BeachcomberFX

Author: Sue Hutchinson

  • Rejoice and Complain part 2

    Rejoice and Complain part 2

    Rejoice and Complain, part 2
    Hello all, I hope you are well and wrapping up warm as the autumn weather arrives. This Sunday (6th October) we will be meeting at the Tavern and Gallery at 7.30pm.
    We continue with our book/art/song blogs and if anyone would like to write a blog then drop Rob or myself a message.
    This week’s blog has been re-entitled Rejoice and Complain part 2. I have had this blog written for a few months in my head and when asked if I could write for this week I was like yeah, sure I know exactly which one we will look at. Then when reading Celeb’s brilliant blog about rejoicing and complaining last week and being part of the discussion, I felt that this could be part 2.
    So here we go.
    As I was have a music evening listening through my headphones while gaming, I was stopped in my tracks when listening to the song ‘I stand by you’ by the Pretenders. I’ve grown up with this song and I can’t remember where or when I heard one of the reason for this song to be written was a response from the lead singer Chrissie Hynes to supporting someone in addiction. However, when you research the meaning of the song this can’t be found but what is found is an interview with one of the
    co-writers who’s dream was to write with Chrissie and that at the end of writing the song they though it was not up to the usual standards or type that the Pretenders where known for. Yet they give it a short and it is now one of, if not their best song.
    There are a number of reviews that talk of this song being about support, faithfulness in a relationship, unconditional love, and you can see this all in the lyrics;
    ‘oh, why you look so sad, tears are in your eyes, come on and come to me now’
    ‘Nothing you confess, can make me love you less’
    ‘If your mad, get mad, don’t hold it all inside, come on and talk to me now’
    And it was this last lyric that caught me off guard. As many of you know I have been in counselling the whole of this year. It has been hard, at times downright ugly but there has been a lot of progress too. As I have been working to stop numbing my emotions and reconnect with them, it was at this time that this line struck me.
    This song spoke to me in this moment, where I felt God was saying ‘be honest about what your feeling, stop trying to protect me by not getting angry, talk to me, cry if you need too, stop hiding it, stop pushing it down as if it doesn’t exit, stop carrying it around inside of you.’
    I have come to believe in a holistic God, a God who is wanting to be part of my every being, a God who is not a dictator and ready to struck me with lighting but a God who cares for my very being, a God who is supporting, faithful and loves me unconditional in all the rejoicing and the complaining, He wants to be in it all; and this song felt like that was exactly what God was saying/singing to me in that moment.
    Life is hard, there is a lot to complain about but it is also full with moments of rejoicing, of happy moments and both are intertwined, woven into each other. If we were in constant rejoicing we, as humans, would become immune to it and start to complain anyway. And life can seem that it is an endless list of complaints and yet I need to take the time to consider and be thankful for the small, everyday things that make my heart smile, that first sip of coffee, a joke or silly meme from a friend or even my own actions of standing in the office trying to open the cupboard door by clicking my car fob HAHAHA! Which made me laugh at myself.
    I think that over the year I have begun to accept that there is a much simpler life to be lead and this is found in the acceptance of all that life has to offer, the rejoicing, the complaining, the good, the bad and the ugly. How I responded to it is important, accepting that whatever it is there, processing it in a healthy way and then deciding if there is something that needs to be done about it, if not letting it go and if so working toward what that action will be.
    Life will always be an intertwining of rejoicing and complaining, yet I’m starting to see that expressing my complaining to God who wants to listen can lead, maybe in time, to rejoicing.
    https://youtu.be/SuWAGT9ZkYE?si=RV09-2BMCsPga1JS
    I’ll Stand By You by The Pretenders
    Questions
    1 What, if any, of the lyrics speak to you? And why?
    2 What are your thoughts about God singing this song to you?
    3 What is your view of God? Is He a dictator or a holistic God or something else?
    4 What are your thoughts about the following? :
    “I think that over the year I have begun to accept that there is a much simpler life to be lead and this is found in the acceptance of all that life has to offer, the rejoicing, the complaining, the good, the bad and the ugly.”
    5 How intertwined do you think rejoicing and complaining are?
  • Re-arrange

    Re-arrange

    Hi folks, I hope you are ok and that you are having a good weekend! This week’s blog is written by Sue and it introduces us to our new theme… We are putting a call out to you to write us a blog. We are looking for people to write a blog based around either a short story, a song, a movie, piece of art, something in nature… that you love or that means something to you. In the blog you could reflect on some of what you love/like about it… think about some of the challenges that you find within it, ponder on how it makes you feel, what inspires you about it. You could talk about some of the themes that it generates for you. Don’t worry about the questions as we will put those together based on what you write. If you have a particular question you want to ask then let us know.
    If you are interested in taking part could you let Sue know and we will give you a date.
     
    Now over to Sue for her blog and we will be meeting at the Enigma Tap  in North Shields at 7.30
    Biffy Clyro has a very special place in my relationship with my husband Peter.
    We both liked the song Mirror of Horrors before meeting each other. Biffy was the first gig we went to together and it was while watching Biffy on tv at one of the summer music festivals Peter proposed.
    It was the album Ellipsis when I heard the song Re-arrange so while Biffy was touring when we went to see them at Newcastle Arena.
    So why this particular song Re-arrange?
    When I first met Peter, I was up front and honest about my mental health regarding depression and anxiety. In fact I cried on our first date telling him and the fact that due to having PCOS I may never be able to have children.
    Heavy for the first date! I know! It was not something I had planned to do but there was a connection that was safe and I felt could be honest, no plastic smiles and masks that would later fall off and be a surprise.
    After being 45mins late for our date! Thank you, public transport! We had a nice meal on the quay and then went for a walk. We had our first kiss and then sat near the river. And there it just came tumbling out of my mouth, along with the tears. The tears came from my eyes not my mouth ha ha. When I finished I said to Peter “ I totally understand if you want to leave now”. What happened next I did not expect. Peter sat closer to me and said “End of an old chapter, Beginning of a new one”.
    And we have been together ever since. In fact it will be 11 years this year.
    The song Re-arrange not only reminds me of our first date but over the years we have helped each other rearrange a lot of things in so many different ways. For me a lot of my rearranging has been to do with my mental health and being diagnosed with PTSD. Along the way Peter has been so encouraging, very patient and loving to help with my healing.
    It is the chorus that really speaks to me. It’s never been about breaking each other’s hearts but it has been about rearranging parts to work better.
    This led me creating the art shown at the beginning of this blog for Peter’s valentine’s gift in 2017.
    Over the years I have listened to this song many times and the chorus has been a reflection of how I see God working in my heart. He’s not been breaking it but rearranging it to work better. Healing so that I am not numb to emotions but slowly healing to allow me to feel emotions again. Addiction has kept me numb to emotions, it has been my coping strategy, but now I am learning to feel emotions again, to not run from the negative emotions and to not hide from the positive ones. I am learning to have my heart rearranged to enable me to allow my heart to be open again and not closed.
     
    Questions:
    1 What was the first gig you went to and\or the first gig you and your partner went to?
    2 . Are there any lines from the song re-arrange that speak to you? What is it and why?
    3. What do you think the song is talking about for you?
    4 What are the differences between breaking something and rearranging something? And what might the similarities be?
    5 When in your journey of faith, has something needed to be broken and something has needed to be rearranged?
    Peace Sue.
     
    Photos by Sue.
  • Elections and all that…

    Elections and all that…

    Hello people. Hope you are well and enjoying the sunshine. This week we will be meeting at The Quarry pub at 7.30pm. This week the blog has been written by Sue.

    Last week we had our local elections and I was asked to write about it for this week’s blog. So thinking about this I wondered what to write should it be statistics and a breakdown of the results or some kind of other fact based research. All great and all very important but what I then thought is where is our voices in all this. I love P!nk and she is not shy in sharing her experiences and opinions, fighting for all, not just the individual. Two of her songs speak to me of  politics: ‘Dear Mr President’ and ‘What about Us?’ (links below to listen).

    These songs make me think ‘well what about us? What are our individual stories of local and national elections? What are our stories of politics? So here are a few stories I have of my own involvement and experiences of elections and politics.

    During my life I have lived under the government of 10 Prime Ministers;  32 years and 45 days (thanks Liz Truss for the 45 days) under a Conservative government and 14 years under a Labour government.

    As a child of the 80’s I watched the TV with miner strikes, remembering clearly the violence between strikers and the police. Watching my own dad come in from work, and head back out to union meetings to protect jobs. I am thankful to my dad for teaching me about politics and government. Hearing him still say ‘if you can’t give 15 mins to go vote, you’ve no right to complain’.

    At university I had to stop talking about politics with a friend because in their opinion Margaret Thatcher was the best thing since sliced bread. We had to agree that our friendship was more important than politics.

    As a community and youth worker over the past 29 years I have seen the decline in funding resources from central government to local councils which result in community centres and youth projects being closed down. And then when young people start getting into trouble and anti-social behaviour the blame is laid at their feet. THEY ARE KIDS! The adults that are meant to be looking after them are struggling working every hour they have, having to use food banks, and make the choice of whether to eat or use electric/gas to heat the house up. Those of us who are trying to help through volunteering and professional work have our hands tied because the government thinks that once the statistics show an improvement to the issues they pull the funding to ensure that work cannot continue and back on the roundabout we all go!

    The consequence of our National government reducing funding to local councils means that the services and projects the local councils use to support are now applying for funding that other voluntary projects would apply for making the ‘competition for funding’ harder.

    And if you ask my husband, the national elections have put me in hospital once. A combination of David Cameron being elected, me staying up to see the results, a very strong coffee and an early morning resulted in the worst migraine I have ever experienced, including throwing up during work, I ended up being taken to hospital. So thankful to our NHS for being there and whatever it was they gave me allowed me to sleep and was then able to go home.

    So to the present day, I feel that over the past few years I have been reliving my childhood but as an adult, watching NHS staff, teachers and other working professions strike under a conservative government.

    In the weeks leading up to last week’s election we only had a flyer from the Labour party about their candidates, no other information was posted or so I thought. On voting day I went to open what I thought was my polling card to find that it was a brochure of the candidates standing for the North East Mayor. Why had it not been opened, because it came in the same white envelope as the polling cards. Yet on closer inspection in the bottom right hand corner it says enclosed brochure for voting.

    When I was talking to a friend who is part of a political party, they talked about how not all candidates who were standing for this role could be included in the brochure. ‘Oh? Was there too many and not enough room in the pages?’  I asked. No each individual/party had to pay £3000 to be included. Not all parties that stand for election have these types of finances. So, again our election processes come down to who can afford what, the haves and the have nots. In my opinion a theme that seems to resonate with a conservative government, or maybe I’m just biased.

    Now I do not hide the fact that I do not agree with the Conservative party but at this time I also see no good alternative to them. The Labour leader is already talking about a ten year plan to turn things around, which is also based on the hope they will be voted in again to complete this plan. Ten years! I’ll be 56! And whoever gets in other than the Conservative will inherit a lot of chaos to sort out, just as the conservatives keep saying they have done from Labour.

    Maybe it’s time to hear the stories and the generational impacts those decisions have had for the individual whose lives are affected by the decisions that are made in London and local councils.

    Questions:

    1. Did your school have house teams? If so, what team were you in? And what was the colour?
    2. What was it like the first time you were old enough to vote?
    3. What has been your experience of politics and elections?
    4. What would you say are the good things about our political and electoral systems and what are the bad things?
    5. What does the Bible say about governments?

    This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

     

    Peace Sue

  • A Question of Encouragement in Faith

    A Question of Encouragement in Faith

    Hi All, hope you have all had a good week.  We will be meeting together at The Quarry at 7:30pm if you want to join us in conversation.  We have tried to meet in the bay window just around the corner from the main entrance (turn left at the bar).  See you then.

    The world is full of worry, stress and challenges at present, with countries at war with one another, government fighting with one another, covid rising again, the cost of living continuing to increase and alongside these there are our own individual worries, stresses and challenges. 

    Through my work and personal relationships its clear to hear that people are tired, drained of energy and finding it hard to keep going, but keep going we must, but at what cost? At who’s cost? The cost of the continued state of living this way is our health; physical, mental, emotional and spiritual; it costs relationships and increases isolation. It feeds negative behaviours and attitudes to be able to cope with what is happening in and around us every day. 

    Life is at times relentless and on top of that there is all the questioning and challenges about what we should or should not be doing, who we should or should not be, what we should or should not believe and who we should or should not listen too. The consistent questioning and challenge leaves me personally mentally tired and my heart seeking desperately to find the joy and encouragement that there are good things about life, people and faith. 

    I am not saying that we should not be challenged or challenge systems and behaviours but there needs to be a balance. There needs to also be conversation that encourages, helping to remember the good things about life, people and faith. To create space for encouragement to happen and what it is at this moment that brings us support, confidence and hope. What is missing in enabling encouragement to take place? And how can we create space and relationships that can give honest encouragement?

    What do I mean by honest encouragement? According to the Oxford dictionary encouragement is the action of giving to someone support, confidence or hope. It is also described as, persuasion to do or to continue something or the act of trying to stimulate the development of an activity, state or belief. I think this is where encouraging can cross a fine boundary and become the need to persuade or stimulate the development of something else. So how can we be authentic in encouraging ourselves and one another without wanting or needing to cross the fine boundary into persuasion? 

    My question of encouragement in faith also comes from conversations about faith and church. While agreed that there are things that need to be challenged , there are lots of elements within faith and church that are good and bring the needed encouragement to do life supported and with joy. Maybe, like archaeologists working on historical sites, we need to sieve through what is needing to change or not be changed instead of throwing the whole thing out or completely dismissing something, losing what is good and helpful at the same time.

    And this is where my reflection on encouragement in faith has left me, with the question how can we maintain a good balance of challenging and at the same time encouraging the faith in practical, supportive ways to bring hope and confidence to life even when things may seem so dark in the world. 

    Questions:

    1. What has been the best encouragement you have received? 
    2. Where do you find encouragement for life, people and faith? 
    3. What is missing in enabling encouragement to take place?
    4. How can we create space and relationships that can give honest encouragement?
    5. How can we be authentic in encouraging ourselves and one another without crossing the fine boundary into persuasion?
    6. How can we maintain a good balance of challenging and at the same time encouraging faith in practical, supportive ways to bring hope and confidence to life even when things may seem so dark in the world. 
  • A question of …. Addiction

    A question of …. Addiction

    Welcome to this weeks blog. If you are joining us to have a conversation around this then we will be meeting at Platform 2 in Tynemouth.

    Addiction is a big subject and has many big questions around it from Health professionals, psychologists and Spirituality/Faith organizations. So this blog is a snap shot, a small scratch on the surface to this discussion.  

    Addiction is nothing new to the human life or to society, alcohol and drugs are maybe the longest substances of addiction and most likely the stereotypical image when thinking about addiction. Yet, in society today there are many other substances and behaviours that are seen as addiction, sex, shopping, social media, gaming, food, work, exercise, religion, sports, tv binging to name a few.

    “The addictive substance or behaviour can take many forms; the relief it offers centres around the emotion, even though it may comfort us physically, psychologically, relationally and spiritually, before it infests our lives with addiction taking root in our earnest bids to make our emotional worlds comfortable and untroubled. Once the prosses of addiction takes over what once was in the beginning our naïve attempts to make life less painful end up costing us everything emotionally and relationally. … addiction is the attempt to escape how the world is, it becomes a life of pretending and misery. Our attempt to be free of trouble leads us to the slavery (of addiction)”.

     ‘Hope in the age of Addiction’ by Chip Dodd and Stephen James.

    While I do strongly agree with what Dodd and James writes I find myself thinking “well is everyone addicts as we all try to find ways to escape the pressures of life and all that it brings?”  What is classed as addiction and not just finding space to rest and recover from a busy day at work? 

    One proposed definition is made by Nick Heather in their article for the British Psychological Society entitled ‘Rethinking Addiction’, he proposes that “a person is addicted to a specified behaviour if they have demonstrated repeated and continuing failures to refrain from and to radically reduce the behaviour despite prior resolutions to do so.” In other words, if you can stop the behaviour or taking of the chosen substance without any withdrawal symptoms, cravings and other psychologically and emotional dependencies, or substituting another addictive behaviour/substance in its place,  then maybe you’re not addicted. 

    I have an addiction to food with preference to sugar and it became my coping mechanism, however the coping mechanism became my obsession and my obsession became my addiction.  My naïve attempts to comfort myself took root with repetitive behaviour and despite attempt after attempt I would have repeated and continuing failures to refrain and have abstinence from compulsive and emotional eating and addiction. 

    However, what I have discovered over the past few years as I have prayed and search from a way to break this addiction is the conversation about addiction and spirituality/faith.  The 12 step programme has been taken originally from Alcohol Anonymous and become the programme for many other support groups with a specific area of addiction. These are the 12 steps: 

    Step 1: We admitted we are powerless over (name addiction) – that our lives had become unmanageable

    Step 2: Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity

    Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.

    Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves

    Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs

    Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all those defects of character 

    Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings

    Step 8: Made a list of all the persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to all

    Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others

    Step 10: Continue to take  personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it

    Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry it out

    Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to all still in addiction and to practice  these principles in all our affairs. 

    In ‘Addiction and Grace’ Gerald G May writes while describing his own search from addiction:

     “I identified a few people who seemed to have overcome serious addictions to alcohol and other drugs, and I asked them what had helped them turn their lives around so dramatically. All of them described some sort of spiritual experience. They kindly acknowledged their appreciation for the professional help they had received but they also made it clear that this help had not been the source of their healing. What had healed them was something spiritual. They did not use religious terms, but there was no doubt in my mind that what they spoke of was spiritual. Something about what they said reminded me of home. It had something to do with turning to God.”

    This is still very much in discussions and research among professionals and lay people as to why and how spirituality/Faith is helping the individual to remain  in recovery and abstinence. 

    For myself I have come to a place where allowing myself to sit in the tension of my emotions and anxieties is building emotional strength, allowing me to befriend all emotions and not just the positive ones. In doing so I am accepting all of who I am the good, the bad and the ugly just as God accepts and loves me for my whole self too. 

    Questions:

    1. How do you like to unwind after a busy day? 
    2. What is it about that unwinding activities that you enjoy? 
    3. What is your initial thoughts about addiction?
    4. What do you think about Dodd and James quote? 
    5. How do you think spirituality/faith play apart in recovery? 

    Photo by Reza Nourbakhsh: