Shake it off

I’m sure you know the first thing a dog does when she comes out of the sea: starting with her head and moving all down her body she rids herself of the excess water picked up from the swim. Don’t stand too close unless you want a shower! My praying friend saw this image in her mind as she was coming to see me – a dog shaking off water. She did something very sensible – which I know I often forget to do! She asked a question about what it means: is this good or bad? The answer was neither. Shaking off all that heavy water is simply a response to the change in environment as the dog readjusts after her dip. It’s a natural reflex!

We humans aren’t always so quick to respond to a change in environment. Yes, we take off our coats when we come inside from the cold to a heated home and hopefully wear appropriate clothes for the season. But what about emotionally, psychologically, mentally? It’s not easy to drop old habits, relationships and presumptions when life around us has moved on. As we get older it’s even harder – hence the generation gap as old people get stuck in a past culture that no longer exists. I admit I gave up trying to keep up with popular music back in the 90’s – I turned to Classic FM! Fortunately nostalgia rules the music scene so I still hear favourites from the 80’s regularly and some bands have just kept going into old age – The Stones, U2, Abba 😉 I think the numbers of such ‘young’ old people makes it even harder for the young ones to come into their own, they don’t have a gap to grow into… but that’s another topic!

Shake yourself from the dust, rise up,

    O captive Jerusalem;

loose the bonds from your neck,

    O captive daughter Zion

Isaiah 52v2

This is the Scripture that came to mind as I thought about that wet dog: shake yourself – not from the water, but from the dust. Yes, I have been lying on the ground and have forgotten who I am, bound by misery and illness. The legacy of anxiety and depression lives on for many, the grief of loss and disappointment over missed celebrations or holidays, fear of getting close to others, catching Covid. I can choose to shake off the dust and remove the bonds – there is a call to rise into who I am, to find out who that is in this coming season of my life. I wrote a poem while struggling with this question on one of those Sami-versary dates a few months ago: read it here

There has been a lot of talk about it being a new season, a new era, since 2020 – which certianly started things off in an unforeseen way! But those words have been everywhere, along with the opportunity for RESET. If it is to be new it means of necessity we cannot go back to what was and it is inappropriate to do things the way we used to! Addressing the climate crisis, the way we do health and social care, transport and energy, politics, everything, up for grabs, for a new start. Is it happening – NO.

But meanwhile, personally, how many of us stop to take stock and actually stop doing things that have lost their impetus, move away from old friends and focus on relationships with life and immediacy in them, draw a line under the past, change our ways? As with a garden, each year the plants must be pruned, tended, fed – or moved, discarded. Ground can be cleared to make space in our lives for new things to grow. I know we make New Year resolutions, but it goes deeper than that. I always ask myself, returning from a holiday, or at other significant times, where is the life now?

During lockdown, my poetry group stopped being fun – 2+ hours on Zoom! Despite loving poetry I had to stop using my time for that, sad as it was to say goodbye to the people. As a result I haven’t been writing many poems – because I’m simply not ‘sowing into’ that aspect of writing at present. But I made more time to develop painting instead, found there’s a lot I’ll never have the patience for, but that I love abstract explosions of colour and cutting up old paintings to do collage and that it’s OK to make pictures like that. I waited to see what I’d like to do instead of going through the motions because “that’s what I do”. In the years since Sam was diagnosed I’ve tried piano lessons, gym membership, creative writing groups, guitar classes, watercolours, oil painting, aquarobics, pottery – and of course various seasons of blogging. Times change, things happen, interruptions come, courses finish. I’m never afraid to STOP.

Coronavirus stopped everything for everybody. Have we recovered? Maybe instead of trying to recover the pre-Covid days, we should aim to discover a way of being now, in the light of those years. Just writing this I realise that during lockdown, although I enjoyed the quiet at first, it actually put me off something I was trying to make a habit – sitting still in silent prayer. In the end I got too fidgety with too much solitude and wanted to be outside walking instead. That wasn’t inappropriate, but after my recent post about being present in the moment perhaps I need to revisit that decision.

At the end the gruelling year that was 2021 I made 2 choices that were going to change things a lot – shake us UP! I bought 2 kittens (see my first post on this blog) and I took on responsibility for the hot drinks at the end of Sunday morning’s church service: I just knew it was the right thing to do and I’d have the grace for it, even though it meant we’d be committed to long hours every Sunday morning until mid-February while I trained a team. To do justice to that story would take another thousand words, but it has been nothing but life and lightness, being in the right place, being used and blessed as part of the Cathedral community outside the building while it is renovated. What a surprise from God! As for the kittens – pure delight!

Now I am living off the choice to write again, finding it pouring out like a waterfall released from a dam. It was 22/3/22 when I decided to open my laptop – numbers that say to me ‘open doors with God in the middle’! 😉 Isa 22:22 explains the doors, 3 is the Trinity obviously. I still love numbers… These just gave me the necessary push.

Thank you too to Taylor Swift and especially Kate Rusby who made this song into an ear-worm through a home-made You Tube video during lockdown so that, along with the Isaiah 52 verse above, it came straight back when I thought about the dog on the beach. Shaking off negativity is freedom and life!

I’m dancing on my own
I make the moves up as I go
And that’s what they don’t know, mm, mm
That’s what they don’t know, mm, mm

But I keep cruising
Can’t stop, won’t stop grooving
It’s like I got this music in my mind
Saying it’s gonna be alright

‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
Shake it off, Shake it off

Heartbreakers gonna break, break, break, break, break
And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
Shake it off, Shake it off

Taylor Swift