Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Some days it is just about putting one foot in front of the other. I am now wondering, if, as you go older, the wonder starts to wear off. I think I am slowly becoming an old cranky person. For a start, I think that maybe I don't know if I really like meeting new people. I wonder if at some point in your life, in my life, it gets to be, actually, I don't need to know any more new people. Which makes me think, why do we want to meet new people...? I don't know, I think I'm just being temporarily cranky. My feet are killing me. We walked 10 miles today. It was a really beautiful day. It didn't feel like end November at all. So many many thoughts. First thoughts are, all the ink and education and the noise and the interconnectivity and the result is a more fractured and damaged world. I have never been so depressed about the state of the world. The self importance as well. The self importance of the people who have more or less created the mess who then say to ...

Today I don't know what to blog about. Ghin was very tired yesterday so I sent him to bed early. So he was in bed tossing and turning and I decided to read him The Odyssey. Having read the TE Lawrence translation I thought that the Ithaca one which I had been reading to him, meant for younger children, was rubbish. Why do they have to modernise it? It is clear that the woman in the story are the inspiration and the make characters are the action. It is OK. You don't have to create a made up female character for Telemachus to fall in love with. Also, the PCness was annoying. Look, The Odyssey takes place in Ancient Greece. They weren't white, nor were they black - they were Greek which means that they were very much darker European and probably quite mixed given all that toing and froing on the Med. Anyway, I decided to read that to him. All was going well, except for the fact that I can't see anything cos I didn't have my reading glasses on, when I stumble upon t...

At Hugh's in Newcastle On going for a trip with my family now is not unlike sitting down to watch your favourit comedy, although now you are part of that comedy. We headed to Newcastle yesterday which entailed doing lots of things outside our usual routine - cue comedy. It is all the unplanned things, isn't it? And I think that being a teacher has equipped me with a massive sense of humour. If something is going not the way you planned, you have gotta laugh. The best part though is now having my niece here with us. Ghin was away and Oisin was working all day so, with the semi good weather I thought, a drive. My dad loves a drive. Eating out It is winter, fire place I have come to really like Newcastle. When I first encountered it I thought it was much like a different kind of Bundoran. I dunno maybe Bundoran is changed now? Anyhow, it was mostly amusements and what appeared to be a very VERY cold Warm Bathing Pools. However, it seems to have really come into ...

Yer body Recently I was speaking to a thrice more experienced Steiner teacher. I can only imagine what her eyes have seen. It is like speaking to a Grand Master, and a real one, not some made up shite. I said to her, Steiner was a genius. I know, she said, I know. And why did I say this? Because Steiner had insight into a human being which seems to have gone beyond human comprehension. The way Einstein said he saw the formula for energy in a shower, on a beam of light, Steiner too had these multiple insights into the human condition. The thing which really got me was how much the children of my class had transformed from last year. The curriculum is supposed to address the child's development phase. Each year they learn about a mythic system, a natural science, music, later on science, history, etc which speaks to them. It is never too intellectual nor abstract - so it lives in them, it warms their soul. Take our physiognomy lesson for instance. Why do we not do it earlie...

Really, the UK government, almost certainly a country in decline. If it was a person, it would be signing its suicide note and placing the gun in its mouth. Why oh why have they decided to do this to themselves? Are they so stuck on some bizarre vainglorious past that they are willing to overlook reality and just reverse off the face of a cliff. Honestly, they are. I can understand you being critical of the EU, but it is the best chance we have right now. I also agree that the EU is the architect of its own fate, but seriously, it is the fate of the neoliberals and how they decided to ignore the obvious - that people are not machines and the economy shouldn't be about money. It is a common mistake made all across the world, sometime in the 80s. I think that when we look back, especially to the 80s, we will realise the spectacular mistake which we made vis a vis two things - the economy and education. Two things took place at the same time. Which has one thing at its base - the me...

It was very weird yesterday. I met a friend whom I hadn't met for a very very long time and I managed to antagonise him. How did I do that? By QUESTIONING whether what he said, about not abandoning anyone was true. It began with Bhudda. I said, I have never been able to get past how Bhudda abandoned his family and newly born son. Never. We were talking about trauma. Then he said, well, I have never abandoned anyone. I said, really, have you never? Who have I abandoned, he asked. Not wanting to be confrontational, I smiled sweetly and said, well, no one that I know of. Whew! He replied, I have never made a commitment, so I have never abandoned anyone.  I managed to not say 'exactly'. It is a great trick isn't it? Not abandoning anyone since you never made a commitment.  I wonder what it is about people who never make commitments. What is that? Are they afraid of failure? Are they afraid of how much they may be made to compromise? Are they afraid of what exactly? O...

Odysseus and the Sirens I am rereading The Odyssey - the TE Lawrence translation - so it is very formal and amusing. But what is interesting is how much my reading of it has changed. First, of course, when I read it, it must have been more than twenty years ago. It was probably in connection with Joyce because at the top of each section I had written Telemachus, Calypso, Nausicaa, etc. The second thing which has happened is I have taught as a Class Teacher, this means having done lots of background reading into the Greek Mysteries and Initation, as well has having read numerous abridged accounts of the story, like the play by Simon Barnes and a teenager's version of the story. So I know it inside out. I remember being utterly frustrated and perplexed about why the first third of the story was about Telemachus and then a good fifth about Odysseus crying on Calypso's island. Followed by this really annoying bit about Nausicaa and her white-arms... it wasn't really a ...

Can't quite believe how amazing that hair looks! Well, my period arrived again after three weeks and what an arrival it was. It was almost as bad as the torrential downpour we had yesterday. Never in all my time in Norn Iron had i EVER seen rain like it. The intensity and the duration was something else. On Ardmore Heights the drains were overflowing and they overflowed like rivers. In the school this morning, I saw that about three inches of rain had fallen over the course of the afternoon. It was something else. But today dawned bright and early and beautiful and we headed out to Belfast. The famile are here and life is now very busy, but compounded by straddling two houses - and work. It is so all go that yesterday I was so exhausted when I got back that I didn't realise I had taken off my tights in the dining room and left them there with my socks. That is how tired women do. Today after St George's we did more shopping for stuff and then I came home and promptl...

Migration, Phase I Goodbye sis! Yesterday we began the half term of school. It was really interesting to get everyone back and into the saddle again. There was gardening and looking at handbells and sorting tunes out - and there was maths and studying the eye and today there will be cooking. Life is so busy in our little school. It always astonishes me, yes I know we work to the bone, but how much breadth and variety the curriculum allows a child to do and how much teachers are asked to do. We cook and bake and knit and sew and math and literature - the kids do woodwork and games and German - it is really a rich fabric of life we have and it is something which I never take for granted. As the weeks have passed, where I felt exhausted in the first half term, I feel like I'm getting my mojo back. The first half term is all about finding your sealegs. Getting used to the rhythms of the years, seeing how much the children are able to learn, checking things out, and then ...

This little pond has a cute history - it was the bath which I used for Oisin and later Ghin. It was given by Peter's mom, all those years ago. Almost twenty years and it is still going strong. Well, went for my run. Yes, it was amazing, in the rain. But warm rain, it isn't cold at all. And it also wasn't heavy. I had a very strange dream last night, so strange that my reality practically vanished this morning. I dreamt that I was in a school and I was a student, like I was in JC, but I was also teaching but in a Steiner school which wasn't my school. When I woke up for about ten seconds I was trying to figure out how I haw going to teach my regular class while teaching this new class - and with me were two friends from JC. It was the weirdest thing. Anyhow, I have decided to do the history of music with my class, instead of them going to choir. It would be more profitable. I just thought, well Christmas is coming and any number of oratorios and cantatas are coming...

This pond I have three ponds in my very tiny garden. Every winter they fill up with leaves and I need  to clear them, which is what I did today. This very funny garden statues I bought - there are four - a frog, a turtle, a mushroom and a bird. They featured in Breaking Bad as extremely ugly garden gnomes, but I just LOVE them. These three ponds will be looked after over the winter so that birds can drink from them when the winter freezes things over. Although this looks highly unlikely as the weather is just very balmy. I was astonished that I was able to garden from 7.30 to just fifteen minutes ago. Here's the shroom Close up I cut the entire garden by hand. I have realised that this enables all the inverts to hide. I also fou dhte caterpillar of a moth which I was able to hide. Peter took the boys for a walk which meant I was able to garden without any interruption - apart from lunch. Although it has to be said I slept little last night as Ghin was feverish and kep...

If you have a beech tree in your garden, you have a forest... Taken this morning at 7.30 am - still LOADS of light Well it is almost the end of the school holidays - tomorrow we restart. It is really amazing how much there is always to learn about yourself. This half term, I learnt how much I, when forced, do enjoy the company of others. I also learned how I am perfectly content with where I am with life. I am utterly enjoying the calm before the storm which will be Brexit and the chaos it will bring should May bring herself to carry it out. Here is a garden table set I bought two years ago - it finally has the patina I wanted. The candle holder is from Singapore and has aged well as has the flower pot which has now got a few years of moss on it I think that the aged look really works. I can't bring myself to throw away anything - yesterday I began gathering shards of broken pots to bin, when i thought, no I could make a cool border with that. So I do the little ...

Oh yeah, slow gardening, I get it Yesterday I hit the garden for the first time and for the first time I felt like I really knew what I was doing. I wasn't trying to manically 'organise' it - it felt like I was being in it and enjoying it deeply for the first time. You know it only took twenty years, so, you know, what the heck. Instead of trying to channel my idea of what a garden would look like, I just cleared things very slowly and left many things which I would have insisted on taking away. Things get old, they decay they get the patine of age - they have their own charm. I loved how calendula had grown in between the cracks and that the nasturtiums were still flowering because of the mild autumn we had had. I loved the way the nettles had grown and promised myself that next year I would keep the nettles. Also rather like a revolution I discovered I could put my bins behind the gate and this meant that the empty space behind the gate would now have a use and th...

Random thinkings Over the many years I have begun to collect things which have made me think of ways in which I could perhaps help people to be more in nature. There are a few obstacles, sure, but first, I want to jot down the things which I have discovered. The world around us has a consciousness - what evidence do I have? I think that since the beginning of time from the moment we were able to tell each other stories, human beings have always recognised this. Our Gods and Goddesses, our creatures of places like nagas and asuras, angels and demons, spirit animals - in every culture all across the world there have been the same archetypes arising from the same recognition. The only period in history in which this has not happened is ours, right now. When I mean ours, I mean round about the late 18th century. So, the world is a living place. I do believe that there are beings which we can't see which exist in different dimensions. These beings are elementals which help k...

A place where memories come to live There is so much love in a place like Cairn Woods. When we got there Ghin and Dougie said, Forest School memories. I miss Forest School so much. It was so lovely to hear - Forest School has enabled them to love being in a place like this on its own terms. That is what is beautiful about Forest School really - that it isn't about camping where you sort of try to establish a place and then settle in for a while - a little bit of land domination. With Forest School, you are there for a very short time, so you learn to adapt to the place. Then, also because you go back to the same place over and over again you get to know it so well. It is like visiting a friend. Someone who changes everytime, but ever so subtly. Everytime we go back to Cairn Woods I feel like this. You can't help but look forward to familiar landmarks, retell the stories you've heard, notice changes, some very drastic... and then there is always that light that flows...

Rambling friends Carin Woods is a beech wood so it is full of colour And some ridiculously beautiful trees Straight outta a storybook Zoe and Kelly The light is constantly changing depending on the part of the forest you are in Right at the top we can look across to Strangford Scotts pines and water Roasting marshmallows We miss forest school Trees are meant for climbing What else would you do with them? Little wood nymph Dryads The tootest gnomey house in all of Norn Iron Complete with twigs, shrooms and moss So they have had an amazing half term break. Oxford Island, house cleaning (Belfast and Ardmore), sleep overs, Samhain and walks in the forest to remember those who had past. And all the while accompanied by the most amazing light. Robins, hooded crows and coal tits were out in force, although sadly the birds don't seem to have discovered my feede...