Il est mort, well no not yet

Monty,

My creative elbow has seized up, perhaps painting a landscape will help.


I live a small life - as small as it is it expands outwards from here via the web just like it does for many of us.
This valley envelopes and sometimes encloses our lives. The folk of this valley are our bread and butter - we listen to their anger, frustration and joy with this thing called life.

Life can be cruel, harsh and grim - that is the reality - but also equally real is the joy, sheer joy in the simple things - the love of family and friends, the sun after all that rain, finding a lime hawk moth caterpillar in the garden.





'There are many paths to enlightenment' Mine came through a daydream many years ago, it eventually led to an event in Jerusalem 2000 years ago which lifted me above the rooftops of Southsea in 1982, and lifts me to this faltering day.



For me, when things get tough, the one vicar remains, despite ego, weakness and boasting. I will soon disappear from this earth like us all.

Here in the small garden cloister I try to forget difficult consultations and conflicts relating to ill health. Illness is crippling not only physically but also mentally and spiritually. I too have been crippled by it - I still have the physical problems which come along as we get older, and sometimes bouts of anger and depression, but thankfully less so now.

When confronted with a sense of hopelessness and a mind bounded by ill health, it is a great challenge to be able to help that individual in any way - because at that point the mind is closed off to any hope - it is defeated. Hope is outside of our limitations. To set the mind outside of everything which seems against hope is almost impossible. When we loose the physical ability to pursue the interests we had when active - causes such grief, such loss, indeed all that can be seen is the loss. To find contentment in such circumstances takes a huge step of faith, and I am not sure how to help someone achieve that.

Sitting here under the tree I am grateful that I can still potter in the garden. How will I feel when I can no longer do this ? Perhaps I too would just become defeated.
In the meantime starting this painting helps, because it lifts me out of my mindset and out above the valley, toward the Pembrokeshire hills.


Paul.


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