I have realised that my life in this magical world is about serving not grasping , about apprenticeship not mastery, about owning my own shadow and accepting the gracious loan of my creative faculties. Anything more is inflating and removes me from the extraordinary ordinariness
I have been somewhat overwhelmed by the reaction to the post 'Now I am 54' after it was graciously featured on ‘Freshly Pressed' It seems that many of us are sufferers from anxiety and depression or stand alongside someone who is.
Yet in the circle of reflection on the morning of departure you saw all the rug pulls in another light and a voice said ‘you know there is great power in your falling’.
No, rather I, with an aching longing, want their world, almost totally uninterested in my human milieu, to become part of mine. I am after all an animal.
In honour of others, especially Matt Haig (see his book 'Reasons to Stay Alive'), who have been open and honest about their own mental health difficulties I post this blog in the hope that none of us need suffer in silence and feel as if
Last Wednesday my daughter Lara bought us all tickets to see Ken Loach's latest film 'Jimmy's Hall'. I have followed Ken's career in Film since I saw Kes as young man. I had never seen my South Yorkshire world portrayed so honestly on screen. His
I am on the way to London with my daughter. The dislocation of travelling always strikes me. Going from the quiet valley where I live to the hustling, siren wailing, constant traffic hub that is the capital. The speed that everyone walks at and the
Taking Stock There come moments in life when we are forced to take stock. A loss, a challenge a brokenness, a revelation, those frontiers that cause a disruption between life as it has been and the sudden flux we then find ourselves in. We are prone
I have been thinking about the need we all have for someone to listen to us, and enable us to make sense of our life story. In the wonderful story of the Road to Emmaus where two depressed friends of Jesus, depressed because he has
In today's Independent Ian Johnston makes a point that is becoming increasingly clear to me. 'Children are living in an “unprecedented toxic climate” in which they skip meals to stay thin, are bombarded by pornographic images and fear they will be failures amid a “continuous