Reverb 17: making a difference

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Day 17: How did you make a difference?

Think of one person whose life you made a difference to in 2012.

What did you gain from this?

How will you continue to make a difference in 2013?

This one was difficult.

First it hit me in the self-esteem. What have I done this year to make a difference to someone else’s life? Precious little. I have bought a Big Issue here and there… I found it very difficult to put my finger on one action that made one difference to one life. In fact, the only event that feels like it fits the bill is a tweet from one of my friends, saying that they had found one of my posts helpful, when they tried to get their head around synodfail.

What did I gain from this? Validation, I suppose, affirmation, a sense that my maunderings made sense to somebody outside my own head but inside the whole mess. The encouragement to continue to share? But my sense is still that I am the prime beneficiary here, that it was all for myself first and foremost.

In my head I have John Donne saying that no man is an island, and Carl Sagan telling me that, if I want to make an apple pie from scratch, I must first invent the universe.

There is nothing that I can do that will make a difference to somebody else without also making a difference to me. I will never know what difference I can make to someone else, because I can never get outside the fishbowl of my own mind.

And usually I am OK with that. I got used to the idea of being a cog in a machine long ago. I am – usually – quite happy to be a cog in a machine, so long as the sausages that come out of that machine are known to be good. I would rather – usually – be a good cog than an indifferent fork.

This year, that doesn’t seem to have been quite enough for me, and I’m not quite sure how to move it on. I think I need to reach out more, to open myself up more, to find a way of doing more without over-committing myself. To find something worth doing outside work and church, because those are two institutions that have been driving me right up the wall recently, and I’ve been beginning to doubt that I can make a difference in them.

See more people. Know more people. Love more people. See more of the people I know; know the people I know better; love the people I know.

Goodness only knows what that’s going to look like. We’ll see.

Reverb 6 and 14: learning and rewriting

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Day 6: What did you learn?

Compare the “you” from the beginning of 2012 to the “you” that you are now. What new skills or talents have you learned or discovered this year?

The one thing I started doing this year that I’d never done before was letterboxing, and as a result of this I have become reasonably good at using lino cutters to carve rubber stamps out of common-or-garden erasers, which is something I’d never attempted before. I have found some letterboxes made by other people whose skill has left me in awe (The Hero of Sherwood is spectacularly good; unfortunately I can’t show you a picture) but I’ve managed to make a few stamps that have a recognisable picture.

I’ve become competent at cycling on the road. This is mostly confidence and etiquette, but it bears mentioning.

I’m beginning to learn how to get proper plots into my stories. Mostly it happens without my conscious decision; part of me watches with bewildered gratitude as I exclaim ‘but of course A would do X if it turned out that B had done Y!’ – but it’s very exciting, because that never used to happen before. So I must have learned somehow…

There were various nifty little tricks I learned on various Microsoft programs, but that’s boring.

Day 14: the path that brought you here

Sometimes I spend too long at the end of the year planning for the new year ahead, so something like #reverb12 is so good for me.

This year was so full of change for me and mine that it feels like it wasn’t a “good one”. While I welcome the fresh breeze that change can bring, too much change just leaves me itchy and skittish, the ground loose beneath my feet. Then, when things settle again and the road ahead looks smooth and delightful, I think – what’s next?

But I need to remember to look back at the winding path before I start walking.

My question is: what was the most important thing you learned in 2012?

I think the most important thing I learned this year was that ‘I ought to’ is a very bad reason to do anything. I had run myself into a wall with ‘I ought to’ and had lost sight of what was actually important for me.

When I had learned to reformulate every ‘I ought to’ into either ‘I want to’ or ‘X needs doing’, I was able to see much more clearly where I was, what needed doing, and whether it needed me to do it. Then I was able to do it, but in a way that did not stress me out, or not do it, and not feel guilty about not doing it.

It has allowed me to do things – some of them very big, scary, things – on my own terms. The whole thing broke a very damaging pattern and I very much want to remember it, and take it forward into next year with me.

The Church of England and Same-Sex Marriage: What Happened, and How Very Furious I Am About It

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1. Govt starts talking about same-sex marriage.

2. Much to the fury of much of its membership, Church of England expresses opposition to this idea, on the grounds that (despite this having been explicitly vetoed) religions might be forced to perform same-sex marriages against their beliefs.

3. Govt obligingly provides ‘quadruple legal lock’ to prevent Church of England performing same-sex marriage.

4a. Members of Church of England who wanted same-sex marriage very upset, as (this is feeling familiar, isn’t it?) this puts us about five years backwards from where we could be, at a conservative estimate. (I do feel that this is being glossed over in the coverage, but possibly I am not reading the right coverage.)

4b. Other members of Church of England fairly upset as they have been hoist with own petard and been made to look kinda homophobic. (I don’t have much sympathy there, no.)

Reverb 5 and 13: destination and journey

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Day 5: What was your dream destination?

What was your dream destination in 2012 and why?

It can be a town, city, country or region — real or imaginary — and doesn’t matter if you actually got there or not!

Prestatyn.

Don’t laugh.

No, really. One of my mad schemes for this year was to walk Offa’s Dyke, the 8th century earthwork that marks the border between England and Wales. I was going to go south to north, for some reason that now escapes me, starting in Chepstow and ending in Prestatyn.

My reaction to most long-distance paths is, ‘ooh, when can I practicably walk that one?’ and Offa’s Dyke is no exception. This was going to be the year. I didn’t do it in the end, because I wasn’t rich enough and I wasn’t fit enough, and I did the Isle of Wight Coastal Path instead, this being much easier and less pressurised, but I do still want to get to Prestatyn. Or Chepstow. Whichever.

Day 13: Some selfie love?

Please post your favourite picture of yourself from 2012, self-portrait or otherwise!

By all means! This is me, on Midna-the-trike, on the way to watch the Women’s Cycle Road Race at the Olympic Games. Picture taken by Tony and sepiafied by Sam, his brother-in-law.

Reverb 4 and 12: me, dancing, weeping

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Day 4: How will you celebrate YOU?

How are you going to celebrate your self this festive season?

I don’t mind admitting that I found it very difficult to get my head around this question. For me, the festive season is not about celebrating me at all; it is about celebrating Christmas (in its religious sense) well, either preparing to do so (both in the solemn observance of Advent and in, e.g., practising Christmas music) or actually doing so; it is about celebrating friendships and relationships, even where that’s a slightly desperate greetings card whose implied message is ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch ALL YEAR! I do still like you and want to be your friend; I’m just a bit rubbish!’ Celebrating myself hasn’t really entered into my consciousness. Part of that is the fact that I spent a lot of the last three months thinking that I was not worthy of celebration, because my brain was doing that annoying thing where it wants to kill me. Part of it is not really having thought about it.

This Reverb project, however, is a sort of celebration of myself. What I do every year, towards the tail end of December, is spend a while taking stock of who I am and where I want to go next. This, glorified meme though it be, is a good way to do that. It involves my taking a long, hard, look at myself, accepting what I see, and moving on. That sounds simple, but it can, as I implied the day before yesterday, be terrifying. One never quite knows that one’s going to like what one sees. So just saying, ‘Right, I’m actually OK,’ and moving on, is in itself a celebration.

Perhaps, though, I should do something frivolous to celebrate myself, as well. But what? I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll go for a very long walk some time between Christmas and New Year. And (looking at other people’s comments on the prompt post) I might get myself a nice dress; it’s been a while since I had a new one.

Day 12: Your most intense emotions

What made you dance in 2012? What made you weep?

Depressingly, the answer to the second question comes to mind much more readily than the answer to the first. I have wept frequently and passionately this year, as much over things inside my own head as for those outside it. There was one particularly bad night in October, when I was suddenly sick to the back teeth of all kinds of activism. Since my job is activism, since family harmony relies on activism, since my philosophy has pretty much always been based on making the world a better place – the logical extension, I’m afraid, of the idea that the only two possible careers for a Christian woman are that of missionary and nurse – this was a problem. Dust and ashes territory. I cried quite a lot that night.

And this year I cried, for what I think was the first time since 2005 and Jean Charles de Menezes, over a news story. The Synod vote, of course: no, we won’t actually be having women bishops this time, either. That hurt. That hurt like a kick in the gut, feeling that my own Church didn’t want me, the more so because we all thought it was going to go through at long, long last. It wasn’t personal, but it felt like that.

As for dancing, well, I think 2012’s most joyful moments did involve literal dancing. Cousin G’s wedding was tremendous fun, featuring all the aunts and uncles and almost all the cousins together, a jazz band, a cheesy disco, and my brothers and the N. Kirby boys marching in to When the Saints Go Marching In. We are not a particularly close-knit family, but we don’t half get on well when we are all together.

Apart from that (and, similarly, Coz Ed’s post-wedding wedding party, though there was no dancing there) my moments of joy have mostly been very simple, more like overflowing contentment in the face of great beauty. Stopping to listen or to look, when I’ve been walking, when the sky or the sea have been so huge and beautiful that I couldn’t not be happy. The goslings at Jacob’s Well. Whitened cobwebs in the frost this morning. Walking from Blackgang to Niton late in the afternoon, with the sunlight falling slanted and gilding the trees, and the cliffs like ivory, and the shadows very black, watching tiny people walking up to St Catherine’s lighthouse, and beyond that the sea going on and on and dancing in the end of the day.

Reverb 3 and 11: wishing and singing

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Day 3: What do you really wish for?

Imagine a scenario where you only had one year left to live. What is one thing that you really wish to do that you just haven’t had the chance to accomplish yet?

I would like to add: what steps could you take (however small) to ensure that you accomplish this thing in 2013?

I am a little hesitant about answering this one, not because I don’t have an answer in mind, but because only a month ago my answer would have been different. I’m not sure what it would have been, but it wouldn’t have been this:

I want to write my novel. I want to write it, and I want it to be good. And I think this is the one thing that I want to do that nobody else can do for me.

What steps can I take? Well, that’s easy enough. Write. Write every day until it’s done. (Within reason, and without getting myself so stressed out about it that I don’t want to do it any more.) Even doing ten days’ worth at the end of Picowrimo I found things coming together, of characters coming to life and beginning to drive the plots themselves, and it suddenly became plausible. I hope that if I keep working this will keep happening.

Day 11: What was music to your ears?

What was music to your ears in 2012, literally or metaphorically?

It hasn’t been a particularly outstanding year, music-wise. My two most impressive achievements were singing half the alto solo in This is the Record of John three times, and getting paid for playing the cello – both firsts. I should have done Record for the Advent carol service last year, but I had the flu.

I also escaped from the choirboy supervision rota and became slightly obsessed with operetta. We did several lovely pieces in choir – Byrd 3-part, And I saw a new heaven, There shall a star from Jacob come forth – but I don’t think there was anything particularly interesting that we hadn’t done before. But then I have been in this choir since 2008, and we do repeat most of our repertoire year on year, and so I have got to grips with most of it. Every so often I do suddenly realise how fantastically wonderful a particular piece is – it happened this year with the three mentioned above – and I really am very lucky. It’s impressive how quickly one gets used to such luxury (and by luxury I mean three practices and two services per week). I love it.

Reverb 2 and 10: spending and risking

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Day 2: Your most significant spend

What was your most significant expenditure in 2012?

It doesn’t have to be necessarily the biggest expenditure, just the one with the most impact.

What difference has it made to your life?

As a matter of fact it was the biggest expenditure, or, rather, between the two of them, they were. Epona and Midna, the tricycles. Epona, £350, from eBay (whence she is shortly to return). Midna, twice that, from Evans, via the Cycle to Work scheme. They have changed my life, and I have to count them both, because if I hadn’t had the instant gratification of riding Epona, useless as she is, I’d probably have lost interest long before it occurred to me to look into Cycle to Work. And then Midna took so long to show up… Epona served her purpose, even if only for a few weeks. I am going to sell her on, but doubt I’d get much for her in the middle of December. Midna is great.

They have changed my life. Not in any dramatic, world-changing way, but cycling makes me more cheerful and gives me a little bit more independence. It means that I can buy twelve tins of tomatoes at a time if I feel like it. I cycled to and from work today, and even though it was simultaneously freezing and sweaty, and a little bit scary in the dark, and some wanker overtook me far too close (deliberately so, I think) it was such fun, in a way that sitting on the train for ten minutes never can be. It puts me in a whole different mindset.

Day 10: Your greatest risk

What was the greatest risk you took in 2012? What was the outcome?

Should I say, starting to cycle again? Perhaps. I did wonder if I was being a bit rash, forking out three hundred and fifty quid for something I wasn’t sure I was going to have the nerve to use. And actually every day I cycle is a risk; I’m always uncomfortably aware that I’m rather more likely to be killed on the road than I would on the train; but it is one of those occasions where you have to make the choice and stick with it.

There have been a couple of moments this year where I’ve felt physically in danger, and, looking back, have discovered that I took risks to get there – the most notable, perhaps, being where the path disappeared at Woody Bay, when I’d decided not to follow the boring, not-at-all-coastal, coastal path, and see if I could get round by the actual coastline. But that was all right: I swore a lot, clawed my way back up to the actual path, and trudged through a hell of a lot of mud to Seaview.

Coming out to the Rector felt risky at the time, but turned out to be safe and moving and vaguely hilarious. It does feel risky, living without the mask, particularly when it’s a long time since you’ve looked at yourself without it, and the person behind it doesn’t look the same as last time. Yes, I think that was the biggest risk of all: being prepared to let the label fall off. It’s worked out OK; I do tend to forget and to slip back into my idea of who I ought to be, but when I do remember it’s very liberating.

Starting – late

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I forgot all about reverb12 until yesterday, and then couldn’t find it. I should have begun on the 1st; it’s now the 9th. I will attempt to catch up by posting two a day until I’m back on schedule. We shall see how this works.

Day 1: How are you starting?

How are you starting this last month of 2012?

Take a moment, close your eyes, take a deep breath and ask yourself the question: how do you feel…

… in your body? in your mind? in your day job? in your creative life? in your heart?

This is rather retrospective, of course, but I’ve felt rather stuck in the first week of December, and only really woken up today, so let’s go with it.

When I went into December I was fed up with 2012 – so much so that I was talking, only half-jokingly, about switching to the liturgical calendar and calling it new year already. My depression was atrocious, made worse by the dark mornings (because they are getting dark, now). This led to my not wanting to get out of bed in time to cycle to work, which led to me feeling worse.

Work has been one long slog since July, dealing with staff absence all over the place, feeling that I was enjoying what I was doing, but there wasn’t enough of it, and I wasn’t actually supposed to be doing that, and anyway, what was the point? I’d not picked myself up properly from a mental crash in October, having finally got fed up with being dragged into other people’s causes, and feeling like a fraud for being paid to care about other people’s causes.

My creative life, on the other hand, had suddenly picked up, thanks in large part and the House of Laity. I got some blinding white-hot fury down in pixels, and this kick-started a project that had been stalled (even, I thought, abandoned) since – well, the last time I decided it wasn’t worth writing. This time it’s looking a lot sharper; it has much more shape to it. That’s a positive, then.

Day 9: Your favourite book?

What was the best book you read in 2012, and why? (And by “Why?” I mean: Why did you read it? And why was it your favourite? Although these answers could be one and the same…!)

To Kill A Mockingbird, without question. Why did I read it? Because it was the May choice for our works book club. Why was it my favourite? Because it was so utterly convincing. Because I was kicking myself for never having read it before. Because it made me so sad, and so angry. Because everything else I’ve read this year has disappointed me in one way or another, and To Kill A Mockingbird didn’t.

Synodfail: where I go from here

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A friend retweeted this earlier:

Yet another thing I genuinely don’t get: why women want to part of a club that resolutely keeps telling them to fuck off.

It is a very good question. Here is my answer. A lot of it is similar to this post, which I wrote back in 2010. Some of it, however, is considerably more hopeful than I was in 2010.

I should first make it absolutely clear that I am deeply disappointed and saddened by yesterday’s Synod decision. It hurts like hell. I think it is bad for the Church’s mission, in terms of both ministry within and credibility without. I had almost begun to believe that we would see the first female bishop in the Church of England before I turned thirty – and could then move on to eradicating inequality elsewhere.

With this decision the Church of England has, of course, rendered itself unworthy to speak on the topic of inequality, hurt and betrayed hundreds of its own best ministers, and, it seems, hung out a huge sign saying WE DON’T WANT YOU.

I, however, am staying. Here are some reasons why:

The overall vote was 72% in favour. 72% of Synod do want us.

The measure got through the bishops. It got through the clergy. It only failed in the laity. Of course this is disappointing and infuriating, and highlights how bloody stupid the voting system is, but I am, in an odd way, encouraged. The bishops and clergy are there because that’s their job – and the vast majority of the bishops and clergy want women to be bishops. The laity are there because they’re fanatics with an axe to grind, on one side of the debate or the other, who have gone through all the hassle of being elected to Synod in order to grind that axe. (I, of course, am a fanatic with an axe to grind. I’m not on Synod, so just think how fanatic they’ll be who actually are.)

I wasn’t able to listen to the actual debate, being at work and all and therefore restricted to the Church of England’s Twitter feed, but I understand from people who were listening that several people who spoke (and, presumably, voted) against the measure did so because they felt that it did not protect women bishops enough. A clearer case of shooting oneself in the foot I never saw, but it does suggest that the House of Laity is not entirely a herd of misogynist dinosaurs. Of course, misguided idealists can do just as much damage…

Outside of London, where all things can be found, I very much doubt that I’ll find another congregation that’s simultaneously sound on women and LGBT, and has a decent choir. I’ll be interested to hear the Rector’s sermon on Sunday; I suspect it will be along the lines of ‘keep working for this, because we will get there’.

In a repeat from 2010:

This is my Church. It is my Church by right as an Englishwoman, by baptism, by faith, and by inheritance. I am working to see it become more like the Kingdom of Heaven, and I am not going to stop doing that just because those members who wish to restrict the ministry of other members have ‘won’ this time.

The Church of England is still the Established Church. For as long as it remains so, it behoves me as a member of the Church that belongs to the nation to make sure that the doors remain open to the nation.

In fact, in a bizarre way, this feels a lot more hopeful than 2010. I stopped crying last night when I thought how other members of my church would be feeling the same way as me. This time it’s not just me and a couple of other wingnuts on the internet. This time it feels like the vast majority of the Church of England, the rank and file, the clergy and the congregations, crying out in pain and fury. We are all standing at the foot of each other’s crosses. It’s rather like the end of Life of Brian.

We wanted it. And we will get there. And I want to be there when we do.

Walking Godstuff

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It was about time I did another long walk anyway. Having most of a week to myself to walk out allowed me to integrate some things that were buzzing around in my head. (‘Integration’ and ‘integrity’ seem to be this year’s words; I was aiming for ‘balance’, but of course there’s an element of separation to that which turns out to be not what I need…)

Quite apart from the usual OMGWTFBBQ sea! butterflies! lizards! houses! yachts! cliffs! thing (um, God revealed in creation, you know what I mean…); also, a Non-Tame Lion, and connected spontaneous thankfulness, I did manage to get some thoughts, if not nailed down, then at least with a paperweight on them for five minutes.

It mostly seemed to be about sex and the Incarnation. I got about a third of the way through Women’s Experience of Sex (Kitzinger) – it’s very eighties and occasionally made me want to punch someone, but had some good stuff in – specifically, about letting sex be about more than genitals. And I read this post about the Incarnation and the necessity (or otherwise) of the Crucifixion, which is an elegant rendering of the idea that Anne and I ran into over pasta and sardines on Maundy Thursday in Redecilla. (Incidentally, I have been catching up on La Vuelta a España, and getting very excited when I see Camino waymarkings at the roadside. I have been looking out for them specifically, but still.)

What I have been getting from this particular combination is that I need to get my sexual and spiritual aspects meshing with each other, I think. This is yet another thing about myself of which I do not have to be frightened, but it’s not that easy. That in becoming human Jesus made the physical world good, or demonstrated that it was good. That it doesn’t matter whether he was married or gay or whatever, because just by being human he made it right to be what you are. (This makes more sense in my head.) (If anyone can recommend any reading around this, preferably something that isn’t a How To Have Good Christian Sex manual, that would be extremely useful.)

That’s probably enough brackets. Anyway, it all feels like a significant spiritual gear shift, and there will probably be more to it than that. I have been feeling surprisingly positive of late (Friday evening, big brain crash, excepted), reading all the back entries of Hannah’s blog and not feeling jealous of her for having a calling. (This is something that I struggle with more than I like to admit.) And this despite the fact that I’m slightly dreading going back to work, though going back to work will allow me to sort out some of the things that have been bugging me, and usually the vocation jealousy pops up when I am feeling frustrated when work isn’t going too well…