On Losing a Lodger 13 January 2012
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Tomorrow our Lodger, who moved in about 18 months ago, “just for 12 months” will be moving out.
It is going to be a pretty chaotic day, as I already have a full day’s work to do, without being acting as removals man, but that’s another story. (Just look out for odd things on the roof bars!)
It’s definitely time he went, and I hope the time has been useful for him, even if not financially rewarding for us. (The incompetence of the DSS seems to grow with every passing year…)
Nevertheless, I’m going to miss the male company (even if morose), the endless offers of cups of coffee, and even the ever-present rumble of the PC through the lounge ceiling. It also presages a round of room moves, which I’m also less than delighted about.
Still a change, as they say, is as good as a rest! Now, once again, with feeling…
Not a Gruffalo, more a Fool! 4 January 2012
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Silly old Moose, doesn’t he know?
Petrol won’t make a Diesel car go!
Anyone willing to give me a tow across town? 
A Different Sort of Waiting 3 December 2011
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I don’t really do sentimentality, but it sort of creeps up on you over the years. I hope I manage to avoid the worst of the mawkish tripe that puts my back up. (Which could explain my dislike of much of Christmas and many American films!)
But having said all that, yesterday would have been Dad’s 73rd Birthday.
So, in faith, I await a re-union. A different sort of waiting.
As It Is 20 November 2011
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(Being another of my friend David’s thought provoking poems)
This world’s a lottery well intended by God,
it doesn’t function like some invariable machine.
There are those I think who will find this odd
for a priest to say. Where’s our Father’s care?But life is, is contingent, and we believe although
the earth shake and the mountains fall
into the sea. It cannot but be so,
and God’s making me giddy with the fact of it all.On a planet shaped by star-dust, planets and tides
in the set purpose of the Creator,
we share in his plain, open, eternally wide
generosity, heads straining towards Kingdom come.
© David Grieve 2011
(Tales of Transylvanian travels is for sale at £8.50 + p&p)
Pride 13 November 2011
Posted by Dr Moose in Faith, Life, Ponderings.3 comments
It’s one of those words I really don’t know how to deal with, that and it’s close relative, proud. It could be based around my own personal interpretation, that of pride as something excessive, self-righteous and non-virtuous. Certainly I struggle when I’m asked what it is that I’m proud about. Am I proud of my own achievements? No. Pleased certainly, but proud? The word makes me want to squirm. Am I proud of my daughters? Again, the same answer and feelings apply. And when I’m introduced, with my clerical collar in, to a school assembly where the head is seeking to, well, not fight, but uphold my place before students of a different world faith, as “proud” of my faith, “proud” to be a Christian, I am really, really uncomfortable.
It could be an irregular and peculiar interpretation of the word on my part, but it doesn’t sit well, I know that. Then there are the exhortations of this time of November to wear my poppy with pride. How? I cannot be proud of the sacrifices and endeavours of others, in the sense that they are not of my doing. I can be grateful, absolutely. I can be awed. But pride is not a fitting word, as far as my vocabulary goes.
Pride, in Christian terms, is not a virtue. Far from it, it is a vice. But to equate pride with self-respect, or respect for nation, doesn’t sit too easy.
Pride is for lions. I am a Christian… and we all know what the Romans thought about that combination!
Ill 8 November 2011
Posted by Dr Moose in Life.2 comments
It takes a lot to force me to stop (too often it’s too much drink on the first night of a gaming convention) but I am forced to admit it: I’m ill. I don’t really “do” illness. I don’t believe in the bogus ailment known as “man-flu.” My usual course of action is simply to get on with life, as I usually have too much to do to be able to stop, like yesterday morning’s funeral (and let’s face it, it’s not as if I have anyone else to call in to provide cover at short notice anyway).
But to cancel a wedding visit, decide to withdraw from doing a school assembly and a Q and A with the year 2s at the other school, to stay in bed, drifting in and out of sleep to the delights of Radio 4, that’s unusual.
I do have to work this week – there are things that need to be done, both public-facing and out of general view, so hopefully by simply stopping for a couple of days I can get myself back to normality (whatever that is).
Most of the time I can look at my wonderful collection of RPG-books here in the bedroom and not even be bothered to move the five feet needed to get them.
All in all, somewhat bizarre.
Now… and then… and Facebook 3 November 2011
Posted by Dr Moose in Life, Ponderings, Time.add a comment
Funny thing, Facebook. It’s a marvellous tool for reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances, but what it cannot (and should not) do is protect us from the reality that most of us change. Change is an inevitable product of life, presuming we are not so set in our ways that we engage with nothing beyond ourselves and our comfort zones. The people I knew then are not necessarily the same people now. Opinions I might have counted as “normal” then, might seem extreme now, while those who were just “weird” then might occupy the same place as I do now… and it’s me who has changed. And that’s without the fact that nostalgia inevitably colours our memories: people I had no qualms about jettisoning in the past, simply because “life’s like that”, are people I want to catch up with now.
There are times when Facebook friends espouse positions I find offensive, or at best questionable, to the extent that I wonder whether I would like them in “real life”, even those I knew in “real life”. There are two things to be remembered when this comes along. Firstly, that there is a place for healthy disagreement, even if typed words are slow and clumsy and lacking in visual cues. For our mental health we need to encounter and wrestle with opposing views. And maybe more importantly to remember that I, and my opinions, may appear equally unpalatable, illogical, ridiculous and even offensive to the other, as theirs might to me!
So bear with me friends, through this strange journey we call life, and let God be the judge, as I pray I will let him be for you, and not my own mind.
This world of Time to consecrate… 30 October 2011
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I wasn’t intending to pick up in detail about questions of theology, although if my memory serves me aright to full line is “Forth in the name of Christ we go, this world of time to consecrate” and opens up all sorts of questions to me about the nature of consecration and holiness, who imparts it, how much of it is deliberate and so on.
I was actually thinking about how we think about time. It is has always been there, and a mark of sentience (or is it sapience) seems to be an awareness of it (possibly along with the awareness of beginnings and ends, and therefore the “death to which we move” to quote the Common Worship Funeral Service).
So this, morning as our internal clocks (like the one that woke me at 6am GMT) struggle to align with our mental constructs of time. It left me wondering whether the whole of our drive to measure and record time, to mark it out and decree that “as of now” it’s such and such a time whereas yesterday it was such and such plus one is symptomatic of our need to appear in control, even of the things we cannot.
Yes, it is beholden (old word) upon s to use our time wisely, but that’s not the same as being slaves to it, even as we try to enslave it to our own ends. I seem to remember Death in Terry Pratchett’s wonderful novel “Reaperman” having been “retired” questioning why humans thought of time and clocks as their friends when they inevitably ended up hinting at how little time they had in the light of eternity.
But enough of my half-awake wittering. I have a church service to do, and ironically, it being a 5th Sunday of the year, just as I’m trying to get across to folks that All Saints’ Tide is a time for us now as much as those paragons who have gone before, aided in my illustrations by Giles Fraser and the Occupy Movement, we are also in our own timewarp. We have put the clocks back to BCP and AV!
O well, one must needs hasten.
Of Birthdays and Reminiscence 26 October 2011
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I’m sitting in the lounge killing a few moments before I need to take POG on the longest journey he’s had since the day I collected him in May, a thousand miles ago. The weather remains delightful, classic October sun, and I’m off to be the good son, and convey birthday greetings to both Mother and Nephew. All this makes the recent appearance of that voice of breakfasts past, Terry Wogan, a very fitting guest on the radio show I’ve just switched off.
It was a long time that I was my nephews age: J was 12 yesterday, and to mark it there was a short trip to the model shop to find a present. It was a strange and bittersweet experience. Memories of happy days with Dad and his extensive model railway, wistful regret at all the locomotives that remain stashed away upstairs, out of sunlight and harms way, and gentle disquiet at find not only did I want to buy something for me, but also to be able to spend a little more on J. Whether it’s because there’s too much month left at the end of the money, or whether because I have no son, I don’t know, but I really wish I could by J something a little better, possibly along the lines that if I can’t play with it, then someone like him should. And yet, at the some time there’s that cache of nostalgia simply hiding away. It’s not right, is it? Of course, then there’s A, my other nephew of a similar age, who, I’ve been told, likes cars, trains and maps and who I haven’t seen in years. Not so sure I make a good uncle or family man, to busy with work and my own priorities.
Life somehow seems terribly short, and terribly crowded. I keep discovering writing projects I haven’t touched for a year. CDs that are 20 years old. Memories carefully polished to shine and smell fresh. I’m even driving a 25 year old car these days. Perhaps it’s the mythical mid-life crisis, although I think it’s fair to simply call it “life”.
So, I’d better go to the supermarket for the wrapping paper and a card, as well as a card and something for Mum, as it is her day today. How can I have a 12 year old nephew, a Mum past retirement age, the memories of Dad?
But, of course, I do have other things. When I was J’s age I discovered Role-Playing Games, and they are still with me. Not long after I discovered my faith, and likewise that remains. And for the moment, that will suffice: the world turns, the divine endures.
Onward into the day.
Time, October 24 October 2011
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It’s a well-known fact that time is a peculiar thing. We all know how it can seem to pass at different speeds, or that there are occasions when there simply to seems more (or less) of it. In our house there rarely seems enough time for me to have a shower, for example!
I feel I’m in a bit of a time-warp at the moment too. For the first time in quite a while (shorthand for “I don’t know when”) I have rather more space and time as usual, since the GLW. LM & LMP are “up north” for a few days over half term.
So somehow I’ve been able to work harder, play harder, go to bed later, wake up earlier today (hence having already been outside to do the bins on this mild October morning, and have the laptop on before 7am) and generally “expand.” I’m not sure whether that’s the right word, but it’ll do.
This, the October half term, is one redolent with memories. Two years ago we had a glorious holiday at Great Yarmouth in a very comfy caravan, so good that I felt that last week that I should have booked a similar break. Last year (how can it really be last year) we were desperately unhappy about the shape of things in the parish and while the family did the “grandparent thing” I was “making space” in the comfort of Ampleforth Abbey, which culminated in an interview for the post of Chaplain at York St John University. Obviously I didn’t get the job, otherwise I wouldn’t still be here.
Now, a year on, I feel pretty much in the right place for the first time in quite a while. I’m still sure that the half and half post isn’t really sustainable in the long term, but there’s good stuff happening, at home (with weekly Skype role-playing and the possibility of real, face to face, gaming), with GLW and the girls being happy and settled, with church feeling like it’s going places.
So here I am. Here I sit. I can do no other (apart from get up and have that shower!)
