I wonder what Summer Solstice would be like without the potential jinx of Christmas?
Christmas is a time of very mixed feelings for me, as it appears to be for many of us. Christmas can be summer, high times and happy family gatherings. It can also be a time that feels relentlessly busy and not at all joyful.
In my family of birth we often travelled to family for Christmas and I would arrive feeling car sick and anxious about the tensions that I could feel but couldn’t name.
On the plus side I loved all the carols, the candles at midnight on Christmas Eve and the opening of presents on the day. We were never far from a beach on our holidays so Boxing Day onwards was often blissful with sun, sand and seawater.
Once I had my own family and several marriages I had even more family and tension to spread myself around. Rescue remedy became the order of the day, particularly the years I did Christmas without my children.
Sometimes I would run to the beach and just hide, excusing myself from multiple family gatherings – so a regular tension for me between my love of the season of summer and my up and down feelings about Christmas.
As the first Pohutukawa triumphantly open into glorious crimson flower from mid November onward how can I integrate my understanding of the themes of Summer Solstice and the themes of Christmas so that I don’t feel like a somewhat hysterical, discombobulated banshee?
In part I plan to do this by pausing for the Summer Solstice as a celebration in its own right. If Auckland weather obliges this is a time of brightness, warmth and the sheer joy of being out in nature. I plan to sit out in the weather and let my heart energy and the energy of the sun infuse each other. I love the idea of holding ‘lightness’ as central to this time, of radiance whether in our energy or the beauty of nature around us. I might invite a few people to share this time with me, exchanging achievements and affirming our lives.
Notice I said I plan and might – writing this article has really highlighted for me just how stressful I experience this time of year. So anything I can do to transform this for myself has got to be good for me! Perhaps I can take the light and warmth of the Solstice into Christmas with me.
Coming just before Christmas, as Juliet Batten suggests, “…, summer solstice is the threshold to the holiday season, and by giving thanks for what has been completed, we can let go of the working year and step forward and enjoy the break that lies ahead.”
I do take personal solace each year in the pre-Christmas gatherings with my women friends. At these we share good food, celebrate, bemoan and cry about the year just gone and ‘gift’ each other in the truest sense - often with real gifts and just as likely with laughter, love and listening. I treasure and look forward to these gatherings.
In New Zealand Summer Solstice and Christmas do happen together so my opening question requires an answer that allows both to be a blessing in my life rather than a non-event and a curse.
The answer for me lies in owning up to the fullness of all my feelings, of taking the time to give thanks for the bounty and the gifts I have in my life, of taking the best bits for me of Christmas, the giving and the receiving, and declining to participate in anything that has me feeling disoriented and distressed.
When all else fails poetry reminds and revives me. May it do so for you.
From “Nativity” - Joy Cowley
p.30 “Spirit in a Strange Land: A SELECTION OF NEW ZEALAND SPIRITUAL VERSE”, ed., Paul Morris, Harry Ricketts & Mike Grimshaw, Godwit 2002
“Look now! It is happening again! Love like a high spring
tide is swelling to fullness and overflowing the banks
of our small concerns.
And here again is the star, that white flame of truth blazing
the way for us through a desert of tired ways.
Once more comes the music, angel song that lifts our
hearts and tunes our ears to the harmony of the universe,
making us wonder how we ever could have forgotten.
And now the magi within us gathers up gifts of gold
and myrrh, while that other part of ourselves, the impulsive,
reckless shepherd, runs helter skelter with arms
outstretched to embrace the wonder of it all.
We have no words to contain our praise. We ache with
awe, we tremble with miracle, as once again, in the small
rough stable of our lives, Christ is born.”
Or from Michael Leunig (“The Prayer Tree”, HarperCollinsPublishers, 1990)
“We welcome summer and the glorious
blessing of light. We are rich with light;
we are loved by the sun. Let us empty our
hearts into the brilliance. Let us pour our
darkness into the glorious, forgiving light.
For this loving abundance let us give thanks
and offer our joy.
AMEN
Arohanui
Kerry-Ann
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Saturday, May 27, 2006
On Being at Home – further personal sharing
Well as mentioned last time I’m moved – talk about a literal transition from one age (pre 49) to the next stage (post 49). We moved the day after my birthday and the last month has been tempestuous – weather, humour and day to day!
I have always liked the notion that spirituality involves honouring the extraordinary of the ordinary and the ordinariness of the extraordinary. It helps to make sense of wherever and however I find myself – which is a bit all over the place currently as I physically and emotionally come home to my new physical home and the being I am and desire to be.
I can’t say I have triumphantly sounded the trumpets of jubilee time yet - however I just love my new home. Disarray and all it just feels right, both in terms of the feel of the house and the feel of the land. Someone recently described nature to me as the ‘sacred naked’. What a privilege for me to be more deeply connected with the land. I already have a different sense of coming home to a community where I fit better and make more sense to the people around me. Simple things like neighbours who talk with us, friends I can now meet just walking distance away, events I am drawn to AND a home I feel like spending more time in. As I practise meditation and explore my living further I am seeking to come more clearly home to myself.
Virginia Woolf is quoted as saying that all women need “peace, acceptance, personal income and a room of their own.” I endeavour to live my life based on this – and have created as a basic purchase condition a beautiful room of my own for meditation, creating and just sitting – a by invitation only space. I am grateful to have sufficient personal income and experience peace and acceptance as a life long journey!
May Matariki provide for you a deepening sense of connection with self, others and the land – a sense of being ‘at home’ whatever that is for you.
Arohanui
Kerry-Ann
I have always liked the notion that spirituality involves honouring the extraordinary of the ordinary and the ordinariness of the extraordinary. It helps to make sense of wherever and however I find myself – which is a bit all over the place currently as I physically and emotionally come home to my new physical home and the being I am and desire to be.
I can’t say I have triumphantly sounded the trumpets of jubilee time yet - however I just love my new home. Disarray and all it just feels right, both in terms of the feel of the house and the feel of the land. Someone recently described nature to me as the ‘sacred naked’. What a privilege for me to be more deeply connected with the land. I already have a different sense of coming home to a community where I fit better and make more sense to the people around me. Simple things like neighbours who talk with us, friends I can now meet just walking distance away, events I am drawn to AND a home I feel like spending more time in. As I practise meditation and explore my living further I am seeking to come more clearly home to myself.
Virginia Woolf is quoted as saying that all women need “peace, acceptance, personal income and a room of their own.” I endeavour to live my life based on this – and have created as a basic purchase condition a beautiful room of my own for meditation, creating and just sitting – a by invitation only space. I am grateful to have sufficient personal income and experience peace and acceptance as a life long journey!
May Matariki provide for you a deepening sense of connection with self, others and the land – a sense of being ‘at home’ whatever that is for you.
Arohanui
Kerry-Ann
Monday, May 15, 2006
Musing on love
When I compose these articles I tend to write from whatever my current preoccupation is. This time I am musing on love, realising that this is an unrealistically ambitious topic for a short piece. Accordingly it is a collection of threads that are part of my living – marriages, children and my spiritual journeying through reflections on Rumi.
January to early April sees me in the thick of the wedding season, meeting couples and writing ceremonies of marriage with and for them. Love and marriage are expected to go together, so love gets to be a big part of what we talk about and what I am challenged to write about in a way that makes sense to all the different couples!
Some want it simple, nothing too frilly or romantic - “We only know what we have always known, that without love we live alone.” (Denis Glover)
Some find a poem or reading that expresses the essence of what they mean to each other, so for example, “Love is friendship that has caught fire …” (unknown) or “because to the depths of me, I long to love one person, with all my heart, my soul, my mind, my body...” (Mari Nichols)
Many welcome it as an opportunity to acknowledge each other in ways we often don’t make the time or place to do.
“ … I love you for putting your hand into my heaped up heart and passing over all the foolish, weak things that you can’t help dimly seeing there, ad for drawing out into the light all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find…” (Roy Croft)
And sometimes the marriage is a celebration of a long love and friendship. “Young love is a flame – very pretty – often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.” (Henry Ward Beecher)
I am deeply privileged to participate in people’s lives at this level. Time and again I get to reflect myself on love. It helps keep me softer and more loving, both toward myself as it reminds me of the best that as humans we can aspire to and toward others as I share their journey of making sense of our being human.
Today, as I was writing this, a friend sent me one of those quick flick emails that go around every so often. It’s heading – “What does love mean?” A group of professional people had posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds. The following responses really appealed to me.
"When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love." Rebecca- age 8
"Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well." Tommy - age 6
"You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget." Jessica - age 8
The children’s responses point to an understanding of love over time, of love surviving challenges and our need to know we are loved. I am a step-grandmother, Nonni K, to two young children. My step-son has only been in our lives for the last eight years as he was adopted at birth. So almost simultaneously we have become birth father and step mother and warmly welcomed and now loved grandparents. No rules for this experience, just an intention to be loving and loved, that we grow into with each visit.
My spiritual journey encompasses mystical Sufism – in particular the writings and teachings of Rumi. I am currently reading and reflecting on a book by Kabir Edmund Helminski – “Living Presence – A Sufi way to mindfulness & the essential self.”
One of the chapters is entitled “What we love we will become”. I find that certain sentences leap out for my contemplation; “whatever the soul chooses to love, it will resemble.” And therefore what we choose to love is important.”
In talking about love for the Spirit or agape he talks of how “Spirit within us can love Spirit in everything. “…our openness, our relatedness, and our engagement are the measure of our love.”
Easier perhaps for me to do when working with couples on their marriage, definitely an energy I endeavour to bring to all my work, even when dealing with people experiencing strife or overwhelm in their work and living.
When I am asked “how are things” - I will often reply, “I am blessed to lead a full life.” Usually meaning I have been really busy! What might be more real and truthful is that “I am blessed to lead a full and loving life.”
When I remarried in 2000 we had the following blessing:
May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk, this marriage, like wine and halvah.
May this marriage offer fruit and shade like the date palm.
May this marriage be full of laughter,
Our every day a day in a paradise.
May this marriage be a sign of compassion,
A seal of happiness here and hereafter.
May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,
An omen as welcome as the moon in a clear blue sky.
I am out of words to describe how spirit mingles in this marriage - Rumi
I could replace the word marriage with the word life and I would have some way of speaking to the blessed life I lead as I am indeed, “out of words to describe how spirit mingles in this life.”
Arohanui Kerry-Ann
January to early April sees me in the thick of the wedding season, meeting couples and writing ceremonies of marriage with and for them. Love and marriage are expected to go together, so love gets to be a big part of what we talk about and what I am challenged to write about in a way that makes sense to all the different couples!
Some want it simple, nothing too frilly or romantic - “We only know what we have always known, that without love we live alone.” (Denis Glover)
Some find a poem or reading that expresses the essence of what they mean to each other, so for example, “Love is friendship that has caught fire …” (unknown) or “because to the depths of me, I long to love one person, with all my heart, my soul, my mind, my body...” (Mari Nichols)
Many welcome it as an opportunity to acknowledge each other in ways we often don’t make the time or place to do.
“ … I love you for putting your hand into my heaped up heart and passing over all the foolish, weak things that you can’t help dimly seeing there, ad for drawing out into the light all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find…” (Roy Croft)
And sometimes the marriage is a celebration of a long love and friendship. “Young love is a flame – very pretty – often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.” (Henry Ward Beecher)
I am deeply privileged to participate in people’s lives at this level. Time and again I get to reflect myself on love. It helps keep me softer and more loving, both toward myself as it reminds me of the best that as humans we can aspire to and toward others as I share their journey of making sense of our being human.
Today, as I was writing this, a friend sent me one of those quick flick emails that go around every so often. It’s heading – “What does love mean?” A group of professional people had posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds. The following responses really appealed to me.
"When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love." Rebecca- age 8
"Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well." Tommy - age 6
"You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget." Jessica - age 8
The children’s responses point to an understanding of love over time, of love surviving challenges and our need to know we are loved. I am a step-grandmother, Nonni K, to two young children. My step-son has only been in our lives for the last eight years as he was adopted at birth. So almost simultaneously we have become birth father and step mother and warmly welcomed and now loved grandparents. No rules for this experience, just an intention to be loving and loved, that we grow into with each visit.
My spiritual journey encompasses mystical Sufism – in particular the writings and teachings of Rumi. I am currently reading and reflecting on a book by Kabir Edmund Helminski – “Living Presence – A Sufi way to mindfulness & the essential self.”
One of the chapters is entitled “What we love we will become”. I find that certain sentences leap out for my contemplation; “whatever the soul chooses to love, it will resemble.” And therefore what we choose to love is important.”
In talking about love for the Spirit or agape he talks of how “Spirit within us can love Spirit in everything. “…our openness, our relatedness, and our engagement are the measure of our love.”
Easier perhaps for me to do when working with couples on their marriage, definitely an energy I endeavour to bring to all my work, even when dealing with people experiencing strife or overwhelm in their work and living.
When I am asked “how are things” - I will often reply, “I am blessed to lead a full life.” Usually meaning I have been really busy! What might be more real and truthful is that “I am blessed to lead a full and loving life.”
When I remarried in 2000 we had the following blessing:
May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk, this marriage, like wine and halvah.
May this marriage offer fruit and shade like the date palm.
May this marriage be full of laughter,
Our every day a day in a paradise.
May this marriage be a sign of compassion,
A seal of happiness here and hereafter.
May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,
An omen as welcome as the moon in a clear blue sky.
I am out of words to describe how spirit mingles in this marriage - Rumi
I could replace the word marriage with the word life and I would have some way of speaking to the blessed life I lead as I am indeed, “out of words to describe how spirit mingles in this life.”
Arohanui Kerry-Ann
Friday, May 12, 2006
Inner & Outer Spring
First Light has just passed and already the light is shifting in the patterns of shadows through the trees and the stunning beauty of magnolias that bloom just as I am feeling fed up with the dark. I marked First Light very simply by myself this year – setting up an altar with ferns, a white candle, a paua inspired small bowl with a simple white rock in it and a green frog symbolizing cleansing. My reflections focused on questions posed by Juliet Batten.
¬ What needs cleansing and purifying in your life?
¬ What delicate new growth needs your support right now?
¬ What creative action are you inspired to undertake?
¬ What is emerging in you and seeking the light?
The answers that came from these questions lead me onto Spring in this article.
Last Spring I wrote on how in our full and busy lives it is often easy to just survive rather than thrive. One thriving strategy I talked about was to acknowledge the seasons, not just those of nature but also the seasons of our own lives.
This year as spring approaches I am reflecting on my inner spring and anticipating the outer spring. I am also thinking in questions rather than having to have answers or as Thich Nah Hanh has said, “don’t just do something, sit there!” Still a discipline for me I have to say.
So I return to Juliet Batten’s Inner Focus questions for Spring – the ones that appeal to me are:
¬ What new quality, attitude or activity do you want to encourage?
¬ How can you care for the earth?
¬ How can you support what is greening in you right now?
These questions and my responses address inner and outer spring. I am seeking, now I feel more physically at home, to develop my vision for community celebrancy. I am looking to sow the seeds of this with colleagues over the next year. My new home has a number of plants now regarded as noxious weeds by Waitakere City. Our plan this first spring season is to get advice on what needs to be removed and the safest ways of doing this. So this spring will be about clearing the way, getting an idea about what will be needed in our garden in the future. As to what is greening in me – well I am meditating on this and staying open. My spiritual self, my sense of the sacred and a personal connection to the divine are the tendrils of new growth that are active in me.
I have chosen to use Juliet’s Inner focus questions – you could choose your own questions. The important thing from my perspective is to take time, to regroup your self from the depths of winter and claim in your own way the ‘rights’ of spring – renewal, energy, balance and hope.
Arohanui Kerry-Ann
Batten, Juliet – “CELEBRATING the SOUTHERN SEASONS – Rituals for Aotearoa.” Random House, revised edition, 2005.
¬ What needs cleansing and purifying in your life?
¬ What delicate new growth needs your support right now?
¬ What creative action are you inspired to undertake?
¬ What is emerging in you and seeking the light?
The answers that came from these questions lead me onto Spring in this article.
Last Spring I wrote on how in our full and busy lives it is often easy to just survive rather than thrive. One thriving strategy I talked about was to acknowledge the seasons, not just those of nature but also the seasons of our own lives.
This year as spring approaches I am reflecting on my inner spring and anticipating the outer spring. I am also thinking in questions rather than having to have answers or as Thich Nah Hanh has said, “don’t just do something, sit there!” Still a discipline for me I have to say.
So I return to Juliet Batten’s Inner Focus questions for Spring – the ones that appeal to me are:
¬ What new quality, attitude or activity do you want to encourage?
¬ How can you care for the earth?
¬ How can you support what is greening in you right now?
These questions and my responses address inner and outer spring. I am seeking, now I feel more physically at home, to develop my vision for community celebrancy. I am looking to sow the seeds of this with colleagues over the next year. My new home has a number of plants now regarded as noxious weeds by Waitakere City. Our plan this first spring season is to get advice on what needs to be removed and the safest ways of doing this. So this spring will be about clearing the way, getting an idea about what will be needed in our garden in the future. As to what is greening in me – well I am meditating on this and staying open. My spiritual self, my sense of the sacred and a personal connection to the divine are the tendrils of new growth that are active in me.
I have chosen to use Juliet’s Inner focus questions – you could choose your own questions. The important thing from my perspective is to take time, to regroup your self from the depths of winter and claim in your own way the ‘rights’ of spring – renewal, energy, balance and hope.
Arohanui Kerry-Ann
Batten, Juliet – “CELEBRATING the SOUTHERN SEASONS – Rituals for Aotearoa.” Random House, revised edition, 2005.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Autumn – ‘it’s just time’ - threads of thought
Thread One
Last year in winter and this year in summer I have been asked “why”?
My reply; “it’s just time”.
So simple really – each time there has been a list of reasons and yet it was just time. Time last year to leave my salaried work and work for myself. As autumn approaches, yes, I am reaping the benefits of that leap of faith.
This year, time to sell the home I have lived in for the longest time ever and yes, it feels the right time to us all. Now is the time to find a home that takes different care of me - a place of sacred retreat. As autumn draws near it is my wish that we will be settled in our new home ready for the winter.
Thread Two
Autumn is a time that just is – each year it is autumn – just because. The seasons parallel our outward experience of aging. Simply by living we experience the cycle of seasons in nature and we age. How we think about this though can affect our experience of the seasons of our lives.
Juliet Batten talks of the autumn equinox as a ‘transition from outer to inner, from above to below, from light into dark’.
My ‘it’s just time’ is my inner, deep intuition of time and timing, while the outer experience of this is making the decisions happen. In the case of my house using the energy and vigour of summer to clean, repair and present our home for sale!
Thread Three
As the outer world comes into autumn my inner autumn begins. I will turn 49 in April and I regard this as a time worth marking and celebrating. In Hebrew tradition they speak of the Jubilee Time – where one dons the mantle of all one’s life that has gone before (the 7 x 7 years) and sounding the trumpets triumphantly stepping into the life that is to unfold. Barbara Sher talks of the first half of our lives belonging to society and our biology – working, raising families etc. The second half of our lives is ours to craft if we would have it be so. And for me ‘it is time’ for this to be so.
Living
Working
Hanging in
Holding on
Leaving
Reaping
Blessings
Blessings of marriage
Weathered this time
Life persevered
My turn
My time
Time in spirituality
Feminine divine time
Right time
Enough time
Time it is
Blessed be
Arohanui
Kerry-Ann
Highly recommended reading:
Batten, Juliet, Celebrating the Southern Seasons – Rituals of Aotearoa, Random House Publ. Revised edition 2005
Harris, Maria, JUBILEE TIME – Celebrating Women, Spirit, and the Advent of Age, Bantam Books 1995.
Sher, Barbara, it’s only too late If You Don’t Start Now – How to Create Your Second Life at Any Age, Dell Publishing 1998
Last year in winter and this year in summer I have been asked “why”?
My reply; “it’s just time”.
So simple really – each time there has been a list of reasons and yet it was just time. Time last year to leave my salaried work and work for myself. As autumn approaches, yes, I am reaping the benefits of that leap of faith.
This year, time to sell the home I have lived in for the longest time ever and yes, it feels the right time to us all. Now is the time to find a home that takes different care of me - a place of sacred retreat. As autumn draws near it is my wish that we will be settled in our new home ready for the winter.
Thread Two
Autumn is a time that just is – each year it is autumn – just because. The seasons parallel our outward experience of aging. Simply by living we experience the cycle of seasons in nature and we age. How we think about this though can affect our experience of the seasons of our lives.
Juliet Batten talks of the autumn equinox as a ‘transition from outer to inner, from above to below, from light into dark’.
My ‘it’s just time’ is my inner, deep intuition of time and timing, while the outer experience of this is making the decisions happen. In the case of my house using the energy and vigour of summer to clean, repair and present our home for sale!
Thread Three
As the outer world comes into autumn my inner autumn begins. I will turn 49 in April and I regard this as a time worth marking and celebrating. In Hebrew tradition they speak of the Jubilee Time – where one dons the mantle of all one’s life that has gone before (the 7 x 7 years) and sounding the trumpets triumphantly stepping into the life that is to unfold. Barbara Sher talks of the first half of our lives belonging to society and our biology – working, raising families etc. The second half of our lives is ours to craft if we would have it be so. And for me ‘it is time’ for this to be so.
Living
Working
Hanging in
Holding on
Leaving
Reaping
Blessings
Blessings of marriage
Weathered this time
Life persevered
My turn
My time
Time in spirituality
Feminine divine time
Right time
Enough time
Time it is
Blessed be
Arohanui
Kerry-Ann
Highly recommended reading:
Batten, Juliet, Celebrating the Southern Seasons – Rituals of Aotearoa, Random House Publ. Revised edition 2005
Harris, Maria, JUBILEE TIME – Celebrating Women, Spirit, and the Advent of Age, Bantam Books 1995.
Sher, Barbara, it’s only too late If You Don’t Start Now – How to Create Your Second Life at Any Age, Dell Publishing 1998
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