Preparation

 If you looked at my previous post (or scroll down to check it out) you'll see that it was about preparedness for adverse circumstances.

Several spiritual leaders and teachers have advised us that we would do well to prepare for times of challenge shortly coming our way. My previous post looked especially at the YouTube videos of Steve and Esther Uppal on this topic. 

I concur. My senses have been on red alert for some while now, and making ready for incoming choppiness has been high on my agenda.

Today I want to add some further thoughts and pointers about the same area of consideration.

Preparing cannot occur in a vacuum. You can't possibly get ready for anything and everything. If you are getting ready for a holiday, you might be sure to pack your bikini and beach sarong, be sure you have some appropriate currency for Spain or the South of France, purchase a dress and high heels suitable for dining out in the evening, and a big shady sunhat. But if you then discover that you're being treated to a hike across Alaska with Bear Grylls, your preparations will have wasted a lot of time and money and be utterly useless.

The spiritual leaders I have seen exhorting us to prepare, typically tell us to "Wake up!" and "Get ready!" We are warned that Something Awful is coming — the problem is that they don't say what; probably because they don't know. Their antennae have correctly detected disruption and radical change, but they don't quite know what it will look like.

Here's a list of what they might be sensing:

• Invasion by foreign nationals
• War overseas resulting in different priorities for our own national budget and recruitment of our resources and personnel
• Economic collapse — banks abruptly shutting, work redundancies, extreme inflation, and that sort of thing
• Particular priorities of government spending that throw the public and private sectors out of balance
• Extreme weather and other influences on nature and agriculture, leading to food shortages
• Power outages for any of a variety of reasons
• Fuel scarcity, leading to rising prices, supply disruptions, loss of agricultural fertiliser and disruption to harvesting machinery etc
• Water scarcity because of extreme weather or pollution or water-hungry industrial plants (eg AI data centres)
• Significant widespread illness
• A chaotic political environment (eg protests and riots) leading to emergency measures disrupting national life
• Changing ideology in our political leadership resulting in unexpected detriment to our existing plans and provisions, or to our habitual patterns of life
• Reduced or interrupted access to services we normally rely on
• Religious or political persecution — this can take a variety of forms, and is sadly prevalent globally, in modern life

That sort of thing. Please feel free to add ideas of your own!!

At the turn of the century, our family had a massive life crash. It was not of my doing, but I needed to take responsibility for the fallout: we lost our family home, all our sources of income, and my marriage abruptly left me. It was tricky. The consequent problems lasted many years, and had a significant impact on my mental health. Fortunately, with a lot of help from my mother and from my ex-father-in-law, we got through. 

Until that point, having grown up in a family with slender means and ambition aspirations, I knew quite a lot about how to make the money stretch and somehow make things work. From monastic friends and thinking a lot about St Francis, I'd learned how to live simply and frugally, without sacrificing joy and playfulness. 

So I had a good head start; the main thing I needed to do was apply what I'd already learned. What I took away from it all is that there is never any point in worrying: what you thought you had firmly in place can be lost or let you down, but help and hope come from unforeseen avenues.

A man in hard times once expressed to the spiritual teacher Wayne Dyer that he was very anxious about being able to fulfil his obligations and pay his bills. Wayne Dyer asked him if he had always done so until now — he replied that yes, he certainly had. Wayne Dyer said, "Then you always will." I can think of possible circumstances where that might not work out, but I think in general he was right. So the first aspect of preparedness is character. 

Seeing storm clouds gathering on the horizon, over the last few years I have been working on being ready for adversity. Since I don't know quite how it will manifest, I have prepared generally rather than with sharp focus. For instance, if we could be sure that whatever comes means there will be massive food shortages, we might choose to blow our budget on supplies. But what if the challenges mean we have to move to a rented room in another location? If that happens, we'll wish we still had the money and not box upon heavy box of tinned food to transport and store. So rather than prepare a lot for a few challenges, I've prepared a bit for a spread of possibilities. In case it helps focus your own thinking, here is what I've done:

• Where hitherto Tony and I shared accommodation with other family members, we moved to live separately. Each house could take all of us, if that became necessary. In tough times, governments may seize your assets, but generally let you keep your family home — especially if it's unassuming and in a not very special neighbourhood. So we have added to our options for offering sanctuary for other family members, without adding the appearance (or reality) of affluence. Each house has a good-sized garden where we can grow food, and have sunshine and fresh air (this was massively important in 2020). Each house has solar panels and water butts, and one has a wood stove and an open fire and is near places where one can forage for firewood.
• In times of serious disruption, money in the bank often evaporates. Tony and I are growing old. If we had a lot of money to leave behind, it would mostly go in taxes. So we have spent it on making sure our home is in good repair (as prices rise we may not be able to afford to do this later) and cheap to maintain, we have planted our garden with things we can eat, and added the solar panels to our roof and a line of water butts to conserve rainwater. Though we personally don't currently have an electric car, we have added an EV charger to our house, as it extends possibilities for the future, for someone even if not for us.
• We have two portable power banks (these, as it happens) to protect against the impact of power outages.
• We have set aside some modest reserves of food: just very simple things — tinned and potted meat and fish, salt, a few pounds of rice, long life milk and coconut milk and a tub of dried milk, some boxes of dried bone broth sachets, and a big box of oats. With the addition of the herbs growing in the garden and wild edible plants, we'd be OK for about a month. We always have on hand a couple of 10-litre bottles of mineral water, which we collect from a local spring and (for extra health precaution) filter before use. 
• Each day we include a long fasting window (works out at about 9/15 or 8/16 eating/fasting).
• We are careful with grocery shopping, looking for bargains and keeping to a budget — but prioritising food that offers high quality nutrition suitable for our age group; and we have researched this in some depth.
• We have adjusted our stash of clothing to give us a modest and simple wardrobe that is easy to wash, quick to dry, doesn't need ironing, and that layers up or down to keep us warm in winter and cool in summer. We have a laundry line in the garden so we don't have to rely on a tumble dryer.
• We cook using only an air fryer and a hob. We have a spare camping gas hob in case of power outages.
• After much searching we have found a church where the people are friendly and kind and care about us, prioritise prayer and bible study, and know how to build community. They are about to embark on creating a community garden. This church is within walking distance, which motivates us to take extra exercise without the need for equipment or gym membership.
• The last few years we have studied and experimented to improve our health, which was badly dented in 2021 as was the health of so many other people at that time. We have developed strategies to optimise our health without needing to be rich or to rely heavily on support from our compromised and struggling national health service. We do rely on particular inexpensive supplements, without which we struggle, and we make sure to always have in good supplies of these in case there are shortages.
• We have divested ourselves of all the possessions we considered to be surplus to basic everyday needs and likely requirements for hospitality. We now have very little stuff and very few treasures. We could easily relocate or downsize, and our house is very easy to keep clean and tidy.
• Both our requirements and commitments are few, and our life is as frugal as we can manage. We do run a car, but are careful about how much we use it, and it is the only vehicle for 3 of our 4 family households in this town.
• We keep a small amount of ready cash on hand, just in case electronic methods of payment unexpectedly fail us.
• We aim to be as inconspicuous, insignificant and unimportant as it is possible to be. The politics of envy would find no foothold in our life. We have no financial debts.
• Every morning we pray together, and we orientate our lives around the presence and power and peace of God as we know him in Jesus.
• We value — and do our best to prioritise, consolidate and increase — a robust network of family, neighbourly and church community relationships. Several years of illness bringing isolation, the times we're in, and difficult fluke experiences with church have set us back, but we have kept at it, repeatedly rebuilding.

Those are the ways we — who are elderly, have impaired health, and have small financial resources and almost no influence or power or connections — have done our best to create a stable and resilient life.

I'm not quite sure what preparedness would look like, in the minds of spiritual leaders who urge us to wake up and to prepare. I expect there may be gaps in our own preparation, but at the same time I think it is as unwise to obsess anxiously about being prepared as it is to neglect the issue — because optimism, a relaxed body, a calm routine, a peaceful mind and a habit of joy, taking delight in loveliness found with life's ordinary circumstances, are integral to facing adversity without falling apart. 

So I hope we have done enough to get ready for whatever the future may bring, and I'd be very interested to read your own thoughts on this topic.

"The Lord is looking for somewhere where his glory can dwell."

 "The Lord is looking for somewhere where his glory can dwell."

Those words arrested my attention in a video put out by Steve Uppal in recent days. He's referring to the 8th verse in Psalm 26 that describes the holy Temple as the place where God's glory dwells — and of course we, you and I, are the Temple of the Lord, dedicated and set apart for Him, the place where His glory dwells.

So Steve is saying that in these times the Lord is looking for those who will make themselves available to hold God's light steady, to be as were the anchorites of hold whose vocation was to anchor the Light for their particular spot of earth.

He (Steve Uppal, not God) has put out a three-part video series on the topic of disruption, that I recommend to you. I'll give you some links below.

In the last few years I've had an increasing sense of urgency about the need to get ready and hold steady. I've felt the need to communicate the importance of making ourselves available as pure vessels for the Light in the times we're passing through and get ready for the times we're about to pass through.

The last two books I wrote — St Luke's Little Summer and The Light of One Lamp (you can find them on Amazon) — are for teaching how to each create our own world (our own New Earth) and how to hold the line under temptation to antagonism and division. I also wrote a book some years ago called The Road of Blessing, which should also be helpful in this context. It's out of print now, but I have some spare copies for anyone local to me (I'm sorry, at present I don't have a budget for shipping) and I see there are some secondhand copies online, via Amazon here. Those are a lot of money. I see SPCK still say you can buy an e-book of it here. They should not be selling it because they no longer hold the rights to it, but it may be possible to snag a copy at that much more affordable price. Eden likewise has the e-book here; same applies, they shouldn't have — but hey, they do. US friends, Abe Books also has affordable copies here. 

So that book might be helpful at the moment, and as I say, I do still have a few copies if you can't get one more easily elsewhere.

But this post is mainly to draw your attention to the teaching Steve and Esther Uppal are putting out on YouTube, the first I have seen from the church giving clear and Spirit-led direction about the path we're walking now.

They have a 3-part series on disruption — Part 1, then Part 2, then Part 3 — and a longer sermon here (40 mins, some sermon!!) giving a helpful overview. There's also this that they did almost a year ago, that I haven't yet watched, which I'm guessing is where they started to focus in on all this.

I have a feeling what they are teaching could be important, and as the time-frame is somewhat short, I recommend these videos to you. What they are saying concurs exactly with my own inner sense, and with what the seers and watchers from outside the church are also saying.

This seems very apposite — at the present time we are in St Luke's Little Summer, the brief window of mild and calm weather that comes at St Luke's tide every year (the feast of St Luke is October 18th), before the St Jude's storms set in (the feast of St Jude is October 28th). This is all preceded by the feast of St Michael and All Angels on September 29th; St Michael stands at the Equinox (the feast is set alongside it) pointing down the year and warning us to get ready because the dark days are coming. St Michael and All Angels are also the Lord's reapers, bringing in the harvest of souls. 

Meanwhile, after the feast of All Saints at the end of this month, and St Martins feast on November 10th, traditionally a time of sharing and community, again in readiness for the oncoming winter, we then come into the second great fast of the year (the other is Lent), Advent, during which we prepare for the coming of Christ as Lord and Judge, and to welcome him as the Light who comes to find us in darkness, the Word of Life, the Light of the World.

Both the Now Moment in which we find ourselves, and the traditional cycle of nature and the church, are saying the same thing to us as the prophetic word now (at last) beginning to stir in the church: it is time to get ready; it is time to prepare; the time to get ready is now.

As always, your own thoughts on this are welcome. My fervent prayer is for watchers and seers local to me, with whom to gather and pray and listen and talk through what we're seeing unfold. A bumpy ride ahead, I think, but most insistently this song keeps coming to my mind.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

[Psalm 23. KJV]

Soul Tribes

This morning as we prepared for our daily prayer, talking about the previous evening and the day ahead, my husband mentioned that yesterday he had seen a political programme that he knows I don't rate highly. A guest on it had been a politician I neither trust nor like, but whom he respects and esteems.

This makes me happy.

If he and I espoused identical political views and listened only to the same people, I think we would be at risk of consolidating an ever narrower outlook. Our understanding would be coloured by a shared bias, and we would lurch further and further away from reality.

While he was watching his political programme, I was considering listening to a podcast from a YouTuber I like very much, that he does not follow. In the end I didn't because I saw that in this particular podcast she was urging us to find our soul tribe. That's not what I want to do.

I have begun to think that soul tribes — ideological clans — are something of a problem in the modern world. The whole phraseology around "identifying as" is indicative of separation.

In recent days there's been a tremendous to-do about the Green Party's ill-advised vote to dub Zionism as a form of racism. Do we need this to add to the suspicions and separations and antagonisms we already have? Absolutely not.

Humanity faces the steep challenges of climate change. I do not share the perspective that it is greatly affected by human activity; the planet's climate has always changed, and will continue to do so regardless. At present it's heating up, and I doubt there's anything we can do about that. But — if we work together — there are many simple measures to help us adapt to the changes. There is wonderful knowledge and practice about permaculture and mob-grazing, water capture and re-wilding, that can protect us against desertification and extend our possibilities for feeding ourselves and protecting our fragile and vulnerable physical bodies against heat. What won't help us is fighting for control over resources, threatening one another, and dropping bombs on what isn't already polluted and ruined. If we really had the intelligence of which we so proudly boast, we'd co-operate, we'd treat one another with respect, we'd take responsibility, we'd accept and learn from one another.

It must break the heart of God that religious factions are among the worst soul tribes for cruelty and violence. 

I know of nowhere but my own life, my own heart, to make a beginning with this. The two books I wrote this last year (St Luke's Little Summer and The Light of One Lamp) were to address our responsibilities in these matters. There is a sense in which we all share the same world, but at the same time we can each be said to create our own individual world. St Luke's Little Summer is about taking responsibility to create and establish and heal one's own world. As it has been said: "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me".

The Light of One Lamp is about constructive ways forward when cohesion breaks down, when people who once saw eye to eye find themselves in dissension. How to stop this hardening into separation and dislike, how to stop it spreading into factions and division? 

There is one world which is our home, and one creation which is our soul tribe — wider than humanity; the trees and plants and water and animals are also on our side. And there is no power but that of God.

Our task is to use our minds constructively to figure out pathways of healing and peace. Our days are for wonder and service of the living God. We are here for friendship, and creativity and joy. We are here to be kind to one another. Possibly also for the opportunity to have tried cake.

Not my duck, not my bottle

There's something I'm quite sure I must have written about here before, but I can't find it so I apologise if I'm repeating myself tediously. It's just that this evening I saw a bit deeper into it.

We went for a walk, Tony and me, after supper. We only go round the block, and it takes about fifteen or twenty minutes, but that's far enough for us these days. Some of the houses we pass have a habit of putting out, "Free to take", any toys or items of furniture they no longer want. That's all well and good, but I get stressed about it when they put out a really good piece of furniture, nicely made, and I know there'll be a dewfall during the night, or it might come on to rain later, and then the finish on the wood will be spoiled. Why don't they move it on with more care? They could put it on Freegle or the Hastings Give-and-Takery on Facebook. 

This was how, back in the summer, Tony and I temporarily came to have the old coffee table that looked Chinese. Some people in that very same place just put it out "Free to take", so Tony (yes, with his bad back and his foot drop) took the car along the road so he could lug the table up the grassy bank, load it into the car and bring it home; and I polished it up and we put it on the Hastings Give-and-Takery and found it a new home.

Well, this evening they'd put out a chest of drawers. Beautiful, good quality, a lovely piece of furniture. It bothered me (and Tony) to think of it left out all night, now we have the heavy dews of autumn. We talked at some length about going back to collect it, but it was quite large and looked heavy, and our car is very small, and the place is down in a dip with a steep grassy verge to drag it up to the roadside.

Plus we've just gone through all our belongings to eliminate any surplus possessions and been really happy with how calm the house looks now it has just enough and not too much of everything. We have nowhere to put an unwanted chest of drawers, we'd only have to move it on, and our house entrance is up a flight of steps — long story short, we gave up on the idea and left it where it is.

But it made me think again of two stories that always come back to me forcefully when I think about taking responsibility (in this case, for disposal of a chest of drawers). These two stories belong together.

The first is a Zen type of story about a disciple coming for an audience with his Master. The master gives the disciple a bottle with a duck in it, and sends him away with it, instructing him to get the duck out. The young man tries every which way, and just can't do it. So he goes back to the master and confesses his failure and asks him what to do. The master just shrugs and says, "Not my duck, not my bottle."

I loved this story from first hearing it — I received it as being akin to the expression "Not my circus, not my monkeys", about knowing the boundaries of one's responsibility.

But this evening, thinking about the chest of drawers, it dawned on me that (unlike the circus/monkeys saying), the duck/bottle story is about restraint in accepting responsibility. This is important. The lesson for the disciple is about not taking on something unrealistic, too much for you, beyond your remit. 

That chest of drawers was not our duck and not our bottle. It was a pity, but it had to stay where it was. Our neighbours are forever fly-tipping their old junk. If we bring it all home it'll become a second career, and only encourage the practice.

But I said there was a second story that goes with the one about the disciple with his duck in the bottle. 

Again, it's about responsibility, and recognising what is yours to do and where that ends.

A friend recounted it to me.

They worked at a place staffed by volunteers, a sort of spiritual centre. On one occasion, they were walking along the main driveway to the accommodation buildings when they fell in with a young man who had been there as a volunteer. Not a very inspiring individual, neither interesting nor industrious, he had nonetheless been taken on, housed and warmed and fed and given work to do — and now he was tired of it and decided to leave. 

My friend stopped to talk — or, more accurately, listen — and heard his tale of woe and how he was leaving. He had no transport, the place was miles from anywhere, and (crucially) he had no money. 

My friend, ever kind and protective, immediately felt concerned for him, and was on the verge of offering to help him out — give him some money and a lift to the station — when the director of the place drove in through the gates in his Landrover, spotted them there and pulled up to chat. He, too, listened carefully as the now ex-volunteer regaled him with his troubles. 

Thoughtfully, not unkindly, the director said: "Oh, dear. What're you going to do, Jack?"

And that's the thing, isn't it? There are the things that are yours to do, and the things that are not. The director had given the volunteer bed and board and a chance to belong: but he didn't want it. He rejected it.

That was fine. No one blamed him. No one was annoyed with him. But when he wanted to pass on that duck and bottle for someone else to fix, in effect the director simply said, "No thanks. Not my duck. Not my bottle."

As the Tao Te Ching says (Ch.59): "In caring for others and serving heaven, there is nothing like using restraint."

It has taken me a long time to learn this. This evening, I thought that I might finally be making some headway.

Dogs, people, politics, assumptions

 When my children were little kids, we had two dogs. One was a cross-breed — a combination of bearded collie, border collie, labrador and spaniel — and the other was a wolfhound. 

The cross-bred dog only came up to the height of the top of the wolfhound's legs; but, as they say, "It ain't the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."

When anyone called at our house, the dogs would come to the door with me. Freya (the wolfhound) would just stand there looking calm and interested, but Mary (the little collie-cross) would bark.

And the caller would assume that what had happened was that the wolfhound barked at them.

I think this must have been because they saw a big dog as somewhat threatening, and a barking dog as somewhat threatening, and they clumped them together and categorised them as one threatening thing. They stayed inside their own opinion/perspective/viewpoint, instead of remaining objective enough to notice what was actually happening.

So it is that many people find it difficult to distinguish between facts and opinions. If you can be bothered with it, there's a very good instance of this in a video about British politics that I'll put at the bottom of this post.

The man in it is talking about a hiatus to a proposed change for local political regions. To explain briefly, we had boroughs (relatively small, town-sized regions) and counties, each having their own council — so in Hastings we have a borough council for Hastings and St Leonards, divided into smaller neighbourhood wards each with their own councillor, but we also have the East Sussex County Council. It's all rather tedious because (for instance) the county looks after the roads, but the borough has to deal with endless complaints about the roads and a lot of councillor time is taken up trying patiently to explain to unconvinced residents that they're complaining to someone with no jurisdiction over the problem in question. 

The new proposal from central government is for larger regional authorities, each having a presiding mayor. Many of us in Hastings have been looking forward to this, because our town is very poor (though well-managed) and other parts of East Sussex are a lot richer. We hoped that by joining together with them, we would be part of something better resourced, with size giving us the benefit of streamlined costs: only one set of accountants, auditors, planning consultants, health authorities, etc, and more money to pay them. Our borough councillors consulted the local residents, gave us various options to choose from, publicised the consultation, gave us every opportunity to have our say, and the majority voted for the change to a bigger regional authority.

It's also worth saying that Hastings is quite a hippy place with colourful pagan festivals, a big arts scene, predominantly Green politics, and a heavy emphasis on inclusion — religious, sexual orientation, trans issues, all of that — despite which we have a superb treasurer who is no hippy, has his feet on the ground, and keeps us on a realistic fiscal base that helps us thrive. We voted him in. Hippies are not necessarily stupid.

Now in the video below, using many such words as brilliant, awful, good, bad, etc, the video man is rejoicing that this change to bigger regional political districts has been put on hold by central government.

He says this will save us money — it won't, we've already spent millions because we're well into the transition. He says the people who want the change are anti-democratic and want money and power for themselves, not for the people. Certainly in our borough, this is the opposite of what is the case. He says that all the mayors will be like Sadiq Khan (the mayor of London); well, they will in the sense that they will all be mayors, but they won't necessarily be like Sadiq Khan — we'll get who the majority vote for. He says the mayors will waste money on their own pet project and he cites trans pride processions as an example. But we already have such projects rolling big time in Hastings, and the people seem to enjoy it. We'll probably get less of that from a mayor elected by a wider demographic than our bonkers artsy Green Hastings-world.

In fact just about every single thing the man in this video presents as fact is in actuality his opinion. Most of it, if you look at Hastings, is (in our area at least) demonstrably incorrect.

How intriguing. Because I don't think the man in the video is (intentionally) lying. He speaks with great conviction and I think he is saying what he absolutely believes to be true.

On the one hand this feels somewhat frustrating, but I think it's also quite restful. It's like the Taoist farmer story — "Maybe yes, maybe no" — it means that what is (daily) presented to us as awful, bad, catastrophic, greedy, selfish and evil (private landlords, for example), may not be so at all. 

There is peace in this. It means that, though we should remain vigilant, watching and listening with real attention, it is probably unwise to take to the streets or shout slogans and carry banners. As a wise person once said, "The things we worry about will probably never happen, but things will happen that we didn't expect; so we're probably worrying about the right amount but about the wrong things." 

It also means that it is unwise to clump things together, to create categories (as callers to our house did with our dogs). Things are what they are, very individual, categories are almost meaningless.

Sometimes people categorise me and my husband into one undifferentiated unit. They assume that because we are married, we think the same thing (I know this by listening to what they say to us). And they make class assumptions about us, too. So there is an assumption that we are rich enough to go on holiday because we speak like educated people; that he is interested in Taoism and Celtic spirituality because I am; that we share the same theological outlook and vote for the same political party, and so forth. None of these things is true. 

Something I am really looking forward to is the publication of my husband's first novel. Because he has worked in Christian publishing, was a Green Party councillor for the borough, is supportive of other people even (sometimes) when he doesn't agree with them, and is an irenic spirit who avoids arguments, people think they know him. They don't. My husband is surprisingly hard to get to know. But when he begins to publish the fiction he has been writing, it will be a chance for his true voice, his own voice, to be heard. I wish everyone would write a book, so every voice would have a chance to be heard.

Anyway, this is getting too long so I'll stop now. Here's the video I mentioned. The man in it is hard work but curiously fascinating in his inability to distinguish fact from opinion, and grasp that other people see things differently. Politics, eh?

Sorted

 Comments glitch has fixed itself! Yay!

Comments

 I still can't reply to comments on this blog. Sigh. 

This has happened to me before, actually. In the sidebar here is a link to Beth's blog (BLT in MT). I couldn't comment on her blog for about a decade, and as mysteriously as the possibility of doing so vanished, now it has come back. Same with San's blog (Multicoloured Madness); years went by where I couldn't comment on her blog and then suddenly one day recently I could. And now I can't comment on my own blog.

It tries one's patience, it really does. These modern marvels sent to revolutionise our world — well, they do, but I've come to the conclusion they disable and limit as much as they facilitate and extend.  Back in the 1970s I would ever have known you unless we had physically met (or I had somehow heard of you and been given your address) and we would have stayed in contact by letter. And we all depended on letters so there was an evening post as well as a morning post. And there were no Zoom calls and there was no YouTube and no electronic games, so we came out of our houses and drank tea with our neighbours and there was still Evensong at every church and doesn't it all seem a long time ago.

But now things come and they vanish, out of our control and beyond our understanding, governed by a mad world of robots behind the scenes. And now, I write here, and you have the kindness to come and read what I have written, and comment on it, and I can't even reply to you, and I am angry about that. I have asked the robots what to do and they have advice about how to tinker with the settings of my blog and of my computer and their bright ideas have not worked.

I'll put my mind to it, but this is a time of endings and conclusions, so maybe after all these years it's time to start again elsewhere. If I do, I'll leave a post to let you know.

In the meantime, there were two comments I wanted to leave. I tried repeatedly and could not. So if one fine day you come along here and read the comment section and what I'm going to say appears there about thirty times, that'll be why.

On my post about modesty, Lynda left a comment. Because I'd said I looked at her photo on her own blog, and moved it to my desk top so I could enlarge it and look at her clothes properly, she said this:  

Oh dear, I'll have to be careful what photos I post of myself if people are going to enlarge them!! :))

And she described her own clothes, and then she said:

I really must do a blog post about it...

And I wanted to say — I would love to read that blog post! Please do it. And then I also wanted to say that every time a person leaves the house or opens the front door to someone, it's like an enlarged 3D photo of their self, so no need to worry. 

Waving to you, Lynda. xx

Then just today Krista left a comment on the post I wrote called "Parameters for perimeters", in which she described her wonderful green light that shines through the night and gives reassurance and a sense of presence to her neighbours. 

And I wanted to say — Krista, I think I can see your light shining all the way across the world; thank you for holding it steady.

And to all of you, my friends, thank you for being here and for reading my thoughts and sharing your own. It's such a cheerful thing.

So for the time being I'll wait to see if the comment facility comes back, and in the meanwhile I'll reply to your comments like this. 

If you really want to be sure to stay in touch, remember that you can send me your email address in a comment. All comments come to me to read, I manually and personally publish them, it's not automated. At least something isn't done by robots, thank God. So if you leave a comment with your email address, I will delete the comment and get in touch with you by email, so you can correspond with me as much as you wish. Then we can also exchange street addresses and write to each other in the old-fashioned way on paper, if the fancy takes us — though it's become breathtakingly expensive to send a letter now.

And if all else fails and the possibility of commenting doesn't return to me like a homing pigeon, I'll strike camp here and move to somewhere that works.

Google uh-oh

 The last post I put up here was blocked by the Google robots because they had some kind of unspecified objection to it.

I have tried numerous times to reply to Lynda's comment on my post about modesty, but my comments won't go through.

This kind of thing does seem to be an increasing problem with all the big sites since AI took over the world.

I'll give it a day or two, and if the wrinkles don't iron themselves out I'll set up somewhere else — Wordpress maybe? Anyone got recommendations?

Parameters for perimeters

Minimalism/simplicity — as a concept — can be very slippery, subject to much variability, even vague.

Online minimalists have different ways of framing the concept, depending on what they're trying to achieve.

The people who are travelling, and the one-bag nomad minimalists, must prioritise and strictly limit both the number and the type of their possessions. This in turn says something about the circumstances they are envisaging.

So, for instance, I have two very thick, warm sweaters and a heated fleece blanket to keep warm in winter. Nobody travelling the world with a 30-litre backpack could include any of those items. Just one of my winter sweaters would fill their whole backpack and prevent them taking anything else. So I deduce either their travels are only to warm places, or they'll be staying in heated environments — and they do typically stay in Air B&Bs or hotels — whereas my goal is to go through the winter without turning the central heating on more than once or twice, I won't be travelling anywhere, I'm living in the cheapest possible dwelling for my local area, and I want to get our household bills as low as possible.

It may be surprising that our 3-bed house with a garden is the cheapest possible dwelling (for two people) but it is true. Counter-intuitively, larger houses are cheaper than smaller ones (per square/cubic foot). If we moved to a more convenient dwelling, with everything on one floor and a smaller garden, we'd have the options of a bungalow or a flat (apartment) to choose from. Bungalows are much more expensive than the same accommodation on two floors (bigger footprint for the same thing, uses more land), and flats always come with overheads — even if they are bought with a share of the freehold there are joint responsibilities for the maintenance and repair of a large building which pushes up annual overheads significantly, and there are often hidden costs like cleaning of the common ways, separate billing for electricity metered for the common ways, grounds upkeep, etc.. In addition, though the area where we live is safe and friendly, it is neither elegant nor desirable, and that depresses the house values — you get a lot for your money. The houses were built during the 1930s mania for faux medieval/Elizabethan architecture, so our estate looks like a failed Disney attempt at an English country village. 

On a sunny day it has a weird ambience of a 1950s book with cosy and reassuring stories for children — like Milly Molly Mandy or the Ladybird Janet and John series.

The one-bag nomad minimalists also have no plans to be offering hospitality — not even a cup of tea for a tradesman come to fix a slipped tile on the roof, whereas my kind of minimalism does include family members coming over for afternoon tea a few times a year. That doesn't mean I need china tea-services and serving platters, linen napkins and a huge family table with six chairs. Paper plates and paper napkins work fine, and we have a tea-trolley that can be an everyday coffee table, or for putting the laptop on to watch a TV programme together in the evening — or serving tea for a family visit. I have a few nice mugs; that's all the china I need for hospitality.

There are plenty of minimalists operating in a family context, some with very young children, most with spouses and kids who are not especially interested in minimalism. So their version of it is not the gleaming white surfaces and strategically placed orchids variety; they just tidy up and have less stuff.

This all leaves every individual minimalist with no kind of template; it's down to each one how they express it as a lifestyle — it depends on their circumstances, relationship, goals and constraints.

My own objectives are something like this. I want to:

• Enhance freedom and flexibility in order to remain quickly responsive to any change in circumstances (eg having to sell our home or having to take in extra people, or losing income sources)
• Make my money stretch as far as it can, to cover my own costs and help other people.
• Minimise chores and the curation of objects. I don't massively enjoy housework. My house has to be easy and quick to clean.
• Enhance and extend independence as we go into old age — reduce what we need to clean and repair, reduce the number of trip hazards and things to carry and lift (or knock over).
• Maximise the sense of space in however small a dwelling I may unexpectedly have to move into.
• Optimise freedom of all kinds by reducing commitments and complication.
• Make choices easier and simpler and less confusing by not having many options in the first place.
• Walk lightly on the Earth, live quietly and unobtrusively, espouse what is humble and simple and calm.

I haven't yet got to where I want to be with it, I'm still working on it. 

One of the things underway is the reduction of plants in pots in our garden. It has a terrace that wraps round the house with steps down to the main part of the garden, because like all of Hastings it's built on a hill. And because joyriders totalled the car of the previous occupants parked at the roadside, we made the decision to turn the front garden into a forecourt to park the car. So there's quite a lot of brick and concrete around our house, and pots of plants soften that a bit, but... maintenance. So most of the plants will go in the earth, and we will just keep a couple for the front and a couple for the back to make it pretty — plus our house is fab for growing tomatoes; south-facing garden and the sun bouncing of the concrete terrace and white wall of the house. We can't eat tomatoes (high oxalate), but they make gifts that are joyously received, so we'll keep growing those. So just tomatoes and a couple of pots of bedding plants next year. The residual pots I'll scrub out and give away.

I am confident I have our kitchen and cleaning kit down to the best practical working minimum, and the tools and gardening things are for the most part under Tony's control in his sheds. But my clothes are still under review — I haven't got it quite right even though my life is very uncomplicated these days — I no longer need formal wear to conduct funerals, and I never get invited to parties (most of my friends are dead), so my only considerations are warmth, coolth, night/day-wear, modesty and comfort. The big challenge in the UK is we have four seasons and all of them are unpredictable. The combinations of warm hot cool dry wet and freezing cold happen constantly, sometimes all on the same day.

I find I need (apart from underwear and pyjamas plus a fleece hoodie for cold winter nights):

• T-shirts (all mine are long-sleeved, so no need for a winter/summer difference. I have several, as they're the things I most often wash: 1 each in grey, blue, green, brown, and 2 black. 
• 2 thick winter sweaters, 1 green, 1 russet brown
• 1 brown medium weight sweater
• 1 black lightweight fleece hoodie and and 1 black over-shirt, to provide a warm layer on a chilly summer evening or a spring or early autumn day.
• 2 fleece gilets (1 black, 1 navy) for the very cold weather — as it often rains, sometimes one of them gets wet which is why I have two.
• 3 pairs of medium weight trousers (black, brown, navy) and one very warm pair in a sort of burgundy colour.
• 1 pair of sneakers, 2 pairs of boots (1 pair is a fraction too small and needs fine socks, but I keep it because my feet are fussy), one pair of sandals.
• A few bits like winter hats, gloves, scarves — two of each of those categories.

All these things are the same kind of casual style and go comfortably together.  I like the variety of colour for my trousers (and t-shirts too), I'm no good at the monochrome thing of many minimalist wardrobes. I love colour.

My other belongings — a few books, stationery, therapeutic items, a small drawer of tools and sewing things, a memory box, my altar, some bits and pieces of jewellery — I regularly look at again, applying Josh Becker's brilliant maxim, "Can I cope with one less thing?" Works every time.

How about you? What do you do? What system do you follow? What are the deciding factors in your life? What do you prioritise?

 

Thoughts on modesty

This may be a ladies-only post. But since we are talking primarily about old ladies, I doubt there is anything to titillate or disturb. I leave it up to you. 

Modesty is something I think about from time to time. I can't say I exactly have an opinion about it — more instincts, shall we say?

For a while, about fifteen years ago, I wore what Americans call Plain Dress — like the clothing of the Conservative Quakers/Mennonites. Simple cotton full-skirted long-sleeved dresses that buttoned high, and kapps (simple bandana-esque headwear), and aprons. I liked it. I had an accord with those clothes. I felt as though they enclosed me in peace, as though they had their own persona inside which I could shelter as one might within vestments or a uniform, like a snail at peace inside its shell.

This was me sometime around 2010.

But it didn't work out. I have to take steps to conceal my naturally occurring oddness as it is, and I discovered that this merely accentuated it. An elderly man, bored, tagging along with his wife out shopping in Marks and Spencer, sidled up to me and murmured meaningly: "Do you live in Robertsbridge?" I don't as it happens, but a Bruderhof community (ex-Hutterites) does. I was accosted by holiday Americans in the London Underground station, wanting to connect with the signals I was inadvertently broadcasting. At a retreat I was leading, an elderly lady felt the need to emphasise that people shouldn't be allowed out wearing such clothing because others have to look at them.

I wanted peace, and this wasn't it. Happily I have Plain-dressing friends across the Atlantic, one of whom was kindly willing to take receipt of my dresses. 

I went back to the usual old-lady gear of capacious trousers in stretch fabrics, and wooly jumpers. Sometimes when I'm travelling I wear the hats I made. I take a spare or two, because the ex-hippy variety of elderly lady often expresses enthusiasm for my hats, so I give her one; thus I am gradually moving them out of my life. This is how to make them.

Modesty, then, for me these days, is vested mainly in my invisibility. My clothing is quiet and plain (but not Plain), designed to neither emphasise nor reveal, only to cover, and to keep me warm. I wear women's clothing but not girly clothing, if you see what I mean. Deep, quiet colours without prints or patterns. Long sleeves. No sheer fabrics, no plunging necklines, nothing that shows my arms or legs.

Leggings are on trend in this present time. Hastings (where I live) being a poor town, many people eat mostly carbohydrate (it's cheap), and are often obese in consequence. I see the ladies out in their leggings stretched tight around their nether regions, and I do my best to limit my response to nothing more than "Hmm." Whatever my own preferences with regard to modesty, I try to remember that other people's are none of my business.

But there is this conundrum I have. It's like a small tangle in the knitting yarn, that I am struggling to undo. Perhaps Our Lady Untier of Knots will come to my aid.

It's this.

I am no longer willing to wear the kind of bras that are smaller than my own body, and thus keep the boob area under tight control.

My midsection is — shall we say — comfortable. Squashy, even. My boobs have moved south during the passing years. I have this kind of fleshy frontage that declares more of my anatomy than I would really wish were the case, during the summer months. It's because I like soft fabrics (neurodivergent) and wear t-shirts, and yes, they do drape.

Winter is OK, because I wear voluminous wooly jumpers that provide an extra layer. Summer clothing is the issue. It's been so hot; two layers are one too many.

I am a woman, but I have no desire to eye-catchingly remind everyone I meet of the fact.

Woven garments in linen or cotton drape less and help circumvent the issue, but you do have to iron them and I am sick of ironing. I gave both our iron and the ironing board away.

Mostly I am just on my own at home, so who cares? But in the near future I am to go and see a clergyman I haven't met before. Modesty, in such an encounter, is important to me.

So I've put a bid on this garment on eBay. It's only £3.31 and no one else wants it.

That should do the trick, don't you think? Veil my sinking assets without generating too much stifling heat?

I can't believe I'm even thinking about this at my age.