Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

My school uniform when i was in junior college... er i wore the skirt There is a lovely little place off the Lisburn Road called the TENS foundation which is a shop that is a charity for helping Filipino children escape poverty. I don't know exactly how we define poverty any longer. I think that often, what we call poverty can simply mean not having much cash. But you don't really need cash to live... that is another discussion though. However, it is a good cause and the place is such a laid back, easy going, open place that you simply cannot help but just love it. I really should have taken pictures of it cos it is ridiculously cool. Not that it should matter, that sort of thing. Last night though i went to a screening of The Straight Story . It is a film by David Lynch which celebrates the resilience, the QUIET resilience, of the human spirit. The protagonist Alvin Straight is an unassuming war veteran who lives with his daughter in a small town in Iowa and one day, a...

I have always been fascinated by the Book of Revelations in the Bible. It is also really interesting for me because i am starting the Bible with Class Three at the beginning - and the Book of Revelations is right at the end. Last night we continued reading from it - and the most obvious thing about the Book is that it is entirely done in pictures. John keeps on saying I saw this and I saw that I saw something else.... It is also full of references to corruption and weddings. There is a lot of marriage in it. The bride and the whore and the Lamb. It is full of very frightening angels. The kind that you don't want to mess around with. It is full of numbers. Seven this and seven that and twelve and one hundred and forty four. We covered the second last chapter last night. Chapter 21. In it John sees the heavenly city. The city is the bride of the Lamb. It is in the shape of a cube and made with precious stones. It is also transparent. Its doors are made of pearls. There are 12 ev...

Camus After i deliver my Main Lesson i usually have like fifteen minutes to jot down my thoughts and formulate what i think my next lesson plans should be as the children eat their break. Today i sat with three children and read from a relatively easy text. The one of them which i thought i think this one needs to be at least ATTEMPTING to read, actually did manage to read. The other two, tried. And that's what you want, they try. It is when they switch off that you start to worry. Always engage with a child's feelings, is the advise. If you work through their feelings you can eventually stimulate their will and thought. Anyway, i sat beneath the cypress tree in school today and tried to rectify some knitting. I actually do not make their knitting even. Rather i leave the gaps and the uneven bits and pieces. As long as it is not unravelling itself, i think the moniker 'distressed' is a good one. As a result i have a few dodgy looking scarves, but i think, it is...

Ah, the quiet life... Over the weekend, Ghin was expressing this desire to read to me. Mum, he said, do you think you could do some reading with me? Of course i said, to him. We'll get some books from the library on Monday and we'll read after school. I would really like that he told me. I had been waiting for them to do lower case letters in school and now they had. So i thought, it is time, and since he wants it... So i went to the library and got some books out. AND there was this lovely George and the Dragon. It was clear, it was a story Ghin knew well and there were good illustrations. I also liked it that George was brown, not white, as he would have been since they reckon he came from Libiya. So we began at bed time. To Ghin's delight, he found that with some help he could read. Whenever he stumbled or was unsure, i prompted him or i pointed to pictures. He read haltingly and slowly - and when we came to the end of the book, he said, can we do that again!...

Redburn in the afternoon winter light Leaves and light Our very own Dark Hedges Beeches and redness Ghin and goldness Running up a hill Tiny fungi Hundreds of them Very large fungi Worlds in worlds Interdimensional forests Scenery Hollows  Silver and gold Camouflage Spot the child Peanut fungi My eldest baby My baby baby Through the forests Red and green and blue Colours Dinner at Pezzos Yum! This afternoon we went for a walk in Redburn Forest. Ghin often asks me tell me how i came to Earth, tell me how i was born, and it starts in a Forest. A Forest in Ireland on Easter morning. I tell him how i met him in a Forest, and how he was sitting on a moss covered stone and laughing at me. Somehow when i see him, i can still hear the laughter of that little sprite, and in fact, the most characteristic thing about Ghin is his infectious laughter. My two ...

I have always had an ambivalent attitude towards money. I very quickly discovered that the things that money could get you were ephemeral. Whatever it is that you were planning to fix with money could only be fixed for a short time. Especially the way in which modern society uses money. Anyway, i don't want to get into the problems with money, because really, i could be here all day. But what i really wanted to write about was about how i discovered how wonderful and romantic money could be. As an object itself, how beautiful it was and i had lots of opportunity to study how beautiful it was with the children. But FIRST, my very first apple pie.... Our very first apple pie! As part of the practical side of teaching children about weighing and measuring, which is part of the curriculum, i have been using the weighing scales when we do our cooking lesson. No longer do i prepare the amounts for them or guess how much flour or yeast goes into something, but we now read out recipe...

Some of the real life fairy houses that pop up around our school Let's not forget to feed the birds! The herb spiral and our very own grumpy Green Man The other side Earth stars... really they look like alien babies There were at least fifty of these dotted all about I could not resist squiring them and have all the spores spoosh out Disguised amongst the fallen leaves, hundreds of brown mushrooms Seriously, hundreds on the front lawn Judas' ear Can you see the shroom? Floppy type fungi They were everywhere!!! More jelly ears They come in smallish sizes too! Texture! It has been a GREAT year for fungi. Wet and warm and at this time of the year just they are everywhere. Our school has a no pesticide and herbicide policy for the last well, i don't know, forty years certainly and we leave a lot on the ground to rot away for wildlife and the kids. But of course this also encourages fungi and at ...