Learning to rely on the Voice inside my Head

I and Bishop Brain

Considering the frequency and confidence with which I use my voice the extent to which I rely on my inner voice—the one inside my head—it somewhat startling. Just who is that voice in there? I’m not sure I know, but I am certain that that tiny whisper offers me far more than the stark Angel/Devil model that shows up in films…my interior self provides the rest of me with a sounding board without which I could not do my job.

I have always set great store by what I like to refer to as ‘mulling time.’ When I was a postgraduate and then a university lecturer, my penchant for spending an hour or two staring off into space wasn’t particularly noticeable—I had colleagues who behaved far more strangely than I—but except for my few years as an academic, my mulling has attracted a fair amount of negative attention. My siblings, who grew up with me pretending to pay attention to them when I was actually mid-mull, think that I am fairly batty.  I have worked with various people over the years who actually found it fairly irritating. What can I do? I am a confirmed muller!

I am currently at the mulling stage for two ACN initiatives: the offering for primary schools that I am working on with Scottish Lorraine and my ACN-NW Seminarian Challenge. As an award-winning multi-tasker, I am able to mull while answering emails, filling in spread sheets and sorting out parcels to take to the post office. I can talk on the phone and mull, but prefer not to as I do my strange phasing out routine which my sisters find so annoying. This week I have managed to have a couple of quiet days—this is prime mulling time—so I have just gotten on with it.

For Prayers & Hearts offering for schools I have been thinking about how the day might work within each school; how long the various components should be and in what order, the nature of the support materials that we will need to assemble and the topics that a seven-year-old might find interesting or palatable about life as an Iraqi or Syrian Christian child living as a refugee in Lebanon. I have also been pondering how Sister Hanan and her community in Lebanon continue to try their hardest to help the ever-increasing numbers of traumatized people who are daily forced to flee their countries in search of safety.

For my seminarian challenge, I have been thinking about ways to spread the word and to help people to team up if they want to help but can’t afford the full amount needed. I have been thinking about how it must feel when the voice inside your head tells you that you should leave your home and your family and devote your entire life to serving God and ministering to others and how much more difficult that must be for those Christians who happen to live in places where very real and physical dangers accompany the decision to follow a vocation.

I have also been thinking about footballers. Specifically about Catholic footballers. More specifically about Catholic footballers who play in the North West. Most specifically about how to approach them and exactly what I would like to ask of those whom I approach. Footballers and seminarians—perhaps an unlikely combination. But the voice inside my head just will not shut up about these footballers; I still can’t quite make out what it is saying to me, but I shall keep listening until I figure it out—I think it’s going to be very interesting…

Obviously most people think about what they are doing while they do it and generally for a bit before actually getting started. I think the voice in my head and I do it differently though; we bat ideas back and forth for however long it takes—not usually too long as my mulling occurs every minute of every day when I am involved in the creative process. When my mull is complete, my internal oven timer goes ‘ping’ and my mulled-over item springs forth—fully formed and carefully set- out, though still in need of editing and the occasional tweak.

This week I have moved forward at a pretty rapid pace on both of these initiatives; this is because I have completed the current mulling phase and so have produced quite an outpouring of documents. Next week I have a veritable festival of meetings—2 days at HQ in Sutton; the new Archbishop of Liverpool; Bishop Brain (of Salford), but, in between all of these, I shall re-examine this week’s offerings before moving on to my next mull.

Things are beginning to move quickly here at ACN-NW: meetings and initiatives and events and marketing strategies. Soon we will all look back (fondly, I hope!) at these more philosophical posts about things like focussing and mulling.  The past few weeks of waiting and planning are nearly over; bring it on! 

Thanks for reading!  Caroline