Posted on by Glenn Mower

Nourishment and Healing

Upon this trip to Weston-Super-Mare,

in the damp underarm shock of glittering sunshine, with our wet crotch strides on newly laid concourse we squelch towards a mud flattened horizon. Desperate are we, for holiday fun, restroom relief and stretching out to meet any breeze we are taken afresh by an incoming brown-blue sea swell until, yes, we find refurbishment in a sticky-sweet cafe serving ‘cream-teas for the four a we.’

And watching our Belizian friends mop scone crumbs through fingers and thumb to the full swill of tea dregs to napkin wafts and contented breath, I could not resist floating my mind back to my more distant, less pleasing memories of this sea side idyll.

Past times when Weston was worn out in Novembers drabness, when I related to this place as merely an extension to my a job of work, to the tiredness within the visiting form filling for older folk in Nursing Homes, stranded in Beech lawns and Happy Landings, and for others ailing while I sat appraising their rehab journeys in grand a week placements like Broadway Lodge.

The respite for others was invariably good, even though I, in my personal space was not.

Remembered times, blandly eating lunch from the steamed car window while staring out at the wooden pier that bled neon light into greying sky as metal detecting men in raincoats battled the wind and litter to ply their trade upon the endless expanse of mud, hopeful of becoming the news of the next treasure trove haul.

These fleeting reminiscences,  sinking my heart within such a sparkling, hot and humidly happy day, pulsed forth a sadness that was beaten away by the chatter about the heat and the lack of sweat rags, and our thick socks and tired foot bottoms and the too fast melt of butter cream and the up-coming joys of crazy golf.

Memories so quickly risen up and gone. Sunken illusions that sprout historical self doubt.

And now, at home, pondering and pawing anew through my overlarge pile of hand written diaries, I at last find a poem that captured those feelings, those experiences, that distantly washed out Weston of my past. There (and now presented here) is a testament to how life flows, how transient even the deepest exhaustion is, how the past seven years has unseen the release of my clinging self…

 Weston-Super-Mud

 

there are donkeys on Weston beach

that wade through dreams of sea

and gold on sands and Geiger-count

the penny falls and vinegar drips

from salting pier and cash-back hands

like mud caked bats decoding waves

they strain the pips from tops of beer

and swoop on prey that resonate

in shaking cans and shell suite ear

while stranded addicts chemical dodge

and beg for change from rehab Lodge

where sharing booze and chips and pin

confound the hope of giving in to a clean

and dried out Weston

and on Beached Lawns beside the prom

the 99’s varicose and wait in vain

for nursing shade and kingdom come

licked and flaked skin by skin

by the super-glare encased within

the blue blue rinse of Weston.

Fifth Mindfulness Training: Nourishment and Healing:

‘…I will practice coming back to the present moment to be in touch with the refreshing , healing and nourishing elements in me and around me, not letting regrets and sorrows drag me back into the past nor letting anxieties, fear or craving pull me out of the present moment.’

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

St Mary’s Wanderings

Recently I spent a happy a few hours wandering around

St Mary Redcliffe Church, photographing the amazing gargoyles of grimacing animals and hybrid half man half pig type embellishments peeking out from the masses of concrete ivy chiselled into a vast assortment of archways and ancient crannies.

In time, with stomach rumbling and mobile phone on twenty percent , I left the carvings and the must-damp coolness, and while the quite scary religious blokes who are for ever stoned upon the high outer walls watched, I pootled my way into our lovely city in search of grub.

Somehow my car fume fuelled feet found me at The fine Cathedral on Park Street, and what the f? With almost no thought towards my need for another one of their oversized scones and strong coffee, I stopped at the Saxon plaque that is silently hung at the entrance of some murky side crypt.

I stopped and pondered the plaques blurred stone work, which, I was reliably informed, shows Jesus being pulled into the underworld by some insistent gaggle of less than lovely lost and grasping types.

The resulting disconcerted scribbles made upon a wobbly table, in between the coffee stains and buttery scone crumbs later transformed into this kind of weird poem…

                                                                   

Caged white folk in missed pigeon shit

And Old Testament zeal like sad poultry sit

In the sunshine, biding their perch

Until wreathed in the New-cut throb twilight

Poached by soft lamplight, they chill out

To evensong-scum-tide, as dark times approach.

 

Gall-gothic grimaces steep dust by the day

While intertwined surfaces are eaten away by

Diesel lead carriages until moonlight unfolds

Vine screed wine skinned ancient gargoyles and

Big bearded blokes sceptred to ride the

Four-legged tree folk, who leaping on wing

Of gossamer swift true grit, fly bold to some walled crypt

To save Christ the King from a nightly torn grippage

Through gnarled grasping cracks of red nails, wails and stoned teeth

Upon Dark Saxon plaque, dragging Passion downward

While underworlds peek up cassock to sip fresh blood

From chunks in His feet.

 

And paced at some distance,  two foreign faces

Both wise and benign,  emerge from stoned entrance

And follow gently behind, to spin Sufi wisdom of

Otherness and love, to encircle and question

That Heaven’s above,

That Hell is below us

That wrath may destroy us

That only we know how to define

The gateway to Oneness and thus

Truth Divine.

 

Let Icons be bygones,  return tamed to One womb

Of moist waves and vibrations, until desert lands bloom

And the profits lost leaders, sow loves lightening speech

To grow fresh simple cities, where the warmed rivers meet.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Loss

Loss

 

and when it comes

we are alone

plunged

together in a tight squeeze

of the heavy heart

and with eyes like

saucers

I watch rain drops

fill and spill

a little a lot

and often

reddening the damp of our cotton soft skin

while witnessing

the rebuild

of partial worlds

on the unknown plains

of my family

familiar.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Flow tears from the heart and laugh from the belly

My dear Richard Rohr, you offer me such unexpectedly healing words. You are a kindly Franciscan man from New Mexico, someone I feel close to even though, really,  I don’t know you from Adam.

You say, (in Everything Belongs p.152) that ‘Western man’s (and women’s no doubt) work is to learn to descend, to go down into the tears.’ You talk of a unity and maturity where  tears of happiness and sadness flow easily together. You briefly touch on how you have needed to learn to relinquish ‘your German, educated, male embarrassment at the inefficiency of these tears,’ and how they can be rejected as they slow you down.

What a relief.

I have for some time thought I was going through a (very light and relatively breezy) form of male menopause. I mean, I have been quietly alarmed at my willingness to burst into tears over the Bargain Hunt contestant who makes a profit at auction, over the redemption story arc attached to most reality shows, over the care, consideration and good humour shown by the GP’s on Gp’s Behind Closed Doors, over Songs of Praise for goodness sake!!

The more  innocuous the good story is, the easier it seems for me to bubble up.

Quite quite unusual, embarrassing and pretty much unlike me. Ever since I have turned fifty my sensitivity and tenderness button has been cranked up to warp factor eight. But my response has been nothing like the manly stereotype of buying a new red BMW.

All this blubbering has up until now been seen by me as an inconvenient, guilty, illogical and very very secret affliction of the soul. But what if its got something to do with having upped my time meditating, waiting and generally  seeking out stillness.  What if its about moving into a maturity within my maleness? (I still inwardly flinch at that notion, but at least am more willing to ask the question)

I have, until The Grenfell disaster, avoided watching TV News, as the daily parade of bloodshed, disaster, inequality and poverty has physically hurt too much. I mean it has made me feel like I want to take to bed and not get up again.

But Grenfell has been different, it has been somehow grotesquely mesmerising. I have been glued to these events, willingly I have rolled into the vicarious pain, spent much time centring my thoughts and prayers of hope for the people involved to be held, nurtured and met within their anguish and distress.

There has been a strange comfort in the tears, in the feeling of being somehow a part of a nations opening up in the wake of such profound loss that is beamed daily into our living rooms. Tears and something bordering on comfort and connection in actually flowing into feeling a heavy heavy heart of thankfulness as well as pain. Thankful to all those people who are imperfectly, ardently, energetically trying to  help family, friends neighbours and foe, help fractured people and a community negotiate the mess, shock and incomprehensibility that is life.

And yes Mr Rohr, I too want to be and grow in my abilities to be freely able cry from the heart, laugh (and give thanks) from the belly and to give without noticing.

 

 

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Everything belongs

Was it really only six days ago that I wrote this while dodging  30 degree burns in a Park Street coffee shop?

Home’s circular fan shifting dampness within fitful sleep, the coldness of  discarded neck pillow reunited with my head, that dismay at a distant November longing for ‘just one little smidgen of sunshine and warmth,’ are all now briefly remembered with  a wipe of my sweat rag and a guttural, definitely frustrated sigh.

The same kind of sigh that woke my wife this morning, that started my day much too early for its own good, that elicited this current sideways look from my arm chaired Coffee Shop neighbour.

Yes in the deep thug and bother of this new day I find myself half way from home, half way to work,  staring at life going by. Staring and waiting for inspiration and for this thick swirl of coffee to cool. Watching the drip drip overfill of a cities pacing minutes as the clock closes in on nine am.

Noticing these streets, brightly distorted with emancipated brick dust and a shimmer and sheen from the nose to bumper nose to bumper conga line of congestion, gently offering their hot workout to exposed skin, surreptitiously suggesting deep ingestion to thinly clad young lungs bursting within ardent strides and their need to ‘get there and there and to get there once again.’

My languishing foot swells for them, for the city dwellers traipsing outside this damply conditioned coffee shop and as I sip my brew to the Deliveroo moped pip pip pippig his way through, I adjust my sweat, exhaust in moistness and try to breathe a clearing in the clog of my tired  waiting heart, in my pregnant pulse hoping to launch goodness and joy into these hard trodden city streets.

And as the froth sticks to my upper lip I smile to remember my shrinking walk thus far. My inward flinch to the hum of richly rotted wheelie bins lining my South Bristol route. Who in their right mind would welcome such a stench, such an unwanted express of our discarded living?

Remembering the diesel sheen and the over pitched radio heralding in the odd assortment, the four neon clad bin collectors, all woolly hats and shouts of ‘attention’ and ‘left a bit,’ and ‘to the right mate,’ as their vehicle reversed to attention,

‘attention, attention vehicle reversing, attention………’

Yes my attention was averted, my nose haughtily placed, but now reflecting on their grind I connect with a thankfulness for those humpingly slow city litter scatterers.

What a blessing they are, those livers of this city.

And somehow I drift towards Titch Nhat Hahns lovely little book ‘No lotus without mud,’ and within the next few breaths and coffee slurps, I practice breathing in the dark dank smells, the compost and rot, and breathing out pure clear light. Imagining walking and breathing thus, so a flower could sprout within the shadow of each footfall, each shit mound.

What if this impromptu Ton-Glen could spin my love and appreciation towards those workers, just as easily the oft quoted flap of a butterfly’s wing can be felt all around the world.

And with a smile, I settle to read and bask in some nourishment…..

‘Everything belongs, God uses everything: Everything is recycled, there are no wasted energies….God forgives (and loves) all things for being imperfect, broken and poor.’ Ricahrd Rohr, Everything Belongs P130

Five Mindfulness Trainings, number two: True Happiness.

‘I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on external conditions, and that I can live happily in the present moment by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy.’

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Pan Ten Pro Vee

After taking stock of my hair line,

skin and inner harmonious balance within my local Boots Pharmacy I finally saw the light:

Oh happy me, for you are there for us

Right now in this new balding light of day, and all I can say

Is I feel so jolly, blinking Regenerous.

 

Ha ha and Glory-be, for now there is no denying

My Lord Pan Ten Pro Vee,

That you are truly, scientifically, age defying.

And so I pray to all your saints in their wrinkling disguise

I praise, ‘Oily Yu Lay’ to your Pentapeptides

For You let me rise and flow to be, me.

To be radically free

To activate in jollops and dollops of refilled truth

The Total Effect 7 of my Liposome-ic youth.

 

You see, a long long time ago for true

All I really knew was that yellowed cream sludge,

In a pot, that quietly grew dust upon my bathroom cabinet top.

Until once a year its Vaseline slug would ooze thick and smear upon

Chap and crack and spot and that was it, a simply sticky sludge-cream solution

To paste on my face post ablution.

But oh oh happy me I’m now saved in a new and evolving trinity

Of Nutriluim, Regenerum and Pan Ten Pro Vee

 

Yes                  Yes                         Yes

 

Nutrillium, Regnerum and Pan Ten Pro Vee.

 

But low, behold and oh blige me to this ever increasing changing flux,

For now what stirreth in yonder bright green box?

Not Niva-Quo 10 for my anti frizz lox?

But yes my friend and plus plus for it truly beggars all belief

Only a Deepening Real Joy of 7,927 Tingling Mint-leaf

To moisten and expand my Original Source of heaven

My Omega 3

And of course silly me

My Fully Proactivated VO of 7.

 

All change if you please, my brows, my pout, my gait, my OM

Re-grout, Re-lift my face my bum

And firmly take me in your hand, Rehydrate, Re-perfect, nay Drama Clean

All my Q10 Plus,

Nutragene all the Naicin 3 inside of me

All my SP15, Keratine, Pro-Enhancing Vitamin D

 

Yes           Yes                        Yes

 

Fibro fill me so I can sprout deeply within

Your gushing rushing media flush of Liquid Germaneering

Alpercin.

 

Oh happy Caffeine lightweight me,

You Multi-effect my anxiety

You Equaderm, Pro-firm and soothe away

My Facial Burn and Razor Cut

In Guava, Argon, Cashmere Carbon, Pure

Maca

Daima

Nizing

Nut.

 

For as you say, you even work from the very first use

And that’s a very handy trick to have my son

You can Propolis me in your 3 minute Pro-Retinal

Honey Bee Juice

All day long.

Until I come to sleep and you night night me

Until you Nivea-Barricade all of my fatigue

And so so sensitively validate all my dreams in

Iceronic Grape Night Creams.

 

And so to sleep, to worry and perspire

Within the secret fantasy that I could retire

And dare escape your ever increasing spell.

For can’t you see and can’t you tell

Don’t get me wrong

My new every moment Omni-Portioned Silver Serum,

But for true, you could release me,

For you knew, you had me at

Pan Ten Pro Vee all along.’

 

And so sleep I do until the mourning kingdom come:

‘Aloe Vera,’

‘Allo my Gold Tantastic son.’

 

Fifth Mindfulness Training: Nourishment and Healing

‘Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family and my society, by practising mindful eating, drinking and consuming……I am determined not to try cover up my loneliness, anxiety, or other suffering by losing myself in consumption.’

Oh yes, I temporarily forgot (again).