Uninspired or (just) tired?

Yesterday, I read the latest post by Nimue Brown on the wonderful Druid Life blog: Where is my inspiration?

It struck several very deep chords with me.

For the best part of a couple of years, my day job has been increasingly stressful and pressured and has demanded more and more of me both intellectually and emotionally. During that time, it’s been increasingly difficult to find the inspiration to get new personal projects going. And when I have found something I want to say, I’ve tried to weigh up honestly whether I feel that someone else has said it already, or said it better. If they have, then where's the use in my writing about it, too?

And then, there’s the feeling that, as Nimue says, I could be doing something more useful with my remaining energy! And when I take a look at what others are doing, I tend to agree with Nimue's assessment that ‘The world has more writers than it needs...’.

(But then, there is, for me, the pull of poetry. It’s always been my first love in writing terms; it is the one thing I manage to keep going and is the one thing I think I’m reasonably good at. If there is to be a book with my name on it one day, I think it would be poetry.)

I continue to wrestle with the best way to balance the ideas in my head, the desires in my heart, and the time and energy available to me. Perhaps, for now, I should just see where these feelings are taking me; perhaps the inspiration (the Awen) will return. In the meantime, Nimue's post has helped me to feel less guilty and anxious about my lack of motivation and inspiration. For that, for now, I am thankful.
 

Ready for my close-up

If you don't mind my asking, when did you last take a photograph of yourself? In other words, when was your latest selfie? I asked myself that question earlier this week and struggled to come up with an answer. After a few minutes' thought I reckoned that the last time I took a photograph of myself was last August, i.e. August 2015, i.e. (if a further 'i.e.' is allowed) 15 months ago.

That realization produced two near-simultaneous responses in me:

1. I couldn't believe it.
2. I could believe it.

Of course, I realise that we take selfies all the time: it's now second nature to point the camera at oneself and capture a pose. I realise also that I am of the generation that has come to mobile technology 'second-hand', as it were, having lived my teenage and early adult years at a time when mobile phones and even digital cameras did not exist. But now that smartphones are available to all and that 66% (and rising) of UK adults own one, my 15-month selfie no-show feels somehow odd. I can't quite believe that I don't do what so many people readily do. What don't I get about this everyday ritual? 

But, then, perhaps I do believe it, after all. I am, by preference, a strong introvert and so tend not to feel drawn to putting myself 'out there' online or in group chats. Also, I spent the formative years of my life in the era when taking photos happened at 18th birthday parties or weddings or, perhaps, on Christmas Day. When I was a teenager, if someone came along to a party with a camera, it became something of a talking-point. Now, if someone comes along without one, it's weird. As a result, I never developed (pre-digital-photography joke, there!) the mindset that taking a photo on the spur of the moment is something that I would do.

And I do worry that I'm missing out, I really do. I don't have a smartphone full of snaps of my family and friends. And I worry that I'm the only one of my peers that doesn't. Will I regret this in five years' time? What about in ten years' time? Twenty years? And what about when it's all too late?

To end, I should own up to the fact that I don't actually have a smartphone. I did, once, for about eight months, but I found it overwhelming. I spent ridiculous amounts of time downloading apps which didn't quite live up to the hype, or occasionally taking photos which never saw the light of day. It all just felt like too much hard work. And so one day, when the battery ran out, I just didn't plug it into the charger. And I replaced it with a phone which cost me £9.99 and had no camera.

And that selfie I took 15 months ago? Well, I actually took it on an old Polaroid camera, and it was a picture of only my feet, as I walked through an ancient forest in Devon. Why I felt drawn to capture that moment, I'm not quite sure. Perhaps it was to prove, as perhaps all our selfies are, that on a particular day and at a particular time, I was here.

The opposite of faith...

I sometimes suggest to the folks at my church that the 'opposite' of faith is not doubt, but certainty. On more than one occasion I have spoken to my congregation of my own doubts, and been open with them about the extent to which I struggle with some aspects of the Christian faith. I can only hope that my willingness to admit my doubts has helped them with theirs.

It is, perhaps, even more surprising to learn of the doubts of senior figures in the Church (though, perhaps, we should not be so surprised - they are, after all, human). One such honest individual is Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh and also a writer and speaker. I saw a short interview with him here in which he speaks of the doubts and uncertainties which came gradually upon him as he got older.

But as I watched in the interview, I got the sense that, rather than losing his faith, as some would have it, Bishop Richard was journeying into a new, more mysterious faith. A faith with fewer certainties and more wonder. A faith rooted, as it were, less in God and more in life. Richard Holloway's honesty, openness and sensitivity helped me to feel a little more accepting of some doubts in my own journey.

Whatever your own journey, the interview is well worth watching. As Richard Holloway says in the interview, he still belongs to the Church, and attends regularly, but he doesn't 'do God easily'. I wish that more in the Church were like him.