Veni Pater Pauperum

When we'd finally got a house of our own after being in temporary accommodation for months, the rooms seemed so big and empty.

There was nothing but floorboards, a few pieces of recycled furniture and donated pots and pans! Boo was crawling but I had to carry her everywhere because of upturned nails and splintered wood. Our garden a shock of dead thorns and rubble. No place to play.

Then when Tilly was just four weeks old, Boo came down with the worst fever. As I undressed her hot little body for a bath I noticed a rash. I'd read about meningitis rashes years before so I called the after hours surgery straight away. They told me to phone A & E.

The doctor on the other line told me to come in immediately. My mind raced...
"I haven't got a car. " I stammered.
"Well get a taxi." She replied, dead pan.

I had only one ten pound note and no cards or bank accounts at the time.
Ten pounds would not have covered the taxi there and back.
It was now pitch black outside and snowing hard. Tani was working nights at a pub and our neighbours, the only people we new in the area at the time were out.
In those days we didn't even have a mobile phone.

I tried calling the pub on the landline but it was a dodgy line at the best of times.
Nothing, no connection.
Just a monotonous, lingering note.

I called the hospital again and tried to explain.
"Haven't you got any family that can bring you in?" said the doctor, clearly irritated.
I didn't. In fact I had no one to call.

"Would it be possible to get a home visit?" I ventured.
No it certainly would not.

Finally she said... "Listen if you don't care enough about you child and your husband just can't be bothered enough to leave work it's not my problem. If something happens it's out of my hands, it's your own fault".

Hands shaking and numb I put the receiver down.
Then without knowing what else to do I called an ambulance.

I carried my fragile post partum body and a baby in each arm along the icy path to the ambulance door while Emmy brought the bags behind me.

Thank God Boo did not have meningitis just a horrible fever from which she quickly recovered.
Still I will never forget how people who often need the most, people with very little support and security are often treated.

I have always noticed such a difference in the way I have been treated depending on other's perception of "my class." Or the amount of money I might (or might not ) have.

An even bigger emotion that I take away from experiences like this is how when things are hard it's like seeing through a fog.
You can't make out where the light source is, you can't even make out your own hand.
Everything seems but a shade of gray right to the end of the road.
Sometimes it's not until the fog lifts just a little that you can see just what has been done and how much it has meant.

We started our family when we were but kids.
So much wonder in hindsight of the hurdles we had to jump.
And if there is not a God we could never have done it. So I believe hard.

And I reach for the light even the fog falls and seeps through every surface.
Rising only as dampness and the residues of dreams.
Because I know light is there.

God is with us "Emmanuelle"(the name of my first born).

There may be much against us, but that is not God. God is for the mourner, the meek, the poor, the dispossessed, the persecuted, the slandered, the lonely, the childlike pure and all seekers of goodness and truth. This is my God.

So when days and nights are hard, and there is no one to call, no shoulder but his and His.

 I remember that the poor in spirit are blessed.

Because it is only when we are at our most alone and empty that there is nothing else to come between our soul and His spirit.

There can be only God then.

Soft, Sunlit Memories

Stumbling over green clumps of soft earth.

Two little girls run against the currents of a gushing wind, that hurls itself across the hills and valleys, scoring tracks in the long meadow grass.

Red cheeks like apples shining in the sun of a girl's soft smile.

Eye's filled with wonder and expectation glance up at a sky worn to cloudy rags with the day's cares and traces of tears that can't be explained.

The glinting of light through naked branches and skeleton leaves.

Bleaches out the damp bruises of ruminating clouds.

Perched upon the mossy gate.

The dreams of children reach beyond a gaze in the distance.

The branches of trees grasp the fading light.

And turn to charcoal in it's cool fire.

Long grasses pick up the whispers of the wind.

A song without words

Pieces of an Autumn Day...

As the brittle and stark days of winter leave trees bare against granite skies.

Emmy captures the last blinking glimpses, lingering gazes and fading traces of Autumntime.

Here is our day through her eyes.

With the pictures she found.


A sycamore leaf surfaces from the birdbath.



















Early morning shivers, blue and crisp as any day in early spring might.

Clouds rustle against the trembling edges of emerald green Bay leaves.

Details, flutter, pause, wonder, glint.

Unassumingly.

Washing the days in their own colours.

Defining the hours, with their own outlines.

As afternoon wanes, birds chirrup amongst the naked branches of a sycamore tree.

As the pieces of our day scatter gently to the earth like the last of the Autumn leaves. ~

Resolving to Rest

One of my biggest new year resolutions is to rest more.

I need to create spaces of stillness, where thoughts can breathe and move and sing. 

Spaces where dreams can wade out into expansive sunsets and dreams can go bare back riding across breaking shorelines.


 
Within our culture at large there is a tendency to connect rest with laziness.

I believe that this assumption is harmful and damaging to the spirit of life itself.

Nobody wants to be considered lazy.

So we make sure no one can ever accuse us of this by overworking.

Conversely, we may succumb to periods of resigned inadequacy and stagnation.

Instead of flowing over the rocks we get stuck between a rock and a hard place, paralyzed into procrastination.


Rest is like a soul anchor
 
Without it we drift far from our natural course and can become washed up and ship wrecked.

Over working can disconnect us from our true drives, desires and truths.

We forget how to figuratively "swim" even though "swimming" is part of our core DNA.

Eventually we drown in the business of endless days washing wave upon overwhelming wave over us.





But what drives the negativity surrounding unsanctioned rest and relaxation?

It is easy to see what profits most from the work hard play hard rule; Industry.

Industry is served best by the idea that rest is a luxury.

Standards have been driven so high and margins so thin that we almost believe that we can't survive or thrive under the premise of a restful life.

Yet rest is not something that we can do without.

Even in the most primitive of tribes much time and consideration is given to rest.

Many of these cultures live hand to mouth, yet adequate time allotted for spiritual, emotional and mental recuperation is prioritized.

In fact spiritual preparation is often considered essential to the undertaking of even the simplest and most Basic of active tasks.

Our modern life, though highly ordered is also highly mechanized and industrialized.

The work ethic of the factory and the pace of the marketplace has created a design that we as humans feel compelled to replicate and integrate in our own behaviors.


But we are not machines.

We are not physical shells with no other purpose than to be productive, fuel efficient, economically sound and functional.


In the first sequence of a wonderful film called Baraka, there is the scene of a monkey sitting in a hot spring.

He seems to be meditating.

 Certainly he is taking incredible pleasure from the warm, steaming pool he is submerged in.

His eyes show one at peace, at one with the simple abundance of natures gifts.




The standards of attainment, perfect and acceptability are driven by an industry where the motto has always been "time equals money".   

But in reality time is a gift that is beyond price.

That perfect lifestyle, physical appearance or worldly achievement are always just that tantalizing millimeter beyond touch.

So we run the treadmill of fear and we don't rest.


Except I resolve to rest.

I'll put the fear aside.

Making rest a priority means I must maintain the boundaries that preserve it as an indispensable part of daily life.

Lack of peace and rest only bind me to the mental "chasing's after the wind" that feed the insatiable production line life while staving the soul of nourishment.

The dissatisfaction this perpetuates in not conducive to a compassionate life.

Change {5 minute friday & Imperfect Prose}

Joining Lisa Jo and Emily today for 5 minute Friday, where you write without editing or backtracking, in a 5 minute stream of consciousness that could go anywhere .

Word for today...

Change...Go...

Trembling  in front of the mirror, on my sixteenth birthday, I cut all my long blond hair off. 
Later, with a pounding heart I watched the pink and black dye rinse down the drain.
Yet, somehow I didn't feel the smallest pang for those childish blond curls the piled upon the bath rug.

Those blond curls were the vulnerable girl, the shy, quiet girl that had let herself be hurt. They had to go. 
Be cut off, shrouded in the colours of a symbolic death.

It was like clutching hold of the sharp edged stone of my childhood and throwing it into the deepest of water.
A place from which it could never be mined.

I wanted to change my life and somehow thought that meant starting from the outside in.

16 years on and my roots have slowly grown on back through, and my truth with them.

I have come to see the truth in myself, and others, however vulnerable that might be, as the only way to live in this world. 

I can't change for anyone else anymore, I can't even change to protect myself anymore. 

I have to be who I am and live it out. 

Though change still happens.
 it now expands from the inside out,
rather than retreating from the outside in.

Like ripples in a lake or rings within the trunk of a tree. 
The finger marks in a piece of wet clay turning upon the wheel;
Layer after layer somehow grows bigger, more out of me.

Encompassing more and more of life in all it's complexity, sorrow, sacredness and beauty,




 

Being a Mama

      

{The Importance of Rest}

 

  {Be The Change} Non Violent Parenting

{Mindful Mothering} Illuminating the Messy

  

               

{Sacred Fragments} From the unraveled frayed edge

{Imperfect Prose} to Poetry or when hard days become holy.

{Living Slowly and Simply}

 Through it all

{A Letter to my Daughter}

{Adolesence and Ashes}

{Moments Like Cut Flowers}



{The Importance of Enchantment}

{What is essential is invisible to the eye}

 {Mitten Strings and Prayers - Approaching the subject of Death with children}

Artful Crafts

{Potion making } Homemade herbal salves, balms, baths, and oils.

 {A Simple Shawl Pattern}

 

{ Waldorf Butterfly Baby Pattern}

 

{A Fairy Picnic} 

 

{An Intentions Bowl} 

 

{An Outfit for Nola} 

 

 {Puppet Making with Paper and Cloth}

 

 {The Elfin Tree - An Autumn themed play for young children}

 

 

 {Nature Art - Andi Goldsworthy inspired}

 

 {An Autumn Verse} 

 

{Whimsical Paper Chain Fairies} 

 

{Make Clay Fairy Houses}