Feeling a wee bit adrift....

I'm pretty confused.
I'm not religious or spiritual any more. I used to be SO MUCH.
BIG reasons why I'm not now. Won't go into that here! (Although I did explain it, here...)
But anyway.... it isn't that I miss it, it's just strange, having to learn to be something different to what I was.

When your faith drops out of your life it takes a few years for the dust to settle. And now that it has, I find myself not knowing what my "moral compass" is. What is my "philosophy of life"- and do I even need one?

In my past I would turn to my religion. I would think of the Bible or some saint. Like St Therese of Liseaux. She wrote about her "Little Way" which was basically "purity of intention". She was in an enclosed convent so couldn't do much for her companions in a big way. But in her "little way" she said that if she put lots of love and meaning into the little things she COULD do, that would make them worth as much as something big.

-Basically doing your best and putting others first.
Though I've been warned, usually by well meaning therapists that this can be taken too far.
When I was nine years old I remember my teacher at school telling us,
"Always put the donkey last. YOU are the donkey."
-And I applied it even to the smallest thing.
Perhaps this was partly why I was unable to stand up to bullies.

I find myself slipping into it quite naturally even now.
I make two cups of tea, one for me and one for a guest. I spoil one of them by pouring too much milk into the cup. So I have that one, and give the better one to the guest. Even though I cannot stand milky tea. Nothing is said, nothing is noticed. It's natural, internal. So some things hang over from one life to the next, from the religious to the secular.

But when I was a Christian, and especially when I was a Catholic, if, every now and then, I felt like I needed a spring clean on the inside, I would go to God, or even to "Confession", get the "slate wiped clean" and, essentially, *start over*. It was a way of drawing a line and starting again, with good intentions to be better, etc. etc. The mental relief was outstanding. A huge weight would disappear from my shoulders and I'd carry on, refreshed. I truly think it's how the human race got by without psycotherapy for so long =)

Well I currently feel like a tumble dryer that needs its lint filter cleaning out. And I no longer know how to do it, because I don't have those outlets any more. How do I draw a line and carry on refreshed, if I don't have anything to draw the line with any more?

I have a friend who also used to be a Church-goer and regular pray-er. She's stopped going along lately. Says she can't seem to believe in it any more. I worry for her. She is giving up more than she realises. I hope she isn't doing it lightly. I have no regrets about my decision, but when it comes to advice on others' beliefs I can't give any, except to say that life with faith is a little more straightforward than life without it, not because it gives all the answers, but because it just has fewer questions.

sorry to go heavy on you all... I HAVE been crafting.... I'll lighten up next time with some photo's of what I've been working on!

Figs, and why I can't believe I'll see her again.

Please don't read this post if you're down.

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Today is Figgy's anniversary. I had to let her go 4 years ago today, because of a vicious cancer. We had the tumour removed twice, but it came back faster and faster each time. Once I had decided that I couldn't go on putting her through more removals, we had just a small operation to reduce the tumour, then hang on, hoping that she would get one more summer, as she loved being out in the sun so much.

Figs loved to climb up the stepladder so in the end, we put it up especially for her, in the back garden. Sometimes she'd be running up it before we'd put it up properly!

This last week of hers, the summer finally arrived. She spent it mostly in the garden, in the sun, or lounging between flowerbeds. By the end of the week I spotted -to my horror- that the tumour had suddenly got worse. I rang the vet; the next morning was goodbye. Couldn't bear to let her go through any more, not once I'd seen that it had worsened.

Fluffy wants out, Figs wants in! I can't remember who linched whom!

I sometimes berate myself that I was selfish, and that I should have let her go earlier. I know some people feel guilty about the euthanasia part, but I don't, because I think it's kinder not to let her go through actually dying of cancer. What I twist myself up in knots about is whether she was in pain that last week. She was slower, not interested in playing. I wish I had been braver.

Figs and me, 2003

I still can't think about her without getting upset. I was crying in the night, once I remembered what day it now was. I've lost other pets, other cats, but never had the pain of loss last so long afterwards. Belly-up in the sun. She flipped to this position a lot.

She would let me cuddle her tummy, and even blow raspberries on it!!!!

I wonder if the grief is lasting longer simply because my mother made me bury her while she was still warm, whereas I just wanted to stroke her, watch her. I know she was thinking of Figgy's sibling cats, Fluffy and Scooter, and was concerned that they not get upset. But I thought of that too, and wanted to put Figs in her box and put her in the shed for an hour, alone, "resting".

Figs had a 'baggy belly'. She wasn't fat, but it wobbled as though she had had kittens, but she never had. Here she is displaying said belly, as well as her wallpaper art.

I reluctantly agreed to bury her straight away. I was in no fit state to argue and didn't want the other cats to detect my being upset.

And so there she lays: in mum's back garden, alongside Mama Cat who preceded her by 2 years (also because of cancer). I planted carnations, sweet pinks, on her spot. I brought some home to my garden at the time and they came into flower again last week.

Figs giving her mum, Snowy-Mama-Cat, a wash.

I struggle with the subject of mum moving house, as I have nightmarish visions of someone digging up my cats. Some sicko playing with whatever is left of them. Or just throwing them on the bonfire.

I just want her back. Just want to hold her again and hear her chortle.

By far the worst thing about living without religion or spirituality is the glaring end that it means death is. The ultimate comfort would be to believe that I could hold her again one day. Please don't be offended if you still hold that faith. But I can't. When your medication has proven to you that things, sensations, horrible feelings, disturbing sounds, whispers, all these that you thought were real, were in fact hallucinations, it is terribly hard to believe in things, even if you can hear and see them, let alone the invisible.

And impossible, I've found, to believe that any feeling or experience that could once have been described as 'spiritual' isn't just another product of an ill mind. Those old feelings of being watched, or of living with hauntings, these were 'spiritual' too, but proved to be false.

When what you've seen with your own eyes and heard with your own ears for decades is proven to not exist, how can what you might sense as 'spiritual' be trusted not to be false also? See what I mean? What I used to call "God's presence" I now think of as my frontal lobe.

-I don't mean any of that to sound arrogant, or like I'm refusing to believe, stubbornly, with folded arms. I used to have a deep faith. Speaking in tongues and the whole shabang. I even spent a year in a convent. So I didn't just lose a Sunday morning habit, I lost a lot. I just can't trust any of it to be true any more, not after what I've experienced with my mad head.

And so I'm left with endings. Friends, human or otherwise, gone.

ABC Wednesday......

M is for MINSTEAD................

.......................and MAISY

MINSTEAD is one of the villages we visited when we were in the New Forest last week.
It's a tiny place.
But it had something in the graveyard that I wanted to see...

....so, up the hill to the church we went:

...see the double lych gate? Apparently they're very rare. The block in the centre of this one is a coffin rest. You rest the coffin there as you walk in either side....

Just inside the gate is half a yew tree. Really! It was very old, and split after a storm a few years ago. The parish voted to keep what was left. The resulting carcass effect is a rather eerie welcome....

We walked around to the back of the church, and here it is, what I came to see:

The grave of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
writer and creator of Sherlock Holmes.

STEEL TRUE
BLADE STRAIGHT
Arthur Conan Doyle
Knight
Patriot, physician & man of letters.
22 May 1859 - 17 July 1930
and his beloved wife
Jean Conan Doyle
reunited 27 June 1940

I love the way someone has left a pipe!The grave is near to a big oak tree:
In actual fact, he isn't buried here. This is his wife's grave. Arthur was not permitted to be buried in the main part of the graveyard because he was a Spiritualist. Instead, he is buried "on the outskirts of the graveyard". Hmmm...

Anyway. We turned to walk the other way back to the front of the church- because when I was little I was told that it is unlucky to walk anti-clockwise round a church- "Never go widdershins round a church" was the saying. But don't ask me where "widdershins" comes from!

On my way I spotted this unusual angel:It stood out to me because, although not overlarge, the figure was clinging to the back of the headstone. I've never seen this kind of memorial before. Angels usually kneel at the front or stand hugging a cross, or have their backs subsumed into the main headstone. This is different: meditative, thoughtful. Even a little playful.She is draping some roses over the stone.
I was moved, and wanted to know who had inspired this.....MAISY Elisabeth Smith.
She died at just 10 weeks old on 26th April 2000.

I wanted to take more photo's but something held me back from doing so. It seemed wrong.
The Conan-Doyle grave was different- maybe because he was famous. Or perhaps because that was longer ago. I didn't know Maisy's family. To take more pictures felt like a sneaky theft.

So instead I stood the flowers up that had toppled over. Tidied off a few dead leaves and read the inscription. When I got home, I was surprised to see that I hadn't even photographed that. But I do remember the gist of what it said: that Maisy had been so "loving and giving, and exactly what the world needed, but maybe Heaven needed her kind more, to help look after us all". I think that was it.

I felt uncomfortable beside the austere cross of the Conan Doyle grave. But I had to pull myself away from this one. It was starting to rain, my partner had started to walk back to the car, and maybe this interest in a grave was starting to look weird. So eventually I left Maisy and her angel behind.

It had been nice to see a more recent and more tender monument, seemingly beautifully indifferent to being in the shadow of an 800 year old building, its fractured yew and its more famous residents.

I don't have any faith to speak of any more. And that's another story. But like I recently read of Julian Barnes, "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him." ...I have to admit there was a sweetness around this little resting place. I left it with a lilt inside that returned now, just as I typed this. And I will remember it far longer than the more renowned grave by the impressive oak.

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By the way, I didn't think about using "M for Maisy" when I took the photo's. This only occurred to me the other day. I think if I had thought of it at the time it would have stopped me taking the pictures at all.

It seems her anniversary is coming round soon (26th). Spare some thoughts for Maisy and her family when it does, won't you?

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For more info ABC Wednesday posts, go to Mrs Nesbitt's blog

where you will see a blogroll of those taking part.

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