2nd November

I’ve decided that my life is a bit too sad at the moment. And I’m not thinking solely of my grief journey. I live a far too cloistered life. My typical week would see quite a lot of contact with family and perhaps a church meeting or two, but little else of any real depth. So my window into the world is basically through the internet and just a little TV, which I normally watch for way less than an hour each day. I quite like the Downton Abbey thing I suppose and, when I remember, Doc Martin; but after that it’s down to the news channels. When Jane’s elderly mum left I had to buy a TV licence for the first time in years and now I wonder why I bothered, as it gets so little use I could get rid of it altogether. My life with Jane was so very different. Not so much the TV, although she did help me engage with Christian broadcasting in a way that I don’t at the moment, but she had an adventurous spirit that challenged me wonderfully. She was always looking for the next adventure for us to grasp, though more commonly it was for grandchildren. I loved it when she went to university and we had our eyes opened to the world of art museums. So one year we made 8 trips to London and countless regional galleries. But the bigger adventure was New York and our student visit (I went as a ‘supervisor’) staying at the YMCA on Central Park… complete with bunk beds! A visit to ‘Ground Zero’ some 15 months after 9/11 was a mighty challenge emotionally, but the welcome to the city from the ‘locals’ was wonderful. But then I’ll never forget Picasso and Gaudi in Barcelona or Monet and Manet in Paris either. And we’d only just begun to live for ourselves after so many years of child raising and there was so much more on the to do list.

Self-motivation is the challenge of the day, aside from emotional turmoil that is. And at the moment I have to say that I don’t really have much interest in anything. It’s almost like I’m just trying to survive and remain relatively stable. Some days, like today, I can’t even be bothered to cook and resort to a frozen pizza for 12 minutes in the oven. My son quite likes those days though. But I want to go visit the Tate Britain again and drive down the French Atlantic coast, then over the Pyrenees to paddle in the Med. An Easter sermon in Vatican City might be spiritually engaging, but then so might a visit to The International House of Prayer in Kansas City. I just need to stir up my creative spirit and do something… even though I hate being on my own.  

But I did enjoy myself this morning as I visited a retired friend of mine. And once again we broached some of the big questions about world affairs. What about the Greek debt crisis and the surprise call for a referendum? Isn’t it good that we never joined the Euro? What will happen with the transfer of the world’s wealth to China? What’s happening next after the Palestinian’s are voted into Unesco membership? What is our political response to a member of the Saudi Royal family increasing to $1million the reward for the capture of an Israeli soldier?

Romans 9:5 ‘Christ himself was an Israelite’ (NLT)