The 14th century charlatan

I've read an article in the Journal of Dementia Care today about communicating with people in late stage dementia. It was a good article but not what I want to talk about right now. The author of the article wrote very well, and was obviously a committed Christian, for which she is forgiven :-). In the article she referenced a very old religious text called The Cloud of Unknowing which;

"is a practical spiritual guidebook thought to have been written in the 14th century by an anonymous English monk who counsels a young student to seek God not through knowledge but through love. "Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love [...] and must always be overcome", he writes. "For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God." (Source: Wikipedia)

I found a full version of the text here.

It's very, very long. To be honest I didn't get past the introduction. This intro was written by Evelyn Underhill and is quite interesting, considered and profound in its own right. Maybe one day I'll get round to reading it all.

I'm attracted to the notion that spiritual awareness is not something that can be studied and found but something that should be developed through 'love, charity and humility'. This makes sense to me, which is why I'm posting simple, things and ideas that I think spiritually uplift me (and hopefully others). I know this is overly simplistic, but we've got to start somewhere, why not here?

Anyway, to my point. I was amused by this quote from the introduction;

"Charity and Humility, then, together with the ardent and industrious will, are the necessary possessions of each soul set upon this adventure. Their presence it is which marks out the true from the false mystic: and it would seem, from the detailed, vivid, and often amusing descriptions of the sanctimonious, the hypocritical, the self‑sufficient, and the self deceived in their “diverse and wonderful variations,” that such a test was as greatly needed in the “Ages of Faith” as it is at the present day. Sham spirituality flourished in the mediaeval cloister, and offered a constant opportunity of error to those young enthusiasts who were not yet aware that the true freedom of eternity “cometh not with observation.” Affectations of sanctity, pretense to rare mystical experiences..."

Wow, even in the 14th Century we had "daft spirituality". So the New Age may not be as new as we think. This lifts my spirits no end!

Amphibian Visitor

We were visited by this frog the other day. It was early evening and getting dark. I was busy sorting our laundry out and nearly trod on the thing coming in from the garden.

It was sat there, bold as brass on our back doorstep just staring at me. I'd never seen a frog so big before, or as beautiful for that matter. Well, certainly not in the UK anyway.

I called the kids over and witnessed a moment of utter joy and wonder as they stared at him. "Wow!" was all that Meg managed; whispered in an awed voice. We watched it, and it watched us for a good five minutes.

I'm not much of a naturalist, and can't tell you what kind of frog it was but we were fascinated by its skin markings. They were bright yellow, gold even. They shone in the flurescent light of our utility room.

I snuck away to get my camera and returned to take the picture you see above. Unfortunately the camera flash broke the moment and the frog hopped away.

I've since looked around the web but haven't found out what breed of frog this is. Perhaps you could help?

Ubuntu

Ubuntu amazes me. I have it running on my home PC. It's easy to install and use. It comes packed with features and software right out of the box and is free, yes COMPLETELY FREE! For those of you who haven't heard of Ubuntu, Linux or Open Source Software then I encourage you strongly to look into them.

My non technical friends often look blankly at me when I tell them I'm running a linux system at home. It seems to me that for most people computing is synonymous with Microsoft windows. The fact that all of the things that you can do with paid for software (Like windows & office etc) you can also do for free with software written by the open source community.

The altruism that brings people together to create tools like Ubuntu and then to give them away free really lifts my spirits.

More and more people are using the power of the Internet to collaborate, share and generally help their fellow man. I'll be posting many more examples of this generosity I come across daily on the Internet.

The Tower

Today is Sunday, so I'm off work and got to spend all day with the family; Miche my wife, Dominic who's coming up three next month and Megan who'll be five in March next year.

Predictably, my children feature in the first of my daily posts. Dominic, the youngest of two spent a good half hour this morning building stuff with his MegaBlock collection. He's starting to show a strong creative streak. We built a tunnel for his cars to go under, a house and the skyscraper that you see above. The little engineer made sure it had a sturdy base so that he could get it so high.

It amazes me how children learn so quickly, and this seems to be mostly through creative play. I guess we could all do with a bit more playfulness in our adult lives.

Most definitely a lifting of the spirits day.

Uplifting?

A while ago I spoke to a chaplain who has worked in a psychiatric hospital for many years. We were debating the idea that people in poor mental health may be also experiencing a spiritual crisis. I don't feel sufficiently knowledgeable to debate this here and now with you. However he said something that I felt was very profound. He told me about the etymology of the word spirit; In that it comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning "breath". In this context he was suggesting that spirituality is something basic and fundamental to life. He also said that in order to start answering my question about what spirituality is than I should simply ask myself "What lifts my spirits?". This felt like quite a trivial question until I started to think about it. So, that's what I'm going to do.

Each day from now on I plan to post something on this blog that has lifted my spirit. It may be an experience, a thought, a picture, a news story a sentence in a book... I hope that in doing so I'll get an idea of where to start defining this nebulous concept.

I hope you enjoy these posts and find them similarly uplifting. I'll start later tonight.

Introductions

I guess I'm struggling in the same way that many do do define and understand what keeps us well spiritually. I'm also not sure if we should even bother to try. Does it make sense to differentiate spiritual wellbeing from just general wellbeing? That of being content, happy, sad, anxious or depressed; and even being physically well, secure and loved.

I hope to use this blog to try to understand this subject a bit better. In real life I work as a mental health professional. In this 'trade' there is an obsession currently about Spirituality and its place in a persons mental health. A lot of people talk and write about it. It is a requirement that we 'assess' somebodys spirituality in the same way we would assess someones mood or behaviour. Predicatably, we all struggle with this. Over and over again I see 'spiritual assessments' revert to typecasts such as the religion a person belongs to (but rarely how or if these religious beleifs influence day to day living) and wishes upon death.

I've so many questions to think about. Perhaps you, the reader can help me and post your thoughts I feelings to me on this blog?