Dear Friend,
There was a trade off in our house. Dad went to work in the car every weekday morning. He had an office with venetian blinds. Like a detective in a film noire, he faced things down, hung out with other men.
A blue payslip came home every month.
Mam stayed at home and kept the place pristine. Me and my brother learned the ropes. We became watchful. Keepers of the peace. Dad had a short fuse, not a violent man, just a boy in a body that had grown in industrial spaces.
Living with a ticking bomb.
Dad had a throne. It faced the tv. How many other homes with kings in their castles?
My friend Luke joined a band in the 90’s, called Baby Bird. They have a song that makes me think of it.
‘I tick like a bomb
A little bomb with feelings
In every single country
Under every ceiling
There's no feeling, there's no feeling at all
There's no feeling, there's no feeling at all’(If You’ll be Mine - Baby Bird)
You get good at keeping out of the way, as best you can predicting the needs of our caregivers. We wanted to be good boys, to please, at least in the early years of childhood. Before the twilight rebellions as, slipping and sliding, we lurched from boys to adolescent men.
Our childhood years in November we’d sit with Mam at the table and write out our Christmas lists. How strange it was to shift gears from watching to wanting.
These were the pre-pandemic years. Decades before Covid, the other pandemic, the globalisation of materialism was yet to fully ensnare our world.
What I wanted?
It was always to do with movement. A bike. Obviously.
We’d see news features on the latest crazes to come over from the States. Roller skates, then skate boards. Anything American. We wanted freedom. The way it was sold.
Besides what we’d seen on the tv, it was hard to know what to ask for.
We weren’t used to asking for things.
What I wanted was my Dad.
Just to be close. There was no language for that.
Really, what does anybody want, if it’s not to love and be loved?
Each one who crosses your mind or your path today, should they be anything other than loving, know that they are searching for love, belonging and acceptance.
Our deepest need, under the frozen surface of a culture in crisis.
That we melt into one another. Agape. Spiritual love. The power right here at the very centre of you and me. No exceptions. No-one excluded.
Forgive yourself for the mistakes of the past. Refuse to condemn your sisters and brothers. Be like the sun, finding no-one underserving of her light, she shines on all.
Our greatest need?
To know ourselves as love.
To give love without demanding how or when or from whom it be returned.
As best we can.
What we give of love, we receive.
Giving attention to one loving thought.
That it will be okay, that there’s something more to life than where we are financially or how much stuff we own or where we stand in the hierarchy.
That so many of us are peaceful, wanting peace for others.
To know ourselves as the loving presence we seek.
Have a blessed weekend.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey