Euphrosene Labon

Friday 5: Successful self-help gurus tend to sit on the fence where non-spiritual matters are concerned. It is obviously a bad marketing move to alienate a percentage of your target market - those who think differently. So well done Deepak Chopra for speaking out.

As I bang on here and in the forum, it is the message not the messenger that is important. And the message can be interpreted subjectively. Maybe it should be interpreted subjectively?

Communication is also something I bang on about from time to time. The need to express is one form of communication. How we answer emails is another. Responding to a direct question is another. And so forth.

How mystical teachings are communicated and how we interpret them is a subset. So I am latterly rather taken with `hermeneutics´ - not a word that crops up in everyday life. Even its definition is headache-inducing ( a method or principle of interpretation; theory of understanding and interpretation of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions). But I suppose it is relevant to any form of mysticism, like my art or even one as opaque as this blog. More anon.

Later: The sun came out when I went to visit Ma. Although she still wanted to go home "to be with Daddy", it was half-hearted as she was tired. She couldn´t even sit up while the chiropodist was undertaking toenail surgery. Actually, I think she fell asleep. When I made her sit up to have her tea, she managed to gulp it down and half a scone and then it was back to lying down again.

Yesterday, she complained of feeling sick and wanting to vomit. Today she was feeling `giddy´. Of course I couldn´t resist pointing out that neither condition was going to get her living alone again. But she was much calmer. Thank God.

Tech News: I managed to find a reasonably-spec´d, low-cost laptop with XP from PCWB. It´s the business arm of PC World and recommended for some good deals. Plus the service is better too. I am not looking forward to loading gazillions of software packages, but I have added it to the network and got connected. Eventually.

Other People: Africa seems such a beautiful country. The people have an exuberance and sunniness in virtually all the countries that make up the African continent. Yet there is also a terrible darkness about them, whether it comes from the incessant fighting, female circumcision or this dreadful treatment by mothers of their own daughters.

My heart goes out to all those who are in flood areas. It must be soul-damaging to put everything right only for it to flood again within months. Have Osibisa on me.

Also in other people: she does have some truly awful opinions, but I have a curious admiration for Ann Coulter. Her self-confidence is mindboggling as is her thick skin. Perhaps that comes from being brainy as well as beautiful.

Oddly though, I think I agree with her about liberalism. It does seem to be anti-God, yet, like matters ecological, it has religious overtones.

PS I can´t believe I am actually having `lunch´ at 19:00hrs. No wonder I can barely focus.

PPS Have another tune on me - Life is not tried it is merely survived if you´re standing outside the fire.

self-help gurus, message, communication, hermeneutics, mysticism, Ma, chiropodist, PC World, female circumcision, other people, liberalism

Thursday 4: If I wrote every time I had internal and external wranglings with God, it would be a very repetitious blog. But I do (have regular wrangles with God). Worse, there is much that I do not write because I genuinely love God and don´t want others to mock (God) when things do not go right for me.

I feel I should be protecting and defending God. Deluded, eh? Why should a mere human need to protect and defend the Almighty?

Yet what does God do in return for such unshakeable loyalty? Not a lot, actually. Well not in mundane human terms. We believers keep believing even though the logic - well there is no obvious logic. We just believe because of personal experience.

Thus, given the constancy of my underlying thoughts, it was unsurprising that I would relish Frank Cottrell Boyce´s God on Trial on BBC2 last night. It was excellent and gave me much food for (further) thought. And yes, true believers also seem to pick lousy hands or rather the Great Everything seems to reward us with blessings wrapped in thorns.

PS One of God´s big jokes is the family relationship. When parents get infirm, animosity is often never far from the surface. Regular visits are expected, as indeed they should, only to make `frequency´ the next bone of contention.

Peace of mind is a rare commodity. Rarer still when NandDs choose to compare and often browbeat if you have different values. There seems to be a competition to see who will do the most. So not only is there the anxiety of an ailing relative who is pulling in yet another direction, there is the added bad feeling of `value comparison´.

At least I am not alone with sibling disharmony. One email in my inbox mentions one sister taking umbrage with two who lived abroad, yet who rarely went to see her mother - or made the mother take the bus to visit her.

Or there are the Van Cutsems. The younger daughter allegedly kept a £35m inheritance from her two elder sisters because she felt they did not care for the father as well as she did. The middle sister died last year with nothing resolved and the elder and younger sisters are still at war, apparently. Says a `family source´: ‘.. they neglected their father and did not deserve it´.

Who is to say who cares more anyway?

Totally unrelated to my own family, we often do things to resolve issues within ourselves. Guilt, for example, makes us do things we would rather not, if we are honest enough. If others want to do more they will. Comparing and contrasting won´t change anything.

If something is a burden, do not do it. Better to do something from the heart rather than as a duty.

As for myself, I made clear before and am happy to do in public here, when someone is bedridden, with death knocking (although it is often difficult to really know), I will take a sleeping bag if necessary and spend final time with them. Otherwise, I will visit to suit.

Besides, being constantly asked to go home creates an additional stress that I can do without right now. I should be focusing on getting some work, selling more books, selling my art and earning some money. There is only me to pay my bills. There is no-one for support (well apart from the Almighty). So any additional harassment would test the patience of a saint - and we all know I am not one.

In the interests of honesty, after several days of distraught telecons (wanting to go home), I did mention to the nurse whether he thought tranquilising might help, meaning something like Valium. He thought I meant something to knock her out and said it was a bad idea - which I obviously agree with! Has Valium changed so much? It used to be called the happy pill.

Re happy: she does seem happier today. For the first time she agreed to come here for lunch and to see if there are any books she´d like to borrow.

PPS At least I have not written a book called How (Not) To Murder Your Mother (Stephanie Calman)!

PPPS And I still have not written that Quality Statement. It involves more work than I realised.

wrangles with God, Frank Cottrell Boyce, BBC2, family relationship, sibling disharmony, Van Cutsems, Almighty, Valium, happy, How (Not) To Murder Your Mother, Quality Statement