An empty page
Day 364
One more of 2024 to go
An opportunity to write
One more blessing
One more affirmation
One more truth
One more encouragement
One more message from the universe
One more awareness of love and magic
One more moment to remember this freedom
One more occasion to make this choice
The last day?
Or the first new day
The next day
Time to be
Time to keep making me me.
Maybe 2025 won’t be (just) Happy
Maybe it will be more.
Maybe 2025 will be beautiful
Maybe 2025 will be full.
Maybe 2025 will be joyous or
Maybe 2025 is when reality bites so strong its impossible to ignore.
Maybe 2025 is about revolution, and resolve, not resolution (s)
Maybe 2025 is for you, and your soul and
when you let the mask hide you no more.
Maybe 2025 is when your love inside becomes fiercely for you.
Maybe 2025 is when you make a stand
Maybe 2025 is about to be…. messy real
Maybe it has to be
Maybe it’s just time.
Maybe 2025 is when you live according to your immense total worth – not the worthless expectations of others
Maybe 2025 is when you believe….in you.
Maybe 2025 will be about living the truth
Maybe 2025 is when you break free
Maybe 2025 is when you finally choose…for you
Maybe.
Maybe 2025 is rage……then stillness….and rage again
Maybe 2025 is time to say ‘I have had enough’
Maybe 2025 is time to take a thousand steps of bravery
Maybe 2025 is about to hold your heart with angels with arms so wide….because it will
Maybe 2025 breaks your heart open wide, open raw, for the light to break its way in
Maybe 2025 will be about hanging in there, gaining strength…noticing…
Maybe 2025 is when you may be
Maybe 2025 is when you finally make you happen
and the spark so hidden comes truly alive,
when you believe your own strength, the courage of a loving broken determined heart.
Maybe 2025 is when you step out in power,
and change what was, into what is and what might be.
Maybe that’ll be life in 2025.
Maybe.
Maybe 2025 is about embracing the ‘maybe’s’ the possibilities, the awakening.
Maybe 2025 will find you open, to being.
Maybe 2025 will find you lost and yet living.
Maybe 2025 will find you feeling,
Maybe 2025 tears will shed
Maybe 2025 will be happy, Maybe it will be sad
Maybe 2025 will be real and life will be had.
Maybe 2025 will be messy, maybe it has to be
Because (when you look back) it may be the best year you have ever had.
Maybe.
Maybe 2025 will make you, maybe it will break you
Maybe dreams and possibilities come alive, or maybe others will fade
Maybe 2025 will be slow, maybe it will be fast
Maybe 2025 is just a year, a collection of days and hours, time
and time that is happening right now.
Spark of the divine, you,
Time in 2025 to receive love and believe
In Loves greatest power
nestled in your own heart, all along
So maybe 2025, is truly about you, and that will be hard…but true…
Maybe it is time.
Maybe 2025 won’t be (just) happy, maybe…. it will be life.
I love this time of the year. Its the time of year when I wake up and drink coffee looking out of the window and see how the dark blue early morning light changes through the colours into the sunrise, admitted today it is just a grey light giving tree branches a dark effect. I love this time of the year, because this all happens at a reasonable time of the morning.
Yet, I do the same thing every morning
I turn on the light.
I flick the switch
So I can see.
So that I can get on with..whatever the day brings, requires light
Coffee, breakfast, reading, work….
Its as if the darkness of the night needs to be escaped from, obliterated, and eyes drawn to the comfortable of the kettle, the sink, the phone, the laptop, the busy, the things, the activities..
Night Walking with Scouts when I was 13 taught me about not using the torchlight until it was impossible not to see with my own night vision. My eyes could adjust. At 13 I would need lights for my bike on early morning paper rounds, so cars could see me, but I could see ok. ‘It’s not as dark as we make it out to be’ when we step outside light infused buildings into the natural light of the streets, the parks or the moonlit infused sky of the open field.
‘The people in darkness will see a great light’
I used to the love the darkness of the streets, the towns the cities, as I walked them, as I had conversations with young people as a youthworker in them, the darkness often meant more interesting conversations than in the summer time, the dark autumn and winter nights full of adventure, adrenalin and unpredictability. That was a darkness, that was a terrain I was comfortable to explore in, and rarely needing a torch.
Far easier to explore the outer terrain of the darkness, than explore the terrain within.
The terrain within, the darkness within so full of shame, hurt, pain, not to be touched, not to go there. To be afraid, to let it have power.
To be afraid of the dark.
To become aware, is to see the light (John O’Donohue)
Yet that often truthful voice of darkness remains, at times shouting, at times cajoling, at times fearing, at times reminding, and for so long it dominated my everything, and it may do you too.
I thought I could maintain appearances
I thought if I could just do something everything would be ok
I thought if I did the right things, other people would change
I thought that ……
Yet the ache of darkness pained within, prowled, festered, and was fed daily. Telling me truths, that I tried to block out, cover it with busy, distract with drama, soothe with food, fill that aching pain of darkness. Pretend it wasnt there, false masking in life, the energy it took to keep the James show on the road, numbing the pain.
Afraid of the inner dark.
The inner dark maintaining its place, loving the self destruction, never wanting to be exposed, never wanting to be seen, self torture and blame its oxygen, self destruction its goal.
Morality is often the enemy of growth (John O Donohue)
We dont want to go there. It feels painful.
I didnt.
So accustomed to the light, so sometimes spiritually accustomed to God being equated with light, that darkness is shamed, darkness is rejected, darkness is suppressed, darkness is moral failure. Darkness is to be avoided.
Yet, thought you and I may walk in the shadows, I will be with you, you will not be alone (Psalm 23)
He will be called Emmanuel, God is with you….and with you always…
In the dark, and not just to transform it, but walking with you through it, through the torture of trauma, through the torture of the voices that dont go away, through the torture of daily abuse, the self soothing and addiction, through the torture of feeling small, trapped, alone… through, with, alongside.. In…yes in the darkness
About three weeks into recovering from my emotional breakdown of 6 years ago, I was reading the Anglican Morning prayer with my friend, and though I cannot remember or find the exact passage, it was something about ‘God appearing in the clouds’ it was in Isaiah somewhere, I can’t find it. And my anglican priest friend just said to me, ‘James, God will meet you in the cloud, whatever path you need to go on, God will be close, even when the cloud mystifies, hides, soaks the path, God will be there, and will appear to you, in the cloud itself’
It gave me ‘spiritual permission’ for want for a better phrase to continue the very tentative process then of the inner walk, revealing and uncovering, that God, that I believed in was light, love and joy….was also in the darkness, also in the bewildering hidden space between. Also in the cloud.
Like today. No mystical sunrise beyond the blue. Just grey light as grey as this screen is im typing on.
In the darkness we are confronted with the unknown, peering cautiously around the corners, tentative steps with tiny courage, falling at hurdles never seen in the light… but thats ok.. its where courage gets tested, its where resolve gets made, its where, honestly, its where love finds us. The more we shame the darkness the more it destroys us. Thats not the path of the God of the bible, its not the path of love, its not the path of healing, its not the path of joy.
That darkness is not us. It is not your identity. It is not who you are.
The darkness might help us, in ways we are unable to see…yet.
The darkness might be shielding us from too much shiny light (s) that seem false, seem unreal, seem artifical
The darkness might be reminding us of part of our truth, a truth to be be faced, faced so that it doesn’t continue to have power over us . Faced so that we can realise that we are bigger than it. Faced so it’s a friend and loved, not a prickly pain in the corner, festering, faced so it has the possibility of transformation.
The darkness helps us to grow, if we have the courage to turn, to, like my eyes on scout trips, adjust to it, feel our way around it, become friends with it, accept it, and love it. Slow, eye adjustment, not blinding torch. Darkness needs hugs and warmth, and whilst it tells you otherwise, you have more than enough love to give to it.
The people who walk in darkness will see a great light… They will, and you will, and I will..and from the shadows light will emerge.
Always Hope.
In amongst the usual stuff I write about, I thought I would share over the next few weeks, as a review of the year, 4 of the stories, readings, poems, that struck me in the course of this year, as a little gift for you.
I have read Paulo Coelhos books for well over 5 years now, and this one ‘Maktub’, was translated into English in the last few years, I bought it in March, as at the time was restricting my book buying to just favourite authors or books that really stood out.
So this one was a definite. Its bite sized stories accompanied by early morning reading and quiet space for a while.
But it was this one that made me stop, underline, put the date next to it, and have a bookmark in it all year.
God is the God of the brave.
Brave. Courage.
I could talk about Mary’s bravery in the run up to advent. The 7 months of waiting, and now the month before the birth of Jesus. What did she (and Joseph) need to do to be brave?
Because…
It’s the same bravery when you or I have stood up to injustice.
It’s the same bravery when we hold someone we care about
It’s the same bravery when we face the inner demons
It’s the same bravery that we can use to make our dreams happen.
Brave means getting angry and rising to do something.
Brave means setting boundaries and saying no
Brave means turning love for others inwards too
And Hope.
God is the God of the brave.
‘Face your journey with courage. Don’t be afraid of other people’s criticisms, above all don’t let yourself be paralysed by your own self criticism’
Bravery means going beyond, to the new place you’ve have never been before.
Brave, means taking on your world to make it different. Whatever that is.
What might it mean for you to own your bravery today?
(and yes, God, it’s fucking tiring feeling like being brave is a constant…I get it..)
But own it as it’s your inner strength coming to the party, and so that one day, that power will be yours to have for you.
God is the God of the brave.
On two separate occasions when I was disclosing to the relevant authorities the abusive behaviour of my mother, I was asked the following question.
‘Why are you doing this now?’
It was 25 years since I had left the family home, and been a terrified abused child. Though her behaviour was still the same even as I had been an adult.
Internal confrontation had occurred previously to absolutely no effect. But then it wasn’t going to, I now know. So the damage continued.
‘So… Why now? ‘
Because that really is the question isnt it.
I was a Middle Aged man, making a complaint about stuff that had happened a while ago, and where the behaviour still continued.
Yet.
The now happened at a time when…..
I had done the very beginnings of understanding the behaviour.
I had done at that point the beginnings of some therapy on my childhood… this action of mine exacerbated it ( I stood up to her, my therapist said)
I knew I wasnt alone in this.
I thought (incorrectly) that someone might believe me.
I was a little bit stronger than I was as a child.
I even thought (incorrectly) that the processes of safeguarding might be strong enough to not be manipulated. ( yeah I was wrong about that too)
I wanted to protect others. That was it.
Stronger in myself, wanted to protect others.
It was time to let others know about the monster.
…and there had been at least one recent moment where abusive action had occurred, in the present.
Because.
It’s strange that there seems to be some weird primacy of someone being able to report abuse at the time.
(Yes, I am thinking of this… Greg Wallace, and the BBC)
I know how terrifying it is to make a complaint against someone who is abusive, manipulating, callous and dangerous.
I know that, though people had faced up to them in the past, nothing was done.
I know that there was absolutely no way of doing it in the midst, the only recourse is to walk away, run away, hide, isolate.
I know that there is bewilderment in the moment, confusion and shame. Thats what abuse is folks. ALL OF IT HAS EMOTIONAL ABUSE in it. The vulnerable self blame and feel small, as the powerful person damages and controls.
WHY NOW…
BECAUSE THEY CANT THEN. THATS THE POINT.
WHY NOW?
I was asked.
I shouldn’t have been asked.
It’s completely irrelevant.
It was the bravest thing I have ever done in my entire life.
Yet someone in a procedural document considered ‘ why now?’ to be the most appropriate question.
Why now?
Because it’s the right time for the victim.
Thats why.
Thats always why.
When they are ready.
They want their voice to be heard
They realise what happened to them was wrong
They work it out.
They feel brave.
So.
Thats why.
Something happened to you
Something happened to you..that wasnt your fault
Something happened to you…that wasnt your fault….and you had to do something as a result that you cannot talk about.
Something happened to you..that wasnt your fault…and you coped in life with self soothing strategies…that you cannot talk about either.
Something happened to you….that wasnt your fault….and everything since has been about staying silent about it…silent….and hiding all traces….protecting it….protecting yourself…from what happened to you.
Something happened to you, by someone who is dominant, powerful and sometimes insane, and bewilders you from any kind of action, and you can’t share it, for recrimination.
Something happened to you…..that you dont think anyone will believe.
That wasnt your fault.
That wasnt your fault.
(even if their insanity causes you to take the blame)
It was something done to you, when you..when I.. was a child, when I was powerless, when I was dependent…
That set so many patterns of life in motion….
And a story that had to remain silent.
We live by stories.
We all have a personal narrative, a myth, a sacred story to believe, a story to live by.
David Macadam says in ‘Stories we live by’ that by having this personal story we then accept, reject information to fit it, or expand our story to fit the new information.
That was one of the things I learned when I was doing my Masters in Theology and Ministry at Durham, the psychology elective that I did with Dr Jocelyn Bryan.
In 2017, doing my Masters, I didn’t have a story I lived by, not one I wanted to talk about, it was far easier, a defence mechanism, to use my brain to disect and critique the process of story making, story telling and consider how theology, story and drama all fit together, whilst I was feeling, well, I wasnt feeling anything, just dying inside. Even the Christian story that I believed , I had critiqued and was full of doubt of it.
Yet.
That sacred myth that I doubted had to do a lot of work, to hold me somehow when my psychological self was a scared, wounded, abused little boy.
The story that I was actually living by, twas a story of shame, a story of abuse, for fear, a story that I didn’t want to acknowledge.
That was the story I was actually living by…
Because it haunted my every step.
It was the story that had power over me.
It was the story that consumed.
It broke me into a thousand pieces every day, causing…
One trip to eat extra food every day
One more hour watching TV news
Three more glasses of wine
One more hour on twitter staying distracted.
One more week watching Friday night soothing comedy.
One more piece of bread, then another, and another, and another
One more football match to overlay drama with drama
One more piece to write to stay busy
Another long bike ride.
More work to do, fill the diary.
One more anything
To run…
Filling an ache.
Because I was so not actually ok, that I could barely say the words, let alone say I had needs, because, that would mean being in a safe enough place where my needs were validated, even if I could articulate them.
One more coping mechanism
One more denial of my self
One more day to mask and pretend.
One more day when I couldn’t share, just keep going.
Survival isnt a story, its fragmented existence.
One more self soothe
One more ‘fix others, im not important’ moment
One more hope of change, living a story of ‘conditional okayness’
Fear, alone, isolation.
The story I lived by, for too long, was a story of shame, fear, anxiety and survival, and masking this so that no one could ever know.
Shame.
Ends.
When stories
are told
in
safe places. (Brene Brown)
Yet.
Shame stories
Held
me
for too
long.
It was a story I couldn’t tell.
It was a story I held in silence.
It was a story that I had no control over.
It was a story that wasnt mine.
It was a story of what someone had done to me.
It was a story of my coping mechanisms because of that childhood abuse and the follow up behaviour, including relationships.
My life, was someone else story.
My lifeless life was someone else’s story.
How I had adjusted to be for someone else.
How I had given away myself.
Actually thats so not true. Because I had never had a self. Self was broken from birth.
When real
stories
of us
being alive.
get hidden.
There was a story I was living by. But it wasnt a story about me. It was a story about how my life was orientated around the fear of someone else, and that I was a bit part player in my own life.
It takes so long for someone to feel the main player in their own story
Spiralling into an anxiety I couldn’t never acknowledge. Tears hidden, as breakdowns occurred in car journeys all alone to Coldplay songs, and reduced priced Tescos wraps scoffed.
In avoiding the negative, we only encourage it to recur (John O Donohue Anam Cara)
I look back and realise how barely I even existed.
To do self care, to have needs, to accept love, to do quiet, to give myself any permission, to feel power…all deemed unimportant, selfish or impossible, so invalidated all of them.
So that story began to change.
Or, my relationship to my story did.
As i began to realise what was done to me, wasnt my fault.
As I began to realise how I had been trapped in emotional contagion.
As I realised that change on the inside brought a sense of worth, and change on the outside…
As I began to realise how I hadn’t been loved, just stolen from.
As I began to realise, how I had survived
As I began to realise the damage, yet also the inner strength and resolve I had to get myself to where I have got to.
As I began to work through every brave step, and own the bravery of it all.
As I began to realise who I am, and who I am not
As I began to connect with my story, to dig deep into it all, and realise myself in it all. I had ran from a past I had to connect with, to face, to love for my self strength in it all.
As I took loving myself seriously, and self compassion, and self care, and just undoing the critical voice of inner torment. I had to love myself in a way that I had only been able to love others.
As I began to realise my own…sense of worth….sense of love…sense of being me, wounded in many parts, but not entirely broken, and capable of love.
As I started to be my own story. I started to be able to own the story, to make this story about me, to connect the dots, and also now, to be able to be excited about the blank pages ahead, waiting for their colours to emerge.
As I started to write it down, and realise I wasnt alone.
As I realised that there was life beyond it, beyond it all.
But at the time, the story I wasn’t able to tell was the story that I was living by.
What if the story we live by is one of abuse and the shame of what we do to cope, and the silence of both of these things?
For, It’s not what happened to us often…it’s the silence and hiding for so long. It’s navigating a life around the shame. Thats draining and energy sapping.
Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way, not forever.
Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to stop living the story that others wrote for you.
Its time to write a different story
than fit into one, already written.
Its time to be your director
than perform for monkeys.
Its time to live as if you matter
and create the story that gives you life
Its time to make yourself the main character
in the play of your own life,
and not the bit part in someone else’s.
Its time
Its time
Its time to notice that you are not an extra
Its time to notice where your strings are being pulled
Its time to notice where your life is shrouded
Its time to notice the scripts that others wrote for you
Because its time
Its time to notice the stage is yours to fill, and make your way into the middle
Brave step by brave step.
Its time to take charge of the pen, and write a story of truth, the one thats you, your voice,
It’s time to clear the stage of the false acting, the shrouded ones that kill the joy.
Its time to write a different story
Its time for you to take your power.
Its time for you to own your own story
Its time to walk out of the shadows
And be on the stage.
Its time to direct the play of your own life
Its time.
To own it, embrace it, and move into the light.
Its time. Shadowed warrior.
It’s time for the extra, to play the lead.
Heres to you,
The kind one, when others destroy
The kind one, who loves, when others run
Heres to you
Soul Whisperer
Light Shiner
Hope Reflector
Dancer in the rain
Heres to you
One who sees
One who believes, in the softness
and strength of love.
Heres to you,
One who believes,
loves, and lives
Despite.
One who walks in courage,
One who feels,
One who invites,
All to the feast. Hospitable.
Heres to you,
One who patiently waits
One who exudes love, without even trying
One who revers
Who gives beyond measure
and who measures
their world
their story
by how much they loved
all along.
And One
who understands
my story
my song
and holds my hand
and walks with me
and walks with you
and you.
Here’s to you.
The kind one.
Be strong.
Keep being you.
Thank you.
I have written before about a certain pink coloured book (link here to that post) that I consider to have changed my life, in terms of how I could see what had happened to me, and the behaviours of others.
However.
There was another book that I had read 6 months previously that had as profound an importance.
At the time, my bookshelf was a mixture of Youth work, Theology, Mission and Social Justice books.
My head was full of ideas.
My life, however, was, and had been falling apart and I was in denial.
I felt completely alone, no where to go, emotionally or physically.
With no one to talk about what was going on.
I was already unemployed at the time, what I didnt know was that I was about to be out of the family home, with no family support, and about to battle to save a marriage. I had barely any friends, and had at least 1 breakdown in that summer.
I have no idea when I bought it, or how it got there, but there was a copy of Richard Rohr’s book ‘Falling Upwards’ on my bookshelf. I may have read 1 RR book previously, but I can not for the life of me remember when I bought it. However, I do remember picking it up to read from my bookshelf in about the April of that year (2018), and thinking to myself that it was a bit ‘woolly’ , a bit not ‘academic’ enough, for the James that wrote blogs on books and theology, this wouldn’t cut it.
In August of that same year, with cracks opening wide, beginning to expose the fragility of my situation, I noticed it on the bookshelf. It was more that likely that with no money I could only read the books I had, so it was this books turn.
To Summarise, Rohr outlined the two halves of life. The first he said was about achievement, making it, ego, and accomplishments. The second, he said was about becoming real, about to being true to the person who was actually inside, and not the masks, identities created for those accomplishments.
He said that to get from one to the other, there is often something seismic, the wake up call, the breakdown, and this could appear/be in a number of ways.
It all depended on how we responded to it.
If I’m honest, I didn’t recognise the first part of what he described, even if I did see bits of me ‘being an internationally known youth worker’ or ‘well known for writing’ all of these things seemed even at the time, I didnt feel like I had achieved, or made it, or anything, I was full of shame, fear, self doubt, and emptiness, trauma I hadn’t dealt with and running away from and bottled up for a day I never wanted to arrive.
But.
I could recognise the middle bit.
The breakdown. The situation of desperation. The need to be vulnerable. When everything that I even thought I had did begin to be stripped away.
And as I picked up the phone to a friend to ask for a place to stay, and cried in relief when he said yes, I kind of knew.
I knew that I was now in the beginning of this phase. I knew, and I could choose how I would respond to what was going on.
I knew it was time.
I said to myself on that very day of that very call,
‘I do not know what is going to happen now, but I am going to learn, I am going to face it’
It may well have been the words from a book.
(and there’s tears in my eyes today as I write this, recognising my journey in all this)
It didnt matter. Because, ‘Falling Upward’ gave me a roadmap, it gave me something to cling to, it gave me a sense that it will be ok, and a sense that what I was about to go through wouldn’t destroy everything (and at that point I needed to know that there was something theological/spiritual about whatever was going to happen). I could hang what was about to happen on a process, (which has subsequently included amongst other things, 4 separate sessions of therapy, a considerable amount of time seeing, understanding and processing and healing from deep psychological childhood trauma, my own coping mechanisms from this, and facing the inner demons, all over the last 6 years). In short, it gave me a structure, and it gave me hope.
Hope because at that moment, and had been for a considerably very long time, life had been dark, shadowed, avoided and I was in perpetual survival mode feeling trapped. But now I had hope. Hope that there might something beyond what I was about to start the process of going through.
Hope because I knew of no one, and heard of no one who had walked a similar path, yes I had heard of ‘mid-life crises’ but I was already in crisis, but no one who shared their story, it felt as though I could hope because the path wasnt completely unheard of, tiny, frightened alone me, walking, falling, held with hope from a book. But it was hope none the less.
Hope, because at that point no one had told me I was going to be ok. I just had to believe it for myself, and now this book shone a light on the possible future.
But that I had to face, encounter, deal with, and not avoid everything that was about to arrive. For though much was taken, and I had to cling on at times, in a way, I started from a very low point already.
And as I walked on the top of Roker cliffs a few weeks later, having received two weeks of safety, and care, that learning process was starting. It would do, and continues to this day.
Where did that resilience come from James?
Asked a friend of mine a few weeks ago when I was telling them this story.
I think it came from when I was 12.
When I told myself the same thing.
I knew that that point that if I am going to make it in life I am going to have to do it on my own. I could not ask for help, have needs, have dreams, ask for money even, or support, I was alone and had to make it. 28 years later, and with the framework of a Richard Rohr book and a safe place to sleep in I dug deep into that survival and determined resolve, the lowest point had been reached already. I was broken, but not beaten, and that moment of vulnerability and seeing the path, was already a very small, but significant positive fall upwards.
Richard Rohr, Falling Upwards, Thank you. Actually, you probably did save my life. You were probably my first Angel on this path.
Thank you.
You are.
And so;
You are not your past
You are not your regrets
You are not your memories
You are not your heart break
You are not their projections
You are not their expectations
You are not their roles
You are not their compliances
You are not your coping mechanisms
You are not your feelings
You are not your thoughts
You are not your achievements
You are not your bank balance
You are not your debts
You are not your attempts
You are not your experiments
You are not your job, neither your career
You are not your beliefs
You are not your search
You are not your hopes
You are not your frustration
You are not your distractions
You are not your family
You are not your friends
You are not your desires
You are not your dreams
You are not your hobbies
You are not your things
You are not your senses
You are not your body
You are not your mind
You are not your breath
You are not your words
No not one, not any, not all
You are that which sees
You stand
You rise
You love
You are before, between and above all these things
You are, just as you are.
Dear Human friend
You are
Sacred, Holy, Beautiful You
Spark of the divine in Human form
You might not think it
You might not believe it
You might not feel it
You might not know it
Thats why you are not your thoughts, beliefs, feelings or knowledge.
You are;
Transcendent met in the immensity of you.
Thats who you are
Truth, yes….
Truly magnificent You.
James Ballantyne 