It is not the fault of the pants!

One of the ace moments of this holidays was when I was being closely observed by two small grandchildren as I got dressed in the morning.  One said, "Granny, those pants are too small for you!" and the other one agreed.  Of course, I blamed the pants and put the responsibility for the smallness of the smalls onto the pants as if they somehow had shrunk without asking permission.  Anyway, pants don't have minds, they just are pants.  These pants have lived with me for a long time, I am not minded to buy new ones very often so they aren't creatures of great beauty, they are just ordinary old marks and spencer pants, circa 2000.  But how can you blame pants for getting small when it is really rather clear that it is the Granny who has got larger! Just quietly and persistently larger in a few specific areas and the part of the Granny which the pants are meant to cover is amongst those larger parts of her. (actually ME!).

What plans do I have you may wonder to amend the situation?  Well, those grandchildren have gone back to their new abroad home and I have a little time to decide if I am going to move to the larger pants shelf or to the smaller Granny project.  I maintain that Grannies are meant to be quite well covered although I have seen some very glamorous slinky Grannies about.  The other thing is that there won't be any observers of my getting dressed for a while.  There will only be Grandpa to take any notice and I really don't think he minds either way.  Besides for which, some of his pants would fail the close inspection of a fashionista as well.

Can the Buddha come too?

Grace, I asked Granny when she was meditating if I could come back to Singapore with you.  As you know, I don't say much, and actually I don't say anything out loud at all but I can communicate directly to the meditating Granny by magic.  She has to be still and then I zoom the thought into her heart.  You see, I come from the East and I have been here rather longer than many others like me.  If you look at my back which isn't my best side, you will see that I was once part  of something else.  Maybe an altar or a special piece of furniture.  I have sat in people's houses for many years and your Granny's house is the first house that anyone has really known what I was there for.  I am there to remind people of the stillness which is inside them. 

I can tell you that my heart leapt with joy when you came in and found it so easy to be still.  So, I thought that as I would like to go back and see what it is like in the far East part of the world and you might like someone to sit in your room to remind you of stillness, that I would ask if I could be packed in your suitcase.  She said that I could be a birthday present to you.  Maybe a part of a birthday present because girls of 7 which is what you are about to be really want something else to keep the busy part of them happy.  She, the Granny is off to Cambridge today to find you something and to find a box for me to travel in but I am just hoping that you will be pleased to take me to join you and your sister.  Could you also be very kind and maybe take a photograph to send back to them?  

And by the way, it is usual to have a Buddha in a special place in your room, to make a corner especially for Him to be with maybe a little vase for a flower or a candle.  Do you think you could ask you Mum and Dad for me if that would be in order?  And tell them that I will bring blessings on their house.  You can ask them to join you being still, see if they are as good at it as you.  And of course, make sure that your sister knows that I am there for her as well whenever she needs to leave her worries and be still with me.

A meditation on the appearance of things

 We gave the Helen hen an honourable burial because we felt that she was an honourable hen and deserved a good send off.  The grandchildren picked flowers and put them on her newly dug grave.  We all hoped that she had winged off not just to hen heaven but to a far better life next time round.

ancient Greek feet

my modern foot

It gives pause for thought and I look round this house which is quite old, older than I am and a house which has been lived in by two generations of this family.  It looks quite old!! and I wonder who will ever clear it up after we two old things shift off our mortal coil or move to "sheltered accommodation".  Most of all, I am struck by the fact that what appears old is actually not really old at all.  Maybe the oldest things are 200 years old but in the bigger picture of time, that is just a moment.  So, what is the house trying to show me and what am I using it for to show others.  Somewhere underlying the thingness of things, there is a sound of family, a sound of familiarity, a sound of tradition.  The games the children and grandchildren are playing were played by my parents, the flowers from the garden are in vases used by my mother in law and the flowers might have been planted in the flowerbeds when she was here.  The Church bells ring on a Monday night, like clockwork the church bell climb up the bell tower, winter and summer at 7.00 pm, after tea and pull the ropes with their funny wooly hand holds and we all stop what we are doing as they peal out across the flatlands of Cambridgeshire.  

All grandparents look both back and forwards, back to their own pasts and what seemed good, and forward with a mixture of admiration for the new ways, and concern that the things which have held families, societies and nations together for certainly centuries, might be eroded by modern thinking.  Then I think, this is all cyclical, it comes round and round and the things which really matter aren't in bookcases, or in the drawers of old bureaus, they are the ancient truths which live in all our hearts waiting to be brought out and considered freshly.  

A very old chapel with today's sun shining in