Lots of bits & pieces: Life's purpose and other wonderings

Various things happened today.

• I got the chance to read a fair bit: Pages 72-78 of JW's Lapsed Agnostic worth re-reading - finally he is getting to the nub of the issue and not discussing The Peter Pan Factor.
  I visited the Quaker musem in Kilkenny/Kildare county and became curious about the nature of that religion and the necessity of a simple life or even the possibilty of going without [certain things].
  
• Also in the library attached to the museum i picked up a copy of the kildare county sustainable magazine. I had hoped the magazine might contain some info about alternatively-living sustainable communities (ie those not relying on salaries and jobs involving long commutes to cities and cheap rents in suburbs of rural towns); I read something about this in a sourcebook I bought in the amnesty international bookshop a few years ago and have found no information about since - communities in ireland that barter etc... but this mag was a waste of time.
• On the way home, I stopped by a friend's house (it's soooo important to meet people you get on with and understand you and you understand them. meet them regularly. v important.)
• Heath Ledger died last night. I've never been a one for idols or people I admire yet for some reason I respected him. A good actor and oh so good-looking. And now he has died, cause unknown. Owen Wilson's apparent break-down was confusing as well. The idea of celebrity is confusing.
• My uncle, with whom I was travelling through the country, blessed himself as he passed by a church (it happens less now with the bypasses) - that too was a notion to get my head around.
• Also had coffee in a coffee-shop in Kilkenny. Was very much looking forward to it. Coffee at 11 o'clock on a weekday is something I rarely do since I got a full-time job. But the coffee shop was crowded. Who are these people who can sit around and engage with each other, who don't need to be in an office earning shekels to pay for things? And outside sat a fully-robed monk, with sandals and a pocket containing the wallet he would use to pay for his scone and coffee - I mock unfairly - he was conversing with a friend and was joined by another female friend and greeted warmly by a female passerby, they were discussing a great poet when I eavesdropped. These, I feel, are the important things in life: having time for coffee breaks and conversing with friends about ideas that matter to you at the time.
  The least we can do as humans with our time on earth is try to gain an understanding of ourselves and to take responsiblity for ourselves within our picture of humanity.
• I listened to an interview with Marian Finucane a saturday or two ago (she was speaking to a psychotherapist, can't remember his name); the interviewee claimed it's important to read books, I suppose to keep the intellect alive and keep excited by the thoughts and ideas of others in the human race.
• We visited a CoI cathedral in Leighlinstown called St. Lazarian's, the name fascinated me, unfortunately we couldn't enter the church but we wandered around the graveyard.

[couldn't find pic for this post!]

Still reading "Lapsed Agnostic"...slowly

Still reading "Lapsed Agnostic"; have to get through a lot of John Water's writings and ponderings about Ireland in the times of various generations. Which is interesting, but not yet giving me great insight into what kind of God he now has in his life or how he "uses" him etc. Though I suppose all this is necessary background. So I'm trudging through it. It's heavy stuff and I don't have lots of time so I'm only reading a few pages at a time.
Was too warm and cosy in bed last night to kneel and give thanks and was too warm and cosy in bed this morning to get up on time to do a yoga posture to start the day. Oh dear, what'll I do with me? I did notice, however, last night, that it's quite difficult to bring to mind the good things from the day while in a sleeping position!
But at least little ol' lazy me has found time for this update.

Choir Rehearsal

I sing with a choir. There was rehearsal tonight. We're called Our Lady's Choral Society. So we have a pretty holy name to start with! (Though they tend to use OLCS of late). And the archbishop is our patron or some such so we're a Catholic choir. Though one of my best friends in the choir ain't a Catholic and they let her in and she enjoys it.
I find choir is my mass. I don't attend mass any more, not even at Christmas so choir is my weekly ritual, my time for concentrating on just the one task for almost two hours and it happens to be Christian. We sing Requiems and Stabat Maters and such from the big composers - Mozart, Dvorak etc. Religious-themed stuff. We often have a Thought for The Day at the end, though it can be a bit cheesy or the reader tries to be funny so it doesn't always work. I feel humbled by the other people there, many are so lovely and kind and open and honest and all manner of good things. And the marvellous thing that everyone else is as or more serious about it than I am.
So, to summarise the elements of choir which are mass-like for me, in the best sense:

• the routine of going
• the ritual of what happens
• the theme or the content
• the other people there
• the conductor - who guides the ceremony! (I'm sure PO'D would love to be aligned with the role of a priest...)
• audience participation
• paying attention / not falling asleep during the boring bits

"Lapsed Agnostic"

Started reading "Lapsed Agnostic". Read up to the end of the paragraph at the top of page 8. It was enough. It is so well written. I think the spacing of the type is tight, maybe single and so there is a lot of text on the page. [My writing about what is in the book is very much my own interpretation or how I understood the ideas as I was reading them, perhaps if I were to read them again or in a different mood I would see them differently.]
He talks about a Catholic upbringing. Discusses the idea of being inactive = being a less Good Man.
God being all-seeing and playing with us, rewarding us or punishing us more or less as he saw fit but under the pretence of us being good or not. And more, but I think I've done well for day one. I'm tired now and must make time to give thanks between switching off the computer and falling into bed.

Day One

I begin this blog without knowing where, if anywhere, it - and I - will end up. Blogging has worked for me with another subject as a focuspoint and a channel for my thoughts. It involves the discipline of being at a computer and logging onto a particular page. I'm trying to understand the difference between that and the discipline of keeping a hand-written diary. Maybe it's simply that I've grown more accustomed to typing than handwriting and I like to be able to copy, paste, move thoughts and add images etc. That having been said, most of this post was written in a notebook on a train platform this morning as I gathered my thoughts while waiting 12 mins for the next train.
I wasn't looking forward to reading Róisín Ingle's column in this weekend's Irish Times mag. I was afraid she might be going on about New Year's resolutions. She wrote about epiphanies and her friend who was hosting an Epiphany Party. And that brings me on to what may have been an epiphany for me (I think we can only be sure of these things with hindsight!) - I was listening to an interview with John Waters on, as it happens, the repeat of Róisín Ingle's saturday morning show on Newstalk. They were discussing his new book "A Lapsed Agnostic" and that's #1 on my to-do list this morning, to ring the bookshop near work and hopefully ask them to reserve a copy for me til I can go to collect it.
After John's chat about the role of praying or giving thanks and the importance of going down on your knees (if you find this difficult to do, the AA say, throw a shoe under the bed and by retrieving it, you will find yourself on your knees). I got up out of my warm bed and it was after midnight and I'm exhausted these days and I got down on my knees, I did a sign of the cross and scanned through the day, a practice I am used to from listening to Yoga meditation CD's before falling off to sleep - but instead of "integrating" the day and "finding moments of happiness", I simply gave thanks. And found I had much to be thankful for, as it happened.

And this morning when I woke, I formed the "child pose" in yoga. I find this position very uncomfortable. I'm not used to it. I breathed and tried to focus on something other than the discomfort. Felt nicely stretched after it. Thought it would be nice to have a special rug or something on the ground to do this on, like the Muslims I suppose. I think the physical position is important to align your mind to a specific task, like preparing for the day or preparing for day's end.
John Waters spoke of the importance of having a God in your life, to take the blame; it's not your doing. He told a story of watching over his baby daughter (another Róisín!) and feeling he had to keep her alive til morning, followed by the realisation that hey, he didn't even keep himself alive til morning. This idea - that it is not just down to us/ to the individual - is a weight off my shoulders! God isn't punishing or rewarding us (as I think I was taught in school as a Catholic) rather he is there. Something happened to me almost four years ago and I've been told it wasn't my fault, I wasn't responsible. I find it hard to believe that if we can control our lives, make decisions etc then how come I wasn't in charge of what happened me, I could have done things differently and had a different outcome. Which is rough! And so, the notion that there is another presence with me or choosing a way for me, is comforting. Watch this space. We'll see if last night turns out to be epiphanic. If that is a word.