St. Brigid's Eve 2013

Tonight is St. Brigid's Eve, the night that marks the transition from Celtic Winter to Celtic Spring.  For many years it has been my custom to phone or email my mom to wish her a happy St. Brigid's Eve, and to discuss whether one should put out milk for the faery folk as used to be done in Ireland, and marvel at those times when the boundary between worlds is thinner than usual. 

Well, my mom is on the other side of that boundary this year, so I will take this opportunity to wish her and all my extended family and friends well.  Be careful, all those of you who are out there on the edges of things tonight! (That probably includes me working this late.)  Also, don't accept rides from mysterious horse back riders tonight... you never know what might happen... And remember: The days are already noticeably longer here in the upper reaches of the Northern Hemisphere.  Somewhere, Thornton Burgess (writer of nature-centred children's books) wrote: "If winter's here, spring can't be far behind." Be well.

Escape from the CU-Thole Mythos (For Brian Rodgers)

Note: Brian Rodgers has worked in various capacities with the Counselling Unit for many years; he is leaving shortly to take a teaching position at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.  Last Saturday we had a going-away party for him and his family; it was also Australia Day, Brian's birthday, and the day after Burns' Night.  I wrote this for him for that occasion.  Although we'll keep in touch about various continuing projects, I will miss him very much in many ways. 

1.

Perhaps it is some strange fate

That draws you to the opposite end of the world,

Reversing the journey of your ancestors,

To take a wee course.

Thirteen years later,

You wake up:  You are going grey,

Have a PhD and a family.

What has happened?

2.

It’s the terrible power

Of the CU-Thole Mythos

Maybe you thought I said Cthulu:

Invention of the American weird

Fiction writer HP Lovecraft:

Incomprehensible, ancient, alien god,

Sleeping under the South Pacific,

not far from New Zealand.

No.  That’s the other one.

This one’s worse:

It’s “C-U”, for “Counselling Unit”, pronounced “Cuh”;

Plus thole, the Scots word for “endure” or “tolerate”,

As in Rabbie Burns’ poem, To a mouse:

“To thole the winter's sleety dribble”:

So that gives us: CU-thole Mythos,

The power that's kept you here,

Year after year,

The power that makes you not just willing

But eager to endure:

Long hours,

Mixed messages,

Endless processing,

Everyone’s IT needs,

And "winter's sleety dribble"

... All year round.

3.

But now you've got your chance

To escape to a paradoxical place:

Queensland, far to the south,

In the Deep North;

Australia's Day is Scotland's night.

Will you be able to make it out

Of the gravity well

Of the CU-thole Mythos,

Finally reaching escape velocity?

Or will you escape

Only to find that you've brought

The whole CU-Thole Mythos

Along with you

In your head?  

                        -Robert Elliott, 26 Jan 2013

Murray Creek Pilgrimage

Entry for 29 Dec 2012 – 5 Jan 2013

1. Time Passes

Going on, living, amid the many changes,

Six months later, your children wait to see:

How does this new empty place feel?

Especially at this time of year, we are missing you,

Our missing mother, our vanished parent;

And we miss our father more for missing you.

The celebration we had to mark your passing

Is months past, and now we return

To see how we might learn to be here.

2. Arriving

As I approach the valley, I remember other times

Driving here with you or dad, or arriving to see you,

The feeling of relief, of coming home.

Now all but Anna converge on Murray Creek:

I think we seek to fill the sudden sinkhole,

Yet sense instead your absence still more keenly.

We come to fill the empty spaces,

But the valley is still, and filled with absence,

Like mist rising or smoke from burnt-out fires.  

3. Gathering

At Christmas a year ago, expecting your return,

We bought you a fridge that you never saw.

Now we fill it with food for another family feast.

We light the fires, check the wireless network,

Walk your labyrinth in the fading light,

Raise and right the creek-misplaced bridge.

For a while your house is filled with chaos

And happy confusion, as children and grandchildren,

Relive and renew what we had with you.

4. Communion

Next day, after breakfast, we begin the sacrament

Of sorting through your things, sacred and mundane:

Books and talismans; trinkets and clothes.

We begin by taking back the gifts, those bits

Of ourselves we gave to you again and again;

Then, some bits of you for the selves we are remaking.

I take some Teilhard de Chardin and Goddess books,

And cache a celtic cross and a shamanic crystal:

Food and drink for the self I am becoming.

5. A New Year

New Year’s Eve: I drive to Anna’s

To complete the circle.  We leave your last year

And enter a new one, the first without you.

Returning to the place where you left us,

I find your echo in the familiar, final spaces,

Prove to myself: you are gone here too.

But we talk, and drink, to you and the new year. 

Your children are still here, and we take you with us:

Into our next pilgrimage, our next new story.

Murray Creek, Late December Haiku

Entry for 28 Dec 2012:

December labyrinth:

Winding path sprinkled

    with oak leaves;

We walk the circle again.

4:30am,

Fooled by false gloaming: Full moon

Fluoresces through clouds

-28-29 December 2012

EFT Tribes Book Chapter Published

Entry for 27 December 2012:

The second edition of Pete Sanders’ popular book on the different forms of person-centred therapy (PCE) was released in the final weeks of 2012.  The first edition, published in 2003, has been a perennial favourite with the students in our post-graduate course in person-centred counselling, helping them to reflect on where they want to locate themselves as budding counsellors and what their options are.  In order to clarify the relationships among the different PCE therapy suborientations, Margaret Warner and others hit upon the metaphor of “many tribes, one nation”, pointing to unity amid diversity.  (From a Scottish point of view, “clans” works well also.)

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) was mentioned in the first edition, sometimes critically, but was not represented by a chapter, leaving it status within the larger PCE nation unclear.  Then, about 18 months ago, Pete asked me if I’d be willing to do a chapter on EFT for the second edition of the “tribes book”.  Although academic pressures nowadays lead me to turn down most book chapter invitations, this one made sense to me, and I was pleased to take up the challenge.  As is common, work on the chapter got delayed and deadlines were extended but eventually several months ago I had to buckle down and produce something, which in quick succession got revised, copy-edited, typeset, proofed, and, finally, two weeks ago, published.

When I wrote this chapter I had in mind my students on postgraduate counselling diploma and MSc courses in the UK and elsewhere, as well as for folks with previous qualifications as counsellors or psychotherapists who might be thinking about coming along for training in EFT to build on their existing skills.  However, there is a lot of complexity to EFT and a lot of jargon. I hope that I’ve succeeded at least in part in providing an accessible overview of Emotion-Focused Therapy, thanks to help from the folks at PCCS Book and in particular Richard Miller, a former counselling diploma student who read an earlier version of the chapter.

Reference: Elliott, R. (2012).  Emotion-focused therapy. In P. Sanders (Ed.), The tribes of the person-centred nation: An introduction to the schools of therapy related to the person-centred approach (2^nd ed.).  Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books.

Travel Narrative: Glasgow to California

Entry for 23-25 Dec 2012:

Leaving Glasgow after an exhausting season of moves and crises.

Twelve hour time shift: up at 3am, 4 hours earlier than usual,

six am flight to Amsterdam, then 8 hours jet lag

by the time we reach San Francisco.

On the way back home to California,

I read most of second of two long-delayed

Australian Emotion-focused therapy doctoral dissertations,

finally beginning to catch up with myself.

We enter the US at Minneapolis,

with surprising ease: short walk, short lines,

American security officers efficient

but condescendingly proud of their equipment and training.

Bay Area rush hour a week before Christmas:

We rent a car and make the drive to Pleasanton,

Risky from sleep deprivation and jet lag.

Arriving at my mother-in-law’s house,

Kenneth is already there.  

He too has been in transition

and is glad to see his long-lost parents. 

Northern California is having a wet year,

storm after storm sweeps through,

filling reservoirs; mudslides block roads,

early snow falls in the Sierra Nevada.

Cool, fresh mornings make for good runs

for Kenneth and me, as we begin to

catch up with the intense jumble of each other’s lives,

clearing a space for recovery and reconnection.

A Toast for the Solstice

Entry for 22 December 2012:

For friends and family,

For light and darkness,

For continuity and change,

For wisdom and not-knowing,

For tears and laughter!