e cigarettes and ascension day

Radio 4's thought for the day reminded me that today is Ascension day, a holy day which celebrates Jesus ascension into heaven.  It is 40 days after his death on the cross and it is celebrated because Jesus' shows that death is not the end and central to Christian faith is a certainty that while death is a death threat, it isn't the whole story.  Angela Tilby spoke about the way we muddle the idea of holiday by forgetting that holidays are holy days, she reminded me that you used to be allowed off school for the day if you could prove you were going to Church!

Just like muddling up holy and holiday, we muddle up the idea of death, forgetting that death is the other side of birth and that having been born, we are bound to go through the death gate.  Faith says that death is a separation from our bodies and I like that thought, I believe that thought although proof is a bit scanty!  But I don't fool myself that however much I believe that I am not just this funny old body, I know that giving it up and dying will happen because wether I like the idea or not, death happens to everybody.

Martha Kearney looks so smiley

Next on Radio 4, the poor man representing the tobacco and e cigarette maker had to defend himself from Martha Kearney's attack on his knowingly peddling products which will cause thousands of deaths by nicotine.  Of course she has a point, dying from lung disease or heart disease should be avoided, a nice gentle death would be preferable but isn't a given.  She made it sound as if the only people dying would be those who had smoked and this clearly isn't the case, smokers may die from smoking related disease but most of us will die from some disease or other.  Naughty Martha, the poor man is trying to make cigarettes better!

Clive James reading his poem Sentenced to Life is a good meditation on life … and then death, click here and listen to him

hugh jackman, nigel farage and my hashtag!

Hugh Jackman's body got the most visits this month followed by Nigel Farage who also got a few visits via Twitter.  I don't really get Twitter but the all powerful Twitter person sent me a message  which told me who had arrived at the blog via a tweet.  It also said that if I had a hashtag I would get more tweets.  So, I see that I have a hashtag on my phone but oh dear I tweet from this old computer which I can't see having a hashtag.
I google hashtag and mac and lo and behold, there is the answer! # I have one.  Now I have to learn how to apply it to Twitter!

lemon squeezer tears

This isn't it but it was a bit like this but older!

We live in a house which belonged to my Father-in-law and which he bought in 1950 so there is a long history of this family living in this house.  When we moved in, everything was there, biscuit tins, old jam jars, lots and lots of berets, (my Father-in-law favoured the French beret when he was working around the garden).  And there, amongst the other odds and ends when we moved in was an electric juicer which we gave him for Christmas over 40 years ago.  It is or should I say was rather brilliant, you just pressed your half-orange or half-lemon down and the middle whizzed around and out came the juice.  I used it a lot.  Today, I can't find the main part, I've looked and looked in every cupboard and drawer and there is it isn't!  I think that someone has thrown it out by mistake so I have put the rest of the squeezer into the rubbish.  I feel sad that I have lost it, it was a link to someone we loved.  40 years plus that have passed since it was bought, wrapped up in Christmas paper, given, received, used over and over again by him, by mother-in-law, by others in the house have disappeared into almost nothing.  It makes me realise how many things pass me by and I don't have time to notice that I value them, how many people pass in and out of my life and I don't think or say how important they are to me.  Meditation does wake you up, not just to the loss of a lemon squeezer but to the importance of every moment.  It isn't the lemon squeezer I miss anyway, it is somehow a person inside me who was a daughter-in-law and who thought it would go on like that forever
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praise for Hugh and a barrage for Farage

Why should a Granny who writes about meditation be bothered with Nigel Farage's political life or  Hugh Jackman's body you may reasonably wonder.  In my view Hugh Jackman is by far the most interesting of these two because his clear sense of detachment allows him to have a balanced view of his role as an actor, a father, a husband and a star.  It is an interesting view of private morality co-existing with a public persona.  Read the interview by clicking on this link.  Anyone would be proud to be Hugh's Granny! Now I don't believe that Nigel's moral compass has the same steady centre and I might be a bit worried about him if I was his Granny!   In fact, cheery and funny though he is, his centre has all the marks of a rather aggravated and enlarged sense of himself.  I sometimes feel a bit sorry for him when I hear his foibles and follies being attacked, and his MEP's and supporters leaving him in dismay. But when I see that the ground swell of opinion for his divisive views is increasing and increasing amongst people the same age as me, I want to leave my meditation seat and shout out NO, don't do it.  He is just playing on your fears and playing the crusader knight from a story book who must have an enemy in order to wear the crusader outfit.  Oh Nige, please lead your old horse back into the stable, take off it's old harness, hang up the bridle,  put down your sword and have a quiet time in a deck chair with a Pimms and a cigar.  Please don't frighten people anymore with your tales of a lost Empire and maybe take up a quiet practice like meditation!  Everyone is doing it now or nearly anyone who is anyone! 

Who are U KIPPING! Nige

We went out to a jolly meal with friends and I set beside a particularly splendid and nice man who I really like BUT I realised when I listened to him just why NOBODY in their right mind should vote for Nigel Farage.  My neighbour at dinner is going to because he thinks that Nige   is  promising that he can recreate old England, a FAR AGE away and oh dear I don't believe it Nigel. You really can't can't can't go backwards and you and we need to realise that going backwards to an age of crusaders isn't going to wash.  We may take lessons from that past and the things that were excellent in it but forwards we must go with our mixed culture and our new moralities and we will fool ourselves badly if we think the past was just gold.

So, vote for whoever is your best, Ed, Dave or Cleggers, they all mean well and are trying to find the way through the muddle to give ALL of a chance to be educated, to have a house and a health service and it can't be easy.  Nige is trying to say that if we went backwards it would all be easy and England would again be a Green and Pleasant Land set about with maypole dancers and hay wains.

You can see now how my meditation went this morning!

Hugh Jackman's Body!

 You may be surprised to read the title of this entry!  What is a meditating Grandmother doing writing about Hugh Jackman's body.  Well….. We were on our way to a wedding yesterday which meant that I could read ALL of the Saturday Times magazine without anyone wanting to take it away and without feeling that I shouldn't be reading for 2 hours non stop on a Saturday morning.   As I am always on the lookout for a snappy item to put in the Granny blog, I was thrilled to read Polly Vernon's interview with Hugh Jackman because I am one of his aged fans!   You see he was asked about his body for which he has had to develop extra muscles to be Wolverine and his beard to play some other part..  I quote what he says (but you can read the whole article by clicking this link) "This….is not my body!"   "He seems" says the interviewer, "genuinely detached from the hardened, muscular bulk currently propping his head up, as if it's a suit he wasn't sure about and someone else convinced him to wear. "
Of course, I think, this man speaks the truth and yet we are surprised yet it clearly makes sense doesn't it?  We only are what we are at the moment we are it, the real bit of us is never encased in a body, we have them and they grow and diminish and get hairy in some places and bald in others, those bodies don't remain the same for a single second but we do, we peer out of them when we are babies, we scramble to our feet when we are toddlers, we race and play our way towards adolescence when we start peering at ourselves looking out of new shapes and then we let them give us children and we play with them, then perhaps we play golf or bridge or bingo and then they start to creak a bit and diminish and we hand them back.  And yet we are surprised… we shouldn't be.  I think Hugh Jackman knows a thing or two don't you!

Triumph of the Spiritual, from the Gita to the Water Babies

Harry Eyres writing in the Financial Times on May 3rd speaks about the Triumph of the Spiritual.  If I get his  meaning right, he is saying that religions like the buildings and images they contain evolve and undergo change; one generation not being turned on by the God or gods or leaders that the previous generation focussed on.  Eyres goes with the idea that our modern spirituality comprises a mix of eastern practices and western psychotherapies which he says might fulfil the spiritual needs of today.  He quotes Claudio Arrau, a Chilean pianist who found salvation from despair through Jungian analysis. He was freed from whatever bound him to fully express his spirit through music.  Arrau said "Anguish and fear of death had given way to a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul". This is also the message of the Bhagavad Gita, the story of the conversation between the Lord Krishna and  Prince Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra.  Lord Krishna urges Arjuna to lift himself out of his despair at the thought of the battle to come by knowing himself and all others to be indestructible.

Today in the Daily Mail, there is an article about businessmen turning to mindfulness,(could this be the same phenomenon, turning to spiritual life to sort out the stress of being a businessman!).

But my real epiphany about spiritual triumph came at the most brilliant production of the Water Babies, now previewing in Leicester at the Curve Theatre.  DON'T MISS IT IF YOU ARE NEAR!  It is a musical whizz, a dancing dream and a triumph of acting PLUS, and this is the most important thing for a Granny wishing the best for grandchildren,(their own and yours!), the story is of Tom freeing the Water Babies  from their underwater refuge.  They have all been rescued by Mrs Do-as-you-would-be-Done-by  (played by Louise Dearman, what a voice! ) from their miserable childhood slavery and are playing about in the  bottom of the ocean, retelling their bad luck stories over and over again.  Their freedom is only available if they give up their stories. This is the brilliance of the story…. none of us can be free while we think we are bound, we could be bound by any identity, being a mother, father, grandmother, businessman, actor or even a Waterbaby.   But you have to say this to yourself over and over again, practice being free, meditate on being free.  (You knew I'd get the word in somewhere!)

What Harry Eyres is talking about (I think) is that spirituality always triumphs by evolving continuously.

Congratulations to the Water Babies team for a terrific entertainment but with a remarkable outcome.

What would you rather do?

the chilly pond!

It is testing to meditate twice a day!  I have been looking at the things which stop me meditating and wondering if it is just a question of finding excuses not to take that time to be still regularly.  The two of us are in a good position now to meditate regularly and yet there are occasional lapses.  We are retired and most days are uncluttered by having and needing and doing and going.  We get to choose how our time is spent and we are pretty disciplined, after all, we have been meditating now for 40 years.  We nearly always complete our two half hours each day unless…..something gets in the way….. and I don't think that happens to a real meditator .  I don't believe that a Swami doesn't meditate because he thinks he is a bit fluey or a BK because they are involved in grandchildren's early rising.  Nor do the committed get tripped up by party mentality, by too many people around all waiting for dinner, twinkling glasses and candles spelling out fun.  The compelling nature of life is what stops us when we don't do it and now it is summer again and as both of us have been under the weather we have been a bit flaky about early rising.  

Here and now, I put on record that I will try to rise early again and I mean to swim again too in the chilly pond! with the tadpoles and the one newt….but will it be tomorrow? Will a little frost put us off? Watch this space!

Grannies should be happy DEFINITELY

*I heard Ari Seth Cohen taking part in an interview on the Radio yesterday.  He has made a documentary about older people, (grannies! in this blog!) who love to dress stylishly, never mind their respective age.   It is a lovely film showing how these particular grannies or perhaps I should call them stylists find their bliss. In the interview he was being roundly told off by a woman who said that this film would give us grannies a complex about how we looked, we would all feel inferior to the styley ones.  Anyway, let me put her right….. Grannies want people to be free, especially Grannies who meditate and being free of jealousy and desire is a great goal to have.  So, bring on the styley ones and let them shine, bring on every octogenarian who is having fun and any meditating Granny worth her salt will be happy for them.  Well done Ari for focussing on happiness.  Perhaps you might like to focus on grannies who meditate next?