Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

I got up at 7.45 and put on my running gear. This is my fourth day of straight running and I know I am getting into the habit again. I am desperate to retain it for the coming year, I love running. I love how it makes me feel, I love listening to the birds as I run, I love watching how the colours change and shift through the seasons, I love how fit I feel. I never run very far anymore and very quickly, but there is something about getting up and going, first thing in the morning, which is just THE BEST. This is really embarrassing, but also true. Whenever I have not run for several weeks, it gets hard to start again because of having to put on my running gear. Well actually, not putting it on but taking it off. My running top is a jogging bra - well, it is - and after you get very sweaty it does end up getting quite hard to get out of - if I have become slightly larger. The first few times are THE WORST, but after I get over it, after in fact four or fives runs, miraculously, or per...

I dreaded doing this bird, because I have learnt that birds which seem quite easy to do are the toughest ones. It isn't the Eagles or the Puffins that give you hard time - it's the Blackbirds and the Tits. But the Starling, I knew that was going to be hardwork because it is really a very colourful bird. Sure, it isn't Parrot colourful, but it hides a multitude of light in its plumage - in fact, in other parts of the world, there are birds which are completely black which are called glossy because that same rainbow sheen, found in puddles of oil or on the surface of busy rivers, is found on these birds. And that iridescence is impossible to capture on a static page because it is a play of magic and movement. In addition to the ever changing greens and purples and blues, it also has these wonderful reddish feet - and it a perfectly sharp beak - and these every so slightly misplaced eyes. These eyes seem too close together, although I have been told that they are so c...

Coal tit - is not coal in colour at all The best named taxa are moths and shrooms. Somehow, the people who go about naming these classes of the animal kingdom have a sense of humour. For instance, Garden Tiger, or White Ermine - they instant conjure up what the moths are supposed to looked like. Fungi also have wonderful baptisers - Eartth Stars ARE indeed Earth Stars and Destroying Angel does what it says on the tin, in addition to sounding super badass. However, when it comes to birds, there are few which have names which are exciting or poetic - or even, in the case of the coal tit, descriptive. The Linnean name of the Coal Tit is - Periparus Ater. I have discovered that Ater means dull black. Hence, the Coal Tit, the smallest of our titmice (again, what WERE they on when they named these birds titmice, some Fly Agaric, perhaps?) is thought to be very dull and boring in colour. The Great Tit, has a huge flashy chest, and the Blue Tit, its special cobalt splashing, but the Coa...

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Finchus Adorables Sure, its name isn't Finchus Adorablus, but shouldn't it be? I mean Pyrrhula Pyrrhula - one can only assume it either came from Greek for fire, which also reminds me of the word, pyrrhic, of course. Which puts one in the mind of great but self-defeating feats, perhaps of Hannibalian stature, and perhaps the Bullfinch is capable of all these possibilities, thus living up to its rather overblown Linean epithet, but one look at a Bullfinch and you will know that this is pure marketing. Fire is, after all, not bright pink. Furthermore, it is the tootest, darlingest ball of feathers which has ever alighted on a branch (apart from the Long-tailed Tit), and really its name should be Greek for something much less fearsome and more squeal inducing. Anyhow, I am now reading a page each morning from Anthony's book about the birds, while I have breakfast. I sort of know the bird I want to draw today, and I read this over breakf...

Yesterday I saw a Blackbird on the tree. It sat for a while watching life go by, and then, deciding it was safe, flew to the topmost branch where it proceeded to shovel berry after berry into its beak. In fact, it was shoveling so fast that berries were spilling and falling about the bird and onto the ground. It was then I realised what a nervous bird the Blackbird was. It doesn't feed noisily and insoucianctly, like the Starling, but with great speed and alacrity, as if expecting to be surprised at any point in its feasting. This, of course, happens more often than not, when the bird then flies off, complaining in its loud alarum. It is a particularly distressing sound, especially when heard in the summer, should a magpie pay visit to the neighbourhood. Despite, or because of, its nervous disposition, the Blackbird is one of the most mellifluous mistrals of the backyard. When it sings, it is heart stopping. All activity ceases and its song will remind you of spring soaked...

Photograph by Anthony McGeehan from his book Birds This is a Wren on the seashore, I told you they are everywhere I am sitting at the kitchen table in my mom's house. Outside is contonesater in its sanguine Christmas glory and on its branch, is a Wren. But it does not really stay on a branch. It flits from cover to cover. To the wren, movement is key, cos, in its mind, one of the smallest birds of our garden, is never safe. Nervous, twitchy and not so much shy, as highly cautious, it is named after the troglodyte. And everything about it is indeed as inconspicuous as a bird on the run - except that its song is heard, literally, everywhere. For my money, the Wren appears to have colonised every habitat in Northern Ireland.  I have been on top of a struggling limestone plateau, not a tree in sight, and I have heard the song of the Wren. Went down for a stroll along the shifting sands of a silent beach and heard its unmistakable song - its loud, repetitive song - all belted ou...

The journey is over. Last night I had a deep sense of having arrived. Having wandered the woods for such a long time, learning and being uncertain, having made mistake after mistake, experience success and failure, loved, delighted, lost, been throw to the heights and then broken completely, having, on some night thought, I cannot go on, having thought on some days, I just want to die, I can't do this - having on some days gone, I am a luckiest person alive, I now have arrived here and here is where I have always meant to be. Not on top of the world, nor beneath it, not a place, nor a person, but myself. I have arrived to myself. And I now accept myself in its entirely and love myself completely. Without reservation, not through the eyes of another person, but through the person I have been and am now. It isn't as if there is no more change or growing to take place, but it is, for the first time, realising I am sufficient. I am utterly sufficient. This is enough. This was a ...

When I look at the state of the world today, I just wonder how idiotic we are. For decades now people have been warning about everything which emanates from the abuse of power: gender inequality, the abuse of children, homophobia, the use of arms, the SALE of arms, the exploitation of the Earth, of the weak, of those with no voice - and they have warned and warned and warned. I have been part of this warning - stop doing this. Because it was unfair. Life is unfair, I would be told. It was a bit like, oh dear, you know in this life some of us get to be Bahamians, the rest of you are the scum of the Earth. But deeper down, as I have always maintained, it isn't just about fairness or liking cute fluffy animals or about making sure that everyone lives a life which is filled with dignity and integrity. Nope, it is was ultimately about safeguarding us from the crazies. Which today seems to be encapsulated in the figure of Donald Trump. Let me tell you if Trump wasn't elected this tim...

Lilac Haze, by Marjorie Leonard This is a painting of Lough Erne, but it looked EXACTLY like Strangford today We were driving along the road to Greyabbey on the shores of Strangford. It was a perfectly calm midwinter afternoon. The skies and waters all merging into Rothko striations of grey. There wasn't a single wisp of wind and as the darkness closed in early in that shade of impossible whispering blue,  pretty lights from the cars began to reflect on the waters below, twinkling like a watery lost city. "A painted ship upon a painted ocean," I thought. Never had I seen the lough so calm. So eerily still. Flocks of lapwing were flopping about indolently. You can always tell lapwings from miles away. They are goodly sized birds and they have a huge lapping style of flying. They also tend to move ever so slightly out of sync so it reminds you of prayer wheels being turned one after the other, or in the black-white-black-white-black-white rolling across the expanse...

When I was about 23 years old, I decided I would write a novel. Which I never ever did, of course. But the novel was going to be about a gardener, who tended this garden without knowing whose garden it was. He spent all day alone, looking after the garden and then one day something happens, he find this box - a box made of green malachite and the story then begins. Anyhow, nearly 30 years later, and many strange adventures, I was lying in bed this morning and writing in my journal. It was very quiet and very beautiful. I was thinking that this was my year for gratitude. This year I would not waste one minute on stupidity and by stupidity, I mean thinking of the things which I lacked. Instead, I would look at all the things which I had - and these were many and plentiful and I was so grateful. Everything time and life and being on this green Earth has given me, I will cherish and adore. And be thankful for. I have everything which I want and I want nothing more - or less. And of...

The last good day of my year - well really this is my New Year and Christmas all rolled into one. As far as I'm concerned tomorrow is the start of the year. The REAL start. It is when the sun returns to the Earth, it is when winter gets over itself. It is when I turn a year older. I will be 47 years old! Unbelievable. I love being in my 40s - it has been the decade where some of the most incredible things that happened to me took place. I got a new job I love, for starters. I did so many things I had meant to do. I learnt so many new things. I went to so many new places. I have, most of all, learnt a lot of things about myself. I have decided that this is the year when I am going to get things together fitness and physically wise. This is when I will take my health seriously. I suppose, like many younger people, I have just assumed my body is going to look after itself, but this year it really made me aware that I am getting older and older. Strange aches and pains began to man...

Magical happenings by the firelight in Forest School at our Advent Festival Over the next few weeks, I am looking forward to chilling. Ah, to chill. Walking in the woods, around lakes, visiting friends (if i have any left)... taking my time to clean the house, get the garden ready for planting in the spring, painting, listening to music... I can't wait. Winter. I love winter. I haven't always loved winter. It has taken my many many years to learn to savour it, but now that I have stayed here for nearly 20 years, my god, i wouldn't be without it. Firstly, there are the TREES. The trees become so beautiful in the winter. Their branches are sculptural and I could spent all day gazing at them, no matter what the weather. In the pellucid, translucent light OR the grey, wet rain filled days - then the water drips from them, like liquid silver. And even when it is blowing outside. I am safe inside and grateful for the comfort it brings. Then there are the shorter days. I l...

Oisin is sitting across from me working on his Macbeth essay. I am exhausted, as usual. In a bit I will be turning in to bed. The school day is relentless, although deeply satisfying, although right now my class are at an age where I wonder what in the wide world did I do to deserve them. -------------------- Man i started that post like millions of years ago. It is ages since I have written. I knew that two weeks ago, we would be looking at the busiest two weeks of the year, and it was. But it has all been worthwhile. The Advent Festival was a roaring success and things seem to have come to good end to the year in the school. People feel tired but happy - a good tired, the best kind of tired. Like the tired after a workout. I am pleased. There have been a few realisations and breakthroughs though since I last wrote. One of my breakthroughs has been to just not take anything too seriously. Today I found myself spiraling once again into the parts of my life which need improvemen...

It is the coming of the light. We greet the darkest days and know that in a few short weeks the light will soon return. Over and over again, we race towards this narrowing point of the year to a sharp intake of breath to then, breathe out once more as the light widens and brings the Earth back in. It has been such a year. It was kinda crazy. It felt a bit like I had lost my way, and that at times it felt like I was very alone in that being lost. What is crazy though is that I was never alone. If anything, there were people around me all the time. I wonder if a butterfly as it slips out of its chrysalis feels this way? Or a baby which announces its readiness to be born. The skin too tight, it can no longer bear the pressure, the disgust of the confines, the loathing, the longing and then the moment of expulsion - bursting into the outer world, a transformed being, for better or for worse? But there is an extremity of emotion or action in the birth of a child or the emergence of a bu...