Au revoir

After yesterdays post I thought that I was going to spend some time thinking about whether I wanted to continue blogging at the present.  However, my reaction to the idea of stopping - at least temporarily - was such that I know that it is something that I want to do.  And once the decision is made...

It has been fun sharing with you all, but for the time being, as Jimmy Young (Jeremy Vine to you younger types) used to say on the JY prog TTFN.

One parting thought!  If George Osborne wants to know where to start cutting then he could try the MoD - why do we need the 4th largest military spend in the world, why do we need nuclear, even if we just paid the soldiers and military contractors to sit at home we would save the hardware costs.  And shouldn't matters of war now be a UN issue?

To Blog or not to Blog

While I was away last week I didn't blog - and it was good!  Then I get back and find this from Clayboy.

I wrote quite a long time ago about blogging and many of the themes remain.  I still think that blogging is for me, and I still think that there is a stress to me in blogging.  The most obvious solution would be to blog less often.  However last week I was talking to a counsellor and they talked about the weekly relationship - and how if the time between meetings stretches out things get saved up to say, and are more thought through, whereas turning up weekly the unconscious has more opportunity to get out.  I think the same is true of blogging.  Posting daily means that some days there is nothing to say - and yet they are sometimes the days when I learn most as I write something down that I didn't know.

The thing that I didn't write about in the earlier post was the community of bloggers.  It feels antisocial to blog but not to read others blogs, to blog but not read and sometimes respond to comments - but both of these activities can be very time consuming.

What am I going to do?  Not sure!  Watch this space.

Is it possible to describe a mystical experience?

The following comes from Richard Rohr's daily email.  I am sure that my atheist friends will say that this is nothing to do with God, but with the exception of "Union" I would would expect agreement that these are good things and ask how they find them in their life?

To sum up these two weeks, mystical encounter always implies a dipping and even falling into a Great Love, and below are just some ways to describe it. It is first of all a momentary "state,” and with years of practice, the state becomes a permanent trait and a way of life. But know this is available to ALL of you! In fact, you are hard wired to receive it.

• Enlargement: You will become larger in your heart and attitudes, not smaller.
• Union: You will have a stronger sense of union with things, not disunion from things or others. You know you are not alone.
• Freedom: You will exhibit a deep sense of inner freedom, not constriction.
• Optimism: You will find a grounded hopefulness within yourself, not pessimism.
• Safety: You will feel a primal security and a “being held”, not anxiety.
• Rest: You will have found a deep and abiding resting place, deeper than any passing restlessness.
• Possibility: You will be filled with creativity and options, over any "all or nothing" thinking.
• Permission: You will wonder, "where does all this inner spaciousness come from?"

Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate ... Seeing God in All Things

Gi's a job

This article talks about the increasingly common practice of expecting young people to work without pay to gain experience.

I am quite clear that I come down on the side of banning it as a practice.  If we claim to be a meritocracy (which I think we do) then making certain jobs open only to those who can fund free working is unfair and should not be allowed.  I think that there is also a good point in the article about the minimum wage!

However, whilst this may be seen as a modern phenomenon and one which is spreading among the more popular jobs (nearly called them professions J), it has a long history as I can recall in my younger days that barristers (and I don't mean coffee makers) had to study and then work for a pittance and be paid in arrears such that most of that profession came from those who were able to subsidise the early part of the training.  A quick look now suggests that this has changed with pupillages funded, so here is one example where action has already been taken.

An alternative would be for the government to sponsor this year, much as they do with student loans - however I am wary of this because, as with student loans, there would still be a temptation for those from more disadvantaged backgrounds to run up large debts.

What benefit is there to the companies?  To avoid minimum wage issues there should be no immediate gain to them, so presumably it is about seeing candidates ahead of time; they could always develop better recruitment procedures - after all if they are after talent then at present they are ruling a significant proportion of the population out.