I recently bought a pair of shoes.

I sort of needed them… ?, and I will wear them a lot, cos they’re great, but they serve a different purpose, in reality.

I was in an “artistic low” moment… I am not sure I believe that artists have a particular temperament?, but I do think those of us who make music, or art, feel things a lot, and this feeds into our art.  Anyway, an artist’s low moment, if it exists, is quite low. The world turns a bit blue and any energy I may at times be known for seeps out through invisible holes in the sole of my shoes. And I am left a bit bereft, aimless, reaching for purpose and filling in the day with things that need to be done but maybe not yet, cos I can’t tackle the big stuff.

St Brigid: one amazing women

It did not help that it was international women’s day, and I went to a woman’s day event that spoke of all the women who were doing great stuff…

while my sense is that the symbolic power of an infinite difference plays out in ways we live, move and breathe in. The more I open my eyes the further we are from what I would like to imagine. And I feel complicit. And at times I feel like laying down my chosen arms and sleeping by the side of the road. And even blaming God (not my default position): what was and is your plan anyway, because this can’t be right?

So I went shopping for shoes that were not urgent.

And now my feet feel pretty, and comfortable. And while this is hardly the best case I have made for aesthetics, (and Balthasar would turn in his grave, if he were still there), I find my spirit relaxing and slowly opening to another more life-giving Spirit in-between the shoes and I, in-between my day and I, turning blue to sea-green with bits of light. This may also be a women’s thing – the power of shoes – or my brothers may just find it hard to admit (gauntlet down), but right now I am naming it.

And I slowly return to my somewhat intense self… whose day starts early and ends late, in the important business a theologian and a missionary normally gets up to.