Month: November 2023

Categories
autumn season

Autumn Tide

Photos from my walk this morning at Betws-y-Coed, a lovely town on the edge of Snowdonia, about 20 miles from my house. Dog and I were walking there at 8am watching the mist lift off the river. Was about 3 degrees with that lovely fresh autumnal/winter feel to it. Not quite a nip but almost. The sort of weather that makes dog walkers smile.

Today looked like it could be the first dry morning of the week so, even though I have quite a few other things to do today I thought I’d drive the 40 minutes to Betws-y-Coed, do the 40 mins walk around the golf course and see the two rivers meet, then go to the Alpine Cafe for breakfast and write some poetry. Renly likes both this walk and this cafe [there is a sausage involved so he gallops around the walk 🙂 ] I felt now that I had stopped working in the nursery/after school club, and Mum is doing ok for now, I thought I’d get back to at least once a week taking myself off to write poetry.

It is very much free writing from what I’ve seen and the photos I feel led to take so there is never a plan.

What came from today’s was all about autumn, understandably. But more about my autumn. Not that “oh I’m in the autumn of my life and the end and winter are coming“. Much more a “this is an autumn season where I need to shed my leaves”

I’ve just googled what goes on with leaves in the winter. [Here’s my take on it so all your biologists and amateur biologists hush!!] As light fades the tree sucks in as much goodness as it can from the leaves because they are no longer photosynthesizing and so they turn all those amazing colours.

So I’ve reached a place where I have been taking a lot of goodness from the projects and work stuff that I’ve been doing over the last few years but that means I need to be looking inside of my “tree-self” a bit more. I need to let those dead leaves go, let those projects and things fall.

But what I noticed as I pondered about walking in mulch and compost was that most of the leaves don’t fall that far from the tree so really the leaves are going full circle and being the compost to help the tree keep going.

I feel I have been fighting this process for a while. Trying to keep going under my own steam instead of letting go. I think I’ve been afraid that if I let everything go then there will be nothing. But in fact all that I’ve done will fall at the “base of my trunk” and so give me sustenance for whatever comes next.

Via QEC, God, and a book called Don’t Believe Everything You Think, I’m doing my best to give all my dreams to God/The Universe and let them bring them to fruition. I know there will be things I have to do but I must only do the things I feel deep in my heart and know to be from God/The Universe. It all comes without striving.

These trees don’t strive. They are just the best trees they can be. They don’t plan the seasons, the winds, the droughts, the floods. They just get on and do their thing.

The walk I did today is one I do every couple of months and today I noticed things I hadn’t seen before, but that was because there were very few leaves on the trees. I was looking through the bare branches and seeing the road, seeing houses, seeing sheep and things. If I am wise, as my leaves fall for this season, I can see other things and who knows what might come from my quietly just being, just really seeing and waiting?

Oh and I took this last photograph because the plant in the foreground has brown and green leaves and red berries too!

Categories
local Love

Photos of my park

Here as I mentioned in Love Where You Are are some photos of my park. I took them this morning between 7.45 snd 8am just as the sun was starting to come up. Unfortunately it wasn’t a great sunrise as the clouds were lingering so the colours aren’t great. But it does give some impression of the size and beauty of it. And how easy it is to forget how beautiful the places on our doorstep are.

I’m not sure about the area but the path around the perimeter of the park is roughly a mile, and all the space in the middle is open space for anyone to walk on – except for the rugby/cricket pitch. At the moment though the centre of the park is very muddy and squelchy but it is still there for our enjoyment.

Categories
Father mother

Which parent?

To stop arguments with my children as to which one of them I love best I always say I love the dog best. May cause more issues than picking one of them but …. And here are some lovely pictures of my dog.

I have been watching BBC’s “Woman in the Wall” based around the awful things young girls and women went through in Ireland with the Magdalene Laundries. What really struck me was the importance of knowing the character who is a child of this period wanting to know who his mother is. It is all about the mothers, all about them wanting to know their children and the children wanting to know their mothers. Who one’s mother is is the important factor.

I understand this is because it is easier to find out one’s mother as that is the name on the birth certificate. I know as a single mum I couldn’t put down the father of my child unless he came to the registrar’s office too. Interestingly a man can go to the registrar’s alone and say who the mother of the child is!

But what struck me as I pondered this after was how in most monotheistic religious, be it Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, God is the father. In Christianity we pray to “Father God”, talk about finding the “Father heart of God”, etc. In some progressive denominations the Holy Spirit is mentioned as the feminine part of God but never the “mother”. There are more more alternative denominations who are talking about “Mother God” but until recently it was only the pagan-type religions who talked about “Mother Goddess” or “Mother Earth”.

It made me wonder if this is why we can struggle with religion. We all know it is male top heavy but maybe it is “father” top heavy too when actually what this TV program, and other places where people search for their birth parents, is that people are looking for a mother.

Yes I know in psychological studies having an absent father can have a huge impact on, especially, a girl’s sexuality as well as on a boy’s way of being in the world. And an aggressive father can lead to a son being aggressive. But I wonder with this how much is affected by the way the mother reacts to the absent father.

This is not a blaming mothers, because I am one, and was a single one for nearly 10 years of my children’s upbringing. But it is more opening up the question of why does it appear that people who are adopted want to know who their mother is yet in Christianity we talk so much about God the Father?

Would be interested to hear other thoughts on this.

Categories
local Love

Love where you are

This is the view of my local park first thing in the morning. I walk I do probably five times a week if not six or even every day. Too often I forget how beautiful it is. I will then drive for miles to some National Trust organised garden to wonder at the colours of the leaves, etc, especially this time of year. But my local park, ten minutes down the road from me, is beautiful. I wish today I had brought my phone so I could have taken photos. Maybe tomorrow if the light is right and I’ll just share a load of photos?

But it got me thinking, especially as I’m in this down time of pondering and thinking, how little we appreciate what is on our doorstep – our friends, our family, our homes, our towns, our woods, our streets. I think we live in a world that is too often encouraging us to “reach higher” to “get out there” and to get away on holidays, with work, with life. But really everything we need is on our doorstep for many of us.

I know I have to travel to see both of my children and my mum and mum-in-law and old friends who live in different parts of the country. And I love the traveling. But if I go to them hoping they will fill some gap then we will all be disappointed.

I traveled a lot before I had children and I will always say that one of the things that spoilt my travels was that I took me with me. The me who was messed up and confused. The me who was seeking something to fill that gap. I came home and between meeting with God and letting them fill me and some real deep healing I now like the me I have with me now. But now that I like me I’m not running away from me either.

Perhaps that is why now I can see the beauty in my local park, my local beach, my local all – because I am not looking for something far away, something that will fill a space. Now I know that all around me is beauty from the autumn colours to the bare branches to the wild waves to the still grey of this morning. And then those amazing greens to look forward to in the spring.

My daughter and I always joke that there is a song for everything and I think today’s one would have to be “Everything is beautiful in its own way”

Also to let you know my Mum is doing okay at the moment. We had an awesome time together just hanging out together – something we’ve never done as adults before because we’ve always had partners with us. It was great just to be her and I – holding ladders whilst she changed light bulbs, buying laundry baskets, cooking meals, washing up, watching TV and realising we like some things the same and some we don’t. I’m looking forward to going for a visit again soon. Maybe too it was realising the beauty in what just was rather than in making it a “something”?