out of the spaceship and home

Meditating with the teeny tiny one

All those weeks of spaceship life with monitors and tubes is just about over and one teeny tiny baby is now almost a normal size and coming home to a perfectly prepared baby room at her own home!  I know it is perfect because today, her mother and I shifted, sorted, hung pictures, jumped on cardboard boxes and generally made a haven for any baby forced out into the open rather early looking for a home.  And when I visited, she was handed over to  me, sleepy and perfect for whatever I wanted to do with her.  Her Mum didn't mind when I said that we wanted to meditate together so we did.  A bit unconventional, cosy, not sitting up straight but here is the best gift for both of us.  Me to meditate with her and her to have someone meditate with.  We will both probably forget it but let me say now that it is meditation that defines my life, it is meditation which has kept me steady in the face of difficulty, of uncertainty and of pain.  It has steadied me in the face of joy and although I would like this teeny one to have all the joy that life can offer, I would give her meditation to cope with the ups and downs which come with the life package.  Go Baby Bea, Go!  

Find your inner Donald Trump and deal with that!

what are you saying to us?

Except those who love him, most of us have been appalled by the Trumpery which has gone on since he became President of the USA. The first and most extraordinary untruth of the figures for his inauguration must have made even a Republican voter gasp a bit.  The last 48 hours have seen policies unveiled which indicate that his America First Policy means Americans like him, Americans who have been Americans for long enough to forget they were ever Irish, Scottish, English, Armenian, Israeli, Afghani, Iranian, German, Swedish let alone of one or other religion.  The awful rightness of being Right in every sense is writ so large that we feel we must say this is wrong.  It is!  But, it also asks us to look at our own walls and barriers, our own likes and dislikes and see how unreasonable they are.  If we are vegetarian, do we hate meat eaters?  If we don't smoke, do we hate smokers?  If we are socialist, do we hate conservatives?  Is our own identity and allegiance based on hating someone else or just a way of life?  

Here is what Father Laurence Freeman says about a state of  mind which I really really wish I, you, and everyone could aspire to.  This is his Thought for the Day and I hope it might help you and if you know Mr Trump, perhaps it might be something you could pass on to him too.

The connection between the historical Jesus and the Inner Christ is the most interesting and mysterious and exciting connection in my life, and to feel that I’m connected to that makes me feel connected to everything in this world. Through that connection, I can feel and love the truth in every religious tradition, and in individuals who manifest the essence of that tradition. And I think that means that to be a Christian, for me, is a process, not just an identity. It’s a process, it’s an evolution. But it does mean, to be a Christian, that there is no competition. Jesus did not compete with other religious leaders, then why should Christians compete or pretend to be superior to anyone else? That would be un-Christlike, not like Jesus to do that.

(Jesus and Buddha, Meditatio Series 2013A, Laurence Freeman)

Missing them is just an idea!

A cook's heart! 

From time to time I get the feeling of missing someone and it doesn't come from my head, it comes from somewhere inside, the place where I think I am!  When that feeling comes it sets me off towards the larder and thoughts of cooking!  A bit daft when that person or persons aren't there to cook for.  However there are benefits for others who might take their place at the table.  The most interesting thing about this chain of events is that the one constant factor is the I which does all these things.  It both misses and then cooks and then does some other thing, eats or chats or goes gardening.  This just shows that the feelings which go with each link of the chain are passing, always changing and therefore not to be taken too seriously.  In the quest for enlightenment, detachment is said to be the key and to lead to bliss but it sounds so difficult and possibly a trifle dull!  It doesnt sound as if you do much cooking for a start but I would like to experience what might it really mean?  It clearly doesn't mean to stop loving the people who you once had in your household and who you once cooked for, because you will always love them, they were the ones who taught you to love (and cook!).  I think it means that you take the lesson of love that it delivered and let it include all families and people.  By the way Mr Trump I don't think it should mean closing your borders to people you don't think belong to you, it should really be an opportunity to find ways of removing the borders in your own heart.   But here is a good discipline for me in detachment, to love Mr Trump too!

cleaning up the grandchildren

All in age order and all cleaned up.

Looking out at the world

As the days get lighter, so the dust shows more! Nowhere does it show more than the shelf above the cooker where  bits and pieces of china collected from here and there live There are various cards which have been poked in between them and a couple of tiny Ganesha statues for blessing.  How could Ganesha do any blessing through the combined layer of rather greasy wooly dusty stuff which cover him so he gets a good wash too.  Behind these now clean bits of memorabilia are 9 of the grandchildren, painted by Tom, then copied and put into this great long frame.  They are in age order and the two newest and youngest haven't made it yet, Benji the crisp-eating Grandpa lookalike and Beatrice, recently allowed out of her space ship and into the arms of her mother and father first, then her godmothers and her two grannies.   The grandchildren in the picture get a good spring clean and I can see each one of them more clearly and although each of them is now at least 3 years older than when they were painted I think of each one, one by one.  As I wash their faces through the glass I send them the Ganesha blessing. He is the remover of the obstacles which fall across all our paths.  As Ganesha has also been cleaned, I feel sure that he will be in the mood to help them.  I add the two missing ones to the wish list and then head off to visit the now slightly less teeny tiny baby in her special baby unit and while I have her in my arms and no-one is listening, I sing a few remembered ancient prayers starting with the perfect prayer.  I sing her the prayer of the wise : May All be Happy, May All be without disease, May All creatures have well-being and none be in misery of any kind.   And then I say the Lord's Prayer and I'm sure she smiled! She knows that every granny wants the best for every one of her children and grandchildren even if she is a bit old-fashioned.  See below Beatrice and Benji, here is a good old-fashioned pastime, crabbing down at Ramsholt, you'll be there this summer too and Grandpa will tie the bait on the string to catch them.

Crabbing at Ramsholt Dock

Bad boys lead the good girls astray, it was ever thus

OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY

BAD BOY BUTTY

You may think I am straying from my usual serious  subject matter by taking on this boy/girl aspect of nature but I was reminded and much amused by watching my bad boy Butty dog leading the adoring Jack Russell girls astray this afternoon.  Off we go, up the hill to the ridge which looks across two or even three counties with everything coloured by a pale blue mist as if it was a watercolour.  I am so entranced by the view that when I let the dogs off the lead, I take my attention off them and zoom, that bad boy Butty is off with the girls following. I whistle and call their names, I see them from time to time as they come round a corner, I am looking out for the fierce keeper who doesn't like dogs running over the ground at this time of year in case he sees me out of control and them streaking around the acres.  But with my philosophical self, I am reminded of how the bad boys or the good boys being bad boys tell the good girls that it is absolutely fine to come out to the pub, to the party, to the club and no, of course their mothers won't find out and even if they do, they'll get over it.  I think I am reminded because of the very slight fear that comes when the dogs go that something bad might happen to them.  Then I think how lucky it is just to be observing all this bad boy stuff and although I am the owner of the dogs, I am not the parent of the boy or girl, oh ho, not me, not anymore.  So, our new baby just out of your space ship and dressed in whatever lovely garments your loving parents are putting on you, unable to tell them you would rather be in a black babygro and that you don't want your hair brushed, one day that bad boy cousin of yours, (nothing personal Benji or Max and Sebastian or Archie) will say, come with us over the hills and far away to the pub, party or club and you will skip out of the door.  I expect your mother will ring me up and then and say should she worry.  What will I say? Probably yes!!!! but I will also say that this will pass and one day even you, tiny new child will be a grown up remembering how you tiptoed out of the door while no-one was about with your high heels in a bag. 

                          

Desert Grandmothers and Grandfathers

St Catherine's Monastery, our home for a week

To get ready to go to the desert with Grandpa, I have been reading about the Desert Mothers and Fathers and the way they lived and what they taught.  We are only going to the Desert for a week but they lived a whole and totally dedicated life there.  The real truth of how these ancient devotees lived was that they became solitary, they weren't seeking anything other than to be at one with  God and that required their total commitment.  Not for them, just a week's retreat with the chance to call home on the mobile phone;  not for them just a Lenten give up of crisps, wine and chocolate, it was living the whole life of the total renunciate, no going back home for them, the desert was home.  

I am looking forward to a chance to try a week of living in the monastery and it being a week dedicated to being in the atmosphere created by the monks who live close to the lives of the early desert Mothers and Fathers and I hope that somehow we will imbibe by osmosis some of the devotion borne of the disciplined life lived in that place.  You might wonder why, when we could be spending a week at Sharm al Shaikh having a pleasant time round the pool, eating crisps, sleeping late, reading books and doing what most people think is restful, we have chosen to have our holiday in a monastery on the Sinai peninsula.  It is because we realise that learning to be alone and content with whatever is actually happening at this moment is not easy but we feel it is important because there will come a time when crisp eating, swimming in big blue pools, sleeping long and reading books aren't going to satisfy.  Having started the January diet and waved goodbye to visitors and given up alcohol, we can already feel ourselves looking around for something to fill the gap left by those lovely pleasures,  looking for something to distract our attention from just simply being by ourselves alone.

The comfort of the old in the face of the new

Grandpa's new toy

new hand touches old one

An old hand is gripped by a new hand and a new baby meets its two uncles who have travelled miles to visit her.  Grandpa gets a new i pad which Mike sorts out for him.   The teeny tiny child is transported in a huge travelling spacecraft- like incubator by ambulance with an entire neonatal team and gets closer to home.  Two of her uncles, one from Jakarta, one from Dubai, make journeys of several thousand miles to visit her and are able to hold her.  They are amazed that her head, just the size of a small orange is so tiny lying in the palm of their large hands and her whole hand is smaller than the tip of their large grown up fingers.  Old friends make the journey from London to join us all as we celebrate a late Christmas, New Year and probably an early Easter all in one weekend, feasting on all the favourite family dishes.  Everything good about our lives is toasted with a huge magnum of champagne sent by uncle number 3 from Singapore.  Come back soon that Uncle Bun, uncle number 3 to meet the smallest and newest member of the family.  We all take the dogs out for a walk round  the long circuit taking us as always out of the gate, turn left, keep going over 2 fields, over the bridge, right, left, down the long field, past the Church and back home with 4 or 5 dogs.  

Uncle number 4

Uncle number 3

And then, a final lunch and the weekend comes to an end.  Nothing you can do to delay the departures, no stamping your foot or weeping crocodile tears.  Back go the friends to London, off to Heathrow goes Jakarta boy in the rather small car belonging to our family giant who somehow looks as if he should be in something bigger. Back to the hospital go the new parents and this old granny finds a certain comfort in washing up the old pans left from the last meal and then mopping the floor whilst thinking philosophical thoughts about the way everything comes and goes, comes and goes, appears and disappears and even though you think you have something to do with what happens, it is clear that you don't have a great role, you just get to watch the show moving onwards.   Even the newest and tiniest baby has moved out of its spaceship life and is in a cot and is wearing clothes and there are newer and tinier babies taking her place in the spaceship station at the big Cambridge hospital.  

both ends of the spectrum

RAF uniform

the tiny baby smiles

We hadn't seen the old RAF officer in Church for months and we missed him but thought that he was maybe unwell or had perhaps even relocated.  But today he was there, right behind us in the pew where he used to sit with his wife before Alzheimers carried her off.  They were a loving couple, devoted to one another, who came to Church regularly, both beautifully dressed. He with the special smartness that comes from having worn a uniform with pride.  His shoes were always polished and he always wore a tie and smart tweed jacket.  He hadn't been to Church, he said, because he had been a bit down and we felt rather guilty because we hadn't known.   He held tight to our hands when we shook his and I heard him during the communion sing along with the choir the hymn 'oh worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness' and he was somehow lit up by it. I am struck by how we light up with what we associate with, with  a uniform we smarten up, with singing special words or saying kind things to one another, we become special and we become kind.  And oh my goodness I am struck by the way one small baby in a spaceship incubator, just 2lbs something of her has lit up devotion in the new parents and their sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles too.  Even Grandpa who is not at ease with new babies has been lit up by the arrival of this new small relative who smiles! 

A time for this and a time for that!

Are you going to be beaten by a potato says Tom Kerridge

Reading the Saturday newspapers at this time of year is a guaranteed recipe for disappointment although our Saturday supplement promised quite the reverse.  The first headline says Eat to Beat depression but that is disappointing because all the marvellous things which are being suggested are simply just out of reach, the ingredients are usually rather expensive or include the one ingredient that I just don't have so I turn that page.

Not Grandpa

Next up, Couch potato to super-fit in 12 weeks;  even we at our age could (they mean should)  train to do a half marathon but we should be backing up the running by resistance training to build up core strength.  There are pictures of people (who don't look our age) doing the exercises which have marvellous names, the abdominal crunch and oblique plank are just two of them and of course, they all take time as does the running.  So, that is disappointing because I am going to disappoint them by never running the marathon, half or whole.  Then on to Page 7 where we could lose weight a different way by going to a therapist.  I do agree that our relationship with food makes us fat but instead of therapy I just need to follow Tom Kerridge's wise words and realise that if I want to lose weight I need to stop eating the things (chips) that I love. I must look at a chip and realise it is just a potato and decide if I am going to be beaten by a mere potato.  It, he says takes self discipline to make us change but also recognising that I must be more powerful than a potato!

Not me

Next article which no-one who has followed the marathon advice and then the complicated recipes for healthy food could follow is that we could spice up our sex life even if we are older.  In response to someone who writes to her at weekendsex@thetimes.co.uk, Suzi Godson advises the older couple to spend time rediscovering and enhancing their sex lives.  "Look, oh therapist",  I want to say, "we are married for over 45 years, have plenty of children and have had our share of the ups and downs of relationships, we are looking for a steady way out of life avoiding excessive activity of any kind besides for which your fellow journalists have been advising that we will need to spend so much time getting fit and eating quinoa that we won't have time to spice up our sex lives as well".  So, I am both disappointed and disappointing.

I go past the pancakes dripping with maple syrup picture and the low alcohol wine article, pause briefly on the hellebores on the gardening page and land on the 50 best holidays in France which are definitely not for those on the diet page but  might suit the older people spicing up their sex lives.   I pause at the Spa breaks; am I stressed or burnt out?  I could try a healing holiday and they all sound wonderful at several thousand pounds a destress. Yoga, jacuzzi, meditation and massage in  fairytale havens around the world all vie for my attention.  I don't mean to disappoint the travel writers but by now I am confused with so  much advice and think that I should offer to do a single page for the newspaper bringing all these advices down to earth and meaning you can stay where you are, keep the pennies in your own purse and be happy.  Meditation doesn't need you to go to Thailand or Italy or even India, exercise can be taken at a nice easy pace and digging your garden will make you fit and probably so tired that the idea of a spiced up sex life can be left firmly in between the pages of the weekend paper.  Meditation just on your own chair or out in the summer house doesn't disappoint.

Not me either but this is a meditating older person just sitting on the beach

Twelfth night thinking time

Here are the wise men with a touch of Sadlers Wells

We clear out the Christmas decorations and all the remains of Christmas today It is twelfth night, the twelfth night after Christmas itself and we clear out the old to make way for the next thing and in the Christian calendar, it isn't the January Sales! 

We are making way for Epiphany which is both the celebration of the visit by the Wise Men and also the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.  It is no wonder that all these events in the Christian calendar are packed in on top of each other, after all, we are trying to pack in 33 years of Jesus life on earth into a single Christian year, all the events and all the importance of the events and what they might mean.  Epiphany is also described as a revelation, an emotional event which seems overwhelming with a sense of positivity that inspires you to act in such a way to either resolve an issue or it can motivate the creation of an idea.

Here on the right are our Xmas decorations photographed on my i phone to remind the family far away about our annual Christmas traditions.   They were made by our dear old friend Joan Evans who was a ballerina and artist.  You can see that she was a ballerina because all her lovely figures look as if they could take off across the stage at Covent Garden.  they are now packed away gently again in tissue paper but safe until next year although they are rather battered.  

 

This is the oldest angel Joan made

If Epiphany means realisation of a Truth, what might our Epiphany mean this year?  For me, the 2017 Epiphany comes in realising that even treasured things get old but not the spirit which created them.  I remember Joan and her qualities of selflessness and her delight in the smallest kindness.  It is still her spirit talking through the angels she made.  In the same way, the spirit which talks through the wise men, through the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, through that packed life of Jesus which clearly wasn't easy, breathes the goodness of the spirit which created it.  My epiphany is in remembering to be grateful to Joan for her kindness and for the enormous kindness of the spirit which comes to earth again and again and again and to resolve to put my epiphany to some good use.  Will you join me?

converting bitter to sweet

Dear Children and Grandchildren, mine and yours,

Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle

Here is a story worthwhile sharing with you and this is the reason.  One thing we all find difficult is not being believed and worse, being thought to be guilty of something we didn't do.  So, instead of feeling forgiving to whoever thinks this bad thing about you, you become bitter.  That bitterness comes back every time the bit that is hurt gets touched.  And it isn't welcome, it isn't something anybody wants.  I am sure from my own experience that everyone wants to be free and to feel loving, no-one wants to harbour bitter thoughts or resentments. This couple, Sunny and Peter, (see them in the photograph) were both once in prison, both sentenced to death for murders they didn't commit.  Are they bitter after all the years of imprisonment and separation from family?  No not a bit of bitter left.  They have used their experience to create a centre for others to get past any bitterness.  The story caught my ear because both of them meditate and speak about it as a way to clear the past and move on.   They are looking for ways of insuring that the initiative never fades and just hearing their story may make someone step up and help.

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out you go 2016 and in with the new one 2017

From 2016 to 2017

My good friend Ray knows about number and has been studying numbers all his adult life, he loves numbers and understands them rather as I might understand recipe books.  He has been lit up by his recent studies.   He says  that 2017 is the start of a new cycle and the way you know this is by adding up the numbers until you get to the single unit. Add it up like this so with 2016, you add 2+0+1+6 which makes 9 and with 2017, you add 2+0+1+7 which comes to 10 which when you add it up in the same way is 1+0 which is 1.

This blog is picked up in all sorts of countries, I don't know how or why.  Perhaps it is because there is a big interest in meditation or chicken keeping or more recently, the line up of those space ship like incubators filling up with teeny tiny new people from space.  The space they come from is heaven and that is why we love them so much.  They are as new as the 2017 adding up to ONE and they give us hope for a new cycle.  We can all hope that 2016 disappearing round the corner with its harvest of politics and wars and one of my teeth will leave a legacy of people wanting a new way of treating one another.  The teeny tiny space babies will be living in the next cycle and our baby is one of so many babies who all want to live in peace.  This is my bloggers plea - Be kind to one another and think kindly of people who you didn't think you should feel kind about.  Love your family and love your enemies too, they after all need your love more than you think.