I Am Not My Thoughts

I'm starting to realise that a lot of my problems stem from unhealthy thinking. The importance of thinking ‘right' cannot be emphasised enough.

Everything we do starts as a thought. Every action and reaction begins life in our minds.

The Bible talks about capturing every thought and making it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

For most of my life I have taken the attitude that every thought that comes across my mind is ‘mine'; that it is a reflection of my personality; that it represents the very essence of my being; that every one of my thoughts is truth. This attitude has come from belief that in effect my thought life is who I am.

By taking this belief on board I have let the floodgates of mind swing wide open. The flow of thought has overwhelmed me so much that the result has been a combination of depression, frustration and anger. I believe that this is one of the primary reasons why I have suffered from mental health problems most of my adult life.

My first realisation has been that my thoughts are not me. They do not define who I am. My second realisation is that I can and should challenge my thoughts. Particularly the negative, self destructive ones. This is what I think the writer of 2 Corinthians is talking about.

Reviving Empty Space

Jill, Jude and I were in Portballintrae this week.

There's a series of picnic tables that line the top of the dune overlooking the bay. Somebody (kids I expect) had taken flowers from the beds that lie nearby and placed them in the hole where the parasol would normally go.

I thought it was so cool!

Maybe inspiration for how we could creatively and simply revive other empty spaces?

When Downtown, Look Up - No.1

Bridge Street and Church Street

Next time you are walking up Bridge Street and Church Street getting depressed as you look at the closed shutters and 'For Sale' signs, take time to lift your head.

See if you can locate some of these 'architectural details' (yes I am a geek!).

Answers on a postcard!

Maybe there is HOPE for our town yet...

For Those Who Should Have Been

http://uk.myspace.com/music/player?sid=87272146&ac=now

Thank you.. and Goodnight

When White Grandpa was a kid he contracted polio. It left him without the use of one leg.

He had to wear a ‘Forrest Gump’-type calliper which had to be clicked into place when he was standing and released to let him sit. He had two wooden sticks to help him walk.

When he was old enough to drive he had a contraption fitted to his car which allowed him to control the pedals from levers on the steering wheel- a crude version of an automatic.

His favourite game was billiards. I wish I’d asked him to explain the rules because I still can’t understand how a game with only three balls could last a decent length of time. He must have been alright at it. He told me of how he won a turkey one year at a Christmas billiards competition.  

He got a job with the Liver insurance company. He had a framed drawing of their headquarters in Liverpool on his living room wall. It seemed like a huge factory type building. You could tell he was very proud of it.

I always struggled with the idea of White Grandpa being an ‘insurance salesman’. He never struck me as someone who fitted my idea of that profession. I think I was ashamed. When I turned 17 White Grandpa got me a good insurance deal for his car- so I learnt to drive in an automatic. I felt bad that his profession meant that I got it easy.

It was only years later that I began to understand more of what White Grandpa’s profession really was. He used to go round all the homes with a Liver life insurance policy and collect their premiums. When someone passed away he was the one who organised everything for the families. It was a far cry from today’s faceless insurance system.

White Grandpa met White Gran and decided she was the one. She eventually gave in after a bit of persuasion. She became his ‘Managing Director’. They had two children, my mum, Joy, and my aunt, Isobel. They are two of the most loving and considerate people I know.

During the War, White Grandpa served as air raid warden throughout the Belfast blitz. He didn’t ever talk to me about it.

When we came along their lives changed forever. We were everything to them. I remember his smile, and his laugh, and his happy eyes. I remember the big raspberries he blew on my cheek. I remember visiting their house in Greenwood Avenue and hearing him play the piano.

We used to go for Sunday walks along the country roads near our house in Ballygowan. We picked blackberries off the hedges and ate them there and then. One Sunday we were coming back along the Ballygowan to Belfast line and we found a number plate lying on the side of the road. Dad told me it was White Grandpa’s. A tractor had come out on him. Thankfully no one was hurt.

Dad got a job in Ballymena and we moved up shortly after. White Grandpa and Gran moved to a bungalow down the road from us. Every Sunday they came to our house for Sunday lunch. These lunches consisted of a dissection of the minister’s sermon that morning and my brother John making whistling noises so Gran thought her hearing aid was playing up.

White Grandpa loved God, but he could never say the Lord’s Prayer the whole way through. When he got to ‘and lead us not into temptation’ he stopped. How could his loving God ever want to lead us him into temptation?

He loved nothing more than to sit in the front seat of our car when we went to Portballintrae and look out at the waves crashing against the rocks.  

As the years went on, White Grandpa’s sticks were replaced by a zimmer frame, then a wheel chair, and then the Sunday lunches became a rarity. My mum went down early every morning to sort out their breakfast and get them up. She was down every evening and usually for a few hours in between.

White Gran got upset when the Social Services took away their double bed to be replaced by a single bed for her and a hospital bed and ‘winch’ for White Grandpa. I wrote her a poem called ‘Don’t Worry’. She just seemed to be getting smaller and more fragile every day.

White Gran passed away in an old people’s home. I can still see her tiny body lying on the bed, lifeless. White Grandpa hadn’t really spoken for months but you could tell he was heartbroken. His ‘Managing Director’ had gone. At the graveside a beam of sunlight crossed her grave.

A few weeks later, nine years to the day in fact, I visited White Grandpa in hospital. My Mum and Dad were there too. He wasn’t very responsive. It was his birthday the next day, March 12^th. He had received ten or fifteen birthday cards which were stacked on his bedside unit.

More to break the silence than anything I took the cards, one at a time, and started reading them to him. I wasn’t even sure if he heard me, but I went through them all anyway. When I finished he turned to me and said clearly, ‘Thank you’.

We all started to cry and then he said, ’Thank you’, again.

Then another, ‘Thank you’.

‘Thank you’.

‘Thank you’.

He must have said it ten times.

We left the hospital and he passed peacefully away that night.  

William ‘White Grandpa’ Foye Holdsworth

12^thMarch 1911 – 11^th March 2003.

Your Love Fuels The Sun

Your love fuels the sun
Melts my heart of stone
Your spirit fills my lungs
Your grace my oxygen

Knowledge Vs. Experience

I really struggled at university.
 
The large proportion of our course was project based. We were given a brief and a site and we had to go away and design a building.

My problem was I had never laid a brick in my life, let alone built a whole wall.

My mind couldn’t get past this fact. My thought process would go something like this:

 

‘OK, I’ve got to design a four bedroom house for a young couple.’

‘Right, OK, no problem. Who is this young couple?’

‘Augh, they are just imaginary. But the brief says that he’s into weight lifting and she owns a couple of horses.’

‘OK, that’s a four bedroom house with a gym and paddock then.’

‘So what about the site?’

‘Well there’s a nice view to the west.’

‘OK, big window to the west then. Great. Let’s start drawing.’

‘Hold on a second there. You’re not seriously going to start drawing yet are you?’

‘Well I thought it might be a good idea.’

‘But you’ve never actually built a house.’

‘Yeah, but I’ve lived in one all my life and I’ve seen lots of them. And anyway I’ve read up on how to build one so it should be OK.’

‘Yeah, but you’ve never actually built one with your bare hands. What gives you the right to think you could tell someone how to build a house?’

‘Well, I’ve read about brick laying...’

‘But you’ve never actually laid a brick?’

‘Yeah, but...’

‘Have you even ever lifted a brick?’

‘Well...’

 

So I decided in the holidays to get a job with a builder and start to get a bit of experience laying bricks.

I went to a local builder’s yard and they told me to turn up at a site in the town the next day. So I quit my job at Burger King and turned up the next day.

The foreman didn’t really know what to do with me. At the time I was built like a rake and I’m sure he looked at me and thought ‘This guy won’t last long’.

And he was right.

He set me to clearing some rubble and to be honest it killed me. After the 10 o’clock tea break I scarpered. I didn’t even tell anybody that I was leaving. I went straight back to Burger King and did what I was best at: mopping floors and cleaning toilets.

So I returned to university having still not laid a single brick.

One local architect I really admire is Mervyn Black. He left school and became a joiner. From there he worked up through the trade and eventually studied architecture as a mature student. He built his own house in Templepatrick and counts the beautiful Irish Linen Centre in Lisburn among his many designs.

What I admire is the man’s experience. He can actually relate to a joiner on site in a way I can never. He knows what it’s like to be on that site everyday struggling to make sense of the architect’s drawings and bringing his ideas into reality. That is something I will never have.

I read a book recently called ‘Pillars of the Earth’.

It’s a fictional story of a stone mason in the middle ages struggling to find work and support his family while holding on to this dream of designing and building a magnificent cathedral. What struck me was that there was no ‘architect’ in this story. It was the stone mason himself who drew out the plans, elevations and sections. And he was on site everyday overseeing the work.

Maybe today the idea of taking the time to work your way up through the trades to eventually become the designer is too costly or inefficient but I would like to suggest that knowledge rather than experience has been given too much emphasis. This is not to say that head knowledge is important- the two go hand in hand. But perhaps we need to rethink the route we take from the drawing board to the site.

At 35 I don’t have the same conundrums in my head that I used to as a student. I’ve laid a brick or two as well. Still haven’t built my own house. Maybe I will after I’ve experimented... I mean experienced a few more builds. I might even go and sign up for a joinery apprenticeship someday.