memories and making sense of them

Here is a link to Lucy Winkett's Thought for Today. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p023t6p4. She talked about her own memory of a landscape meaning one thing to her as a child and something else to another person.  Landscape and horizons she pointed out were even a piece of music to a composer.  This fascinated me especially as during the last week having all the family here, I realise that I reach back into my own childhood to find things to put before the grandchildren, the games, the fun, the sweetness of good fun and cousinly affection.  They will probably do the same and maybe their summer memories will only be of the fun and not of the bee sting or the falling over, their childhoods will be coloured by summer in their memories.  There is something universal about these memories, most of us have good ones thank God but others must struggle to remember anything good in other places;  how different a summer here in the UK to a summer in Gaza or Israel or perhaps Ukraine or Syria.  It is because all these horizons are limited that the possibility the happy give perhaps point the way to something wonderful lying behind them, an unseen and benevolent stillness which should really belong to everyone.  It takes someone who has an inkling or an insight into the reality of that stillness to point it out.  So, thanks to Lucy Winkett for a good thought for today.

Still waters to play in

Meditation in and on a gene pool!

A Pond full of family!

A holy man seeking for liberation would just go into the hills and find a quiet place, leave his home and family behind and  meditate.  Do I envy him? NO, but I am aiming to discover what freedom might be and I wonder if leading a householder's life will do the business. A householder basically carries on with the household and family life and meditates twice a day with the aim of finding freedom from attachment. This weekend, the house filled with family and the sun shone and the pond filled with every sort of son and daughter, of every in law and out law, every grandson and grand daughter, a couple of grandparents and each and every one had a big appetite!  I just squeaked in early morning meditation but by the end of every day, the householder part of me was ready to drop.  So, detachment, what might it mean in this context?  I think it just means that when they all go home, you let them go without trying to hang on but if you love them, it is a bit of a spiritual effort.  

Are they mad!

Father and Son, Will and Neville

I begin to understand how odd it must seem to have "spiritual parents"!  What seems so normal to you as the parent, the prayerfulness, the conversation about spirit, the rather old fashioned ideas and maybe rather modest dress plus the expectations on you as a young person to conform to whatever spiritual norms the parent has committed to seem to be common sense but it may not seem like that to the family you belong to.  I much enjoyed Will Hodgkinson's book The House is Full of Yogis, it is a truthful account from the child of a marriage which had encountered a very strong expression of spiritual life.  And it had a tenderness about it, a tenderness towards the spiritual striving of the Dad, of the reaction of the children and the difficulties it created in the marriage, I found it touching and felt for each member of the family, felt for Neville, the father who "finds" THE way and gradually distances himself from his old life, first hoping the family will join in but then just determinedly carrying on towards his spiritual goal.  I felt for the children whose life was turned upside down, not aggressively but just slowly changing and distancing them from what had been perceived as a norm.  I felt for the mother, trying to understand, not understanding, distancing herself and then finally extending a friendly hand out towards her husband in his new life.
I was touched too because we also stepped outside what might have been a norm with a sense of spiritual purpose, it wasn't the same but it marked our life out as slightly different to the apparent norm and it didn't really convince our family that they were marked out for a spiritual life!!! far from it, they seemed to find ample excuses to use the house as a great party venue while we were about our new spiritual life.  I think they think we are a bit mad!
Is there a right to this? I don't think so, I just think some people are going to go for a spiritual path if it opens up for them, and not everyone is going to follow them down it.  The great thing is to be patient and to keep friends with as many people as you can from both inside the new life as well as those who you were born to be with.    

A little glimpse shows who Grandpa really is!

Which is which

Just a glimpse of something special and rather wonderful in a person who you normally see as just ordinary and maybe even a bit tiresome convinces you that whatever it is that they do is making that extraordinary thing about them real.  So, to the story, he, my husband and life partner hasn't been well and what goes with that is tetchy and irritable and what goes with that is that I get high-minded and critical and the mixture of tetchy and critical can of course lead to increased tetchy and increased criticism.  However wretched the night or miserable either of us are, we seldom miss meditation, out we go to the meditation hut, he reads something and we meditate before anything else.  Then it's hens and dogs and porridge making and into the day with whatever it brings.  And the daily round is the daily round and we play our characters in them but both of us are a bit tired and so there is an edge to the day which can disturb the underlying harmony.  But But But….He had to give a talk a short while ago, and this was just after coming out of hospital and we had wondered if he would or if he could but he had said he would and so he did.  When he spoke, the real person who lives inside him who doesn't have to be annoyed with traffic or family events or tiresome wives, appeared and it was a magnificent realisation that meditation has developed this inner man who is so pure and clear that I fell in love with him all over again.
Of course, on the way home, the traffic and the weather and the usual irritations were there but I had seen the light!!! I knew who was really sitting next to me.

pants and archbishops, two gems for today

The great thing about being a Granny is that you aren't allowed to drive the car, Grandpa literally takes the wheel and you just sit there and to distract myself, I read the newspaper from cover to cover.  Thus, today on our drive to London, (2 hours and several jams), I read even the extra business bit which tells me about Becky John and her ethical  pants-making company (not pants as in America but pants as in knickers)  She believes "that pants can change the world" and I certainly agree that pants can change the way you feel about yourself!  Even if you are a Granny on the outside, you just pop on a pair of Becky's pants and you feel ageless.  To further add to my delight at reading rather than listening to traffic updates and the reaction of my Grandpa driver, I turn to page 5 which quotes an interview with former Archbishop Rowan Williams in the New Statesman who says that "over the years, increasing exposure to an engagement with the Buddihist world in particular has made me aware of practices not unlike the "Jesus Prayer" and introduced me to disciplines that further enforce the stillness and physical focus that prayer entails"-"walking meditation, pacing slowly and co-ordinating each step with an out-breath is something I have found increasingly important".
Of course you can easily see why I have linked these two articles can't you?  They both point to ways of discovering that you are not what you seem, neither Granny nor Archbishop, you are free inside to practice whatever makes you feel better and you are free to wear whatever pants you make you feel good.  Good luck with making the same link and good luck Becky John and three cheers for Rowan Williams who I regard as a complete saint.

e cigarettes and ascension day

Radio 4's thought for the day reminded me that today is Ascension day, a holy day which celebrates Jesus ascension into heaven.  It is 40 days after his death on the cross and it is celebrated because Jesus' shows that death is not the end and central to Christian faith is a certainty that while death is a death threat, it isn't the whole story.  Angela Tilby spoke about the way we muddle the idea of holiday by forgetting that holidays are holy days, she reminded me that you used to be allowed off school for the day if you could prove you were going to Church!

Just like muddling up holy and holiday, we muddle up the idea of death, forgetting that death is the other side of birth and that having been born, we are bound to go through the death gate.  Faith says that death is a separation from our bodies and I like that thought, I believe that thought although proof is a bit scanty!  But I don't fool myself that however much I believe that I am not just this funny old body, I know that giving it up and dying will happen because wether I like the idea or not, death happens to everybody.

Martha Kearney looks so smiley

Next on Radio 4, the poor man representing the tobacco and e cigarette maker had to defend himself from Martha Kearney's attack on his knowingly peddling products which will cause thousands of deaths by nicotine.  Of course she has a point, dying from lung disease or heart disease should be avoided, a nice gentle death would be preferable but isn't a given.  She made it sound as if the only people dying would be those who had smoked and this clearly isn't the case, smokers may die from smoking related disease but most of us will die from some disease or other.  Naughty Martha, the poor man is trying to make cigarettes better!

Clive James reading his poem Sentenced to Life is a good meditation on life … and then death, click here and listen to him

hugh jackman, nigel farage and my hashtag!

Hugh Jackman's body got the most visits this month followed by Nigel Farage who also got a few visits via Twitter.  I don't really get Twitter but the all powerful Twitter person sent me a message  which told me who had arrived at the blog via a tweet.  It also said that if I had a hashtag I would get more tweets.  So, I see that I have a hashtag on my phone but oh dear I tweet from this old computer which I can't see having a hashtag.
I google hashtag and mac and lo and behold, there is the answer! # I have one.  Now I have to learn how to apply it to Twitter!