Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Things that always make you feel better: 1. Cleaning the house 2. Going for a run 3. Meeting friends 4. Doing something useful with other people 5. Completing a task which you have wanted to do for a long time 6. Sitting in the sunshine with a glass of wine 7. Having a meal cooked for you 8. Listening to a favourite song 9. Having a warm bath 10. Going to see some art 11. Meaningful conversations 12. Hugging your babies 13. Being given flowers 14. Being told you look lovely 15. Seeing a beautiful sunset Having all these things happen to you in one day.

I need to regroup. It will be fine once i have managed to sort myself out. But for now i feel absolutely dreadful. I have this idea about the kind of person i should be - what i need to be doing, what my day is going to be like - and then when i don't get to do this because i am sick things start to fall apart for me and then i feel awful. Usually i am able to just take one or at the most two days off - and then get on with things but i haven't been able to do this and this cold has me floored. It has gone on for more than two days now and this is mostly because i couldn't take time off when i needed to. This is not good. Thing is that i a tremendous capacity for carrying and then when it falls it does feels huge - things just lie around me in a mess. And actually i have been doing this tremendous carrying now for years and years and years. Just getting on with it. Oh dear, boo hoo hoo, i am feeling very sorry for myself. Please, just STOP it. I mean when i am d...

Over the past few days, with the death of Martin McGuinness, only too late do some people seem to realise what he was trying to do and what he has done. I don't know. I don't know how bad things were at the height of the Troubles, but i can tell you they were pretty bad. People were terrified to go anywhere. Not just because of the IRA. The IRA was a symptom of a problem - the problem was the disgraceful way the Catholics had been treated by the Protestants. There was deeply instutitionalised and segregated sectarianism. And this was assisted by the State - the British State. It is the same problem which is taking place on a global scale now. The state once again playing people - the poorest off each other. Soldiers sent to destroy civilians who have no protection. Civilisans then turning to violence to solve a problem born of violence because they have had enough of waiting. The IRA and Sinn Fein waged war against the state and wonder of wonders they won. In this lifetime....

Martin McGuiness has died. He was one of those incredible people who emerged in the Troubles who lived in a time when people seldom had a choice. I wonder what he would have become if he had been born somewhere else. Incredibly intelligent and filled with political nous, he was as close to a Che Guevara character which the Irish had. Possibly the North's Michael Collins. I think that people don't give him enough credit. A man who ironically, was a butcher, was behind the most violent IRA campaigns, who then was able to call a halt to it, and then sit down and negotiate. It will be a long time before we ever see his like again. Of course being a Derryman, i had met Martin McGuiness. By then he was a household name and a politician. He was just about to enter Stormont and be part of the new power sharing executive. And the journey there has not been easy at all. Several false starts, several falls at hurdles, but the people of Northern Ireland have clung onto this spar for dear...

The nicest thing about running at dawn in March is the birdsong and the way the sky gets lighter and lighter as you continue the run. I went out at quarter past five today. Everyday is a new day i tell myself. I am glad that my theory about taking two days to recover is right. Now with the sap rising, i am hoping that I am really going to be able to enjoy the spring. I have decided that this year is the year of me getting mt act together physically and writingly as well. I have always sort of fitting them around other things i was doing school, forest school,whatever the hell else i was doing, but this time, i am going to totally concentrate on this. Really make an effort to pay attention to my body and once again returning it to being fit. In the past few years when i lost weight i sort of lost weight not through being fit. I lost it through dieting. It was not really a choice. For instance i was on a forced diet in Harapan. No alcohol, no midnight snacking, no large portions. Now...

It is definitely two whole days of complete rest to get me sane again. I had my two days on Friday and Saturday - i tell you each of these complete rest days feels like forever. I am housebound and i am mostly doing nothing. I rise on the third day and i am utterly restored. So today, i ran, cleaned the house, did laundry, tidied the study, cleaned my bedroom, hoovered everywhere, cooked two meals, did shopping for tomorrow and the list goes on and on and on about how i am now a member of the fully functioning part of humanity. I have decided that i am getting up everyday at 5 am to go running. I just must. If i don't do this the day slips by and before i know it it is gone. I have promised myself that this year is the year i become completely fit once again. I get fit, and that i write on a regular basis. So this year is really going to just be me about myself. It was quite strange sitting in Estd just thinking about things which i would like to write about. I saw so many peop...

Everyday is a new beginning i say to myself. I feel it acutely as well. It is impossible not to feel this when you work with children. Everything is always new to them. Even teenagers who like to be world weary, they are newly minted too. Everyday is a new beginning. How do we embrace the world even when we are tired is a question i have to ask myself everyday. Getting up at 6 am everyday, getting the children's breakfasts and lunches ready, making sure i have everything i need for a day at school, thinking about the million things which i need for the day to be done before it is over. And then, myself. Thinking about myself in this piece, in this place of everything. I feel myself so acutely. I have always felt my sense of myself. I know this is true for most people, but somehow i often don't see it translate to their lives. I suppose i mean, if you feel yourself, if you feel who you are, then you would live your own truth, in some small way, no matter what, right? And yet...

I did this rant earlier and i have no erased it. I do that a lot. I changed my sheets last night, nothing beats clean sheets. I feel completely renewed. I wonder how long i can keep this up now. This cycle of exhaustion and burnout followed by a few days of respite.

For St Patrick's Day, the weather decided to be Irish. As in lots of rain and wind and no sun whatsoever. So i stayed in. No one wanted to go walking and to be honest i could not face walking either. I have come to an age where i do not need to prove anything to anyone about going out in all kinds of weather, least of all myself. So we stayed home, i binged on FB and later on we watched this really weird and not very good Marvel TV series called Iron Fist. It was about a man who was orphaned at 10 and trained by, of course, monks and had returned to New York to claim his inheritance from these evil people. I don't understand Americans. They make film and film, TV show after TV show about how evil, superrich people are going to destroy the planet and people and then they go ahead and elect them. I mean WTF right? I think the weather today is not set to improve. I wonder what life would be like for me if i did not work in the school and continued in some job which involved ad...

I arise today, through The strength of heaven, The light of the sun, The radiance of the moon, The splendor of fire, The speed of lightning, The swiftness of wind, The depth of the sea, The stability of the earth, The firmness of rock. - The Lorica of St Patrick, fragment In a few days time, it will be equal day and night and the sun would have truly returned to us. Inside me there is always a part which feels a little bit sad about this - i cannot say why. I think it is like a child looking forward to Christmas... when it is here, it will be gone. I have been so busy over the past few weeks, as usual. The few days' break is welcome. I have been thinking about the REAL reason why i am in Steiner education. Yes, yes, yes. The curriculum. But increasingly i am meeting people who say, yeah, sure we can do that - and i think, well the REAL reason for Steiner education is to be part of a movement. To be part of a community which is creating a viable alternative and try...

Last night i had a dream.I dreamt i was being kissed. Now this is not unusual in itself. I dream that I am being kissed every now and then. But when i got up i remembered this kiss. It was a deep down kiss. The kind of kiss which when you kiss the person you just get completely lost inside the kiss and the kiss itself, no matter how long or short it is, it makes you lose your way in time. You are united with the universe. You are standing on a mountain top, or you are on a beach, or you are somewhere, just gone...... Oh yes, one of those kisses. And as i brushed my teeth and grinned to myself and thought, it is wonderful to have kisses like that. Kisses which just make you know that this is EXACTLY what you came into this world for. Angels watch on mournfully because they will never know the beauty of such a kiss and by god, they lean in closer and place their hands on where they hearts may have been and the inhale the fragrance of such a kiss. A kiss that says, i promise, i promise fo...

Yesterday was massively busy. It began with the making of rosti, followed by cleaning the house and doing three loads of laundry. Then we went for a walk in Belvoir Park Forest - the rest of my family are a squeamish race - the mere sight of mud distresses them - a quick visit to Spoon Street, then we head home for the cooking of lunch, followed by me dropping Oisin off to circus school and in between times i do the weekly shop. After i get back, i help Oisin to organise his notes and discover questions, questions... as Oisin complains that this is not something to do on a Sunday night. Having gone through his notes and looked at his exam schedule, i realise that we have managed to get to the organisation in the nick of time. Oisin has no idea how to do an exam, and why the heck should be, he has never done one. So it is up to me now to help guide him. We watch Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief after that and i collapse into a menstrual heap at 9 pm. But not before i hand Oisin t...

Friday afternoon sombreness It is now Sunday. The weekend went quick. I did manage to get some of my shit together. Manage to haul myself onto the moving bus called life again. For a while there i was slightly lost in the fourth dimension. It is interesting. Steiner says the fourth dimension does exist. It is the world of devachan - the place we go to immediately after death. This is opposite land. The physical world is really a projection of the astral world, he says. He calls it astral because of its relationship to the stars. This astral world is responsible for the existence of the physical world. If it was not for the astral world, we would not have the seeable universe. It sounds remarkably like quantum physics, of course. If Steiner is correct, then there is a conscious intelligence, unseen which is able to organise dark matter as we know it, into physical matter. This intelligence can be seen by other higher beings. In any case, it means that there is a world which we...

Yesterday i went to St Paul's a Sports Bar in Belfast. This was in honour of the activists who campaigned for Sinn Feinn during an election triggered by what has to be one of the most shameless politicians in all of history. Arlene Foster. Now even if you loved the DUP and everything you stood for, you COULD NOT read the details about the scandal where they were just handing money over for a very dodgy heating scheme and causing not only a huge increase in greenhouse gas, but also mindlessly emptying the treasury as if they were sitting on a magical mountain of leprechaun gold which they found at the end of the rainbow - which they never would, because they are madly anti gay. But, nevermind all the weird other bits of their ideology and belief, that's ok - apart from the obvious sectarianism - nevermind all of that - but when it comes to scrutiny over governance and wasting the taxpayers money, this was astonishing. The whistle blower said that God told him to rat out the he...