Waterperry and Bernard Saunders

Returning to Waterperry at the end of the summer to help with a changeover at the house, the striking thing is the steady witness the house bears to human beings who strive to be fully themselves.  Here are men and women from all over the world who have spent a fortnight here studying and meditating and whose aim is to find a best way to offer ancient wisdom in an easy and accessible way to people who want to know.
The house itself draws people to it;

Waterperry House

 maybe it is the stillness built up over the years it has been used as a centre for study and meditation, maybe it was there before, with its little medieval Church tucked alongside, but you can feel it drawing you inwards.  Here are heroes and heroines, those men and women mentioned beforehand as well as those who look after the house.  Central hero today is Bernard Saunders whose vision for Waterperry is a main reason for it being what it is and whose vision for Meditation as the way to connect with the source of all life has helped so many of us.

Great Grandmothers meditate too

She is 94 and a great grandmother.  Life now is limited by movement, memory and every other thing which comes with grand old age.  Always elegant during her life, I don't know if Velcro has come into play but she would manage Velcro with style, she just would.  Her daughter, my friend, told me yesterday that despite the creeping effects of time, her mother says every morning to herself, la vie est belle!  And this stuck in the blogger's mind as true.  So today I have this running in mind and everything gets the blessing of that sentence and instead of the blogger's mind filling with extraneous bits and pieces, nothing to do with what is going on, every little thing gets a chance to  be really felt, really tasted and really considered.  The great good fortune of health and ability to enjoy beauty and life is suddenly catapulted into memory and huge gratitude comes for just being alive.  Even my husband has been sprinkled with magic today and the dogs and hens are given extra rations and extra pats.

And you can see from the picture above that the feeling of la belle vie is spreading from the grandmother to the great grandchild and just looking at it, you are feeling la vie est belle wherever you are.  You can start just by joining in with that delicious and infectious smile.  Thanks to that photographer for letting us into the secret.

Grannies loose on the internet!

Two Grannies

family matters

this was when I got married!

One of Martha Lane Fox's great achievements has  been to champion the cause of Grannies, or not just Grannies, but the generation before the internet, getting on to the internet.  This Granny blogger is now roaring about it spreading the word about meditation but there are dangers!! From the blogosphere to twitter sphere to Facebook, I have tried every which way to promote the idea that meditation works and is not too difficult if you want to try it; however, trying to update my profile on Facebook, I pressed a heart which I thought just sid that my status was a married one
 and then before you could say watch out, the news went out that I had just got married and would I like to upload a photograph!  Certainly not! but how to undo it and to undo the fact that it now says I live in Sydney.  Oh Martha, what have you done letting us out of our quiet reflective meditative Grandmotherly place to gallop about wildly in cyberspace.
We worry about the young getting into trouble on the internet but the young should be worrying about what we get up to.
Back in your meditation box Granny!

Martha Lane Fox and Philosophy on Woman's Hour

Martha Lane Fox

Yesterday on the radio Martha Lane Fox was being interviewed.  Hers is a remarkable story of courage  of clarity of thinking.  This blogger who is interested in the way the mind and body can be observed especially liked her description of the old English or was it British virtue of denial.  In her case, this meant she worked both with and independently of the pains in the body, not allowing them to rule her real life.  I hope I have got this right Martha, but you are now on my list of heroines.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039cbss. You will also hear about female philosophers being sexually harassed in universities.  What a pity that philosophy should be allowed to be dragged into trouble through academia, when it is the most wonderful subject for anyone who wants to examine life. Of course, philosophically-minded Grannies are unlikely to be the subject of sexual harassment which is an advantage to Granniedom but we would like young women to be allowed the same freedom through philosophy and send best wishes to the two splendid lady philosophy professors who are out there holding up a banner for wisdom.
So, more heroes and heroines; Martha Lane Fox, Heidegger, Plato and Plotinus for today.

Optimistic Granny

Dalai Lama in 2007 in Amritsar

A cause for optimism when we really need to hear and act on positive thinking.  This blogger is a tweeter and amongst the tweets I follow I found a link to this.  As the tweeter tweeted, the Dalai Lama, great big hero of blogger in question, says the future of the world relies on women,  He is not alone, a great teacher of the Vedic Tradition who inspired me, said that if women of the world held hands (I think he meant metaphorically) it would make the difference. So check this out before too long and see if you agree? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxgTsyL4y0E  Come on Grannies, now we have time to meditate and time to observe, we can make the difference, really we can.

Confessions up! blogger confesses to being a fan

In today's newspapers which this  blogger scans daily, Canon Anthony McBride, Dean of Salford said in relation to the report that confessions are up 65% in Catholic Cathedrals, that "a positive experience of talking about yourself with somebody and bringing God into the equation is found to be helpful to a lot of people".
This raises the blogger's spirits, makes the blogger optimistic because it shows that despite having access to every sort of device which we think connects us to each other and to information, we really have a heartfelt need to get straight with ourselves.  Although not a Roman Catholic, the idea of going into one of those velvet curtained boxes in a quiet Church with a kindly priest listening to the dreadful mistakes I have made is rather attractive but I am hoping that turning to that same presence in meditation.  Well aware of all the human errors made, I am given a chance of renewal of spirit and a space to face up to those grisly bothersome niggling tiresome faults in my individual thinking.  I hope that each day I try to be a bit better because of meditation and not just expect that everything and everyone around me gets better!
This blogger is already a fan of Pope Francis as well as the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Father Laurence Freeman, Rev Alice Goodman, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, Father Rob Marshall, Laura Hyde, Catherine Thomlinson,Valery Rees, Donald Lambie, Richard Burnett and Sylvia Leiserach.  Four of these will be at St Martin-in-the-Fields on November 20th so you can become a fan too.

For Digital Detox, Meditation twice a day

There has been a great deal of interest/concern/uncertainty about the digital world which is now almost everybody's domain.  There is a campaign https://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/digitaldetox to help people who might be addicted to the digital world to take a week off and of course that isn't a bad idea, taking a week off anything which has become compelling is helpful.  There is evidence that taking a week off from your children and letting Granny look after them is beneficial to parents!

When the parents get back from the holiday, they are totally in love with their children again and hopefully with one another.
Meditation gives you a break and also allows you to see the compelling nature of the ideas which come roaring into life as you aim for peace and quiet.  You begin to see that you are free however much they roar at you for attention, you just keep going back to base, to your mantra, to your prayer word, again and again and again.  Then you come out and the toxic nature of the things which grip are in perspective.  Like your children after a week away, they are adorable and manageable again, your ideas and your digital world are there to be useful, to be creative and not to rule you.