Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

I do love the way i did have quite a religious upbringing. Easter - i was promised when Easter arrived i would feel much better. I actually DO feel much better. It is weird. I have been contemplating suffering, as some of you will know, and i was thinking about the powerful story of Jesus. That he sacrifices himself. He truly suffers, he enters this suffering willingly, to...i'm not quite sure what he did this for, but he most certainly did not do it for himself. He could have taken the easy way out - the last temptation - crawled off the cross to live a life of dotage with Mary Magdelen, but he did not. He was supposedly the Son of God, and he stayed there, to redeem...us i think. Because when we suffer, not of our own accord, we draw strength from one that has suffered. Suffered, died and was reborn. If i have the courage to go through with this, to be touched, to be shredded, there will be another day - and i say, look at Jesus. There is a point to the suffering. There a...

Planning things - essential - diary and map - COFFEE!!! Love the way my eyes for some reason are inexplicably large in this shot! :-) Snow, snow, snow Diageo factory in some border town Matched in its ugliness only by Portadown Royal Hibernian, as i wait for the passport appointment The Heretical Cat Sutra There is a point to suffering. Bhudda was wrong. I'm sorry but he was. Human beings can escape suffering? We are the cause of our own suffering? I am sorry we are NOT. OTHERS are the cause of our suffering - we are the instruments of its redemption. These were the thoughts she has as she looked at the giant gold leafed statue which sat twenty feet tall in the Main Hall of the Temple of the Golden Palmed Bhudda. Gosh, they were very keen on their gold the Bhuddists. Of course you could go into the significance of gold and its incorruptability and how it soft yellow gleam had the siren's seduction in their glaze, but really, in the end, did it ...

Sigh... When anyone is depressed i challenge them to go to Dublin and remain that way. I had to go to Dublin to get my passport done, fair deuce, i thought, be a day out. It was not just a day out - it was a simply wonderful one. It was one of those days where everything, all bits of your life sort of come together, when everything is funnelled into a few moments, but over and over again. I thought of many strange things, like drinking from the water cooler in school. I thought of the Hail Mary prayer, Hail Mary Full of Grace...i thought about the nature of grace and what it was. I thought about suffering, and how it was related to grace. I thought about the children, my own life (for the first time in a looong time, i know people who read this blog can't quite believe that...), but for the first time in a long time it felt like i was back, once again, being 20, and it felt...amazing. On a train, through countryside side, as snow fell, to Dublin, a city which i had always ...

The snow fell, not poetically, nor in a picturesque manner, the way it usually fell in films and the imagination, but sparingly and sparsely, as if the weather gods could not make up their minds. It was difficult to get excited about this kind of snow, the kind of snow which indicated cold weather, but no prospect of snow fights, nor snowmen, nor any of those of things which you were supposed to do when it snowed. Ski. Sledge. Silence. He watched it come and felt a strange detachment. His friends had said they were going to the pub that night. He didn’t really want to go to the pub. He wanted to go to bed, but the prospect of a drink or two was alluring, and he could never resist the allure. The pub was busy. Cold brought people out to huddle in numbers. The warmth of the pub’s fire, the whiskey, the conversation – the conversation which wasn’t really conversation. Talking for the sake of talking – unless like Seamus in the corner there, the darkest, most drunken corner t...

Colour and flight Tell you what, i'm no longer in Norn Iron - in fact currently i'm not on planet Earth. I'm somewhere which colour lives. I'm trying to do the pastels according to the way we are taught about colours in the course and it is fascinating. If it had been up to me, i would have never EVER done the colours this way, but because we have been taught how to place the colours, this is the result... I'm colouring in Daivd Lloyds. It reminds me a bit of when i was in Singapore and i used to go to the club to study. I'm still going to the club to study i guess. It's sort weird. I also got a show around the gym today. I actually need to go to get my photo taken. Tonight i'm supposed to go out to the Holywood Yatch Club for a quiz. I suppose it will be fun. Well i'm going to do some writing and then i'm going to go to get that photo taken. I'll leave around 3.30. It is really good for my soul this.

I'll Wait So i drew and wrote some poetry over the last few days. This house is the house which i had in my mind's eye when i wrote my last piece about waiting. It has done me a power of good. The Courtship of Ahab and Catsimir  This i did as therapy. It looks much nicer in real life...a whimsy based in reality. There is ALSO a poem to go along with it. Oh i know the poetry isn't very good, but it is good for my soul.   My mom and dad will be here in a few days. I have lost even MORE weight. I am now almost as thin as i was when i was 19...honestly. It feels so wonderfully good.   The thing about the other side of suffering, see the previous post, is that...you are never sure what exactly lies on the other side no? You hope it is light. So here is a sample of the poetry, as i sai,d it ain't very good... If from such sorrow, beauty can come, If from suffering, light can be free, If from tragedy, hope may arise, Then all my troubles wou...

When i was a child, when we went to church, the altar was stripped bare and nothing was left. There was something resplendent about this emptiness. Last night, as i lay in bed, i thought about Lent and how one can be resplendent in suffering. How instead of putting 'a brave face on it', one could really be brave and enter into the suffering fully. To feel it burn inside and cleanse your soul, for there is something very purifying about suffering. It is like a crucible, a reduction by fire, where you are left with nothing and you walk through everything - left with only yourself. Perhaps that is when you discover what you are truly made of. I, of course, have the children. I am not left with nothing. But i was thinking, i have done one half of my life, i am now doing the other half. It is a good chance now to sift the wheat from the chaff, to say what it is that is truly important. To put down things which are no longer of use to me, which i had still been carrying, and then t...

Oisin entertains hello blogers im oisin my mum is the best mum in the world now i shall write a poem about mum;mum um she like her tum she keeps it fit every day no way shes going to pray

The famous fish and chips in Annalong... We spent the weekend in the Mournes, the boys and myself...and it snowed!!!!

It has been a SUPER busy day, as usual. Around 2 pm i usually go - oh yes, i forgot to go to the toilet today as i cross my legs in pain. The kids were great. The thing about children is that you can never prepare yourself for the stuff that comes your way. The only thing ou can be sure of is that its gonna be there. What exactly will be there you don't quite know. It could be anything. Like today to warm up when we went outside i said, let's run four times around the school. Most of them did not manage it. Possibly because they don't run in sustained laps, but small bursts. But it was good fun watching them collapse on the ground going - we are going to die....There i was with my boots and tights and flowery dress running with them. It was great fun. AND on top of that, other nice things happened too. I got my BC through and my name was reregistered on the Singaporean electoral register. I don't know why i bothered, honestly with the latter. I probably won...

Just completed class preparation. And did a couple of will activities. It does me no end of good to do will activities. Somehow the inner core is strengthened and i become less stupid. Esply around this time of the month. I'm think of good recipes involving spiders which are the only eight legged or thingy thing i can think of. I don't really want to encourage the children to think we can make things that look like spiders. I'm sure it will come to me. But a food that has eight sides would be great. Biscuits possibly. The weight loss continues immesurably. I am delighted. It seems to stupid to be bothering about this at my age, but i do quite like the fact i can now fit into my pink cheongsam. The next post will have me in it!!! And then my sister and mother can grind their teeth in envy - well gotta have some highlights in my life. So...now i am going to do the laundry, the dishes, hoover the house and then get dinner ready. It will have to be soup cos Oisin is not ...

The boys asked me to take photos of their latest legos... Here they are...and some nice one of the three of us too...it is snowing like heck outside! My mom was commenting on how big the boys were. You can see how big they really are when i'm holding them. Honestly...my adorable sons. Ghin asked me, hey mom, do you really love us? More and more everyday i say to him...do you love us more than giraffes? Why giraffes Ghin, cos you really like girraffes, don't you? Yeees...i love you more than one hundred million giraffes. Of course i do.

smeeeeelll.... I wish i could say i was putting a brave face on it, but really...i am not. There is no brave face cos you know what, it was the right decision. And once again, which ever way i cut it, it was the right decision. Decisions. To not dwell in the house of uncertainty. So much needs to be said about it. HOWEVER aside from this, today the sun shone and the snow snowed and it felt amazing. Utterly and totally amazing. Being in the school with my course mates, sewing a wee felt frong, having had breakfast served on monther's day - contemplating what it means to have health and how we foster it in children as teachers - it is all so amazing. I did think when it all kicked off, this is going to take ten years to get over this. In actual fact, it would be amazing if it took ten days. Because i think i'm now mostly over it and what has it been, less than a week? I simply cannot explain it. There is a lesson from life eh? You can never tell what will happen if the ri...