Tiger Tilly... and some on the rest of the bunch....

Tiger Tilly!

The three littlest girls love to dress up and play pretend. They are always pretending to be animals, wolves, leopards, dogs, or making up plays, songs or dances in different characters.

Since her birthday Matilda has been really having a lot of fun with the face paints. She is such a little actress and loves to use her imagination. The stories the girls make up can go on and on for days, it's beautiful to have a peek into their world as I watch them bring their ideas to life.

Yesterday Emmy Bujana and Matilda made a fantastic fairy castle in their double bunk bed. It took up most of the room with different "realms" I was amazed at the detail the girls had put into their design and the magical feeling that was created by a few bit's and pieces they had found around the house to embellish their "fairies world".

Today the three older girls spent a good part of the afternoon trying to design a marble maze. They were so focused and full of excited ideas about how to use different forces to manipulate the speed and direction of the marbles journey along the hallway! I think they were quite inspired by this video which they watched the other day on you tube.

I just love the absorption children have in their tasks, they absolutely become a part of the ideas and worlds that spring from their imaginations. Us grown ups could take quite a few lessons from them I'm sure :)

Breakfast favourites this morning, served warm with great big mugs of milky teas mmmmm!

Fina enjoying helping make dinner.

Snuggle bugs...

Fina's new favourite thing to do... Sit in front of the bookcase in the girls room and pull out book after book after book... She knows the stories off by heart so is often found contentedly "reading aloud" to herself... So sweet.
I made the little knitted bolero in this picture a couple of weeks ago. It's the first time I've tried a cardigan pattern in years and I was surprised at how quick and easy it was to knit up!
It should be just the thing to keep little arms from feeling the chill during these crisp spring days.

Since I last stopped by...

We've celebrated a 12 year old's birthday!

Two sisters growing a friendship...

We've celebrated a 4 year old's birthday in pink!!! Well of course :) The red paper braclet was made especially for Tilly by her best friend Emily :) Matilda treasured it as one of her favourite presents.

I made this little Dolly as a present to a little girl who just loves dollies so, so much.

And I spent a lovely couple of quiet hours making these fairies and their little pocket purse home with my own Bujana Grace who is becoming quite the little seamstress!

Now just to say a few words that seem to have been pressing on my heart...

This place feels so special to me. It records the days we spend together, the things we create, the things we learn, hand in hand...
Sometimes I want to hold these things close and let no one in. But sometimes I read something like this... and sharing seems special, a gift even. A gift given in trust in the hope that something beautiful may reflect "out there" and give a little warmth and love too.

God Bless Friends...

Eliyana's Song

As I wander through the garden I hear myself ask... Are you here Eliyana?

God, I hear you saying... Take off your shoes, for this is Holy Ground.


The leaves of the tree shimmer. They have caught the flame of the setting sun. Orange, gold and weeping beauty. Sailing toward another dawn.

I hear the birdsong He brings me.
Soft cooing pigeons amoungst, the rustle of leaves.
The still sky.
The cradle shaped moon.

She is here,
He is here,

So Close.
So Close that the breeze can only bring a lullaby,

....singing....

Eliyana, Eliyana, Eliyana...

Vulnerability

 “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." ~ Joseph Campbell 

“To embrace one's brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries within it the possibility that one might come to embrace one's healing."~ Robert Benson

I have always found it hard to be vulnerable. 

A long time ago, deep in the mines of childhood memory, I probably put the essential parts of my heart into a box. 

Shrouded them in a still, silent, safe darkness.

And I wove myself some new clothing from the least frayed pieces of me.

Pieces that could be woven into a good functional cloth. 

The kind of cloth that's good for cleaning surfaces and polishing mirrors.

The frayed edges?

 I learned to hem them in.

 
 

The thing is, we carry stories, and deep in our hearts we know our story is our gift. And we want to share it.

 When we bring our stories together and tell our truths, we weave the cloth of our collective consciousness.

If we don't stand by our story and our truth, who will?

 
As Brene Brown says in her "Ted talk" below, deep down at soul level, we may not feel even worthy of connection, love and acceptance.

Often a childhood experience made us feel that essentially, we are 

not enough.

As we grow we feel it necessary to accessorize ourselves with achievement to prove our worthiness.

So we wear the correct apparel, maintain the appropriate etiquette and keep up appearances.

 

Women and young girls are often told to "be nice" quiet and feminine. 
  
So we learn to suppress our ideas or package them in nice, neat, socially coordinating wrapping paper.

 
Negative experiences of letting go and becoming vulnerable can also remind us that people can recoil, or reject our pain.

 
 
These experiences only compound our fears so that when, in time, 

people do try to get close, their gentle touch can seem almost 

harder to embrace than isolation. 

Friendship can seem similar to an antique porcelain vase. Precious, yet incredibly fragile.

In the end it may seem safer to simply step away to prevent the inevitable shattering of beauty at our clumsy touch.

The desire for authenticity and real relationship remains at odds against the fear of being hurt, rejected, judged.

Yet, connection, true connection is such an essential part of being human. 

We are always drawn back to the communal hearth.

Some Studies even indicate that forging real intimate connections can help you live longer.

 
To cope with our vulnerability, we disassociate.

Our vulnerability hides while our outer persona struggles to tread life's surface waves.

While one part of us hides in the shadows, another part, the part 

that has grown up as a "coper" may exude strength and infallibility.

Yet in the process a gap between our different elements of self ever widen and divide and the lines between truth and fiction begin to merge and blur.  

Sometimes we may even sacrifice "our inner child" or our deepest truth for  the intoxicating feeling of control and success we derive from our external persona.

But my world for this year is "True." 

Truth is always ready to open the box, peel back the layers, unravel the stories. Truth is defiant like that.

I want to embrace my inner child, take hold of her hand and bring her into the light.

Shadows will fall, cracks will show, but truth is as compassionate as it is courageous and I will trust it to navigate the way.

"I realized the most subversive thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be afraid." 
Anne Lamott 

Truth, is like Love, it overcomes the fear that I am not "enough".

To embrace truth is to accept...

My truth is enough

My story is enough.

My efforts are enough.

My best is enough.

Enough.

“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries." Theodore Roethke, Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke

Making A Home Alter

This is our little home alter.

It is a beautiful, quiet peaceful spot for the children to come to during the day. I also take refuge at our home alter to recharge, re centre and re orientate myself to what really matters in our day.

It is so easy to get carried away with a whirlwind of activities throughout the week. A special sacred space to stop and gaze and still and listen in a little corner of the home is a perfect reminder of what matters most.
The nurturing of children's hearts and spirits.

The girls love to decorate our little alter with candles and ornaments.
They love to pick fresh flowers for Mary, Jesus and the Holy Family.
On feast days the alter is a perfect place to gather special symbolic items such as shamrocks on Saint Patrick's Day.


Inside the cupboard is a collection of old prayer books, children's prayer books, A Bible and some writing books and pencils. The children (and I) often use the writing book to put down our thoughts and write our own mini prayers which is very healing and therapeutic.
If there have been squabbles or discord, the alter is a wonderful place to gather and come to God together.

Thoughts on Bee Keeping: "The Via Negativa," contemplation/ action and the art of knowing when and how to say Yes!

The beekeeper: Ivan Kramskoy 1872

I've been having a conversation recently with someone about whether prayers are as important as physical giving. There is a undercurrent of feeling that somehow prayers are less valid, fasting less potent than actual physical help. I have to say I may have once thought along similar lines though I now believe that this is not true at all.
I think of the Carthusians a life that seems dead to the world and to many a pointless even selfish sacrifice when their skills could be used in so many more practical ways. Yet the men and women who given up their lives in this way are doing a job that is unseen, invisible, supernatural even. They are tending to souls. They are continuing Christs work on the cross, they are reconciling the polarities between pure, holiness and godliness (innocence too perhaps) and the physicality of the world, both it's beauty and it's ugliness. The balance complete detachment and complete participation with the world at it's deepest level.
For a long time, I couldn't understand the meaning of the psalms. They didn't seem to register with any of my modern reference points. Yet since starting to pray the office, which I do very badly I'm afraid:)
they have begun to resonate with me on a more interior level. The psalms are a dialogue (primarily) between David and God. But there seems to be more there too. They are also the dialogue between man (humanity) of all eras and times and their creator. To pray them is to pray the prayers of others as your own and in so doing, connect with them in their own souls and lives, loving them as a part of your own story. The Psalms are unafraid to confront conflict and balance paradoxes. They are a reflection of life in it's entirety.
So getting back to the original question; are prayers equal to physical acts? Well this make s me think of one thing. When people are about to die what is of greatest ultimate importance to them, peace of body or peace of soul? Life is but a breath. When the veil falls, it is the soul that will have to take it's breath then. The prayers and fasts and sacrifices of those that tend the soul will not have been in vain at that moment.
There is equal importance. We need Martha and we need Mary. Yet, Jesus said that Mary's choice was the choice of ultimate importance. In the end we all need the Vision of Mary to sustain us.
Sometimes we can make ourselves busy for the wrong reasons too don't you think?
It can be a way of dealing with our emotions, guilt, fear, worries etc... Our physical work can almost become our idol. Many good and wonderful things have been built by the hands of men but still less harm was ever done by one who simply contemplated the green blades of grass beneath his feet and said "no, the grass on the other side cannot be greener than this" I am content to simply be where I am.

"LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance."

Here is a quote from poet David Whyte's book "The Heart Aroused"

"Some years ago, during a weekend course I helped to lead in the south of England, I experienced a moving example of how the "via negativa" can blossom. The course was unusual for me, to say the least, in that I was the only man working amongst thirty three Medical Missionary sisters, The weekend was part of a six week rest and recuperation for missionary nuns who had returned exhausted from their work in the hinterlands of Peru, Indonesia, India and whatever other country needed the benefit of their good work and clinics. Their work was difficult and exhausting, delivering babies, inoculating children, caring for the old and the sick. You could not fault their endeavours, yet, as they say in the Christian tradition, they were all Martha and no Mary. They had absolutely no way of replenishing themselves. The medical Missionary Sisters had little or no inner contemplative prayer discipline in their daily work. Every nun who went out worked herself into the ground for two years and then came back completely depleted. Working with the sisters, you could not help but be moved by their work and in despair at the mere shadows they had made of themselves to do it. Down in the kitchen of the convent all the while, like Cinderella among the ashes, hidden away from our seminar room, was the young woman who served our meals every day. I say young, for although she seemed to be about twenty seven years old, it transpired in our conversations that she was in her early forties. I was amazed, not only by her youthfulness, but the glowing spirit of calmness and serenity she had about her work. It became the high point of each day, almost like a privilege to go down there and spend a few minutes with her as she served out the food, She seemed like a bright, shining light in the dim underground dining hall, and she never had a bad word for anything or anyone. It turned out that she had been a member of the Poor Clare order for over twenty years. The Poor Clares are a silent, prayerful order with an almost Zen-like approach to spirituality, spending much of their time in silent contemplation. She had entered the order at eighteen and spent more than two decades in contemplation; even the work of the convent was done by the sisters working in mutual silence. Finally after twenty-three years, alone in her cell, she had heard an inner voice telling her to go out in the world and work on the behalf of others. Following that voice without hesitation, she had joined the order that was hosting our weekend and come to the convent as part of her initial training. The whole experience was something of a culture shock for her, but she had not a bad thing to say about her new order, though its whole approach was foreign to her training. There was not a trace of spiritual materialism in her body. I would hear her apologise to the others for appearing to ignore them when she worked in the silence. "It's hard for them," she would say, " so I must keep explaining that the silence means something else to me." Not a shred of judgement on her part as to their lack in the art of contemplation. Witnessing her profound spiritual presence, I couldn't help but think that there was a young woman who would never burn out no matter how much she applied herself to the outer world. She had inexhaustible inner light that would endure through the direst of circumstances. She had come to that light through the ability to say no to everything except the thing most precious to her, an inner focus based on her personal spirituality and the religious life to which she had given herself. Out of those years of saying no, blossomed a magnificent yes; magnificent because she would be nourishing much more than the physical health of those she would care for - a yes that could be followed fully because after all those years gathering her Psyche into one single body of faith, every part of her would be uttering it Yes!"

Ancient Wisdom

Chief Seattle, Chief of the Suquamish Indians reply to the request of the United States government to buy the native tribal lands.

"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all."