Letter to Sebastian, Space is the thing you miss

What's in your heart and in everyone else's is Space

Dear Sebastian, 
You asked me a few days before you went home to Dubai if I believed in God. This was shortly before you asked me about believing in Santa Claus! I have a real discipline of trying to tell the truth so with Santa Claus this is what I said. Santa Claus exists as long as you believe in him!! We agreed that your belief in Santa was getting a bit shaky so bad luck Santa! 
But God, now there is the big question because you see I do believe in God but I think God is a really diminutive little name for something which is so huge. I think whoever said God first just couldn't think of anything shorter don't you? 
So I am going to ask you to think about space in order to help God out of the small hole we have him/her/it in and to think how little we ever consider space. God is like space or space is like God, whichever way round you think best. We think space is outside our world, part of the sky or outside our house or else space is like a parking space, empty if there isn't a car. We don't realise that nothing could exist separately if there wasn't space. We would all be stuck together like toffee without shape of any kind, we wouldn't be anything particular at all. And these words I am sending you wouldn't be readable if there wasn't space between them and cars would crash and pedestrians couldn't keep apart if space wasn't there. We think we should have OUR SPACE, but what does that mean? something where nothing else is apart from us? We claim our house, our family, our children, our school, our Church or Temple or Mosque, Chapel, Pub, Hotel, our borders, our country. We think we begin in one place and that the next person begins elsewhere. But, think about it, think how important the space is for our well-being and ask who it really belongs to. That space is the most important thing there is and it is in your heart and in mine. 
So, God or whoever it is, was once just One thing and made himself huge huge huge and made himself into all the different things within himself, into earth, air, water, fire and space which in turn makes all the solid and not so solid things. So wherever we are, he is too and we mostly just don't notice. 
Sebastian you have a space in your heart as do all the people in the whole world and in that little space is the whole universe so take care of it and of everyone in it. Love from Granny

Are you here or there?

Grannies delight in final wedding with real pics

from this

to this

Whoever would have thought that this small fairy with specs would turn into the bride on the right!  Well of course her mother and father always thought that she would but I'm not sure that being brought up with 4 older brothers teasing her passions for my little pony and small fluffy animals was a real confidence boost!
See the photograph below of the whole family with grandchildren dripping from a swim and click on this link to see Marianne Chua's brilliant record of the day. Link taken down but you can e mail me for the postcard at info@justthisday.org

The whole lot, some a bit wet!

Hens set to test a meditating Granny

Henry, the fine cockerel

Naughty speckledy hen on the right!

I finally turfed the broody hen off the eggs which she had sat on for too long and which showed no signs of hatching.  We thought she was just idling in the maternity ward waiting for us to bring her all she needed, she must have thought we were running a hen hotel.   Anyway, after 5 weeks I said enough old speckledy hen, you are just a fraud.  So, off she got and joined the rest of the flock all vying for attention from Henry the magnificent cockerel.  She had her revenge though, she left hen mites in her place and let me tell you that hen mites are in the business of major irritation.  You only have to put your head into the henhouse to clean it or check for eggs and they jump straight into your hair presumably thinking you are just another hen not realising you are a meditating, serious-minded Grandmother of 10 wishing the world and all nature's creatures well.  Straightaway you suspect that something is in your hair but 5 minutes later, sitting with Grandpa to meditate, they start to explore your face and find channels through your thinning grey hair to wander through.  This is a test for a meditator, let me tell you, almost an ultimate test and first of all I thought I was up for the test, I thought that I could manage my half hour without budging, let alone my hand reaching up to brush off, then squash any invaders.  I didn't manage though, I got to quarter of an hour and then apologising to Grandpa and God in case He/She was interested, I ran to the house and into the shower.  

So speckledy old hen, you won this round!

washing out the grey with Dadi Janki

white sock with grey bottom.

In my clothes drawer, there are a few once white, now grey items which have encountered the stray sock or blue item.  I am not drawn to them.  I prefer the white ones, they look fresh and inviting.  Out goes my hand and I pick the white item and what do I do with the grey?  Well, they either sit in the drawer or they come out and get discarded or they go into bleach in the faint hope that they will recover.  

Imagine the washing in the Brahma Kumaris washing machine!  

Every item is white, as far as I can see, even the socks are white.  

They wear white as a sign of purity and my goodness they really work at that purity, it is their goal and just like the white items in my drawer, you are easily drawn to them, the white is inviting and what's more it reflects white towards you, the wearer of colour.

Dadi Janki, a woman worth knowing

I went to a meeting with them yesterday, the oldest and wisest telling us about purity of heart, mind and body through simplicity of life and dedication to the One or to the supreme or to God.  Dadi Janki, approaching her 100th birthday is the oldest and they all love her dearly and she loves them too.  Now there is something very special about the love and I hope I am doing justice to it by telling you about it.  It is a sort of white or transparent love, it doesn't ask for anything in return.  It doesn't ask you to return with interest and it doesn't ask you to love the person who is telling you about it, it simply asks you to recognise that love as your own self, that love is really who you are.

To have the goal of white garments or pure thoughts is an easy goal to visualise isn't it?  Out with the grey and in with the white but the work is making certain that the odd sock doesn't slip into the wash or the odd black thought cross the mind.

Thank you Dadi Janki for pointing out the reality!

Suffolkating

River Deben at sunset

crabbing at the River Deben

What could possibly be better after a wedding than a totally stress-free Suffolk weekend combining sun, sea, swimming, village fete, meeting with old mates, drinks by the River, boating and crabbing for boys with obliging crabs which allow themselves to be hauled up out of the river over and over again.  It gives me the chance to rekindle my old skill of hanging up swimming towels on the washing line stretching across the garden which has in it's time sported the most eclectic mix of towels, trunks, small and large knickers, socks, odd and paired and at the end of every sunny day, returned them miraculously dry Oh, when I am ready to go or even have gone, return me to the river where it mixes with the sea and let my remains become part of this landscape

Ramsholt Arms, a pint and chips at the end of a day, what could be better than this?

Happy marriage is all down to med and bed

dogs undisturbed

See what happens to Algie when Grandpa meditates

I read so much each week in the Saturday newspapers about the bedding habits of couples and I thought that it might help all those experts to hear what this Grandmother has to say.  After 45 years of marriage to the same old Grandpa, (once the young and dapper city  boy) I can say with confidence that it is the bed that matters.  In our case, he has to have the duvet tucked in and if possible have a blanket tucked round the duvet.  I put this down to boarding school where it was probably rather cold.  A lot of stuff is written about boarding schools, about the cruelty and bullying but from what I have heard, it was cold and the food wasn't great especially after the war.  Anyway boarding school in Grandpa's case had a formative effect on his needing to be well tucked in.  I like to be able to stick my feet out and leap out of bed quick if I get cramp (something boring for old people where your toes stick out straight and you have to force them back into foot position).  

In our everyday routine, which alters only marginally depending on who goes to get the morning tea, we rise, more slowly now to the day, we make ourselves reasonably respectable and then we make the bed together because of the aforesaid need to have one side tucked in  and the other side loose.  Then, out we go, dogs too to meditate.  Sometimes a little light chanting, sometimes not and then half an hour of meditation which those dogs are timing.  On the absolute last minute before either of us move, they are up, waiting to be walked and for their day to start.  

So, my recipe for a long and happy life with Grandpa is to find out what he really needs to do with the bed and then of course to meditate!

wizard wisdom

I get to read about Wisdom at Rachel's wedding.  Wisdom sounds very very old doesn't it?  But it is bright and sharp and clear and around just as much as it was when it found it's way into King Solomon's sayings and into the Bible.  Wisdom is as old as old but maybe for you it is easier to understand when you think about Wizardry and Wisdom being connected by being the same and not just sounding the same.  I say that Harry Potter and King Solomon have more in common than you might have thought.  Wis, Wisdom, Wizardy are all about the deep magic which makes everything happen.  When Jesus, who is the source of the Christian religion was a boy he had to learn to manage this extraordinary wizardly wisdom.
"When he was six years old, His mother sent him to fetch some water and as he went along to the fountain, the container broke. He must have known that Mary would be cross so, he got wise and going to the fountain, spread out his own shirt out and filled it with water.  My shirt would leak, wouldn't yours? But He took it back without spilling. And when his mother saw what he had done, she was amazed and hugged him.
Another time, He had made twelve little birds out of clay on a Sunday when, where he lived, people weren't meant to make or do or make anything.  Another boy told on him (there is always one isn't there?). But He looked at the sparrows and said: Go on then, fly off and remember me in your life. And they flew off, not clay anymore, but flesh and feather.
This is a Wizard story.  It tells us about wizardry and wisdom.   Everyone has a bit of wizardly wisdom about them and we need to learn how to use it.  In our ordinary old lives, we should use wisdom to help us live with each other, to make certain that we don't use our own stash of wisdom power to do horrid things or say horrid things to each other.  We learn to stop the horrid words and actions just where they are and that helps everyone.
So, if you think that wisdom is something old and has nothing to do with the new wizard computer game, launched today, you are wrong, wisdom and wizard are as close as close can be!


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