JULIET'S MUSINGS

  I've just finished this painting, inspired by the thought and anticipation of Spring. I hope it lifts your heart out of any winter blues you may have been having...xx Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –             When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;             Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush          Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring          The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;    The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush             The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush          With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         ...

  ....OR UNIQUELY YOU? Something I just read in a book by Eugene Peterson got me thinking, and feeling uncomfortable at the way the term 'Dysfunctional' has become common usage for people/families/behaviour of human beings and/or cultures that are behaving differently or unusually from what is considered the norm.  What is normal anyway? Obviously, this is not to affirm destructive and abusive actions and ways of life - those things should be named as such. I only feel a bit sad when it is applied to our fellow human beings, whose patterns of behaviour or communication is different from our own, perhaps caused by negative, traumatic or abusive things that have happened to them, or simply just the way they are. Dysfunctional is a term more suited to a machine, not a complex human being. The term seems to overlook all the different reasons that a person is unique in their life, a lack on our part of looking deeper. I've been quiet for a while, getting over the loss of my dear...

  Would you like a moment of stillness? Why not try meditation - a rather scary or posh word for relaxing your mind, emptying it of rubbish and coming home to yourself for a while...   It's not easy to stop the continual 'streaming' of thoughts and feelings, but the more you do it, the slightly easier it gets. Try this one, based on a verse from the psalms 'Be still and know I am God'. First sit or lie somewhere comfortable and quiet. Then after a few minutes, speak out loud these words.. Be still and know that I am God... After a minute or two say Be still and know that I am... After a few more minutes Be still and know... Then Be still... And finally Be It's quite hard to come home to yourself, but it's where you belong. You are not your thoughts - who you are is based somewhere far deeper than your mind, more like in your guts, or you could say your heart. And who you are is made in the image of God with the divine spark of life always within you.  It...

  A bit of a strange motif for a rubber, don't you think?! I bought it when visiting the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam when I was visiting my son last month.  He happens to live directly opposite this church which is the oldest building in the city.  It's clock chimes every quarter of an hour - delightful at first, but after a while...!  It interrupts Seb when he's doing anything in his apartment and he goes into a sort of trance for a few seconds whilst waiting for the cheerful sound of 'The Lord's my Shepherd' to finish, so he can carry on with the music he's making or the conversation he's having.  It's very amusing to witness ... 'Embrace don't erase' slides glibly off the tongue, but is quite hard to do in practice, neither the embracing nor the erasing.  Yet it is good advice if you've suffered emotionally, physically or mentally.  We know that nothing really gets erased but if we bury stuff and never process or look at it properly, it...

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with our life's star Has elsewhere had it's setting And cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness And not in utter nakedness But trailing clouds of glory From God, who is our home.   Wordsworth

Recycling - one of the best things we each of us can do in terms of loving our planet. And it can be done so creatively too... There are endless possibilities... Beauty out of brokenness... Unfortunately, life is not always a 'flowery bed of ease' - for some people in this world it has never been. When it comes to our own personal experiences, we are each intricately and uniquely affected by the stuff we go through. I think we have stages of being broken then reshaped over and again in our lives - I know I have!  Some things in us need renewing or changing.  Other good parts of us may get terribly, tragically damaged, and its incredibly hard to understand why. The question of suffering is a huge one and not easily addressed....  But, depending on our response, our sorrows and sufferings can potentially  be turned into something of great goodness. And we'll have an all the more positive and potent influence to those around us due to the painful road it took us to get ...

  Doors in walls? The other day I was in the little chapel along my road (and up a steep hill!) and was blessed by this sight of stained glass reflections creating a magical doorway in the stone wall beside the altar. (By the way, I'm not very religious, but I do love beautiful spaces and places where your spirit can kind of expand - usually out in nature...) It seemed to be telling me something and I got to thinking we can feel so walled in by circumstances in both our outer or inner lives. I've been in a few situations where I felt excruciatingly walled in.  Like when I was in a christian community.  After the first few golden years I began to have deep misgivings about certain aspects of it.  I had made a lifelong 'covenant' to the church, and was told that to leave would mean certain judgement from God, 'backlsiding' from my faith, loss of protection and blessing and basically the road to hell!  I had loved the vision of this group of people and had friendsh...

A thing of beauty is a joy forever, It's loveliness increases, it will never Pass into nothingness, but still will keep A bower of quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health and quiet breathing..... John Keats

I just need to have a quick rant about labels... No, not food labels but labels we put on people... I got very incensed the other week when I heard someone round here saying ' I can't stand Germans' and it got me thinking how destructive and divisive labelling people can be. Quick test - what do you think when you're told about someone, that they are: -  A 'leftie' Russian An ex-prisoner Gay A Conservative Jewish Very rich On the dole Muslim A migrant etc etc If you're not careful, you form an opinion of that person before you've even met them. Which is sometimes hard to get rid of. Labels can form a barrier between you and an incredible, many-faceted person (which we all are!), depending on your opinions.  I've allowed that to happen in the past, but am very careful now not to accept such - often judgemental - labels to colour my perception and reception of someone I meet. I would hate to be defined as being a 'Heterosexual' as if that summe...

  No, this isn't a post about sex, but maybe another time! I had a conversation recently about the problems of having a 'black and white' mentality.  I've had one for years - gradually getting over it! I think it's a problem. It causes you to have a mental dictator telling you how everything   life/emotions/people - should fit into your black/white paradigm, should neatly fit into one side or another, or have a proper beginning and a definitive end.  I have found this just sets yourself up for conflict, self-censure, loss of peace, dissatisfaction and a constant sense of failure. (Moral issues aside - I believe that certain things are definitely right or wrong, like murder/lying/stealing etc, even in the light of the great mercy and forgiveness our God gives us). No, I'm talking about the expectations of our selves or others of how we think life ought to be. Yet life is made up of a million shades of 'grey'!! When I lived in a Christian community, my B/W...

  This will be the title for poems I put up here.... Clouds are glorious Gilded horizon Dewed hedgerows glitter Birdsong tumultuous     but weeping is in their voice Moonrise gentle Grass tremulous in softened breeze Whilst the world is on its knees... Yet my soul sings 'Beauty is victorious!' Written a few years ago whilst on a walk, after hearing about another catastrophic event in the world...

  ...or I would be if I chose to be a nun! You know I mentioned Hildegard von Bergen in my last post?  She was a Benedictine nun and I've recently been reading the Rules of St Benedict, a lovely big-hearted Italian who started a monastery somewhere around the year 500.   I've also been looking at the difference between Augustinian and Benedictine ways of thinking.  Correct me if I'm wrong (visions of an angry monk knocking on my door!) but I believe the Augustine train of thought believes that we were born in sin, we are inherently evil, the world is evil and the best thing to do is to deny ourselves as much as we can and keep away from this fallen, terrible world. The Benedictine view is that we are all made in the image of God, we all have the divine spark of incredible beauty and life within us (though it can get very buried), that this earth shows the wonderful indescribable beauty and being of its Creator.  That we can see God in our fellow human being...

  ...SET THE WORLD ON FIRE! It's a quote form Hildegard von Bingen (1098 - 1179), an incredible German woman who was centuries before her time in her thinking and expression.  She is known for being a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, medical practitioner and founder of scientific natural history in Germany.. But I want to unpack that statement 'be yourself and set the world on fire' a bit from my own life learning over these recent years... I always thought that the  phrase 'Be true to yourself' was really rather self-serving and egotistical. I've been taught and trained to think that 'deny yourself', 'crucify yourself', put your own desires and feelings 'on the cross' and never have strong opinions. To the point that you no longer had any self-hood. Those of us who lived in certain christian circles will know exactly what I mean.  I've been learning recently that, only when you are truly in touch with who you are can...

  Diary entry 19.8.22... Felt like I was being told 'You can make heavy weather of situations, or you can look for the rays of sunshine - it's up to you.' (So this post are for people who, like me, internalise pain and carry it deep inside, finding hard to just have a good cry and let it all out.  Not for those blessed with a positive, glass half full attitude already - you are where I'm seeking to get to!) Suddenly I realised that I've been Mrs Heavyweather for most of my life.  My natural reaction to difficult situations for years has been to be overcome with deep, heavy, 'end of the world' type emotions. True, I've been through some stuff - the breakdown of my 28 year marriage for instance, which was agony at the time, and I've only now come to terms with it.  Being committed to a christian community with heartfelt loyalty for many years, then finding out about the sexual, financial and power manipulation that had been going on in the background a...

  I've only recently realised that I'm a chronic over-thinker and need lots of time to process, whether it be the emotional challenges I've faced, issues with my loved ones, world events, spiritual realities, podcasts I've heard, stuff I've watched on the telly...If I don't try and sort it all out I'm like a computer with lots of programmes running at the same time, my thinking slows down and sometimes my heart gets frozen. This probably accounts for the insomnia I've also suffered from for decades because I've gone to bed with way too much on my mind (sleeping much better at the moment!) A few weeks ago I put the light out to go to sleep and as usual found myself reviewing various different things - emotions to do with relationships, inner conflicts, anxieties over the children (it never goes!), what or how I should have said or done something earlier in the day, who dunnit in the crime mystery I'd just watched etc etc - an endless tickertape. A...