Sense of divinity

Last weekend was an interesting one. I went to the Progressive Christian conference held at St Andrew's on the Terrace. The Friday chimed with all of the work I've been doing on breaking stigma around mental illness at work, and preparing for Mental Health Awareness Week and the launch of all the resources we've been working on - but it was doing it from a different angle. I have only been in a church three times since the abortive St James' AGM in March and in that time my thinking has really shifted again, so I was a bit nervous about being with people that described themselves as Christians, as my experience of people who use that term are often anything but loving and compassionate.

However, I was pleasantly surprised - I met people that I could have genuine conversations with about issues that mean something to me: how we treat our Mother the Earth; how we treat other people that wear skin over their divinity; how we walk with kindness and gentleness in the world; how we find Godde, God, Goddess - the Greatness that is the Brightness of All - in the midst of all things and in everywhere.

The most interesting sessions were the one that Emily Colgan ran on reading the bible from the perspective of Earth, employing a hermeneutic of suspicion that I am familiar with from feminist theology. I found this helpful as I haven't touched the bible for months, preferring Matthew Fox's theology, the Gnostic Gospels, or Goddess writings. There may be a way back there for me, employing the hermeneutic of suspicion again.

The best session of all though was Sande Ramage's Jungian "releasing the Christian ties that bind" session. I cried - suddenly it seemed I had found someone else who has travelled the same route I am travelling, and is further along the road. When she talked about her experience of divinity as Goddess and swapped between he and she as naturally as breathing, it felt as though I had found what I had been trying for years to get into the church.

Not sure where this leaves me though. I will continue to read, to seek. Hubby and daughter gave me a singing bowl for my birthday, which now sits alongside the pottery version of the Venus of Willendorf that one of hubby's pottery friends made and we bought a few months ago. It is astonishing, the sense of divinity that comes when I ring the bowl and light a candle. Maybe that's all I do for a bit: small ritual actions, lighting candles, calling on her, singing bowls, breathing, walking on her breasts the earth. Smelling the jonquils in my garden. Sinking into the depths of the wonderful bathtub in our gorgeous new bathroom that hubby built. Being aware. Writing. Poems are beginning to bubble again....

Pottering, and potting

This weekend was full of doings. I've had a list of things that I want to get done, and we knocked off quite a few of them. The most satisfying was organising our herb and spice drawer. Years ago, we got a whole lot of round pots (the sort you used to get Chinese takeaways in when we were kids) and put all the herbs and spices in them. We needed a lot of pots because we have a lot of herbs and spices and we buy them in bulk because it's cheaper (and we use a lot of flavours in cooking).

The problem started when we moved to Rotorua. The drawer we use here for herbs and spices is smaller than the one we had - narrower and not so deep. We had to stack pots two high, and they stuck on the drawers, the lids flicked off, herbs and spices were self-combining in unplanned ways in the bottom of the drawer. It wasn't working. So we've been watching for a while until our favourite little stacking boxes with clip-on lids came on sale again and we got little pots and boxes. We relocated herbs. I wrote lots of neat little sticker labels. Boxes won't come undone. They stack - neatly. The whole thing looks like a work of art and it is so easy to find the herbs we want when cooking now.

We also weedmatted and barked another chunk of the front garden, I tidied the bathroom cupboards, and pottered around making things. Planted a lot more herbs (we like them fresh as well as dried!), and am hoping the oregano will stand up and be counted soon: it's looking a bit dismal...

Yesterday was also my first time shooting my compound since it became mine. I bought it off a club member who was selling it for her son: it was an astonishingly good buy because it came complete with arrows, sights, bow bag, release aid, quiver - the whole lot, pretty much. I shot it outside at 25m - my first time outside and at that distance - and it felt good. Took a while before I got the sights in but then the groupings began to come together and it started to get tidier. I love the total presence that I have to be to the bow and the arrow: it is very contemplative. The more still I am inside, the better my shot. At least that part of archery is not something I have to learn!

This coming weekend is the welcome of our new Bishop to the Bay of Plenty part of the Diocese of Waiapu. Looking forward to meeting him, and it's quite appropriate that it's on Advent Sunday too!

A sneaky bit of gardening

I discovered another sneaky advantage to having my office in my home today. The weather is starting to pick up with the approaching summer, so today at lunchtime, I headed out into the sun in the garden and did half an hour of weeding in the back garden at lunchtime! It's only a small garden along the back of our shed so I got it finished in the time I had, and then after tea, we all enjoyed the lovely longer evening and got outside: I mowed the back lawn (hubby did the front yesterday but because I had washing out to dry I wouldn't let him mow the back then!) and then we all went out and put down weedmat and bark on the garden I prepped at lunchtime. Unfortunately we ran out of weedmat and the shops were shut by the time we finished, but we can finish it off tomorrow.

I was all prepared for all sorts of problems about working from home, but I'm loving it. Hubby works from home too, so we get to spend morning and afternoon tea and lunch together - we often go for a walk or a bike ride at lunchtime - and we don't distract each other because he works at one end of the house and I work at the other. My office space is in our library, so I'm working surrounded by books which feels rather nice. All of my colleagues are within reach on the phone or email, and that will be even easier when we get the new VOIP system loaded on all the computers. They're testing it in our major offices first to iron out the bugs, before they roll it out to all the satellite offices like mine.

My office is also "favoured space" for the cat: he often comes to sleep in my office because I have a heater on in there in winter (I have to - I have a thermometer in there, and it's been 9degC in there on frosty days), and at the moment it gets a nice morning sunbeam that he likes. In fact, on Saturday a couple of weeks ago, he came in after breakfast, went trotting down the hall calling me, wondering why I wasn't working in my office (and turning the heater on for him!). He's good company: it's nice working with him quietly snoozing in the corner.

The other distinct advantage to working from home is being able to take advantage of the weather. If it's fine, I can slip into the laundry before work and throw on a load of washing, and hang it out at morning tea time. It's also good if the weather packs up - I can rescue the washing before it all gets sopping wet again!

So that working from home thing? It's working out just fine, thanks!

Family doings

Our "care of creation" efforts in the autumn appear to have paid off, with a lovely display of daffodils and tulips in our garden this spring. We planted mixed bulbs and so every flower has been a surprise, with different varieties of both. The ghost of the previous owner has also appeared with some jonquils and Canterbury bells popping up that we know we didn't plant! Not that we mind at all - in fact, it just made us more determined to plant more bulbs next autumn.

However, I am not confident in the longevity of my flowers: we have a significant storm over most of the country and some of the first "real wind" I remember in Rotorua. It's also freezing cold - it snowed on the Desert Road today and I smelt more snow in the wind when I went outside to get firewood tonight. We had thought we had nearly finished with the fire for the year - apparently not. It was windy enough to dislodge the top part of our metal chimney: we heard a huge bang this afternoon and then saw it bouncing around in the front yard. I'm fairly certain it isn't supposed to be doing that!

Rotorua has its tulip festival next weekend (there are over 42,000 tulips planted around the city in public spaces) but I wonder how many of them will survive for the festival? The city does look beautiful in spring, especially as all the cherries and plums come into flower, but I saw an awful lot of kowhai and other flowers spread all over the roads today.

The last few weeks have been filled with family doings. Daughter had a trampolining competition in Hamilton a few weeks ago, and we were very proud to see her win gold in the double mini for her age group (her second medal since she began competing). Last week she also won a ribbon in her interschool competition in an apparatus she had never used before (single mini tramp, which is not a standard apparatus - she trains on the trampoline and double mini which are both competition-standard).

We went up to Auckland to the Mythbusters Live event at Vector Arena for a treat for my birthday and Fathers' Day combined. It was a really fabulous day and the Mythbusters were really fun. It was very cool to see them live too - I think they're almost funnier in real life than on tv. Daughter tried desperately to get herself picked for one of the on-stage demonstrations but there were a lot of people there....

I've been doing a bit of moving around for work recently, with trips to Auckland, Nelson, Whangarei, Tauranga, and Taupo recently. Most of those have been one-dayers, fortunately. For my sins, I am speaking at the national conference of one of my clients this weekend, which will be interesting. I have been told to start with shock tactics! The good thing is that I get a day in lieu on Monday, which is the first proper day of the school holidays, so I'll get some time to hang out with the family. Hopefully the weather will behave: daughter is learning to ride a new bike and I'm loving mine, so it would be good to go play outside on our bikes!

An undersupply of spoons

How many spoons in the drawer today? It's not a question I've had to ask for some time: how much energy I actually have, how much energy will living an ordinary day will take? Unfortunately today is one of the first days in over a year that I have had to count spoons, and felt that I had a significant undersupply - I opened the drawer, and the drawer was more than half empty. 

The annoying thing is that it is a beautiful day outside and I don't have enough spoons to enjoy it the way I want to. I got quite a lot of weeding done yesterday and I'd planned to do some more today but today it's not going to be possible.

Romuald and Wordsworth

St Romuald's Brief Rule says, "Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it.... Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what their mother brings them." In that being is peace. The world may come with us into our cell, our place of prayer, but when it comes with us it comes into the paradise of God's grace, and wonderful things are possible there.

The world is too much with us, and sometimes at the moment it feels very much too much with us. Wars and rumours of wars, fear, hatred, death, loss, pain, grief. What can I do in the midst of so much suffering? My little efforts feel like less than the widow's mite. But I need to remind myself of what I am, of who God has asked me to be: to dwell in my inner place as if it were paradise and wait there. Even though it feels quite often as though no-one else has turned up - to wait there is a gift and it is paradise. My inner cell is the doorstep to heaven and I should be content to sit and wait there, whether there is sunshine or rain, and know that the world I have put behind me is part of me and is waiting on the doorstep with me, gathered to paradise in my heart.

But no-one said it would be easy. As one of the monks at St John's Abbey preached, in our monastic round of rediscoveries and re-echoes and revisiting the same truths day after day, "we have good days, and bad days, and sometimes just days". And quite often its raining on the doorstep, or it's cold, and frequently it is lonely and dark and dispiriting, and sunshine and light and love seem like a distant dream. A long obedience in the same direction, as Eugene Peterson called one of his books, requires sitting on the doorstep even in the winter when the snow is piled so high we cannot see over it and springtime seems a million years away.

But then there are the days when the daffodils are dancing in my garden and the first of the tulips are poking through the ground, the sun is warm on my back as I do a bit of weeding, and the tree down the road is pink with blossom: to sit on the doorstep of my heart on those days is easy and the whole day bubbles with a deep and subtle joy, even when the world is too much with us and seems to be falling around my ears and I don't know what to pray or to say or to do to help. Maybe it's enough. I pray that it is.

Bits and pieces

I found out that my previous post didn't post (probably because I was out of town at the time and had a very dodgy connection!), but I did get my CMIOSH. The certificate is dated 2 days after my interview so they must have made up their minds fairly quickly!

The last couple of weeks have been busy with clients and the Safeguard conference in Auckland. I always enjoy Safeguard: it's a great opportunity to meet people, network, and listen to some very interesting speakers. This year there were no "superstars" in the safety world, but lots of reflection on the new law, particularly from Australia, as our new law is going to be very similar to theirs.

This weekend is Queen's Birthday - the last of the public holidays for months. The weather has been stunning so far. I've finally finished clearing the front garden, and I've planted my first plant - the first actual plant (above the ground) I've chosen for myself - a little hebe called "pretty in pink" (ironic when you consider I don't like pink!). We put in a lot more bulbs and barked everything, and it's looking very nice. The first of our earlier bulbs have now broken soil, which is very exciting, and it appears that daughter's purple winter carrots may also have cleared ground. It's a bit hard to tell because some other things that we didn't plant have also appeared in that garden! One of them may be other pre-existing bulbs. I hope to have a good look tomorrow when I weed back through the barked areas.

Ordinary doings

I'm getting slightly disturbed. Today is the third day in a row that daughter and I have been out in the garden! Yesterday was a weeding day, clearing another area for more herbs and beginning the big marathon clearing of weeds in the garden in front of the house. Today we planted the herbs (we needed to get some compost this morning first), finished the weeding of the part of the garden in front of the house we were working on, and barked it. So there's now a goodly part of the garden in bark. There's a lot more to do but I get the feeling we're on a bit of a roll.... Daughter is happy to help, and we're having a lot of fun working together so I think I'll leave the cleaning of the kitchen cupboards I was planning until we get a rainy day, and take advantage of the sunshine while we still have it.

After lunch, we headed over to sunny Mt Maunganui for a bit of a wander around, and a swim in their hot salt water pools. Not that we don't have hot pools here (we've got lots!) but we had a couple of other things to do, including a bit of a wander in Bayfair mall - with birthdays on the horizon, we had a bit of planning to do! The Mount is only 45mins from Rotorua and it's so lovely. We finished our day with fish'n'chips on the beach, watching the sunset. Daughter was a little bit upset we didn't manage a walk on the beach, but by the time we finished tea we had only the afterglow left and it would have been completely dark within a few minutes.

And now, I'm sitting listening to The Seekers on spotify and enjoying the feeling of the warmth from the fire, and trying not to fall asleep - all that good outside air and exercise is making me tired!

More fifth mark and other things

Today was a productive day, in and around regular rain showers. Daughter and I tidied up the detritus of her term at school around her desk and under her bed, and then dodged the rain to sort out the strip of garden behind the shed to plant some of the herb and pansy seeds. This means two sets of gardening in two weeks which is pretty much a record for me!

It went quite well because we'd headed off to Bunnings first and acquired a proper hoe and hand digging and clearing tools, along with some compost and a bag of bark. The compost went on the garden we cleared where the seeds were going, and the bark on another bit that hubby cleared around the front. I was stunned how fast the hoe sorted out the weeds - 10 minutes and most of them were gone, with another ten or so to sort out the ones with stubborn root systems using the hand tools. It felt pretty good too!

Now the interesting bit will be whether the seeds grow or not.

Last night we took daughter to The Lego Movie, which was a heap of fun, with masses of references that kept hubby and I cracking up laughing. The story was surprisingly strong, well scripted, and very clever. Probably my favourite bit was when the main characters were on a pirate ship attempting to build a space ship but didn't have a hyperdrive (this is Lego, remember - you can build anything!) and the Lego version of the Millennium Falcon arrived (complete with Lego C-3PO, Lego Han Solo and other characters from Star Wars) and Lego Batman jumped ship and stole their hyperdrive... only in Lego, seriously. There was also strategic placement of "human relics" including a piece of old sticking plaster, a scalpel blade, and glue.... And a number of annoyingly catchy songs. All in all, a good night out and one we will definitely look to get on DVD. 5 stars from me.

And the rest of the Easter Triduum, I hear you say? Good Friday liturgy was quiet, reflective, and well done. Holy Saturday felt empty and cold, and Easter Day was good - although I missed singing the Alleluias and the Gloria again (they did 476 so we didn't even use the Gloria at all!).

Tonight was spent salivating over the gorgeous A4 Pacific-class steam locomotives in the fascinating BBC documentary Locomotion: Dan Snow's history of railways, which we've been enjoying on ChoiceTV recently. The beautiful Mallard and her sisters still have the power to make me drool. They look so sleek and so wonderfully fast. I seem to remember it was one of the few really famous classes of steam loco that we didn't have a model of when I was a girl, but it was the one we all wanted!