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unsui
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Likes it here |
Registered: September 2007
Messages: 338
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No Message Body
[Updated on: Fri, 24 October 2008 19:43] |
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Dear Michael,
Well said. Last year Peter died. It was 47 years since I'd been to bed with him. We went to visit him and his wife a few years ago. They gave us dinner. If he and I had been alone we might well have renewed that. He explained that the reason we could not be alone was that his wife was jealous!
But as your master said the love that was, still is. I sorted out some pictures of Peter the other day because I'm thinking of writing something autobiographical. I don't really mourn him; I just think back on those times with pleasure.
Love
Anthony
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Michael ~
When do you think accepting memories begin? When we lose someone we love, either through death or they walk away, there is always shock and anger. Then, blame and the silence of depression. During all this, do we form the memories or is it when we finally step over into acceptance that our hearts sigh and the good memories replace most of the pain?
Have you ever felt their touch in a whisper of breeze or their hand on your shoulder to make you stop and think? Do they become part of us or watch over us?
I have a close friend who was in a horrific car accident. The doctors said he should, from the extent of his injuries, have died on the scene. We've talked about this alot and wondered what he was saved to do. There must be reasons for everything that happens like the ripples in a pond when you toss in a stone. My friend lives with great pain but he always has a smile and kind words for everyone. We all have something that we are meant to do. I really believe that; big or small, a ripple in the lives of others.
Scuse the ramble .... I've been thinking about Marc and everyone else who has suffered a great loss plus your post gave me the feeling of words from The People (I am in awe of The People of New Mexico and Arizona)
Hugs ~
Jamie
"It's not lying if they force you into the lie. Not if the only truth they can accept is their own."
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Anthony ~ So, what you're saying is that we have these moments in time filled with joy and we should treasure them, not grieve for their return.
That our lives are enriched by the love we received and we are better people for it.
If you don't mind my asking, when do you think of Peter? What brings the memories? I reckon they make you smile.
Hugs ~
Jamie
{gh}
"It's not lying if they force you into the lie. Not if the only truth they can accept is their own."
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Dear Jamie,
Yes you got that more or less right. I do think of him and our time together with great pleasure and no regrets and very little sadness.
I've been thinking of Peter more often recently. I started (thinking of my grandchildren) to write something autobiographical but, whereas my father's autobiography omitted everything about sex and relationships, I thought I would put as much of that as I could remember in mine. I guess I was sparked off by discovering the stories on the web. I began with Nifty and then discovered IOMfATS.
And I suppose he was the nearest I got to a proper male lover. I've searched for and found quite a few photos of the period = at least two or three of him.
But I have to admit that as we lived separate lives for about forty years I wasn't thinking of him weekly or monthly while bringing up a family and earning my living and so on. It was about five years ago that I started on what I think of as an extended fit of nostalgia and started to try to contact people I'd known in my teens and twenties. No that's wrong! We've been living in this house for fifteen years and I began while we were still in St Albans (where we lived for 32 years). So I must have started before I was sixty.
One of the things I like about this place is that I feel I can be completely honest and open about it. Even if I were 'out' to the whole world I wouldn't feel able to speak the truth and shame the devil.
(For example:)
My wife and I had lunch on New Year's Day with five people who were at Oxford with me and two wives not from Oxford. I was dressed in lycra running tights and I think they all know about me but I think if I had mentioned that for most of my time at Oriel I occasionally buggered the chaplain they would have been shocked to the core.
One has to watch one's tongue, even at 73 when with friends. Peter would not have been shocked!
And, by the way, I don't mind you asking. To be honest I'm flattered.
Love,
Anthony
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Dear Jamie,
You asked Michael a question and in your explanation said something which surprised me. Please forgive me for muscling in on your discussion.
You wrote:
"We've talked about this a lot and wondered what he was saved to do. There "must be reasons for everything that happens like the ripples in a pond when "you toss in a stone.
The notion that there must be a reason for everything that happens is a deeply religious idea. The supposed overall controlling intelligence that is organising things for the best in this 'best of all possible worlds' doesn't explain floods or plagues or earthquakes or indeed anything at all.
It is a grave distortion to interpret all events as being organised for the best. In my opinion it is quite clear that some things that happen are very much for the worse (and some are plainly for the better).
Maybe the origin of the idea is the feeling that we are powerless to change the way the world is. As the man wrote: "Give me the wisdom to accept what I cannot change". But that does not imply that those unchangeables are the work of a guiding intelligence who has a (maybe good) purpose.
Well? Am I talking rot?
Love,
Anthony
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unsui
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Likes it here |
Registered: September 2007
Messages: 338
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No Message Body
[Updated on: Fri, 24 October 2008 19:41] |
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I know exactly what you're saying. I come from an uber-religious background with no dancing, no music (except hymns) and no wavering from the path. It's been a struggle climbing out from under all that. I chose the way of least resistance until I was 18. Let me see if I can make myself clearer.
The Native Americans believe that the fabric of life is formed by the ripples in the pond.The steps I take are influenced by everyone and everything around me and I influence them. Picking up a book a stranger dropped may change their whole frame of mind. Smiling at a child, helping an older lady with her grocery bags, washing the dishes for my mama, writing stories hoping they will help one person.
I dislike organized religion and will never be part of all that again, but I do feel that there is a strong current of energy that runs through all of us. I don't see an enormous man-figure perched on a cloud in front of a giant computer running all our lives. I do have strong hope in reincarnation so I can get it right eventually.
The wars, the tsunamis, the hurricanes and all .... that kinda negates the picture of a kind and loving God. Gotta agree totally.
I do have huge questions about the times we almost die but jerk ourselves out of it like the semi that comes out of nowhere on the curve, standing on the edge of a cliff and 'wanting' to jump, totaling your truck and coming out without a scratch. I've just always felt I'm being "saved" for something .... that it wasn't time yet. It doesn't have to do with The Greater Plan, just, I guess, the serendipity of the moment. I guess with a little more age on me, I'll understand more. I do know I'm mortal though; so many people don't.
I guess some people have faith in God and some people have faith in themselves. It's when you have faith in nothing that you fail.
Just my mish-mash of thoughts ~ Prolly worth 1 horseshoe nail 
Jamie
"It's not lying if they force you into the lie. Not if the only truth they can accept is their own."
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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I think I can accept just about everything that has been said in this thread, but the ripple analogy really made me think.
Most regular posters will know by now that I'm an agnostic who is only a hairsbreadth from being an atheist, so I clearly don't believe that anything in life is pre-ordained. Yet the thought of the ripples resonated deeply because it reflects very closely the way I live my life - or at least try to. Richard Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford, in an article recently published in 'The Observer' (a UK Sunday newspaper) said that he had no difficulty in accepting the contention of Professor Richard Dawkins (Britain's premier atheist) that morality could exist independently of belief. I find it very reassuring that a senior Anglican Bishop can acknowledge that being an unbeliever is no barrier to being a good person because, though I haven't always suceed, that's what I've tried to be. Going back to the ripples, they spread out when a stone is thrown into the pond and, to a greater or lesser degree, they affect everything in the pond - except the stone. It is at the epicentre of the disturbance, but it isn't affected by it. So it seems to me that the analogy fits my situation perfectly; my actions can impinge upon the future actions of others, as can theirs upon me, but that doesn't imply any pre-ordination. I have the choice at any given moment of being good or bad, and for essentially the reasons Dawkins suggests I choose to try to be good.
I think that memories can also be fitted into the pattern, and though memories of those we have lost in one way or another are particularly poignant, all memory pays a part. It's certainly true that memory can be triggered by external input, including the whisper of a breeze or a hand on the shoulder - it is, apparently, a consequence of the way our brains process current inputs by comparing them with past inputs. Our experience helps to define who we are, and if we wish to be 'good' memory will play a large part in determining the way we act, and thus the way we influence others.
All of which leaves me in the somewhat surprised position of finding my life ethic as an unbeliever to be only a whisker away from the theistic mysticism of the Native Amarican. And, for me, that's pretty damn' astonishing!
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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