mothers games and manipulation that I WILL NOT allow her to control me or to turn me into that little child that I will act as the adult and address the issues in an adult and grown up way, without loosing my temper and without allowing myself to be turned into the little child again, regardless of how she reacts, even to the point where I can make the conscious decision to NOT tackle an issue if I feel it would not be constructive, or would even be detrimental to do some but this would be a decision would be a conscious decision made in my adult self rather than one made because I have become the weak child that she wants me to become.
Fortunately for us we have always made a point of refusing to allow my mother to have any stronghold over us in the form of having given ups money to help us out, there have been times that she has offered to help us financially with some significant expenditure, most recently the cost of re-wiring the house, but we have always turned down these offers because we do not want to allow her to be able to use this against us. A good policy and one my sister wishes she had adopted but she has taken money from my mother at various times and always regrets it.
Anyhow, I do feel that, in the right time and in the right way I need to tackle some of this stuff directly with my mother, addressing her general attitude towards other people and telling her that her attitude is only going to result in her being very lonely into her old age, certainly myself and my sister feel that we are reaching the end of what we can tolerate from her. But also addressing directly her attitudes and prejudices about our children, telling her that if she is that embarrassed by our kids then she best not come out with us! But timing and wording will be crucial, I need to ensure that my attitude and actions are from right motives and done in a right way but also being prepared to accept that this MAY result in the severing of relationships, for at least a time, depending on her response, this is obviously not an issue I can tackle with the kids present either, so wisdom beyond wisdom is needed to know how best to tackle this.
I think that’s about all I need to say on this, the post is a lot longer than I expected but that’s not unusual, as I said at the beginning there may well be a couple of others to follow this if I can get my head round it all.
OK so that sounds quite a heavy title for a post but hopefully it won’t be as heavy as all that!
Over the past couple of weeks in counselling we have chatted around issues of ‘core beliefs’ some of my core beliefs being that I am useless, stupid, ugly, no one likes me, unable to do anything, the list could go on! Pretty much all my core belief’s are negative. As if you needed to know that!
She said that core beliefs are really set during childhood, we develop our core beliefs through what our parents & other influential adults tell us and then they are set and it becomes difficult to change them.
So what about the evidence based belief part of this? Well my counsellor was saying that when we have core beliefs we always look for evidence that supports those core beliefs and dismiss evidence that doesn’t support them, so for example, I see myself as stupid, I build this belief up by looking for all the evidence to support it, when I don’t know the answers to the things people ask or I cant solve a problem etc and dismiss all the clever things I manage to do, when I manage to solve problems or sort things out for myself or for others. Yep that about sums me up!
How else can someone who as a Transport Manager was head hunted on more than one occasion because they thought I was good at the job manage to decide that he is stupid? Quite simply, I dismiss others belief that I am pretty good at it by saying they don’t really know me, etc.
Anyhow, you can see how this whole issue swims round and round in circles, for me I am working very hard on trying to correct some of my core beliefs because I know that others do not share the same view of me that I share of myself, as has been evidenced by some of the things they say and the way that they have spoken about me, I must dig out that list of positive things people spoke about/over me a few months back.
Having gone through my childhood believing that I was useless, ugly, stupid etc I have carried those beliefs into adult life and perfected the belief in my own mind so it takes a lot to over come those beliefs and I need to constantly look for and validate the evidence that supports the opposite views to those that I have thus far believed. After all, as my wife regularly says, do I want to believe the things that my parents said about me when I was a child (and my mother continues to say to this day) or will I believe the things that those who are nearest to me and who love me most say about me? Well there is no contention really when you put it like that BUT life is never quite as easy, its not a matter of flicking a switch and hey presto your mind set has changed.
OK now for the other part of this post, hadn’t intended to write most of the above! What I really wanted to say was, it occurred to me earlier today that the vast majority of people, even those who are highly educated and respected leaders in the field of science, can and do fall into the trap of developing core beliefs then looking for evidence to support their belief rather than looking at all the evidence before forming a belief, indeed it would be pretty impossible to do the latter as the evidence sometimes changes over time.
So, for example, many years ago people believed that the world was flat and the whole of their world view was based in the belief that the world was flat, they never challenged this because all the evidence (that the found) pointed to the world being flat, it took a lateral thinker to challenge this assumption and re-define the whole way we saw the world when he discovered that the world was actually a globe, can you imagine what it would be like if we still thought the world was flat?
There are still those who don’t believe that smoking causes any health problems, these people will point to the evidence of great uncle bob or granddad who at the age of 90+ is still going strong and has smoked 40 a day fro most of their life, indeed if you look only at this evidence you can see why people come to the conclusion that smoking cant be that bad for you, but that is to dismiss the huge number of deaths each week from the effects of smoke, lung cancer etc.
Another example might be the pro & anti Europe camps in this country, those who are anti Europe will look for all the beurocratic decisions all the stupid rules, the costs to us as a nation of being a part of the community whereas those who believe we should be in Europe will look at all the benefits, the grants we receive the good laws that come out of Europe (at which point the euro sceptics say what good laws?) the investment and security the EU offers us, oh and before you ask, I am pretty neutral on the issue of Europe!
When is comes to faith, religious beliefs, we all have a faith, whether we acknowledge it or not, and our faith usually provides the basis of our world view, for some their faith is a belief on God, in some form or another, for others it is a belief that there is no God, whichever camp you fall into I can guarantee that you look for the evidence to support that belief rather than looking at the evidence that exists to see what it tells you, your thought patterns are affected by your belief system.
As a Christian I freely admit that I look for, and see, evidence of God’s creative work in every day life, I can see the way that he has created and written DNA into every living thing, the way that he made the planet to be such a beautiful place, the way that he made everything good.
Of course those who are evolutionists will point to the glaciers and carbon dating and various other aspects of the world to show how clear it is that the world was formed out of a big bang and we are all evolved from microscopic beings, or whatever is their particular conviction of how we came to be.
The evidence on any side can and will be overwhelming to the people who hold to that particular belief.
So, who can claim to have THE answers and know the truth? Well I believe that the truth can only be known separate from the ‘evidence’ and comes out of an inner evidence, as a Christian I have had a personal encounter with God and know from my inner evidence that he exists and that there is truth to be discovered, however I can not provide you the reader with evidence that will sway you because you will filter all the evidence based on your pre-conceived views and beliefs.
Many people who have grown up with an abusive father have struggled with the concept of God as Father, until recently, well the past couple of years, I would have denied this was me, I could relate to the concept of God as father, but the truth is that I still had a wrong perception, I have always believed that I pretty much sneaked into the kingdom, I wasn’t actually chosen, at the meeting where I went forward to give my life to God I was just one of a number of people and I have always felt that when I stood there God looked at me and just said ‘oh you came forward too did you? OK I will let you in’ this view was really due to the relationship I had with my parents in growing up, always feeling as if I was just tolerated rather than loved, not wanted but there, not being kicked out but still not really being welcomed as a valued part of the family. This mind set has been really clear in the way I have felt about going through the depths of depression over the past couple of years.
Are there issues where you filter evidence through your own belief system rather than filter your belief system through all the evidence open to you? I know that there are still definitely areas that I need to work on, areas where I still believe things and stack the evidence in support of that belief. Mainly for me in relation to my perception of myself, but bit by bit I am dismantling my belief system in an effort to rebuild it on the security of all the evidence available.
The following is the text of an e-mail I have received in response to this blog post, Mike (the author) is a photographer who's blog I have been following with some interest over the past few months, He lives in the same area as me and I am hoping to get out with him so that he can teach me camera techniques and help me improve my photography skills. As he says, his response is too long a comment to have left directly on my blog so he chose to e-mail it to me, I am copying it into the end of the original post because it adds soem very thought provoking ideas to my original post, if you wish to find out more about Mike he can be found on his own website here.
Well, as you'll have now discovered, I've stumbled across your blog.
That's what you get for posting a link to it on Twitter! Heh heh.
Anyway, I wrote this *huge* comment to one of your posts only to find that blogspot wouldn't accept it cos it had "too many characters". A bit reluctant to then just consign it to the recycle bin, thought I'd email it to you. Do with it what you will.
Here 't is...
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Well, I've now returned the favour and bookmarked your blog ;)
Discovered through one of your tweets, and rather pleased about it I am too for this is a fascinating post. Most thought-provoking. And one with which I can only too easily identify. That's to say, the opening paragraphs.
I don't think I've ever phrased it to myself in quite such terms but for as long as I can remember I've always had an awareness that my perception of myself is very frequently at odds with the perception of me that others appear to hold. And generally the latter tends to be rather more positive than the former.
Which in effect, if I've understood you correctly, is pretty much the same as you're saying.
Perhaps I should qualify that for I'm not entirely happy with the terms "positive" and "negative", in the sense that "positive" could be taken to imply "good" or "nice" or whatever, and that's not quite what I meant.
More accurate perhaps would be to say that others' perceptions of my abilities and competencies frequently appear kindlier than my own.
What I'd not connected this disparity with however was the influence my early years viz parents etc may have had in the forming of my self-perception.
Its a fascinating and persuasive notion, and one to which I can see myself giving considerable thought.
But leaving that aside, you then go on to talk of people falling "into the trap of developing core beliefs then looking for evidence to support their belief rather than looking at all the evidence before forming a belief" and, as you rightly observe, in some circumstances it would be almost impossible to do otherwise.
This too set me to thinking. About the statement itself, and about the assumption implicit in the statement, which becomes much clearer with your closing remark. An assumption, moreover, that I suspect we all tend to make... that "evidence" is in some fashion more valid than "belief".
Particularly if we're equating validity with "closeness to the truth".
("Closeness to the facts"? Hmm. Even a statement as apparently simple as this raises profound questions.)
But I wonder if such an assumption is justified?
Here's a few random thoughts...
Can "evidence" be said to exist "in isolation" as it were? Or does it not, rather, derive its status from the interpretation we put upon it?
Even to the extent of deciding which factors are relevant and therefore constitute "evidence" and which factors should be discarded as irrelevant?
Is it not possible that the whole notion of "evidence" is little other than a product of our own perception of "reality"? And if so, would that not actually render it, paradoxically, a product of belief?
It seems to me that the attraction of restructuring (or attempting to
restructure) one's life upon "the evidence" in preference to core beliefs resides in the assumption that in some way "the evidence" is more accurate, more truthful, or more representative of "reality" (or however you wish to express it) than belief may be.
Yet, as you so rightly observe, "evidence sometimes changes over time".
Thus, how would we know, were we to structure our lives upon the evidence available today, that such evidence wouldn't change (or, more pertinently, even be proven wrong by the discovery of more complete evidence for example) tomorrow?
And if there is an "absolute reality" and the evidence available to us at any given time can only ever be reflective of our circumscribed knowledge and/or understanding of that absolute reality and therefore (and inevitably) incomplete, how wise can it be to structure our lives upon such an incomplete (and possibly completely mistaken) basis?
(Bringing this principle right back down to "our own doorstep", how can others' perceptions of us constitute any form of reliable evidence when their knowledge of us is far less complete than our own?)
Is it even possible to attempt such an undertaking? How would we know, for example, that we have all the available evidence at our disposal?
Could it not be that actions based on partial evidence may be more erroneous than actions based purely on belief?
And in fact would those actions themselves not be based upon belief...
the belief that we have all the available evidence at our disposal?
Dilemmas indeed!
I think the thing I find most worrying about this is the sense that an "evidence-based life" (for want of a better term) hints of a very mechanistic (one might almost say materialistic) approach, and seems to allow little room for "movements of the Spirit".
And that, so it seems to me, goes against the available evidence of what humans actually are, or how they live their lives in reality.
There's another paradox for you!
I doubt if any reasonable person would argue with the notion that certain things are susceptible of being decided upon the basis of the evidence. One example you've used is that of the harmful effects of smoking.
I can't imagine any reasonable person (even smokers) disputing that smoking can be (and generally is) seriously injurious of health. And such a conclusion is based purely upon the available evidence alone.
However, such examples don't (so it seems to me) necessarily or even logically lead to the inference that everything should be (or needs to
be) evidence-based.
Let's return to the matter of perceptions of self... one's own and those of others.
In my own particular case, were I to "buy into" the evidence offered by other peoples' perceptions of my abilities in certain areas then its distinctly conceivable that my efforts to improve in those areas would be significantly less than efforts based upon my own perception of such abilities.
In other words, its entirely conceivable that one's own lesser perceptions of oneself can be the motivation to strive to improve. And surely that is a good thing. Isn't it?
My own "spiritual path" (which, as you may have realised by now, goes by a somewhat different name to yours... though I tend not to place too much significance upon mere labels) demands of me a constant striving, which effort can only ever be based upon my own perception of myself and my shortcomings. Were I to allow it to be otherwise then its entirely conceivable that such striving wouldn't be anywhere near as rigorous.
Or so I believe ;)
And (returning to an earlier point) should validity even be equated to "closeness to the truth"? How can we ever know what such "truth" is (in any absolute sense) when it must forever be filtered through (or coloured by... whichever you prefer) our exclusively human perceptions? Would it not then make more sense to equate validity to relevancy?
And if relevancy be that which has the greatest potential for impacting our lives, or actually does impact and motivate us to the greater extent, then it seems to me that belief is far more valid than evidence.
Hmm. I've just re-read everything I've written and it strikes me as sounding somewhat challenging. Its not intended in that way. Its all just speculation reflective of my own virtually constant uncertainty about... oh... almost everything. Apart from my core beliefs of course
I thought it was too good to not share elswhere so here it is! It means that my f/book friends will get several copies but hey whats wrong with that? ------------------------------------------------------------------- I asked for strength that I might achieve, I was given patience that I might endure; I asked for health to do larger things, I was given wholeness that I might do better things; I asked for power that I might impress men, I was given prayer that I might seek God; I asked for wealth that I might be free from care, I was given understanding that I might be wiser than carefree. I asked for all things that I might enjoy life, I was given life that I might enjoy all things; I received nothing I asked for. I received more than I ever hoped for. My prayer was answered. I am blessed.
I may have said this here before but I think its worth repeating, I believe that the church and society generally have a couple of big taboo topics, one of these is Mental Illness, to admit that you have this in the church is like telling people that you are demon possessed.
Get real guys, these things can and do affect people in our congregation whether we like it or not.
I have suffered severe depression (a form of mental illness if onyl people would admit it!) I and have also self harmed as a direct result of the depression I have suffered, and still do suffer, this is something that just wont go away, it is part of who I am and its part of my journey.
I want to be a real person, I want to be whole, of course I want to be whole but I also want to be real and denying that I have, or have had, these problems doesn’t make me either real or whole.
I recently came across a charity, based in America, called ‘to write love on her arms’ the story behind the charity is so powerful and has touched me pretty deeply, I challenge you to watch this video and not be moved by it.
All too often we can shrug off the fact that someone hurts themselves, tries to commit suicide or cuts etc, and say they are just attention seeking, other who take drugs, how often do we just look down on them but we need to get alongside such people and write love on their hearts as well as their arms, show them true compassion and true love and show them that there is another way forward.
I am fortunate to have a good and very strong wife along with some really good loyal, strong, lovely friends who have able to carry me through what is without doubt the toughest couple of years of my adult life, I am on a journey, still on a journey, of discovery and healing, healing from the past and discovery of new things to come, but this journey would have been so much harder without the love care and support of a group of dedicated friends who have loved me through it.
Others are not so fortunate and this is where TWLOHA comes in, they are encouraging people to do this for others, to get alongside them and journey with them, I want to encourage you, TWLOHA don’t work in this country (yet) but we don’t need to be a part of a group or have a title to do this, just look around you, you don’t have to look far to find people who are hurting and who need this love in their lives, I challenge you to write love on her arms (and in her heart) anywhere you find her, or him.
Please visit their web site for more info and if your in America and there is a project near you why not get involved?
Ok so those who know anything about us will know that myself and Joy are the proud parents of 2 children with learning difficulties, we adopted them so in a sense chose to accept them with their difficulties and disabilities.
One of the things we have felt is a part of our ministry is getting the church to accept those who have disabilities, especially learning difficulties/disabilities, as valued and important members of the church community.
In our fellowship we have had a guy coming along for some time who has learning difficulties and it hasn’t always been easy to know how to handle him, its been interesting to see how he seems to have been accepted by some, alongside our own 2 children who are by and large made to feel right at home, although some are still very nervous and frightened of Steven because his behaviour can seem rather strange, I don’t say this to condemn or criticise these people because I am not sure I would have reacted any different towards him if it wasn’t for the fact that we adopted him, although, given time, they seem to have been accepted on the whole.
Anyhow, when we did our building project a couple of years back one of the main objectives of the project was to remove as many of the physical barriers to worship for those with disabilities, improved A/V facilities, better layout & lighting, disabled toilet, generally much more accessible buildings, it has been my hope that our church, and the church at large, would take on the call to reach out to those with disabilities, especially learning difficulties, as they represent one of the largest un-reached communities in this nation, but it requires more than just improved buildings to allow those with learning difficulties to participate in our services, it takes an attitude of acceptance and welcoming.
It is far easier to accommodate someone with physical disabilities because all you have to do is adapt the building, in order to accept those with learning disabilities you need to adapt the people, which can be so much harder! However it is a challenge that the church has to rise to, the Disability Discrimination Act gives us a legal responsibility to ensure that we adapt to the needs of those with disability but it is so difficult to legislate for attitudes of mind, yes we have complied with the physical requirements of the act, as so many companies and organisation have done so, but we also need to comply with the spirit, indeed, we as the church, as those who seek to Love God and Love others, should be streaks ahead, we should be showing the world how to be accepting and welcoming instead of just complying with the law we should go over and above it, find the Gold standard and aim for that, if our faith means anything to us it means that we love other human beings wholeheartedly, regardless of their background and abilities and we accept people who are not like us as if they are our brothers and sisters, this is easier to do with people of other nations and colours but those with learning difficulties frighten the average person on the street, mainly because of ignorance I am not using that word in a critical way, we are all ignorant of something we know nothing about, we don’t know about or have regular contact with people with disability so we are ignorant of them and their needs/ways and this makes us frightened, being honest, even though I am the father of 2 children with disabilities (one of which has quite profound learning disabilities) I too am afraid of some of the adults I have come across, both in my role as driver for Social Services and in my day to day life, in-fact I recall a few months ago a discussion at one of the leadership meetings about the guy who had been coming to church, it was said that people feel uncomfortable around him, he is a pretty big guy, and I had to confess that I am just as nervous as everyone else BUT it is our responsibility to overcome these fears and prejudices and not allow those fears and prejudices to become barriers to them coming to know the God who loves them just as they are.
So, why say this now? well this morning we had a group from Acorn Fellowship joined us for our morning service, they are Causeway Prospects group working with adults with learning difficulties. We have had some involvement with them, at one time I used to drive one of the minibuses for Acorn and we have come across causeway at Grapevine and they ran a session on Worship Academy so we were pretty much familiar with what they do, it was good to see them here this morning and to have a number of the guys from Acorn share with us this morning, several spoke, including Ruth, who runs the Bedford Monday meeting (meets in our premises) and Julie who had the original vision to run this project, which has been running for 18 years now.
After the service myself and Joy were chatting to Julie, we were saying how it would be good to see some of these folk incorporated into local fellowships as well as being a part of the Acorn group, several already go along to one church or another, when one of the guys (Graham) approached Julie and said he would like to come along to our church every week! Well if that’s not God speaking I don’t know what is!
So, next week we are going to pick up Graham and another guy, and bring them to church with us, the idea is that they will start coming every week, they will hopefully come on the church minibus but for the first couple of weeks we will bring them in so that they get familiar with us and people they can relate to and know they can approach us if they have any problems.
It is going to be interesting to see how they get on and how well the fellowship adapts to incorporate them into the fellowship, they could well mess up our nice neat and organised services and cause a bit of disruption but this is a challenge that we will have to rise to, they are just as valuable in the eyes of God as the rest of us and they deserve the time and space to meet with him just as much as we do.
I think that there is going to be a period of adjustment on the fellowship until we get used to having Graham & Andrew around but the challenges they will bring will be exceeded by the blessings that come from following Jesus commands to minister to ‘the least of these people’ so exciting times are in store for the fellowship.
Time to crank up the profile of disability issues, I have for a while wanted to see if we could organise and run a disability awareness day for churches in the town, in-fact it was only earlier this week that David G forwarded an e-mail (sent to my work address) from Pete Windmill, asking if I had any further thoughts on the issue of having such a seminar, this is one of the things I had mentioned to Julie, apparently it is every much on her heart to have such an event so I think it is likely to be down to her to organise! I will offer our buildings to host the event, and help where and if I can but that help is likely to be limited at the moment because of my own health issues.
The title was NOT a typo! Its my attempt at humour!
This post is of a Christian theology nature those of you who are not Christians might not get your head round it so might prefer not to read.
Ok so a few weeks back I was at a conference, Church Leadership conference and to be honest I should NOT have been there, I was not really well enough to be at work never mind at the conference, but that’s in the past I went and I freaked and hit a real low as a result of going.
Anyhow, whilst there one of the speakers who I would say is a preaching Pavarotti, said some stuff that I find hard to get my head around, I actually wasn’t at the second of his session, which is just as well with how fragile I am/was, but at that session he trotted out one of the things I have heard some Christian speakers say a few times before, effectively what he was saying is that as Christians our security is in God and that our state and position is that we are, as children of the living God, Blessed and highly favoured, and yes there is truth in that, it is our position as Christ carriers but he went on to say that our response to being asked how we are should be to declare that ‘truth’ my problem with that is that although its true its not real!
If anyone asks at the moment how our car is I could say ‘it runs really well, the air-conditioning is working great, especially in this heat, it has fantastic suspension, its got fairly low mileage for the type and age of vehicle, its pretty new and it’s a great vehicle that suits our purposes well but if I wanted to be real about it I would say well there is an awful noise coming from the steering rack because one of the bearings is worn and needs replacing! Its actually not a pleasure to drive at the moment because its so noisy. All of the above are true but the answer to the question how is it is simply the last one is the. OH I could always just say, well it’s a FIAT what do you expect? J
Yes I am blessed yes I am highly favoured but the truth is that when someone asks how I am, genuinely asking rather than just as a greeting, they are not interested in my spiritual state and my eternal destination they are interested in me, in how David is doing and feeling right here right now, and the truth is that, as a guy who is suffering from severe depression, I am not feeling blessed and highly favoured I am often feeling pretty low and finding life tough!
Similarly, if all people want to hear is ‘I am wonderfully well and Blessed and Highly favoured’ then they actually don’t need to ask as they know that’s the theological state, indeed I would rather they don’t ask because they are clearly NOT interested in the real me the me that has to deal with real life and face issues and struggles in the here and now that, to be honest, sometimes bring me to breaking point.
Lets get real with each other, lets admit that actually as Christians we are not immune from the problems and difficulties the rest of the world face, we can still be made redundant, we can still have financial problems, suffer from sickness, have car accidents, get cancer, suffer bereavement, have financial problems, have marriage problems, and dare I say, yes Christians can and do suffer depression.
So if you ask me how I am don’t be surprised at getting an honest and real answer because that’s who I am! Although I have to confess that very often I will gloss over the question and not answer it too fully or honestly simply because I am not prepared to discuss it with people who are only interested in the superficial, usually for me, at the moment, the answer to that question requires more than a passing single sentence response, it requires a desire on your part to understand depression and understand me, it requires the ability on your part to empathise with where I am and want to support.
So, how am I? well actually, its been a really good week this week, I am generally feeling so much better than I have been for ages BUT I am not able to say at the moment that I am better, Depression is not one of those conditions that you can say your better or have been healed from after just a week or so of feeling good, there are ups and downs, this might just be another good period before the next down or it might be real and significant improvement in my condition, helped significantly by the medication that I am on.
Now I have lit the touch paper, ME taking anti depressants! Yes and I have been taking them for a couple of years now! yet another big taboo in the Christian world, but why? After all I also take medication for Asthma, no one ever considers that to be wrong, I have asthma I take medication to help make it better, I have depression I take medication to help make that better too.
For the past few weeks we have been having problems with the car, well I call it a car but it’s a Fiat Ducato, which is the Fiat equivalent to the Transit, it’s a wheelchair accessible adapted vehicle.
The problem is that it has been making rather strange noises when driving, I was pretty convinced it was a drive/transmission related issue rather than engine as it only happens when actually moving, it started a couple of weeks ago and has got gradually worse, yesterday I finally got round to contacting the fiat dealer to get it booked in to be looked at.
One of my BIG bugbears with the vehicle has always been that, before we signed the contract for this particular vehicle I specifically went to the local fiat dealer, in Bedford, to make sure that they were able to service commercial vehicles, they said yes! But by the time we had the vehicle delivered they had stopped doing Fiats altogether! Leaving us with the option of going to either Milton Keynes or Northampton. A minimum of 22 miles.
We tried the dealers at both locations for servicing but weren’t happy with either, for a number of reasons, but this time round when we needed to get this problem looked at I discovered that there is yet another dealer, also in Milton Keynes, who can service the vehicle now, so I have opted to take it there, I took it to them today for them to look at and they have diagnosed the problem and booked it in for 2 weeks time to be sorted, hopefully.
Anyhow, so far this new dealer seems to be much better, their whole communication and customer service skills seems streaks above the others and they have been making the right noises throughout, obviously time will tell but at last, half way through our 5 year contract, we seem to have found a dealer who we can rely on and trust to look after us.
So the biggest problem I had today was finding my way to the dealer! This should not have been a problem as I have sat nav and that is normally totally reliable, the thing is that sat nav is only as good as the idiot who programmes it and because I transposed 2 digits it took me to the wrong place, the actual postcode was MK6 4AG but I entered it as MK4 6AG leaving me at completely the wrong end of the city! Then not having a clue where to go as I hadn’t realised what the problem was! Perhaps I need to learn from this and make sure that I take a written note of addresses with me just in case there is a problem, however I wont have a problem finding the fiat dealer again as I have set it as a favourite on my sat nav, I am a fan of such technology and always feel that the problems encountered are due to human error more often than actual problems with the technology itself and this problem illustrates that clearly, it also illustrates that I am only human and fallible.
Anyhow, you are probably wondering now what the problem was, it turns out to be a bearing that’s wearing out so they have had to order the part in and, as I said, have booked it in for the problem to be rectified in a fortnight, one good thing for us is that we don’t have to pay for the problem with the vehicle as it is a motability vehicle and the costs are covered under the contract hire scheme.
Did you know that the very large type font that newspapers use for major headlines, you know the ones, they fill the front page used for the death of an important person or a major world event, well this font is referred to in the newspaper industry as ‘second coming font’
Please note:
I have moved my blog, this blog will stay live for now and for a period some posts will be double entered but to remain up to date with my writing please visit my new blog, which can be found at: www.cavanagh.me I look forward to your continued support over on my new blog.
David.
The goings on of my heart
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