A Mother's day Meditation

Mother's Day has history.  In the days when young girls were in service in big houses, they were given a cake and a day off to go and visit their mothers for the day.  It has another bit of history which is that it is about 9 months before Christmas and therefore it connects to that particular and special birth and to that particular and special mother.

My recollection of seeing my first child and experiencing the immediate love for that particular child was knowing that every mother felt this love for her child, it was as natural as spring coming every year.  Watching a daughter become a mother, you see the whole of love in action possessing those joined together by nature completely.

love is freely available and plentiful as oxygen.

Mum's get recognition and thanks for being Mums on Mother's Day but perhaps we Mums should be thinking of the gift of love we felt when we became mothers and how huge that love is and that we tap into it, we don't own it.  Here is a poem from one of Alexander McCall Smith's characters as a Mothers Day gift to my children and any other person reading this today.  This is from The Revolving Door of Life (the 44 Scotland Street Series) and it is the second verse of  the painter, Angus Lordie's poem at the end of

the book.   It is also a thank you to all those who have loved enough to work in the National Health Service to do all they can to bring well-being to people.  Of course particularly this week, the response of the doctors and medical staff from St Thomas's Hospital and in our case, those who have looked after my own Mary and her baby for so many months, in and out of the spaceship and now home and healthy.

The remarkable thing about love

Is that it is freely available,

Is as plentiful oxygen

Is as joyous as a burn in spate

And need never run out

And yet for all its plenitude

We ration it so strictly and forget

Its curative properties, its subtle 

Ability to make the soul-injured

Whole again, to make the lonely

Somehow assured that their solitude

Will not last forever; its promise

That if we open our heart

It is joy and resolution

   That will march triumphant

     Through the gates we create.

Everything has its uses

Lama Zangmo

If you heard Lama Zangmo last November  spelling out the 4 noble truths of Buddhism, you would have heard her talk about the first noble Truth which the Buddha discovered.  This is the Truth of waking up to the pain or misery which accompanies life.  This realisation, she said was the start of developing compassion.  This has to be tested, you have to test it yourself to find out if it is valid. Luckily most of us find it out slowly because life also offers us a taste of bliss and a glimpse of heaven.  Somehow when you begin to see the double nature of life you then have to work out a way of negotiating this apparent contradiction  of it being able to give bliss  but in the same measure to be  full of pain and misery.  You have to sort this contradiction out and  and make it as good as you can.  If you click on her name, you will hear her lay this out simply and happily.  You can see that whatever she has realised, it has given her a great happiness which shines out from her face.   So, what has she taught me or in what way has what she said made sense of whatever pain might hove into my life?  This is a work in progress because it goes against the grain not to complain of any pain we might feel.  This is what I have found to be most helpful when I am stuck.  I have to take a good look at the pain, hold it right up to the light and then think about another person's difficulty and say to myself, is this pain that they have worse than mine and I can say for absolute certainty that I mostly find their pain is most likely much worse than mine.  What the whole exercise does is to sharpen you up and make you realise how many very courageous people there are out there and what they can teach you. Make your OUCH into something beautiful, it may take time but it will be worth it. You see it in her face and maybe one day in mine and one day in yours.