Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man play a song for me....

Mr. Tambourine Man

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand,
Vanished from my hand,
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship,
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin'.
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'.
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

*

I tend to think that when Bob Dylan wrote a song like Mr Tambourine Man he was getting in touch with a deep undercurrent of truth. So many of his songs often seemed to catch the threads running through inner seams of life.

Listening to the lyrics this morning as the sky rolls out like a piece of blue satin at the back of a stage for birds to flit in and out from the wings, reminds me of much of what I have been reading in "The Maiden King" A book by poet Robert Bly and Analyst Marian Woodman.

In so many ways, modern life seems to have lost touch with the human soul.
There is a the newspaper critic's cynical undertone, the scientist's reductionism and the irony of the jaded comedian. A sense of conflict, disallusionment and weariness, threads through much of the media. Stitching the seams that connect the fabric of reality to the individual soul's hunger for truth, meaning and love.

Yet, somehow, these fragments, do not fit together to make a whole picture.

Something is missing in the doughnut shaped existence.
No more does the human soul find a place to rest and grow in the centre of our being.
The middle piece is deemed unnecessary, as reality moves further and further to the concentrated outer edges.

There is a bland kind of numbness to modern forms of work. People have become small cogs in an ever expanding machine that they can't fully understand, operate or have control over.
While " the outer edges" of everyday life, become a series of binges and purges. Too many calories with not enough sunstance or nourishment in them.

Far from the earth that grounds us, we live from product to product and idea to idea instead of season to season and ritual to ritual. Where once, songs, poems, stories and the blossoms on the trees would bring the fabrics of soul and body and heart and mind together with the stitches of metaphor, symbolism and beauty.

For thousands upon thousands of years humans have lived in such a way. Where the foundations of community and family absorb the shocks of life changing events and support the seasons of life from birth to death. Offering wisdom, nourishment while nurturing, security and a sense of place, worth and belonging.

Now the promises are so big."You can be whatever you want to be" echoes out from the megaphone of a political rally. Yet for those in poverty, the opportunities to make dreams a reality are few.
And for those who fail, the world labels them a "failure".
Souls are buried before bodies on ground like this.
Where is the centre of balance, the grounding, the foundations?

"Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship, My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip, My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels To be wanderin'. I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it."

Like souls living on the periphery of consciousness, oppressing much of the underlying material where imaginations, dreams and memories are stored. We often walk between the lines of what we are and what we have to be.
Genetic memories that have not yet caught up, on an evolutionary level with the pace of modern life leave us somehow suspended somewhere between our soul and our physical reality.
As we traverse intricate social networks and career ladders our soul still sleeps in the forest studying leaves and catching fish.
These days, we try to avoid the forest more and more.
Yet the forest (the place where our soul rests) is a place where wounds are both made and healed. A place where compassion and understanding and forgiveness of ourselves can be accepted in our compassion, forgivness and understanding of others.
There is oftentimes lack of empathy and compassion outside of the forest.
On the urban streets of relativity survival instincts are given higher priority.
Desensitisation is essential to functionability.

In a poem or painting the forest is a shadow place where the light that falls upon us castes every curve and outline of our truth upon the ground. Hidden fears come out from behind the trees in the guises of bears or wolves or tigers, ready to devour. Yet the forest is a place where journeys are made and adventures found. It is a place of becoming. Prayer, brings the light that can reveal. But prayer needs stillness and being, which are often forsaken in the contemporary world of movement and doing.

"Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'.
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn't pay it any mind,
it's just a shadow you're Seein' that he's chasing."

This ragged clown bears the happy painted face so many wear. Yet the song leads him to the sky where "there are no fences facin'".
No barriers between body and soul, conscious and unconscious, between the truth of who we are and the way we have been made to feel we ought to be to fit in to an ideal. Here we can stand naked and not be ashamed. We can be the child of God we were always meant to be.
For in the endless blue yonder above "there are no fences facin'" no perimeters around our inner being. This is no doughnut shaped reality.
There is only a child and the child rests in God, in wholeness.

This is not a place for shoes, but bare feet for the washing.

Here the clown is chasing his shadow, instead of his shadow chasing him. He is bringing the darkness out in to the light, to the surface, to the conscious.

The kind of deep rituals, (the bread and the wine), stories (the parables) poetry and songs (of either praise or lament) that used to help people connect to their souls to the earth, help them through the various seasons of their life (puberty, parenthood, sickness, old age etc...) and help them find their true selves within the collective consciousness, have been replaced by MacDonald's, film stars, coca cola, rock concerts, Movies and fashion designers. For some alcohol, cigarettes, and other substances fill the void that remains between their reality and their still sleeping dreams.

The rich and famous play out our stories for us within the pages of a thousand glossy magazines, without any deep understanding of the sacredness of the role they've been given. "The ancient streets to dead for dreaming" The ancient paths of discipleship, of learning how to find and come to terms with and forgive and accept and embrace changing seasons in life, are too dead on their feet upon these post modern streets, to teach us how to dream anymore.
In my poetry book "Falling Leaves" I wrote a dedication "To those who teach others how to dream" I don't mean sleep dreaming, or dreaming of winning the lottery, but the kind of dreaming that awakens our inner truths, the kind of dreaming that brings meaning into life, God into life.
The stories of Jesus do this, they are like a dream that awakens.

Yet for the first time in history God has been taken out of everyday life, ritual, initiation of young people, relationships, work, parenthood and family life and what is left is a hole that aches to be whole, that longs to be holy again.

"Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand, Vanished from my hand, Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping. My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet, I have no one to meet And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming."

That last verse of the song reminds me of my husband's memories of communism. Yet their is resonation of his experience to, within much of the western world.

Growing up in a communist country means that the soul, the heart, the longings and the dreams of a person have to remain un-lived, un-manifested. They stagnate beneath the consciousness, beneath the painted face, within the shadows.

There is a huge national identity in a Communist country, that eats individual souls so that it may remain in power, bigger and stronger than any one of them can consume or defeat alone. Projecting an acceptable image in a country like this, is more important than being broken and real, and greed festers under the premise of shared economy.

All that is true is buried under a false placard of perfection. And people disappear, both figuratively and literally.

"Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind, Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves, The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach, Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow. Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, Let me forget about today until tomorrow."

Yes, there is hope! and these words instinctively point to where that hope can be found. The hope comes from within. It is a deep longing. The longing is not even close to desire it is way deeper and older than that.
It is the dream that children have before it is carved out of their hearts for the sake of fitting in, knowing their place, not dreaming too big or damaging their future earning capacity by spending to much time playing in the mud, writing poetry or praying in the light.

It is the dream of "dancing beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free."
"With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,"

It is about being, simply being in the moment with oneself. Unattached to position, name, age, rank or number.

Mr. Tambourine man plays a song of freedom that leads the body along a path that reunites it to the soul.

It's a shaman song, it is an old hymn, it is, in it's way a beautiful prayer. Yes.

"In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you."

Living true.

*

Photo Credit: .Lal Khan : Click the link to read the story of the broken window.

Simple Love

To love like a child. There's not much pure, vulnerable, childlike love in the world it seems. Yet maybe those that do open their hearts to love in this way, live in this way even, actually hold the broken pieces we do have together...
We have so much to learn from children like Ashley's sister.

Children don't overcomplicate. They are simple, genuine, they are loyal, trusting and eagar to reach out to both give and recieve love.
We try to find the origins to every word, turn ourselves inside out to distract ourselves from the real work of falling into Jesus's arms and loving others as he loves us.
Loving when it's hard, loving when it's messy, loving when it hurts. Not giving up.
Because He never gives up on us.
It's not about who's wrong and who's right. It's about Jesus.
And he keeps it simple, he says, it all begins and ends with love. That's the narrow road.

Photo Credit florian.b

I will choose to linger...

I will choose to linger
on that little face just a little more tonight.
These moments add up.
They are the brush strokes of a bigger picture.
If I choose to rush along, getting things done and forget to linger on those features. They will change and I will have missed them. The way they are, just for today. Tomorrow, somehow
they will be different.
I will deliberately, stroke your cheek and tell you what you mean to me. Look in your eyes for longer than I normally would
as I lay you in your cot tonight.
Your sweet pixie grin and sparkling eyes. The feet that run about all day, so fast
I can't keep up with them.
I will choose to linger
Elongate the time we have on the evening of the 781st day since my eyes first gazed into yours. That difficult birth. You came out blue and barely breathing, your little hand numb from a damaged nerve.
And now, you have so much joy and spirit and energy.
You dance in the sun, and splash in the puddles. You know how to really live!
So now as I sing you a lullaby, I will choose to wait one minute more, take it to another verse.
Because each and every time I let that moment linger.
Time slows down.
And I get the chance to really know who you are just a little bit more.

Praise Songs on the Wing...

I swear the birds recognise beauty like we do.
Flying high into the beautiful sun filled days and silhouetted against the slow, smouldering sunsets.
In both, they sing praise songs upon the wing.

I pressed my ear to the glass late the other night and was compelled to open the window wide to the sound, of hymns being sung to the sky, to the ebbing golden waves, drawing out with the tide of time.
Another day done, eclipsed by darkening blue gauze. A net fine enough to let even the smallest, dimmest stars shine through, like diamonds.
And the birds noticed. They sang the song of the angels at the foot of the throne, in their own way.
They saw God in the clouds and responded.

My eyes were dim that night, they had been filled with too many words, too many ideas still unprocessed, chores still left undone. I was not "singing, praise songs on the wing."
I felt the edge of my own time ebbing away too fast and was racing through tasks just to catch up before it slipped away. Would there be a sliver left before tired eyes would drag tired bones upstairs under covers of night and sleep?

...Maybe, if I had found my "praise song upon the wing",

maybe my tasks would have too become a song. A hymn of giving, within a small pile of gently folded clothes perhaps.

I could have been reaching out to touch the silence of the branch ( socks, vests, cotton, wool) till roused to sing from somewhere deep within. Roused to sing a song that weaves the strands from darkness to light, from night to day, from confusion to clarity, from frustration to praise.

Where is my song when I am flustered, busy, living on the surface, tossing about upon the stormy waves? The unfinished tasks, the hundred voices grabbing for attention, the gnawing feeling that maybe, somehow, I'm failing.
Is my song perhaps in the noticing of the beauty in these moments? Can I see God in the clouds? If I do, do I respond?
In many African cultures a call and response song is used to bring spiritual meaning into everyday work.
God calls all the time, through both the silence and the storms.
It just comes down to me to notice and respond

By noticing, the whisper in the whirlwind, I can bring the song to the surface of each and every day, where Jesus can still the waters of my soul and the souls of those that sail with me in my little boat.

"Awake now, he told the wind to pipe down and said to the sea, "Quiet! Settle down!" The wind ran out of breath; the sea became smooth as glass" Mark 4:39

Looking out from this window, across the windowsills and shelves that curve around each room I notice all the bits and bobs that we accumulate, the ornaments getting dusty under glass, the clothes getting creased in the drawers.
Yet in the aching notes of this song, they seem to me like cheap imitations of beauty. Clumsy distractions, compared to the naked, fragile, ever moving, yet ever still beauty of God's creation left untouched.
The quiet breathing of a song so rarely heard in the ever quickening pace of everyday contemporary life.

In my own life, I keep carpets vacuumed and sinks wiped down, but how often do I see the beauty of it, the gift in the giving, the still song within the movement of life the " praise songs on the wing".

For He is everywhere. He is the whisper at the center. And the song on the breeze.

God grows in the quiet upon a little piece of bark on an old tree, God moves breathlessly inside a seed caught in the wind, God sings in the morning sunlight echoing across leaf and petal.

"Jesus said, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."
Gospel of Thomas

He moves and breaths in the tiny fibres that make up the fabric of life. All we have to do is notice.

Today, as I open my window wide and let the first morning light into my day.
I will notice, like the birds, I will respond.
And as I flit and fly and soar and glide from moment to moment I will try to sing my own "praise song on the wing".

*

"Then he was told, "Go, stand on the mountain at attention before God. God will pass by."
A hurricane wind ripped through the mountains and shattered the rocks before God wasn't to be found in the wind; after the wind an earthquake, but , but God wasn't in the earthquake; and after the earthquake fire, but God wasn't in the fire; and after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper."


photo credit by mehmedakif

Girl...

She doesn't miss a thing; the veins in a leaf, the bubbles
in a glass of water left on the bedside table overnight.
The details of insignificant objects become magnified till they
seem as rare as and more precious than jewels.
Her perceptions contain a spectrum of colours; there is no
black and white in her world.
She is mutable and able to change her mind in a minute
Without feeling insecure.
Her reality includes her imagination; she does not filter it out
like white noise or background music.
Her imagination shapes her life and prints patterns all over mine.
She cannot hide her emotions.
There is no hidden agenda behind her smile.
She has not yet learned to conform to the pedantic intricacies of etiquette.
She still runs into the sea in her knickers and vest!
However high, she has no fear of the waves.
Her sunshine seeps through storms and basement windows
illuminating them like stained glass.
She lives in the moment.
No limitations, no expectations.
She gives me perspective.

Remembering what truly matters... "Post it " notes to myself...

Being right with Jesus before I try to be right with anyone else.

Taking off the shackles of the mind. Sinking down into the still waters dwelling in the heart.

Remembering that peace increases with trust, whatever the outside circumstances

Taking life without the frills. Eating simple. Mind, body and soul.

Reaching out to touch the truth in the kind of beauty which comes unadorned.

Not forgeting that it's the the inside of the cup that needs the most attention.

Welcoming the outsider into my heart. The one who opposes me. The one who threatens me. The one who other's reject. See how the reflection in another's eyes is deep within a part of my own self.

Embrace. Love.

pHOTO : My hand after spending a morning planting, painting and play doughing with the girls.
Real, true, unpretty, but touched with the fabric of the everyday life I love and embrace.
Better than a french manicure.

All my Tears, Goodbye and Where will I be by Emmylou Harris... Just because they're so beautiful... Enjoy :)

Visions of truth in two worlds, And how Love navigates between them...

Our vision has two lives. One manifests itself physically, the other spiritually.
When Peter was released from prison by the angel he thought he was having a vision, but the vision was so powerful it manifested into a physical reality immediately. Usually the process is a staggered one that takes time.

The tools for bringing the vision up to the surface waters are Faith and Hope, they are the buoys. But it is love that should be the journey itself. A process, an emerging, a taking of breath and an opening of eyes in each step of the way.
As saint Paul said, even the faith that can move mountains and reveal all the mysteries of scripture, even the hope that sets itself upon the flames, or gives all it has to the poor is worthless if it is not shot through with the golden thread of love. The thing that binds all things together. Yes, love brings the physical and the spiritual into union with one another...
The foot of love is buried in the ground at calvary hill, the eyes of love gaze to the heavens and the wounded hands of love stretch from east to west, embracing the whole world.

When I've tried to fit myself into a box or a "vision" that doesn't fit me, it is usually a sign that I didn't make the journey to that vision with love. Maybe I took the journey with pride, or selfish lust, a desperate desire to fall in love with myself all over again in a different body, or a greed for new ideas.

I may have had faith in my vision, truly believed that it was the "right" one, and I may have had hope that it would work well in a real, practical way. But once I reached the surface water I realised I was lost. Way out to sea with no land in sight. I had left love on the ocean floor.
My eyes had to open slowly and painfully to the truth that I had to let go of all my good ideas and throw my plans to the wind. I had to take off the heavy layers of thinking I was right if I wanted to dive down and recover the pearl of love in the depths.
We can never be truly "right", not ever. We can only throw our wrongness like a rough pebble to the sea and let the sea redeem it, bring it to the surface as a pearl.
However we try to clean and polish our pebble, it will never become a pearl until we give it away to the depths of love. Love will do the work, we can leave the corners of our homes unfinished and a little bedraggled, and go and care for a real, living person who needs us.

A vision can be like a mask. It can become a sense of who we are in the world according to the world's standards. Everyone has their own reference points I think, like co-ordinates on a map that link people together into groups. This is very obvious for example in the British class system where certain modes of dress, words and phrases used in speech, and places visited on holiday become reference points for determining ones own, and others, social position. And it is hideous.

Although it can be truly wonderful to be a part of a group, the group can become a mask that hides the beauty of each individual within it. This can be especially true of religious groups, where behaviour, dress and ideas become so entangled with what the group essentially believes to be divine truth.
But as Saint Paul says, we can only see things dimly now, we shouldn't behave as if the lines are crystal clear to our sight when they are not.
I believe (this is just my thing) that the bible has contradictions in it purposefully. The Sufis believe in putting "trips" into their texts, the Navajo Indians weave imperfections into one of the corners of their rugs. All is there to bring to light the seeming contradictions and frayed edges of real life. The only way through the tangle is to love. Reason won't even bother drawing a map. But love perseveres with innocent hope, embracing the contradictions and forgiving whatever stands in it's path. Love disarms. Love clears a way. Love is a narrow road. But a road in which it is free to walk.
When Jesus said that whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever we loosen on earth will be loosened in heaven. He was referring to the innate relatedness of the two realities, of the physical and the spiritual.
He also said Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.
If we mark up strict physical rules that are not based on love but on our "ideas" of perfection, or righteousness then God may humble us enough, in His compassion, so that we fall beneath them ourselves.
I have fallen beneath my own "rules" so many times and my pride has taken a knock each time.
The statue I was in my own mind has been knocked into a pile of clay bricks upon the ground. And I feel free. Yes! I am a piece of moulded clay like everyone else. Each a different shape to fit into a different part of a whole picture in the end. I need these other pieces of clay and I need them to be their own shape or the picture will never become a reality.

The best kind of group (whether that be a family, a work group, a religion, a town, a city or a country) is built on love. Where the differences between members does not threaten the cohesiveness of the group as a whole.
Love doesn't fear the height or depths of the waves. Love will ebb into hidden bays and fill them as equally and fully as cups, and lakes, long white sandy beaches, dirty puddles even a handful of tears.

rain drops and fingerprints upon my window...

When I held you
and saw
the sunlight find itself
moving and breathing
upon
your skin
The fingerprints
and speckles
of water droplets
let loose
from your little feet
kicking around
in the paddling pool
only hours before
Seemed
to me
to be jewels
Heavenly Pearls
printed upon
my window
Memories of the day
dried like a flower
preserved for this moment
with you
and the light
upon glass
A transparent pane between
then and now
And I was blessed
Because I knew
just how beautiful
small fingerprints
and dried raindrops
can look
upon a window
when the sunlight finds itself
moving and breathing
upon
your skin.

*
*
*

Some moments are like butterflies

Wish I'd had a camera
Make the moment tangible,
something to hold with my hands
And frame
But some things are too precious
to be caught.
Some things break with
touch.
Some moments
are like butterflies.
Too soon they'll
Fly away

Counting Blessing,...

With inspiration from the 1ooo gifts list over at Holy Experience...

I'm counting mine everyday...
in faces of joy,
giggles,
sisters becoming best ever friends,
kicking up grass in the garden playing tag,
the laughter (and tears) that come with growing, learning and forgiving one another on a daily basis.
Seraphina's funny faces,
Matilda's funny expressions,
Bujana's sincere heart,
Emmy becoming a beautiful young lady before my eyes, strong, certain of her beliefs yet full of gentleness and compassion for everyone.
Listening to Emmy read chapters of "Little Women" or "Hinds Feet on High Places" or her favourite parts of the Gospels while I sew in the evenings.
Cuddling up in on blankets and cusions in the garden in the afternoon with Bujana reading stories and picture books.
Listening to shrieks of joy as 3 littlest girls splash in the cool of the paddling pool.
Hearing my husband read fairy stories to my youngest girls behind me right now, with gentleness and fun and silliness, giving each character a funny voice, stopping now and again to chat about the pictures... "look Tilda this princess must be you, she's all in pink"
The soft breath of a summer breeze against the curtains.
Lavender oil foot rubs for the girls after a bath time.
The girl's summery, patterned printed dresses blowing on the line in the afternoon.
The prayers and love of true friends who accept me just as I am, flaws and all.
My mother bringing sweet peas from her garden for us today on a surprise visit, as she does, , and when she does never forgetting to bring little treats for the girls in brown paper bags ( jelly babies, raisins, trail mix, white sugar mice or berries)
Emmy's maple and lemon sponge pudding with custard after Sunday dinner.
Chatting with my "little big" girl about this that and everything else, listening to her thoughts.
Sitting out in the garden in the evening with my husband, sharing the day, laughing about silly things and amazing at the blessings God has brought us.

Listening...

God I hear you say...

Love as you have been loved.
Forgive as you have been forgiven.

Suffering brings you closer to me.
Yield to your pain, I AM with you.

Do not put anything before me.
Come to me first to be your healer, counselor, guide, teacher, friend and lover.

Ask yourself does whatever I am doing increase my love?
Or does it distract, confuse and come between us and what is truly nessecary.
Be like Mary, sit at my feet. Learn what is the essential. It lies between us. It rests in the heart, like a pearl, shining love, just love.

Let your voice become small. There is too much talk.
Let yourself fall freely into my arms, rest a while.

Gaze upon me.
See how I love you as a child.

Take off the masks,
Let the masks fall away from others.

Perfection is not a set of rules,
Holiness can only be found in Love.

See how I love you just as you are.
Love other's this way too.

See how I forgive and embrace you just where you are.
Forgive and embrace others where they are too.

Let love be the only motive.

Finding truth in others and ourselves, and loving it all the same.

This morning, I found my drawing pencils and sketch pad and drew a picture of some little children playin in a garden.
I have this picture in my mind when I think of life. And when I see the blessings and the beauty I ache. Because they are so fragile.
When they come, they are to be handled carefully, thankfully, with love and just a little awe, they carry the fingerprints of God. Our grasping, heavy hands can too easily wipe His mark away from the moments of our days.

Emotions don't trickle like a stream for me, they flood and break banks and seep into the foundations.
I wish it wasn't so.
I think a dam built up, stick by stick years before and there is a wall of water behind it now. Sometimes it crashes down upon me. But every time it breaks, a few more barriers break down too, and a little more of the pain from the past washes away into the ocean, resistance subsides to a greater, deeper body.

The most beautiful gift a person can give another is to accept them with love, just as they are. Broken, flawed, imperfect but real. Loving who they are, where they are, and all they bring with them.

That is something else.
We need to do a little more of that. I need to do a little more of that.
Truthfully though, the process of "doing that" is messier than a few poetic lines can make it out to be.
Like when my girls bring out the paints and crayons and glue. I know there's always going to be a little mess before beauty emerges, before a painting can be created. And there will be some cleaning to be done afterwards. Some washing away of stains before we can sit back and take a look at the whole picture. Before we are able to make out it's meaning.

And it can be so hard to bring that acceptance, that surrender of self, to a situation. Acceptance of that which feels unacceptable, surrender to that which feels difficult. In the same way its scary to let love into a place that feels cold, hard and opaquely resistant to the vulnerable transparency it offers with open, trusting, childlike hands. But love is the only way, it's the only way to soften the soil we walk on and grow in.
That is something to pray about.

I do know that the times when I've been hurt by somebody and I've simply taken myself to be alone for a while in silence, I have always found comfort in Jesus's arms. Peace has always followed that path. Somehow the hurt becomes redeemed, transformed, used to strengthen or bring understanding for the other person. When placed in God's hands, our own defensiveness loosens it's grasp as gentle ebbing peace overpowers.
Why I don't always take that path is probably because the first step is always the hardest. A mute and seemingly directionless step into quiet, when only noise echoes around your head. It seems paradoxical. But this step is the only one that finds a footing when life takes a detour on to steep and rocky ground.

"Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah. " Psalm 4

I am reminded each and every day that every day is lavished with gifts and joy, that once a long time ago I never thought I would ever experience. My family is my world, a world in 5 people. I can put my arms around my world! My world fit's in my bed in the mornings, one by one, my world scrambles under the covers.
I am blessed!

Is, sometimes messing up a good thing ? Well it is humbling, it brings you back to your roots, your truth.
The truth of us all, distracted, amusing, messy, unique, flawed and wonderful human beings that we are. And there is love there. Messy, beautiful, painful, joyful, strong, fragile, passionate, wonderful love.
I'm going to make some coffee, and I'm going to embrace it.

here. now

• Take one moment at a time.
• Dwell in the heart of each moment.
• Still the waters of your mind
• Do not fall beneath their surge.
• Sit with me upon the banks
• do not be absorbed by the currents and swells.
• Take the route I've mapped especially for you
• I will navigate the course.
  

With love for a friend.

The passion is in this letting go.
You will find
yourself again, beautiful, shining
full of life.

A soul grows in the dark
of the earth, giving itself away
piece by piece,

stem, sepal, seed,
Becoming smaller time and time
again, becoming
pollen drifting,

and the gentleness of rain, the warmth
of sunlight in the morning
after a bitter night of frost.

The melting snow, white
petals unfolding,

Opening

Becoming.

True.

Beautiful.

Shining.

Full of life.

When eternity sends an Angel to change our shape....

"What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the angel, who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel,
(who often simply declined the fight),
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Extract from "The Man Watching"
Rainer Maria Rilke

Memories in the garden... (belated father's day post)

My Father has been through a lot. He’s getting old now and age is bearing down. Though he won't like me writing that down!
He enjoys spending time sitting in our garden and watching the children swing and slide and dig and run making the happy sounds that children do. Somehow children always seem to bring a gift of carefree joy to the seat of age.
As shadows lengthen and daylight dilutes into sepia, he can still find a quiet spot in a garden to think, murmur on politics, philosophy or random ideas and give advice on which plants would suit the soil conditions best. Last year it was peas and runner beans, they add a lot of nitrogen apparently.
No matter what problems he has had in the past, he has always been the kind of person you would remember. He is one of life's eccentrics. But now life takes his footsteps along a quieter route, slower, simpler, treading a pace that can't be forced.
And it is a change of season for my Dad, who like a sailor has had a life of extreme weather conditions. He knows what is is to walk in the heat at high noon and the storm in the middle of the night. But here in a little abandoned corner, often left neglected and unnoticed, a place to pile uprooted weeds and fallen leaves, flowers now grow at his feet.
My Dad was a horticulturalist, he had a very messy greenhouse, pots everywhere, and a very messy garden too, full of plants. It was not much of an advert for his business , but it’s the way he liked it.
The greatest peace I’ve seen him have is in nature. Times when we walked the dogs and stumbled upon some secret, undiscovered woodland, and he would just look around and pick out the names of the wildflowers in Latin. Or in the garden with a fork digging out potatoes, staring up at the sky for long stretches in-between, hands resting on the wooden handle, boots deep in trenched earth.
Or watching sea birds catch fish along the coast with an ancient pair of binoculars in hand and silence as a companion.
In my mind the muddy boots of difficult times stay at the door. Only flowers grow in the soil of my memories.
One of the greatest gifts my Dad has passed on to me is the connection between God and nature. It is something that has made a deep impression on me, like a footprint in the clay of my heart.
Whenever anyone asks him what he used to do when he was young, he would reply, "I paint with a spade"
We used to make fun of "his art" by saying that it must be of the abstract variety. But growing, creating, nature, prayer and God were all one and the same for him.
When I think of my father I see stormy, grey skies falling head over heels across ragged fields of grass. Potatoes cooking in the embers and tasting wonderfully of like mud and charcoal. The chink of a September sun glinting on the sharp edge of blue tide in the distance. Pheasants and hares hanging in the garage door, homemade scrumpy and apple cores in the compost.
"These rocks have been here for a million and more years and they'll be around for a million more after we're all long gone."
A well worn expression (one of my Dad's many) 'oft' used in times of reflection. Just came to mind just now as I was writing. There is a sense of perspective there I think.
We can't build anything, or hold onto anything in this life. Life will fray and unravel one day. But in nature we can sense the eternal essence of our creator.
He holds the fabric of our lives in his hands. However torn or frayed or mismatched the pieces are he weaves them in to a new garment. Bodies age and deteriorate, but my Dad's soul somehow flies free in the wind above the rocks set in the deep.
I think somehow it always has and some day it will be truly free to do so again.


Photo, taken by my Dad in Ireland three years ago.

Sometimes...

Sometimes I feel an deep ache. It hits me suddenly and without warning. In the middle of washing up, or the moments of quiet, the shade of blue of the sky.
My heart hangs heavy, pangs silently, a sudden outburst of rain fills my eyes.
I feel like mercury pushing the clouds out of the corner of the picture in the Spring time Primavera But I can only chalk blue skies with my mind. My thoughts are a clear meadow, but my heart is a sunken valley where the rain pools.
Yet there is sunlight all around me and flowers in small hands, so many gifts.
It's only the undrawn picture, the unfashioned memory which falters my smile. It is the one small hand I will never touch. The little body I will never hold, the smile I will never see,
and I mourn it.
I grieve for a little child I never knew, yet know more intimatly than any in some ways. Because now she enfolds my soul in the wings of prayer as I once held her little body beneath my heart.