Page 8 - 1.News and Views Spring 2025 for Jim.

Becoming un-responsible. Len Wigg

Recently travelling to the ‘Writing the Spirit’ group in Poole on a m1 bus, as we passed Parkstone URC
the thought came to me ‘Once I might have enquired about hiring a room here, since there is a car-
parking area, for running a series of Clinical Theology seminars’. But I haven’t had to do that for 30
years!

I guess that needs a bit of ‘unpacking’. Clinical Theology is a style of counselling developed around
1955 by a doctor, Frank Lake, working at Bangalore in South India. He was used to diagnosing illness
by looking at the patients cells, and this was the key. He knew what healthy cells looked like. A Hindu
colleague asked him, ‘On this basis, what does a fully healthy human being look like. Frank’s reply
was ‘Someone living like Jesus and his life and relations with people.’

I was introduced to this just at the right time in my life, but that was 54 years ago, and I had training
and became a tutor in the discipline around 1980, hence the need to hire training rooms.

Another responsibility was hoping to inspire people twice a week. That has been off my formal
agenda now for 50 years. Having to clean up sick in the gents toilets or paint over grafitti after discos
in the YMCA in central Plymouth; that hasn’t applied for 45 years.

No longer having two daughters plus Lucy from next door but one, playing adjacent to where I was
trying to work/study. That’s been 40 years or so. Cycling to Twynham School where I was a Teaching
Assistant, hasn’t applied for 14 years.

Someone has composed a poem or song about becoming ir-responsibly free, carefree. I wish I could
remember who! Simon and Garfunkel perhaps? ‘Can’t remember’, ah! That is the downside of
becoming an ir-responsible oldie. Sometimes I quite enjoy the freedom! BUT what of the future?

Good Lord, help me enjoy making new discoveries, being fairly independent – able to use my bus
pass! Also, hopefully able to make some kind of a contribution.

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