Back on-line

My new computer is installed and I am thus on-line again, though delivery took longer than I expected and I've had the usual set-up problems, especially with email. At present mail to the buddhisthospice.org.uk address isn't being forwarded, so it will help if messages are sent to me at pgoble6@aol.com in the short term until I can get it sorted out.

I had a letter drafted (on the defunct machine) to send to Raft subscribers (or former subscribers) and I intended to mail this out with a back copy of Raft from my large stockpile of early editions, notably 'Spiritual Care', 'Bereavement' and 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead'. These topics are timeless and the editions are well-worth having and reading. Certainly they aren't doing any good in cardboard boxes under the bed. I do take copies to meetings and send them out with correspondence, but there are ten boxes each containing a couple of hundred journals, and they take a long time to pass on a couple at a time.

The letter I drafted was lost with other data when my PC nose-dived, but I still have the Raft subscriber data-base on a "Flash" drive, so I know where you all are, unless you've moved in the last few months (I've got your recent change-of address, Val Philpott of East Yorkshire, so don't worry your head!).

The letter was a two-pager with information about where we are at or, more plausibly, where we're not. As I see it, and the other Trustees agree, there is no likelihood at all of a replacement journal for Raft in the foreseeable future. There isn't a lot of call on the Trust's services either, but there's enough to warrant our 'being there' just in case. It's important that the 'spirit' of voluntarism in support of our core aims is kept alive, and I shall be writing a new draft letter to supporters soon to breathe into that spirit.

I hope and expect that as many of you as can and want to are doing your bit in your own locality, in your own way. Perhaps you have links with a local hospice or with Macmillan nurses, the palliative care service. It's just about spiritual friendship at life's end, especially supporting those who ask for help in doing whatever needs doing, if anything, including letting go of the need to do anything. But, above all, Buddhist friendship. Even the most spiritually adept and practised individuals can lose sight of the obvious: I know I can and most often do. How it will be when my own death looms large I don't know, but I trust the process ultimately, and my friends to tell me what I need to hear.