Jude Smith

In morning prayer one day at college the following Australian poem was put into my hand to read: There are only two feelings. Love and fear. There are only two languages. Love and fear. There are only two activities. Love and fear. There are only two motives, two frameworks, two results. Love and fear. Love and fear. It sounds simplistic on some level. I'm sure many of us would want to dispute that our feeling of wanting to berate or defend our favourite author is about fear. We may doubt whether our anger at NHS treatment of the elderly is about love. We might question whether our constant keeping up with the news is about fear or love.. or both. We might want to make ourselves seem more complex but the simple reality is that most of what we do is motivated by love or by fear. I feel like i live in a world where fear is in the ascendancy. Anxiety hovers over this community where 86% of people live on Government benefits. Tomorrow letters will start arriving telling people th

And so that time has come round again. About every six months I get bored. Its not a short attention span, its not that I don't care about things or people, its just that my brain and life has fully absorbed the last new thing and so is hungry for some new challenge. This is problematic. There are some new challenges that you can just add in (last year, new diet, running etc etc).. but there are others which impact the other people around you. I'm sure its really upsetting for people who have just caught hold of an idea to find the touter of the idea has moved on. I'm sat on a Saturday night surrounded by materials to help me prep for tomorrow. And yet I'm restless for something else to get my teeth into. At the same time I know that I have to sustainably hand things over, I can give up running without hassle but I can't give up on after school study support.. I can change my hair but I can't change the service times.. And so I'm caught in the middle