How New Age Spirituality has influenced Culture and Why - Some thoughts and a video

I'm sharing, in this post, a fascinating and important talk on the roots and influence of New Age philosophy in all aspects of modern society and why people are turning away from Christianity.

Over the course of my lifetime (43) years I have seen a huge shift. People have overwhelmingly abandoned traditional Christianity and turned to atheism, agnostism, or new age spirituality. 

Why has this happened? 

I believe that a major sifting is happening. In the past, people ascribed to Christian beliefs  because the church was a force in the culture. There were social privileges that came with being a "good church going Christian" and social sanctions for not being one. People didn't necessarily have to really believe to gain access to these privileges, they only had to put on a good show which led to the kind of hypocrisy that scandalised many and that Jesus, more than anyone spent his life on earth decrying. Jesus hated hypocrisy.

These days the opposite is true. Indeed, to be a true Christian these days means being ostracised by polite society. Much of The Bible is considered either irrelevant, offensive to modern sensibilities or both. Religion is thought to be too controlling and outmoded or just a crutch for the weak. 

Behaviour that would have been considered shocking in the past is now acceptable. This has led many people  to freely indulge in all manner of activities that would have meant social exclusion in the past. This has prevented a lot of hypocrisy while also revealing the truth of people's hearts. 

When given the opportunity to live as we want without any negative social implications and indeed, even with social rewards, what will we do? This "free" cultural atmosphere reveals the truth of souls. 

What reveals truth? Revelation. I do believe that we are living in a time  that the book of Revelation, the final book of The Bible speaks about. This book is also called The Apocalypse. The Bible prophesies a great apostasy or turning away from the truth in the end days.

Yet, human beings haven't ever lived and cannot live without God. So to fill the need for God on their own terms, they invent their own. Spirituality has taken over from Christianity. This Spirituality doesn't depend on any absolute truths but relative ones which means everyone gets to make their own god or gods with their own attributes that fulfil all the particular specifications of the individual. These gods give no absolute commandments to protect and guide or free the soul from the limitations and bondage of self and sin.

In these self made, customised religions, there is no need for mystery because esoteric knowledge will be given to the initiated. There is no need for guidance or doctrine or the protection of the church because there is only love and light in the spiritual realms. There is no need to pray, because power is manifested from within if you are "enlightened." Eventually, the end result is that people become their own gods. But we cannot save ourselves. We cannot free ourselves from ourselves. We need a Saviour. We need God. 

This talk is particularly fascinating to me because it reflects some of my own journey from New Age philosophy, heavily influenced by Anthroposophy, to traditional Catholicism.

These new age philosophies influence music, media, films, fashion and much of modern culture. They are so powerful and able to move so freely because, those in positions of power, the elite, are steeped in them themselves through masonry and they infuse the culture with these beliefs as a form of social engineering. 

These new age philosophies which stem from masonic networks are infiltrating Christianity too now and getting mixed up in a modern form of Christianity which contains a lot of heresies. People don't understand the danger of heresy anymore. It sounds like such an outdated word. Yet one small heresy is akin to making the smallest engineering part of a ship a millimetre out of shape. It won't necessarily make an enormous difference at first, yet over the course of years and generations it will lead to major error and turn the course of the whole ship. 

Freemasonry influenced that period of history known as  "The Enlightenment" which attempted to de spiritualise humanity. Lucifer (one of the names of the adversary - Satan) is known as an angel of light. Yet the light or "knowledge" he gives is false, deceives, leads away from true light and leads to destruction of the soul.

The story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil led them out of the garden of Eden where they could walk with God in truth, beauty, goodness and love to the hard world, where "the prince of this world" causes havoc and the mortal body dies.

But the soul is eternal and how we live in this temporal world effect our soul in very real ways. Jesus came to teach us these eternal truths, He came to guide us and to save us. He said: 

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." - John 10:27-28

"The Church is that within which is right order. Outside the puerilities and despairs, even in these, our earthly miseries, we always hear the distant something of an eternal music and smell a native air. Within that household, the human spirit has roof and hearth. Outside, it is the night." - Hilaire Belloc

The hardest homeschooling days - A Spiritual Journey

The hardest homeschooling days weren’t when they were little and every day was brimming full to overflowing with  laundry, dishes, sweet, early morning snuggles. The days when I was pregnant and heavy and carrying teething toddlers on my hips while working out geometry problems. The days of veggie sticks and cupcakes with sprinkles, dandelion posies in jam jars and wailing car journeys. The days of stolen moments to nap or write a few lines or knit a few rows. The days of giggling under blankets, sofa forts and tea parties on the living room floor. The days of aching loneliness and the sweetest consolation and moments of communion. Times where it felt like Jesus was actually walking beside me when I was afraid.

No, the hardest days came after these. 

As life became less brimming and overflowing I began to exhale. I began to forget the things that had given Grace to the grit of struggle.

I prayed less. I think that’s where it began.

Soon I stopped going to mass every week. I would go to the woods instead. I'd say things like, ‘I find my God in nature more than in church.’ I forgot the Grace of sacramental life. I forgot that the sacrifice comes before the blessing. 

Although I still find the beauty of the creator in His creation, I don’t idolise it. This world is not our soul’s true home. Ut Migraturus Habita.  

I started to read books on buddhism and the new age. They seemed so full of esoteric, knowledge, and secret patterns that connected all the dots in the universe, like how constellations connect stars. There were similes and symbols everywhere.  I went down ‘truther’ rabbit holes and got lost. I rediscovered astrology. I went to new age gatherings where women were goddesses. I stopped seeing deception for what it was, the antithesis of truth, the doorway to forgetfulness.

The word religion means to re/connect, to bring the fragmentary, the incomplete and the broken to wholeness, to holiness. To remember who we are. There is a touching and telling moment in  the story of the prodigal son. It comes after the son has squandered his Father’s inheritance and is sitting, starving among the pigs and their empty husks. It is a still life portrait of a worldly dream come to it’s natural conclusion. Yet it is in that moment of complete disillusionment with what the world offers that he remembers his Father’s house and ‘comes back to himself’. After ‘coming back to himself’, his true self, and identity as His Father's child, he musters the strength and clarity to return to his true home.

A half truth is a complete lie. We are made for the fullness of truth. And there can only be one truth. 

In the faith, the evil one is known by names that denote his character. He is known as lucifer, (the light bearer), devil, (accuser and deceiver), satan, ( adversary).

Here is a comprehensive list of names and their meanings taken directly from Biblical texts.

Satan can come dressed as an Angel of light. He is the deceiver. He is the father of lies.

During this time of wandering away I began to fall for many lies. The truth became tough to swallow. I began to think the laws of The Bible weren't a good fit for me. I began to take on the rules and belief system of the culture which says anything goes, mocks virtue and seeks to justify vice.

It was a tempting paradigm. The temporaral, physical self wants its immediate needs and desires, perspectives and opinions to be satiated, fulfilled and ratified even if they destroy its eternal soul.

Real, authentic compassion always tells the truth because, however hard, the truth is always the highest, purest, most beautiful and most loving path for our eternal souls. 

My children were watching my struggle.

They began to act out, they became confused, they began to question absolute truth too. 

My physical health deteriorated. I became ill with one thing after another.

I understood something was wrong. Like the prodigal son, I began to think of My Father's house. The days when I could just run into His arms like a child. To be under the authority of The Father is also to be under His protection. I began to pray again. I stopped hiding from the Bible and the condemnation I rightly felt when reading it.

At first it was like walking through a desert. I didn’t feel the consolation and close communion I had before. I felt far away and distant. I felt unworthy. This continued for many months.

I remembered Jacob who wrestled with the angel and wouldn't let Him go till he blessed him. 

Then I came across Chelsea's testimony and Jamies and Steven Bancarz. 

I prayed for delieverance with Derek Prince sermons. I made a choice. I chose Jesus over everything else. I chose Jesus over fear, resentment, pride and self sufficency.

One night, I felt like I was on fire. I had a terrible pain in my stomach. I knew that if I just got on my phone and watched some random video or scrolled through some pretty pictures I would find some relief, some numbing for the pain. But I just stayed still in the flames and waited. And waited. 

I waited on The Lord alone. I only wanted rescue from Him. It was like a complete surrender. 

Then I saw a vision of Our Lord on a throne. It was real. The room was dark but I saw this light shining through that dark, piercing it through, His feet were like bronze and His robes shone like precious, white gold, His face was partially hidden in a cloud. I felt his hand reach down and rest on my stomach. Suddenly, all the pain I'd experienced for the last few years vanished. The fire was utterly quenched and I felt perfect peace like I've never felt before in my life. 

After this I got into the Bible like I never had before. I knew that even if I didn't understand everything in it's pages, what was nessecary for my soul would be made clear. I became more humble. I realised how, despite all my book reading, I really understood less than I did when I was a simple, illiterate child. I became a child again.  I read and prayed. I went to confession. I went to mass. I began praying novenas and rosaries. I attended The Mass of The Ages, The Tridentine Mass. 

My children were watching. They were curious, they asked questions, they joined me.

They were upset we didn't do halloween the first year, but by the time the strange noises that had been scratching at the windows and in the attic ceased, they were convinced. They began to see the deception that runs like a string of fake, twinkly lights through the culture. They deceided they wanted The True Light and the peace that it offered.

They too began to pray more. We prayed together. We went to confession together. They read their bibles and learned to love them. They found peace. We, as a family found peace.

My physical health began to improve. But most importantly, my spirtual health returned.

No more panic attacks, no more light headedness, no more strange aches and pains and debilitating tiredness. No more low level depression in Autumn and Winter. 

The three years that followed this experience have been some of the most trying in some ways. Covid came, My father passed away, my mother began needing daily care. There were diagnosis and exams.  Our best friends moved away. Yet, despite this,  I haven't ever felt more peace. Jesus says His peace is a peace that surpasses all understanding, a peace the world cannot give. This, I find to be completly true.

And so, I find myself somewhere near where I started. The place of overflowing sinks and cups. The place of grit and unfathomable Grace. The place of stillness in the surrender and peace is a person not a place.

I share this only becasue I feel led to. I share this only because perhaps someone needs these words. 

I am an introvert and it's not easy for me to open myself up but I do it as an act of obedience and love that it might touch some soul on a similar path.

This is just a chapter in a bigger story. I don't have the burden of writing my story, only of faithfully playing my own small role in it and retelling it as truthfully as I can. 

If I can do nothing more, at least I can do that.

There is no perfection this side of heaven, so don't imagine every day is easy. God never promised that we wouldn't have trials, only that He would be with us through them all, giving His Grace and strength to our surrender. 

And through Him these trials are redemptive and meaningful. A life-bestowing paradox. Gving is receiving, death is life,  the end is the begining and the stillness the dancing. 

Praying whomever reads this is enjoying a restful and restorative christmas-tide. 

With love,

Blessings to you and yours. xxx

thoughts on my morning routine

 I was late to joining Facebook. I only started looking at my feed about a year or so ago. For some reason the energy I get from Facebook seems to make me feel tired and weary. I used to think it was a good way to hear about and share interesting articles, but more and more I come away from Facebook with a weary, jaded feeling. I don't like it. I can't explain it but I don't like it.

 I want to change this part of my morning routine. There is something about the morning that is sacred. The way I spend my morning colours the whole of my day.

Surely, energy emanates from our rituals, and our habits. Our rituals and habits form and in-form us. Similarly the in-formation we absorb effects us and our energy output.

"We are what we eat," in broader terms than simply nutrition. We are also the words we hear, the images we see, and the environment we live in. These things are our culture. They are the brushstrokes that create the undulations of our internal landscapes.

Tani was baptized and confirmed during the Easter Vigil Mass 7 years ago. After the Mass he told me of the incredible sense of peace that overwhelmed him for days after the event. He is an analytical person, his mind never stops. For that week he felt profound inner stillness.

But how to attain this fleeting, transitory awareness?  I cannot attest to retaining it throughout every interaction or situation. Far from it. I too easily digress into the fluctuating nature of my own emotional condition. But I have found one thing, that if I devote the beginning of my day to beauty, meditation, prayer, stillness and free thought the rest of my day is positively effected by it.

What we do grows from the energy of who we are.

After all our cells are changing all the time.

"Your body is constantly replacing old cells with new ones at the rate of millions per second. By the time you finish reading this sentence, 50 million of your cells will have died and been replaced by others. "
citation




 “Consider that you can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum. As you read this, you are traveling at 220 km/sec across the galaxy. 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not “you.” The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star. Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato. The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photo-receptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don’t just look at a rainbow, you create it. This is pretty amazing, especially considering that all the beautiful colors you see represent less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum.” Sergio Toporek
 

{Yarn Along}

 I am still working on Matilda's Pickles Vest. I'm a little less inspired third time around, not because I don't like the pattern, I love it, it's just that novelty motivates me when it comes to knitting and I'm ready to get my hands on some interesting textures and colourways after metres and metres of what is a very pretty but rather monotonous beige/lavender aran.

I have been enjoying "Listening Below the Noise" by Anne D. Le Clare. It was gifted to me by a very kind and thoughtful friend and I have already copied down many a quote from it's pages.

"Just as a blade can pare fruit, sculpt wood or inflict injury, or a key can set free or imprison, in hundreds of tongues around the world, words are being employed both to hurt and to heal. To cause both peace and chaos. To connect and to isolate. To praise and to condemn. Create harmony and discord. Honor and abase. To mask truth and to tell it. To align and to alienate neighbors and nations.
Again I consider, how do I use my allotment? How mindful am I of my intent? How responsible am I to my speech? How long will the effects of my carelessly spoken words linger? In silence, I sit and contemplate."

 

"There is a book called The Hidden Messages of Water by the Japanese scientist Dr. Masuru Emoto. When Dr. Emoto began experimenting with photographing crystals, he found that when the water he used for the experiments was exposed to words like "love" and "gratitude" and "wisdom," it formed stunningly beautiful crystals. But when it was subjected to words like "hate" and "You're ugly," the crystals became dark, malformed and fragmented.
Earlier this morning, as I stared at the photographs Dr. Emoto took - visual evidence of the power of language - I wondered this: If the vibrations of words can affect water so dramatically, what do they do to us? We who are comprised of more than 70% water."



" Our emotions and feelings have an effect on the world moment by moment," Dr. Emoto writes. "If you send out words and images of creativity, then you will be contributing to the creation of a beautiful world. However, emitting messages of destruction, you contribute to the destruction of the universe."

Anne D. LeClare  "Listening Below the Noise - The Transformative Power of Silence"

sharing with Small Things and Frontier Dreams

Soulfood Friday

We all came down with stomach flu this past week. One, by one, despite  a friend's so called full proof  immunity building carrot juice smoothies, and my own thick as tar, homemade elderberry syrup, we succumbed.
Today, is the first day we have all been well. I spent the morning, carefully stripping beds, airing rooms, taking down glasses and mugs and clearing away the debris of books, papers and pieces of lego that have banked up in drifts around the bedrooms over past days.
When I went to the kitchen it seemed like a ghost town, chilly and uninhabited.
Rolling up my sleeves I turned the heater on for the first time this year.
I ran a hot bath, filling it with fragrant salts and a peel of aloe soap. Then I sunk down into it's soothing depth, steeping like a brew, and let the week evaporate from my skin with the steam.

Today is meant to be national poetry day. If you've noticed my sidebar, it is quite clear, I dearly love poetry. I wanted to share a poem as any excuse is a good one, and something I had read earlier this week from the travel writer Piers Moore Ede in  his book "All Kinds of Magic" {A Quest for Meaning in a Materiel World} seemed especially pertinent.




Soul drunk, body ruined, these two
Sit helpless in a wrecked wagon
Neither knows how to fix it

And my heart, I'd say it was more
Like a donkey sunk in the mudhole
Struggling and miring deeper

But listen to me: for one moment
Quit being sad. Hear blessings
Dropping their blossoms
Around you. God


In the chapter "Amongst the Sufis"  the writer describes his quest to find the elusive Sufi sects of Rumi's hometown of Konya, Turkey.
The Sufi orders have all been driven underground, their practises criminalised since the redevelopment of Ataturk's hard-line, right wing, government.

By stealth, luck and maybe even the hand of God he finally sets up a meeting with an old, reclusive Sufi teacher (pir) in a backstreet courtyard, (haveli). Over the next couple of paragraphs, he movingly describes how simply being in the presence of this man clarified his mind and gave him a profound sense of peace.

The Sufi's believe this sense of presence and clarity can be transmitted through words, music, dance, art and of course the bodies of those who hold it within themselves such as this gentle, aged, teacher.
An orthodox saying comes close to conveying the same message of transmission: 

"The one who has found the peace of God within himself can heal a thousand around him without knowing."
 
There is much in this world that creates static, white noise within us. Life can be a little like turning the dial through 10 radio stations. To tune our selves into a peaceful, focused frequency takes a discipline, habit and stillness that can be hard to obtain.

Places ( or people) of sanctuary, where there is no ego, pride, trade or judgement are rare and holy but we may recognize them by their quietude.
And although they may be elusive they are as necessary to a human soul as the pause between lines is necessary to a poem.

Every Friday I'll be pausing to notice something from the week that has nourished my soul. 
* 
A special, sacred-everyday moment captured on camera, or perhaps a snippet from a book, a recipe still warm from the kitchen or something whimsical that simply made me smile.
 * 
Here are a few simple things that have fed my soul this week. 

What has inspired/fed/nourished your soul this week friends? 
*
 Feel free to link up to your own soulful spaces either at the bottom of this post or in the comments.

 
   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Soulfood Friday

Every Friday I'll be pausing to notice something from the week that has nourished my soul. 
* 
A special, sacred-everyday moment captured on camera, or perhaps a snippet from a book, a recipe still warm from the kitchen or something whimsical that simply made me smile.
 * 
Here are a few simple things that have fed my soul this week. 

What has inspired/fed/nourished your soul this week friends? 
*
 Feel free to link up to your own soulful spaces either at the bottom of this post or in the comments.

"The wild god reaches into a bag
Made of moles and nightingale -skin
He pulls out a two-reeded pipe,
Raises an eyebrow
And all the birds begin to sing."

Extract from the poem  Sometimes a Wild God by Tom Hirons

Sometimes we forget about the wild God and the birds stop their singing in our lives.
We lose our hearing of their call, chatter and chant.
*

"But here I have lost
the dialect of your hills,
my tongue has gone blind
far from their limestone roots..."

Extract from the poem "Oh, The Wild Trees of My Home" by Laurie Lee

Far from the Madding Crowd, like Bathsheba Everdene, our true love is close to home; friend of  simple rhythms, and homespun ways, like Gabriel Oak of the story, he is always found guarding the flock and the harvest, though the revelers forget and the storm of the world beyond rolls on unbound.

The cyclical nature of the seasons help us remember these truths, grounding us with their rhythms, traditions and festivities.


 

A copy of Tom and Rima's beautifully illustrated book  can be found here at Hedgespoken Press.

 
   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Mooring

The night I drove Emmy back to town, the moon loomed larger and redder than I've ever seen it.
She and her boyfriend Matthew are slowly but surely furnishing what was a small, empty attic room into cosy nursery. Tiny clothes are being carefully folded into drawers, her hand painted pictures cheer the walls and blankets both old and new drape the chairs.

Life moves, seasons change and we become more pliable, mutable and softer with their teaching.
Lines that were once etched in stone have been scribbled over with crayon and small mossy plants have started to take root in the cracks.

The next morning the sunlight is thin as whey.
The gangly hedgerow grasses fray.
The signs of their fading gleam gloriously in the wash.
The sky is a crisp, new canvas, poised and ready as a bird on the brink of flight.
And I have no profound words or deep insights to write, or camera at hand to capture the moment.
Just the gossamer fabric of silence which evaporates on touch.

The days are quiet. Just Boo and I.
With no fixed plans, we fill them with that which feels right and good.
I thought I'd fill these extra hours to their brim. Utilise, might be a better word.
I thought I'd utilise them, make them work for their keep and pay their rent. In other words, squeeze their freshness to dregs.  But isn't that what time is for, to be used efficiently and productively?
After all isn't this what I've always dreamt of; time in which to do the things I never get time for?
Modern life can feel a little as if you are in a boat with a leak that you constantly have to keep pailing out.
Money is a constant need as it is for everyone.
Yet keeping the water out through constant work and busyness can sometimes only mean another way of drowning.

Since my illness, I've not had the same quantities of energy that I had before. I've begun to re-evaluate the way my time is spent, literally.

Not every stillness is in want of movement. Not every silence needs to be filled with sound.

Pacing the day means that I can mindfully prepare meals and take care of the home, garden and animals without distraction or discord.
It means I can more readily carve out a peaceful and open space in which to gently welcome often tired and sometimes fractious children home from school.

I am working even if there's not too much to show for it.

In a product driven world, process, which is often hard to define, weigh and measure, can be easily rushed through, forgotten about or removed from the picture altogether.
Work which can't be compensated for in pounds and pence becomes devalued.
This doesn't mean however, that it is valueless work; an important distinction.

This afternoon we pruned the lavender bushes taking care not to break the delicate lacework of the spiders.
We preserved some more elderberries, read passages from books that we were reading in the garden and made each-other laugh.
I knitted some rows of Matilda's sweater and phoned my Dad.
I'm now going to leave early so I don't have to race down the country lanes as I pick up the girls from school.

When I feel the world biting at my heels I will go to my secret place. The one I have furnished with time spent and attention given. And I will trust as Lady Julian of Norwich said.
“All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

 "Don't spend your energies on things that generate worry, anxiety and anguish. Only one thing is necessary: Lift up your spirit and love God."

 Padre Pio

 "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
Matthew 6:33


"The Mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders."
Lao Tzu



Joining Tuesday Afternoon at Spirit of Simplicity
 Little Things Thursday
nature notes
Through my lens

circles

 The Moment

Margaret Atwood 

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round. 

Two currents converge in middle age. It's a bit like the two towers of Middle Earth.

We bear the ring of years on this planet. 

Every voyage we make around the sun deepens the lines on our skin and the mark of the materiel on our lives. 

Whole lives grow from a tap-root of simple questions.

On what ground will we stand?  Will we follow our soul as guide? Will we be led by compassion or fear? 

From birth to middle age we grow layers like an onion. We take on roles, labels, names, careers and other outward definitions. 

We develop our style.

If we are lucky we cultivate dreams into a way of making a living and if we are luckier still, a life. 

We accumulate, souvenirs and photographs, memories and experiences ( and if you're anything like me a garage knee deep in rubbish too)

We've walked and walked telling ourselves the top of the hill is our destination only to find one strange and otherworldly morning that we have reached the summit sometime during the night. 

Those dizzy heights of achievement and experience which seemed so out of reach to our childhood/teenage/twenty-something selves are here, finally. 

Perspective broadens vision and insight. For indeed, the higher you stand the further you see. 

The knowledge of inner and outer worlds and how they collide deepens. 

Foresight sobers.

The reasons why some things happened to us, the way experience moulded us like a river moulds the earth, coursing rivulets and irrigating the landscape of years, months, days , moments begin to clarify...

And life seems suddenly intense, precious, vivid, raw, messy and profoundly fragile.

And then the shocker, though we should have guessed, The summit of this hill is not the destination at all.

If we are to go forth we must descend. 

Peel back the layers, return to the simplicity of the child within. The one who doesn't carry a pack on their back or a label in their pocket. 

The older I get the more I feel myself returning to that experiential state. 

At the age of sixteen I cut my long blond hair into a pink mohawk. The self within me wanted to wade fearless and true into the world in a pair of oversized Doc Martins.

I thought that was my statement. I thought my life was a statement. I thought that statement was my reason for being here.

But now life is more simple. It is about breaths and moments and connections. It's about nuances and the pause between the big events. It's experiencing things as they are including myself with all it's flaws.
It's about being rather than doing.

And I find myself letting go more and more as my children grow. 

I used to think the worrying would decrease as they grew, but no, it only changes. 

When they were little chicks I could keep them under my wing, huddled close. 

Now they are sprawling, exploring and finding their own paths and I realise that they never were mine, they never did belong to me, they are their own and this is as it must be.

Life is one long lesson in letting go. 

Every year Buddhist monks in Tibetan monasteries nestled high in the Himalayas create a huge mandala from coloured sand which they painstakingly blow grain by grain through thin straws. 

The mandala is said to represent a blueprint of life which illustrates the nature of existence. All beauty and form is given place in the endless circle, from the spirals in a sunflower to the swirl of the milky way.

The mandala's intricate design takes hours and hours to complete.

Yet once this exquisite work is finished the monks spread their hands over it merging the colours back to one before releasing the grains into the down-flow of a sacred river. 

Perhaps this is both the"wild"  and the "precious" of our finite time here on this crazy, beautiful whirling rainbow sphere.

There is a point to these rambling thoughts (although it may not seem like it :) 

If I thought being 15 was full on I obviously hadn't heard about being 35!

Stay tuned :)

sharing with a field of wildflowers
& Little Things Thursday