Turn and return and turn again

Oh dear, it's got to the point where people are leaving me comments asking me to come back and I don't even see them because the most recent post is more than two weeks old.

That, in and of itself, is mildly distressing. Many apologies to any of you who might worry about me. I am well.

That I can't say I've been blogging much anywhere else is perhaps more telling. My career-related blog is getting posts even more intermittent than this one; my locked journal (which had several posts a day for many years) is all but abandoned. I'm not even really leaving long rambly comments on Nick Baines' blog (which has more than once been the cause of my not having time to blog here). My e-mails to various dear friends have become shorter and less introspective, very much more "I did this and that and the chard is still growing" than they once were. I'm not even doing pen-to-paper reflective journaling on my own (I tried for a few months early spring but it isn't good for my elbow to do that much longhand writing).

I'm not doing badly -- my physical and mental health seem to be pretty good at the moment, I'm doing lots of work, I'm mostly getting enough rest (although as always there is this battle to catch up, this temptation to be busy on days off). But given how much I have previously relied on reflection and analysis in a written format, I'm starting to wonder what's up here. Am I really just too busy, or am I avoiding something? Is this about finding a voice (I typed "void" the first time, Freudian or what?!?) for my career-related blog, or giving myself space to speak at all? Is this about being more private, more circumspect now that some of my job is so obviously tangled with my religious life, or about being honest with myself? Is this about busy-ness or about not allowing stillness? I don't want to be precious or dramatic about this, and maybe I just need to accept that it won't be perfect and I can't do everything, but I have written hundreds of words per day for several years and don't seem to be doing so now. It isn't that I can't think of what to write, as evidenced by the verbosity of this post. It's that I'm not sitting down and starting.

I think I need to work out a Rule again. I have sort-of had one of one sort or another since my last year at Academic Institution, where the Rule consisted of "practise two hours before anything else" and I built everything -- my prayer life, my social life, my work, even my love life -- around that.

I don't have anything like that focus now. I have some things that are major -- the organist job, the teaching, a chamber group -- which will always take priority over other work. I've tried to shape my days sensibly and I'm not generally spending hours and hours online talking when I should be working. But there are things that are getting neglected, including this blog. Some of the neglected things are optional; some are not, and I wonder if some of my tiredness is not from being too busy but from being a little ungrounded.

Do you have a Rule of Life, or a set of intentional habits for your daily life? How specific is it, and how flexible? How do you decide when, if ever, to make changes to it? How do you make this fit around variable working patterns?

Keeping on.

Still ticking. Last day on the stronger tablets today, though I've been managing with food rather better this week than the one before.

I'm working on a project. It has to do with psalmody. Ultimately it's going to be something I'll attach my real name to, which means I can't discuss it much here. If you do want to hear about it let me know. I'll e-mail you if I have your address. Some of you have heard about it already.

The more I do research for this project, the more I let the psalms get into my head and my heart, the more it seems really important that I do some sort of direct voluntary work with people who are homeless. I wrote about this before, at the end of January. I don't know what the connection is; I don't know if my interest in psalmody will mean that the psalms are somehow directly involved in the work I eventually do, or if they "clear the lines" somehow so that discernment is easier for me, or if I'm going to need to know the psalms inside out and backward to deal with what I might find and this is a sort of preparation period for that. I only realised there was a connection fairly recently, after I'd written that other post.

This is way off the beaten track for me. The psalmody project itself is far more research-based than my usual work, but I can at least see a connection, a drawing together of various threads. But direct work with the homeless is unfamiliar in just about every way possible. Using my existing professional skills doesn't seem to be the requirement, and everything I can think up that uses them is definitely not the right thing.

I've spoken to some friends about this. I've spoken to my spiritual adviser/director. I've prayed. I've thought and thought and chased my tail.

I've found a night shelter/day centre within walking distance of where I live and printed out a volunteer application form.

I'm just going to have to try it and see what happens. I can't think this one through any further without taking action.

Right then. Thy will be done, and I hope I don't screw it up.

It's been an interesting few days. I'm busy with academic work, and getting to the end of every day not having finished as much as I'd hoped and intended... that's about normal for this stage of the degree, I think.

Want to see something beautiful? Have a look at this video footage of narwhales.

One thing I didn't anticipate, deciding to start blogging here myself rather than just passively lurking, is that suddenly all the prayer requests seem quite a bit more compelling. I haven't replied to all of them but I have prayed in response to all of the ones I've seen. I've not previously been in the habit of keeping a written list of people or situations to pray about, but I think I might like to start one soon. I don't want to miss anyone out. On the other hand, I'm always going to forget someone or something even if I do keep a list, so maybe a simple "and anyone in need of help" tacked onto the end makes more sense.

It's a little odd, because I still don't really know most of you at all and you don't really know me, but even small niceties like online comments build a sort of connection, a sort of bridge between souls if you like, even if it's tenuous. Jan writes I believe love is a prayer, so we all are joining God's prayer when we love, whether we know it or not. I like that view of prayer.

I wonder how this relates to being kind to the stranger, especially when the help required is more material than prayer or kind words. I think we're all a little more likely to give money or food or shelter to someone we know than someone we don't, even if we find a way to do so anonymously. I can't help everyone without becoming an ascetic myself (and even then, it wouldn't be enough) so maybe that sort of community-within-the-world is as good a method as any to decide where to send help, but there are some obvious flaws: the world is a very interconnected place and just because I'm not directly involved in a community (even on a marginal basis) does not mean there is no need for help, no obligation to help.

I've been thinking more about music and liturgy and worship, but in a different context: that of hospital chaplaincy.

When my grandmother was in hospital I used to visit her with my dad. She had Parkinson's disease, and her body gradually became more and more a prison. Sometimes we would sit and talk, or read poetry that she had written or that we knew she loved. Often we would go to the hospital cafeteria and eat together. Always, we would take her wheelchair to an open area of the building that had a piano in it, and I would play for her. Long after she lost the ability to speak or even vocalise in response to conversations, she could sing along with the music.

Music is a very important part of worship for me, and if I were in hospital and facing a crisis, I think it would be in music that I would find the most comfort and solace. Some things just can't be put into words, and I think I would want to sing, or if I couldn't sing, to be sung to. Some things just can't be put into words. But many hospital chaplains may not be musicians, and I imagine that most hospitals, at least in the UK, are lucky if they have a piano at all. Also chaplaincy as I understand it very often means dealing with people from very diverse backgrounds and (I am generalising madly here) musical traditions in worship tend to be less rigidly standardised than, say, spoken prayers: there may be strict guidelines on what sort of music is appropriate in a given tradition, but in my experience there are almost always various different tunes that can be used for different prayer texts. Very often the musical part of a service is the part that is most variable. So to incorporate music effectively into the pastoral care of hospital chaplaincy would require working knowledge of a huge range of traditions and access to several libraries. The Hospital Chaplaincy Gateway has a link to the Oremus Hymnal, which is a wonderful resource, but it has limits. (And then there is another problem: someone hums something at you, you don't recognise it, they don't remember the words or title: how do you search for it? I understand Google is working on some sort of melody-based audio search but this is extremely non-trivial.)

I'm not done thinking about this, but I'm already starting to wonder whether this is something I should pursue as a volunteer activity, when I've finished this academic degree. I don't know whether I'd want to help compile more extensive online resources, or get involved in the practical side of things; I suspect I would learn more from the latter. But for now I really do have to file this under 'neat ideas to explore when I have time'.