With Our Great Pleasure

    Ok, it's not the first time I have posted this one on a blog but it might be new to someone out there,     Another poem I discovered in later childhood with that immediate sense of 'stickability' - something that would remain just below the surface of consciousness and memory to come back to the top with its accretions of associations and meanings throughout the rest of life. To be thought about, experienced and realized in some way.     At the centre of the poem is the all important notion and reality of psychological projection ('unless your soul sets them up in front of you') and its effect on how we see the world. Without this knowledge - and the capacity to withdraw and own one's projections - we can never grasp what autonomy or 'individuation' might mean; just who you are and what I might be.That is the work of a lifetime.        Ithaka as a worthwhile destination that demands the surrender of illusions.  ...

Another chance find from the Poetry Foundation... well worth a visit. SELF PORTRAIT I lived between my heart and my head, like a married couple who can't get along. I lived between my left arm, which is swift and sinister, and my right, which is righteous. I lived between a laugh and a scowl, and voted against myself, a two-party system. My left leg dawdled or danced along, my right cleaved to the straight and narrow. My left shoulder was like a stripper on vacation, my right stood upright as a Roman soldier. Let's just say that my left side was the organ donor and leave my private parts alone, but as for my eyes, which are two shades of brown, well, Dionysus, meet Apollo. Look at Eve raising her left eyebrow while Adam puts his right foot down. No one expected it to survive, but divorce seemed out of the question. I suppose my left hand and my right hand will be clasped over my chest in the coffin  and I'll ...

A good find on another winter Sunday - from the Poetry Foundation. Sorry I couldn't remove the highlighting. THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS Sundays too my father got up early  and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,  then with cracked hands that ached  from labor in the weekday weather made  banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.  I’d wake and hear the cold splintering,  breaking.   When  the rooms were warm, he’d call,  and slowly I would rise and dress,  fearing the chronic angers of that house,  Speaking indifferently to him,  who had  driven out the cold  and polished my good shoes as well.  What did I know, what did I know  of love’s  austere  and lonely offices? Robert Hayden

For everyone who has been out for a walk, long or short, to a peak or a pub, on this wonderful day..... CHAPLAINCY FELL WALK There is always one out in front With superior calves and experienced boots; Always a final pair to be waited for, Not saying much, pale, rather fat; And the holy ones in the middle, making it Their part to acclimatize the lonely and new, Introducing cinquefoil, heron, a view; And a stout one who giggles, uniting us In wonder at her unfaltering chokes; But alarming too. For what is she laughing at? And remote presence of hills; And the absence of you.

Another recent interesting stay in hospital for an emergency operation brings to mind this old favourite of Ms Fanthorpe's..... I know that Jill and Jo will be interested at least.... Don't we all imagine how much more of a success we could make of life if we started off with say, the best of seven decades of life experiences? That's nonsense in medicine - innocence, naive enthusiasm, a complete ignorance of the subjective suffering of patients, an astonishing capacity to dissociate from horrible circumstances, intolerable demands, pressures and expectations- all these are fundamental survival techniques for young medical and nursing professionals just to get through the working day - and the loneliest hours after visiting hour left to you and a hundred or so patients. It is very often like a war - but maybe in the right company, good colleagues, with the kindness, good will and forgiveness of one's patients (the best are those that, despite experience, keep coming b...