False prophets

I know I know I know, I have not been At All around.  I'm sorry.  You think you're hard-done-by?  Try being one of my actual real-life friends that I am neglecting.

That is a whole other story though.

Remember my Cat of Redemption (link)?  Dang it, it really would help to have a picture.  Mum, Dad, C, Rich - if you are out there anywhere could you email me a pic of Tilly and Abby together please?  It is high time I illustrated this point.

Anywho.  CofR (aka Tilly) is an all-black cat and Abby is black and white with the white being mostly on her belly.  One time a dear friend of mine Miss Love came over and she met Tilly... she then saw Abby on a chair later and said oh there's The Cat of Redemption again.  Ehr Ehr! (quiz show fail noise).  From that moment onwards Abs has had the rather unfortunate name of "The Cat of False Prophecy".  (Kitty the fluffy tabby feels rather left out.)

It is SO easy to take a fabulous analogy - like, I don't know, a pertinent song or a car - and think it means something.  A friend of mine did that once.  She fancied a boy who had her dream car: it was in her favourite colour and the make had brilliant adverts.  That, coupled with a memorable moment of eye contact and a shared taste in music, had her smitten.  Perhaps you might want to say smote as it wasn't really a good thing.

We were in my car the other week behind the very same model of car and it prompted a memory; and a revelation.  The boy thing never worked out and the car (and song) were always a bit of a frustration for her - why did it even have to be like that?  Why fall at all, with such small but darling details to now have to let go of??  My thought was that perhaps God sometimes let people see small "signs", from which they inevitably infer big wrong things, because working through all of the resentment and pain the lesson comes out that people are, in fact, emotional and pattern forming creatures who often see what they want to see.

This might not sound very hopeful from a blog that seeks to find something in everything!  However, it is important if one is seeking out the truth and not a projected ideal. Care must be taken when looking for answers; if not, when the lights come on and you realise it was just a fiction, hearts can get hardened rather than wisdom increased.

So the false prophecy was actually a real analogy!  Everything is significant, just not always in the way we expect or want it to be. I think Abby probably feels a lot better about her name now.  I know my friend finds it easier to let go... Having a purpose to pain always helps, I find.

Weak, Broken, Vandalised?

This sunshine recently, well, there is a whole blog in that just waiting to be made ready, but in brief: it has been Good. Really wonderful symbol of really wonderful things. Lots of light, nearly summer, winter is so over it is untrue. I've been joyful.

Not so much today though. Today has been a test of joy as something that doesn't give in to external rubbish. The way I see it, real joy keeps going despite circumstances that would try and break us. Inner life that resists all the outer troubles; that defies death. If everything was always wonderful then the remarkable surviving capacity of joy would never be known. So, when my potent delight started getting a bit wobbly today, I just had to choose a joy filled life even more. Strangely enough, for the best part it worked.

Until now. This evening life has been all about the broken sunglasses and destroyed artwork. The choice to be joyful felt firmly taken. I was too tired, too worried, too comfortable in my misery to carry on choosing. Or at least to want to... and wanting to choose is kinda where it is at.

I broke my sunnies by being careless, flippant some may say. Sounds like me. I shouldn't have chucked them in my handbag along with everything else I carry around and expect the arm not to snap off. I've taken the risk enough times but I ought to have known better. Why is it we have to learn the hard way? Gutting. Loved those shades but obviously not enough to look after them.

As for destroyed art. Time ago, when I first moved to this city and I wrote a different blog, I got excited about this graffiti:

I said it was a Banksy (very famous local artist) but actually I was wrong. It is a Nick Walker (famous-if-you're-cool local artist).What I never got around to saying at the time is that this happened but a few weeks later:

Isn't that just a proper shame? I noticed it again this evening as I was walking home from my 'up-and-down, I was defeating it but not so much now' day.

Then, well, I sort of was thinking about all these weak, broken and vandalised things that say defeat and misery and destruction and stupidity and hate and lack of perfection... and I started to look on the bright side! Or not so much but, well, I'll explain...

Take the picture. I don't entirely understand it, granted, but there seems quite a good vibe. You got the heart, the romantic plotline. It looks like a picture of alternative love. Then some scally-wag comes along and corrupts it by performing actually destructive paintwork on top, denouncing all that is stands for in proclaiming freedom for "vandals". However, if you see the idea of Vandalism as being the main message then, actually, the picture itself getting vandalised can in some poetically just way be seen as an unlikely but in-keeping response to the original; merely reinforcing the ambiguity between beauty and mess. Moreover, perhaps it is even about the 2-D artist "Prince Charming" abusing Rapunzel and the picture is really about love being a vandal: a harmful, corrupting force... so whoever came along has just let the b*stard have it...?!

The chances are that it was a bored, jealous rascal trying to bring destruction and death. But you know what, even if it is that I reckon it makes no difference to what comes from it. That kid can't control the spin that we put on the muck, transforming rubbish into beauty as we see truth in it. He hasn't a clue what genuinely positive results come from something and he can't control it neither.

As for my careless, smashy smashy attitude. Well, on Saturday I couldn't find my fave ever sunglasses, not for love nor money. I only just spotted them yesterday morning as I left but I was in a hurry so I took the ones I already had in my bag: the big brown ones that were bought as a bit of a joke in Dublin oh so long ago... It was those what got broken, not the black heart-shaped ones I adore that have already been replaced for me once! (Lol. I swear only one reader will even know what I'm talking about... but she will care so I mention it for you Miss Spitfire!) My point? Perhaps I made a mistake but it could have been worse and from learning the hard way I can avoid doing so when it is really important. Perhaps it was a narrow escape. I don't really know what this means apart from about sunglasses! I think it is something to do with not beating myself up for when things go wrong and I feel, or indeed am, responsible.

All this may seem highly speculative (when does it not?!) but I reckon, perhaps, even speculation can fall into the graffiti camp. Doesn't really matter what motivation may be behind people, doesn't really matter what the result looks like on the surface or how bad the day gets, good can still come... somehow. There is a verse in the bible that talks about this, it is one of my favourites:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans%208:28;&version=31;

Kinda makes me hopeful that no matter how much I mess up something, someone messes up me, or even when a situation feels so dark and dead that I can longer "muster up" joy myself, it doesn't really matter. It will still all be OK. Nothing can be so weak, broken or vandalised that it can't be turned to good, no matter how bad it may initially seem. Now there's something to be glad about!