From Christ’s Padawan (emphases mine)

Dear Lord, Bring us back, turn us away from our futile dreams and take us into Your love. Help us to remember our identity as Your children. You sent the prophets and we did not see. You sent John the Baptist but we did not see. You came down and died for us, and Your disciples having lived beside You saw and set off in Your name to help the rest of us to see and turn back to You. Help us not to forget You and not to wander away again. Take us back to Your family, where we belong.

Click here for istructions on praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

“I saw a great light, with God the Father in the midst of it.
Between this light and the earth I saw Jesus nailed to the Cross
and in such a way that God, wanting to look upon the earth, had to
look through Our Lord’s wounds and I understood that God blessed
the earth for the sake of Jesus.” – St. Faustina

Bad stuff happened.

Silly humour is comforting.

nemo est quin sciat Melem tantum farragina solanorum tubererosorum amare ut ea figuras fingat et cotidie edat. Fractor Melesque, Fractor Melesque, la la la la la la la la la la. Fractor Melesque numquam longe sunt.

*waits for someone to point out the million inevitable grammar mistakes*

Anyone who can guess what it is wins a series of tubes. EVIL TUBES!

Personal update forthcoming, but it’s kinda turning into an autobiography (and probably not an interesting one.) Short version: God and other people treat me much better than I deserve.

This, however, IS interesting. And beautiful.

Softly and gently, dearly-ransom’d soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And, o’er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.

And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.

If you lie to people, no good will come of it. 

Lord, free me from the lips of liars,

  from deceitful tongues.

What will be given you, what will you receive,

  deceitful tongue?

Sharp arrows from the warrior,

  hardened in the flames. – Psalm 119 1-4

But God gives me the courage to tell the truth.

Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
   teach me your paths.
⁵Lead me in your truth, and teach me,
   for you are the God of my salvation;
   for you I wait all day long.
⁶Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love,
   for they have been from of old.
⁷Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
   according to your steadfast love remember me,
   for your goodness’ sake, O Lord!
⁸Good and upright is the Lord;
   therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
⁹He leads the humble in what is right,
   and teaches the humble his way.
¹⁰All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,
   for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.

¹¹For your name’s sake, O Lord,
   pardon my guilt, for it is great.
¹²Who are they that fear the Lord?
   He will teach them the way that they should choose.   – Psalm 25. 4-12

(I am way overdue for an update on actual events in my life. Lots of important concrete stuff has happened lately, much good and some bad, and I need to blog about it, but I want this off my chest first.)

‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ – John 8.31-32

Advent is the beginning of a new liturgical year. It is a good time to change things.

A recent conversation has thrown a defect of my character into sharp relief.

I tell lies often. Even when I am not lying, I rarely tell the truth.

There is a whole spectrum of untruth that is broader than deeper than lies. G.K. Chesterton put it brilliantly (I am not a schoolboy, yet this still resonates with me).

I know there does still linger among maiden ladies in remote country houses a notion that English schoolboys are taught to tell the truth, but it cannot be maintained seriously for a moment. Very occasionally, very vaguely, English schoolboys are told not to tell lies, which is a totally different thing. I may silently support all the obscene fictions and forgeries in the universe, without once telling a lie. I may wear another man’s coat, steal another man’s wit, apostatize to another man’s creed, or poison another man’s coffee, all without ever telling a lie. But no English school-boy is ever taught to tell the truth, for the very simple reason that he is never taught to desire the truth. From the very first he is taught to be totally careless about whether a fact is a fact; he is taught to care only whether the fact can be used on his “side” when he is engaged in “playing the game.” – From “What’s wrong with the world?”

I have never had a single friend, relative, acquaintance,  teacher/tutor,  employer, coworker, boyfriend, support worker, or mental health professional to whom I have not lied at least once. I struggle to be honest with myself, let alone others.

But truths can be stitched together to make a Frankinstein’s monster of omissions, distortions, false implications and general dishonesty which is a million miles from the truth, without ever containing an explicit lie. And that’s a HUGE problem.

Please pray for me. Pray that God gives me the courage to learn to tell te truth.

Lying is addictive because it seems like the best way to avoid getting caught is to cover up one lie with another. I accept full responsibility for my own actions. It’s nobody else’s fault that I lie. It is my fault and my responsibility to deal with it. But at the same time, I have got myself locked in powerlessness and whilst it is my responsibility to get out, I can’t get out without submitting to help, including help that feels unpleasant.

Adapted from the 12 steps of AA:

1. I admit powerless over dishonesty—that my lies and half truths have become unmanageable.
2. I believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore me to sanity.
3. I promise to turn my will and my life over to the care of God.
4. I will make a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.
5. I admit to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs.
6. I am (or by God’s grace, will soon become) entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. I humbly ask Him to remove my shortcomings.
8. I will make a list of all persons I have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.
9. I will make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. I will continue to take personal inventory and when I am wrong promptly admit it.
11. I will seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God,  praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.
12. Through God’s grace, I will have a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I will try to carry what I learn to dishonest people, and to practice these principles in all my affairs.

Lord, help me.

Domine, non sum digna ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo et sanabitur anima mea. Amen.

Oh Lord, You have searched me and You know me. And for some reason, You still haven’t given up on me.

This post is a less morbid version of what I did in “Hate me”.

(Full, uninterrupted lyrics here. I’m not sure Tim Minchin would like his words being used in a theistic way, but you [insert vague ramblings about the irrelevance of authorial intent, deconstruction, not being able to own words etc])

This is my Earth
And I live in it
It’s one third dirt
And two thirds water
And it rotates and revolves through space
At rather an impressive pace
And never even messes up my hair

⁵You set the earth on its foundations,
so that it shall never be shaken.
⁶You cover it with the deep as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.
⁷At your rebuke they flee;
at the sound of your thunder they take to flight.
⁸They rose up to the mountains, ran down to the valleys
to the place that you appointed for them.
⁹You set a boundary that they may not pass,
so that they might not again cover the earth.
¹⁰You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
they flow between the hills,
¹¹giving drink to every wild animal;
the wild asses quench their thirst.
¹²By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation;
they sing among the branches.
¹³From your lofty abode you water the mountains;
the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.

- Psalm 104. 5-13

And here’s the really weird thing
The force created by its spin
Is the force that stops the chaos flooding in

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. ³Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. ⁴And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. – Genesis 1.1-5

This is my Earth
And it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine
It’s not perfect

And never more than now I know
That man’s first heaven is far behind;
Unless the blazing seraph’s blow
Has left him in the garden blind.

Witness, O Sun that blinds our eyes,
Unthinkable and unthankable King,
That though all other wonder dies
I wonder at not wondering.

- G.K. Chesterton, The Mystery

And the bloke who runs my country
Has built a demagoguery
And taught us to be fearful and boring

Fear is in the news again. A report this week from the Mental Health Foundation – In the Face of Fear – suggests that our individual and communal fears, many of them misconceived or exaggerated, are both exacerbating the economic downturn and hindering recovery. When we worry about our jobs and fear for the future, we spend and lend less, avoid risk and feed economic paralysis. As fear overrides logical thinking, the crisis deepens. Half of us are worrying about money and two-thirds are anxious about the credit crunch. Women and younger people feel most frightened but 77% are more fearful than they used to be. High levels of fear and anxiety have a knock-on effect on the levels of coronary heart disease, gastrointestinal problems, asthma and allergies. They raise our blood pressure and make us more likely to smoke and drink more and eat junk. [...] As sociology professor Frank Furedi puts it, politics has internalised the culture of fear: “British politics is dominated by debates about the fear of terror, the fear of food, the fear of asylum seekers, the fear of anti-social behaviour, fear over children, fear about health, fear for the environment, fear for our pensions.” Full article here

This is my country
And it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine
It’s not perfect

“I pledge allegiance to Fawlty Towers and faulty trains and that small, almost silent sigh that shudders across a carriage when the train stops for no reason in empty fields. I pledge allegiance to the wrong kind of snow.

“I pledge allegiance to the fact that the London Olympics in 2012 will be messier and shabbier and far more prone to disruption by protesters than the Beijing Olympics.

“I pledge allegiance to the boys who died in the mud at Normandy so I could be free. I pledge allegiance to the women who slept in the mud at Greenham Common so I would not burn. I pledge allegiance to Ateeque Sharifi, who came here as a refugee from Taliban Afghanistan, only to be blown up by Talibanists on the Circle Line. I pledge allegiance to everyone who drives an ambulance or teaches a child on this rainy island for paltry wages because they know it’s the right thing to do.

“I pledge allegiance to the people of Britain, not because they’re the best in the world, but because they’re mine.”  – full article here

This is my house
And I live in it
It’s made of cracks
And photographs

Marriages, families – famously difficult to live in. Religious communities – there will be someone who will insist on clicking their nails behind you in choir, or say intolerably moronic things in recreation. But what do we singles do to make sure our corners are rubbed off? Volunteering for a day a week is not the same thing at all.

I recommend adopting a granny, your own or someone else’s. One party gets a strenuous drilling in forebearance, consideration and patience, and you have someone to peel the potatoes.   Think about those stories in Cassian and hagiographies, where adopting a Difficult Widow is on a par with living in a cave.  If like me you’re not up for caves, adopt an Occasionally Mildly Trying Widow(er). - by berenike

This is my house
And it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine

Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. – Exodus 20.12

Get Out of My Life: But First Take Me and Alex Into Town – possibly the best book title ever. Haven’t read the actual book, but the title tells me everything I need to know about being a better daughter

This is my body
And I live in it[...]
I spend so much time hating it
But it never says a bad word about me

For it is lifelong. There is no cure. Once, when I tried (gently) to get this across to a parent who possesses the same melodramatic messianic passion as Sally Kirk, I was accused of being bleak and defeatist. “I believe in a God who heals!”

My unspoken response, uttered mentally as a prayer, was, “I believe in a God who did His job well the first time round.” – Vicky on disability and “cure”

This is my body
And it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine
It’s not perfect

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. – Psalm 139.13-16

This is my brain
And I live in it
It’s made of love
And bad song lyrics
It’s tucked away behind my eyes
Where all my screwed up thoughts can hide
Cos God forbid I hurt somebody

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
²You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
³You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
⁵You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it. – Psalm 139. 1-6

This is my brain
And it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine
It’s not perfect
I’m not quite sure I’ve worked out how to work it
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
¹¹Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
¹²Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit – Psalm 51. 1-12

Domine, non sum digna

Ut intres sub tectum meum

Sed tantum dic verbo

Et sanabitur anima mea

Details to follow.

From Open Left

The point here is not about achieving sainthood, about suddenly changing your attitude and becoming a “real” social actor.  In fact, the point is the reverse.

If you want to recycle, if you want to make sure you turn off the lights when you leave a room, if you want to create an elaborate compost system in your kitchen, go ahead.  But do it for yourself, be honest about that, and not because it’s some deep contribution to the universe.

Of course, once you acknowledge that, you may find you don’t want to do it anymore.  You may want to get a hip haircut instead.

So, an assignment:

–throw out a can today
–leave the light on in a room overnight
–drive your car to work when you don’t have to.

Don’t feel guilt.  Your guilt is your own self-aggrandizement.  It is your own effort to make yourself matter.  Your guilt is about YOU.

Plus I should be writing my essay rught now and I’m not.

Just under18 months ago, I was in a situation where there were 3 options:

1. Do the right thing and make a friend’s life much easier. I would also make my own life much, much harder in the short ter, but easier in the long term.

2. Do the wrong thing, make said friend’s life MUCH harder make my own life much easier in the short term and pretty much the same in the long term.

3. Do the wrong thing, lie unconvincingly about it and make everyone’s life MUCH harder in botht the short term and the long-term.

Guess which one I chose?

The consequences of choosing number 3 are still hurting me and Friend Who Shall Not Be Named. I have no idea how to fix this in the present. I can’t apologise to someone who refuses to have anything to do with me. Since she no longer trusts me, she wouldn’t belive my apology anyway.

I can either:

1. Accept that this friendship is destroyed irrevocably, move on with my life and never lie to anybody again.

2. Accept that this friendship is destroyed irrevocably and only make friends with people who are poor lie-detectors in the future, so I can get on with treating people in the way that is most convenient for me, regardless of what’s right.

3. Continue to pine over Friend Who Must Not Be Named, try to get third parties to make her like me again through pity and not change the fact that I’m a pathological liar.

Guess which choice I’m tempted to make?

I never learn. I never bloody learn.

Ok, I took a break from my essay to check out the FWD Disability Blog Carnival. It’s great, check it out.

I was especially pleased, however, to find this post from Juggling with Colours and Smoke. Woo! A fellow-dyspraxic blogger.

I’m not aware of that many of us. Vicky and Danni are good bloggers, but they focus more on autism (not that I’m criticising them for this or telling them they should write more dyspraxia posts – it’s obviously entirely their decision what they write and I appreciate their writing ). Ruby is currently too busy to blog, as is Mr Negative. (Again, no criticism – it is good that they have livesaway from glowing rectangles.)

Are there any other dyspraxic bloggers out there?

Now, back to Meno…