Monday 2nd September 2013
Yes, I was busy today. The kind of busy you get when you know there’re only so many days to go and you see how much you have to fit into them. The pre-holiday busy. When you begin to wish you’d attended to a few of those things earlier.
First thing on the list was to call the Cameroon High Commission to check the status of my visa. The person I spoke to said she’d just completed it, did I want her to post it to me. ‘I’ll collect it tomorrow,’ I said after she confirmed that it would be sent out by ordinary post.
I immediately booked travel to London on the coach – trains were much more expensive at such short notice and some of them not much quicker than the coach. The five and three quarter hours there and back will allow me to get through a chunk of The Healing Spirit of Africa.
I shopped today. I shopped for a mosquito net, Wellington boots, sleeping bag, raincoat and trousers and a big suitcase on wheels.
The shop assistant was amazed that I’d never a) owned a pair of Wellington boots or a sleeping bag and b) that I’d never shopped in GO OUTDOORS.
However there were a couple of things I hadn’t planned for. Well it was the same thing with two different people. Talking to a friend about his connection with spirit it became obvious that he needs to make peace with his father. His father is trying to make amends and he’s pushing him away, no matter that he died several years ago. By the end of the discussion my friend had agreed to go and visit his dad’s grave and to be open to listening to him.
It occurred to me that this is the same issue for another friend who is having difficulties in a number of areas of his life. When I called him and said ‘things will not improve for you until you make peace with your father,’ there was silence on the other end of the phone.
He told me his very resistance to the suggestion meant there must be some truth in it. His father is still alive; he doesn’t need to visit a grave, just his estranged father’s house.
That’s when I realised that this is part of the work I need to do; to help men repair their relationships with their fathers.
Writing Creatively With Spirit 