Month: February 2013

by

Springtime

The weather is so beautiful today and Spring is so exquisite that I just have to repeat a quote from Thomas Traherne  the 17th century Poet & Mystic

“Heaven! is not that an Endless Sphere
Where all thy Treasures and thy Joys appear?
If that be Heaven it is Evrywhere
…
Heaven surely is a State and not a Place
To be in Heaven’s to be full of Grace
Heaven is wherever we see God’s face.”

I recently took a walk in Painswick to see the snowdrops at the Rococo Gardens.  By the lake children were playing and birds were singing.  The sky was blue and the soft breeze blowing through the trees was chilly but welcome.  The snowdrops were beautiful and the company was great.  It is one of those special places, a sacred space filled with peace and natural beauty, which justify Traherne’s words.
Related articles
by

Breeze

This post is inspired by haiku Heights prompt word “Breeze”.

On of my favourite places is London.  There is nothing so inspiring as the city skyline viewed from the South Bank of the Thames on a summer’s evening.  Imagine feeling a gentle breeze drifting over the river at sunset and listening to the birds singing in nearby trees ~ magical!  Do click on my link to hear the fabulous Glenn Miller Band playing one of my favourite songs ~ the inspiration for this haiku ~ with a nod to one of my favourite poets too ~Thomas Hardy.

Nightingales

Nightingale Nightingale

As gentle breezes blow

Nightingales in bushes sing

Sublime serenade

P1080455 Tower bridge 1

 One of my favourite times of year in the Vale of Evesham and generally in the Cotswold, is Spring, when the blossom covers the fruit trees and the ornamental cherry is out.

 Boughs bend to the breeze

Covering the earth in a

Blanket of blossom

Ornamental cherry
 

Watching butterflies

Their beauty borne on the breeze

Children barely breathe

Butterfly in captivity
 

There are times when a gentle breeze can have a powerful effect, as can a still small voice.

Gazing on Taize

Sunflowers bow to the breeze

And my spirit soars

I will never forget the time I went to Taize.  In the 1940s Roger Schutz was appalled by the violence and suffering he saw across Europe.  Throughout the war years, he sheltered political refugees, especially Jews, whom he helped cross the border into Switzerland from the occupied region of France.  He began to develop the idea of a community based on mutual understanding and respect for all.  He found a suitable site at Taize near Cluny in the Burgundy region of France and on Palm Sunday of 1948, seven men took monastic vows.  They dedicated their lives to working and praying for ‘outsiders’ of all kinds; especially those living in extremes of poverty, hunger, or disease.  Taize is now famous for its gentle and powerful worship built on meditation through repetitive chants, a model of worship which has spread around the world.  Brother Roger’s work continues; to bring reconciliation, unity and peace to all the peoples of the world. www.taize.fr

There is a beautiful icon of Mary in the Church of Reconciliation in Taize.  I would recommend anyone who travels to France to make a detour so that they can spend some time there and see this Icon.
Icon of Madonna and child from the chapel at Taize Icon of Madonna and child from the chapel at Taize
When I went to Taize one summer I had an amazing experience.   I stood alone in a field full of sunflowers, at the foot of the hill looking up towards the church, as a gentle breeze blew.  The wind caused the flowers to bend and the sound they made was so strange.   It reminded me strongly of the beautiful words of one of my favourite hymns:
 Be still for the presence of the Lord
Be still for the presence of the Lord  The holy one is here
Come bow before him now  With reverence and fear
In him no sin is found  We stand on holy ground
Be still for the presence of the Lord  The holy one is here
Be still for the power of the Lord  Is moving in this place
He comes to cleanse and heal  To minister his grace
No work too hard for him  In faith receive from him
Be still for the power of the Lord  Is moving in this place
by

Shimmer ~ haiku

This post is inspired by the Haiku Heights word prompt for this weekend which is “Shimmer”.

Clevedon in Somerset

Clevedon in Somerset

Mellow moonlight drops

Diamonds on shimmering sea

Neap tide trickles out

Frosty day in the garden

Frosty day in the garden

From frosty shed roof

Hang diamanté drainpipes,

Glittering gutters

Strike

Lucky Strike

Lake shimmers ~ Ripples!

Mirror carp lured by the bait,

Fast strike ~ fish landed!

A good catch

A good catch

Setting sun shimmers

On ancient Black Sea coast as

Night train leaves Sochi

Black Sea coast at sunset seen from train leaving Sochi

Black Sea coast at sunset seen from train leaving Sochi

by

Inner Journey

The lion and the rabbit ~ like a lamb to the slaughter The lion and the rabbit ~ like a lamb to the slaughter

This morning I read an excellent post http://merlinspielen.com/2013/02/20/count-down-26-days-left/ which got me thinking.  Why do I write what I write?

I realised that for me it is, and has been for many years, an important part of coping with my journey through life.  Like everyone I have had ups and downs, good experiences and bad.  Probably the worst time of my life was when I was only 5 years old in the early 1950s.  After a serious illness and a long spell in hospital I was considered too weak to go home, so was sent to a convalescent home miles away from the city in which I lived.  It was in the depths of the countryside during the worst case of Myxomatosis this country has ever seen.  There were dead rabbits everywhere with their eyes bulging.  A terrifying sight for a 5 year old on our daily compulsory constitutional walks in the forest.  In those days it was not considered a good idea for parents to visit their children in case it distressed them, so I was effectively abandoned for months on end to what I considered to be hell on earth.

I am sure the staff were only doing their jobs; but some were quite sadistic and the cruel discipline and force feeding I endured there will stay with me forever, and is still the stuff of my nightmares.  I had to develop an alternative, inner life in order to stay sane and survive.  So I became adept at switching my feelings off and pretending to be somewhere else as I went through those long winter months.    When I eventually was taken home I discovered that my mother had a new baby, my adored grandmother had died, and I was a totally different person to the child I had been before my illness and convalescence.  I felt as if I didn’t fit in to the family any longer, and I have felt pretty much like a fish out of water ever since.

As an adult I started going on pilgrimages to find healing and peace, which I did.  But I also found a great deal more.  I found acceptance from the people I met, and I learned how to find deep joy in the simplest of things.  This has been my salvation and is the reason I call my blog “heavenhappens”.   It really does!  I look for the sacred in the everyday things around me and I find it; I wonder at the variety and beauty in all the different parts of the world; I look for and believe in, the essential goodness at the heart of most people.  Then I write poems, stories, haiku, or make drawings or collages about it.  They give my life meaning and purpose now that I am retired, and bring me a great deal of pleasure.

This is the closest I have ever got to explaining myself to the world and I don’t think it will happen again so thank you merlinspielen for the opportunity!

Just today I have been given the opportunity to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, if I am meant to go I will be there in May this year.  Maybe I will write another post about some of the places I have been on Pilgrimage but for now I will finish with some photos which to me show that heavenhappens x

Poppies in my garden
Daffodils in the College grounds at Glos Uni
Hailes Abbey Ruins
Sheep in the ground of Hailes Abbey
Sheep in the grounds of Hailes Abbey
Sunflower in my garden
My daffodil plot and Easter flowers
Spring water gushing at Compton Abdale in the Cotswolds
Bird house made by my daughter
Lake in barcelona
Bakewell in Yorkshire
Autumn trees outside my home
A birds eye view of Lourdes
Our Lady of the Snows
My favourite flowers, vase and small stones
Gloucester Cathedral
Icon of Madonna and child from the chapel at Taize
Angel of the North
by

Sugar stars

Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 photographed by ...

Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 photographed by Hubble telescope (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sparkling stars spiral

In glittering galaxies

Bleak blackness beyond

astronomy

Sugar sprinkled stars 

On a blue velvet background

Heaven  happens here

stars being born

Last week I went with some WI friends to a talk entitled “A Universe of Stars”.  Dr Paul Olver FGS FRAS gave a fascinating talk with slides and photographs as snowflakes fluttered down outside Bromsberrow’s beautiful village hall.  Being one of the many people who cannot comprehend the size and scale of the universe and all that is in it, I found the talk very educational and enlightening.

When I was a little girl my father used to take me for night time walks and tell me all that he knew about constellations but I never really understood any of it!  Now I can honestly say thanks to Dr Olver I do ~ well I understand a lot more anyway: Black Holes, White Dwarfs, Galaxies, Supernova, Dying Stars, Nebula, Light Years, Constellations, Big Bang Theory ~ these things now make (some) sense to me.  If the sky had been clear we would have gone outside with Dr Olver’s range of telescopes, but although it was cloudy we were not deprived, as he had brought along a range of photos taken from the Hubble Space telescope which were absolutely astounding.  With all the new digital photography and space technology it is almost possible to take photographs at the edge of the universe where our wonderful world began.

Some of the galaxies looked like sugar spilled on a dark linen tablecloth and they set me off writing haiku.

My camera does not do justice to what we saw but I have added a few photos that I took to give you a taste of the evening.

Asteroid ~ very topical!
Comet
Craters formed when space debris struck
Polar region
Another Spiral in Space
Nebula
by

The Spanish City

The inspiration for my blog this week is the Haiku Heights prompt word “Sugar”.    My readers know that my mind moves in mysterious ways so please bear with me on these haiku ~ they truly are connected to sugar!

Memories caught in

spun sugar clouds, on sticks

At the Spanish City

When I was a little girl I lived in the North of England.  Holidays were unheard of, but days out were de rigeur.  As we had no car we used to catch the train from Newcastle to the coast, usually South Shields or Whitley Bay.  They were equally wonderful.  South Shields had sand dunes and miles of white beaches while Whitley Bay had the “Spanish City”.  It was actually named the “Whitley Bay Pleasure Gardens”, but to us and everyone else who went there, it was the “Spanish City”.  It was the most exotic and exciting place in the world with carousels, coconut shies, waltzers, ghost trains, magic mirrors, and any number of other ways to lose what little money we had.

Spanish City with Dome restored

Spanish City with Dome restored

I was obviously not the only person bewitched by the Spanish City as Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits had a hit record called “Tunnel of Love” in 1980 which is all about the place.   They too had their origins in Newcastle.   If you listen carefully you will hear it mentioned many times.  This is the chorus

And now I’m searching through these Carousels and the carnival arcades

Searching everywhere from steeplechase to palisades

In any shooting gallery where promises are made

To rockaway, rockaway…. Rockaway, rockaway

From Cullercoats and Whitley Bay out to rockaway

And girl it looks so pretty to me just like it always did

Like the Spanish City to me when we were kids

And girl it looks so pretty to me just like it always did

Like the Spanish City to me when we were kids

Mark Knopfler with Dire Straits

Mark Knopfler with Dire Straits

The link with sugar comes from the Candy Floss which is forever in my memory.  Made of spun sugar, it was huge and soft and fluffy, like a cloud on a stick.  So here are my Haiku

Candy floss

Capturing childhood

In pink and white sugar, spun

Into candy floss

spanish city

Memories meld, of

Days by the coast, sea-mist and

Fairground fantasies

Sadly the Spanish City is no more. The last I heard the dome had been restored and there were plans for a four star boutique hotel,  a care home, new public spaces and an outdoor performance areas on the 7 acre seafront site.

by

Red London Bus ~ Number 24

Number 24 London Bus from Pimlico to Hampstead Heath

Number 24 London Bus from Pimlico to Hampstead Heath

This week’s prompt for haiku Heights is the word ‘Red’.  I considered red roses as it is nearly St Valentine’s Day but then I thought of the iconic red buses in London and I was off!

One of the great things about being over 60 in the UK is that we get a bus pass for free travel on local buses.  This pass can be used anywhere in the country, not just in your own city.  So when I go to London I can travel all over the city on the red buses for absolutely nothing.

My favourite bus, and the one I use most often, is the number 24 from Pimlico to Hampstead Heath.  I usually take a coach to London Victoria then get on the 24 near there.  The bus then takes an hour or so to get to Hampstead where my journey ends.

The route the 24 travels is as good as any tourist bus as it takes in some of the greatest sights of London:

Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament, Whitehall, Downing Street, Horseguards Parade, Admiralty Arch, Trafalgar Square, National Gallery, St Martin in the Fields, Haymarket and Theatreland, Charing Cross Road, Camden Town with its famous Market, Lock and Canal, and finally Hampstead itself with its famous Heath.

On the way you can see world famous galleries, inns, hospitals, statues, universities, monuments, museums, Cathedrals, and lots of buildings marked with blue badges where famous people once lived or worked.

Another delightful aspect of travelling on London’s Red buses is the cosmopolitan nature of the passengers.  People come from all over the world to live and work in London and I just love to hear the different languages and see the different styles of clothes.   By the time I arrive in Hampstead I feel as if I have had a mini trip around the world.

Culture’s condensed in

Our capital city on

A red London bus

Winchcombe in the Cotswolds

Winchcombe in the Cotswolds

Phone box, post box, brake

Lights and barriers brightened

up Broadway today

by

Reckitt’s Blue and cardinal Red ~ Pride

Reckitt’s Blue and cardinal Red

My post today is inspired by Haiku Heights prompt word ‘Pride’.  It took me back to my childhood in the 1940s when women were expected to go back to being proud housewives so that the men returning from the war could do the ‘real’ jobs, which women had done perfectly well while they were away fighting.  The housewives did this for a while, taking pride in spotlessly clean washing hanging on the line, and beautifully kept homes,  which took all day to clean.

 Lines of white sheets hung

over cobbled stone streets, when

Monday was washday

Reckitt's Blue

Reckitt’s Blue

Do you remember Reckitt’s Blue?

I do as I grew up in the North of England in the 1940s when every woman worth her salt would boil wash her sheets to within an inch of their lives every Monday morning.  There were no washing machines, and no kitchen in our houses.  We had a tiny scullery with a sink and a gas cooker, a couple of cupboards and a copper for doing the washing.  The sheets, always white in those days, would be boiled in a ‘copper’ and agitated with a ‘dolly’ before being rinsed in Reckitt’s Blue to make them gleam.  They then had to be wrung out in a hand operated mangle or wringer as there were no spinners then.  The earlier you got your washing out, and the whiter it was, the better housewife you were considered to be.  It really was a source of pride, and the housewives were terribly competitive!  Women used to get up really early to start the washing as it took ages to boil the water.  Washing could take all day so lunch was a quick scratch affair.  In our house it was usually Sunday’s left overs and chips.  These were a real treat and to this day I can’t hear a tune played by Mantovani without thinking of chips as he was always on the wireless on Monday lunchtimes.

Living in a ‘back to back’ terraced house, we didn’t have a garden, just a yard with a coal house and lavatory in it.  So washing was hung out to dry on lines stretched across the cobbled front street with poles to hold it up.  I remember clearly as a child that whenever a doctor’s car, or an ambulance, wanted to visit a neighbour, all the women had to get their washing in and take down the lines so the car could pass!  No-one else in our area had a car so the only time we saw one was when a doctor came to the street.  For years I thought only doctors had cars and telephones.

The history of Reckitt’s Blue is fascinating and if you want to read all about it click on this link.

Cardinal Red Polish was another thing I remember my mum using.  She would paint it on the tiles on our front doorstep and polish it thoroughly ‘til it shone.  It had to be really well polished and dry otherwise it would be walked into the house if you stepped on it.

At the front door she

Knelt and shone to perfection

Her gleaming stone step.

Cardinal Red Polish

Cardinal Red Polish