A real treat for the end of the year

Posted on Thursday, 29 December, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I wish England was this!

In the Fen Country: Landscape and Music in the Work of Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams

This is a truly beautiful posting on the English music that broke with the German Romantic fashion promoted by Stanford and Parry, and Elgar also to an extent. That being said, I love and identify with the German music of the tradition of Bach, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms and others – “pure” music. Read the article, enjoy the paintings and listen to the music which is also available on YouTube.

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More Aspie Stuff

Posted on Wednesday, 28 December, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have been looking some more information on the internet, and am finding some remarkable stuff. Here’s one from an American writer, a woman, who has a lovely way of describing things. She wrote My Inner Life: Adventures With Asperger’s. Like myself, she has not had a professional diagnosis but has done some tests. One I did last January, just under a year ago, revealed a “neurodiverse” score of 116 of 200 and a “neurotypical” score of 98 of 200. The young lady to whom I linked took the same test and got 125 of 200 and a “neurotypical” score of 86 of 200. I think my differences were my intact physical coordination and spatial perception (ability to drive safely and navigate at sea), and being slightly less sensitive to outside stimuli. I will do the test again, trying to be as honest as possible, and see how it goes.

Whatever, each human being is totally different and the typology has to be very subtle. One sign is feeling more in common with “aspie” people than with mainstream folk in our places of work and in the world. Many aspies do not have habits like flapping hands or melting down at the slightest stimulation. I do look people in the eye even if not for very long. One thing I like about this lady’s article is the interior dimension of this condition. Whoever we are, we can’t know what it feels like to be someone else. But, I do notice that many things I notice and which bring me some pleasure (or the opposite) have little or no effect on most people.

The inner world is described thus, and I have never come anywhere near articulating it with such precision:

I want to show you what it is like to live inside in my head. It is a colorful world, a verbal world, a world of impressions and shapes and impulses and words and thoughts that can never be put into words no matter how much I struggle. It is a place where new connections are constantly being formed, where I am testing the truth of every statement, searching for contradictions, searching for commonalities, searching for patterns and puns and odd ways to fit everything together.

My mind wants to hear everything, see everything, take it all in. And sometimes it breaks down because it has taken in too much. I want to know people in impossibly deep ways, and yet want to avoid them because the disruptions they cause to my steady stream of thoughts is nearly intolerable.

I do not settle for simple. I will not abide ordinary. Welcome to my inner life.

I have always had “impressions” from everything I see, hear, smell, taste and touch, but have never been able to describe them, any more than being able to describe a colour other than by using the conventional words red, yellow, blue, etc. My experience of sensing things in this world makes a big impression on me, but is this so with most people. Or, do they keep quiet lest they should be labelled as mentally ill? The schizophrenic sees and hears things that most people don’t sense, and are labelled as crazy when they are diagnosed by a psychiatrist. My own theory is that some people sense reality totally differently. Perhaps the very reality they sense is different. Quantum physicists talk about multiverses: different worlds of probabilities. Imagine a world in which there was no first World War, and Hitler remained a bummer and failed art student in Vienna – or a world in which there was no Reformation of French Revolution. Maybe all these worlds exist at the same time but at different “frequencies” like on a radio. Most of us live in a single frequency like a perfectly-tuned radio, but sometimes there is interference. Thus some people have mystical experiences, see Our Lady, prophecy, speak in tongues, goodness knows what else! Something of that happens in me, but it is too different to describe, too subtle. Have I experienced something of heaven and hell? Perhaps, on one hand through music and beauty, and on the other hand through hearing hard rock blaring out of a car and hearing the way some people talk and act.

Some people have synaesthesia, which is something very strange. For example, letters and words have colours, you can “touch” musical notes, hear tastes of food, and all sorts. Perhaps the “celestial electrician” was drunk when he connected all the circuits, switches, relays and circuit breakers! I do tend to take some words and separate them from their conventional meaning, and take enjoyment in pronouncing them and making them mean something else. The words concerned change throughout life, but some current examples coming into thoughts are “drop”, “apple pie”, “prickly” and some others. Some of these words I associate with pieces of music. I listen to Parry’s Shulbrede Tunes  played on the piano, and then the quintessential English dessert, apple pie, came up in my mind. Perhaps Mrs Parry made good apple pie in her Victorian kitchen when her husband was teaching, composing or out in his boat! There is a lovely passage of Alfred Deller singing Purcell’s Music for Awhile, and the word “drop, drop, drop” is repeated. It is rather a lovely sensation to sing it. In a certain way, an “aspie” remains a child, innocent and open to everything – which is not a good idea in today’s modern world of predators and people with personality issues. Naturally, you keep quiet about this kind of thing, otherwise you might be grouped with people who think they are Napoleon – stark raving crackers!

When I was six years old (the year was 1965 when Churchill died), I was taken shopping by my mother in town. One of our ports of call was Briggs Boot Store where farmers, gardeners and others would find their joy in stock. There was a whole row of wellies of different types and sizes on the floor along the front row of shelves. My mother would remind me of this story years afterwards, how I touched each boot (yes, they were in pairs) and chirped “Booty, booty, booty” all the way down the row. I don’t think I was particularly fascinated by boots, but rather by the word. I suppose it still resonates when I boot up the computer or hear the expression “So-and-so got the boot”. It’s a strange word. In German, it means a boat and the French say botte.

Since childhood, I have been fascinated with words, their etymology and meaning as well as the sound of their pronunciation. I enjoyed grammar lessons at school and did well at writing my little weekly essays. I was never very good at foreign languages, but I learned French through the force of circumstances. Finally, I earn my living by what I am best at, but I tend to be a tad literal for some clients. That has to be carefully watched. Abstract mathematics and Aristotelian logic were off my radar, but I can deal with things like geometry and trigonometry because they allow us to measure things using angles – indispensable for sea navigation.

Science seems to have identified differences in the structures of our neurones and the way our brains function. It is genetic, a neurological difference and not a mental problem caused by bad outside influence like childhood abuse. Some think it is caused by pollution, poisons and vaccines, but not all scientists are agreed. Autism has been studied for a long time, and there is a whole spectrum from those who are very retarded and have no use of language to kids like Mozart or Einstein or a physics student who proved mathematical errors in Newton’s calculations.

It is not without significance that the old Gnostics distinguished between the spirituals (pneumatics), the psychics and the hylics (materialists). There are theories, more or less fantastic, about humans being descended from different “races” of “extraterrestrial” or “angelic” species of before the Flood. I think that Hitler got into this sort of conspiracy stuff as a part of his eugenics programme – and there is plenty of garbage from weird Evangelical cults on YouTube. All the same, there might be something in the genetic questions, just as with debilitating illnesses like Downs Syndrome because of DNA or genetic defects. I can imagine that some of the genetic differences go back many generations and perhaps even to ancient times.

Whatever, we are all human beings with different experiences of life, and some of us fit badly into mainstream life, at least without adaptation and convincing acting. Regarding Aspergers Syndrome or high-functioning autism as psychiatrists generally call it nowadays, some of the classical stereotypes are being dropped or given less emphasis as criteria.

It is since I begun to read about the experience of “aspies”, however imperfectly expressed in conventional language, that I began to understand that there was really a difference between how sensitive people feel things and most “ordinary” people feel them. Perhaps the big difference is that “aspies” feel everything from within, and most people rely on stimulation from outside, from crowds and groups of people giving them energy.

I share the same social awkwardness, though I have become better at not over-compensating for it by trying to be a false extrovert and make a complete fool of myself, especially by mimicking and imitating characters with idiosyncrasies. I can just be myself, but know that I will never “hold court” in a conversation. I am just drowned out by the others and I listen if the subject is interesting, try to be polite or get up and walk away quietly. This is the way it is. My talents lie elsewhere. I am no Oscar Wilde! I always hated small talk, and make a fool of myself when I try it. It is necessary, and I understand that intellectually. I have learned to desist from engaging people I don’t know in deep conversation. There’s nothing worse than a party bore, and I seem to have learned that lesson a long time ago – from my father.

It is a whole experience of life, and reading about others who have the same or similar experiences of life bring a whole sense of identity, not of sick people looking for a cure, but our own existence with our individual talents but social difficulties. None of us can be good at everything between using language, numbers and figures and calculations – or their physical expressions.

I was certainly given to hyperlexia as a child, reading material that was totally inappropriate for a child. For example my father’s textbooks from his university days on animal anatomy and pathology fascinated me. Biochemistry was a little less fascinating, and I would find dead animals and birds (if they weren’t too mutilated by the cat or putrid), and my father would teach me how to do a dissection and drawings of the internal organs. My grandmother was successful in getting me onto ornithology by buying me a very nice Readers Digest book – and I still remember quite a few species to this day. The characteristic obsessions were certainly me, from dismantling mechanical toys to collecting locks and keys. I became fascinated by Captain Nemo’s submarine from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne. I suppose that that sort of thing was quite characteristic. My problem was that I didn’t seem to be able to invent something that hadn’t already been invented! I still have some film footage of me, taken on Super 8 by my father, standing in front of a flower bush in the garden playing with bee-like flies, totally absorbed in the flowers and flying insects. I seemed not to be far from being the Very Model of a Modern Major General!

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

I’m very good at integral and differential calculus;
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

I know our mythic history, King Arthur’s and Sir Caradoc’s;
I answer hard acrostics, I’ve a pretty taste for paradox,
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous;
I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,
I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes!
Then I can hum a fugue of which I’ve heard the music’s din afore,
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.

Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,
And tell you ev’ry detail of Caractacus’s uniform:
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

In fact, when I know what is meant by “mamelon” and “ravelin”,
When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a Javelin,
When such affairs as sorties and surprises I’m more wary at,
And when I know precisely what is meant by “commissariat”
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery
In short, when I’ve a smattering of elemental strategy
You’ll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee.

For my military knowledge, though I’m plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

The implication seems to be that the poor fellow knew everything and nothing! When one grows up, one has to get an idea of reality and concentrate on what is really within our reach!

Circumstances in my life seem to dictate that I will live a very secluded life, hopefully in the west of Brittany. I am going to leave married life, for the sake of my soul and sense of being. I need the stability of life and predictability with which I can only find with myself. Knowing that I have failed in a relationship is bitter, but it will be better for her and better for me to go our ways. I will have time and possibility to focus, not only to “hack” translations but also to do some real writing beyond this blog. I need to think up some projects, perhaps the question of ability to relate to a Church and remain a person. There is an Asperger Ministry blog on the web, which is very interesting, but it seems to have lost steam and is Evangelical. A comparative approach is very revealing, and shows the difficulties we have in Churches simply because of social difficulties and inability to fit into a team or a group.

When I read through the article, I recognise so much, but not everything. I don’t rock backwards and forwards, nor do I flap hands. I do sometime fidget, but very discreetly and not in circumstances where I would be judged for it. On the whole, my own life compares with this lady’s life or that of so many others. I have to realise that most people are totally different and have other priorities. I do not judge them, because man is naturally social like many species of animals. We have to be to survive. We are conditioned to believe that if we do not relate to this mould, we have moral failings and are selfish. We live in a “neurotypical” world and we have to negotiate with it and play the game, be realistic. I often criticise “preppers” and others in alternative lifestyles, because we will not entirely eliminate money and the need for electricity, telephone and other utilities. We can become less dependent, but compromise is necessary. That takes a lot of effort.

I have a strong sense of empathy too, and I feel conflicts very intensely, even when the conflicts do not concern me. One that occurred between my wife and her sister caused me an anxiety state that lasted for more than a month, and my wife getting too close to me now still causes the anxiety. She comes to me, not to bring tenderness and comfort, like a man would usually expect from a loving wife, but more need for energy, another “fix”. I must go away as soon as possible and establish myself in the contemplative life I seek. In a group with a lot of noise, I find it difficult to filter and follow a conversation. Perhaps the worst I have known is the evening festivities at the Semaine du Golfe when the traditional Brittany dance music blares out of over-amplified speakers. I hear all the noise and it is quite painful.

Autism experts still see the spectrum of conditions as a handicap. I intend to study this human phenomenon and try to understand not only the high-functioning part of the continuum but also the little children who are given up as idiots. Some “aspies” have become priests like I have, and that definitely goes against the management principles and criteria of vocations directors and seminary rectors. Would I have persevered with the knowledge I now have? I think so, and with the idea that people can bring their gifts and talents to their vocation, and not merely conform to a system.

There is the Christian site I linked to above. There is also Wrong Planet, which contains a forum. I find it a little bewildering, and don’t let anyone count on me to organise anything new. I already posted a load of links that depart from the old stereotypes of clumsy geeks and examine the interior and human dimensions. There would be room for Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Orthodox who identify with this condition, or have received a professional diagnosis, but it is better for them to look at the “aspie community” in general and pursue the path of their own individuation as Jung would have expressed it. I know at least two “aspies” who read my site. There are certainly others, because they like my way of going on and on and on.

Whether we are “aspie” or “neurotypical” or somewhere between the two, let us pray for each other and learn to love the diversity of our personalities and experience of life.

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Archbishop Hepworth Again

Posted on Tuesday, 27 December, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I read this in John Bruce’s blog:

Hepworth Visit

Abp Hewpworth will visit and celebrate mass at St Mary of the Angels at 7:00 PM Epiphany Day, Friday, January 6, 2017, not Epiphany Sunday as I had previously posted. (I assumed!!) Anyone for whom this is convenient is, of course, invited. I will attend and try to get a photo, though probably not outside the church.

Unless Rome has secretly made him Titular Archbishop of Titipu sometime in the last couple of years, what surprises me is not that he is visiting a priest who wants him as his bishop. What is incoherent is that the event is being encouraged by a Roman Catholic convert and apologist who is more or less opposed to the Ordinariates on the pretext of their not being Catholic enough!

If he is not a Roman Catholic Titular Archbishop, I am wondering what he is Archbishop of. Not the TAC, because their man is Archbishop Shane Jantzen. I have not heard of a an alternative TAC being founded to replace the old one, even less of the elusive Patrimony of the Primate.

The mind boggles. Perhaps we will read soon about my crankiness. It takes all sorts – or There’s now’t so queer as folk, as we say in my part of the world.

PS. I hesitated about posting on this subject, but I saw my statistics were a little on the low side. This one should add a little pizzaz!

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Happy Christmas

Posted on Saturday, 24 December, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

christmas2012I convey my Christmas greeting to all those to whom I have not been able to write individually. May this feast of the Nativity renew the joy and hope of Christ in us all.

Christmas is often a sad occasion through human hypocrisy and grotesque gluttony, the glittering lights and decorations meaning but little to most people. May this feast be an occasion to pray for the poor in spirit, those who are poor, homeless, sick, loveless, estranged from their families, broken-hearted and suffering from every illness, disability and pain. We bring them and us all to the Infant Jesus in this silent night of the Sol Invictus.

I share with you the Sarum sequence of the Mass in gallicantu, translation by Canon Warren.

All hosts, above, beneath,

Sing the incarnate Lord,
With instruments and pious breath

Attune each measured word.
This is the hallow’d morn

When on our fallen race
In full effulgence rose the dawn

Of new-born joy and grace.
Glory to God on high,

On this renowned night
Was thundered forth in harmony

By angel legions bright.
Amazing splendours shone

A strange unwonted sight
Upon the shepherds biding lone

Under the veil of night.
Sudden, while peacefully

They watch’d their sheep-folds still.
Good tidings wafted from on high

Their ears attentive fill.
Who was before all time

Is born of purest Maid;
Glory to God in heights sublime,

Peace comes the world to aid.
E’en thus the choir on high

Sings praises jubilant,
From pole to pole their voices fly,

Heaven echoes to their chant.
Let all with thrilling voice

Give back the glorious lay,
Let the wide universe rejoice,

That God is born this day.
Burst are the iron chains

Which held the world in thrall;
The cruel foe no longer reigns,

Peace is restored to all.
For lo ! an order new

Doth the glad world adorn ;
Let all things render praises due

Unto the Virgin-born.
He all upholds alone,

He all alone did frame ;
May he who hath such pity shown

Blot out our sin and shame.

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Great British Eccentrics

Posted on Friday, 23 December, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Many years ago, when I was at school in York, I was introduced to one of the songmen of the Minster. He had been there for years and was living in a little house belonging to the Dean and Chapter in Monk Bar Court with its back yard hard up against the medieval city wall. He was an amazing fellow who was born in Halifax during the first World War and had learned enough about music and singing to be up to English Cathedral standards of choral singing. His name was John Rothera.

His two great passions were photography and sound recording. He was often to be seen carrying a huge 1950’s Ferrograph tape recorder on his bicycle to make recordings at the Minster. He had a “ball and biscuit” microphone permanently hanging over the choir stalls from the cathedral’s central tower. The length of the cable would have been unimaginable! His house was quite incredible with something of the Quentin Crisp grottiness, but with a surprising implied sense of order. Everything he collected was meticulously arranged, but other aspects like his kitchen were quite distasteful. He would talk on and on about these centres of interest, which included organs and church music – the two things that brought he and I into an intense friendship. In 1974, when I was introduced to him by someone from the choir at Holy Trinity in Micklegate, he was 58 and I was a fresh young schoolboy of fifteen.

He was also a railway enthusiast and actually bought the last Sheffield tram, and found someone to store it for him. Whether it has survived since his death is another question. He would go on for hours about steam locomotives, different mechanical designs and the London Underground. He was quite lucky to find in me someone who appreciated machines and knowing how things worked. I was that sort of boy!

I moved away from York in 1978 and had little contact with John, and I was eventually informed of his death in 1997 from prostate cancer. That was the time when I was a working guest with the Benedictines at Triors Abbey. The memories flooded back to me, but he was someone I found so hard to understand. One man who had known him earlier than myself called John the last of the great British eccentrics.

Eccentricity seems to be something so British compared with the conformism of people here in France and especially Germany. English culture has always had more time for difference and individual passion for things that go unnoticed by most people. Despite our enormous age difference, John and I seemed to have something in common. I did not do too well at school and felt quite alienated from my fellow adolescents at school. It was all very innocent, but such a friendship did cause concern for my parents and housemaster. Nowadays, such a man would be assumed to be a dangerous paedophile!

It was only since I began to explore the world of Aspergers Syndrome that I began to discover the answers to my own life. I have almost arrived at the age of John Rothera when I met him in 1974. My life took a different turn from his. He stayed in the same place for decades, and I moved around and experienced many things. There are still things I learned from him like the use of shutter speed and aperture to increase or decrease the depth of focus in a photograph. My memory about many of these long evenings at Monk Bar Court is still razor sharp. I began to interest myself in Aspergers Syndrome due to dialogues with an American and a young Englishman living not far from London. The flashing lights brought me to consult many sites about this high-functioning “section” of the autistic spectrum. I also did a number of online tests and they were all positive.

It is a conventional term known to psychologists and psychiatrists to enable them to rationalise quirky and eccentric people, find a scientific constant of characteristics and traits, and discover a typology. Every single human person is absolutely unique, but there are mental characteristics in common in the same way as our normal and abnormal physical characteristics known to our doctors. It does help to make a distinction between “being a certain way” and being a “jerk” or someone of moral mischief, or with culpable moral failings like selfishness and lack of concern for other people.

It is extraordinarily difficult to get a professional diagnosis. I waited several weeks for the application form to fill in from our local autism centre attached to the main hospital of Rouen, and I recently received a letter telling me that the waiting list can be eighteen months or more. I’m sure they have to give priority to children with all kinds of difficulties and needs for therapy before real mental problems set in. Finally, all that is in question is a label, for other people to be able to rationalise what they would fail to understand otherwise. To the person in question, a diagnosis makes no difference other than to bring relief in the form of credible answers to questions about one’s life. Old school reports are seen under a whole different frequency of light, and mean something completely new. I remember my own life – and that of that old character in York pedalling on his old bicycle from Monk Bar to the Minster.

Aspergers Syndrome leaves the intellectual faculties completely intact, and perhaps enhances them, but the price is high. It causes difficulties for a person in relating to other people and maintaining relationships. It has been very helpful to research far and wide, because many opinions, even professional ones, lead to confusion. I even saw one article yesterday that confused Aspergers Syndrome with psychopathy and linked “aspies” with notorious serial killers! There is a lot of scientific research and many more “human” sources to outline the positive aspects of the way a person is made, created by God, and with a spiritual beauty not found with most other human beings. I write this article in the light of many of these writings that enlighten and enhance my own experience.

To be sure, the experience of life teaches us “coping strategies” – using the intellect where intuition leads us astray. In time, from being a green schoolboy of fifteen, we learn what facial expressions mean, when people are getting bored with the technical details that are so indispensable for understanding how something works. They just don’t want to know, and they have that right. My treasure is their trash – so be it. But, I still have to treat my neighbour as I would like him to treat me. We have to learn to listen, even if it bores the pants off us. I think I managed incredibly well at seminary, because I had plenty of time in the day to be alone and take a “rest”. When you have about forty priests and seminarians playing games of living in the eighteenth century, one man’s quirkiness goes un-noticed! I spent most of my time reading and writing, and improving the chapel organ.

I mentioned in an earlier article that the institutional Church is made for extroverts and “neurotypicals” (people who are not autistic in any way), even more so the seminary system for screening men for suitability for the priesthood and training them. Pastoral ministry in a parish is no vocation for someone who does not have good social skills! I was very struck by the abdication of Benedict XVI in 2013, who said of himself that he was unable to do things a Pope is expected to do, especially since the days of John Paul II. I doubt that he is an “aspie”, but he is definitely an introvert, an intellectual and a contemplative. Vocations directors and seminary rectors are usually highly gifted in selected men who satisfy the usual criteria of our days, especially people skills and leadership. Such criticism, when it came my way, caused me no small amount of discouragement – and a challenge to prove them wrong. It all haunted me those dark days of January 1997 at Triors as the snow fell, the exorcism of the possessed man and the lugubrious early morning Abbot’s Mass in the crypt.

We have to be like lambs and wise as serpents, as Christ warned his disciples. We can’t expose ourselves, at least without self-knowledge, because the worst is always assumed by those “other people” living on another planet. We can’t hide ourselves, but we do have a duty to do the best we can using rules of courtesy and moral principles, and seeking to understand the soul facing us and looking us in the eye. But, there is a lot of acting, and this is not good spiritually, because we are called to be true and honest, not play a caricature of something we’re not. For many years, I tormented myself with the question of whether the priesthood itself was not for me a mask covering an inadequate person! That was until I discovered this neurological condition discovered by the Austrian psychiatrist in 1944. It isn’t an excuse for moral failings but a revelation, an answer, a favour we can do ourselves.

Going for a diagnosis is a perilous undertaking. My brother is a medical doctor, and I have sometimes asked him questions – and he didn’t know the answer. Either he didn’t know, or it was out of his field of expertise as a general practitioner. Many doctors are aloof from their patients. They have to be because they have to defend themselves. Psychiatrists even more, and then you have professionals who are in it by vocation, others because it’s money for old rope and there is little to care about. It is a lottery. Specialised centres are almost inaccessible except through excessively long waiting lists, and even then you have the aloof “clerics” and the “plethora of human dross” they are paid to deal with. The notion of vocation is rare, as it has become with priests, sad to say. We don’t entrust our souls to just about anyone. Harmless as doves but as cunning a serpents. Medice, cura te teipsum – physician, heal thyself. How much suffering goes without assistance, and so I have decided to do my bit – as a priest and not as a medical professional.

It is all about a label, but we live in a society that requires evidence, proof of good faith, the possibility of putting people into neat categories. Otherwise, they become afraid and dangerous. I have only to be myself – but that isn’t good enough for most people.

Despite all the experience we gain over the decades, trying to follow the advice of parents, schoolteachers and seminary rectors, we don’t change – cannot change. We keep the same focused and obsessive minds, the razor sharp memories, often behaving the same way as when we were young. I have suffered from internet trolls in the same way as schoolyard bullies, but the difference is learning to detect their behaviour and go against our natural instinct of compassion and kindness.

One of our most dangerous emotions is fear and our fight-or-flight response. In situations of extreme fear, we shut down like many animal species. Adrenaline does strange things: it spurs us to react against a dangerous situation or causes us to seize up and shut down. With autism, the shut-down reflex is that much more sensitive. I have often had this emotion of fear in large crowds of people or at the supermarket. It is quite unnerving. Many suffer more than I do, but I can’t get out of the place quickly enough once my basket is filled with what I had on my shopping list. The last hurdle is paying – going through the process like cattle at the slaughterhouse! At last, I find myself free, the goods in the van and the basket put in its place and I’m gratefully away…

Many “aspies” have sensory issues, which is less of a problem for me. Excessive noise and modern “music” are quite frightening. Crowds are something to be avoided whenever possible, and I abhor cities in the same way. I am rarely bothered by lights. Smells, both pleasant and unpleasant, usually remind me of all sorts of things in my life. I suppose that a putrid calf being autopsied by my father in the dead animal part of his surgery caused me to puke up, but that is nothing unusual!

Seminary was fairly “cool”, but school was another matter. The traditional English boarding school is (or was) tough. I am sure that my old school and other English public schools are reformed and enlightened since the days of flogging and fagging – I hope so for the amounts they cost parents in fees. Team sports are particularly trying as is sleeping in a dormitory. All the same, we still had academic and practical work we could do on our own, and this brought balance and relief. Having intellectual ability does little if we are not up to social expectations. Of course, nowadays, such a school would have evaluation procedures in place when things go unexpectedly.

If we have this difficulty with getting on in the mainstream, we are incredibly focused. I would very much like to write some books instead of this blog, or at least in a different proportion, but I don’t have enough time alone. I remember my father picking me up as a child for lack of tact, for saying or doing the wrong things. I could never seem to be able to do anything right. When things came to a head in about 1970 (I was 11), my father became concerned and had me do tests with a psychologist in Barrow-in-Furness. What results? I have no idea. He introduced me to fishing and took me for long walks by the sea. I have never forgotten this concern and kindness, albeit with little apparent understanding. It was why I was sent to Wennington in 1971 in the hope that something would get me out of my shell. I am very lucky to have such a father (he’s still going strong at 88 years), but there were things we just knew nothing about in those days.

For all the social disabilities, “aspies” have higher IQ’s, a sense of the prophetic and the visionary, to be “out of the box” and conventional wisdom. We find patterns and logic where most people don’t. I have self-taught myself many things like electricity, plumbing, tiling and other trades – to be able to do my own jobs at home without the expense of a professional job. I can do quite a lot of things with my van too, but I am still prudent about what really needs a pro.

I read about physical clumsiness and sensory hypersensitivity. I am very sensitive to pleasurable sensuality (I have written on this subject) and this leaves me with differences of opinion regarding Christian stoicism and epicurianism. I am very precise in my movements and I navigate very accurately at sea by sight and spatial perception. That is atypical, but I have given thought to the sensory question. I am particularly sensitive to being shouted at. Being told off as a child was a worse punishment than a smack-bottom! There is a transferring of negative emotion and not merely physical pain. It may sound odd to readers, but I take great comfort from having an old silk curtain in bed at night. I stroke it and rub my face on it, and it makes me think of my best moments as a child and the old Victorian house with the rattling windows in Kendal. I have to admit being quite fussy about clothes. I like the priest’s cassock, and would probably feel quite well in a Muslim thobe, of course at home and in private. Long flowing hair has added another dimension to my life. I have always been grateful for having had a musical education. Sailing has done me a lot of good, more than I could imagine than when I was doing regatta training at sailing school – and discovered dinghy  cruising: just discovering nature close to the shore is a small boat. Winter makes life more difficult, since many of these things are not possible. There are still music and the silk curtain – and also prayer and my life as a contemplative priest.

My style of life makes things easier: living in the country and being self-employed. Someone said recently on his YouTube that he didn’t mind working for forty hours, even eighty hours. His problem would have been having a boss and being in a corporate structure. Like me, he works alone and motivates himself very nicely to do a good job for what customers pay him. I manage very well without the crap, but I have to be motivated and ready to do some boring work like specifications for machines in factories or my most hated subject, corporate management!

One thing where I went wrong in life was trying to convince others or even be someone I wasn’t. It was one of the less pure aspects of my vocation to the priesthood, and caused me many issues of conscience. We are brainwashed into wanting status, success, power and money that we go along with it as far as it can, and all of a sudden the bottle is empty. Little me hasn’t convinced anyone of anything. Everyone else gets where he want to go, but I am confronted with a barrier. I might as well want to be the Pope! Some people make themselves into false popes, but such silliness is way off my radar. Another is the illusion to which many “independent” clergy fall. There is a social aspect of the priesthood none of us can escape, but above all the theological and ecclesiastical dimension – which is essential.

Acceptance and self-acceptance are the way. We can make efforts against moral disorders and sin, but we can’t become someone else. It just doesn’t happen. That goes down very badly with vocations directors and seminary rectors. We are expected to be social and corporate, team players and mainstream, even at Gricigliano. One of the criteria for ordaining priests is soundness of physical and mental health. You find all the stuff from Rome in seminary libraries and nowadays on the internet. The gate is quite narrow, and we are told that it is for the protection of the sheep (cough) faithful.

I think I could argue that Aspergers is a gift in spite of the social handicaps it involves. Even with some psychiatric disorders, there is always a place. There is even a monastery in Franjce for mentally handicapped people with conditions like Downs Sydrome – good on the founder for giving those beautiful souls a vocation in life! Jean Vanier is one of the leading lights of our time in the acceptance of those who are handicapped in some way compared with the majority of humanity. Most of those who live in his communities would otherwise be institutionalised and banished from anything like normal human life.

From my reading and my own experience, “aspies” have intense interests and powers of concentration. Most of the great composers were perhaps “aspies”. Musical composition is not “inspiration” or messages from God: it is gruelling hard work and fanatical devotion. Writing is a little easier and is more my medium, but it still requires focus and work, which is why (among other reasons) marriage is not my vocation. I don’t imagine that “aspies” make good parish priests, any more than company managers or project team leaders. However, the Church has always had many things for priests to do. Don Lorenzo Perosi was a priest and a prolific composer of whom Puccini said “C’è più musica nella testa di Perosi che in quella mia e di Mascagni messe insieme” (There’s more music in Perosi’s head than in mine and Mascagni’s put together). He spent much of his life suffering from severe depression and other neurological problems. His work and spirit remain with us. Priests are found in monasteries, hermitages, teaching in schools and universities, buried in books in libraries, sometimes living and working with ordinary people as a new form of ministry and evangelism. Vivaldi was a priest and his ministry was music and beauty. Others write books or are artists.

I remember my interview with our ACC diocesan board of ministry, where one priest caused me no small amount of pain with his questions. A man on the rack tells everything! I was asked what use I would be to the Diocese. I answered “None at all, I’m just a fool for Christ, nothing else”. I was accepted into my Bishop’s clergy, and the priest in question has since then been most sympathetic, and sent me a Christmas card a few days ago. Sometimes, the unexpected answer is the one that upsets the apple cart. I didn’t have the mind to try to justify myself, and that was long before I started reading about Aspergers Syndrome.

I return to my original theme of the New Goliards, not that of clergy who fail to respect legitimate authority in the Church, namely their Bishop, but the notion that diversity of humanity builds of the true charisma of the Church. This is the point at which bureaucracy and corporate management fail and the only discerning strength comes from humanity, experience of life, compassion and a life of contemplation and love. I began to write on this theme of aspergers and the priesthood almost a year ago. Very few comment, because the subject must be very far from my readers’ lives, but it is of increasing importance to me, not only for the question of my own vocation at an existential level, but others who are “out there” and of whom some read my blog.

I belong to a very tiny Church, but which has established itself in a normal way of ecclesiastical life, and is working for unity with other Continuing Anglican Churches. My blog is something like my Church: we cry in the wilderness as a prophetic voice. There must be diversity in the ways men offer themselves for the priesthood or ministries like the diaconate or the lectorate. Most are equipped for parish ministry and the gifts of the extrovert it requires. I bring my mind back to the reluctant German Pope who became convinced that it was not his vocation, abdicated and continues as a quiet contemplative. His presence in this world still witnesses to his prayers and his unexpressed and secret thoughts. It is easier for a simple priest to be himself.

The mainstream Churches have become excessively modelled on modern management principles which is a “mild form” of totalitarianism which differs only in degree from the murderous ideologies that killed weak or less useful people. It has always been encouraging when exceptional people have reached out to “others”. At this point, I mention my own Bishop in connection with Credo Care, which gets disabled children into foster care. I have always admired his humanitarian commitment, which as an extrovert he is good at.

I would certainly be no good at organising anything, but I willingly advocate humanitarian work – but more so the complete inclusion of atypical people in the life of the Church to the maximum of their abilities. Only today, a disabled priest wrote to me for liturgical texts, which I will try to send him tomorrow.

Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them (Matthew 11).

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Understanding Neurotypicality

Posted on Wednesday, 21 December, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Someone sent me this text, apparently found somewhere on the internet. The term “neurotypical” is one used by people with Aspergers Syndrome (or at the high end of the autism spectrum) for the majority of humanity. The implication is that of “aspies” considering their condition less as an abnormal condition or handicap than a gift. If creativity and the ability to think outside the box are “aspie” characteristics (though not exclusively), then it is a gift – which is conferred at high cost in terms of social skills.

There is a tendency in liberal society to impose the norms of minorities on majorities, thus making tolerance into a new form of intolerance, as happened with homosexuals and transgender people. Minorities remain minorities, and will always be treated with misunderstanding and cruelty by majorities. Such is human nature.

At the risk of overlooking it, I include several interesting articles about Aspergers Syndrome which help to clear up ambiguities coming even from professional quarters.

This following piece by Frank Klein is satirical, but preaches many truths.

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Understanding Neurotypicality by Frank Klein

Neurotypicality is a pervasive developmental condition, probably present since birth, in which the affected person sees the world in a very strange manner. It is a puzzle; a enigma that traps those so affected in a lifelong struggle for social status and recognition. Neurotypical individuals almost invariably show a triad of impairments, consisting of inability to think independently of the social group, marked impairment in the ability to think logically or critically, and inability to form special interests (other than in social activity). It is my hope that this article will help us understand the very different world of the neurotypical.

Neurotypical individuals show difficulty in forming an individual identity, or in thinking outside of the bounds of the accepted norms of their social groups. It appears that each group a neurotypical belongs to will have its own set of “official” opinions, and each neurotypical within that group is expected to adopt those beliefs. As strange as it sounds, they generally do so very readily, and are not hesitant at all to help enforce those beliefs and ensure group homogeneity of opinion. There appears to be an innate drive for the neurotypical to fit in with groups in that manner, and their own innate opinions and desires are modified automatically to fit the group ideal. This bizarre lack of independence explains the tendency for neurotypicals to engage in fads of various sorts, or for the existence of certain trends. Neurotypicals will change the way they talk or dress according to these trends, and other neurotypicals will admire and imitate such “trendy” behavior. As such, neurotypicals are easy prey for TV commercials or other means of advertising that seek to portray the purchase or use of various products as socially desirable or “cool.”

The need for neurotypical individuals to “jump on” the latest trend is a function of their excessive level of concern of how they are perceived by others. Neurotypicals form their self-image based at least as much on the opinions of their peers as they do on their own opinions. They do not perceive themselves as individuals in the manner that you or I do; they see themselves as individual members of a group, but in practice, the opinions of others weigh heavily upon them, and there is a great drive to obtain the acceptance and admiration of others around them, including complete strangers. There is a built-in tendency for neurotypicals to blend in, to become “one of the herd,” so to speak. Most of them never realize how much their opinions are dictated by the group. They want the things that the group deems desirable, and they internalize that desire so fully that it feels to them as if it was an internally-motivated desire.

The overdeveloped social centers of the neurotypical brain are also responsible for their odd, inefficient communication style. We’ve all seen the strange tendency neurotypicals have to hide their true communicative intent beneath layers of often contradictory statements. They tend to state things implicitly rather than explicitly, and with a level of vagarity that often results in miscommunication. This appears to be an outgrowth of the neurotypical person’s desire to maintain popularity and social status; they seem to believe that by stating potentially annoying or offensive things indirectly, their popularity will be better maintained. This obsessive concern with social standing makes communication with neurotypicals rather difficult at times. They are incapable of expressing things directly, in a manner that can be easily and unambiguously interpreted by anyone that knows the language. They are also limited in their capacity to interpret statements directly without trying to find hidden meanings in them; they often misunderstand the most basic statements in this way.

People with neurotypicality tend to communicate in a very vague manner. They make guesses as to the level of knowledge of the listener, and omit parts that the listener is presumed to know. It is rather obvious that this guessing will often be wrong. Unfortunately, the listener that does not understand will generally not ask for clarification of such ambiguities, for fear of the speaker thinking that he is stupid or ignorant. As is usually the case with neurotypicals, image and status is more important than effective communication and the truth in general. Communication between neurotypicals is very limited in this way, and the fear of being seen as stupid prevents either party from verifying the content of the conversation. As such, most miscommunication goes undetected by at least one, if not all, neurotypicals that had engaged in such a conversation.

The neurotypical individual typically has a very limited capacity for logic or rational thought. The most recent research on the topic suggests that neurotypical people are not able to separate their emotions from their logic, and they often confuse the two. This is an obvious explanation for the sometimes appalling illogicality evidenced in neurotypical behavior. Neurotypicals typically exhibit very limited critical thought, and they are easily led to believe some rather illogical things. Sadly, most societal positions that require logic and rational thought are occupied by neurotypicals, which is a function of their sheer numbers more than any fitness for the job. Such jobs include important functions like jurors, legislators, judges, voters, doctors, and many others. If their herd mentality did not result in excessive rates of reproduction, their numbers would be smaller, and they would be of more use in job titles like salesperson, receptionist, cashier, and others where rational thought is less emphasized than social interaction.

Neurotypicals have a very limited ability to concentrate on one topic for great lengths of time, or repeatedly. The apparent absence of special interests in neurotypicals is notable. Their concentrations on normal areas of interest like computers, machines, scientific interests, history, or other academic subjects, are limited, and are short in duration as well as relatively infrequent. It appears that nearly all neurotypicals share one singular special interest, and that is socializing. This is the only activity that the person with neurotypicality can engage in for more than short periods of time. The stereotyped neurotypical mannerism of “chatting,” or communicating verbally with others even where no relevant or useful information is exchanged, is notable, and can be observed very often in neurotypicals that are engaging in perseverative social behavior. Why the neurotypical mind is limited in its flexibility insofar as selection of a special interest is not known at this time. This social interest is not terribly useful as far as society in general is concerned, and the neurotypical is unlikely to be capable of significant innovation, or of fostering societal advancement.

Without significant intervention, neurotypicals will continue to be dependent on us for generations to come. Unfortunately, the neurotypical herd mentality results in an excessive rate of birth of offspring that are genetically predisposed to be neurotypical, and as such the incidence of neurotypicality remains frighteningly high. Fortunately, the percentage of neurotypical births has been in decline recently, although it is still far too high for comfort. As long as the numbers of neurotypicals are so high, it is unlikely that they will allow us to institute any remediative efforts to help them overcome their disability. We may think it is so sad to see neurotypical children being trained to maintain a group mentality and to forsake true individualism, but at this point it is unlikely that the neurotypical parents of these children will be able to overcome their aforementioned logic impairments to realize how important intervention is if their children are to live to their fullest potential. It is up to us to educate them, and to get them to see that every child is entitled to greatness, even if he was diagnosed with neurotypicality. There can be hope for a better future if we can reach these children in time.

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The Power of Introverts

Posted on Thursday, 15 December, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Whilst going through some blogs and sites on solitude and different human temperaments, I came across this video of a young lady who expresses herself beautifully.

It is significant how things have changed in the world in such wise as everything is made for extroverts: corporate life, teamwork, management, education and group projects to the extent that a child working alone is seen as abnormal. Popes and statesmen have to be extroverts, as do bishops and parish priests. We moved from a society in which people knew each other to one in which you have to prove yourself to strangers. Therefore you need charisma and an outgoing personality. See my older rant on Totalitarianism via Corporate Management.

As St Paul says about the diversity of talents making up the body of Christ, our world needs both those who are leaders, stars and showmen – and the quiet contemplatives who write and make music, those who find their strength in silence and nature. This little talk is passionate and reminds me of many things in my own family. Very often, talk was unnecessary and we knew when to switch off the TV. We would read books and play board games together or I would go off on my own and live from my “suitcase” (watch the talk to find out the importance and meaning of the “suitcase”).

Mrs Cain is the granddaughter of a scholarly Rabbi who died at the age of 94. He was a man of books, spirituality and depth. The story reminds me of Pope Benedict XVI who would have preferred to retire and return to Germany, either to a monastery or a solitary place with a piano, a library and one or two cats. Those years are far behind us.

I would appreciate comments on this beautiful soul and her thoughts.

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Ember Wednesday of Advent

Posted on Wednesday, 14 December, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Ember Wednesday of Advent at Sarum

Now and again, we get some nice surprises from the New Liturgical Movement. They often show an interest in the Use of Sarum.

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The Lord of the World

Posted on Tuesday, 13 December, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Using the title of that famous book by Robert Hugh Benson, I give the link to Globalism Is “Demonic,” Theologians Say.

I find it difficult to give an independent opinion on the threat of globalism, except that it makes me very afraid – the prospect of concentrating the entire world into the hands of a single Führer or group of oligarchs. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Fear those who can destroy not only our bodies but also our souls! This has always been the ambition of the principalities and powers of which St Paul warns us – those of the Antichrist, the Devil and all the other names found in the Scriptures, tradition and other religions and philosophies.

It is perhaps the first time in history that globalism looks like becoming a reality, except for the increasing call by the people: Wachet auf! Wake up! We are in great danger, but being aware of it is half the battle. It is not as invincible as it thinks it is. Hitler tried it and came a cropper, and Communism melted down in 1989. Exorcists are often amazed about how blinded by pride demons are, and how they are beaten by the power of Christ and divine light.

I won’t go into all the considerations of conspiracy theories, alternative news and present-day polemics surrounding the election of Mr Trump in America. There’s plenty in the article to which I linked and elsewhere on the internet.

I don’t know whether Pope Francis goes along with this, hoping to evangelise globalism to bring about the one true Church along Jesuit and Ultramontanist lines. Cujus rex ejus religio. Perhaps Francis is dealing with the globalist ideology like John Paul II worked with Communism to rot it away from within with a philosophy of resilience and personalism. With some of the asinine sayings I have read in the past few days, I see little in the way of gravitas and the dignity of the office in this Pope. Some would even say that the Pope is the Antichrist – the old line from fundamentalist Protestants since the days of the Reformation.

There are to sides. One is the issue of immigration. I as a white Englishman would have the usual hoops to jump through if I wanted to live in America, Canada, India or anywhere else outside the EU. Why should I not be allowed to live anywhere I want if I can earn my own living and not sponge off their welfare state? Double standards? Should we have borders (or filtering borders) or not? Should we have to pay for the upkeep of all comers, whether or not they can or will work?

Do we have the right to our culture and identity, or do we all have to acculturate to Islamic culture and leave behind all we have inherited from Christian civilisation and the Enlightenment? This is the issue of multi-culturalism. I leave the reader to decide what he finds most convincing. The real issue does not seem to be radical Islam or terrorism, but world government, surveillance and absolute policing. It is a question of civilisation or what little is left of it. We live at the brink of something like the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of an invisible world empire, one designed to destroy in the same way as Nazism. Hitler was born a hundred years too soon!

I do believe that globalism is evil. No human system is perfect, but not all are designed to violate every principle of God and man. I am naturally concerned about the nationalist temptation. In the end, we just have to get on with life, aware but trusting in God…

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No one need be alone.

Posted on Thursday, 8 December, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

One of my regular guests, JD, has his own blog and he has just written Advent Acedia. This damnable winter, and it doesn’t seem so long since I last sailed my boat at an extraordinarily mild beginning of November! We all seem to be going through the Blues, and it is simply due to a lack of sunlight and being outdoors.

Acedia, on which I have written is all the more frightening if you are on your own (or married to a person who is not interested in these finer points of spiritual life). Orthodox spirituality is loathe to speak of the dark nights of the soul we have in the west. They often attribute it simply to sin, but we in the west see this period of purgation as essential for arriving anywhere near illumination by grace. St John of the Cross, a Carmelite hermit, was most known for his spiritual writing on the dark night of the soul. Pope John Paul II, a saintly man if he was not a very “successful” Pope, based his spirituality of St John of the Cross. With it, he lived through the horrors of Nazi occupation and Communism in his native Poland, and emerged from it all believing in the essential goodness and dignity of humanity when illuminated by God’s grace.

I would describe entering into solitary life as being like setting out to sail the Atlantic in a dinghy! Try being alone in December in a house you are fighting to heat and fighting off depression! That being said, some of us have no choice about it, not being in the “right” Church or canonically apt for formal monastic life – quite apart from the liturgical issues. Most people trundle along in life with no religion or a token observance of parish life in “ordinary” parishes or the various traditionalist Roman Catholic and Anglican solutions available but thin on the ground.

For most of us, it will be a matter of trying to be faithful to a decent and godly life, saying the Office, and Mass if we are an ordained priest, working a little business we have built up so as not to have to be employed by a boss in a corporate situation and keeping the house and garden reasonably clean and tidy. There are moments when I go into the chapel to have some moments of silence before the Blessed Sacrament – and the wife bursts in with her worries, invariably matters than can wait!

I do think we need realistic goals. If we are on our own, there is more we can do like in a monastery. Most of us will be glad just to be able to say Lauds, Vespers and Compline each day with the Matins readings as lectio  divina. I don’t know the Byzantine Office, but I find the Benedictine Office the most balanced. Matins is heavy going, but is designed to be said in the very early morning before the phone starts ringing. The day hours are much lighter and are designed to allow a day’s solid work, which we have to do to earn our living, leaving time for study and writing. The Anglican Office gives us the whole Psalter each month and the entire Bible over the year, but does not give us patristic readings. It’s great for parish priests, but I favour the monastic office which is available in Prayer Book English. My books are old, given to me many years ago, but they are reprinted by St Andrew’s Press and can be ordered – both the day hours and Matins.

We loners need a challenge, some real theology to read and make us really think about what we believe and practice. If we really want some winter stuff, how about some Soloviev and Berdyaev. Where they came from, it is really cold, quite unlike western Europe or most of the southern states of the USA. We need to understand something of the Russian soul, and also something of German Romanticism in men like Schelling and Schliermacher, even something of Engels. Through the melancholy comes the desire that is so characteristic of Romanticism, what C.S. Lewis recognised as the desire for God beyond the limitations of this transitory life.

But when it comes to our observances and prayer, we need to be concerned about a sense of duty, doing things because we are called to them in a stable way as a result of our fundamental option in life. That is unless we have been victim to illusion in our fundamental option and it is killing us from within like a microwave oven cooking a piece of meat.

We have to live with the sadness and Angst, confident that light will shine as a Sol invictus in these gloomy days. As I mentioned elsewhere, the anxiety will keep us awake and spur us on to positive action and a disciplined life. It is hard work and there are no short cuts. The alternative is depression and death.

St John of the Cross didn’t find it easy, quite the opposite. Men like Karol Wojtyla or the many priests and bishops under Nazism and Communism lived through times when evil triumphed, and they clung to hope. Death knocked at their doors each day, and they held out. Perhaps our worst martyrdom is suffering from Christians making nonsense out of our faith by making it an ideology.

We have to protect ourselves from burnout and cynicism about theology, the Church, the liturgy and all the things people argue about. One solution is to have hobbies. We can go sailing if that’s what interests us, make things in a workshop out of wood and metal, take up painting or writing novels, composing music and / or playing an instrument. Social life is important, even when we have failed miserably in relationships. Friendship comes in degrees and the highest form of human love is found in friendship, not marriage. It is good to have a couple of beers and tell jokes with a few relaxing fishermen at a port bar like at Tinduff in the Rade de Brest. In moderation, it is good to lighten our heaviness.

Much of the time, we have to rely on ourselves because churches and spiritual fathers are all so remote, far away and inaccessible. We should have some kind of spiritual friendship with someone we esteem and look up to, and such a thing is precious if we find it. We all live in different circumstances, and urban life subjects us to so much noise and stress that God’s voice is effectively silenced. We should live in the country and be self-employed if we can. Most people can find a business idea and a market if they think hard enough. I had the idea of translating. It doesn’t always pay very well, but some months are good, and you need to leave money in the bank each month for cashflow – takes the worries out of all. It beats working for a boss hands down!

Another thing. Install some kind of chapel or oratory where you live. A sacred place or corner that is always there, and which represents the universal Church and the communion of saints. It may only be very simple, perhaps in a wardrobe so that you can keep it discreet from people who don’t understand things like this very well.

Some of us are introverts and ill-equipped for doing anything other than going our own way – whether into sin or according to God’s will. It is one of the purposes of this blog to tell all my readers that wherever you are, in whatever situation of life, we are together in spirit and communion through our prayer and desire to witness to the Light.

Be strong, faithful and stubborn, and you will be rewarded…

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