Hospitality: Come as you are, exactly as you are, but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition”

I will begin with a classic bit of Rumi

"The Guest House" by Rumi  

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

I recently attended the funeral of my dear friend Nik’s mother, Helen. Helen was a very special person. She gave so much to so many by just being herself and making you feel welcome and accepted as you are. I have been reflecting on the impact that she had on my life as well as the life of others. While I was preparing thoughts I would share at the funeral, it dawned on me that she was one of the inspirations for my ministerial mantra, she certainly planted some seeds: “Come as you are, exactly as you are, but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition.” I learnt that in her home where she made myself and so many others feel truly welcome. Her home always felt like a safe haven, a place of refuge. A place of welcome. Home. Certainly, Helen always made you feel that way. To quote the great Robert Frost:

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

Now the thing about Helen is that she didn’t have to take you in, but she always did. More than that she encouraged and enabled you to be who you were in her company. This is true welcome. This is true openness. I think that sometimes we confuse what it means to be open. It is not to tell the whole world who you are, to pour yourself all over others, but allow those you meet to be who they are in your company. When I think of openness I see it as an Invitation to others, to come into your life.

Now while Helen always made us welcome, there were a couple of rules. She would say “I don’t mind you coming round, as long as you say hello” and “There’s two doors to this house, you come in one and if you don’t like it you go out the other.” So, you would arrive and say hello as Helen worked away on her knitting or stamps in the back room. I learnt the lesson the hard way about her rule. I didn’t need to learn it twice. As she told me straight when I didn’t pop round and say hello once.

Helen was of Polish decent and was born in Germany just after the “Second World War”. Her start to life was not easy. Her father died not long after she was born and as a young child she developed polio, spending months in hospital in an iron lung. Helen’s stay in the hospital lasted so long that she even began to call the nurses ‘mum’. Polio permanently handicapped her as she had one leg shorter than the other. The family eventually ended up in England. She could speak only Polish at first, but eventually became a fully fledge Yorkshire woman. She again learnt something of welcome in those early days as some made the family welcome where as others were suspicious of these strange sounding people. Helen’s sense of welcome was shaped very much by her early life. It also shaped her career as a theatre nurse. Many of her former colleagues attended her funeral. They all spoke of Helen is exactly the same way. Her welcome was her life.

Helen fell in love and married having two sons. Sadly her husband John died suddenly while on holiday from a brain haemorrhage. She brought up her boys alone, being both mother and father to them. Her son’s Nik and Anthony are two of the finest people you could meet. They carry that same spirit of openness and welcome. An absolute credit to her.

I spoke with several people family, friends, colleagues, friends of her sons and all had the same impression of Helen and her life and legacy. She is a wonderful example of what it means to live with welcome. She wanted you to be who you were, with love and respect. She acknowledged the inherent worth and dignity of all, although she would never have used such a phrase. She did so not by what she said, but by simply being who she was. Oh, by the way I am not attempting portray a saint here, she also had that classic Yorkshire bluntness and if you and done wrong she would tell you so. I learnt that once and never disrespected her again. She welcomed me with open arms though, not matter what condition I was in. She did the same with everyone.

This all got me thinking about welcome, about encouraging welcome, about encouraging folk to come and try again even if they have fallen short in life. It also got me thinking about how faith enables us to do some.

It brought to my mind those well known words of Rumi

“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.”

Jelaluddin Rumi

Rumi’s words bring to my mind the prodigal’s father. A lot of folk who ended up at Helen’s, who would go talk to her in her back room were struggling with life and she would listen without prejudice, just offering love. When I think of living in and by Grace this is what comes to my mind, to be that kind of person to others. To welcome another to be who they are is the ultimate of Grace we can offer one another. I’m sure Helen wouldn’t see it that way, she was just being herself. She was simply being hospitable. She lived with the memory of those who had offered it her, from a difficult beginning in life and at other stages too. She followed their loving Grace filled example. She also remembered those who made her feel unwelcome as she was a stranger in a strange land, at a difficult time of re-building in European history. Many of her parent’s families were murdered by the Nazi’s and she suffered loss and tragedy throughout her life. She witnessed and experienced a variety of examples and chose the path of love and hospitality, all her life.

Since Helen’s funeral I have been thinking about hospitality and how we might live hospitable lives. Lives of welcome and of healing and repair. We cannot do that to the whole world, but we can begin where we are and do what we can with what we have.

Hospitality is word that conjures images of the hotel industry in our day and age. The word though has a deeper spiritual history. It dates back to the early monasteries of the 5th century. Strangers would come in need of care. The word “Hospitality” originates from the Latin word “hospes” meaning both guest and host and stranger, the origin of the word is reciprocal in nature. At the heart of word is the link between welcoming travellers and caring for the vulnerable. The words hospital, hospice, hospitable, hospitality, bring to my heart and mind the idea of being generous, caring and sustaining, something I witnessed in Helen and many others. It is no surprise that Helen worked as a nurse all her life. Now like Helen there were rules in these ancient monasteries. The best known being that of St. Benedict. Benedict created a book of rules to live by, called The Rule of Benedict. Many monasteries still adhere to it today. The foundation of the rule was listening. “Listen with the ear of your heart,”

To be hospitable is to listen with an open heart; it is to allow the person in your company to speak, to be who they are. It is the key to my ministry and do know what I think I learnt it in Helen’s backroom as she would listen to me and my troubles when I would go to her home often in confusion and despair. She would welcome and listen to me in my prodigal shame. It wasn’t anything personal, she did it for so many, right up to the very end. She would call you a pain in the backside, but would sit you down and give you a cup of Mellow Birds and sometimes something a little stronger. It is strange to me but over the last few weeks, before Helen died, “Mellow Birds for mellow moments” has been singing in my heart and mind. The concept of mutual care and love as also been on my heart a lot too. That it is relational in nature, that folk walk together side by side, listening and sharing

It fascinates me that at its root in the Latin word “hospes”, hospitality meant both guest and host. This is a relational interchange. It brings to my mind an article I read by Renee Ruchotzke who wrote:

“I believe that the theological basis for hospitality – radical hospitality –is the concept of the Creative Interchange as expressed by process theologian Henry Nelson Wieman. In Wieman’s theological model, the source of human good is what he calls the Creative Interchange. You and I interact, we learn something new from one another, we absorb that experience into our own being, it enriches our experience of the world. Our enriched selves in turn enrich others in subsequent interactions. This ripple effect enriches the world. The more varied our experiences and the more we interact with different people, the greater the increase of human good.”

This to me is how we live hospitable lives; it is to be truly open and welcome to one another. Such living is truly transformative; such living embodies what I mean by my ministerial mantra “Come as you are, exactly as you are, but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition.” To welcome the other you have to be welcome too. A real challenge in our time, but then again it is the same in any other time. It is always a challenge. There is nothing new under the sun.

Hospitality, living this way is not easy. There is the possibility of rejection and becoming vulnerable. Harm can come. Some can make you unwelcome. Some may take advantage. That said I believe that hospitality is essential if we are to begin to heal our broken communities and world. It probably begins one relationship at time, just a wall is repaired one stone at a time.

I have been remembering and honouring a life that touched me deeply the last couple of weeks. Someone who taught me hospitality and welcome. Not a perfect person, a very real one. One I didn’t realise at the time had had such an impact on me at such a difficult time in my life. Someone who loved me as I was by welcoming me exactly as I was. Someone who offered comfort and shelter and most importantly a listening ear, someone who listened with the ear of their heart.

As I said at her funeral.

“Helen was a remarkable woman. Someone who would make you feel welcome as you were. In my work my ministerial mantra is “Come as you are, exactly as you are…but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition.” I have been thinking of these words these last few days and do know what I have only just realised where I learnt this. It was at 46 White Lee Road a place where you were always welcomed in, even if you were a pain in the arse.”

Thank you Helen for all that you gave to all of us. It is etched in my heart and soul as it is in that of so many of us.

Someone whose memory I hope will always live on in me.

I’m going to end with a little bit more of Rumi. A poem celebrating hospitality.

All religions, all this singing
One Song.
The differences are just
Illusion and vanity.
The Sun's light looks
A little different on this wall than
It does on that wall,
And a lot different on this other one,
But it's still one light.

We have borrowed these clothes,
These time and place personalities
From a light,
And when we praise,
We're pouring them back in.

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "Blogspot"

Odyssey: Returning from a Fog

I drove home last Monday. As I passed through the moors on the top of the Pennines, on the M62, the highest motorway point in England, I entered into dense fog, it continued all the way home, and it only really dissipated as I pulled into the drive . It was the same driving back to Altrincham, although it cleared as I joined the ring road. It was not an unfamiliar feeling as I have felt like I’ve been living in a bit of a fog these last few months, haven’t we all. I have to say my personal fog seems to have lifted ever since Christmas morning, for this I am oh so grateful.

Life is often described as a journey, although the truth be told it is a road to nowhere, we don’t go anywhere. We go round in circles and end up returning to same place many times. That said we return often changed in all kinds of way, sometimes with treasure to share. The lovely thing about returning home of course is that the return comes with the sense of belonging, to a place where you finally belong. I suspect it is the same when we go on our final journey. I have been thinking of the many folk, this Christmas season, I have journeyed with during my life, who are no longer with us, but who shared their treasures with myself and others. For this I offer thanks and praise.

 Tom I want to share with you a short poem by Tom Leonard titled “Odysseus”

“Odysseus” by Tom Leonard

it took me so long to get back to who I am
why was I away so long why was the journey so tortuous
all those false masks against a backdrop narrative to do with authenticity

but now arriving back there is still much debris to clear
the clearer to see the point from which I started

that from which I set out confused in sundry identities at war with themselves
now to find calm on that setting-out point as the final destination

As I was coming back to my home in Altrincham I found myself singing one of the chants I have shared in “Singing Meditation” the words were: “The Earth, the air, the fire, the water, return, return, return, return”. It was the final words “return, return, return,” that kept singing round and round in my heart.

This got me thinking about a conversation I heard on Oddysseus and the Odyssey, I think a friend had seen the old classic Hollywood movie. Now while we might not be fighting mythical beasts we are all on an adventure, a kind of Odyssey. That throughout our lives we step out we get lost, we find ourselves in the dark of winter lost in a fog, but that eventually we return home, or at least yearn to return home, often enlightened by the adventure. The call for home is a powerful one.

Human history is littered with stories and adventures inspired by the search for treasure, for wisdom, for enlightenment. Think of the great figures of religion Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammed, Gandhi, they all stepped out into the wild alone and returned enlightened. Think also of the heroic figures from the great stories, they did likewise. They were called out into the unknown, only to return with something new and inspiring. They stepped into the dark, but came home in the light. Stories such as Jason and the Argonauts or many of the other Greek tales, Pilgrims Progress, Gulliver’s Travels, The Wizard of Oz, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Lord of the Rings the list is endless. Human history is littered with folk tales and myths which teach us so much about what life is in all its potential both for beauty and horror.

Joseph Campbell, who spent years exploring such myths, believed that these stories helped us to fully understand how each of us at some point in our lives or at many moments of our lives are called out to journey forth. He identified four distinct stages of the journey. The first stage Campbell named “The Call to Adventure”. This he claimed is caused by discontent, which draws us out of the comfort of our lives to risk something new; the second stage is a form of initiation where the hero goes through a series of ordeals that test their mental and physical skills; The third stage is the time of revelation the discovery of truth and treasure; the final stage is the return to one’s community. With wisdom gained and with treasure to share. Coming home in the light, coming out of the dark or a thick fog, if you like.

These adventures began and ended with a call. They began with a powerful call to adventure, but they also ended with an equally powerful call, to return home. Just think of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and those immortal words as she clicked her ruby slippers “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” Similar to those three words that came to me as I drove through the fog, “return, return, return.

The call to return, especially to return home is a powerful call. This call though is not just about returning to a place, it is also about time I believe; about returning to a time in life when everything was simpler and safer. I’m sure that this was Dorothy’s call in “The Wizard of Oz”.

This is the call of nostalgia. To return to the place of safety the place of paradise, where we were cared for and looked after. Nostalgia though is often blind and perhaps senseless. It can also be painful. Things are never quite as we remember them.

Nostalgia is an interesting word. Like so many words it has changed in meaning over time. Originally it meant “severe homesickness considered as a disease” from the German heimweh (home+woe) homesickness. It is rooted in the ancient Greek words “algos” meaning pain, Grief, distress and “nostos” meaning homecoming. Nostalgia is a painful homecoming.

There is a similar Welsh word “Hiraeth” which is a mixture of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past. The Cornish and Breton equivalents are "hireth" and "hiraezh". The truth is that reality and memory are not always the same.

The physical return home can also be painful, especially if what we are returning with is seemingly not wanted. Sometimes you might be rejected on the first return. Think of Jack and his beans in the story “Jack and the Beanstalk.” There is an account in Mark’s Gospel of Jesus returning home and being rejected and almost mocked. As he said to his disciples ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.’

Sometimes we might not be recognised when we return home, how painful can that be. We can feel like a stranger in our own land. Think of Odysseus who is recognised by no one on his return. It is only as he begins to speak that his old, now blind, dog recognises his voice and his tail begins to thud with joy and love and recognition.

I remember a painful experience in my own life many years ago. There had been quite sudden and dramatic changes in my life, I have never been quite the same person since. I remember over the months that ensued that I would go home for a few days and return quite frustrated, with this feeling that my family and my loved ones were not accepting me as I was. I remember going to see my minister at the time, John Midgely and voicing this. I remember John calmly saying to me, after listening to me going on with myself for quite some time, “Danny you have gone through some quite dramatic changes and while you have adjusted to this it will take others some time. People are not quite sure how to be with you. They are used to you being a certain way and it will take them some time to adjust to the new you.” I remember thinking to myself how wise these words were. I also reflected some time later that perhaps I’d not changed that much as it was still all about me. Instead of me wanting them to adjust to and understand me, I was the one who ought to have been adjusting to and understanding them. These days I rarely feel unaccepted wherever I go and am gratefully received if I come to preach in my home town. I am loved amongst my kin and welcome in every home. I am recognised as I truly am too.

Well at least this has been the case until recently, when I found myself in that fog. I felt unaccepted and unwelcome, not that anyone else made me feel this way. I did this to myself and thankfully I have moved through this and come to a place of self acceptance once again, the fog has cleared thank God. The truth is I have always been loved and accepted as I am, I just haven’t always felt this way. The journey home this week has shown this to me once again, “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” It was wonderful to share stories and laughter once again. I also remembered some rather beautiful experiences of being with folk who are long gone, who I have not thought of in a long time. The warmth and love I remember feeling in their company and homes, as a little lad. Recently all I have been remembering are less than lovely feelings as I have been in a less than lovely personal space. Just shows to me once again that we remember our past through the lens of our current experiences. Some say you cannot change the past. It is true that the facts remain the same, but they way they are remembered are under constant change.

Earlier we heard the wonderful poem “Art of poetry” Jorge Borges. Like Joseph Campbell Borges recognised a common theme in all the great stories. In this poem he explores some of the great ancient Greek stories. One being Ulysses (which is the Latin translation of Odysseus) and his painful return to Ithaca. He also talks of the philosopher Heraclitus who suggested that we can never return to the same river. This is because water continual flows on and on and the water we step into is never quite the same, but also because we who stand in the river are not the same person either, life will have changed us too…Like the river our lives, go on and on, ever changing. The lesson is that it is not about yearning to return to some mythical ideal, but to fully experience the adventure, the beautiful journey as the poem by Constantine Cavafy, “Ithacca” suggests. This is the lesson of Homer’s Odyssey and perhaps all the great stories. The treasure is the journey itself.

Life is a journey and a beautiful one at that. One in which we are constantly turning and returning again and again and again. It is not always an easy one and one where there will be troubles and difficulties. There will be times when we will not be recognised and may not even recognise ourselves; there will be times when we will feel completely lost and won’t know where to turn for sanctuary; there will be times of darkness too, when we find ourselves lost in a fog, but we all must journey on. In the end of course we return from where we came. We return, return, return, from the beautiful Odyssey. We step out of the fog, out of the darkness for the final time and return into the light…

Please find below a video devotion

based on the material in this "blogspot"

Home is where the heart

“Roots hold me close; wings set me free;

Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me”

When I look at myself, when I really look at myself, I know that while I’m very comfortable with the concept of wings setting me free I am far less comfortable with the idea of roots holding me close. I’ve been thinking about this the last few days. I have always struggled with roots, especially the kind that hold you real close.

I’ve always been a bit of a nomad, a wanderer, a traveller. I have never really settled anywhere. I have lived in my current home in Altrincham for about two and a half years now and it is as long as I have lived anywhere. Even as a child this was the case, we were always on the move. A bit of a butterfly you might say, just floating from flower to flower, but never staying anywhere for very long, never really nesting.

My dad always said there was Romany (Roma) blood in us. I know that he had this romantic view of himself and he certainly had a love of this lifestyle and I can see traces of this in me. Not the love for horses and horse folk, but certainly the nomad, the traveller, the fear of taking root somewhere.

I always remember the story he use to tell of why travellers were always on the move. He says that it was a traveller who hammered in the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet as he was crucified, but for some reason he only used three nails instead of four; a nail in each hand but one nail through both feet, as they were crossed together. He use to say that this fourth nail was why travellers never settled in one place for very long; this fourth nail was always following behind them catching up with them, a bit like those headlights that keep on following us at night, as we drive in the dark...just like headlights on your tail, headlights on your tail...

My dad on his way to Appleby horse fair

The story is a rather beautiful “mythos”, but a sad one...

I am learning the importance of roots, the importance of place, the importance of home. We all need roots, that hold us close, so that we can spread our wings and truly fly free. We all need a nest to fly back to from time to time otherwise we get lost and lonely on our journeys.

I do feel settled these days among the beautiful communities I serve and belong to.  I’ve certainly learnt a lot from them about place, commitment and community. I have learnt so much about those roots that hold us oh so close, that are so vital if we wish to fully stretch our wings and fly free. I’m very settled in the community in and around Altrincham and in my little house. I’m sure that the way I live would be too basic and perhaps Spartan for most folk, but I feel at home there. It is my little nest, my little home where I can settle down and rest after a day flying around all over the place. I am finally beginning to understand the importance of home, how vital it is to have roots that hold you close and that the “Romany Rye” that my dad use to sing, is not really for me at all.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about "Groundhog Day" and shared the closing words from the final broadcast of weather man Phil (Bill Murray)  near the end of the film. He said:

“When Chechov saw the long winter, it was a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope; and yet we know winter’s only one more step in the cycle. And standing among the people of Punxsutawney basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter."

...”Basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts”...those words have stuck with me these last few days. I’ve been thinking about them. It brings to mind a true image of home. It is a loving image, a comforting image and one I am growing to appreciate.

Home is where your heart is and it is also where your hearth is. Yvonne Aburrow (Editor of the Unitarian) recently told me that the ancient Romans “viewed the hearth as the centre or focus of the home. It was where the family offerings to the family gods were made.”...she went on to say...”I think a room is incomplete without a hearth or an altar to focus it and in some rooms, the TV is the focus instead of the hearth-fire.”

I wonder what the main focus of people's homes are...the focus of my home and my life is so many ways is my laptop...

Home is where the heart and where your hearth is, even if that is a laptop. And as they say there is no place like home. When I think of the nomad, the traveller who wants their wings set free, but without the roots to hold them close, I always return to Dorothy and “The Wizard of Oz”. In the film she begins by singing of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” a place away from the drudgery, of the mundainity, of life where wings could set her free, but at the end she clicks those ruby slippers and says those immortal words. "There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like"

“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” Dorothy has been on a spiritual journey and encountered all manner of fascinating friends along the way. She has also fought off enemies who wanted to destroy her. She has experienced and learnt so much, but in the end she just wants to return home. She needs those roots to hold her close, because her wings have become tired.

For many home is the embodiment of safety and acceptance, the heart and the hearth of a loving family. Robert Frost wrote that “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Sadly this is not the case for everyone, for many people home and family is not a place of safety at all. In fact it is a place of struggle and suffering.

Home is a tiny word but a powerful one and one so rich in meaning. It is a word that can hold such dreams of possibilities or nightmares of hurt. It is more than a physical place it is an idea, a feeling, a vision. It is something that we carry with us as we journey through life; it is not just something that we seek. For some it is a place that they are fleeing from, a place of repression and not a place of loving possibility.

Shelter is of course a basic human need. Something that people are seemingly increasingly being denied, homelessness is once again on the increase in this country. Some estimates claim that as many as 1 million people live without a permanent residence. To have somewhere to lay your head at night is a basic human need. We all need a place to cook, to eat to care for each other and yet increasingly people are finding themselves devoid of this basic need.

That said “home” is more than a physical place, you do not need to be physically homeless to experience a sense of homelessness. When Dorothy says “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”, she is longing.

I suspect that it is the tension between the roots that we need to hold us close and those wings that we wish to spread to set us free that drive us to find true home. We all need connection and we all need freedom, our souls cry out for both. A true home offers this. The true home, the ideal home offers us the promise of wholeness; it offers both solitude and connection. A place where we can warm ourselves by hearth and hearts can dream of what they truly desire. Home is where the heart and the hearth is.

A sense of belonging is vital to a happy and healthy life. We need roots that can hold us close so that when we fly off on our next adventure we can spread our wings and fly free. To me this is the purpose of free religious communities like the two I serve. To me this is the purpose of true religion; a place where no one need be alone; a place that anyone can call home; a place that binds up the whole and the broken; a place that brings glad tidings; a place that offers space to spread your wings; a place where you can fly free. At the beginning of the “Wizard of Oz”, while she was still in Kansas, Dorothy sings of a place where “the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true”. To me this is the purpose of spiritual community, a place where such dreams can come true.

I know I’ve found a home among the beautiful people of Altrincham and Urmston and I offer thanks and praise for this. I believe that it is the task of communities like these to be places of open hearts and hearths so that people can truly feel at home there. As I look forward I believe it is our task is to create together  a place where the roots are stretched out far and wide and people can be held close so that they can spread out their wings and be set free...

Of Mice and Men

“The best Laid plans of mice and men often go awry”

The Robby burns poem was of course the inspiration to John Steinbeck’s novel “Of Mice and Men”. I remember reading it at school and it must have struck a chord, because it has stayed with me over the years. It seems to have been the theme of the last couple of weeks, as I have been off duty.

I spent the two weeks visiting and spending time with friends and family and I have to say it has been lovely. That said it was not how I had planned things. I had intended to go away on holiday, when I booked the time off, but because of changes in personal circumstances that didn’t happen and I just did not have the heart to go away on my own. This it seems was the correct decision as it has allowed me to spend time with a lot of folk who have been with me through thick and thin; people I do not spend as much time with as I ought to, if I am really honest. What was amusing throughout the period was that every day I had to change my plans, things just kept cropping up. I adjusted, I accepted, I went with the flow.

I was travelling to Yorkshire the other day listening to New Model Army, very loudly, in my car. It was playing a classic track of theirs “Green and Grey”. It ended at the perfect moment, just as I crossed the border from Lancashire to Yorkshire, the final note played out. The song, of course, is about a small part of West Yorkshire, but what it’s really about is never forgetting where you have come from.

In so many ways the last couple of weeks have reminded me how important roots and long standing loves are to a sustained and happy living.

I am a fortunate man indeed, as throughout my life I have been shown a great deal of love from so many people. I have not always appreciated or easily accepted this, but it has always been there. I hope in the last couple of weeks I have been able to give some of that back.

“It’s the time I think most clearly, it’s the time I drift away...”