the sensation of life
It all started with an email. Of course, it had been going on before that. Annette and I had been reading Gabor Maté, particularly When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. On 29th October 2021, an email dropped into my inbox: Psychedelics and Compassionate Inquiry with Dr Gabor Maté. [The original details … Continue reading Coming Out
I was given a lesson the other night. I woke up after a few hours of sleep. I went to the toilet, and then lay in bed worried that I would not be able to go back to sleep, fearful of being awake in the empty dark. I don’t usually notice this feeling. I listen … Continue reading To care and not to care
Then sigh not so, but let them go,And be you blithe and bonny,Converting all your sounds of woeInto hey nonny, nonny.Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing People will often say that they can't pray. When asked they will say that they are unable to make their minds still or empty of thoughts. Somehow they have acquired … Continue reading Sigh no more
There were stories this week in the Independent and the Guardian about 130 imams and Muslim religious leaders who have refused to perform funeral prayers for the London Bridge and Borough Market attackers – "a ritual normally performed for every Muslim regardless of their actions". I understand the impulse of this and the political expediency, … Continue reading Mercy
Here is something I wrote in my journal nearly 17 years ago. At the time I was living in a large, Victorian, short-life house (council housing, unfit for council tenants, leased to a housing co-operative) close to the Brixton Road. I don’t think I’d change a word today. What troubles me is that I’ve been … Continue reading The Discontents of Empire (II)
12 December 2015 I want to write about emptiness, loneliness, meaningless, and the apprehension of death. This is what I feel at the moment. But what to say? How to write about these feelings? I might say that there are days when I struggle with these feelings. There are days when I wonder what my … Continue reading Emptiness
Whenever I walk in a London street, I'm ever so careful to watch my feet; And I keep in the squares, And the masses of bears, Who wait at the corners all ready to eat The sillies who tread on the lines of the street, Go back to they lairs, And I say to them, … Continue reading From resentment to recollection
… when we take up occupation of the site of our bodies in stillness before God. We are granted a place to be, simply in virtue of being there as material beings made by God: the physical act of drawing breath becomes an affirmation of my receiving of the gift of my place, an acknowledgement … Continue reading Occupation