6.30 am: Woke, showered, and dressed. I habitually prepare myself for the day from the outside in. 7.15 am: Hotel breakfast. ‘Oh, yum!’:
(‘Honestly, J! You’re like a child sometimes’.) I enjoy an occasional ‘full English breakfast’. (Does ‘full’ modify both ‘English’ and ‘breakfast’?) Evidently, by the size of their girth, some of the other male diners indulge themselves far more often. 8.00 am: I caught up on incoming emails and messages (for which a post-breakfast cup of tea was a welcome lubricant) before preparing to take a breath of fresh air. Today would be characterises by reflection and meetings:
Many of the chain stores were filled with inane music. It may have some relevance to young people (the target audience, I suspect), but little for the older generation. Music is turned into a mode of manipulation, to which shoppers unwittingly acquiesce. Although, it provokes this customer to turn on his heels and exit the building as soon as possible. 9.45 am: A beginning of reflection:
I thought I’d write more notes. But the conversation was largely internal. At times (when the head and the heart talked together), the discussion was without words: thinking emotions; feeling ideas. I allowed the heart to have a voice (for once). I’ve been taught the value of coming to a problem from the heart to the head, rather than the other way round. (My usual way round.) It’s helpful to be in conversation with someone who has a polar-opposite orientation to oneself. The two perspectives are often either complementary or identical, rather than contradictory, in my experience.
Words can be too propositional, too fixive, for some purposes. Some issues in our lives cannot be reduced to, or be articulated in, statements of fact, intuition, or conviction. The older I’ve got, the more I’ve appreciated this. There aren’t always either definitive answers or clear solutions that hold true in all circumstances and at all times. Our experiences can be muddled and messy, quantumly complex, contextual, relative, ethically elastic, and utterly mystifying. (Begone crude fundamentalism!) As I ‘thought-felt’, I found myself fixing my gaze upon objects on the ceiling:
After lunch and final meetings, I returned to the hotel and located the room-service cleaner and trolley in order to secure more little buckets of awful UHT milk for my afternoon cups of tea (the bags for which I’d heroically liberated from the dining room at breakfast this morning).
There’s a verse in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Rome that opens up this concept of non-verbal articulation. It’s written in the context of God’s participation in, and commitment to, praying for us (which is remarkable in itself): ‘Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered’ (Rom. 8.26). God chooses to speak without words (in contrast to the expression of his fiat at Creation (Gen. 1.1)); his Holy Spirit intervenes through deep-feeling alone. (Bring on a doxology!)
4.20 pm: A break from the work and a walk into the city, via the cathedral:
I’m not one who believes that prayer is more effectual in ‘holy’ places. Churches have no intrinsic holiness, in my books. They’re sacred only insomuch as they are set apart for religious use – which is what ‘sacred’ means. Nevertheless, the context can be conducive. And it was, on this occasion. Strangely so. Sheffield has sunshine too, I discovered.
6.00 pm: Off in search of yet another Italian café. (It’s a phase I’m going through, clearly.) I ended up in the same restaurant eating the same meal (more or less) as I did yesterday evening. Now, what does that say about me? (‘You need rescuing!’) And I needed company. I dislike eating on my own. People look at you as though you’ve been either stood up, or recently divorced, or socially ostracised, or all three. Me? I was just a ‘lonesome traveller’ (as Kerouac would have it).
7.00 pm: Back at my desk to catch up on the dairy and correspondence, until bedtime. (Now that was sad.):
