there is so much today would have been
if the world had been as it should

and this is the moment
where we pretend things are
as they were always meant to be
and yet today is a result of all the things
that have fallen apart
the mistakes
the injustices and unfairness:
the meeting that never happened
the fight that never got resolved
the choice that was too hard to make
the car that swerved when it shouldn’t
[how much you are missed]

and because the pain is too great
i buy you a card
with a sweet
heart
that pretends all is
as it never was going to be.

Julie Perrin is blogging her way through a five week story telling course she’s participating in over in Cape Town. She writes so beautifully. So looking forward to hearing all she has to tell on her return.

He wants to write a love song
An anthem of forgiving
A manual for living with defeat

A cry above the suffering
A sacrifice recovering
But that isn’t what I need him to complete…

- Leonard Cohen, Going Home

I’m spending my days learning my new job at the moment. It’s bloody hard work. I liked things better when decisions I made didn’t matter, and when I was completely dispensable. I’m trying to navigate the new territory without falling into delusions of self-importance or power.

I miss the fragility of what I did before. I miss the space of being unsure; the incomplete idea and the relinquishment of knowing.

My new working world involves a lot of contracts, which are, by nature and necessity, black and white. I think it’s because they’re black and white that they leave me floundering in uncertainty. I am a shades of grey kind of person. It’s the only way I know how to function. I work well in those environments where every outcome is negotiated through its context. Contracts don’t allow that, for good reason. I am having to learn to live with certainty.

–

Leonard Cohen’s new album, Old Ideas, is quite extraordinary. My first listen was the other night, with a friend, over a drink. We heard the line ‘a manual for living with defeat’, and my friend said ‘that’s you! you have to write the manual for defeat’. Which I could – and probably have. I have spent my life practicing for when things don’t work out. The trouble is that I’m completely unprepared for when they do. I’d like the dummies guide to coping when things go to plan… how to give in gracefully to the world’s yes…

I don’t need it quite yet. I’m just willing to concede that one day I might.

‘I will find the time to keep writing in this new job’, I promised myself and everyone around who asked. ‘We’re setting it up so that I can.’

Of course, having time is only a tiny, tiny part of the writing equation. More importantly, there have to be words – and for me, as an introvert, they have to be words that aren’t already spoken; and for me in this new role, they have to be words that are mine to tell. I must have deleted twenty posts in the last few weeks, because they broke either or both of those rules. Hence the silence.

–

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

from Before you know what kindness really is by Naomi Shihab Nye

My new year’s resolution was to be kind. It’s going the way of all new year’s resolutions: I am failing, but at least now I remember I’m failing.

I chose kindness. I didn’t realise then that with it I would be choosing sorrow. Sorrow didn’t come by way of a resolution.

I didn’t connect the different meanings of resolution before I wrote that sentence: I resolve to live more kindly; I want sorrow to be resolved.

i wrap my dreams in a protective layer of cynicism
and place them in the dark to keep them safe…

I woke up this morning with this line running through my head, picturing eggs being wrapped in spider-web like threads, and hidden in a corner away from tramping feet and the harsh glare of daylight.

This was a christmas of unexpected, quite unbelievable miracles – some were big, life changing discoveries for people around me, others seem in comparison quite tiny but were nonetheless just as miraculous – a text from a someone whose silence for months had been deafening; a tiny, tiny step towards restoring friendship.

The thing that held these miracles in common is that no-one involved believed they could ever happen, but they chose to live as though they might.

i will let myself have hope, but only if i can survive without its fulfilment…

My favourite poem last year was Padraig O’Tuama’s ‘Facts of Life’, which he told at Greenbelt. It ends with these lines:

… that you must accept change
or die
but you will die any way
so you might as well live.
and you might as well love.
you might as well love.
you might as well love.

I’ve been wondering, since being in the prison and being told i had too much hope [!!], about the role of a community in hope. i have some friends holding hope for a situation i’m on the edges of – nothing big or dramatic, just some sadness that could do with some resolution. i mock them for being too idealistic, because those of us involved know full well that this situation is too complex and difficult to turn out happy ever after… but i have to admit that something has changed in me because of this community of friends who take responsibility for believing that it might one day be different. They don’t tell me that one day everything will be alright, but because they believe it might, they insistently push those of us involved to always choose the path of love. And them doing so has meant i am choosing another way of being in this situation to what i would ever have chosen before.

I think that’s what having a community of hopers around me does. It makes me live with love, even though i know that won’t make things alright. I’m not stupid; i’ll keep wrapping my dreams in cynicism and putting them in the dark for safe keeping. I’m just counting it as something of a miracle that i have the dreams to begin with. And i’m so grateful for those who hold them for me in their hope.

I hope the year is happy, wherever you are…

I have no resolutions, just lots of hopes that this year will be different to the last – and a commitment to living as though it will be.

Christmas in the prison was hard. It’s a sad place this year, sadder than normal, but the service was lovely and the men were appreciative. We needn’t have done the service really – they just loved that people were in there on christmas day, and that they could talk to someone about who they missed or the difficult phone call they’d just had with their mother or their children. Guided meditation worked best with this year’s group – i suspect because it meant there was enough silence for those who couldn’t understand what we were talking about. Every year I remember that creating silence is actually one of the hardest tasks when curating spaces – how carefully we have to shape it in order for it to be safe, and how every word that surrounds it has to be crafted to not expect too much from those we invite into it.

One of the men told me during advent that i was too hopeful, which i’m sure will amuse many of you…

On my desk when i returned this morning was this gorgeous book, that i first heard about through this website, which i think was far and away my favourite website for 2011. The book has given me a first idea for the fringe festival space we’ll do this year… and another idea for the commission for mission staff gathering, and still one more for our communication strategy this year… it’s been worth it’s price already.