Are you lonely? Some people enjoy solitude, being alone doesn’t always mean feeling lonely. Loneliness is the distress, some have called it ‘social pain’, that comes from a perceived gap between desired social interaction and one’s experiences of it. It can lead on to other mental health issues : depression, anxiety, paranoia. Loneliness is often…
Exploring the idea of prayer further, I have been reading Rev John Wesley’s sermon on the subject. He says the model prayer Jesus left us, contains all that we can reasonably pray for; there is nothing that we need to ask God for which isn’t mentioned – physical, mental and spiritual needs, past, present and…
I remember my Grandma having a small plaque that had these three words on; I read it every time I went into her kitchen and sat with her. She lived just down the road, so I would be there at some point on most days. I’ve always been interested in words and letters, so it…
I was there watching when your alarm went off this morning. I saw you hit the snooze button and wondered if you might remember me as you scrolled through the appointments and activities you planned for the day. But I guess your mind was full of other things. I saw you hurriedly jump out of…
At weekends when my children were small, we would often open a tub of popcorn and hunker down to share a film together. I’d invite them to take a handful of the snack and put it in a bowl on their laps and nibble as they watched. However, there was one evening when the tub…
Thinking of the D-Day anniversary, reminded me of this story. One Sunday, a man went to a service in an unfamiliar church. He arrived early and parked his car. As he opened the door to get out, another car pulled up next to him and the driver wound down his window,” I always park there.…
It doesn’t seem possible that it’s June already! To me, it’s a month of contrasts with lots of family birthday celebrations but also echoes of the solemnity of examinations. It’s about celebrating long evenings and the shortest night. It’s a time of transition as, from the end of the month, days begin to shorten even…
When it was my birthday recently, small granddaughter rushed to meet me at the door, ‘Grandma, Grandma, I’ve got a card for you!’ she shouted, her eyes flashing with excitement and her hand waving a large pink envelope. ‘Wow!’ I gasped as if I’d never seen a card before,’ What’s this?’ ‘It’s a CARD Grandma!’…
You may remember a few weeks ago, I wrote about a recent incident when my ‘daughter-in -law’ was taken into A&E. I recounted the reactions of the older two grandchildren which ranged from mild hysteria to laid back detachment. So, what about the youngest? How did she react? When I arrived, she ran into my…
May dew was thought to have special properties – girls who bathed in it were thought to have beautiful complexions; people would go out of their way to walk barefoot or roll in it; men who washed their hands in it were thought to become good at tying knots and making nets. Mothers would wrap…