Granny goes viral! Wow!

Well who would have thought it!! Granny goes viral and it was all by chance or was it?  I went along to Global House for a meeting and there were the two film boys making this little film and they wanted someone to interview about what the Brahma Kumaris meant to them.  And there I was, hair newly done, looking like a cross between my own mother and the Queen and they put a nice white shawl in front of me and this is what happened.  It is true too, the Brahma Kumaris are remarkable, they only wish people to enact their own birthright which is to become the spiritual person they really are.  It doesn't matter if you are a formal Brahma Kumaris, there are plenty of them but it does matter that their message is known to be a universal human message.  It is just the same as Love your Neighbour as Yourself.  So, why not do that? why not?  And you never know, you might just go along to your friendly neighbours and find that there is someone with a camera and a shawl and you become a star, just for a minute.  Of course the real message is that everyone is a star and just needs to be assured of it! 

And the Dalai Lama had toothache

I think that I was told that when this interview took place, His Holiness the Dalai Lama had a toothache and Father Laurence had an ear ache.  It doesn't show which says a lot for whatever it is that they do!!! Father Laurence will also be at St Martin-in-the-Fields on November 26th and I hope that he doesn't have earache then.  Come along to hear him.  To find out more about him and about the other speakers go to www.justthisday.org

Sister Jayanti, a woman who speaks to the world today

Here is a link to a film made by BK Sister Jayanti for Just this Day.  She made it a few years ago but as she is speaking on November 26th at St Martin-in-the-Fields, it seems a good idea to give you just a little taste of who she is.  I am deeply pleased that many of you who haven't met her will get a chance to hear her speak in person.  However, if you can't get to London on the 26th, you will be able to hear and see all the speakers on You Tube.  Hooray for technology!

Meditating Grandparents are the BEST

Isabelle looks happy doesn't she!

Mrs Laura Hyde

This is a message to mine and every other grandchild: Meditation helps you in life and is a lifeline to the part of you which watches the whole show, which doesn't change along with the hair and the teeth. Put quite simply if you don't find that space inside yourself when you can, going through the process of ageing without inner help can be difficult and meditation is the one thing which makes the ups and downs of life less confusing. 
When you are a Grandparent you are definitely likely to be over 50 but more likely to be over 60 or even 70. And there are only a few grandparents or people of grandparenting age who are likely to be climbing Everest, running marathons and sailing single handed across the oceans like Robin Knox- Johnston. Most of us are not going to be high-flying pensioners, we are mainly going to be low-flying! So it has to be a good idea to be prepared for this stage otherwise we might take it all too seriously and be full of regret that our toes curl inwards and that reaching our toe nails, never mind about painting them, is a triumph! No more stiletto shoes for us, we may be looking for the velcro fasteners. And our teeth aren't waiting to be whitened, they are waiting for us in a glass! We aren't thinking Jacuzzi, we are wondering if we should put a handle on the side of the bath in order to steady ourselves as we climb in!! It takes a rather determined state of mind to make it through this part of our lives. It takes a bit of humour, a bit of patience and an understanding that this is the way it is, was and ever has been and use cheerful reason to find a point to it. Most important though is to discover what YOU REALLY ARE. 
So find out about how to have a spiritual life while you are young or if you are a granny, find out because its never too late! And here is your chance....On November 26th in the evening, (7.00 pm) Just this Day finds itself at St James's Church, Piccadilly in London with two remarkable women, Laura Hyde and BK Isabelle Gauthier facing questions from a young panel on what having a spiritual life means. You can come along, you can bring a friend and if you can't come because you live too far away you will be able to see the film of it. .
Register by clicking on THE INSIDE STORY

Boethius and banana skins

blessed boethius severinus

There was a Roman called Boethius who lived in the 6th Century.  He had everything; intelligence, fortune, estates and long established family.  He came from a long line of brilliant and well known men of the time and had two sons who just been promoted to high position.  He loved Greek philosophers and was planning to translate the whole of Plato into Latin.   He was charged with treason and everything changed.  No longer able to translate Greek Philosophy, he had to become Greek Philosophy.  That's the only choice when life lays down banana skins in your path, you are forced to live the things you aspired to, you either live them or you don't!

Boethius with Philosophy

In Prison, he had an imaginary conversation, or was it a real inner conversation with Philosophy, his long time friend and he wrote it down.  In it, he complained to her, he tried to rationalise and understand the things which seemed to have happened to him. She stood by his side and because the circumstances were so extreme and there was nothing to protect him from accusation and disgrace, no rationalising what had happened, he  had to listen, he had to nakedly keep going towards what was going to be an end to this life of success and then disgrace. He had to give up everything else!

Meditation,worth trying early!

What he didn't have was the complete addition to philosophy, he didn't have meditation, he just had to think it through and reason it.  Meditation gives just one more defence against the wretched cosmic banana skin, it means that every time a banana skin looms up in your mind, you have a friend, you have a mantra or a point of light to put your attention onto.  Now, it may not do more than give you a tool to keep going but underneath it develops a strength of being which will stand you in the only stead you can rely on when everything shouts it's compelling message of division at you.

If you are interested in meditation and why it is a positive step, come and hear from 3 marvellous speakers at St Martin-in-the-Fields on the morning of Wednesday, November 26th.  To find out more go to www.justthisday.org

feel familiar, banana skin!!

The Great Cosmic Bake off! just desert!

When I was in the desert with the great big view of the night sky and all the myriad twinkling stars and the vast vast panorama of galaxies and shooting stars and all of them such miles away that the light I was seeing with my eyes had left some of those stars hundreds of light years ago, I couldn't help realising that having such an earth bound view of things was trying to put a limit on what was really there.

Playground

building blocks

I read that in the beginning the Creator made the universe including all the stars and planets and galaxies and suns and moons.  I think it would also have included all the elements, space, air, water, fire and earth.  Then he/she made what is called Universal Soul and I imagine that to be whatever it is that makes us or any other thing alive.  Then He/She took some of the universe and some of the stuff called soul and made every living being, using different amounts of universe and different amounts of soul and made different mixtures so that different things have different percentages of one element or the other.  And just think what He/She made;  trees and all green things, fish and all the creatures that live in the sea and in rivers, He/She made lizards and creeping things,  He/She made insects and flying feathered things and He/She made us and gave us all sorts of different physical shapes, some tall, some short, some round, some long and to each one He/She gave the right sort of skin and hair for the place they were going to live.
Looking around that ancient desert with all the shapes in the rocks I think that He/She sat here and tried out all the shapes, moulding them out of all his created elements and then breathed  his life breath into the ones he had made and loved and then he scattered them all round the world in their right places and withdrew to a place he could watch them from.  That watching is the bit that makes us most like him.

mathematical formula or recipes

Granny in the desert without her rollers! what does she find?

Several Desert Grannies and Grandpas

Our new home!

There were quite a few Grannies in the desert on my desert odyssey plus at least 4 Grandpas! and this, oh you grandchildren everywhere is  a bit about it:
Can you imagine 15 people who didn't know one another, whose average age was probably 70 meeting at an airport, taking a bus to the desert and becoming best friends in under a week.   I'm guessing this average age by adding in the youngest at 30 and the oldest at 83.  Anyway we were well beyond the usual age of the average rucksack carrying, jeans wearing, sun seeking person on the flight to Sharm al Sheikh.  Most of the people on the flight were there for a good holiday in the sun with bikinis and sunblock but we 15 with our average age of 70 and our borrowed (mostly) sleeping bags and mats and rucksacks were quite easy to pick out among the rest of the travellers because we mostly wore our walking boots which were too heavy to go into our borrowed rucksacks.
Our adventure was an adventure into Sinai and an adventure into Silence.  Our guides were two, Sara Maitland whose book Silence had inspired most of us to try this out and Abi from Wind Sand and Stars, a travel company specialising in historical and spiritual journeys.  We were all there in our new togetherness for an exploration of silence as a spiritual journey in a place whose history makes your eyes swivel in your head because it is so remarkable.

More Grannies on adventure

You know I couldn't take my electric rollers (see earlier blog on rollers in the Sinai desert) but hey, who needs rollers when our hair would be covered with it's new black on white keffiyah to keep the sun off our heads.  But were we all prepared for camping out under the stars right there on the sand on our mats with our sleeping bags?  Were we all up for the splendidly basic hole dug in the sand in a rather flappy tent for our basic outgoing needs?  Well, not exactly used to it but definitely up for it and after 5 days we all with our average 70 years could have managed months like this.  What we were prepared for but were still surprised by was the deep deep peace to be found in this magical place and the deep deep companionship we discovered amongst ourselves in sharing the deep deep peace.

Father Justin in the library

On our last day of venturing into Silence, we went to St Catharine's Monastery at the end of the Sinai peninsula, famous for its icons and for being the longest surviving Monastery in continuous praying and living.  We met Father Justin (click on the link to listen to him talk about the ark in the wilderness) an American monk with special responsibility for the library.  Only a totally universal spirit, (aka God) could have summoned out of the whole world a monk with such expertise and knowledge of the texts but also of the technology he would be using to make these texts available, to bring them out of the sandy boxes and shelves of the ancient place and actually put them on line for ANYBODY to read.  He told us about the way some scripts hid even more ancient scripts which had been overwritten but which with the modern magic now available could be read.  This is the magic of the real detective, one who can read hidden messages previously only done by holding texts up to the light or by  dripping ammonia onto the papyrus.   But now it can be done by our 21st century techie magic.   This form of hidden message is called a palimpsest and it made me think that seeing the hidden thing is the magic working and that requires knowing that there might be a hidden message.
I found that the whole adventure was a sort of palimpsest, it magically showed that under every Granny there was an ageless person, that in the desert there is a hidden wealth and that nothing is really just as it seems.  You may have to leave behind some of your old ways of looking as well as your electric rollers if you want to read the secret but it is definitely worth it, definitely definitely definitely!

our bedrooms where we have stars at night