Thursday 31 December 2009

New Blue Wishes for You

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Today is not only the last day of the year, it's also the last full moon of the year AND... it's also a blue moon (a second full moon in the month).



A 13th moon, on the 31st, seems a good time to make a few Full Moon Blue Moon wishes. ;-) So here are my wishes for all my friends and loved ones:

Happiness, Health, Peace, Prosperity, Hope, Joy, Home,
Security, Safety, Inspiration, Love, Romance, Laughter,
Music, Merriment, Movement, Luck, Surprises, Magic,
Compassion, Passion, Friendship, Companionship, Pets,
Success, Accomplishment, Completion, Closure, Career,
Satisfaction, Pleasure, Delight, Acceptance, Amusement,
Freedom, Fulfillment, Nature, Wonder, Smiles, Miracles...


Abundance



HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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Wednesday 30 December 2009

Poets

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A friend sent me a poem in an email yesterday. It had no name on it, which always bugs me, since I've been a victim of word theft and author ignorance myself often enough. So... I went looking for the author and found a very interesting woman who gave us a quote that is pretty famous...

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
"Weep, and you weep alone."

Recognise that? I bet you do, but do you know who wrote it? I certainly didn't.

The author of that quote, and my email poem, is Ella Wheeler Wilcox. She was born November 1850 in rural Wisconsin.

I found her poem rather remarkable for a woman born two centuries ago. Let's see what you think. :-)

The Law

The sun may be clouded, yet ever the sun
Will sweep on its course till the cycle is run.
And when into chaos the systems are hurled,
Again shall the Builder reshape a new world.

Your path may be clouded, uncertain your goal;
Move on, for the orbit is fixed for your soul.
And though it may lead into darkness of night,
The torch of the Builder shall give it new light.

You were, and you will be: know this while you are.
Your spirit has travelled both long and afar.
It came from the Source, to the Source it returns;
The spark that was lighted, eternally burns.

It slept in the jewel, it leaped in the wave,
It roamed in the forest, it rose in the grave,
It took on strange garbs for long aeons of years,
And now in the soul of yourself it appears.

From body to body your spirit speeds on;
It seeks a new form when the old one is gone;
And the form that it finds is the fabric you wrought
On the loom of the mind, with the fibre of thought.

As dew is drawn upward, in rain to descend,
Your thoughts drift away and in destiny blend.
You cannot escape them; or petty, or great,
Or evil, or noble, they fashion your fate.

Somewhere on some planet, sometime and somehow,
Your life will reflect all the thoughts of your now.
The law is unerring; no blood can atone;
The structure you rear you must live in alone.

From cycle to cycle, through time and through space,
Your lives with your longings will ever keep pace.
And all that you ask for, and all you desire,
Must come at your bidding, as flames out of fire.

Once list to that voice and all tumult is done,
Your life is the life of the Infinite One;
In the hurrying race you are conscious of pause,
With love for the purpose and love for the cause.

You are your own devil, you are your own God,
You fashioned the paths that your footsteps have trod;
And no one can save you from error or sin,
Until you shall hark to the Spirit within.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Copyright 1911

Tuesday 29 December 2009

...
I am thrilled to recieve an award from my dear friend and fellow blogger, Cliff of WIXY'S Gone Bananas.
"Next is the "Bananas are good for your health" Top Banana. This goes to Michelle of Crow's Feet fame. Michelle has had some health issues this past year and I hope that this might make her smile, which would help her feel better. Michelle is one who does what she can to make me feel better as we are good friends off the blog and on Facebook, as well as exchanging emails. Michelle lives in Scotland. She moved there from South Africa. She is also a published author."
THANK YOU, Cliff!



This award really is the cherry on the cake in a very fruitful year of blogging. :-)

Now for my award speech...

*cough*

2009 had its fair share of lemons and I know I'd have had a much harder time (even gone bananas) if it wasn't for my berry good blogger friends... like you, Cliff. :-) You're a peach for picking me. This award is a grape honour, certainly nothing to trifle with. I'm jelly proud to add it to my side bar. If I feel melon-cholly next year... I'll go look at it and smile. So... I hope you read between the limes here and understand how truly apple I am to know you and count you as a friend.



...

Sunday 27 December 2009

Twelve Days of Christ-mass

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The traditions of Christmas have always fascinated me. It's amazing how often we know very little about them. Like the fact so many Nativity plays have everyone arriving together to worship the newborn baby in the manger. The shepherds, were told by angels, did arrive in time to find the baby in the manger...



...but the Magi (who were following the star) arrived later... after Mary and Joseph had left the Inn and were staying elsewhere.



Traditionally the day the Magi found baby Jesus is celebrated on the Feast of Epiphany - the 6th of January. It's not a well known holy day in Africa and I only knew it because we knew a South American family in the 1980s. In their culture it's these three Wise Men who leave gifts for children, just as they once left their gifts of Gold, Myrrh and Frankincense for a very important child.

It took me a while to realise that the 12th day of Christmas is Epiphany, the day we've always traditionally taken down our Christmas decorations. This year I was listening to the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas", and realised I still don't know much about the days that lie between Christmas and Epiphany.

I went to do some snooping and discovered that the Twelve Days of Christmas are traditionally called Christmastide. They run from St Stephen's day, the 26th of December, till the Feast of the Epiphany on the 6th of January. In older times all twelve days were a holiday of food, fun and music. We seem to have lost out in our modern times!

So what about that famous song? Where does it come from?



Well, it's probably from France originally, but it has been sung in England for a very long time. There are mentions of it being sung in the 16th century.

The fourth day's gift is often sung as four calling birds but originally was four colly birds - blackbirds. Funny enough I learnt the words from a book of nursery rhymes I had as a child and in that they were called colly birds.

Another misinterpretation are the five gold rings. Apparently they meant ring-necked birds such as the ring-necked pheasant.

The first seven gifts were all birds: partridge, doves, hens, colly (black) birds, pheasants, geese, swans. Perhaps the birds all related to food that would be served during the 12 days of feasting? Swans were eaten in the past and "four and twenty blackbirds" were baked in the king's pie in another old song. Putting live songbirds into pies, so that they'd fly out when the pies were opened, was as much a "special effect" at parties as doves being set free at weddings is nowadays.

In some French versions of the song almost all the gifts are food. Wikipedia has the sequence as:
"... a good stuffing without bones, two breasts of veal, three joints of beef, four pigs' trotters, five legs of mutton, six partridges with cabbage, seven spitted rabbits, eight plates of salad, nine dishes for a chapter of canons, ten full casks, eleven beautiful maidens, and twelve musketeers with swords."

Sounds like a really good party!


Scotland has its own 19th century version too. It starts:
"The king sent his lady on the first Yule day a popingo-aye [parrot]; Wha learns my carol and carries it away?"

In this one the gifts are:
"..three partridges, three plovers, a goose that was grey, three starlings, three goldspinks, a bull that was brown, three ducks a-merry laying, three swans a-merry swimming, an Arabian baboon, three hinds a-merry hunting, three maids a-merry dancing, three stalks o' merry corn."

I notice the gifts don't grow in number, they stay either one or three items. Trust the Scots to be sensible! What I can't figure out is the gift of a baboon for Christmas...

...

Sunday 20 December 2009

Away with the Fairies...

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I've been talking garble lately. I'm not sure if it's tiredness or my brain finally reached its "Sell by" date. I'm saying words backwards, saying the wrong word, or forgetting words completely!

Last week it struck again. I was munching dried apricots. I love dried apricots. :-) So... I'm chewing away when hubby walks in. He's hoping it might be time for lunch and he sees me chewing.

Hopefully he asks, "What are you eating?"

and I reply.... "Leprechauns."

LEPRECHAUNS???


I can only think my brain picked up that both words have a similar sound in the middle...

A"prico"ts ----- Le"prico"rns

I keep having this vision of little green legs flailing madly as I chewed...
...

Saturday 19 December 2009

Friday 11 December 2009

Wor(l)ds and Windmills

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This morning, browsing blogs led me on a journey that turned out to be a circle... or a spiral. I started off chasing windmills and became one instead.

It started when I read Ann's tribute to the tragic student massacre in Canada, 20 years ago. The Canadian Massacre story led me to finding a very interesting new blog - The League of Ordinary Gentlemen. That led me to popping into Facebook, to share the links with a friend of mine there who runs the Canadian White Poppy group. Searching through my groups reminded me of several I hadn't looked at in ages, including my own. That led me to some more browsing where I wandered off Stephen Fry's Facebook page onto his blog.

There I watched a video about twitter and the phenomenon of social media, found a forgotten favourite author (Oscar Wilde) and remembered something startling. I first made contact with my Spirit Guide while watching Stephen Fry on TV. I wonder what he'd make of the fact his TV show on searching for his ancestral roots was the catalyst that led me to discovering the elephant in my head was Jewish? My mind boggles!



From there I went on to wish three people Merry Christmas and dash of a belated Happy Birthday to Mimi, the Queen of Blog blast for Peace. That in turn reminded me of other birthdays I'd forgotten so... back to Facebook where I found another friend (Stephen) had left a petition waiting for me. I went to sign the petition ... what do I find at the end? One of those who is in support of it is... Stephen Fry. Weird Windmills!

...and none of it would have been possible without the Internet - this world of words.

Which was when something else struck me - isn't it interesting how the WORLD becomes a WORD once you remove the "L"? My browsing has been equally interconnected today. It's all spirals and synchronicities, connections and re-connections. I haven't a clue what it means, but it feels nice. :-)

...

Simon's Cat 'Fly Guy'

I bought the book for my birthday. It's hysterical. I LOVE Simon's Cat. :-)

Saturday 5 December 2009

Ice Aged

...


Last week I got into a discussion about how we label strong emotions hot or cold. A friend of mine said she tends to see hot emotions as good and cold ones as bad. When she's all "fired up" in anger she can tackle anything, but when she freezes her anger... not so good!

I pointed out that I'm the opposite when I'm angry. When I'm fiery, I burn bright, but it's messy and I can burn both myself and others in the process. I have no control.


Cold anger is when I'm able to get things done, to stay in control, but when fear freezes my heart... I'm paralysed and useless.

My friend came back later in the week with another email to say that she'd realised that she'd been mistaking frozen for glacial.

So, what's the difference? Well, for my friend the difference showed when the big chunk of frozen anger inside her grew so HUGE it became a glacier... and began to move.

Slow...
grinding ...deliberate
...and unstoppable.

I was still thinking about that last night when... what did they have on the news? Glaciers! They were showing the affect of global warming on glaciers. The scientist being interviewed said that having Glaciers melt too fast was devastating - because the frozen water was a controlled regulated water source.

Controlled. Regulated. Not a flood, not a drought... always just enough.
Freezing is a good and healthy thing. Nature does it because it serves a vital purpose.In many parts of the world there wouldn't be any water for Spring flowers without the melted waters of snow and ice...


It made me think... are emotions the same? Fear, hate, anger or grief... is an emotional glacier a way to control extreme emotions? As long as you do allow them to become a glacier and not an ice-bound freezer, of course!

If we follow the rules of Nature an emotion "glacier" could be a way to allow strong feelings to melt gently in a controlled manner. A way that allows them to seep away without doing damage.

Sometimes it feels like the world wants instant solutions and fast fixes. Has it made us too keen to do the same psychologically? When we turn a bright spotlight on problems are we shining a light or are we trying to melt thing too fast? Are we merely creating our own personal global warming?

Maybe being aged in ice, until it's time to gently and naturally thaw, isn't such a bad thing at all...


Tuesday 1 December 2009

First Snow

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It snowed last night. The grass was just frosty this morning, but the mountains around us are all white.

Winter is here!

Saturday 28 November 2009

Weather Forecast

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On Tuesday night I started feeling really awful - bad headache and nausea. Hubby and mom dragged a VERY green me to the doctor on Wednesday. It seems I have managed to acquire an inner ear infection.

I've been laid up ever since - not so much feeling "under the weather" as "weather-beaten"! I've been unable to move much, any kind of movement makes me dizzy or want to throw up. So reading, watching TV, and going online has not been possible except in small slow doses as I can't watch anything on TV that involves fast movement.

I'm having to type and not look at the words as I type as even that makes me feel green and gross. Life is slowed to a plod and very boring. I'm not sure when I'll be back online properly so until then...
HAPPY THANKSGIVING to everyone in the USA

I'll be back to reply to blog posts as soon as I feel better....

Monday 23 November 2009

Newsflash for Autumn

...



Nature
Entertainment
Wise words
Spirit
Family
Lessons
Artist
Smiles
Health

NATURE
Bunny boy has gone away for winter. :-( He did that last year as well. I suppose snoozing under the barbecue isn't as much fun when the days draw in and the wind turns icy. I wonder what he does over winter... go visit his parents?

The good news is the geese are back. :-) I love hearing them calling as they fly over and I love watching them fly past in long skeins. They make the coming winter feel exciting.

ENTERTAINMENT
The best entertainment this Autumn was the BBC's AutumnWatch. The home videos were often the best, especially Woody, the wood mouse who gobbled all the peanuts in a bird feeder and then got stuck when his fat tummy wouldn't go through the feeder hole. You can find all of the videos on their website. The baby fox cubs on the trampoline was also very cute. Woody was set free, by the way, in case anyone's worried about him.


WISE WORDS
My Wise Words choice for Autumn are from Bogey.

Life is funny. You shut up and listen long enough, you find out that life is not as bad as we think it is. Ya just have to look in the mirror of somebody else's soul.

SPIRIT
The strongest spirit this Autumn was one of connection. Even in the mutual gloom-and-doom of many internet friends suffering losses this year there's been that sense of similarity and sympathy. We really are One. Hopefully this coming Winter will lead us all into a bright new Spring where we can share good experiences and joy.




FAMILY

Family life this Autumn was quiet. We've had our fair share of struggles and woes, but we keep keeping on!

LESSONS

The lesson of Autumn was to respect natural rythms more - to learn to slow down. Nature understands that. Every year Autumn arrives and the animals and plants match their energy to the world around them. Only humans try to push on at the same pace every day of every season.

ARTIST
My Artist choice for Autumn is Noa. I'm picking this track for my mom, because it has her favourite musical instrument - drums. :-)

SMILES
The biggest smile of Autumn was the wonderful love and friendship shared by everyone who took part in Mimi's Blogblast for Peace. With bloggers reaching out from every part of the globe... it's like we hugged the planet.

HEALTH
It's now three months since my hernia operation. It still hurts a bit when I roll over at night, but otherwise my middle feels better than it has in over two years. I'm mostly feeling loads better, just getting tired a lot, which is probably the fibro's fault. BUT I am learning that taking a nap can be a good thing. In fact a few weekends back I spent an entire Saturday sleeping! It was wonderful. :-) Next life I definitely want to be a critter that hibernates.


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Friday 13 November 2009

Good Memories

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I found some old photos in my computer today. I took this one in the Eastern Cape on honeymoon. The sign on the right read:
McDUCK'S DEERSTALKERS
MAKERS OF EXCLUSIVE HATS
Specialists in Tweeds and Tartans

We went inside... but it was a post office. Not a sign of a hat or a tartan... or a McDuck! In fact, not even a sign of anything else they advertised on the outside and since no-one inside spoke English... we'll never know the story behind McDuck and his hats.

I still chuckle every time I look at this photo and think of the mysterious McDuck making tartan deerstalkers in the middle of a very hot dry Africa!
..

Wednesday 11 November 2009

11/11

...
For Peace...For Remembrance...



For Hope...


Let the rain come and wash away
the ancient grudges, the bitter hatreds
held and nurtured over generations.
Let the rain wash away the memory
of the hurt, the neglect.
Then let the sun come out and
fill the sky with rainbows.
Let the warmth of the sun heal us
wherever we are broken.
Let it burn away the fog so that
we can see each other clearly.
So that we can see beyond labels,
beyond accents, gender or skin color.
Let the warmth and brightness
of the sun melt our selfishness.
So that we can share the joys and
feel the sorrows of our neighbors.
And let the light of the sun
be so strong that we will see all
people as our neighbors.
Let the earth, nourished by rain,
bring forth flowers
to surround us with beauty.
And let the mountains teach our hearts
to reach upward to heaven.

Amen.

a prayer for the world - rabbi harold kushner - 2003

Saturday 7 November 2009

The Rain-Bird Award

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November the 5th was Guy Fawkes in the UK (and colonies) and Peace Globe day to hundreds of bloggers. Personally... it was also a really horrible day in what has been an extremely difficult year.

I started Nov 5th with a bad news phone call caused by bad news mail. From there I dashed to the doctor (check up) to discover I need MORE medication and then on home to bad news by email! Not surprisingly I still haven't read most of the wonderful Peace Globe posts listed on Mimi's blog. Last year they were such a joy I could hardly wait to read, but this year I was too busy, too angry, then too tired...

...and finally, last night I had my first migraine in over a decade.
This morning I feel like I've been thrown against a wall repeatedly. Typing is... s-l-o-w.
BUT I have finally started to read the other Peace Globe posts and the quality this year is just as impressive as last year. Wonderful writing, gorgeous graphics and lots of music videos (which I'll go back to enjoy when my head feels normal once again!).

Reading through some of the Peace Globe posts this year I couldn't help but compare them to the emails my friends have been sending me this year. This has been a very hard year for so many people. Swine flu, global economy in tatters, ill health, lost jobs, deaths and destruction... all we need is a few plagues and we'd be Biblical. Oh wait... we do - we have Swine flu!

It made me think of a story I read years ago about Peace. In trying to remember it my mangled brain mangled the memory, but I did manage to find a version online. (I love the internet!)


There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who could paint the best picture of peace.

Many artists
tried. The king looked at all the pictures. But there were only two he really liked, and he had to choose between them. One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with soft clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace.

The other picture had mountains, too. But these were rugged
and bare. Above was an angry sky, from which rain fell and in which lightning played. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all. But when the king looked closely, he saw beside the waterfall a small tree growing in a crack in the rock. In the tree a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on her nest – in perfect peace.

The king chose the second picture.
“Because,” explained the king, “peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace.”

~Author Unknown

It's easy to talk about peace when life is calm and smooth. Creating peace when your life is a mess and the world seems in chaos... that's the real challenge!

I know so many dear friends (and family) who sat their doctorate in "Peace under Pressure" this year. I think I came in as a third year... hopefully with honours.

In honour of us all I have created the new Rain Bird Award - for Peace under Pressure. I dedicate it to every person who has come through their own personal "war" with... if not their dignity and sanity intact then at least with compassion and humour! ;-)

If I had to list them all it literally would take 90% of my email and blog list. Instead I'm only officially handing it on to one today - the Queen of Peace herself... gracious Mimi, who stood by her Peace Globe promises as she stood by the side of her dying father.

I know they're both proud of you Mimi, little girl.
(but Papa picked the flying heart)

If you're one of us, one of those who's been sitting out the storms and rain lately, then please feel free to accept the award below for yourself. We all need to remember to pat ourselves on the back for getting through the tough times. This is for all of you...

...

Thursday 5 November 2009

Dona Nobis Pacem 2009 ... Peace Starts Here

...When I first started looking for ideas for this year's Peace Globe Day I went browsing worldwide symbols of Peace. What surprised me was discovering how many of those symbols stir up anger or even fear.

The Nuclear Disarmament symbol is considered evil by some...
...and the white poppy has its own hate group on Facebook.

How can a peace symbol have a hate group? Why would anyone misinform the masses into believing that a peace symbol is evil?

It seems to boil down to two main misconceptions:
  1. Pacifism is the easy way out – flight not fight.
  2. Those who wear Peace symbols must hate soldiers and have no respect for those who die in combat.
Anyone who thinks standing up for your beliefs against opposition is running away has clearly never tried it. As for seeing any Peace symbol as a hate symbol? How ridiculous and sad.


I wanted to wear a white poppy this year because I have loved ones who have fought in wars, not in spite of them.

In “spite” of them…

Says it all doesn’t it? You cannot blog for Peace in spite, you can only claim Peace with empathy and sympathy.

  • I blog for Peace because I have a 26 year old friend who has war injuries that will cause him problems for the rest of his life.
  • I blog for Peace in memory of friends and relatives who have fought and died so that others could live in a better world than they did.
  • I blog for Peace because ordinary people die in conflicts while politicians argue over which choices will bring them the most power and financial gain.
  • But mostly I blog for Peace because I want a better future for our world's children.

Peace is more than a lack of wars and terrorism. Peace is a lack of wanting, or needing, to cause violent harm. Peace is realising we aren’t countries, cultures or religions who need to overcome and subdue each other – we are one planet that needs to work together in order to have a future for our children.

Every mother wants a positive future for her children… the Earth as Mother is no different.

I had intended to use the white poppy for my Peace Globe, but the Earth Mother image took over along the way... Mother knows best? ;-) Goodness knows thinking of the Earth as our Mother certainly made me look beyond the surface issues of this planet we all share. That in turn led me to create the video about what Peace really means to me.


All good mothers understand that children need to claim responsibility for their own actions in order to grow up to be responsible adults. Good mothers know that pointing a finger and saying, “It’s their fault” or “He/She made me do it” never solves anything. Good mothers teach their children concepts like sharing, being considerate of others and good manners. What a different world this would be if countries acted more like mothers and less like global powers.

Peace alludes us when we chase after it because it never was out “there”. Just as creation of life starts within, the responsibility of creating Peace starts within each and every one of us.


Peace starts here - it starts with you.
...

Thursday 29 October 2009

An Improbable Life...


glitter-graphics.com
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? ... "
Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four (1890)
Someone I know made a comment yesterday (email) that made me think. He said:


I wish I could develop faith in things that I cannot see. That, I think makes life a lot easier.

I agree with him completely, I do think it makes for a far simpler life, but I have one reservation... when it comes to the realms of psychic phenomena I have more trust in those who question than those who accept blindly.

In my own experience all the real psychics I know have doubts. I imagine the truly spiritual and saintly do reach a stage of perfect trust and faith, but I suspect none of them started out that way.
To experience the inexplicable has to create a certain sense of, "Did I imagine that? Is this real? Am I crazy?" in a normal sane mind.

It took me two years of writing down my dreams and checking them against news paper dates and my own journal notes before I accepted the fact I was dreaming of things before they happened. It took me two decades to trust that I do see the odd dead person who has a message they want passed along. I suppose some might see that as a failure in trust, but I see it as merely being sensible.

In the end I had to go with Sherlock Holmes - only once you've eliminated the impossible can you truly trust the improbable.

Anyone who has experienced the inexplicable or paranormal, or has some psychic ability, knows exactly what it means to live with the improbable.

I know I live an improbable life.

Has it made my life easier? I have no way to know what a life without who I am now would be like (my imagination boggles!), but I do know it has made my life more complicated, sometimes frustrating, but also very rewarding.
...

Wednesday 28 October 2009

Mother Nature - Mother Earth? Earth Mother :-)

...
As most of my friends/readers know, I sometimes get messages and see things beyond the normal seeing. Some are for sharing, some are either personal messages for one particular person or personal just for me. At first this recent one seemed to be just for me, but it hasn't turned out that way.

First one friend connected to what I'd seen/heard, so I told him. Then another friend connected in a completely different way, so I told her. Now today I shared with another friend who also connected to what I saw in another completely different way.This seems to be meant to be shared!

After I came out of hospital in August, I had a month of recuperating and doing nothing strenuous. Sitting at the computer was painful at first, so I had at least two weeks of not being able to do anything. It was during a long day of lying around doing nothing that a word kept popping into my head - MOTHER.

Eventually I realised I should at least try to find out why I was getting the word repeated over and over, so I asked for more information. I saw a woman's face. She had long silver grey hair, but her face looked younger. She was smiling and looked nice.

Some time later, in September, I was sitting in my bedroom (trying to write book 2 of the First Light Saga) when I started seeing her face again. This time I tried harder to keep my brain quiet and just... look.

I saw all of her this time. :-)

She was an average woman of average to slim build. Long straight thick silver grey hair, oval face. Smiling expression and a very strong feeling of gentle tender love. She was wearing a long dress, but I could see her feet were bare. When she came closer I realised her feet were actually tree roots. Her feet and toes were like the gnarled roots of very old trees. She even has some little seedling branches with leaves sprouting from her toes.

She lifted the skirt of her dress and I could see her legs were a deep darkish blue. Looking closer I realised they were water and there were whales and other ocean creatures swimming in them. Her legs were the oceans. 

From there she showed me other bits of her body, as if her clothing dissolved away... Her stomach area was molten rock and swirling fire, like the Earth's core or a volcano. Her breasts were dripping bees instead of milk. This seemed really odd, but it kept being repeated when I questioned it. Her throat was pale blue and full of flying birds. Her eyes were dark and full of stars. Her hair, up close, was actually heavy falling rain.

She was amazing. :-)

The first person I told was a friend who had sent me information on the goddess Durga - the ultimate Mother Goddess. After talking to him I realised that I was now getting two words - EARTH MOTHER. So I now had a name for what I had seen. :-)

The second friend I spoke to asked me why I hadn't seen her heart or why bees were coming from her breasts. I asked about this and was shown that her heart is a beehive, full of honey and bees. It is warm and buzzy and it holds all the seasons in it. It is female power.

The day I wrote to friend #1 I saw this on the Internet...


... and I knew I had a new set of friends to tell my story to. Particularly since I had already created my own "earth mother" for my Peace Globe...

So I told my next set of blogging friends - those busy Peace Bees working together to try to make our planet a better place. :-)

Now, today, I came across another friend talking about the power and strength of women. We were discussing female power and female animals that live in strong matriarchal societies like ants, elephants and bees.

Bees... the heart of female power hidden in a hive.

Over the weekend I tried to draw what I saw. It's very rough, but it gives a visual idea. If you click on it you can see it large with more detail:

Feet - old roots with new growth.
Legs - the deep blue oceans teeming with fish, dolphins and whales.
Stomach - Molten core of the Earth.
Heart - the hive and female power and all the seasons captured in the honey itself.
Throat - the sky and birds and the voice of every bird as one.
Hair - rain.
Eyes - the night sky and the Universe.

What better way to see in this year's Blogblast for Peace than with the essence of the planet itself as a powerful yet gentle loving all-embracing mother. :-)
...

Sunday 18 October 2009

Blogblast for Peace 2009 - My Video


My Surprise. :-)

Video Credits

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I'm hoping to add the names of the photographers who shared the pictures I used in my Blogblast for Peace video.

So far... Thank you to:

Dani Simmonds for the photo of the child's grave.

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Thursday 15 October 2009

Busy Doing Nothing

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I've been sitting here trying to think what to write about, but lately days seem to vanish on "busy doing nothing".

I am busy on one "something" - I'm plotting and building my Peace Globe Day speech and surprise.

But beyond that life has been dull here and it seems I'm not the only one. Usually I get at least 15 emails a day, but over this last weekend I had 3. Three? :-\

So... I'm guessing I'm not the only one busy doing nothing?
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Tuesday 13 October 2009

Peace Day countdown!

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Not long now till Blogblast for Peace Day, the marvelous idea of one very inspired blogger - Mimi.

If you haven't yet signed up to join us there still is time to get your Peace Globe badge ready before Movember 5th.

Get your templates here: http://mimiwrites.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-get-your-peace-globe-2009.html

For those interested, but not wanting to participate, there will be loads of Peace Themed blog posts and "hand made" Peace badges linked through Mimi's blog on the 5th of November. Last year I spent eight hours reading some of the most moving and amazing blog posts ever. This really is an event to look out for.

I'm still busy working on my own Peace Day post (and a surprise *grin*), but my badge is now ready to out up. :-)

The lovely photo of the pregnant woman came thanks to Nate of Morguefile.com
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Sunday 4 October 2009

Moments of Mud

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When I was little I used to eat mud. Actually, according to my mother I ate pretty much anything and everything. - flowers, grass, dog biscuits, but mud was one of my favourites. Later mud would have its revenge, by giving me some of my funniest and most embarrasing clumsy moments.

Kind of a mud-karma thing?


My first mud moment was during my first year in high school. I was 12 and a year younger than the other kids due to a difference in the age of starting school between South Africa and Rhodesia. Being a year younger seems so enormously important when you're a kid and being a year younger in high school made me the youngest person in the entire building. I spent my first year of high school trying to act cool or stay invisible, but mud had other ideas...

Our School started a project to raise money for charity. It was called the “Cape to Cairo” race. Every class had a map of Africa with the route. The idea was that for every sponsored mile a pupil ran you marked off ten miles on the map. Each student had to run at least five miles. If you didn’t finish the miles by the end of the first two weeks you had to stay back after school and run them under teacher supervision.

Some older kids had a plan to try to get it over with as fast as possible. They figured that if we ran every lunch break, on the sport’s field we could have it done in a few days. Of course we weren’t allowed onto the sport’s field at lunch break, but that didn’t bother the older kids and I went along as well... trying to be cool. The field was to the left of this photo, behind the school swimming pool.

Thinking back I now wonder why we didn’t just lie and say we had run when we hadn’t, but I wasn’t that smart (or devious?) at 12, unfortunately.

The problem was that this was in the middle of a wet African winter. The rain had been pelting down for days and the sport’s field was a squelchy green swamp. At lunch break we sneaked over the back fence and started running around the field. I had almost finished a mile when the bell for end of break rang. Everyone dashed for the fence and in my hurry to turn for home my feet went out from under me.

*SQUELCH*

I fell back flat on the ground right in a huge muddy puddle. I was mud from the back of my head to my heels. Fortunately almost everyone had left by then. A few friends helped me up and pointed out that there was no way I could let any teacher see me without giving the game away. My friends managed to wipe a bit of the mud off my hair and back, but basically I was cold and wet and disgusting.

For the rest of the day I made sure I never turned my back on a teacher. I even managed to take a book up to the front of class and return to my desk walking backwards without the teacher noticing. Of course everyone in the class knew and the stifled sniggering was very clear to me even if our teacher never seemed to notice. So much for cool and invisible!

My second mud moment came a few years later. It was during the summer holidays and a bunch of us had pooled our money to hire a large canoe for the day. There was me, my best friend, her two brothers and their friends which included a guy all the girls in our small town thought was gorgeous. He was a year older than us and had a motorbike AND a leather jacket.

We all had a wonderful time that day. The river ended at the sea and main beach. We stopped in the shallows to buy ice creams at the tea room before heading back up the river. It was a perfect day and I felt I was wonderfully sexy in my new red shorts with little ribbon ties on the sides and matching top.

At the end of the day we took the canoe back to the jetty where we’d rented it. When we’d left it had been easy. Everyone got in, the last person undid the rope and hopped in... and off we went. When we got back it wasn’t so easy. The tide had gone out and no matter how we tried we just couldn’t get close to the jetty. Someone was going to have to get out and wade to the jetty with the rope. Wanting to impress I volunteered loudly. The water was crystal clear and only about a foot deep, so it wasn’t as if I was making a grand gesture.

I hopped over the side.. and vanished. Yes, the water was only a foot deep, but the river bottom that looked so solid was actually a four foot layer of soft slimy mud. I sunk up to my waist in the gooey stuff. My friend’s brothers tried to pull me out, but I was stuck fast. The cool guy managed to jump from the canoe to the jetty (why didn’t he offer this earlier?) and pull the boat in. And me? In the end it took everyone there to pull me out. They were all laughing their heads off by then. I came out with a really loud “SHLOCK” noise. My lovely new outfit was covered in stinky river mud and no one wanted to go near me. Mud Karma once again. :-\

On to mud moment number three... Although this one was more humiliating/funny than embarrassing.

I was the only girl in all the grandchildren of my family. As a result tended to be a tomboy who had to keep up with the boys. It got harder competing with my cousins as we moved into our teens. As kids we’d all been equal, but whilst they all would eventually zoom up to the 6 foot level in their mid teens I barely made it past 5 foot. When I was 16, we all went to the beach for the day. This photo was taken of me with my youngest cousin, about ten minutes before I had my mud moment.
On the way home we decided to do a bit of exploring and instead of following the path back up to the houses we decided to follow a smaller path that ran along a nearby stream to see where it went. It was a great time actually. The stream went on into woods and farmland and there were even little waterfalls along the way. Very pretty.

After a while the path petered out completely and the only way to travel on was to cross the stream. It wasn’t very wide and my tall cousins simply stepped across. My one cousin held out his hand to help me across. Refusing to be “the girl” I ignored his offer and jumped... slap bang into the middle. You guessed it. Once again I was to discover that a foot of sparkly water lay above three foot of soft sticky mud! Short legs just aren’t made for leaping streams. It only took two of them to pull me out this time, but I smelt just as bad as the time before and even after a bath and a change of clothes the smell seemed to hang around me like an aura.

Mud moment number four was actually a mud and gravel moment.

I was about 18 and it was a rainy day. My mom had stopped by the post office to pick up a parcel. The entrance to the little post office was across a semi-circular gravel parking area. I leapt out the car and sprinted inside. No problems, but the queue was long and I was in there for ages. By the time I left it the sun was shining, but I was in a hurry to get home and so I sprinted back to the car again.

One moment I was looking at the car...
...and the next I was looking at the sky.

I’d slipped in a puddle and the mud-gravel had acted like ball bearings. I’d slipped neatly under the car like a letter in a post box slot. All that was sticking out was my head. An elderly man with a walking stick came over and asked, “Are you alright?” I assured him I was fine whilst wishing the ground would swallow me up. Everyone going in and out of the post office gathered to stare at the talking head sticking out from under a car. My mom hadn’t even seen me vanish and was sitting in the car puzzled at why everyone was talking to the ground beside her car.

I have learnt to respect mud since then and so far I've remained mud free. It has seemed to have worked as the only time I walked through a bog in Scotland I managed to leave the scene with only muddy shoes and socks. That was because this time I had a large Scotsman holding my hand and making sure I didn't slip.
The funny thing is that large Scotsman, my hubby, is as clumsy as I am. He has a long list of crash-bump-fall stories himself. But although we are a disaster seperately together we manage to stop each other from tripping/falling... which is perhaps what a good relationship is all about? Being better together than apart, especially in the muddy moments of life!

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