Each step taken with Jesus's  loving hand as a guide. Falling all the time.

seeing

Said the fox. " This is my secret. It's very simple: we only really see with our hearts. What matters is invisible to the eyes."

"What matters is invisable to the eyes," repeated the little prince, so as not to forget.

The little Prince

Antoine de Saint - Exupery.

This reminded me of a beautiful series of posts over at Holy Experience entitled

The Ugly-Beautiful

Sometimes, I perceive on the frayed edges of myself.

I see with my eyes. I judge, find fault, see ugliness instead of beauty, chaos instead of grace.

I forget to stop, and count, each blessing. I forget to Praise in the rain I forget to be .
Thankful

When we first moved to our new rented house, in "not such a great neighbourhood" as I thought at the time, all I could see was dissatisfaction. I cleaned and tidied like mad in a desperate attempt to paper over what I thought were external cracks but were in truth internal ones.

Our garden was filled with rubble and weeds yes, and our floor was nothing but bare unvarnished boards, (not funny when you have a crawling wiggling 10 month old!

But we had some angels on our side and a few hard working helpful hands in tow and before we could blink we had turned the concrete rubble into green grass and the gutted house into a home.

Yet, as soon as we had finished I started to write a list about which furniture we would " have to" replace first, ( all our furniture came from a recycling centre,)

Even though it looked fine in reality, Some itching doubt inside me knew it wasn't new and I was seeing with my bad short viewed, narrow visioned eyesight, instead of with a grateful heart.

Things were not "perfect" in my view.

It's so funny to me now looking back.

Because now I am sitting here 4 and a half years on with two more children and a lot more dust, toys, mess and "imperfections" to look at than I ever had before. Yet, strangely, overwhelmingly, I don't see ugliness any more, I don't see imperfection.

I see joy.

I see the expectation of a new day, a new chance to build a memory, a connection. Sow a seed in a little heart.

I see quarrels at times, yes, but I see growing, independent souls behind them instead of disruption and failure.

I see sand speckled like spray paint over the lawn, where the dandelions seem to have gone crazy multiplying and dividing this year! But I don't see untidiness, I see children having fun with a bucket and spade on a Summer afternoon. I see a memory made in the sand. a footprint that was bigger than last year!

I see a memory made in the heart not the eyes. In love not judgement.

I see books piled up on the children's bedroom floor yes, but I don't see a lack of discipline ( well not to much anyway! I see creativity and children who love to read willingly and gladly!

My vision has shifted.

From my eyes to my heart.

And as I sit here I think of how many blind people Jesus cured. And I know that every time I "see" truthfully. Every time I see the beautiful in the "ugly" and the grace instead of the "chaos" I know it is Jesus who is wiping my eyes with his own hand, with his own truth.

And tears come to my own eyes as I realise that though "I was blind, now I see."

lOVE

"There where love is lacking, put love and you will reap love."

Our Tree

" In order for the tree of our life to spread out its branches over the earth and for the birds to be able to make their nests there, we have to plant the top of the tree below.

The cross on which Peter was crucified upside- down is the image of every gospel life."

excepted from "We, the Ordinary People of the Streets"

Madelieine Delbrel,

I was inspired to read this truly wondeful book by the wonderfully thoughtful Barefoot toward the light

Peanuts progress

Seraphina is growing so fast! I can't believe that she is a toddler so soon. She still feels like my little bitty baby. She's so funny too. At the moment she keeps kissing everyone and everything. From her own hand to inanimate objects. She kisses pictures of animals in books, she kisses her bears and doll, she kisses her clothes, her food, her bottle, her dummy (soother) or num-a-num as she likes to call it lol :) As you can tell she is very affectionate.

She also nods her head and says yep,yep,yep whenever she's asked a question. Even if she really means no, no, no, like when asked if it would be a good idea for naptime for example.

Another cute thing she does is roar whenever she see's a picture of an animal. Bujana taught her to roar like a lion one day when they were playing and now sheep, pigs, horses even chickens roar heehee!

I just love this big baby stage, it's so adorable. Please don't grow up too fast peanut!

Dance, Love, Sing, Work, Live

Dance, as though no one is watching,

Love, as though you've never been hurt before,

Sing, as though no one can hear you,

Work, as though you don't need the money,

Live, as though heaven is on earth.

Rumi.

Simple Spirituality.

I have just finished reading a book called Simple Spirituality by Christopher L. Heuertz from "Word made Flesh" international ministry. It has really spoken to my heart so deeply.

I just wanted to share it with you all here.

Here is a quote from the preface:

" Though he was on a mission, Jesus was not simply a missionary to the poor. He was poor. He joined the suffering of humanity and entered into the human struggle from the day he was born in the manger till the moment he was executed on the cross. In Jesus we see God entering this world as a baby refugee in the middle of a genocide, wandering the streets with " no place to lay his head" and dying next to two bandits on the imperial cross. It is this Jesus who we are invited to follow. Like the world in which Jesus was born, ours is one of big beasts and little prophets. There are many giants that stand in the way of God's dream. But the great irony is that we have a God that uses the foolish things to confound the wise, the weak things to shame the strong. The great paradox and humour of God's audacious power is this: a stuttering prophet will be the voice of God, a barren old lady will become the mother of a nation, a shepard boy will become their king, and a homeless baby will lead them home."


.The book is a really wonderful testimony to Jesus's core message. The author worked with mother Teresa in Calcutta and relates some of his experiences with great compassion and humility

Here is a PdF link to the word made flesh ministry http://www.wordmadeflesh.org/learn/fall2005.pdf_________________

Poverty

One image after another. Passed across the internet, newspapers, television, cinema screens, Music concerts.

Of children dying senslessly of preventable illnesses, teenage women working 16 hr days in sweat shops, suffocating poverty, environmental disasters.

It leaves me completly overwhelmed and empty at the same time.

These images of vulnerable people are passed on, it sometimes seems, as a legitamate way of making a difference.

I can watch, feel awful, pass on the message. Pass on.

Pass by.

Yet like these celebrities, clicking their fingers, the irony makes me deeply uncomfortable.

I don't want to "pass on" pass by. A face that cares but does not change in response.

Also, I must admit that unlike the people on this ad clicking their fingers, I don't have any personal wealth to give, and I'm surley not about to attain any. So what more can I do but watch?

Maybe the greatest difference I am able to make right now comes down to what I can leave out of my life than what I can give from it. Maybe it's about what I choose to do with what I have, however small.

As mother Theresa said so well " We can do no great things, only small things with great love."

I have recently put a fairtrade button on my sidebar, this is something I can do.

I can also choose to by my clothes from second hand charity shops or ethical online stores that stock fair trade. I can make my own clothes even! I can choose to buy fairtrade food. Local food from local suppliers. I can even grow my own in an allotment or in a tub in my own back yard. I can stop buying toys for my kids that are probably made by kids in a factory on the other side of the world.

I can go to reycling centres, charity shops for furniture. I can buy secondhand. I can stop buying new gold that is mined by children in Africa who risk their lives everyday. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CDwJRz6ySU

I have another button on my sidebar for writing to persecuted prisoners abroad. This is something I can do too. As is being an advocate for cases involving human justice through organisations like Amnesty International. I can write.

I can choose to live simply. Use what I need and when I have no use for it any more, pass it on to somebody else.

It has been easy for me to think I need alot of things to be happy, normal, respectable, respected.

A nice neighbourhood to live in, a larger house, a better car, a great collection of cd's, dvd's, books, elegant clothes, toiletries, ornaments, kitchen wear, accesories, highlights in my hair, baby equiptment, toys, possesions that make a staement about who I am, what I believe in. Possesions that define what sort of social bracket I fit into.

Lifestyles are sold to us all the time, as is disatisfaction. I can choose not to buy into the illusion.

I can choose to make up sandwiches for homeless people in my area or volunteer at a soup kitchen every once in a while.
Every day is a gift from God. How can I best show gratitude for that gift? Can I give it back with something more, from myself like the man with the talents. I can increase the value of the gifts I have been given in my life by doing something with them.

I can cut down my children's programs and give that money to children who can't even afford to learn to read. I can do that.

I can visit the old, the sick, the widows in my neighbourhood, offer a helping hand or just stay with them and listen.

I can prioritize.

I can do more than simply watch and click and then watch as others watch and click after me.

Everything that God has blessed me with He has blessed me with for a reason.

And what he has given me does not actually belong to me. Even if I have earned something with my talents I have been given those talents my God.

While my sister lies hungry in Africa I should not be filling my grocery bags with the choicest food. I have not been blessed so that I can indulge without thought.

Sometimes all I do is click my fingers and wait. Wait for somebody else to make the change.

But I can do.

I can pray.


Lord open my eyes to what I can do today.

Let me see my neighbour in the stranger, in the lonley, in the lost.

So that I may stop to help him somehow, in someway ,

Not simply pass on or pass by to the other side of the road.

Lord give me ears that I may hear.

Your voice calling in the homeless, the hungry, the needy, the grieving, the broken, the sorry.

Take my hand and tell me to walk. Lead me to the places where I may find you,

Heal me of my paralysis, when I feel so overwhelmed that I can't do everything,

Give me something, something I can do.

In this day I have been blessed with.

Help me find a way to give the gift back to you.

Where I'm from...

Emmy wrote this poem a little while back, inspired by Lisa @ Are We There Yet and this format found here.

Where I am From...

I am from music,

from loud and soft

I am from the first sun shine of spring,

I am from the daffodils,

the triuphant.

I am from Christianity and trust,

from lilies and light.

I am from the gentle and loving arms of my mother

from angels watching and love that is everything.

I am from the father and the holy spirit,

the holy water and the cross.

I'm from a sea that crashes against the rocks

and echoes a song in abandoned shells

I am from apples of the orchard and olives of the grove,

of green rolling hills and mountians of red dust.

English winters and Balkan summers.

I am from pilgrims crossing the plains of a new world

settling when the sun finds it's rest,

at the days end.

From the stories of Albainian rivers.

I've been told of my father as a boy,

diving in fresh water as cold as ice but as clean as the side of a diamond.

I am from pictures of my sisters Bujana, Matilda and Seraphina.

pictures of relatives in far of countries.

Everyone of them as special as the other,

They are as much to me as roses seen blossoming in the snow.

*

*

*

(Side note "from lillies and light" is a referance to the meanings of our names, Suzy means lilly and Dritan means light.)

A few things we have been up to latley :)

Boo's illustration of the poem "little things"
Emmy's victorian flower press, picked up at a local charity shop for pennies!
Art Study of Impressionism
Getting started on knitting scarves for Christmas pressies.
Emmy's still life.

Plum, Apple, Pear.

Disarmed.

I have started to do something different in my prayers with my children recently.

I have felt the need to open my hands out as I pray instead of holding them together which is how I was always taught.

We had an extraordinary priest come to visit our church a few months ago. His name was Father David. He was visiting from Zimbabwe where he helps run and orphange for children whose parents have died, usually from Aids related illnesses and a house for lepers. His place is called Mother of Peace and there is a link to it on my sidebar.

Father David spoke about a little baby who had been brought to the orphanage in a terribly dehydrated condition. The little baby had no one left to care for him. He didn't even have a name. Father David cared for this child as he died. Loved him as he passed from this world to the next.

And when his tiny, malnourished body was laid to rest in his little coffin Father David laid his own rosary between his little, limp hands.

On the child's little wooden cross they had carved. "God knows" And Father gave the child his own name "David."

Everytime Father David prayed during mass he invited the congregation to lift their open palms as we prayed with him.

This felt very special.

As I raised my hands I was aware of the emptiness I found between them. Yet there was presence also.

I guess the emptiness was mine and the presence was God's.

I was also aware of how the the action of opening out my arms left me disarmed. I was vulnerable.

I was offering something of myself. From my heart.

Yet I was embracing something also. As far as I was giving, as I was opening my arms, disarming myself, surrendering, I was also recieving. My hands were cupped to drink life and at the same time except the nails of the cross. My heart was exposed to except God's loving embrace, his strength and warmth yet also the wounding of love, the sorrow of love.

This must be a daily disarmement for Father David and other's like him. As he bathes lepers and feeds malnourished, abandoned infants. The wound of love in his heart can only be healed by trying to heal others.

By the emptiying of open hands, cupped to give in the same way they recieve.

http://www.motherofpeace.co.uk

A time to be still.

"Stand in awe, and sin not.

Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still."

Selah.

Psalm 4:4

I'm taking a break from my blog for a bit.

Blessings and love to all &:0)

xxxx

fLYING KITES

Being a Kite

Jacqueline Sweeney

If I were a kite

I'd kneel,

stretch my skinny arms

out wide,

and wait for wind.

My yellow shirt would

fill up like a sail

and flap,

tugging my criss-crossed

wooden bones and me

towards seas of cloud.

My rippling paper skin

would rustle like applause

as I inhaled,

gulping one last

gustto swoop me giddy-quick

above the trees.

My red rag tail

would drift

toward everything green

to balance me

so all day

I could

loop and climb

loop and climb

and soar

into pure sky.

ThankFULLNESS

"All our life is a celebration for us; we are convinced, in fact, that God is always everywhere. We sing while we work, we sing hymns while we sail, we pray while we carry out all life's other occupations. "

Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215) Theologian

It started with the small things, like buds bursting. I began to notice. More and more. The light and shade of life. All beautiful in it's own way. Each thing unique and purposeful, somehow.

Life. This messy, beautiful, chaotic, painful, ordered, blessed, life.

Redeeming praise.

Praise the LORD.

Praise God in his sanctuary;

praise him in his mighty heavens.

2 Praise him for his acts of power;

praise him for his surpassing greatness.

3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,

praise him with the harp and lyre,

4 praise him with tambourine and dancing,

praise him with the strings and flute,

Praise him with the clash of cymbals,

praise him with resounding cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

Praise the LORD.

Psalms 150:1-6 (NIV)

*

"Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."

Genesis 2:7

*

A breath of life,

a gift of life,

given back to life in praise and thanksgiving.

*

I'm breathing thankfullness today

in...

The way a few brief notes of music, can bring tears to my eyes without warning,

The blue and purple petals, delecate as butterfly wings, of the sweetpeas, we sowed from seed in early Spring. Now just beggining to blossom in the garden,

Times of reflection,

*

For...

The grace of every day blessings,

Gifts of joy through children's innocent eyes,

Laying close to the green grass,

Making shapes out of the clouds

*

with...

Being "undone" and yet knowing it's not something to be " fixed" just surrendered to in faith.

The honesty of my child's laughter and tears,

The growing depth of love and understanding between me and my soulmate.

*

Through...

Flying kites and blue and stormy skies.

Reaching across distances,

Words, and gestures.

Vulnerabilities that kindle compassion and friendship.

Part of The Thousand Gifts list @ Holy Experience
Just click Gratitude on my labels list for more posts xx

THE SIMPLE WOMAN'S DAYBOOK

The Simple Woman

Outside my Window...

A new Rosebush just bought and planted in. Pictures tomorrow maybe ;)


Golden marigolds, blue and purple sweetpeas just bursting into bloom and my favourite, translucent blue delphiniums bobbing their heads in the breeze.


I am thinking... The girls are playing in the sandpit and the baby just fell asleep, which gives me a few moments to myself :)


In the kitchen... Ploughmans! Perfect English summer food. (i.e) Fresh baguettes, with mature Cheddar cheese , pickle, chutney, onion, ham and salad, fresh from the garden. Mmmm! Simple, easy for littles to eat , healthy = it works for me ;)


I am creating... A pink gingham Summer dress for my 10 year old.


I am wearing... Blue jeans and a chocolate brown Cotton top.


I am reading...The bible, children's picture books with my girls, the poems of John Betejamin with my 10 year old.


I am hearing...my baby snoring softly. My husband playing guitar in the other room. My oldest daughter scratching around, cleaning out and feeding her rabbits for the night, my middle two girls chatting in the sandpit at the far corner of the garden.


Around the house...There is a big pile of laundry in my big girls bedroom that I'm trying to forget about for a few more moments heehhee!


One of my favorite things...Sharing a coupla glasses of wine with my husband in the garden on a beautiful Summer evening.


A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week... Try to remember to build as many memories as I can with my girls, to make every interaction a blessing. Not to let other things take priority.


Here is a picture thought I am sharing with you...





a LEAF bOO BROUGHT IN FROM THE GARDEN ON fRIDAY. aPPARENTLY, ACCORDING TO bOO, IT IS A MAGICAL, JEWEL, SPARKLE LEAF.

i THOUGHT IT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND TOOK A PICTURE!

Some children's books we love

I thought it might be a fun idea to share some of our best loved children's books

These are probably the books that are the most well read and well worn on our children's book shelves!

Feel free to browse :)

Prayers for Children (Little Golden Book)

Beautifully illustrated prayers for even the littlest ones.

Make Way for Ducklings (Viking Kestrel Picture Books)

A fun heartwarming classic that I love to read just as much as my kids do!

The Snail and the Whale

We just love this one! It's so fun to read and the illustrations are bright, cheerful and amazingly detailed!



Mary, Mother of Jesus

A carefully written portrait of Our Lord's life through the eyes of his beloved Mother.





Pumpkin Soup

The characters in this book are so wonderful, the pages are very creative in design too.




This Is the Star


Amazing illustrations and beautiful poetic text describing the Nativity Story.



Unicorns! Unicorns!

Another beautifully illustrated book ( we love our illustrations :) Telling of the Story of Noah's Ark.

Material World: A Global Family Portrait

A great way to introduce older children to the way different people of different cultures live and survive day to day across our planet.

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

A comprehensive account of the way families live in various countries across the world. This book is utterly fascinating!

:)

Look at these two. :)

Bujana and Tilly love sleeping together. I think it's so nice when they are small for them to have the same room, even the same bed! They seem to get so much comfort from eachother. I'm so sure it has helped closen their sisterly relationship. They are so attached to eachother!

Aren't they adorable, :)

And BTW) Yes that is my four year old still attached to her bottle heehee!

Deep Peace

Deep peace of the running wave to you,

Deep peace of the flowing air to you,

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,

Deep peace of the shining stars to you,

Deep peace of the gentle night to you,

Moon and stars pour their healing light on you,

Deep peace of Christ,

the light of the world to you,

Deep peace of Christ to you.

FROM THE CELTIC TRADITION

Purity of heart

*

To see the best in another,

Ignoring other's flaws,

And acknowledging my own,

Seeking sincerity,

In my own thoughts, words and deeds,

While assuming sincerity in the words, thoughts and deeds of others,

Purity of heart...

Simplifying instead of analysing,

Encouraging instead of criticizing,

Reaching out in friendship to all,

Excepting the imperfections and limitations of both myself and others,

Knowing I can do nothing in myself,

But turn my eyes to the kingdom first.

" lOVE.

THEN DO AS YOU WANT."