The Four Rs

 There are four activities (or perhaps in two cases, non-activities) which I find to be vital for my soul's continuing well-being. And this past few days, I have been indulging in all four of them, to my delight and joy... And for me, they are summed up in this lucky photo of my favourite beach in all the world, Benar Beach, which was taken earlier this year. There is something about the "permanence in motion" (to quote Stephen Donaldson) of sunlit waves which restores my soul. 

Benar Beach in mid-Wales (Sue Woolley)

What are my Four Rs? Rest, Relaxation, Reading, and that well-known honorary R, WRiting. I drove up to spend a few days with a very dear friend on Sunday afternoon, straight after leading worship in Shrewsbury (because that meant I was part way there already). My friend lives in a tiny hamlet in the Lake District and over the past few years, I have fallen into the very pleasant habit of spending a few days in her hospitable company three or four times a year. Both of us enjoy our time together very much.

The shape of my visits is unvarying - we indulge in extensive bouts of the three Cs - Canasta, Crochet and Conversation. As the days pass, I find myself sleeping in later and later, which does me good. And also travel to delightful towns which have good wool shops and bookshops. I will be travelling home with three new books... Bill Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors, Write to be Published by Nicola Morgan, and Illuminated Alphabets by Patricia Carter, all bought secondhand - wonderful! I've already read the Nicola Morgan book - I knew I recognised the name - I enjoyed her first novel, Mondays are Red, about a teenager with synaethesia - more than twenty years ago.

Reading is the only constant activity in my life. During 2023 so far, I have read 95 books. To be fair, many of those are re-reads, which take less time, but I have also discovered some new joys: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, Writing Down the Bones and Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg, Femina by Janina Ramirez, and The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary by Frances Stillman. All delightful, and in some cases, very useful.

How do you restore your soul?

it's an Inside Job

 I very much like this week's quotation, by Marcus Aurelius: "The ability to live happily comes from a power within the soul."

Because I do believe that happiness is an inside job. Let me declare one fact straight away: I am an optimist, married to a pessimist (although he would call himself a realist). I have blogged about this before, here, so I'm not going to repeat myself. Suffice it to say, I think I've got the better deal, as I am happier for more of the time...

The gorgeous postcard which accompanies this week's quote made me very happy. And reminded me of a special evening last year, when I was holidaying in mid-Wales with my best friend. We went down to the local beach to watch the sun setting, and it was completely glorious. Here is a photo I took with my phone that evening:

We were down there for about three quarters of an hour and were filled with awe and wonder at the beauty in front of us. And yes, happiness, that we were able to witness it. 

So this year, back at the same lovely holiday cottage with my husband, I decided to take him down to the beach to share the glory. Sadly, there were some clouds, which meant it wasn't quite the same, but when the sun came through a gap, the effect was equally stunning. It made me feel happy to be alive...

I read somewhere (I can't remember where) that individuals are born with an innate quota of happiness. So that even when something wonderful (or something dreadful) happens to them, although they may be happier (or sadder) in the short term, they will eventually revert to their default happiness level. I think the example given was lottery winners, who are thrilled when they win a substantial sum of money, then discover that it hasn't really made a difference to their happiness in the long term.

Another example, used by Geneen Roth, is about losing weight. She says that people tend to put living their best and happiest lives off, until they've reached their desired weight, rather than being happy now, allowing themselves to be happy now. 

So happiness is also about trying to appreciate the present moment. Which I believe is a spiritual practice, like any other. I blogged about having a gratitude practice as recently as last month. It really is an inside job.

How do you nurture your own happiness?

Being Welcomed Here

 Kurt Haberstich once wrote, "It is more delightful to step through the open door of a humble house, than to stand before the locked gate of a palace."

I think he meant that it is the quality of welcome we receive that makes the difference. To hear the delight, the warmth, in someone's voice, when they invite us in, whether it is to their home, or their place of worship, gives us the confidence we need to proceed, to walk into a new situation.

Yet, offering a true welcome to strangers can be difficult. We have to remember that each human being is "unique, precious, a child of God," as the Quakers say. It is far too easy for us to retreat into judgement, into "othering", seeing other people as somehow less than we are ourselves. It can lead to all sorts of -isms: sexism, racism, classism, ageism, homophobia.

Ultimately, I believe our welcome should be offered to people as they truly are, rather than pre-judging them by how they identify themselves, or how we identify them - by what they look like, how they dress, the colour of their skin, the number of their piercings or tattoos, their age, their religious faith, their sexual orientation, their gender. Whenever we choose to judge people in that way, we are guilty of being non-inclusive, of putting up that metaphorical drawbridge, which says, "You are not welcome here."

Sadly, this seems to be all too prevalant in UK society today, no matter what we look like or whom we are attracted to. Why do we do this to ourselves, to each other? We are all human beings, each one unique, each one worthy of love and justice and respect, each one with unique gifts to offer the world. As my friend, Yvonne Aburrow, once wrote, "everyone is an unique combination of beauty and diversity, and we should celebrate that. And each form of oppression of that beauty and diversity is different, with its own distinct history, which is different in different places, which is why we need feminism, and LGBT liberation, and Black liberation, and the disability rights campaign, rather than a single, munged-together 'human' campaign."

I believe we need to learn to be aware of ourselves and each other as "unique combinations of beauty and diversity" and to respect and appreciate the struggles that each of us goes through to be recognised as such. And welcome all, regardless of superficial differences.

    

Time to Relax

 American journalist, Sydney J. Harris, once wrote, "The time to relax is when you don't have the time for it."

And there are times when we look at the postcard which came with this week's quote, when we sigh in longing, wishing we were there, on that comfortable hammock, looking out to sea and relaxing. 

At first sight, Harris's advice may seem paradoxical - how on earth are we supposed to relax when we don't have the time for it? It might even make us feel angry - what the **** is he talking about? But over the years, I have found that it is very good advice indeed. Because when we get too busy, rushing from one task to the next without even a breathing space in between, that is when it becomes impossible to pay proper attention to what we are supposed to be doing, and the results are rarely good. 

Yet if we strive to take a more leisured approach to the to-do list, giving ourselves a little resting space between each task, we will be able to move from one to the next with a clearer mind, and not get so wound up in what we *have to* (which is often self-imposed pressure) get done. 

I believe that this advice has become ever more important in the past few years, as more and more of us have begun to work from home, following the pandemic. And if we are not careful, it can be difficult to maintain proper boundaries between "work life" and "home life". Yet boundaries are so important, otherwise we will never be able to properly rest, relax.

One thing I have begun to do in the past few years, is to try to only answer work-related e-mails when I'm using my work PC. Rather than when they pop up on my phone. Because if I'm not sitting at my work PC, or doing ministerial work outside my home, I really shouldn't be working. And answering work-related e-mails *is* work. Our mobile phones can be a tremendous source of temptation - they are always to hand, constantly pinging for our attention (unless we've turned all the alerts off). I blogged about my own mobile's insidious influence here.

So these days, I try to consciously separate work time from relax time. And feel very much better for it. How do you maintain the boundaries between work and home?

Every Joy is a Gain

 The 19th century poet, Robert Browning, once wrote, "Every joy is a gain, and a gain is a gain, however small."

This is something I have always believed. I have blogged about my optimistic outlook before (see the keyword "optimism" in the links to the right of this post). Yet it can take a lot of courage to embrace the idea behind Browning's words. When we are in a bad or sad situation, when all the joy seems to have drained out of our lives, leaving them grey and bleak, we can easily look around and see no hope, no prospect of ever feeling joyful again.

Which is why I believe that having some kind of daily gratitude practice is so valuable, to give us another perspective on our lives. Somewhere in her books, Brené Brown writes about gratitude, and shares a practice that her family has: they go round the table during the evening meal and each person shares something they are grateful about on that particular day. And she says that this may only be gratitude that the day is over, if it has been a difficult one. Which I believe rather proves Browning's point that "gain is gain, however small." Simply being alive at the end of the day is its own joy, because every day, someone (in fact many someones) will have breathed their last.

I call my own gratitude practice "small pleasures" and record them in the daily log of my Bullet Journal each evening. And I can *always* think of something - a moment of sunshine, a kind word from a family member or friend, completing (or making progress with) a particular task, noticing something beautiful in the natural world. 

I think that noticing moments of beauty and kindness and yes, joy, in our daily lives can help us to appreciate that not everything in our lives is awful. To give a current example from my own life, yesterday I had a hospital appointment, the upshot of which is, I will be having surgery on my left foot later this year, to correct my deformed toes, which are becoming a problem. And, amid the nervousness that this news inevitably brought, I was able to feel joyful that once I have recovered from the operation, my foot will be able to fit into ordinary shoes again (not trainers and one pair of boots). 

I wish you every joy that life can bring and the power to notice them as they happen.

Finding Peace at Home and Away

 We have been on holiday in our favourite part of Wales since last Saturday, and will be driving home tomorrow. It's been a glorious week, yet very relaxing. One of the highlights was visiting Dolgoch Falls, as we do every time we come here, which is an incredibly special space for me. It was the only day we had some rain, but even then it was still beautiful.

We have also spent a gorgeously warm and sunny day in Aberystwyth, which was new for both of us, and visited Bodnant Garden in north Wales yesterday, which was glorious in the sunshine. Although even the overflow car park was nearly full when we arrived, Bodnant is such a large site that we never felt crowded with people except at the refreshment places. It was too late in the year for the laburnum arch and for the rhododendrons and azaleas, but there was still so much beauty to wonder at and glory over. Towards the end of our visit, we came back to the house and the rose gardens, which were in full and luscious bloom. 

All in all, it has been a gorgeous week - we've had a mixture of sunshine and rain, long days out and relaxing days where we stayed local (Barmouth to the south and Harlech to the north) and simply relaxed. I love being here, on Ystumgwern Farm, in our lovely upside down cottage, just being peaceful. I've done some writing, a lot of reading and just enjoyed spending time with my beloved. For me, this is the best kind of holiday. Lots of time to recharge my batteries, and when we go home tomorrow, I will feel relaxed and at peace.

 

Being Cheerful

The 3rd century BCE Chinese writer and politician, Lü Buwei, once wrote, "The heart must be in harmony and calm; only then will it be cheerful."

Quite what is "harmonious and calm" about a jug of home-made lemonade, I'm not exactly sure, but there we are...

My Concise Oxford Dictionary defines "cheerful" as, "contented, in good spirits, hopeful; bright, pleasant; willing, not reluctant." And yes, I absolutely agree that harmony and calm will help us to have cheerful hearts, but not "only then". Because of the last part of that dictionary definition, "willing, not reluctant." I believe we might do something, in a  "willing, not reluctant" spirit, but feel far from calm while we are doing it. For example, one might say something like, "I could cheerfully have throttled him/her."

I Googled "cheerful quotes" and while many of them agreed with Lü Buwei, and more conflated cheerfulness with optimism, some definitely showed another side of the word. For example:

"The average man has a carefully cultivated ignorance about household matters - from what to do with the crumbs to the grocer's telephone number - a sort of cheerful inefficiency which protects him." Crystal Eastman (an American lawyer). And yes, I know that this is a dangerous generalisation - in our house, my husband and I split the housework fairly evenly.

And I believe that the heart can be "in harmony and calm" when we are feeling far from cheerful. For example, when we hear of the death of an old friend, who perhaps died peacefully in their sleep, surrounded by their family, at a good age. In this circumstance, we might accept that they had a "good death" (if there even is such a thing) but would certainly not feel "cheerful" about it.

Yet I do believe that harmony and calmness can help us to view life in a more cheerful way - to accept what comes without heartburning, and striving to live in the present, neither being too nostalgic about the past, nor worrying overmuch about the future. They might even help us to be more compassionate.