Category: Daily Life

Through the week there has been a missionary priest, Fr. Carlo visiting the parish. He delivered a sermon at the weekend mass and has been conducting an evening session each day this week as part of a retreat. It is a program of bible reflection, prayer and health, and advertised in the church bulletin as a “retreat on eucharist & the word of God for healing life’s hurts”.

At the weekend mass Fr. Carlo had spoken about modern life and all the strains and stresses that go along with that, causing issues with health – depression and loss of mental energy. I thought what he had to say was very interesting so I went along to the Monday night session.

There was a good turn out – maybe 40 or 50 people, mostly elderly or retirement age, I seemed to be the youngest one there. There was music, Fr. Conway was hovering in the background. I took my seat about halfway down the church, not far from where Dad and I normally sit.

Fr. Carlo shared his reflections on various parts of the bible, the book of Ecclesiastics (Ecclesias?) in particular seemed interesting, kind of a philosophical bent – you can have all the riches on earth but without faith they mean nothing. He pulled out various tracts which talked about prayer as a quiet, meditative experience. He taught us meditative techniques – thoughts and deep breathing. Breathe in the spirit, breathe out anxiety, depression, fear, anger, jealousy. We spent about a third of the evening in meditation and came out more relaxed than I’ve felt in ages.

I found this web page about Catholic meditation and it explains the rationale behind the meditative techniques from Fr. Carlo’s retreat http://rickmk.com/rmk/Cath/meditation.html.

This assignment signed, sealed and delivered. One down, 17 more to go.

Here I was getting slightly panicky about having to complete three assignments a month for my course; I hadn’t read the date correctly – Oct 2010, next year. Eighteen months to complete 18 assignments is a much better deal, but I don’t intend to return to my old ways and slacken off. I have nearly completed one assignment (possibly finish off tomorrow night). If the next unit is not too hard I might get the second one finished over the weekend. Then I can take a little break while I’m waiting for next units to arrive in mail.

Phew!

Received a terrible email the other day. It concerned my slow progress with the bookkeeping course I enrolled in last October. Since then I have only handed in two assignments. There is six months to go and I need to complete another 18 assignments!

It just goes to show how poor my planning skills are. I thought I had longer than 12 months and fewer than 18 assignments to go.

I have been mulling over a piece of advice I was given yesterday – to prioritise “me” time. It didn’t really sink in at first because it seems like everything is “me” time in my life. The truth is that I seem to thrive on sacrificing “me” time. I spend so much time doing Hospice work, but it is not planned very well, so I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. And other areas of my life suffer the shortfall.

I guess this is why I always feel so stressed and wrung out, and it seems like everything in my crazy, disorganised life is a mess.

I want to turn this around but I need some tools to help me do this. One of the tools, I think, will be this blog. I shall record my efforts and progress. Don’t want to live like this anymore!

So today is Day One of getting order into my life.

Saturday morning, finally I’ve the time and motivation to run a few errands but it is a public holiday – ANZAC day. As I drove around getting a couple of things done I saw a lot of Australian flags in evidence. I thought about the service men and women who have been involved in a war effort, sent overseas to fight. What it must have been like for their families, the people left behind. The unthinkable tragedies when son or daughter did not return home. The horrors experienced by those who did come home. Let’s not forget the grief, the loss, the sacrifice.

Well my head cold has worsened and I’ve called in sick at work today. I’d called sick yesterday at the pound, hoping it would help my chances for today. Oh well. Ros has suggested I have tomorrow off too, so I’m 100% better. Not sure about that yet.