Honour Thy Father and Thy Mother

I eventually overcame the disappointment of not being able to climb all the way up the first hill of the day and the short sharp lumpy climbs continued until respite came with a steep descent into the pretty coastal town of Looe.   First lunch was taken just outside Torpoint.  Climbing out of Looe had been tough but after about five miles there was a descent and the hills were less exacting until we reached Tor Point.  After lunch my mind returned to trying to fathom out what on earth Jesus was on about with regard to family relationships.

“…a man’s foes will be those of his own household.  He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me … he who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”  (Matthew 10: 36 – 39).  I recalled that St Luke’s version of this saying is even stronger and more obviously shocking – “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sister, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.”  (Luke 14: 26 – 27).  So, what’s happened to “love your neighbour as yourself” and “love your enemies” not to mention breaking the commandment “Honour your father and your mother”?  I remember once, whilst looking at a crucifix, having a sudden outburst of emotion which culminated in my muttering under my breath, “You ask too much!”

I concluded that the entire business can be summed up in the word “identity”.  It seemed to me that there comes a point in life where you have to decide who or what defines you or, to put it in phycological terms, what do you internalise from your surroundings which you end up imagining is the essence of your personhood.  I concluded that Jesus was saying don’t let even those nearest and dearest to you define who you are rather find out for yourself and then live out your own identity with all the consequences of what that will inevitably mean; put briefly live it as fully as possible and pay the cost.  That is where the bearing your own cross comes in.  In my reading of the story of Jesus as it is set out in the four New Testament Gospels that’s exactly what He did and that is what He requires of anyone claiming to be a follower of His.  That put in context my angry outburst to the crucifix.  It is very difficult to be yourself before God, it is easier to run with the crowd but if you do that you will lose your very essence, your very soul.

We met up with the support team at Yelverton for second lunch.  This was a familiar town as we stopped in the same place on the 2013 ride.  On that ride we had all been dreading what came next, a very long haul up to Princetown which looked particularly horrendous on the stage map in Nick Mitchell’s book.  However, our experience on that trip was that the climb, whilst long, was not as bad as we had anticipated.  I found that the first part of the climb was the worst and caused me the most difficulty, after that I was able to ride the rest of the way.  So, this time part of the team at least knew what we were in for and so having had a toilet break and stuffed ourselves full of carbs we set off having decided we would all do the climb at our own pace and meet up again with Julia and Jo at the top of the climb.

Once I began to ride the less exacting parts of the climb up to Princetown I was able to begin to muse again.  I have a suspicion that God never intended our upbringing to be perfect.  We might all wish that like Adam and Eve in the Genesis story we lived in some kind of Garden of Eden, a paradise where everything is laid on and we don’t have to struggle, but if we lived in that kind of world we would never grow up and would be condemned to a life of perpetual infancy.  It seemed to me that day that the struggles for identity begin at home and extend outward into the wider world.  We, like Adam and Eve in the story, discover that once we lose our innocence life is tough and not everyone wants to, or perhaps can, engage in the necessary costly struggle of becoming who they can truly be.   There is however no way back to Eden, an angel with a flaming sword bars the way.

I finally made it up the climb and found the others slumped on the pavement outside a brick building taking in the brilliant sunshine on one of the highest peaks of Dartmoor.  The Chiselled Whippet was ready for the off as usual and had persuaded the other testosterone fuelled males on the team that it was, “all downhill from here!”  “Except for the uphill bits!”  I replied.  I remembered the last lap of this day’s ride from last time and did not share Ollie’s somewhat over optimistic view of the difficulties of the last fifteen miles.  The others took off and Lizzie joined me for the last leg of the day.  We rode together across the moor which was bathed in golden, late afternoon sunshine, past sheep and wild ponies; glorious, but certainly with as many ups as there were downs.

 

 

Please Excuse The Language!

When the Rock n’ Roll Circus finally wheeled out of town in the early hours of Sunday morning, I dozed rather than falling into the hoped-for deep sleep.  However, that said, I didn’t feel too bad when I got up and I was ready for breakfast at eight o’clock.  The breakfast did not disappoint when it arrived, it was a well-cooked “Full English”.

We were on the road by nine-thirty, which was a little later than we had hoped.  I say, “we were on the road”, there was some heated discussion by those with Garmins as to exactly which road we should be on.  Henry said one way and Sam and Ollie said another.  Sam and Ollie prevailed until we discovered that Henry had been right after all and so we added an unnecessary mile or two to what would prove an exacting ride.  It was the shortest day’s riding in terms of miles but when Nick Mitchell wrote in his guide book that the first two days of what he called “End to End” and we called LEJOG were the hardest, he wasn’t kidding, and day two was considerably harder than day one.  As we rode off I wondered how much yesterday had taken out of my legs and whether or not I would achieve the goal of riding up every hill without getting off my bike and walking.

From the pub, once we were on the right road, we headed for Fowey and the Bodinnick ferry which would take us across the River Fowey.  I didn’t have to wait long to answer the question about the state of my legs and their ability to repeat yesterday’s performance.  Were they up to the challenge?  Unfortunately, not!  The first part of the climb out of Bodinnick got the better of me and so did several other steep sections of climbs on the rest of the day’s riding.  Various heated expletives accompanied each time I dismounted and started to push my bike wearily up the hill in question.  Anger may have served me well when it came to dealing with others’ doubts about my intellectual competence earlier in my life, but it was impotent with regard to this challenge; in fact it was downright unhelpful and I had to have a few stern words with myself and suggest that being kind to myself rather than fuming might be a more positive position to adopt, after all there was a long way to go.  Disappointing all the same.

Perhaps it was musing about how to deal with painful legs and the disappointment of having to resort to walking, or perhaps it was the fact that I was swearing quietly to myself, caused a rather caustic and bitter poem to suddenly came into my mind.  I can’t be certain, but you know how it is, sometimes something pops into consciousness and if you are anything like me you have to run, or in my case that day, ride with it, and see where it takes you. Please excuse the language, here is the poem:

They f*ck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were f*cked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man, hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin, “This Be the Verse” from Collected Poems. Sour Collected Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)

I once heard Alan Bennett quote from this poem on a TV program.  He went on to briefly describe his parents, of whom he was quite obviously fond. He stated that he had no complaints with regard to them and that really “f*cked him up”.  I think know what Bennett meant.  Similarly, on the surface I couldn’t complain about my parents.  They clearly loved me and tried, on their limited means, to provide for my wants, but, underneath all that, something darker brooded and that I think is what Larkin is driving at in his rather bitter words.  My parents were both very anxious people and I grew up in an anxious environment.  They also lacked confidence, so little wonder then that all my life I have been an anxious individual who lacked confidence and looked at the world through suspicious eyes.  That bit of misery certainly bounced down the generations and landed squarely in my waiting lap.  I pondered that Jesus has some strong words to say about those closest to us and the negative effect that they can have, but that’ll have to wait until, hopefully, I’ve conquered this next hill.

 

 

 

Name That Tune!

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, Lizzie sat out part of the first day’s ride; this caused me to muse about the whole business of lack of confidence, something I have in fact struggled with myself over the years.  So, during the ride between second lunch and St Austell, I got to thinking about a therapy patient I saw a long while ago over several years.  This patient had deep emotional problems, in part caused by an abusive partner who ridiculed her, leaving her bereft of any sense of self-worth; in other words, she was a victim of emotional abuse.  Consequently, she found it very difficult to engage with the world and arrived in my consulting room extremely angry because one therapist she consulted told her that they would not work with her because she could not afford the fee. Naturally this compounded her sense of worthlessness.  I saw her on a reduced fee although I was criticised for doing so by some of my fellow therapists.  Month after month she pleaded with me to show her the secret of confidence or to give her confidence as if it was a gift I could bestow and my withholding it, as it appeared to her I did, was an abusive and depriving act.  Her fantasy was, I was a totally together individual abounding in confidence; little did she know!

Eventually after a very long time, she realised that the only way to progress in her life and break out of her personal prison was to have a go, and so tentatively she got herself a voluntary position with an organisation and was progressing quite well and gaining in confidence, until a paid position came up for which she applied unsuccessfully.  This was a devastating blow to her still fragile ego.  In our sessions we almost, but not quite, went back to where we had started.  However, she did survive this demoralising set back as she had survived my apparent withholding of the gift of confidence and to cut a long story short, she managed to get employment and started to rise through the ranks of the organisation she joined.

Finally, the great day came when she said to me, “I think I am OK now and I don’t need to come and see you anymore.”  I concurred and felt that to try to keep her in therapy would be counterproductive. So, we had a few concluding sessions to tie up loose ends, and she left.  I was pleased to see her go because I felt that she could indeed walk the next part of her journey without my support but I was also sad to see her go as I had grown fond of her and the journey had been a two-way experience, I too had grown through our relationship.

As a therapist I see myself as a wounded healer and so I have learned that confidence comes through taking risks and trying to extend myself; to use a cycling analogy, if I fall off my bike the best thing to do is get straight back on and ride despite the cuts and bruises.

The last part of the first day’s route took us past Hewas Water after which we left the winding B roads, which we had ridden for most of the day, and joined the A390 for a six-mile ride along the main drag into St Austell.  The very last part of the ride was up a fairly steep climb which was the last thing any of us wanted and I for one thought it was never going to end; of course, it did.  I had ridden up every hill that first day, so go me!

Naturally the climb had caused our group to fragment and I was, as usual, the last to arrive at our destination, The Bugle Inn, which turned out to be a very pleasant pub with good food and beer and a live band.  After a hearty pub meal and a couple of pints I decided to listen to the band for a bit before turning in.  They seemed to take forever to set up and then all disappeared for a while only to reappear around 9.45pm when they finally started to play.  As it turned out they were a good pub band, but I was knackered and so I went to bed relatively early after listening to only a handful of songs.  When I got upstairs I put in some ear plugs but I could still recognise the tunes the band was playing from the comfort of my bed, which seemed to vibrate along with the bass line. They played until midnight!   Julia and I gave up attempting to go to sleep and instead played, “Name that Tune,” not quite what one wanted when trying to get a good night’s sleep.

“And there was morning and there was evening the first day.” (loosely based on Genesis 1: 5)