reading mamaia's journal

i've been reading mamaia's journal over the past two days. it's been nice to be able to do this in peace, all thanks to my mom who took the kids for a walk every morning since we've been here, allowing me this precious time to myself.

i don't think mamaia would've minded us reading her journal. when my sister and i visited her in 2002, she actually read us part of it, and seemed to enjoy sharing it.

it's hard for me to write about it, although i do want to.
her entries are very similar from day to day, and they revolve around the same few subjects: what she bought at the market that day (she walked to the market near her house almost daily - it's probably what kept her alive for so long); how her flowers are doing (she describes her delight with the blooming of each new flower); how lonely she feels; how hard it is to be old and alone in a (mostly) uncaring world; how nothing she worked for, not the money she gathered, not the efforts she made to build a certain life, made any difference in the end; whether she heard from us (she recorded each time we called and it seemed to make her happy for days; when we didn't call, she'd worry and wait).

but the two main themes i gather in her journal so far are loneliness and god. i can taste her loneliness as i read her writing, and i wonder how she was able to bare it. it scares me to imagine myself in that position, and i try not to let it get me down. from that vantage point, it seems natural and necessary that she puts all her hope in god. it's only in god that she finds protection and companionship. she speaks to him sometimes directly, asking for protection for herself and others. sometimes she just asks questions with no answer such as 'what is this life for?'.

her journal is so raw and honest, that it's hard to read. it's hard to see anyone's naked soul without trying to fix it, give advice, or do anything other than hold it.
but there's another dimension of her journal which i find uplifting almost, and i feel very grateful for it. although not explicitly or intentionally, i feel that in some way her journal provides essential guidance for my life. she is so clear about what matters and what doesn't when you've reached her age, that i can easily see myself in her shoes; and, based on this insight, and, being as young as i am now, i feel that i can make wiser choices.

when i read her journal, part of me feels sad, and part of me feels elated. elated in the certain knowledge that the only things that matter, and the only things i want to do with my life is to love and to give. my children come to mind first when i feel this, especially now when they're so young and needy; but this is a general feeling, not limited to them only.
the other thing that mamaia's journal makes me realize is that the only thing that is truly lasting is my relationship with my inner self, with god and the earth, which to me are all the same.

now when i compare these insights with my life as it is, i'm happy to realize that they're quite aligned. i spend most of my time and energy on loving and nurturing my family and friends, and i am at the same time plunging deeper into developing an intimate relationship with nature, with the unknown and the unseen.

so i feel that overall, mamaia's journal is a precious gift to me, although one not easy to hold.

peace

having a good time in montreal

here we are in montreal, having a good time, enjoying the sun in my parents' back yard;
bouncing on the ball;
sena, learning to sow, aiyana perfecting the art of nose-picking;
showing their new caps from buca;

aiyana preparing for a tea party;
and enjoying my mother's plants.


peace

older pics from my mom

i found these pictures on my parents' computer, taken by my mom:

this one is at the cafe near our house, in april:
and here, you can see sena with her best friend giovanna, at the park, as well as aiyana with another little girl, fatima:
here is sena at my parents' house in montreal, in march, learning how to knit...
and aiyana and i playing patty cakes:
and sena and aiyana being crazy at the table:
in these ones, ed and i were playing ball with the kids last august, and we look pretty silly, but i think it's funny:

feeling really bad about this

we were driving to montreal today, and stopped at a rest stop in vermont. we sat at a picnic table in a wooded area with a little path going through it. even though we were on the side of a major highway (91), the woods made the atmosphere feel nice and peaceful. sena and aiyana ran back and forth on a small path, and i watched them from the picnic table. at one point, some men came in two trucks, and started working in the woods. they were far enough from us that i couldn't see what they were doing.

eventually, it was time to head back to the car and continue our drive. sena ran one more time on the path, and then she came to me, very upset, saying 'mama, those men are cutting down a tree, you have to go and tell them to stop'. i didn't know what to say. we just walked to the car and got in. she was still upset, and told me i had to go and talk to them. i had no good response. i chickened out. i wasn't gutsy enough to go and ask them why they're cutting the tree, although in retrospect, i think this is what i should've done. i think sena's concern was valid, and actually, for her it was more than concern, she was personally affected. i mumbled something to her, like they probably have a good reason for cutting it, maybe the tree is too old.... something lame like that.

the truth is that i felt exactly like she did, i felt sad hearing the chainsaw cut through the tree, and felt even sadder when i heard the final thud. maybe there was a good reason why that tree had to be taken down, but the point is that i was too afraid to even go talk to those men. what made me feel the worst though is that i am setting a really bad example for sena and aiyana, by not addressing something that is important to all of us....

well, i hope that this made me feel bad enough that next time i could muster up the courage to politely walk up to those men and talk to them....

rainbows and gardening

this week, the weather's been very unstable. on wednesday and thursday, for example, it rained, then it was sunny, then it rained again, 4 or 5 times each day. with all the rain and sunshine, i knew that we'd get a rainbow, and on thursday evening, i was delighted when i finally saw it. it had rained hard for half hour or so, and just before it stopped the sun came out. when i looked out the kitchen window, i saw a beautiful bright rainbow. i dropped the dishes, called ed and the kids, and we all ran out of the house, across the driveway, across the field, trying to catch the best view of it. i took some pictures but they don't do justice to the scene...i'll post them anyway.




i'm also posting a picture of sena and aiyana hugging each other. aiyana had just woken up from her nap, and sena was giving her hugs and kisses. aiyana was very affectionate in return, and when i commented on how sweet they looked, she said 'take a picture'. so here it is (you can also see what i'm currently reading, as my book happened to be right next tot hem on the bed):


other than that, our main occupation this week has been gardening. i love it. sena and aiyana love it. we've been buying plants, and i let sena and aiyana pick the flowers that appealed to them the most; i picked some too, and we've all been excited to do this and then come back home to plant them in the ground. i think it's been a pretty good learning experience too; the kids learned the difference between annuals and perennials (which is, more or less, the extent of my knowledge of plants), and they got to see all kind of little grubs as we overturned the soil.

we also planted some flowers from seeds, but these require lots of patience. we sowed the seeds a couple of weeks ago, and since then we've been watching them grow into minuscule shoots, and recently into tiny stems and leaves. still a long way to go before we get any flowers though...but we have all summer.

sena and aiyana also have one indoor plant each, which they got a couple of months ago. sena has a geranium, and aiyana a begonia. they're very loving with them, too loving in aiyana's case, where she grabs the stem and yanks it towards her to kiss the tiny flowers....but so far, both plants are doing well, and maybe it's because they get so much love and attention....we try to water them regularly, but it's hard to be consistent with the kids - sometimes they drown them, and other times they forget. and let's be honest, i'm not known for consistency either...

but i love gardening, i love working with the earth, digging, getting my hands dirty, seeing what comes up. i don't really know what i'm doing yet, but i feel that i'm learning. i've attempted to have a garden for the past 2 years, but things didn't look too good for various reasons. it wasn't always my fault. last year, for example, the groundhog (which was later relocated) chewed on most of my flowers. then, when he was gone, our chickens decided to take dust baths in the nice overturned dirt of my garden, so they dug and pecked and squirmed around, and in the process damaged most of the remaining plants. this year, the groundhog is gone, and there's no sign of a new one. we still have chickens, and they already started digging, but ed put up chicken wire and that should keep them out for a while. it kind of changes the look, but whatever...

so with all this planting and gardening, i found myself yet again in awe of Nature. here i go again...but, each flower seems so perfect and special. i can't help but be drawn into the mystery of the dance that manifests itself through these flowers... i also realized that no matter how hard i work on my garden, how much i learn and apply myself to it, ultimate beauty and harmony is in leaving things undisturbed. can i ever create anything as beautiful and harmonious as a field of wildflowers? probably not, but in the meantime, i feel like i want to be part of spring and summer not just by observing, but by doing something, and hence my little patch of earth where i experiment...

peace

a beautiful opening

this is the opening to D. Jensen's book, "A Language Older Than Words". i wrote about this book before, but i meant to also include the opening passage, which i really love. here it is - enjoy:

"There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the
language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists."

3 questions:

who are you?
where do you come from?
where are you going?

i love reflecting on these 'border patrol questions' (elaine pagels' terminology). as of yet, i have only the vaguest of answers. but i love the glimpses they afford, and how i feel when i seek for an answer. and it comforts me that jesus advised 'seek and you shall find'.




peace

god revealed, and other things

i don't know what god is, but i know that i felt his presence in these flowers and their intoxicating scent this morning. i felt transported, if only for a few instants, to a place of bliss. i felt inspired and uplifted by this presence.

i still have a hard time with the name 'god'. with the label. it's such a loaded term. some people see the word 'god' and form an immediate mental construct of what i mean. i would not want to convey the wrong idea; i don't even really know what i mean by god. for me, it's part mental construct, based on what i've read and thought about, and part intimate personal experience. i could refer to it as so many other things, but i don't know of any one word that captures my meaning and experience of god accurately. so i fall back on the one term that everyone recognizes, and try to explain myself as best as i can.

the other day i came across a term for god that i really liked: "the shadow of the turning". i love this. it's so beautiful and vague and hard to get a grasp on. supposedly, this is a gnostic term, but i came across it in 'eat, pray, love'. another gnostic reference to god, which i love is 'thunder, perfect mind'. it makes me shiver just to speak it.

and since i'm mentioning gnostic stuff, i thought i'd say that i'm now reading another great book by elaine pagels (the historian of religion who wrote 'the gnostic gospels'). this one is called 'the gospel of thomas' and it's blowing me away so far.

i have to admit that i've never been drawn to christianity before, mainly because of the church. i felt drawn to jesus, based on the stuff i heard about him; i thought that he'd be someone i'd really like to know and hang out with. but the standard christian stuff i heard from most church-going people, i didn't think too much about.

i never read the bible, and the few times that i went to church, i felt mostly drawn to the silence and peace i found there. not so drawn to the religious culture, and the teachings themselves (or maybe it was the people delivering them) seemed to me too rigid, and not very spiritual. i guess i never felt god in church the way i felt god in the flowers this morning.

but anyway, reading elaine pagels gives me a totally different perspective on christianity. i love reading about the history of this movement, but most of all, i love her discussion and interpretation of the (gnostic) gospels. this stuff, i feel much more drawn to. it speaks to my personal experience, and i can relate to it on a deep level. some of the passages she quotes from the gospels are so powerful and beautiful, that to me, it doesn't even matter who said them and when. why argue over trivial stuff like that when you're given something that is imbued with truth and beauty? (elaine pagels would say that the main reason you'd argue over who said what and what did they mean has to do with control).

anyway,

peace

sena and aiyana's garden

we went to a greenhouse on tuesday, and sena and aiyana each got to buy one plant. when we got back home, they picked a small patch of earth, asked ed to overturn it, and planted their flowers. they've been very careful to water and take care of them ever since...

a little bit of sunshine

i found a beautiful book by tasha tudor at the library. it's called "the springs of joy" - this title is very appropriate, because the book does capture, through its beautiful drawings and thoughtful quotes, the essence of joy. it makes me so happy just to look at it.

here are 3 of the many quotes that resonated with me:

"What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet,
Long live the weeds and the wildness yet."
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid)

"Be like the bird
That, pausing in her flight
Awhile on boughs too slight,
Feels them give away
Beneath her and yet sings,
Knowing that she hath wings."
(Victor Hugo, source unknown)

"No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.
Take heaven.
The gloom of the world is but a shadow;
behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
Take joy."
(Fra Giovanni, source unknown)

our first trip to the beach this season

sena and aiyana really wanted to go to the beach on wednesday. it was sunny and warm, and they wanted to have a picnic and play in the water with their fishing nets. so we went to a little beach i know at a lake nearby. the water was cold, but the sun was strong enough to compensate i guess...i didn't go in the water, but they did and had a great time. i was able to lay back and relax, while still keeping my eyes on them. it was one of those days that make me really grateful to be able to stay home with them. here are some pictures:

to get to the beach, we had to walk through these beautiful woods; sena and aiyana were very excited and walked way up ahead of me...

once we got to our spot, they ran in and out of the water laughing and splashing, about 50 times in a row:



then, sena slowed down and tried her fishing net. she got some small pebbles, and asked me when she's going to get fish. i told her it takes time and patience. i think she's starting to lose interest...

finally, we had some lunch...

now it's cold and rainy again, no more beach for a while. which is ok because they already got burnt that day.

peace

Bakerwoods

one of our favorite hangouts, Bakerwoods, a little petting farm close to where we live, re-opened for the season. we met our friends there on tuesday, and spent an amazing morning walking in the woods, hanging out with turkeys and other fowl, fishing with our new nets, relaxing and taking it all in. the people who own this place set up trails in the woods especially for children, with little gnome houses, and other surprises all along the way. the kids loved it. here are some pictures:

peace