Claire > Recent Status Updates

6 vignettes, responses from participants, correspondence and feedback years later.

Workshop process of building person-centred communities.
Unity out of separateness, the chaotic, painful aspects, value choices, the paradox, building a climate of trust, participatory decision making, cooperation, respects for others, mutual helpfulness , awareness of the good life within not dependent on outside sources, becoming lifelong learners. Social will.

The endless self-inflicted torment club of being under the close eye(s) of an island community, none of whom live authentically. Unusually, of men.

The lexicon of crime became his favourite contemplation. The English possessed as many words for stealing as the Irish had for seaweed or guilt. With rigour, with precision, & most of all with poetry, they had categorised the language of thievery into sub-species, like fossilised old deacons baptising butterflies. Every kind of robbery had a verb of its own. Breeds of embezzlement he never knew existed came to him...

Love the illustrations at end of each chapter, the fragments of letters from Ireland to their immigrant relatives. Poems, songs.
Prologue presented as notes by a NYT writer from An American Abroad, of Ireland and London 1847 by a G. Grantley Dixon
Preface The Monster: recollections of the ship journey, passengers and the evil that stalked them.
Ch.1 The Leave Taking, 1st of 26 days at sea, notes of master of vessel.

Winter of 1847, departing an Ireland disrupted by injustice and natural disaster, the Star of the Sea sets sail. Reading this in conjunction with Land by Maggie O'Farrell for more about that period in Irish history.

finding this utterly compelling, as the family expands, contracts, rebels, stabilises, is met by various challenges that separate them and then...

Empathic: An Unappreciated Way of Being

To lay aside one's views and values in order to enter another's world without prejudice.

Experiencing the consciousness behind another's outward communication Stages 1- 8

Findings
Clients are a better judge of the degree of empathy than therapists
Brilliance & diagnostic perceptiveness are unrelated to empathy
Can Be learned from other empathic beings
Dissolves alienation

Enjoying this so far, subtle shifts in time signalled by a whole line of whitespace, it helps to figure that out early on.

On being open to the existence of multiple versions of reality.

Lancelot Whyte: it was his theory that great steps in human history are anticipated and probably brought about, by changes in the unconscious thinking of thousands and millions of individuals during the period preceding the change.

"At any moment the unconscious levels are ahead of the conscious in the tadk of unifying emotion, thought and action."

Life in a small Mennonite town that tries to keep up appearances, seen through the eyes of Nomi who has too many questioning tendencies alongside the life of righteousness she is supposed to be leading. The most pressing questions being where her sister Tash and her mother Trudie are, since they went missing, one after the other. Were they shunned, or is something else going on?

Life in a small Mennonite town that tries to keep up appearances, seen through the eyes of Nomi who has too many questioning tendencies alongside the life of righteousness she is supposed to be leading. The most pressing questions being where her sister Tash and her mother Trudie are, since they went missing, one after the other. Were they shunned, or is something else going on?

Interesting to read about this Mennonite community after reading Jan Carson's The Raptures, which focused on a traditional evangelical Protestant family. I didn't understand from Carson's novel what "raptures" actually was until I came across it again here.
"The idea is that if we can successfully deny ourselves the pleasures of this world, we'll be first in line to enjoy the pleasures of the next world, forever."

Wonderful road trip novel, full of humour and humanity. Hattie returns from Paris to care for her niece Thebes 11 and nephew Logan 15 when her sister is admitted. Thinking she's not up to caring for them, she takes them on a road trip to find their father, with a very vague idea of where he might be.
Engaging and insightful and beautifully flawed so far.