Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Routine returns today. Because i went to see a friend and then i did the Advent Wreath. It is about being accountable to the world beyond the one we have, the one i have which gives us structure and civilisation. I felt good, better, and then i feel like yes, this needs to be done. This is important. Today the house will be cleaned from top to toe, all laundry be done and the outside of the house cleaned up. After lunch. Before lunch i will be at the CC and then after that i will be doing up the classroom. These things must be done, they give us the pegs upon which the meaning in our lives are hung. Without structure meaning is chaos. Without meaning structure is death. Both must work together to lend each other support. I have been listening to a litany of outrageous consequences of the West's foreign policy. I really do not understand how come they don't see it? How come they do not see that they have created the situation they are now in through their foreign policy?...

Return of the blog selfie! Man that hair is long! I have decided not to cut it till i go to Singapore next year So after a few weeks of feeling quite miserable, i am feeling a lot better. This was mostly precipitated by the bombing in Paris - but not just because of Paris, but rather the escalation of the situation by our governments as well - i just knew they would react in a stupid way, and they did not fail to disappoint. The world is mostly creaking at its hinges and this is how politicians behave. However, as usual, i had to think, we have two choices - be miserable or be happy. Or be positive in a constructive not a stupid way - and of course i immediately began to feel better. Also i finally came home to the house after the boiler incident. Things are really good. Today i am off to see an old friend. I am now trying the reconnect with people. It is too easy for me to just crawl under a rock and hide. I love hiding under rocks. I love not meeting people. I love jus...

Species of Least Concern I love being out in nature. This is because it becomes patently clear to you what is REALLY important AND it also helps you just think by relaxing. Being in nature resets all the buttons. It makes you realise that everything will be ok. And if everything isn't ok, well then, there is always nature. It heals from the inside out and outside in. It so good. Yesterday we drew the Teal. The thing about anything is that once you start to draw it, you really begin to see it. So it starts with you thinking, yeah that's an ok looking bird and then you draw it and you realise my goodness it is completely gorgeous! I love drawing birds. Love it. In fact i love drawing animals and landscapes. Animals IN landscapes. We get to draw all the time in class because art is an essential part of our Main Lessons, and i always knew that the Animal Main Lesson would be heavy on the drawing, but i honestly did not expect the class to do so well in it. I thought, yeah, ...

The black tailed godwit I was astonished to discover that Belfast Lough is a Ramsar site. I knew it was an ASSI, but a Ramsar site? That is an international designation with international protection. You know often we think of places which are important for wildlife as remote and pristine and untouched. But i think we can all say that Belfast Lough is something which is most certainly not like that at all. Surrounded by a city and a port and airport and industry, the place is the furthest you would expect from a place which is teeming with wildlife and YET yesterday when i went down to the shore with the children, that is EXACTLY what it was. Part of the ML is about showing children how we live with wildlife all the time. If you do down to the Holywood foreshore, at low tide, you will see millions of shells. Millions of them. All kinds of shells. Bivalves, gastropods, barnacles... you will see seaweed. You will see, at this of the year, thousands of birds from all over the world....

Yesterday was just beautiful. The sun shone, it was warm and what's more the sun shone all day and it was warm all day. I was down at the school at quarter to 11 and when the first parent arrived i had begun woodchipping the paths of the back garden. I worked all through the day till 3 pm until we left. We had one break for mince pies and tea and that was it. We chipped the remaining paths, we cleared the areas of leaves which would otherwise make the entire area really mucky, we left areas of leaves for insects and hedgehogs, i was able to take a good look at the beds, gutters were cleared, mud was removed, notice boards were put up. I am always in awe of how much gets done when a few people get together. Sometimes i wonder what WOULD get done if even more people showed up. After the day, i had a hot bath, something to eat and then just before bed, because i could not sleep i began designing the new beds. There was this idea that we would have a zodiac garden, but upon ref...

After not drawing for many weeks, we finally are drawing again. Here are pictures from the Human and Animal Main Lesson. They start with the Forest Habitat. The mammals of the forest I loved doing this - for a very long time i did not know how this would pan out. I wasn't sure how it would be with the telling them about the animals. But since the class are very used to drawing since no age at all, the lesson consists of me giving them some facts about the animals, then drawing the animals. We have done mammals this week - and we go into birds and then into insects and bivalves the week after. It has been great because i have managed to do the scientific name of the animal, do so  by way of explaining animal conditions such as albinism - alb means white, and so when we learnt that the barn owl was called Tyto Alba, they knew that the Alba in the name stood for.  Foxes are Vulpes Vulpes, from where we get the adjective vulpine, and they have learnt nocturnal...

Vincent Cassells in La Haine - a great film about action and consequence Despite the complexity of life, one thing is certain - there is one law which governs us all - the law of Action and Consequence. Call it fate, karma, all it destiny, call it coincidence, history, future shock, call it any damn thing you like under the skies, but it is clear - if you are standing where you are standing today, it was almost certainly a result of something you did in all the years, months, weeks, and days previously. Unless, of course you were abducted by aliens - which perhaps you had nothing to do with, unless you worked in SETI - in which case, you were asking for it. But yes - if you are where you are today, then it is almost certainly the result of something which happened in the past, as Winston Churchill said, Events, dear boy, events. SO, on to Paris and what happened there. It is hardly surprising that in this day and age, with cheap flights, an arms market which is oversupplied, w...

The Lady Chapel in Westminster Cathedral - that is the Tree of Life I was in London last weekend.  London was very crowded. It reminded me of Singapore. Hordes of people on Piccadilly and hordes of people everywhere. I could not live in London for the same reason i could not live in Singapore. Even the museums were filled with people. You had to line up everywhere you went. It was really too much, but there were plus points. Well, there was Francoise and Natasa whom i had not seen for three years. It also made me think why the heck did i not go to London more frequently, it was so nearby Belfast. But most of all there was the V&A museum, which I visited for the first time and it was so beautiful, i was choked with emotion when i saw it. Most touching were the exhibits from the Arts and Crafts movement. For the first time i really understood what Ruskin was trying to say about the sublime. The sublime in the service of God through the service of man. In his essay ...

Oisin and Mika demonstrating the uprightness of the human being Our ability to balance Of all the Main Lessons which I had to do so far, this one filled we with anxiety. To understand why, I need to rewind this back to four years ago, when I did my teacher training course. In the course, it was suggested that human beings were not animals. When i heard this, i was appalled. How could human beings not be animals? We are animals. Well, this was explained quite patiently to me, we share a lot in common with animals, but we are different in that we can choose. We are not bound by our circumstances. We can choose. Since then, I have been really thinking about the Main Lesson. And about ourselves, of course. The most distinctive trait that we have is our hands - our upright posture and that we have these hands that can mostly do everything. Of course people without hands have achieved much as well, and many animals are very clever in problem solving too, but evolutionary biologists bel...

The nerd... i have photos of myself looking like this when i was 15... Still the nerd... Well i have not gone running yet. Everyday something has cropped up. The truth is that i have realised something about myself during this fast. Something which i have long suspected. If it involved something which i do not like, or there is too much of an effort, or if i know that it will end up in some kind of delayed response from someone - so these things all involve other people - apart from my running - i will delay doing it. It is such a terrible habit. I hate it, I can't bear it. So i shall, do something i do not enjoy everyday. I suppose it is only human nature to not like to do thing that we do not enjoy doing. How much of life is built on procrastination? How much inertia occurs when we just do not start doing things? Ugh. I did manage to buy my new running shoes, cos one of them was left behind in Dublin. But there they sit in their pink and black weird hediousness in my car...

Made this for dinner yesterday It went ok yesterday. Helped by a dodgy tummy. I stayed home and while it did stop eventually i was as weak as water and very bored. I had honey from Helen's Bay which helped considerably and i watched BBC documentaries on mushrooms, bees and weeds. I lay in bed and felt very sorry for myself. I phoned plumbers and managed to convince one to come out and look at our house today. And then i cooked bean soup for Ghin and had some bean soup myself. It was very pleasant and light. The food from the food parcel is very nourishing and i am slowly weaning myself off the need to eat lots of meat which leaves me feeling sluggish and heavy. I had no sugar, apart from the honey and three plums and i did not snack. Although i did eat two bowls of rice - two small bowls. But it was quite successful really. Right at the end of the evening i had one egg and the remaining bread. With a little bit of butter. Today i am going running after school and then i am head...

My one luxury... Cup of coffee Today i woke up and i felt really really tired. Like tired exhausted. Like blah. Then i thought, i am not being healthy enough. I need to do something about this. So i have decided to go on a fast. My fast will consist of a 21-day fast. I will eat eggs and toast in the morning - my luxury is one cup of coffee with one teaspoon of honey. I will have an apple and an orange for lunch and then i will have dinner of broth and a cup of green tea. I will have no tea. Why am i undergoing a fast? Because my body is telling me i have to, It has become sluggish and icky and it has becomes really fed up. I can feel my spirit going, you call this a BODY???? I will also go running - well when i say running i mean jogging. No dairy, no alcohol, no sugar - apart from the honey. 21 days. Lots of water and green tea - green tea because it is alkalising. It is good for the cells to be bathed in alkaline water. Soooo.... i also thought that i would record my ...

When you think Dublin you think... GPO, Grafton Streen, St Stephen's Green and Temple Bar... after we dropped off Oisin, we headed for Pehonix Park. I had never been there, so i thought, why not? Also i had never been to IMMA. Which was near Phoenix Park. The Wellington Monument This is the Wellington Monument. It is a VERY VERY large cenotaph. It is the largest cenotaph i have ever seen. You can see the woman in the photo for scale. It is the most blatant, unapologetic hymn to colonialism and militarism. I find cenotaphs quite horrible anyway. Aesthetically they are really really dull. They are grey - usually made of granite - and straight and awful. The most interesting sort of cenotaph i have seen is the Vigsland one in Oslo. That i fantastic. Most others are awful. The Wellington Monument was awful on a very large scale. The bronze friezes depict his battles One is India submitting, the other France Talk about a poor winner There's Ghin Here is ...