Hi friends!
I feel like I have neglected to comment and visit your lovely spaces as much as I would like recently :(
Life seems to have stepped up a gear and yet through it all, I am trying to use the quiet times that are available to simply "be" with ones I love so much yet seem to be growing up so very, very quickly. I am reminded more now than ever of how important each moment really is...
Could I please ask for prayers? My lovely friend is in the last stages of cancer, she has two very beautiful girls, the ages of my Bujana and Emmy 8 & 13.
Things seem to be moving fast now and I know she would so appreciate the blessing of prayer.
Thank you so much in advance :)
xx
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Monday, 29 October 2012
{Weekending}
The temperatures have suddenly dropped and the Autumn colours are gently seeping through the once abundant, rain induced greenery of Summer.
Nola did well to walk up this steep hill against the biting wind.
Once we got into the shade of the woodland, her energy returned however, and Tani was sent on quite a *muddy* wild goose chase around after her as she stumbled about the damp, leaf strewn ground.
Every small thing amuses her.
She has the sharpest eyes when it comes to discovering tiny little bugs, she always picks them up with great care and gentleness.
I'm always worried she will damage them but she never seems to.
It reminds me a little of how wild animals carry their babies in their mouths.
It's funny how she whispers to them as well, "Buggoo, buggoo, eep, eep, buggoo, dare go, bye, bye, kiss."
In the meantime the girls an I found an hollowed out log and went about finding materials for making a fairy house.
We found some sticks long enough and strong enough to lock into place for a roof and wove some thinner, bendier sticks through it.
Fina collected some Sweet Chestnut leaves for tiles which she laid on top followed by some mossy bark.
More lovely leaves made a beautifully plush carpet. Boo found a lovely arched shaped stick to make a grand archway. And Matilda, being a domestic girl at heart, found some broken Conker casings and filled them with all sorts of wonderful forest delights for the fairies supper.
Fina made the little flag at the top, and Boo said the special fairy verse: "Fairy, Fairy come tonight, While you're in your fairy flight. For we have made a fairy house!" Usually the words end with "For we have got a letter." The fairies are in snail mail communication with the girls.
Seraphina declared the house "Fabnolious" which is everything wonderful she can think of rolled into one word.
The glimmer of sunlight through trees is one of the most beautiful things in life to me. Sometimes just looking makes me feel recharged and renewed. A golden, Autumnal sun is even more special.
Linking up with Amanda for "Weekending"
Thursday, 25 October 2012
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
No Written Word...
"No written word, no spoken plea
Can teach our youth what they should be,
Nor all the books on all the shelves.
But what the teachers are themselves."
Can teach our youth what they should be,
Nor all the books on all the shelves.
But what the teachers are themselves."
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
Mindfullness and Mothering - illumination
Sometimes the carpets seem so old and stained and parched, yet other times the sunlight gleams upon them and footsteps dapple them with dancing and they speak of all that is warm and homely to me.
Sometimes there seems to be nothing but an endless mess of random objects on dusty surfaces, yet at other times these objects carry the weight of a sacredness, blessed by children's imaginary games or the telling of stories or the making of crafts as if through this they are bestowed a beating life of their own.
I suppose it all has to do with how things are seen and interpreted, and the inner dialogue we have with them.
This is what gives external things a value, it is how they interact with our spirit.
What is within mirrored without.
The inner dialogue I have with things is sometimes the first thing I am careful to be mindful of.
Instead of "How in the world am I going to clear all this up for the hundredth time today, and where do all these crumbs come from?"
I can say, let me do the next thing with a peaceful heart, these things are evidence of growing life not stagnant life, for life that lives moves, and for this I must be grateful!"
Here is a beautiful quote I found from a new book that I am reading...
"There was a feeling of a weight of light - pressing the damp out of the grass and pressing the small of sour old sap out of the boards on the porch floor and burdening even the trees a little as a late snow would do. It was the kind of light that rests on your shoulders the way a cat lies on your lap"
..." There's a shimmer on a child's hair, in the sunlight. There are rainbow colours in it, tiny, soft beams of just the same colours you can see in the dew sometimes. They're in the petals of flowers, and they're on a child's skin."
..." the twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I've thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, ot the humor of it. "The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart."
Excerpt from "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson ... recommended by dear Tonia...
Thursday, 18 October 2012
Embracing Autumn... and other Life, Death, Life Cycles
The leaves are beginning to rust and rustle, gold and red shells of what was only but months previous, tender and green.
Every season brings it's own wisdom and Autumn is the great teacher of the letting go lesson.
We will all reach an Autumn in our life somehow. Physically, emotionally, spiritually... Maybe one and all.
And like the leaves we will be blown along roads we don't recognise.
We will begin to feel the damp earth beneath us, then surrounding us, then above us.
We will become softer somehow.
Then we will go back to our roots, our core, our own truth. And it will be enough.
Every Autumn brought with it a little death.... And ever Spring a rebirth.
And I began to see that love is not linear, it is cyclical, like a wedding ring.
And I began to see that without the little deaths of those Autumns there could be no re birthing come Springtime.
Autumn and Spring are seasons of transition.
They neither carry the heat of Summer or the bitter frost of Winter yet they hold the key that unlocks both.
In their suspension, the times of transition in life almost always the hardest points.
Just ask a mother in labour. Transition (the time of complete cervical dilation that precedes delivery) is always the most overwhelming point in the birthing process.
Yet it is also the most trans-formative.
It is the very threshold of both the end of one thing and the beginning of something else.
But first comes the letting go.
Only the acceptance of death can embrace the promise of life.
Every season brings it's own wisdom and Autumn is the great teacher of the letting go lesson.
We will all reach an Autumn in our life somehow. Physically, emotionally, spiritually... Maybe one and all.
And like the leaves we will be blown along roads we don't recognise.
We will begin to feel the damp earth beneath us, then surrounding us, then above us.
We will become softer somehow.
Then we will go back to our roots, our core, our own truth. And it will be enough.
Every Autumn brought with it a little death.... And ever Spring a rebirth.
And I began to see that love is not linear, it is cyclical, like a wedding ring.
And I began to see that without the little deaths of those Autumns there could be no re birthing come Springtime.
Autumn and Spring are seasons of transition.
They neither carry the heat of Summer or the bitter frost of Winter yet they hold the key that unlocks both.
In their suspension, the times of transition in life almost always the hardest points.
Just ask a mother in labour. Transition (the time of complete cervical dilation that precedes delivery) is always the most overwhelming point in the birthing process.
Yet it is also the most trans-formative.
It is the very threshold of both the end of one thing and the beginning of something else.
But first comes the letting go.
Only the acceptance of death can embrace the promise of life.
‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
9 What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
10 I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.’
- Ecclesiastes 3:1-11
.
‘Verily, verily I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’
-John 12:24
Monday, 15 October 2012
Friday, 12 October 2012
Creative Friday!
I have had a lot of fun making these custom birthday crowns for my shop!
I love using organic- fair-trade and naturally plant dyed materials for my work. I really think that the ethical natural and quality of materials brings a warmth and love through the very fibres of the work itself.
I also love the way a design will almost dream itself into being.
I get a vision of the design and the work and know exactly what colours to use in an intuitive way.
It seems that the best things almost "dream" themselves into being!
Joy is an essential ingredient to creative work.
You can tell when something is made with joy and of pure, natural fabrics, it is so different to handle and touch than anything that has been mass produced.
It holds a different quality and carries a different energy.
{Race} 5 minute Friday
I wake up, adrenaline surges.
Sometimes it feels like the arc of a rainbow rising through plumes of majestic, hopeful sunlight and warm, fertile rain before landing on gold.
Sometimes it feels like an ache before a storm; a build up of pressure against the valve of now and all now demands.
Life can feel like a race.
But really, truly, it's not.
I have learnt to let go of the dream of that gold medal as soon as I feel the panic thrum as if my life depends upon it.
Because not everything I think counts, counts.
So I place these pieces of me, the fragile ones that need affirmation, that worry about the future, that feel overwhelmed by a day that has barely begun, upon His alter and ask Him to burn them up and leave me only that which is necessary, truly necessary to win this race.
And I am left with a little piece of glowing gold at the end of this rainbow.
A small Olympic torch with which to light my way to the end.
A fragment of light that has refracted
through this temporal prism
only to be passed back into light again
through an eternal one.
a
