Poppies

Mam Tor

Had a lovely weekend in Castleton with Sue to celebrate her birthday.

blood on the tracks

I recently learned how to take blood. Its a skill I have wanted to acquire as many of the people coming to see me about their alcohol problems require a liver function test to give an indication of the impact that their drinking is having on their physical health. Its not always possible to find some one to take bloods at the end of an assessment, and sometimes the opportunity to get it done is missed, and with it, a piece of the jigsaw that may have weighted someone in favour of beginning to address their problem, or simply to have come back for another session.

On the first day of the phlebotomy course I felt a little anxious. I was to be trained by an experienced worker at one of the busy general hospitals in the city. The first morning began, after the preliminary paperwork, with practising on taking “blood” from a plastic arm. The arm, it later turned out, was not a realistic alternative to a real, flesh ‘n’ blood member, but did have the distinct advantage of  being removed from a real, possibly anxious, certainly pain-sensitive  human being. I fumbled about and my fingers felt like fat sausages. Tremulous fat sausages, in need of beta-blockers.

The next step *gasp* was to take blood from my instructor. The blood flowed. I gulped.

Coffee time. Then back to the cubicle in a busy phlebotomy outpatient department. Patients waiting in rows, having taken their numbers from the ticket dispenser. Vacutainers, needles (green and black), cotton wool, plasters, mediwipes, tourniquet, sharps bin… I watched my experienced colleague take blood with ease on several occasions before being told, matter of factly, that it was now my turn. Reader, I cannot tell you how far I was out of my comfort zone, as the first member of the public was summoned to my booth.  I asked her name and date of birth, made sure I have the right specimen tubes for the required blood tests. Tourniquet on, a little tentatively, (did my patient just raise a nervous eyebrow?) I feel for a vein, wipe the area with alcohol, pick up the vacutainer and select a needle, moving the point to towards the vein, skin pulled taut, anchored. The needle breaks the skin, the vacuum draws up the blood. I am not breathing and my patient is aware of my tremor and asks “are you learning then?” my trainer intercedes that we all have to learn sometime. My patient is assured now that I have released the tourniquet, the specimen tubes are indeed blood red, and she is not in any discomfort.  Do you remember the first time? Oh yes.

Three days and I have some ups and downs. Elderly patients veins need hunting down like live eels. Well, perhaps not exactly live eels, but there is the element of the chase about them, and the elderly can have such delicate, friable skin.

At the end of the third day I take six tubes from a young patient and feel a sense of achievement. I have spent the last half day working alone in my booth, summoning help as and when I need it. I am surrounded by underpaid, skilled workers who have great sensitivity to their patients’ needs, and who develop relationships with the many people attending regular clinic appointments.

I have enough skills to take back to my day job. I have taken about 50 bloods in the three days. Back at work I am seeing about six people a week, some my own clients, but also helping out colleagues within the team. And it is going well, and I am no longer shaking.

But what I really take away from that time back working in a hospital, is a sense of our mortality, of my own mortality. When I moved from mental health work into alcohol I remember commenting on the sense of how the work brought me more into contact with our impermanence, our ill health and frailties, it felt more visceral.  But a few years pass, and maybe I have become immune to it, or more likely, in denial.

Hospitals, “dukkha magnets” as Jon Kabat-Zinn memorably called them, bring one into contact with the sick, the aged, those who are dying .  And I am in touch, once again, of my fear of the dying process.

Amida Sheffield

I have revamped the Amida Sheffield blog and added a post about National Refugee Week.

Retreat

Photo courtesy of   Three Wheels

I recently attended a weekend retreat at Three Wheels Shin Buddhist House. It was a beautifully sunny weekend and the retreat was a good opportunity to meet up with friends,some who I had initially met through the internet. There were dharma talks, chanting practice, work periods in the garden and wonderful food. Madrakara, an Amida Order member was also present and we both felt very welcome and supported at this event. I may add a few more reflections at a later date. Shokai retreats are being offered twice a year and I have already pencilled in the date for the autumn event.

Visiting Three Wheels has also been a great opportunity to call into the Quaker bookshop on Euston Road. I picked up several books about the Experiment with Light project, including Rex Ambler’s Light to live by.

I’m sure there will be some readers who are a little perplexed about how and why I am writing about Shin Buddhism and Quaker Spirituality – how can one reconcile these different spiritual paths? I’d like to offer two quotes which may shine some light on this area. The first is from New Light – 12 Quaker voices and speaks about -

…a complex Hindu concept – sarvadharmasambhava. This says as a result of one’s own experience of the ultimate we may be able to understand a similar experience of another and respect it. But from this deep experience of ultimateness and universality at the depth of one’s own religious faith what results is not a superficial suggestion that “all religions are the same”, but a capacity to understand that the experience of another may be equally ultimate and universal but quite different from one’s own. We may recognise the validity of the encounter yet not recognise the God of whom the other speaks. This is a religious tolerance based on deep respect, “the homage which the finite mind pays to the inexhaustibility of the infinite,” in the words of Radhakrishnan.

I think this is very important to remember. And yet, and yet… there is a paradox. When I speak with my friend who is a devout Muslim, we find that as we talk of our lives and our work, as we move beyond the words to the spaces in between them and truly let those moments of attentiveness to each other address us, so we find a deep unity in our encounter with God (”closer than our jugular vein”, as the Qu’ran says)

And it is in the hospitality of listening and waiting that we Quakers can find our unity with one another amidst the very different words we use.

My next post will be from John Hick and will, I hope, shed light on how I can see both the Shin Buddhist and Quaker traditions as  “spheres of influence”.

Currently reading

The first Paul by Marcus Borg & Dominic Crossan
Light to live by – An exploration of Quaker Spirituality by Rex Ambler
Searching the depths: Essays on being a Quaker today by Harvey Gillman & Alastair Heron (eds)
How to believe in God by Clark Strand
Understanding Shinran – A dialogical approach by Hee-Sung Keel
Buddhism of the heart by Jeff Wilson

Introducing Amida’s light

After a bit of a break from blogging I will be returning shortly with a new focus on exploring Quaker spirituality. I am fortunate to have the opportunity of being part a pilot project for a new Quaker initiative – Becoming Friends: Living and learning with the Quakers. More about this within the next couple of weeks, but I intend to use this blog as a way of reflecting on the course material.

I have been reading a short pamphlet The Mystery of Quaker Light by Peter Bien and was taken by the following passage -

[H]ow many contemporary Friends realise that George Fox never used the term Inner Light at all? He spoke instead, although seldom, of “Inward Light” and most often of “the Light Within.” John Punshon explains why “inner” is not appropriate. Light, he writes,

“operates at a personal level to redeem those who turn to it; but it would be a mistake to regard it as a part of human nature, a personal possession, a fragment of divinity, our bit of God. The light is in all, but it is the same light that is in all, not sparks from the eternal flame. There are not many lights, but only one.”

It is better, therefore, to speak of Inward Light – a power that enters us from outside – rather than of Inner Light, which sounds too much like something all our own that we possess internally. Punshon states categorically:

“The light is that of God within you, and is not your conscience or intellect.”