Pottery & Poetry & Life
First published 29 August 2022
Next weekend I’m taking part in an event called Potfest in Melton Mowbray, an event for makers of pots and other things out of clay.
This completes a cycle for me that started many years ago.
There is no way I would have completed that cycle without all the help, inspiration and support I’ve had from family and friends.
And the wheel is going to keep on turning!
Writing into Life
In yesterday’s post I reflected on my self-management rule no. 2: Establish a good relationship with a stationary (or stationery) supplier. https://gladabout.life/2025/08/29/day-4-growing/
Today I’m considering rule no. 3: Establish (and maintain) good relationships with other suppliers (providing the bases are reciprocal).
Not all friendship relationships are reciprocal. I like to think that I can and do reach out a hand of friendship and support to people without any expectation of return. I do, however, have friends where the relationship is one of mutual support. These relationships help to sustain me through difficult times and I do what I can to sustain my friends through any difficult times that they might be having.
Coming, as I am, through a period of emotional and psychological burnout, I don’t have a lot of giving energy available at the moment.
I am, however, gaining spiritual nourishment and sustenance from an increasing commitment to the Buddhist faith.
‘The Liberating Prayer’, composed by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche, includes the following two verses:
With folded hands I turn to you
Supreme unchanging friend,
I request from the depths of my heart
Please give me the light of your wisdom
To dispel the darkness of my mind
And to heal my mental continuum.
Basically, that’s what I’ve been working on for a long time without knowing it but – more recently, since I started reciting this prayer – with growing awareness of what I am doing and why I need to: to dispel the darkness of my mind and to heal my mental continuum.
To know that I can do this, using methods through meditation and putting the Buddhist teachings into practice in other ways, has been like a hand of friendship is helping me to pull myself out of a deep well. I still have to do the work myself – and it’s taking a massive effort – but I’m not stuck and I’m not on my own. That’s friendship.
I also feel an increasing sense of friendship with members of the Buddhist teaching group that I go to. It’s good to have friendship groups as well as ‘besties’ in our lives.
Having just given Lydia a good ‘rub-a-dub-dub’ tummy rub and chest massage, and knowing that she looks out for me and Trev too, in her way, it’s good to know that we have our own friendship group here at home.
Continuing the story of Lydia and Me
After a long day at the Show, I’m enjoying a large g&t and reflecting on the list from yesterday’s post. My focus is on ‘Let ourselves be held’.
I’m not sure if this means emotionally, psychologically, spiritually or physically. Probably any or all four or a combination.
I’m not good at letting myself be held, and neither is Lydia.
She now lets me give her massages (the “rub-a-dub-dub” massages I’ve referred to in previous posts) but she still doesn’t let me fully ‘hold’ her when we’re out walking, in terms of believing that I will keep her safe. She’s been too badly traumatised in the past.
I’ve had to be so self-reliant for much of my life that I will always fall back on myself too. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but historically I’ve tended to look out for others, while at the same time my own needs weren’t being met. That’s not because I’m a selfless saint, but it is because I really don’t want anyone to have to go through what I’ve been through in my life if there is anything I can do to help them not to. I just don’t like that level of waste.
Looking again at the list, I’m drawn to ‘nourish our senses’.
My senses feel jaded, as if nothing is fresh and invigorating any more. This is where Lydia comes in to help, as I do find our walks together on a morning have a stimulating effect on my senses, even if it’s still at a low level of intensity.
I’m certainly much more open to ‘imperfection’ than I used to be. I can still be a bit obsessive about details, but more able to let things go.
I can only ‘do one thing at a time’ these days, and very slowly, so I’m doing OK there.
I’m not always great at being able to ‘ask for help’ although at least I know now that help can be sought out. In the first half of my life, I had no idea that such a thing might be available, never mind what form it could take.
‘Expressing emotions’ is complicated, I find. I’ll keep trying to work that one out.
I do ‘create daily rituals and routines’ although I tend to need to be flexible on timings and interpret this very broadly.
It may be a while yet before Lydia and I are both as relaxed as we need to be, but we’re working – and resting – on it.
The fact that my partner has just made a delicious meal while I’ve been resting helps enormously.
Continuing the story of Lydia and Me
There were big farm machines harvesting crops in the fields by the side of the road where Lydia and I walked this morning. She’s quite used to farm trucks now and was generally quite settled as they passed.
I’m feeling generally quite settled, although I do have a dentist appointment today. I’ll just concentrate on my breathing and I’m sure it will be fine.
I’m continuing to steadily prepare for the Aldborough & Boroughbridge Show on Sunday.
As featured in yesterday’s post, I’ve planted up some of my pots, with plants that I bought, such as ivy and a heart-shaped vine, but mostly using spider plants that my friend Maxine propagated for me. Everyone should have a friend like Maxine, not just because she propagated spider plants for me – and also gave me some pepper, tomato and cucumber plants that she’s grown from seed – but because she’s been there for me at every turn through some very dark and difficult times. She’s the “supreme unchanging friend” that the Buddhist teachings talk about.
Last night’s class was the fourth on the theme of ‘Cool to be Kind’. We looked at the “mirror of dharma”, reflecting on how easy it is to see the faults of others but how Buddhist teachings (dharma) can help us to cherish others instead.
The reference book for last night’s teachings was, ‘The New Eight Steps to Happiness – The Buddhist Way of Loving Kindness’ by the Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso[1].
I have a copy of this book and when I picked it up this morning, found a bookmark at page 149. This is the start of a chapter, ‘Accepting Defeat and Offering the Victory’, with the verse:
When others out of jealousy or anger
Harm me or insult me,
May I take defeat upon myself
And offer them the victory.
This is something I’ve been working on doing, particularly over the last 18 months. I haven’t and don’t find it easy, and in fact I find it psychologically and emotionally draining. But it somehow feels like the right thing to do. It offers a way forward for me, even though I don’t know where that way forward is leading.
However, I do have good friends to share my journey with me; and a Show to go to on Sunday.
[1] Founder and spiritual director of the New Kadampa Tradition – International Kadampa Buddhist Union
First published 13 April 2020
Cry
A cry goes out
but no one hears
The Act is almost
done, no tears
But then another cry
is heard
That stops the Act
before the end
And so it goes on
and on
and on
These are the pages between the sheets of our lives
Blank. Black. White. Dirty. Torn. Cornered. Folded. Plied.
These are the lives that we limit to live
These are the cries that we’re frightened to give
These are the days that we count on our clocks
How soon will it be before it all stops?
2020
Rules, Rhymes, Recovery, Recipe, Random – Glad About Life:
https://amzn.eu/d/6Ptwe4S
A Woman, a Dog & a Blog – Writing into Life:
https://amzn.eu/d/6Ho21L8
It amazes me that the Buddhist religion, rooted in the East, is so accessible to me here in the West, in the UK.
“Dharma” is the teaching and “sangha” is the community. I’ve taken refuge in Buddha, dharma and sangha recently and will continue to do so, as it helps me to see things differently, train my mind, start to feel calmer about things that have been profoundly distressing.
Sometimes in life it can feel like we’re faced with an impossible situation. ‘Fight’ or ‘flight’ – the reflex responses – seem like the only options and neither of these provides a way forward. But if we can start to see a problem as an opportunity – something that we can grow with rather than get angry about or run away from, there is potential for a way forward to open up after all.
This isn’t something that I’ve found easy, not now and certainly not when I was younger.
I’ve gone into flight mode at critical times in my life because I just didn’t have the skills or insights, confidence or support to help me do it differently.
I used to struggle to assert myself in any way and used to get it horribly wrong, with disastrous consequences in terms of life choices and relationships.
I was in my late thirties when I discovered Buddhism at around the same time as I found out that I could turn to a counsellor for therapeutic support.
I haven’t always found that Buddhism and personal therapy are comfortably aligned. In some ways they have seemed to me to work from opposite polarities – Buddhism teaches that I give up ‘self-cherishing’ and therapy helps me to learn to love myself (with great difficulty). However, my approach has been to not over-think, take from each what they offer and do my best to move forward in more positive ways. It’s an ongoing journey, still fraught with trials and traumas.
I’ve worked through – cried, ached and screamed through – a lot of emotions over the last 30 or so years. There were some, though, that I put to the back of my mind, locked away because they were too difficult to deal with and I had to find a way of building a life for myself rather than staying stuck. Those locked away emotions do, however, have a way of finding their way out, demanding to be addressed because they be need to be resolved. That happened when I retired.
So I’m now at the point where I’m engaging with both therapy and Buddhism again. Except now they don’t feel so polarised. I just feel very lucky to have access to all the wisdom and wonder of Buddhist teachings from the East here in the West, as well as skilled therapy, that will help me to heal, and to make the most of the life that I have.
Cry
A cry goes out
but no one hears
The Act is almost
done, no tears
But then another cry
is heard
That stops the Act
before the end
And so it goes on
and on
and on
These are the pages between the sheets of our lives
Blank. Black. White. Dirty. Torn. Cornered. Folded. Plied.
These are the lives that we limit to live
These are the cries that we’re frightened to give
These are the days that we count on our clocks
How soon will it be before it all stops?
© Glad the Poet 2020
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