tariki

Previous post (slightly amended) now available in glorious technicolor here:-

mydookiepops.blogspot.com

I never had much luck with the "worldly ball" so switched to "Old Nobodaddy", AKA Urizen (Your Reason.....get it?)

Here he is, a painting by Blake...

The guy is so desperate to get it all down in words that he is using both hands at once....😀

Anyway, I knocked the blog into shape while in Starbucks. The omens were good, they spelt my name right. I knew I was on a roll. 

But Old Nobodaddy never made it to the final cut. 

Thanks Amy........the thread was dead yet is alive!

😀

39 minutes ago, romansh said:

A few?  

He's the strong silent type

😀

Hello again toty, is there actually a human being there? Can you respond, inter-act, with others? Are you human flesh and blood?

Me, I'm in McDonald's now, fortified with caffeine, and ready to go again. 

I'm not totally against pouring over ancient books, looking for guidance and inspiration. Maybe once I looked for "truth" there, but "truth" is a nebulous thing, always on the move, and ultimately not found in letters. Jesus was once asked:- "What is truth" and gave no answer. In fact, he did, in as much as the truth is a human being, and a human being was standing there in the dock - sadly, where most human beings stand, fearing and waiting for the judgement of their peers, the theologians, and anyone else who wants to hurl the first stone. 

But, whatever, no, not totally against "searching the scriptures daily" for just maybe life can be found in them. I love Jewish history, and the various stories of the rabbis, who would often, in the ghettos and hiding from persecution, would dispute joyously with each other over the words of the Law, which they loved. Throwing verses at each other, rejoicing at what they found revealed to them, there, then, in ancient words. They did this in Warsaw, before the Nazi's came and destroyed their lives and culture, before being hauled off to be turned into soap or pillow stuffing by the Master Race, the  Ubermensch of Nietzsche. But I think back then, among themselves, rejoicing in the Law, the word became Word. In human hearts. 

But the Word is always on the move. Sorry, people like yourself, turn the words to stone, then use the stones to throw at others who understand them in some other way. 

Doesn't every Surah in the Quran begin with "Allah, the all merciful"? Can't you just leave it there and stop all the nonsense? Just understand those simple words? Why does anyone really want a commentary? But whatever, good luck with your own "deeds", hope your "reward" is to your satisfaction, that the decision goes in your favour. 

Well, I ramble. I waffle. Maybe a bit of William Blake, who spoke with angels. From "The Everlasting Gospel":-

The Vision of Christ that thou dost see

Is my Visions Greatest Enemy

Thine has a great hook nose like thine

Mine has a snub nose like to mine 

Thine is the Friend of All Mankind

Mine speaks in parables to the Blind

Thine loves the same world that mine hates

Thy Heaven doors are my Hell Gates

And:-

What was it that he brought to Light

That Plato & Cicero did not write 

The Heathen Deities wrote them all

These Moral Virtues great & small

What is the Accusation of Sin

But Moral Virtues deadly Gin

The Moral Virtues in their Pride 

 Did over the World triumphant ride

In Wars & Sacrifice for Sin

And Souls to Hell ran trooping in

The Accuser Holy God of All

This Pharisaic Worldly Ball 

 Amidst them in his Glory Beams

Upon the Rivers & the Streams

Then Jesus rose & said to me

Thy Sins are all forgiven thee

Well, there you go. Stick with that Pharisaic Worldly Ball, keep pouring over the words, seeking to prove yourself "right", win a few arguments, feel satisfied that you are in the camp of the "right-thinkers". 

Must go.

(Just might turn this waffle into a blog, and add some glorious images! Just what will pop up when I punch "Worldly Ball" into the search engine? The mind boggles......)

EDIT:- Had to go, quick, now edited my post. Been trying to contact an old mate but his phone keeps going to answerphone. He is the salt of the earth kind, but I just wish he was easier to contact! He seems to spend his entire life cycling around saving the earth, bless him. We are planning a walk together, to breath in the trees, exchange a few words. 

11 hours ago, toty said:

Jesus was not eternal from eternity

 

 

The argument is made that because Jesus was “before” Abraham, There is no question that Jesus figuratively “existed” in Abraham’s time. However, he did not actually physically exist as a person; rather he “existed” in the plan of God. A careful reading of the context of the verse shows that Jesus was speaking of “existing” in God’s foreknowledge.

Here is another example where a Prophet existed in God’s foreknowledge. even before he was born, yet he was not at all Divine,

Jeremiah 1:5 –“Before I formed you in the womb I knew[a] you,
    before you were born I set you apart;
    I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

 

Prophet Muhammad (sallallaahu alayhi wasallam) said: “I was a Prophet when Adam was between water and clay”
Yet, no Muslim claims that the Prophet was god .

Attaching ‘Divinity’ to such statements shall be absurd and meaningless.

 

Because the Gospels are distorted, and Jesus did not say everything that John mentioned

The text does not specify the period that Jesus, peace be upon him, is supposed to have lived before Abraham, and there is no evidence that it is eternal. Therefore, there is never a faithful way to make this passage in John 8:58 proves the divinity of Christ

There is no word for "am" in Hebrew or Arabic. And pronouns are not proper nouns.

Basic grammer.

 

 

 

Q&A Jesus:Before Abraham Was, I Am (John 8:58) - Sheikh

شابان أمريكيان انبهرا بشرح الشيخ عثمان بن فاروق

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 فضائح الكنيسة الكاثوليكية من ق*ل واغت*اب الأطفال + شاب يُسلم

 

 

 

Hi toty,

You have chosen the wrong Forum for those sort of arguments. Try some more Fundamentalist Forum where disputes and nit-picking over words are grist to the mill. The disputes are interminable.

Such disputes over the dot and tittle of the meaning of Biblical words are, at least for me, a sure sign of a person being unable to grasp the simple acceptance of Grace as being the causal basis of salvation. Acceptance. Mercy. 

So please, as far as I am concerned, you can take your arguments elsewhere, where others may welcome such pointless piffle. 

All the best

On 4/28/2024 at 1:50 PM, toty said:

 Tired of Lying to Christians...12 Pastors Convert to Islam!

 

 Famous Pastors Who Recently Left Christianity for Islam!

 

 

Each to their own. You love spam, I love rambling and waffling. Welcome to the Forum, but try putting your brain in gear rather than just cutting and pasting. 

😀

Just to expand a bit, now in McDonald's and boosted by caffeine, just think about the age old Christian hymn written by John Newton (once he had dropped his slave trading occupation - and quite what he ever considered the eventual fate of those slaves who expired in mid-atlantic and were dispensed with over the side, I have no idea. Maybe I could read a biography of the guy sometime and be illuminated?) Yes, anyway, the words:-

Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
  And grace my fears relieved....

The teaching to "fear" represents the software, the programming. Teach to fear according to a time-conditioned theology, then hey presto! supply the necessary "answers" to be "believed", the "only" ones given the programming. 

But what about the Hardware? Reality itself?  Well, why bother with that when you can simply wait until you are dead to start living?

All this reminds me of me saying to my "other half" (aka significant other, spouse, wife, love of my life) that I felt that I was now in danger of becoming just a Grumpy Old Man, and she said:-

"What do you mean, becoming?"

 Well, there you are

A Grumpy Old Man, or maybe just beginning to fear, awaiting the suitable programming to relieve his fears. 

7 hours ago, RedAppleSpice said:

But what would be the reason for being a christian instead of other religions?

There are within the Christian Faith a wide varieties of theologies. Looking at the Catholic Tradition and you find the "outside the Church there is no salvation" - but then there are various ways of understanding among its theologians of exactly what "the Church" represents, ways that allow the Hindu's and Buddhist's in, even our atheist friends!

There is of course the Fundamentalist cry of "one way" but serious study shows that such is itself a virtual Modernism born of the Reformation, the printing press and mass literacy and not grounded in a true Biblical hermeneutics. 

If the causal basis of "salvation" (call it what you will) is Grace, and not our own "decision" or personal allegiances, then really your questions are answered. 

Universalism, as taught by very many of the Early Church Fathers, is the way to go. It places "salvation" into the hands of pure Love and Mercy, where it has always belonged.

As a supplement to this, from my own Pure Land perspective, some words here giving the view of one of its founding fathers, Shinran:-

According to Shinran, salvation is entirely a matter of the Vow* (Grace). It does not hang on events and conditions of time and space, or the imposition of man and society. Salvation cannot rest on chance factors. Shinran makes it clear that the reality of Grace requires nothing from the side of man, including the act of faith, as the causal basis for birth in the Pure Land. Otherwise the emphasis on the Vow (Grace) would be devoid of meaning and significance. Our residual karmic bondage may influence the point in our experience when we become aware of Amida's compassion, but it is not a factor in determining whether or not we actually receive that compassion.

We are suggesting that from the standpoint of Grace (the Vow) all are equally saved even now, despite the presence or absence of the experience of faith itself. The reason for this is that salvation depends on Grace and not on any finite condition.

Someone may ask then what is the point of being religious, if we are saved in any case? This is an important question. However, it reflects the virtually universal notion that religion is a means to an end. We get the benefit of salvation from being religious. For Shinran, however, religion becomes the way to express gratitude for the compassion that supports all our life. It is not a tool for ego advancement or gaining benefits.

The point of being religious for Shinran is that when we come to have faith in the Original Vow (Grace) and live in its light, we truly become free to live a full and meaningful existence in this life.

Shinran's perspective permits a person to see deeply into their life to detect the springs of compassion which sustains it; it allows them to participate and associate with all types of people despite their unattractiveness or difficulty because they understand the potentiality that works in their very being. In perceiving the compassion that embraces all life, the person of faith can themselves become an expression of that compassion touching the lives of others.

(From "Shinran's Vision of Absolute Compassion" by Alfred Bloom, contained within "Living Within Amida's Universal Vow" )

So, what IS the point of it all for you? Saving your own skin? Living in the certitude of being "right"? 

All the best

Hey! Just used my Kindle, touched the image, chose "Copy Link Address" then pasted onto the Forum!

Thanks Rom, I use my touch screen Kindle most of the time. I'll wait until I'm on my Chromebook before "right clicking". Not really much of a computer geek myself, just stumble along. 

On 4/28/2024 at 11:27 PM, beaconmike said:

 I figure at age 65 if I haven't found a niche by now, I probably never will...

Probably not......😀 But then, what would it be a sign of if each and every church member echoed exactly the same beliefs, the same affirmations? 

True life is surely more to be found in acceptance of others irrespective of their beliefs? 

As Thomas Merton has said, Christ is to be found, not only in our own hearts/beliefs, but in the voice of the stranger. 

However strange it may be. 

Hi, I'd say that if there was indeed any totally incontrovertible evidence for a particular expression of the Christian Faith being the "only way" then faith could be dispensed with. 

Of course, there is no such evidence. 

What an astonishing software system this Forum must have! Try to upload a single image and you get all sorts of bother, needing to compress the KP or whatever. Yet cut and paste one entire Blog, complete with half a dozen uncompressed images, and hey presto! No problem!

Not complaining, just observing. 

Anyway, the OP here is as said/implied, simply a cut and paste of my 300th blog on the now infamous "Dookie's Place" blog. Now at almost 19,000 hits and Google Statistics show the spread is over 20 or so countries. 

Looking at the stats I have pause to consider just what anyone in Turkmenistan makes of my ramblings and waffle! Maybe a knock on the door at midnight might provide the unwelcome answer. 

But no matter, it keeps me sane. Very therapeutic to waffle away.

Access here:-

mydookiepops.blogspot.com

Thank you, or as we say in the trade......Namu Amida Butsu.

(Which now always makes me think of an ardent Christian fundamentalist, one wayer, who in response to my using the word said:- "Did someone sneeze?")

Ha ha ha ha ha. 

 I'm nearing the end of Thomas Mann's long book, "Joseph and His Brothers". Almost 1500 pages, in small type. As long as "War and Peace"? Not sure, but it has often seemed like it. 

Thomas Mann - like Joseph's coat

Way back I read a portion of the book but dropped it at the point where Joseph hit the fleshpots of Egypt. It was quite a labour then, the translation that I was reading turning Thomas Mann's German into some sort of King James Bible language. I assumed at the time that this was how Thomas Mann had originally written it in German, but apparently this was not so. Just a few years ago I read of a new translation that dispensed with such stilted diction (a diction maybe suitable for the Word of God, especially among the fundamentalist fraternity who perhaps equate it with "depth" and authenticity) but not for a novel such as this. 

Everyman (for himself?)

Learning of such a new translation, my yearning to pick up where I had left off took roots. Let's face it, who can resist the lure of fleshpots, real or imagined? Anyway, I ordered a copy of this new translation, the Everyman Edition. When it arrived I found the small font size very daunting, but a strange determination to get the job done took hold, irrespective of my poor old eyes and the flickerings of blepharospasm. I decided to take the book with me for my stints on the till at Oxfam every tuesday, anticipating reading a small portion while listening to my favourite music. 

The world of Enid Blyton - no fleshpots here

So it has been. For two years or so I have taken the book with me and read about twenty pages or so each session. A labour of love, but often more labour than love. Much of the text is out of my league as far as the allusions and meanings and implications of Thomas Mann are concerned - maybe back to Enid Blyton next? The Secret Seven or the Faraway Tree?

Nevertheless the story is well known, at least to me, and the forward momentum of the narrative kept me going. A great story, even without the fleshpots!

Look for the fleshpots in vain

I must say though that the "forward momentum" did stumble just a bit when the wife of the Pharaoh began to fancy Joseph and she sought to manipulate a meeting of bodies, hers and his, this while retaining her righteousness and self-respect! The equivocation and prevarication went on and on for well over 100 pages, and there was I gagging for the juicy bits to begin. But then, really, seriously, what did I really expect but more of Thomas Mann's fine prose - Fifty Shades of Grey it is not! 

End of the road

But as I say, nearing the end now. A mere 100 or so pages to go. Even reading a few pages here in McDonald's, trying to get the job done and dusted. 

No need to issue a Spoiler Alert, as the story is well known. The final reconciliation of the brothers is still to come - and that I can understand. Reconciliation. Of all things......

 "And the fire and the rose are one"

I just love a happy ending. 

Note:-

Joseph's story is told in Genesis (37–50). Joseph, most beloved of Jacob's sons, is hated by his envious brothers. Angry and jealous of Jacob's gift to Joseph, a resplendent “coat of many colours,” the brothers seize him and sell him to a party of Ishmaelites, or Midianites, who carry him to Egypt.Thomas Mann, however, begins his book with the story of Joseph's father, Jacob, who steals the birthright of his older twin brother Esau from their father, Isaac. Mann ends it with the reconciliation of Joseph with his brothers, Joseph by then having risen to high rank in Egypt by interpreting Pharaoh's dreams.

If you google "Jacob and Essau" or "Joseph and his brothers" you will be offered various versions. You will also be offered various "meanings" of the stories, the "lessons to be learnt". Such can be taken or left. So it goes. 

Hi, as most religion is little more than programming, your hopes might well be realised.

😀

Just thinking lately of another song, "The One I Love" by David Gray. I seem to remember mentioning it before somewhere, but at my age the memory is sometimes not what it used to be - some say it is the first thing to go, for me it is the second.

I'm trying to learn it on my guitar, simple chords, quite easy, and I will add to my repertoire of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "The Wheels On the Bus". I first heard the song when on the night shift at Wilko's, when I was a Stock Replenishment Executive (AKA Shelf Filler) They played a tape each night and we all had our favorites. We all joined in with "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" and "Do You Wanna Be In My Gang" (don't mention the name of the artist Pike!) We all dreaded the Christmas tape, which being in the retail trade, would start early November, two months after the first Xmas stock came in.

 

But I'm waffling again, in McDonald's with my coffee. But yes, "The One I Love", which I liked, and not listening intently to the lyrics - concentrating instead on making sure the AnuSol was placed on the correct shelf and aisle - took to be a simple "boy meets girl" love song. "You're the One I Love" yeah, yeah, yeah. Then some of the lyrics started to penetrate my mind/heart, words about bullets whispering through the grass, and tracers in the sky, of blood leaking out.

 

Not sure about the "yee hee, yee hee" bit, just might leave it out when I try entertaining the grandkids.

Who is the "repo man"? I see it as that love cannot be repossessed. Love is the hidden ground in which we live and move and have our being. Someone once said that love is the reason that there is something rather than nothing, and another (Meister Eckhart) said that "love has no why". So tell the repo man to stuff it.

 

Back in McDonald's. Sunday afternoon, my morning chores done. Washing my loved one's feet, putting out the week's rubbish (all this recycling makes it a job for rocket scientists, trying to work out just where each minor bit of debris goes. We have 5 different containers outside in the yard. It takes great dedication trying to save the world from oblivion) then getting our towels washed and dried in the communal laundry room, where fisty cuffs threaten if the machines are all being used - particularly if I'm faced with a smaller resident incapable of self-defence. Then cooking sunday dinner. We now have some yorkshire puddings in the freezer, which we call "dog's dinners" - which started a few years back when one resident who could afford some serious dinning at local restaurants spoke of liking a good yorkshire pudding, and referred to the "stick 'em in the oven" type as unfit to give to a dog. Me and my loved one caught each other's eye and kept quiet about the 10 for 50p yorkshires we got at the local Tesco's. Now we just call them "dog's dinners" without really thinking about it. 

 "Are the dog's dinners in" or "don't forget the dog's dinners".

Now we are more affluent and buy the Aunt Bessies variety, 10 for £2. Very nice.

This reminds me of another term of endearment we have, for a guy who has an apartment in our retirement complex who we call "unsuitable". When he first arrived our resident Christian lady, a bit prim and proper, whispered to us in the communal lounge that just perhaps he was "unsuitable" for our home. Not sure exactly why she thought this, maybe she had seen him with his fly's undone. Not sure. But whatever, ever since, when we see him walking by we say "there goes unsuitable". Well, it takes all sorts I say.

I really am waffling. I'm onto my chocolate milk-shake now.

Recommended, if only for your dog:-

(Just remember that the empty packaging must go into the correct re-cycling container at your local large supermarket. By no means must it go into the plastic recycling just outside your apartment in the yard)

Maybe time to get back to my roots, i.e. a sequence of quotes strung together by a loose assembly of stray thought perhaps totally irrelevant. 

How to sum up how I see/understand/live things....

 "Love is why there is something rather than nothing" (Source unknown, but then, who cares?)

Those aghast at our world's suffering will find that difficult to square with the reality they inhabit, but there you go. 

 "Love had no why" (Meister Eckhart)

Maybe "conclusions" and ardent beliefs can mess us up? Hang loose. 

As far as Reality, in our relationships, then the key word is "mercy". 

"When I speak well of myself and ill of others, the autumn wind chills my lips" (Buson)

When the autumn wind blows then, as Krishnamurti would say, "it is over". When seen, it is over. As Merton once wrote:-

The spiritual life is something that people worry about when they are so busy with something else they think they ought to be spiritual. Spiritual life is guilt. Up here in the woods is seen the New Testament: that is to say, the wind comes through the trees and you breathe it.

(from "Day of a Stranger")

So, love is why there is "something" rather than nothing; love has no why; and the key to life with others is Mercy. 

Merton again:-

The Cross is the sign of contradiction - destroying the seriousness of the Law, of the Empire, of the armies, of blood sacrifice, and of obsession.

But the magicians keep turning the Cross to their own purpose. Yes, it is for them too a sign of contradiction: the awful blasphemy of the religious magician who makes the Cross contradict mercy. This of course is the ultimate temptation of Christianity. To say that Christ has locked all doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved - while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.

A final word from Rumi:-

"Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation"

So be merciful towards my own translation.

How do we get to SEE?

Back in McDonald's (have I ever been away?) and some workman is repairing some piece of electrical set-up. Quite a shrieking of electric drilling, and it makes a change from children screaming. 

Well into pop biographies at the moment and one quote caught my eye...

I have always believed that rock ’n’ roll comes down to myth. There are no “facts.”  (Lester Bangs, in "Rod Stewart")

Not actually reading a Rod Stewart biography, but the quote was from another book sampled. No "facts". It makes me think of the art of translation......and it is an art. Samuel Beckett apparently suffered much as he sought to translate his own works, written in French, into English (or vice versa) Sometimes he gave up the job as impossible. Very easy to translate "the cat sat on the mat" but when you get down to nuances of expression within one language to translate/express the self-same thought/feeling into another becomes a daunting task. The implications of all this is far reaching. I leave it to you. 

For me it relates to "judgement", particularly of others. Reflect upon this:-

It’s difficult to be a legend. It’s hard for me to recognize me. You spend a lot of time trying to avoid it…. The way the world treats you is unbearable…. It’s unbearable because time is passing and you are not your legend, but you’re trapped in it. Nobody will let you out of it except other people who know what it is. But very few people have experienced it, know about it, and I think that can drive you mad. I know it can. I know it can. (James Baldwin, interviewed by Quincy Troupe)

It's difficult to be anybody in this world, where "hell is other people". In a preface to a bio of Elvis Presley I found this:-

“Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel,” Milan Kundera wrote in what could be taken as a challenge thrown down to history and biography, too. This suspension of judgment is the storyteller’s morality, “the morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding.” It is not that moral judgment is illegitimate; it is simply that it has no place in describing a life.

To be honest, thoughts on this bring me to tears, still being emotionally raw from ditching anti-depressants (into the second week now)

We are all living "lifes" and the judgements are terrible at times. "Judge not, lest you be judged". So true. We can know ourselves in the judgements we make of others, and we can therefore stand condemned while the one we judge rests in the mercy and grace of Reality.

But whatever, back to the biographies. Reading one on Charlie Watts at the moment. A good man, beautifully flawed as we all are......" there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in" as Leonard Cohen sings in "Anthem". Just stop trying to make a perfect offering! 

As Keith Richards, his bandmate, said:-

He was a very private man. I always had the feeling that I wouldn’t necessarily step over or enquire about something, unless he wanted to talk about it. There was no side on him, there was no act to follow. Charlie was just what you got, which was Charlie. He was the realest guy I ever met.

So Charlie was just Charlie, which says it all, or says nothing. Take your pick. 

PS One story from the book made me laugh, about Keith Richards in his library, on steps reaching and stretching up to get a book on anatomy by Leonardo da Vinci from the shelves. He slipped and did his collar bone. Keith reports that while he never got the book, he learnt a lot about anatomy! 

On 4/10/2024 at 10:40 PM, romansh said:

Did the graphic novel depict this scene?  

 

Yes, in glorious colour! 

Had to laugh as I read through (for a second time) the graphic novel "Slaughterhouse 5" by Kurt Vonnegut.  The "hero" Billy Pilgrim has the serenity prayer up on his office wall:-

Then it says of Billy that the things he could not change were the past, the present, and the future!

Which jogs my memory of the opening lines of Four Quartets by T S Eliot:-

The end of the same poem:-

Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

(You can tell I'm not very busy)

Another view, this one showing my own best feature......

The view from the till.....

Now at Oxfam. I always bring my own music, but the Ramone's "Rocket to Russia" was playing so I've left it on for the moment - their cover of the old Searcher's hit "Needles and Pins" (or is it "pinsa"?) has always been a favorite.

Posting my previous story, I was remembering (or trying to) a little haiku. I've found it....

For those who proclaim

they've grown weary of children

there are no flowers

What I was going to write before, my original intention, was about trying to describe my actual state of mind recently - a sort of void with all the various thoughts/moments spinning around and about. It's all a bit strange. But just by chance I picked up on a book by Jung, "Psychology and the East" and hit on a passage that was immediately relevant, about the disintegration of the conscious mind and the protection it needs from the "centre". An image really grabbed me:-

The guy is "centred" even in the storm of revolving "selves" which each have their own disintegration into other "selves"! 

"Be still and know that I AM God"

Well, I'm not making much sense. Back to the Ramones!

Tuesday is my Burger and Chips day at McDonald's, prior to my afternoon stint at Oxfam in the music section of the local Book and Music Shop. The place is crowded, I love the ambience of the place. Crowded! And yet down the High Street the Burger King is virtually empty - difficult to know exactly why one place attracts while another is shunned. 

Just to say that since Xmas I have been tapering off the anti-depressants. I tried it a couple of years ago with disastrous results. This time I consulted with my GP and I have stuck to a preplanned reduction, not accelerating simply because of "feeling good". From 40mg I now take just 10mg a day, and next monday is the day when they finally go into the bin. 

The last time I tried I ended up almost in the mad-house. I've probably told this before but really can't remember. In the middle of all the depression and anxiety I had the task of taking a couple of large carrier bags of stuff to my daughter's place, about three miles away. After this, to collect the grand-children from school. It was raining, the wind blowing. No car and the buses here are unreliable. A three mile walk in the wind and rain, with two heavy bags. My eye was on the clock, and the minutes ticked away before I knew I had to leave. The time came, I stood up, and I grabbed both the heavy bags. It just struck me then how impossible it was. I just stood in the middle of the lounge and seriously, it was in my sliding mind the time for the white-coats to come and take me away. I remember simply standing there and saying:- "I need help"......and I meant that I needed to be sectioned, taken away. My dear "other half" (who in all the long years has never said anything like "pull yourself together" or any other bullshit) just thought that I needed help with the task at hand. She said to give my mate Terry a ring, ask him to give me a lift to my daughters. It was something to do. I rang him, and thankfully he was in, and in ten minutes he was there outside. My best mate. 

Not only did he take me, but he then drove me down to the school to pick up the little kiddies, then he hung around for a few more hours (missing his own dinner) after I poured out a few of my problems to him. It brought us closer. Really, he had saved me from the knackers yard. Once or twice I've tried to explain to him but I think he just looked upon it as a small favour. 

Gratitude. He was the mate who died from a sudden heart attack just a couple of months ago. What can you say? 

Anyway, next monday is the end of the tablets day - all being well. The tapering off this time has been fairly uneventful, actually feeling better the less I have taken. Maybe a bit over-emotional and teary at times, but fairly stable; but that said, an undertone of simply feeling very little at all - hard to explain. But I do know that my heart leaps at the sight of "little ones", their faces - children delight me!

Well, I must go. But may continue once I get to Oxfam. I had intended a slightly different post but as usual the words just wrote themselves irrespective of my original intentions.