Grandparents rather out of place in this modern setting

The neonatal unit at Addenbrookes hospital is rather like a space station, the incubators look just like teeny spacecraft parked in a row waiting for teeny spacemen to come and get in.  And the teeny babies who get to spend their first rather too early weeks there are all legs and arms which wave from time to time just to show they are in there doing their bit for growing.  Nothing on but a nappy and occasionally a hat to keep their heads warm and to make a slight bow to fashion, they make small but just noticeable movements.  

The nurses and doctors and the mums and dads all know what they are doing when they look after these teeny tiny babies in the spaceship incubators and somehow they seem to be dressed just right.  They all seem to be in pyjamas!  

Maybe this is why Grandpa in his country green rather tweedy outfit with country going crocs looks and feels a little out of place.  He, like me, wonders if you have to get the babies out of the holes on the side because it seems to be the only way out but then suddenly at the push of a button, the top of the spacecraft lifts up by itself and the teeny tiny space baby is lifted out all attached to the home station with tiny thin wires and an air pipe.  Really she is just like a spaceman making a first step on the moon, all surprised by the light and the new gravity of the situation.  

When we visit, the new mum says to Grandpa, "would you like to put your hands in and just hold the tiny baby in the comfort position?"  Mmmmmhhhh says he, a bit uncertain and pushes his hands through the holes in the side of spaceship.   Having been shown how to do it, he lays one huge hand gently on her head and cups the other one round her teeny bottom and long spidery legs.  He says "now look here baby ours, we are praying for you and you must get bigger and stronger and then we will bring you home."  We know that as she is the smallest person in the family, she will be able to find the best hiding places in the house and that her cousins will find it hard to find where she is because she will be able to get into the smallest places and they may not be able to follow her in.

Everyone, young and old are hanging on for dear life

teeny tiny  baby hangs on for dear life

You have heard the expression hanging on for dear life haven't you?  Well it takes on a really important meaning when you see it happening because most of the time I realise we are so self absorbed that we don't even notice that so many people are just hanging on right there, hanging on for the dearness of life.  When you spend a bit of time in a hospital, you see all the different players in the hospital drama, there are the nurses and the technicians, the doctors and the patients, the different kinds of doctors and the different kinds of patients.  Some patients are on their way out to have a jolly New Year, some are on their way out but to something not considered quite so jolly.  All of them are hanging on for dear life because life is dear.  If you are moved by this little picture of the teeny tiny baby holding on to its mothers finger, then you know how dear it is.  The baby hangs on to the mother for dear life, the mother holds on to the baby for dear life.  The dearness of life is unmissable in a hospital and you notice the things which make the difference.  You notice how transformative care is when it is beautiful, you notice because that care is total, there is nobody seeking recognition or glory from caring, they are just getting on with it because care is needed.  You notice too when care is not so good, when it is withheld because a carer is preoccupied with their own stuff.  You notice everything because you are so grateful for the care being given and you notice how bravely people are coping with the difficulties coming their way and you know why it is.  It is because they are hanging on for the dearness of life. 

a teeny tiny Christmas child, a new daughter, neice, grand daughter and cousin.

In our family, we have just had a teeny tiny baby, arrived 2 months early and 2 days before Christmas. So tiny, she looks like a miniature doll but perfect, every finger and toe there, small neat ears, every limb beautifully formed, so perfect that I am blown away.

Holding on to my mummy's finger or is it Dad's?

So, small granddaughter, what do I wish for you and your other girl cousins? Of course I wish you all the things that every girl wants to make her life easy; friends, beauty, enough food and I hate to say money because it is a stark and rather hard word but I hope you don't have to worry about your everyday needs. But most of all I hope that you will be kind.  I am sure you will be kind because you have arrived on a wave of kindness and goodwill from your parents, your grandparents, your uncles and aunts, the old (sorry Prof, young but old in wisdom) Prof, the nurses and monitor monitors and shortly all your cousins who will sweep you up into their play and pass on all their clothes to you.

Kindness is natural to everyone and just means that you realise that everyone and everything is of the same kind as you and needs to be treated as you would wish to be treated yourself or wish others you love to be treated.

And I wish you luck because it helps but you seem to have a measure of it because everyone is looking out for you now.  And I wish much of the same to your boy cousins but maybe with a few more challenges to bring out their fine fine qualities of courage and generosity.

Once in a while, meditation really delivers!

look out and see the same beauty

40 plus years of meditation, mostly twice a day or do I lie, perhaps it is easier nowadays when we are retired but twice a day for half an hour by intention undertaken for 40 plus years, that's what has taken place which means that in minutes I have meditated for about 40x2x365x30mins . My phone calculator says that is 1,876,000 minutes.  Actually, strike off quite a lot for shortened meditations when the family were younger, and quite a few minutes for just not quite making it to the 30 minutes.  Then, all of a sudden for no deserved reason, meditation takes on a new beauty and I can say for sure that it is undeserved because it is so surprising and unimaginably marvellous to find that the end of meditation is peace, the end of meditation is HUGE, not a tiny little speck of stillness but a complete and total eternity and there am I, not as just a small individual but as as the same consciousness as the huge universal space I am in.  What is granted in that vision is a certainty that there is consciousness and I am that and I am limitless.  Of course, that is a glimpse in a million meditations but it is enough to make sure I keep the practice going even if I don't arrive at that place again because I know it is there and I know that it is there for anyone, anyone who needs it enough to give it a try.  There is a result too, and this is it; when you come out of that reality, everything which is beautiful is beautiful because of it and your breath is quite taken away.  You also know that beauty is the reality and anything which isn't beautiful is just beauty covered and that every ugly thing, every ugly action, every disaster will be reabsorbed into that space and all will eventually be well for all.

Go on, believe it if you meditate because it is your very own reality and it is worth keeping going.

Do you know where you will go when you die Granny?

A smart 7 year old girl asked her Granny where she would go when she died.  Heaven said my friend, the Granny being questioned, thinking that would do the trick but it didn't.  How do you get there asked the child?  Well, said the Granny, I am not sure.  "Oh never mind" said the child, "I'll google it for you!"

Of course google maps are marvellous but when I google Heaven there isn't all that much to help.

Well first of all, what comes up in response to the question is Heaven in Camden Town.  Ah ha, I look closer and find that heaven is masquerading as a Dry Cleaner. In Newmarket, Heaven is a Pizza parlour!  In Villiers Street in London, it is a nightclub!   Put in heaven USA and there are numerous different mentions but none of them look as if they are expecting the souls of the departed!

Minecraft's vision of heaven but no map. 

So, here I am imagining myself as 8 year old girl with my whole self bent on discovering the way to heaven via Google.  I google how to get to heaven and up come lots more answers, everyone seems to have an answer, Christians, Muslims, and would you believe it, Minecraft.  Go to google, the all knowing and put in Heaven and Minecraft and then try the images.  Here is the image but there aren't any instructions for how to get there.  No one is really positive about how to get there, clearly they are all just guessing,  The Minecraft  heaven doesn't really look like a place for Grannies does it?

Christmas thoughts and prodigal pie

Christmas tree up with new Led lights

The tree is up and the good old decorations are on it.  Lots of old friends hanging up again but with one change!  Led light candles which you can turn on with a remote switch twinkle until I press the off button on my way to bed. No more wires taped down with sellotape to stop Grandpa tripping as he climbs up the stairs.  This is not the only change but it is perhaps one of the better ones.  The other changes are most apparent as we write our merry Christmas cards and going through the address book see how many mates are dropping off the perch.  It used to be change of addresses added in as they downsized once the children had left home but now the downsize is disappearance.  But in their place, their children who we knew as tiny babies, nappied newborns, tentative toddlers and tiresome teenagers have stepped into their/our places and now take responsibility for banks and airlines and properties and security, for the nation’s health and education;  they are the mums and dads of today and good on them say I.  That feels right and a proper evolution like led lights, it makes sense. 

We are still here!  We have a mixture of Christmas past and present and in the imminent arrival of a new baby in the family, we have the future.  We have the tree and the lights and we will keep in contact with the family who are abroad.   We will have the same Christmas holiday menus, the fridge is already overstuffed, we will break open the best of drinks and toast the Queen and have lunch when she has given her 90^th year Christmas message. Grandpa will fall asleep in front of the telly, some of us will struggle with a 750 piece puzzle and just in case the prodigal boy comes home there is a fish pie in the freezer and a new bottle of tomato ketchup.

The oldest Christmas angel made by Joan Evans 40 years ago

tempura sprouts! Suffolk's answer to haute cuisine

Only in deepest Suffolk would you get a tempura sprout and a battered tempura parsnip!  Grandpa and I arrived for a couple of days in Suffolk but the food we had packed got stuck at Addenbrookes so we took the torch and walked across the dark and misty churchyard to the recently refurbished village pub.  I wondered as we walked across it if any old friends buried here would be making a misty appearance but they didn't and anyway, those good souls buried here would only make a  benevolent and kindly mist.  I wondered what they would make of the renewed village pub which looks as good as the best of gastropubs all painted with Farrow and Ball and lovely wood burning stoves and exposed beams.  It being Monday, the landlord wasn't expecting any hungry gastronomes let alone any foodless friends.  He was only expecting the Parish Council to call for a beer after their meeting.   But not phased at all, he handed us the menu which is quite an ambitious foodie one.  I picked the tempura vegetables, Grandpa the soup and fish and chips.  The dear battered vegetables arrived looking as Japanese as can be with a proper little bowl of soy sauce.  However their shapes were a bit of a giveaway, three round slightly green ones on a stick particularly un Japanese.  You will be longing to know what they all were.  Well, first there were the three sprouts which had already been cooked and then tempuraed.  Then a ready cooked carrot and a parsnip,  and finally two little cloud shaped babes which were cooked cauliflower and broccoli in white sauce which had also been tempuraed.  I ate them all up basically because I like batter and soy sauce and the landlord was such a cheerful hopeful person.  I don't think that the Japanese will be wanting to copy this very English version of their delicate dish do you?

We watched the documentary of Prince Phillip and felt a swelling of national pride.  I expect he would have laughed at the modest country sprout being elevated to gastropub starter.  We slept like babies in the most comfortable bed we have ever owned and then take the dogs out over the sandy Suffolk soil to see what there is to be seen! and maybe chased!

You have to be fit to climb Mount Sinai

St catherine's monastery, an ark in the wilderness
Father Justin, librarian's talk

In the spring Grandpa and I are going to climb Mount Sinai!  This is not only a spiritually high spot but a physically challenging climb.  We may go half way by camel but I am not sure that camel riding is Grandpa's bag.  In order to get fit for this, I need to do more than potter around with the dogs and the hens, I need to lose about a quarter of my body weight and start a fitness regime.  But oh, hey ho, it's Christmas next so the weight will have to wait around.  That will give me 6 weeks of dieting which I hate but if we do it together, Grandpa has the staying power for dieting.  In fact he has remarkable discipline when it comes to anything he sets his mind to doing so I think he will be up Mount Sinai like a gazelle and I will trundle along behind him.

Christ Pantocrator, 4th Century icon, He looks so alive

We are going with Father Laurence Freeman and friends on an adventure and retreat to St Catherine's Monastery which is built on the site of the Burning Bush where Moses met God in fiery form.  The bush is still there!  Also still there are the icons which show over and over again the stories of God and man, God and Mary the mother of Christ, John the Baptist, the Apostles, the Saints and all manner of ancient and extraordinary stories imbued with the total devotion of the icon painters who really stood between the painting and the transcendent inner vision which had been granted to them.  

Do you want to come too?  If you do, just get in touch with Fay at Wind, Sand and Stars, there are still a few spaces.  And there is still time to lose those extra pounds beforehand.

Did the prodigal son have a mother and if so how did she cope

Messing about with the pigs

In the story of the prodigal son which is most likely an analogy for our own soul and its foolish wandering, the figures who feature in the story are all boys!  The Father and his two sons are there but there is no mention of the mother.  I am not so bold as to think that this is a mistake especially as it is an analogy as well as being in the Bible but I have been thinking about what role the mother might have played.  Do you think that she kept saying to the Father, "why don't you just call him and see if he's alright?" and the Father replying that it was best to let nature take its course and that he would come back in good time for Christmas...or sometime.   Do you think that she worried about him even more than the rest of the family?  That other brother was at home and clearly very dutiful and now had the house all to himself and his mother's attention.  She probably ironed his clothes and made his meals all the time her other son was drifting slowly downwards towards the pig farm.  Do you think she had perhaps always worried about him and even more so when he came and asked for his portion of cash because she knew he had a weakness for the more extreme?  Do you think that once he had gone and he never got in touch, that she woke up early and worried about him?  I do.

I think that she dreamt that he had run out of all he had gone with,  I think she dreamt that he was on his uppers and was reduced to being a waged slave on a pig farm.  I think she hoped he would come home even if he was a mess.  And then of course, he returned and the Father, who had always known that he would come, opened his arms and held a banquet.   I think she cooked it!  She thought about what his favourite meal would be...... fish pie and tomato ketchup and ice cream and while the Father was busy killing the fatted calf and placating the other son who was so miffed, she just put on her apron and started to smile again.   She knew he liked her cooking best.