Our Heart

Our heart is the object of a great and fierce battle.
It is your most precious possession.

Without your heart you cannot have God.
Without your heart you cannot have love.
Without your heart you cannot have faith.
Without your heart you cannot find the work you were meant to do.

In other words, without your heart you cannot have life.

John Eldredge - Waking the Dead

Opening a Can of Worms

Why would anyone want to open a can of worms?
Surely if you have them, then the creepy things are inside the can and if you keep the can closed, they don't get out.
Problem solved!
Or is it?

What if you have to carry that can of worms around with you. Never putting them down, always by your side, wherever you go and whatever you do. You don't have to worry about people seeing them, the cans are invisible. But you have to carry them regardless all the time.

Would you want to get rid of them?
What if you had to open the can to get rid of them?

I may have to open mine sooner rather than later. Too many times over the last couple of years have they become a pain for me. Its as if they are getting tired of being carried around in a stupid can and want to get out! I am scared though. Very scared. In fact, Im so scared that I would rather run and hide and forget all about them.

I have collected these worms over the years. They all need to go back to different places in space and time, and so therefore, so do I. Every time I get close to opening the can. I stop and put them down again.

But, the time has come. I have to open my can.
One by one, I have to sort them out and deal with them.
Allons-y!


Picture Credit by Ann Aguirre

Ow

Ow. My face hurts.

The injection is just about wearing off after about 4 hours. I have dribbled and bit my numb tongue a few times and now I'm just about returning to normal.

Apparently I don't brush my teeth for long enough, or brush them inside enough or floss them enough. I said my sorrys and held my head down in shame. My dentist says she forgives me, but my teeth may not. She gave them a good polish though and they look quite cool!

I have also realized I have quite a low pain threshold and a very high complaining about it afterwards! I am home with my parents so my mum has lovingly rubbed my head and covered me with a blanket to aid my recovery. Its working. Now all I need is a kiss better from my love and all will be better.

Beauty and Intimacy

There is a beauty and an intimacy about skating on ice.

The ice is hard and cold, and yet the two skaters have to use this to their advantage. They have to create warmth and passion.

The man shows his strength by twisting and turning his partner, and she in turn, will show her vulnerability by caressing him.

It both mesmerizes me and entices me.



Brooke Castile and Benjamin Okolski of USA in action during their Pairs Free Skate during the ISU World Figure Skating Championships at the Scandinavium Arena on March 19, 2008 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

(March 19, 2008Photo by Jamie McDonald/Getty Images Europe)

The sculpture taking form

Take a rough piece of marble.
How do you transform it into a beautiful sculpture?
How many chips does the chisel have to make to find the form?

The sculptor makes small slow chips at times and others hard and bigger.
The result is still the same.
The sculpture is being formed.
One way or another.
The sculptor has one goal.

Spring Cleaning the flat and my brain

The weekend was very productive. The flat is now officially spring cleaned and looking good.

Every year, usually in February, but before Lent starts, I perform the Spring Clean Ritual. Its brilliant. Start on one room and make my way gradually until all is well and all is clean.

From Friday to last night I have moved, tidied, bundled, washed, scrubbed, straightened, ironed, sorted, wiped and hoovered. I was alone and so was able to get on with it in my own way and my own time. Just three more jobs to do and it all done. All is well...

However:

Problem 1: Now it is tidy - it can be untidied. The kitchen resembles a show room. I know it wont stay like that for long. As we both have busy jobs, its hard to keep an eye on it and tidy as it goes along. Leaving it to the last minute make it messy and I hate messy.

Problem 2; I am going away for a few days so I cant fully bask in the glory of the tidy. Dentists and a variety of other treatments draw me away.

Problem 3: I miss my love. I haven't seen him all weekend and now I'm going away for a week and wont see him properly until the end of February. I know we live together and I know we get to see each other, but the quality is diminishing and it makes me sad.

We both are planning for the future and so we have to work overtime to save enough and go to courses that will help us in the future. I know it is necessary.

I'm not blaming him (although he is a pain-in-the-ass sometimes- and so am I). I suppose, its hard when you remember how things used to be and then they change so gradually that its only when you look back that you realise how much they have changed.

There was never a morning or nighttime that would go by without a good morning or a goodnight text message when we were apart. This weekend, there was a noticed silence at those times. And of course, Im so stubborn, that I wont be the first one to make the move. I wont. And so feelings are starting to creep in that eventually will tip me over the edge of fruitcakeness. I'm trying to keep them at bay, but they are whispering to me.

When we met, my heart was lifted and danced around on the breeze like a dandelion being blown into the wind. It was the most amazing feeling of my life. Quite often, I daydream of those moments. I flick through my journal and ponder on a moment that set my heart beating once more. I never doubted his love for me or his ability to pursue me. I felt wanted.

I know things can stay the way that they were. I still have a great time with him and I have never been so happy. I have also never been so cross. In the past, I never dealt with my feelings, I would just bottle them up until they got too much and then I would finish a relationship. It was always the way. Until this time. My buttons are pushed constantly, and I'm having to face things I would rather not. But I don't keep things bottled up for long now. Or maybe my bottle is smaller.

It has a taken a weekend to disconnect and the reconnecting will be hard as always. Its like all the wires have been pulled from their sockets and will have to be gradually reconnected one by one, carefully and gently. One wrong wire here and short circuit!

Good luck with that!

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

Kindle my heart

As the moon kindles the night
As the wind kindles the fire
As the rain fills every ocean
And the sun, the earth
With your heart, kindle my heart

Take my heart
Take my heart
Kindle it with your heart

And my heart
Cannot be
Kindled without you
With your heart
Kindle my heart

Abigail Doyle and Liesel Matthews

The language of the soul is gold

Sometimes there are no words to express the language of the soul.

Try upon try, the words do not come.








Touch upon touch, the paint feels the paint and caresses the page.

Thought upon thought, it absorbs and hears the music the paint sings.
Only then can the soul sing the beautiful song that no one hears.

Breath upon breath, it breathes out and breathes out the picture.

spring is coming...

ever thine..ever mine...ever ours...

Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together

Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell.

Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
ever thine
ever mine
ever ours

Ludwig Van Beethoven

What do you see?

Is it possible that we can look at something and not see what is there?

Do we focus on what you can see or what we cant see?

I have looked at this pictures many times because it is in my home, but today, with some distance between me and it, I saw something else. I saw the background behind the image. It was like I was looking at this picture for the same time.

It is often in the things that we do not see or cannot hear or are not spoken that the answer lies.

What do you see?

When we cease to cling to our own expectations and conclusions and begin to flow with life, then we begin to let God’s life live in us.


Paul Coutinho
Just as You Are

Like Glass...

All parents damage their children.

It cannot be helped.
Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers.
Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.

Mitch Albom
The Five People You Meet in Heaven

I want to paint but...

I want to paint...but my painting box is stuck under the bed and I cant get it out.

Better

If I kiss you where it's sore
If I kiss you where it's sore
Will you feel better, better, better
Will you feel anything at all
Will you feel better, better, better
Will you feel anything at all

Born like sisters to this world
In a town where blood ties are only blood
If you never say your name out loud to anyone
They can never ever call you by it

If I kiss you where it's sore
If I kiss you where it's sore
Will you feel better, better, better
Will you feel anything at all
Will you feel better, better, better
Will you feel anything at all

You're getting sadder, getting sadder, getting sadder, getting sadder
And I don't understand, and I don't understand
But if I kiss you where it's sore
If I kiss you where it's sore
Will you feel better, better, better
Will you feel anything at all
Will you feel better, better, better
Will you feel anything at all
Anything at all
Will you feel anything at all
Anything at all
Will you feel anything at all
Anything at all...

Regina Spektor

I am...

I am frustrated.

My mind is filled with a thousand thoughts to say and as usual, they stay beneath the surface.
I cant assimilate them into words. It should be easy. I am a woman of many words - but just as long as I can write them down.

I feel that every time I take a step forward I am pulled backwards by two.

I summon just enough bravery to do something and I am walking in the dark with only a small glow of an idea. It is scary and I don't have the strength to do it yet. Something has stopped me doing what I want to do. It is crippling me.

I want to say so much.

I want to say the things that I want to say.
I want to say that I am happy more times than I am unhappy.
I want to say that arguing frightens me.
I want to say that all that I am meant to say, and not crumble in a sigh of unattainable conversations.
I want to talk more than I listen.
I want to be understood.
I want to say that criticism, however small, truthful or appropriate chastises me into being half the person I am.

I know who I am. I see myself trapped in a little jam jar with the lid screwed tightly on. I look at myself sitting inside, dying to get out, dying to say the words on my lips, dying to explain them so that they can be understood and really understood for what they are.

And then the moment overwhelms me, and I say nothing. And I know that the words sink deeper and deeper and they are hard then to retrieve.

And I am writing this and know I have nowhere to run or hide. I am exposed. I am vulnerable. And I am angry. I am angry for all the things I cannot say. I need time. I need sleep. I need sleep.

A poem

I love you,
Not only for what you are
But for what I am
When I am with you

I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself
But for what you are making of me...

I love you because you,
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern, but a temple
Out of the works of my every day
Not a reproach, but a song

-Roy Croft

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel.
None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

by Elizabeth Bishop