http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Hi Everyone,
Sorry, no
poem today, but I am working on one so... hopefully, soon.
Hope you
are coping as well as any of us can in the middle of a pandemic. Me, I do try to
keep looking on the bright(er) side of life, and manage to do just that most of
the time, but - like everyone else - I have good days and bad days. On a good
day, I can usually complete a poem to publish here, and that always
lifts my mind-body-spirit.
A new
reader appears to have taken offence by my suggesting that religion has no
monopoly on spirituality. No matter, we will just have to agree to
differ. The same reader also disputes that I can have a sense of
spirituality without believing in God as according to any religious agenda.
Again, each to their own, surely?
As I have
said before on the blogs, also at my poetry reading on the fourth plinth
in Trafalgar Square, back in 2009 (my contribution to Antony Gormley's "One and Other" project that ran for 100 days) I see myself as a pantheist; I still do in
so far as I see God as nature, not its creator. The reader
clearly sees this as blasphemy, but I could never get my head around the idea
of a personified God, even as a child; when I discovered pantheism, I could
relate to it instantly. Besides, religious bigotry is not uncommon and - not
least as a gay man - I find bigotry in any shape or form as distasteful as it
is indefensible.]
No one
has to embrace the religious beliefs of others to respect them,
and I do, whatever reservations I might have, so how about this
reader’s respecting mine…?
Another
reader asks how I am coping with various medical issues, not last the prostate
cancer with which I have been living since 2011. Again, good days and bad days,
and the same with others problems. Stress has a nasty habit of
making us feel worse regarding just about anything likely to
prey on the mind, even at the best of times; I dare say I am as prone to
coronavirus stress ( hovering at about 80 on a sliding scale of 1 to 100) as
anyone else! All we can do is take each day as it comes, for better or worse,
and keep telling ourselves that life can only get better. Never easy, but do we
have a choice?
Yet
another reader is unhappy about my poems and preambles that suggest that my
regular reference to ghosts as the personification of a posthumous
consciousness indicates “an insultingly casual approach” to the death of
loved-ones. Believe me, there is nothing ‘casual’ about it; it is a subject
dear to my heart. I am 75 years-old, and those I have loved, as friends or
more, are with me always, so great has been the impression they have made on
me; impressions and precious memories that have helped me through good times
and bad as well as exposing my flaws and showing me - not least by shining
example - how to recognise and (hopefully) overcome them as needs must in the
course of a lifetime.
Few if
any of us are perfect. Others are as likely to take issue with what we consider
out strengths as with any flaws or weaknesses, seeing them in a different light
altogether. (How we come across to others is never easy to work out unless they
tell us, and then it can sometimes come as a shock to mind-body-spirit. At the
end of the day, though, I suspect it is how we see ourselves and
what, if anything, we choose to do about it that counts, certainly in so far as
managing self-confidence, self-consciousness or that old standby conscience is
concerned.
Many thanks for dropping by, folks, always much
appreciated,
Take care, be safe, and let's all try to nurture a
positive mindset, whatever...
Hugs,
Roger
PS New
readers might like to take a look at poems in the blog archives now and then;
they can be accessed on the right-hand side of any blog post.
[Note:
This post also appears on my general poetry blog today.]
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