Say Thank you Granny

so where did this all come from?

As they all go, the parents say…"say Thank You Granny" and they all dutifully do.  This is good, it teaches all of us to say "thank you" from very young.  BUT… here is the secret which all children and all Grannies know…. The fact of the fun doesn't come from anyone, neither the child or the grandmother, it comes from the whole thing, the sun and the space and the water and the well-being which everyone is enjoying, it all comes from the same place.  The food which passes from the grandmother cook, the mother feeding, the child eating has all come from somewhere else and that somewhere else isn't Tesco or even the garden which has produced the tomatoes and the raspberries.  Those fruits are the product, the picker, the preparer and the eater are just part of the receiving process.  So, who did hang the apples on the trees, who made the raspberries go red, who made the wheat which goes into the Cheerios, who made the hen lay the eggs?  Let me tell you that it isn't Tesco!!!
But it is good to say thank you to somebody along the way who has been part of the process even if the Granny knows that all she did was to receive the goods she passed on to you.  And she has to remember to say thank you to that which lies behind it all and to try to pass on the idea of the real provider.  The idea is to realise that there is a good reason to learn about thanks but then the fun comes when you examine who it is you are really thanking, and just how far back those thanks go and let me tell you again that it certainly isn't Tesco!!!

memories and making sense of them

Here is a link to Lucy Winkett's Thought for Today. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p023t6p4. She talked about her own memory of a landscape meaning one thing to her as a child and something else to another person.  Landscape and horizons she pointed out were even a piece of music to a composer.  This fascinated me especially as during the last week having all the family here, I realise that I reach back into my own childhood to find things to put before the grandchildren, the games, the fun, the sweetness of good fun and cousinly affection.  They will probably do the same and maybe their summer memories will only be of the fun and not of the bee sting or the falling over, their childhoods will be coloured by summer in their memories.  There is something universal about these memories, most of us have good ones thank God but others must struggle to remember anything good in other places;  how different a summer here in the UK to a summer in Gaza or Israel or perhaps Ukraine or Syria.  It is because all these horizons are limited that the possibility the happy give perhaps point the way to something wonderful lying behind them, an unseen and benevolent stillness which should really belong to everyone.  It takes someone who has an inkling or an insight into the reality of that stillness to point it out.  So, thanks to Lucy Winkett for a good thought for today.

Still waters to play in

Meditation in and on a gene pool!

A Pond full of family!

A holy man seeking for liberation would just go into the hills and find a quiet place, leave his home and family behind and  meditate.  Do I envy him? NO, but I am aiming to discover what freedom might be and I wonder if leading a householder's life will do the business. A householder basically carries on with the household and family life and meditates twice a day with the aim of finding freedom from attachment. This weekend, the house filled with family and the sun shone and the pond filled with every sort of son and daughter, of every in law and out law, every grandson and grand daughter, a couple of grandparents and each and every one had a big appetite!  I just squeaked in early morning meditation but by the end of every day, the householder part of me was ready to drop.  So, detachment, what might it mean in this context?  I think it just means that when they all go home, you let them go without trying to hang on but if you love them, it is a bit of a spiritual effort.  

Are they mad!

Father and Son, Will and Neville

I begin to understand how odd it must seem to have "spiritual parents"!  What seems so normal to you as the parent, the prayerfulness, the conversation about spirit, the rather old fashioned ideas and maybe rather modest dress plus the expectations on you as a young person to conform to whatever spiritual norms the parent has committed to seem to be common sense but it may not seem like that to the family you belong to.  I much enjoyed Will Hodgkinson's book The House is Full of Yogis, it is a truthful account from the child of a marriage which had encountered a very strong expression of spiritual life.  And it had a tenderness about it, a tenderness towards the spiritual striving of the Dad, of the reaction of the children and the difficulties it created in the marriage, I found it touching and felt for each member of the family, felt for Neville, the father who "finds" THE way and gradually distances himself from his old life, first hoping the family will join in but then just determinedly carrying on towards his spiritual goal.  I felt for the children whose life was turned upside down, not aggressively but just slowly changing and distancing them from what had been perceived as a norm.  I felt for the mother, trying to understand, not understanding, distancing herself and then finally extending a friendly hand out towards her husband in his new life.
I was touched too because we also stepped outside what might have been a norm with a sense of spiritual purpose, it wasn't the same but it marked our life out as slightly different to the apparent norm and it didn't really convince our family that they were marked out for a spiritual life!!! far from it, they seemed to find ample excuses to use the house as a great party venue while we were about our new spiritual life.  I think they think we are a bit mad!
Is there a right to this? I don't think so, I just think some people are going to go for a spiritual path if it opens up for them, and not everyone is going to follow them down it.  The great thing is to be patient and to keep friends with as many people as you can from both inside the new life as well as those who you were born to be with.    

A little glimpse shows who Grandpa really is!

Which is which

Just a glimpse of something special and rather wonderful in a person who you normally see as just ordinary and maybe even a bit tiresome convinces you that whatever it is that they do is making that extraordinary thing about them real.  So, to the story, he, my husband and life partner hasn't been well and what goes with that is tetchy and irritable and what goes with that is that I get high-minded and critical and the mixture of tetchy and critical can of course lead to increased tetchy and increased criticism.  However wretched the night or miserable either of us are, we seldom miss meditation, out we go to the meditation hut, he reads something and we meditate before anything else.  Then it's hens and dogs and porridge making and into the day with whatever it brings.  And the daily round is the daily round and we play our characters in them but both of us are a bit tired and so there is an edge to the day which can disturb the underlying harmony.  But But But….He had to give a talk a short while ago, and this was just after coming out of hospital and we had wondered if he would or if he could but he had said he would and so he did.  When he spoke, the real person who lives inside him who doesn't have to be annoyed with traffic or family events or tiresome wives, appeared and it was a magnificent realisation that meditation has developed this inner man who is so pure and clear that I fell in love with him all over again.
Of course, on the way home, the traffic and the weather and the usual irritations were there but I had seen the light!!! I knew who was really sitting next to me.

pants and archbishops, two gems for today

The great thing about being a Granny is that you aren't allowed to drive the car, Grandpa literally takes the wheel and you just sit there and to distract myself, I read the newspaper from cover to cover.  Thus, today on our drive to London, (2 hours and several jams), I read even the extra business bit which tells me about Becky John and her ethical  pants-making company (not pants as in America but pants as in knickers)  She believes "that pants can change the world" and I certainly agree that pants can change the way you feel about yourself!  Even if you are a Granny on the outside, you just pop on a pair of Becky's pants and you feel ageless.  To further add to my delight at reading rather than listening to traffic updates and the reaction of my Grandpa driver, I turn to page 5 which quotes an interview with former Archbishop Rowan Williams in the New Statesman who says that "over the years, increasing exposure to an engagement with the Buddihist world in particular has made me aware of practices not unlike the "Jesus Prayer" and introduced me to disciplines that further enforce the stillness and physical focus that prayer entails"-"walking meditation, pacing slowly and co-ordinating each step with an out-breath is something I have found increasingly important".
Of course you can easily see why I have linked these two articles can't you?  They both point to ways of discovering that you are not what you seem, neither Granny nor Archbishop, you are free inside to practice whatever makes you feel better and you are free to wear whatever pants you make you feel good.  Good luck with making the same link and good luck Becky John and three cheers for Rowan Williams who I regard as a complete saint.