The Thoughtful Corner

The Christmas survivor and the long goodbye

2012-01-16T12:44:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to everyone, and I hope 2012 proves to be a positive year for us all. It's great to be here, especially as last year was so very difficult - health problems and two house moves etc etc certainly took their toll, so I'm hoping for a better time all round for the next twelve months.

Christmas was surprisingly good and, for the first time in years, we actually put some decorations up. I usually do find the season a very tricky time and get quite stressed by Christmas trees and tinsel. I think it's the feeling that everything's supposed to be perfect and it's not (what is?...), and also that everyone emphasises how much of a "family time" it is and I don't get on with mine, and only regularly see my mother and stepfather, for a variety of very good reasons. Never on Christmas Day though! That's for my husband and me ...

But this year, though I did still feel twitchy when we were putting a few things up round the house, it seemed better than usual - maybe because this is the first real house we've ever lived in as a married couple and we decorated it mainly with plants from the garden, which felt very homely. So that feels like progress, at least in my head.

Anyway, I'm sure I'm not the only one to have seasonal issues - I really do prefer Easter, all in all - but I hope Christmas was as good as it could be for you. I think also the year ahead is going to be busy with writing projects so I may not get the time to do a monthly thoughtful blog when it's due. Of course that may be no bad thing - I started this diary as an experiment to get me through a rather tense time, and perhaps it's served its purpose for now.

So happy 2012, come what may, and - who knows - I may pop back in at some point.

Anne Brooke
The Gathandrian Trilogy
Biblical Fiction UK
Gay Reads UK

Way to think about Rev.

2011-12-09T08:21:00.001-08:00

A bit of a wildcard thoughtful blog this month, but it connects with the season (kind of) so I thought what the heck, eh. I just wanted to draw to your attention the charming qualities of the sitcom Rev. - just coming towards the end of its second series on BBC TV.

I totally love it. It's probably the best sitcom about the church by many a long mile. Yes, of course Father Ted and The Vicar of Dibley were lovely in their way, and very funny (though Father Ted is rather dated now), but they didn't have that strong core of reality that Rev. has in abundance. There are moments when I cringe as it's just soooo true. Yes, church and the people in it really are that weird. There are moments when I chuckle - such as the many times when the Rev. Adam is walking along praying in his head and something distracts him and his mind goes off at another tangent altogether, eg from interfaith issues straight to how his teeth don't feel right - and moments when I laugh out loud, such as when he and the lay reader are getting dressed for the service, checking their robes and adjusting their stoles and making sure they both look okay whilst at the same time complaining about the feminisation of the church and the need to "man up" a little. Bliss.

Beyond all that, there are the utterly glorious moments when the real kick-ass realities of life and faith both come together and it takes on a wonderful new life of its own. The episode I watched on iPlayer yesterday took us all the way from the jealousies, hatreds and envy in the church to a glorious moment at the end when Adam needs to think about heaven and what it means when someone dies unexpectedly. I found it very moving and very true and the episode is well worth catching if you're able to. It's still on iPlayer. In any case, I do love a vicar, however fictional, or indeed any Christian who freely admits to not knowing what heaven is like and not being afraid of saying it. Doubt is indeed all.

Plus, on top of all this top-notch quality, we have the wonderful darkness of the evil yet strangely alluring Archdeacon. How I love him. He just gets better and bitchier every episode. And, yes, I do know that Archdeacons (probably) don't actually travel round London in black cabs whilst wearing white gloves and creating havoc and fear in their priests' lives, but - as some real-life vicar has already commented - really, they simply should.

Happy Christmas to you all!

Anne Brooke
The Origami Nun

People and their Communities

2011-11-05T12:23:00.000-07:00

I don't like to think I judge people by the communities they come from and I certainly don't want people to judge who I am by the same measure - but lately I've been thinking how much that kind of judgement is a part of our culture and wondering if we can ever be free of it.

Not that it's a recent thing. I can remember my mother telling me about how, many years ago when I was no more than six or seven years old, we were playing as a family on the beach when the flag I was playing with suddenly broke when the top came off. Being a sensitive child, I burst into tears and apparently couldn't be consoled. Mother tells me that, at that moment, two very bulky blokes covered in tattoos walked up to us and the whole family were worried as to what they might do. Instead of making fun of the situation or worse, they simply hunkered down, mended the flag and handed it back to me. Problem solved! And a lesson learnt for everyone, I think. I've tried to remember that particular family story every time I come across anyone who doesn't have the same background or experiences as me. After all, we're all human under the skin.

At other times, certainly later in life and when "community" also takes on a cultural significance, I think we become more aware of what society counts as "normal". Take the traveller community for instance, about whom so much has been said in the UK media recently. When I was at primary school, there were several semi-traveller families who attended school, and I was friendly with one of the girls from that community. She regularly came round for tea at ours and I went round for tea at theirs, and I don't think either of us thought any more about it really. We were probably too young to take on adult views concerning our different backgrounds.

Much later on when I first moved to Surrey, I was part of a church near a traveller community and some of them came fairly regularly to church and to church meetings, which was nice. In adulthood I'd never had the chance to have a decent conversation or two with our local travellers, and seeing things from their viewpoint was a real eye-opener. There are indeed prejudices on both sides which run deep, and pros and cons to both lifestyles. But people are people and always worth talking to.

Since then, I think, to my shame, I've probably become more aware of the differences between these two cultures, partly due to the year of house-hunting we've just been through, in which everyone seemed to consider it an issue as to where the traveller communities were. I then started to worry about it myself, perhaps because that was what people apparently thought I should be doing and also, I admit, due to the amount of negative publicity in the media.

It was then I brought myself up short and told myself in no uncertain terms that whilst other communities might be scary because they seem different and we all love what's familiar, people need to be seen as individuals and responded to as such. So the next time I'm about to make a snap judgement about somebody because of where they live or where they come from, I'm going to think again. And I hope I can be open to finding out something new and even making a friend of someone new. After all, I hope they'll do the same with me too.

Anne Brooke
Anne's Blog

Garden delights

2011-10-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

Having moved into a house with a garden, which is the first time we've actually had a garden in 18 years of marriage, K and I are getting to grips with the Gardening World with enthusiasm.

There's a lot to be said for it. I've found myself falling into the habit of getting back from work and immediately taking a tour of the garden to see how things are doing and what's changed. A couple of times, when it's been warm enough, I've even sat down on our lovely two-seater bench near the shrubbery and enjoyed a glass of wine. This never used to be the case. In our life BG (Before Garden ...), I used to come back home, sort the post out and turn the computer on, which meant I'd at once be drawn into dealing with emails and catching up with my writing/publishing world.

Now I find the garden gives me time to draw breath before my "evening work" kicks in. Even when it's too cold to venture into as autumn really begins, I still take some time to look out at it and see how things are.

This sense of a necessary pause in my action-packed day has begun to be included in my morning routine too. Not to such an extent as in the evening, but when I'm having breakfast in the dining room, I pull the curtains right back and admire the garden as I eat. We look out, beyond the garden, onto fields of horses so nobody is there to look back at me. I realise how lucky we are to have that. It's very soothing indeed, and gives me a sense of perspective before the busyness of the day.

There are things I notice more as well. Some of our roses are still producing buds and blooms even so late in the year and that's been a delight. They pop up in the most unusual places: at the bottom of the trellis near the vegetable patch, and in the display of grasses (sadly now dying ...) outside the dining room. It's very satisfying to discover these hidden jewels and watch them as they grow.

Working in the garden, as well as watching it, is proving satisfying too. K is enjoying clearing the far right hand corner of the overgrown bushes and weeds in order to prepare for new planting. And tonight I've settled down to prune the lavender bush back, take the dead patches of the lemon balm away and cut down the out-of-control spirea bush so later K can take that out too. I'm aching in places I probably didn't know I had, but I've enjoyed working with what nature has provided in order to create something fresh.

So, this weekend, whether you're working in your piece of land or simply sitting back to enjoy it, I hope you can take a few moments to appreciate the sheer fun and - dare I say it - blessing of what you're doing. Happy Saturday to you!

Anne Brooke
Anne's Writing Blog

Fresh starts

2011-09-10T07:27:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot recently about fresh starts and how they fit into our lives. It's been quite a hectic year for us, what with moving once into rented accommodation and then a second time only a week ago into a house in the rural Surrey village where we're now living. Perhaps there have been just too many fresh starts all in one go and it's certainly been rather more unsettling than I was anticipating!

As a result it feels very nice indeed to finally be somewhere where we can begin to put down roots and where we don't have to think of moving - at least not in the foreseeable future. It's actually rather satisfying to think that our "old life" is now all folded up and put away, and we've got an opportunity to redefine ourselves within our new environment and home. Though, of course, the old life never really goes away - it's what makes us who we are and perhaps also what makes any fresh start possible. After all, to have a fresh start, you need to understand how to move away from the old one - what to leave behind and what to take. Always an interesting exercise.

Anyway, now we've been here a week and are definitely feeling we're starting to settle in. We've met some of the neighbours who have been very kind indeed, and I've got my bearings a little more by walking to the pub and the shop. Ten minutes each way, so I never need be short of a beer or the Saturday Telegraph. Lovely.

It's also nice to have more rooms than we used to - so I've nabbed the "box room" as a prayer room, of sorts, and put in it some of our theological books, my Christian books, the larger of our two crosses and the two icons. Strangely it feels very natural, though with the amount of busyness we've been experiencing lately, I've not had much chance to pray or be quiet in there. But the two or three times I've managed it, it's been very relaxing indeed. The room has that kind of stillness about it. In a way, that's a fresh start of a spiritual kind, as well as a more practical one. So I hope I can begin to put down roots there, as well as in the home.

Or maybe the two aspects are really more connected than I would have imagined. Now, there's a thought ...

Anne Brooke
Anne's Writing Journal

Demands and delays

2011-08-05T03:02:00.000-07:00

Reasons behind this blog:

I've been thinking lately about how fast everything goes these days. The demands of work, family and the 101 things we all set ourselves to do, sometimes just by the end of the day, seem to be stripping all of us of the deep factors that make up who we are. Or at least that's how it feels to me, sometimes.

Of course at other times all this haste makes me - as a rather desperate goal-driven gal - feel I'm achieving and that makes me feel good. But am I really achieving? Are you? The answer is I just don't know. But there is something in me that says I used to be so much better at ignoring the demands in life and setting aside time simply to delay and be quiet for a while. I gained a lot from that - I think I felt more whole and more confident as a person. Mind you, that said, those times were nearly twenty years ago now, so I might well be seeing it through rose-tinted glasses.

Someone once said to me - I can't quite remember who but I'm grateful they said it - that if we set aside our goals and aspirations for one day in the week simply to enjoy the gift of being still and the deep pleasure that comes from embracing delay then we become more truly ourselves. I'm not really sure I can do that, or even consider doing it - though in my teenage and early twenties I used to. But I'd like to commit to put more time aside to ponder more regularly, if you like.

In the old days, I used to meditate - an experience that was for me inextricably linked with prayer - for about an hour a day. Time used to be something to treasure whereas over the years it's become something to grab as it flies past and beat into a kind of submission for what I think I want it to do. I'm not sure what changed but I'm wondering if next time I see time and its demands flying past, I might try to find the courage to let it go, embrace the delay, and wait and see what happens. It might even do me some good.

I should, when I come to think of it, take a lesson from the race of people in my most recent novel, The Gifting. The Gathandrians are fully committed to the practice of meditation and, as far as they can, make it a key part of their days. More so when trouble comes upon them as they understand that it's better to take time to think about the situation and how they can respond to it fully rather than - as I do - leap in with all guns blazing and take the first action which comes to mind. Even if it's the wrong one. At the very least, they're a people far more energised and centred than I am, so it's a gift I envy - and one I envied even whilst writing about it.

Something, then, for me to ponder on once more. I intend to post monthly in this blog on a subject or subjects that have made me think. But in the meantime I'd love to know what your own experiences are of the demands and delays in your life, and how you balance those (or even if you do). I hope we can help each other.

Thank you for reading.

Anne Brooke
Anne's Other Blog