Dogs and goldfish.

An old friend.

I have painted this lovely dog before but when I went back the other day to look back over some of my past work I noticed a few things I was not at all happy with. I have done again on a larger digital canvas. This meant that I had to work on a larger scale and everything becomes more detailed. Where before one stroke might have done now I have had to paint each hair to create the same effect.

It is strange that I enjoy painting people dogs yet do not have a dog myself. My last dog I have spoken of often he was my companion through difficult times when I could not speak. He and I ran miles together until sadly one day he was not looking well and I had decided it was time to head home. He assumed I was going the usual route and went that way, he was hit and killed by a car. I do not think I could ever bear that pain again.

We often do things for all the correct reasons and get it wrong. Fortunately, we sometimes learn from those mistakes.

I remember being taken to a carnival where I won four goldfish. That evening I kept them in a large bowl from the home. On the  Saturday morning, I went  to find an aquarium or some appropriate container. The first few I spotted were well outside the budget I had. Then I spotted it, right in the aisle: a discarded 10-gallon display tank, complete with gravel and filter for a price I could afford.

Of course, it was dirty, but the savings made the two hours of clean-up a worthy.

Those four new fish looked great in their new home, at least for the first day. 

But by Sunday one had died. Too bad, but three remained. Monday morning revealed the second casualty, and by Monday night a third goldfish had gone belly up. 

I sought help, visiting the library to find out where I had gone wrong. a member  It didn't take me long to discover the problem: I had washed the tank with soap, an absolute no-no. MY lesson learned I went on to become a bit of an expert in the looking after fish and at one point had almost 40 fish tanks. 

My uninformed efforts had destroyed the very lives I was trying to protect. 

Sometimes in our zeal to clean up our own lives or the lives of others, we, unfortunately, use "killer soaps".  We use, condemnation, criticism, nagging, fits of temper. We think we're doing right, but our harsh, self-righteous treatment is more than they can bear. Before going down that road we need to stop, search for the right way to respond and in gentleness and knowledge proceed. 

Our first reaction to a problem either with ourselves or others is not the correct one. 

Have a marvellous day.

Memories and looking back.

Selfie.

I did something I seldom do, I looked back over things I had written and some of my artwork from the last year. I think there is always room to look back and reflect to be aware of the past and to use this to try and improve the future. 

There is nothing sadder than to see modern politicians acting in such a way that it seems they are oblivious to the mistakes of the past. It is as though they have learned nothing at all from history. We continue to make the same mistakes all over again.

I remember another time I looked back. I had just moved from my first church to become minister of my second congregation. During my previous six years, I had kept all of the sermons I had preached. Now here I was at the start of a new ministry, surely all those sermons would be a great blessing and saving of time. I could preach them again. Some of them I was sure would not be able to be preached again because there would be those that had been specific to a certain event in history and time. But there would be a good many that could be used.

How wrong I was. Slowly but surely I realised that I had moved on and much of what I had said in the past I would not repeat in the present. it was even worse than that. I realised that I had said and preached some things that now embarrassed me completely. Had I really had the arrogance to say such things?

Yesterday I looked back at much of the artwork I had completed in the past year. Artwork I had been pleased with. Some I thought with some small changes might be better but some were not so great.

The truth was that I found myself ashamed to think I had been happy at all with much of it. Digital art painted on my IPad were easy to sort, I deleted a great many. Deleted from memory if not from the brain.  The one on today's blog I know a good few friends did not like at all but I had in fact liked. Now I could see it was mediocre. I have made an attempt to smooth and soften its brash harshness. Still not sure if I like it as I did then but I will look again next year.

There is an old man who every evening walks down to the shore with a bucket of food scraps where he feeds the seagulls. Now feeding seagulls are against the law in the UK but he does this act of lawbreaking almost every day. When asked why he told the story of when he had ditched his plane in the sea during the war. The rations had all been used up and he felt like giving up. A seagull perched on his little dingy and as if sacrificing itself allowed itself to be caught and eaten. Now he was paying back his thanks and respect. 

When we face difficulties, we sometimes forget the lessons of the past. We see only the detours and the dangerous path, the difficulties and the pains. But look back in earnest and you will also see the joy of victory, the challenge of the climb, and the presence of your travelling companions who stood beside you and offered support. Those companions and friends who have promised never to leave you nor forsake you and have been true to their word. 

it can be a painful excercise but one well worthy of your time if we are ready to learn from history. 

Have a marvellous day and in these dangerous times let us hope those in positions of responsibility learn from past errors of time and learn. 

A little bit of comfort.

A Little Bit of Comfort.

Now and again I feel that to leave your comfort zone can be good for you. It is such a simple thing to stay where you never feel tested or taxed. In the past year, I have more and more painting on my IPad, it has been a long slow learning curve and often very difficult.

Then on the other side, it seems that if a painting is digital it is not real! That makes me often wonder if I should just stay where I know I can produce art that others like and no questions.

This of course was all playing through my mind when I walked yesterday. it is a very interesting concept the idea of being in a comfort zone. Offering comfort to another. Feeling comfortable in the company of a friend knowing that no matter what this person will never make you feel uncomfortable. Then there is the idea of making others uncomfortable.

Is there ever a time when it is correct to challenge a person even although the challenge makes them feel uncomfortable.

It is an idea with so many connotations. I am moved by the idea of being a comfort to another. The Tao Te Ching, which as most by now know I am spending much time studying and learning from. The smallest book I have ever spent so much time studying.

One of the lessons I have learned is that by going with the flow of life so much stress can be taken from our lives. We need not fret about that which we have no control over and it is foolish to worry about what the morrow might bring. Again we have no real control over the future, in spite of what others might say.

Having found this comfort, this zone of peace is it possible to share it with others? Searching the memory banks of tales and lessons taught and learned I came up with just a few marvellous notions about the sensation of comfort.

Once during Queen Victoria's reign, she heard that the wife of a labourer in her service had lost her baby. Having experienced deep sorrow herself, she felt moved to express her sympathy. 

So she called on the bereaved woman one day and spent some time with her. My thought at this point was that she might have made the effort to go to her rather than call her to her presence. 

After she left, the neighbours asked what the queen had said. "Nothing," replied the grieving mother. "She simply put her hands on mine, and we silently wept together."

As I thought of this I remembered a very similar and very true account. 

A little girl came home one day from her best friends house. Her best friend had died. "Why did you go?" her father asked her on her return. 

"To comfort her mother," said the child. "What could you do to comfort her?" 

"I climbed into her lap and cried with her." To understand and share empathy with another often requires no words.

I conclude with another thought and account.

Douglas Maurer, a young lad of 15 had been feeling bad for several days. His temperature was ranging between 103 and 105 degrees, and he was suffering from severe flu-like symptoms. Finally, his mother took him to the doctor who in turn sent him to the hospital. 

Douglas was diagnosed as having leukaemia. The doctors told him in frank terms about his disease.

They said that for the next three years, he would have to undergo chemotherapy. They didn't sugarcoat the side effects. They told Douglas he would go bald and that his body would most likely bloat. Upon learning this, he went into a deep depression. 

His aunt called a floral shop to send Douglas an arrangement of flowers. She told the florist that it was for her teenage nephew who has leukaemia. When the flowers arrived at the hospital, they were beautiful. Douglas read the card from his aunt. 

Then he saw a second card. It said: "Douglas, I took your order. I work at the florist. 

I had leukaemia when I was 7 years old. I'm 22 years old now. Good luck. My heart goes out to you. Sincerely, Laura Bradley." 

His face lit up. He said, "Oh!" 

Douglas was in a hospital filled with millions of pounds of the most sophisticated medical equipment. He was being treated by expert doctors and nurses with medical training totalling in the hundreds of years. But it was a salesclerk in a flower shop, a woman making very little a week, who, by taking the time to care, and by being willing to go with what her heart told her to do, gave Douglas hope and the will to carry on. Like her, he has survived and is always ready to give a word of encouragement to others.

An amazing word with so many emotions attached to it. Comfort. have a day filled with it and maybe even a little challenge of being out of your comfort zone. In all though, go with the flow.

The sound of silence.

There are times in life when I wished I had said nothing rather than the comment or response I did make. I never said anything to ever be hurtful but there were times when that was the result.

In my younger days, I often ended up in hot water not because I intended to upset but because I had answered without giving due consideration to my answer. My mother had a habit of ticking us off if we did not respond when she spoke to us. Often she had made a statement and not asked a question and I thought no response was called for. In the end, I more than once said something I later regretted because I had spoken at all.

I am not sure which philosopher I was reading when he spoke of the wisdom of silence. He wrote, "Once on a railway journey, my father unintentionally perpetrated some slight infraction and was unmercifully bawled out by a minor train employee. I was young then and hotly told my father afterwards that he should have given the man a piece of his mind. My father smiled, "Oh," he said, "if a man like that can stand himself all his life, surely I can stand him for five minutes."

A lesson I often wished I had learned much sooner than it has taken me to and even now I forget.

Grace Coolidge, the wife of President Calvin Coolidge, tried to surprise her husband by having his portrait painted. When it was finished, she hung it in the library of the White House. 

Later the same morning the President happened to walk into the library accompanied by a senator. They stared at the picture together in silence. Finally, Coolidge commented quietly: "I think so too."

It takes a great deal of silent wisdom to make no comment about a painting or photograph of oneself or somebody close, but often silence is the greater good. 

I had a wonderful older friend who was an elder in one of my churches. I recall an incident that without saying much, said everything.

It had been a rather stormy board meeting and some very harsh things had been said. My friend, highly respected and unusually wise in his judgments, had said nothing throughout the proceedings. Suddenly one of the leaders in the argument turned to him: "You have not said a word. I am sure we would all like to hear your opinion on this matter." 

"I have discovered," replied the quiet one, "that there are many times when silence is an opinion."

Some very interesting words on this topic come from the Simon and Garfunkel. 

"Fools," said I, "you do not know, Silence like a cancer grows, hear my words that I might teach you. Take my arms that I might reach you. But my words, like silent raindrops, fell. And echoed in the wells of silence."

To end on a slightly lighter note a tale about a person I have a great feeling and empathy for and I hope you see why. 

A little fellow was waiting on a corner when a car stopped and a huge man got out. 

"Excuse me, please," the big man said, "but I'm a stwanger in town and I'm lost. Can you diwect me to Wolling Woad?" 

The little fellow looked at the big man nervously and said nothing.

"Are you deaf?" the big man wanted to know. "Can't you speak Engwish?" 

Still getting no answer, the big man walked over to a police officer. "Excuse me, please, officer, but can you tell me how to get to Wolling Woad?"

"Rolling Road? Why sure, you go down this street and turn right."

"Thank you vewy much," replied the muscleman as he went his way.

The officer watched him leave, and then went over to the little fellow. "What's the matter with you?" he asked. "Couldn't you tell him how to get to Rolling Road?"

"Howy smoke, officer, are you cwazy? The minute I twied to tell that big wascal how to get to Wolling Woad, he'd have town me wimb from wimb." 

Yep a man with a speech problem should often hold his silence. Have a marvellous day. 

Somebody is in trouble.

Somebody is in Trouble

Have you ever had a day where everything you did went wrong? I have had those days frequently and so often it is my own fault that I end up in trouble. 

Yesterday I had a day when everything went just perfect in spite of it being a very cold wet and windy day not the ideal for a long drive. But things went well. I even managed to fit in a nice seven mile walk around the edge of Coniston Water before finishing the packing and heading up the road home. Now maybe in that lies the answer. I was out walking well out of the way while my wife packed stuff away in the van. When I returned back all that was left were the things that only I ever do, Packing away routers and gadgets sorting the electric in the van and such. Also the jobs my wife does not like doing so never moans at how I do them. 

Maybe a lesson learned?

But I do have an inordinate knack for getting myself into trouble. Those who know me well are very well aware of this. 

Getting into trouble puts me in good company.

Somerset Maugham, the English writer, once wrote a story about a janitor at St Peter's Church in London. One day a young vicar discovered that the janitor was illiterate and fired him. 

Jobless, the man invested his meagre savings in a tiny tobacco shop, where he prospered, bought another, expanded, and ended up with a chain of tobacco stores worth several hundred thousand dollars. One day the man's banker said, "You've done well for an illiterate, but where would you be if you could read and write?" "Well," replied the man, "I'd be janitor of St. Peter's Church in Neville Square." 

Another who had a knack of getting into trouble was the photographer for a national magazine. He was assigned to get photos of a great forest fire. 

Smoke at the scene hampered him and he asked his home office to hire a plane. Arrangements were made and he was told to go at once to a nearby airport, where the plane would be waiting. When he arrived at the airport, a plane was warming up near the runway. He jumped in with his equipment and yelled, "Let's go! Let's go!" 

The pilot swung the plane into the wind and they soon were in the air.

  

"Fly over the north side of the fire," yelled the photographer, "and make three or four low level passes."  

"Why?" asked the pilot.  

"Because I'm going to take pictures," cried the photographer. "I'm a photographer and photographers take pictures!"

  

After a pause, the pilot said, "You mean you're not the instructor?" 

 The bottom line for me and probably others reading this is if I could kick the person responsible for most of my troubles in the backside, I wouldn't be able to sit down for two weeks. 

Have a trouble free and happy day.

It is my little world!

I have been coming to the Lake District for more years than I wish to be honest about. My love for the place and the friends I have made here over the years has not diminished but things have not remained the same over the years.

I have been noticing little perceptible changes over the years. Where once I could run freely over little well-worn tracks more and more fences have begun to appear. Many of these fences have been of the barbed wire type. More and more notices have begun to appear with the fences. "Private Property Keep Out. " "Do not stray from the permitted path."  From a well-known university, Enjoy your walk but keep to the path this land belongs to the name of the university. Just to make sure that this is obeyed a large fence is being constructed on either side of the said path.

It is a symptom I fear of the changing society. More and more we live in an age where we wish to have it made clear what we own and what we do not wish to share or allow others the pleasure of.

A recent survey gave some credence to this. The survey asked about peoples beliefs, habits and practices.

This poll sheds light on another paradox of increased religiosity and decreased morality. 

According to sociologist Robert Bellah, 81 percent of  people  say they agree that "an individual should arrive at his or her own religious belief independent of any church or synagogue." Thus the key to the paradox is the fact that those who claim to be Christians are arriving at faith on their own terms. Terms that make no demands on behaviour. 

A woman named Sheila, interviewed for Bellah's Habits of the Heart, embodies this attitude. "I believe in God," she said. "I can't remember the last time I went to church. But my faith has carried me a long way. It's "Sheila-ism".  "Just my own little voice."

Soit seems that desire to have and to own covers all aspects of life, not just the property we own.

I feel sad that we seem to be travelling the road of individualism which says, keep out or off. Such isolation deprives us of a social network of support and help.

It is like the saying of Gandhi which I paraphrase. When they came for the communists I did nothing. When they came for the Muslims I did nothing. When they came for the Christians I did nothing. When they came for the Jews I did nothing. When they came for me there was nobody there to help me.

I fear that the desire to keep ourselves to ourselves and what we own only for ourselves we deprive ourselves of all the shared knowledge of others the shared fellowship and the sense of community. We continue at our peril. 

I rejoice in the friends I have and the sharing of much and would want all to know I am grateful for your friendship.

I travel home today so doubt if I will be able to have a blog for tomorrow enjoy my absence. Have a marvellous day.

What is a little stress/

How simple it is to create situations of stress for yourself and others. Without even trying we can find ourselves in such situations.

I walked with my son and daughter in law yesterday. It was for my son a walk we had never done before from where we started, he so wanted to get it right. This desire to get it right meant he spent a great amount of the walk reading the route from a book of walks. Rather than help, the book, in fact, caused more stress. The instructions were, to say the least, less than helpful. 

Meanwhile, my daughter in law, not knowing the walk was concerned for all the possible dangers that could befall when walking with a dog in strange places. 

Kevin Carter, a young and enthusiastic photographer had for a decade,  captured vivid pictures of repression and strife in his native South Africa. Then he went to famine-racked Sudan and came upon a starving toddler stalked by a vulture. He photographed the scene, an image that won the year's Pulitzer Prize. He then chased the vulture away. As the child resumed her walk to a feeding station, he lit a cigarette and wept. At 33, he killed himself with carbon monoxide pumped into his pickup truck. Explained his father: "Kevin always carried around the horror of the work he did."

Stress is a frightening thing, it comes in many guises and can so easily become life-threatening. It can creep up on us when we least expect it. 

Over the years I have become aware of some of the many danger signs of living with hidden stress.

How often I have made plans for my day that was from the off unrealistic.

How often I was first to arrive, last to leave.

I was always in a hurry.

I seldom if ever made a plan for relaxation.

I frequently felt guilty about doing anything other than work.

I often saw the unforeseen problem as a setback or disaster.

I was always thinking about several other things when working.

Those are just a little few of the many signs of a life lived in stress. The trouble is that we seldom see them creeping up.

So what does my favourite sage say about just such things?

 Recognize aggravating aspects of your life and accept them rather than fight them. 

Seek the wisdom to discern what can and cannot be changed, attempt to change the first and accept the second.

Identify your emotional needs and find ways to meet them.

Practice listening, it is more relaxing than talking.

Be sensitive to change, sense it coming and make adjustments. This makes change manageable rather than insurmountable.

I am wondering why it is that I am aware of the signs of stress when I am in fact off and away from home relaxing?  Because even though most of those around me are like me supposedly on holiday and relaxed, the signs of stress are all around.

We have created a stress-filled world full of high and often impossible expectations. The sage says again, "Go with the flow.

Have a marvellous day.