New Year, Old Blog or Here I Go Again

Yet again I return to this blog after a long gap. In fact I see that I only wrote three posts last year when I had meant to write monthly. I do not want to castigate myself for this however but instead want to look at ways in which I can go forward into the new year.

This blog has had several different strands. First and foremost it has been a way of continuing to write my spiritual autobiography - a project I have been engaged in for many years. I am looking at different approaches and hope that I can share some of that work here.

I have also used this blog to share my passion for Quaker history - and especially for the eighteenth century and particular Quaker characters - with others. The Quaker alphabet structure helped me with that but it also limited my choice of subject, although without it I only managed one Quaker history post last year so something needs to be done.

As well as writing here I have other outlets for my thoughts. I write a diary, also irregularly, in a series of A5 blank books using a rollerball pen. This is just for my consumption but sometimes what I write in my diary can feed into what I write here and in fact for the last few weeks I have been considering with pen and paper how I can continue this blog.

There is something else that I do regularly elsewhere. As well as reading and writing the visual arts are also important to me. I am a devoted fan of Pinterest and use my 'boards' to collect images for my eighteenth century research but I have created many others for art that I love. Some are devoted to a particular artist - for example Eric Ravilious, Emily Carr, Felix Vallotton and Giovanni Boldini - while others cover subjects that attract me - trees, the sea, windows, landscapes, abstraction and still life to name but a few.

Eric Ravilious. Cuckmere Haven 1939

Nearly two years ago I decided to share some of this art on Facebook as an antidote to all the doom and gloom about the world appearing there. So every day, usually when I first open up my computer, I share a piece of art from my Pinterest boards. At first I wrote a bit about the chosen image from my perspective but after a while I decided to leave each image open to whatever interpretation my friends wanted to give it. I now just give the title, the name and nationality of the artist and the date it was made if I can find it. I think this is right for Facebook but for a while now I have been wondering about finding a way to expand this description, to give more background or to explain why it appeals to me. So I have decided to add this to my possible subjects for this blog.


So I am expanding my subject matter but realistically I know that actually sitting down to write is likely to remain a problem for me! I need a prompt but I also need to be flexible. Aiming to write once a month, as I did last year, is obviously not enough but weekly writing feels like too much pressure, so in 2019 I will aim to post something every two weeks and allow myself to do more if I can. I will also set a reminder on my phone for every other Sunday and see how that works!

Blogging is a personal thing for me but, unlike my diary, this blog is written for an audience. I welcome dialogue and hope that I will hear from some of my readers in 2019 - if only to act as another sort of prompt!

Turning Inside Out again?

For the second time a course on 18th century Quakers which I had hoped to run for Woodbrooke has been cancelled because of a lack of bookings. This has led me to consider what to do next. I am not going to abandon the 18th century but perhaps the time has come to approach it in a different way. I shall continue to try to 'introduce you to my friends' through this blog and I will look into the possibility of creating an online course for Woodbrooke for 2020.

At the same time I will put some more effort into research and writing and try to make progress on my biography of Catherine Payton Phillips. I have ideas for some journal articles which I will focus on. I know from long experience that, as the historian Barbara Tuchman put it, 'Research is endlessly seductive. Writing is hard work'. I think that now is the time to do some of that work.

Also, for a while now I have been feeling nudged towards a new direction - or rather to a new approach to an old path. It is twenty-five years since I set out as a Joseph Rowntree Quaker Fellow to give workshops on spiritual autobiography up and down the country. I talked about this in earlier posts on this blog - first of all ten years ago and then later when I was wrestling with some difficult questions.

Having published my book Turning Inside Out; an exploration of spiritual autobiography in 1996 and given up the workshops after ten years, I thought that spiritual autobiography, although still an interest, had faded into the background of my life, except in its connection to my historical research and writing.

Recently though I have been contacted by a few Friends in different parts of the country who had read my book and wanted to use it as a basis for workshops in their meetings to allow people to share their spiritual journeys. Encouraged by this I got out my notes and at long last transcribed the two background talks I gave as part of the workshops from longhand to the computer. Of course they need updating but I may now look at ways of publishing them as I originally intended to do.

I am also putting together a new Woodbrooke course with Rhiannon Grant on 'Spiritual Blogging' which is due to run in May 2019. It will be a new experience to work with someone else on different approaches to spiritual autobiography and I am looking forward to it.

I am also aware that I need to do more work on my own spiritual autobiography. I have a title - and used it for this blog - but so far I have only written fragments in different places. I was inspired by some of the writers I met at the QUIP conference earlier this year, especially Iris Graville and her memoir Hiking Naked, both to read more and to go back to writing about my spiritual journey. I need to turn inside again before I can take the next step, turn inside out and share what I have found with a wider audience.

So it seems to me that what I am being led to do is not so much a change of direction as a closer integration of the two strands of my endeavour - spiritual autobiography and 18th century Quakers. I need to allow what appear to be stumbling blocks to become stepping stones.