Blog Archives

Great Expectations

3/26/2019

I went hunting for seashells and found only seaweed. I do that a lot; go out into life with set expectations. When my plans are thwarted, I feel anything from mild disappointment to frustration and irritation. I can be so single focused that it renders me blind to what else surrounds me.

Fortunately this morning my disappointment gave way to intrigue quite quickly. I’ve never realised how many varieties of seaweed there are and soon found myself immersed in studying their patterns and colours, texture and shapes. I had an unexpectedly beautiful morning engrossed in seaweed!

I’ve always seen seaweed as an inconvenient, messy clutter on beaches but I've discovered a fresh appreciation for another miracle of creation. I must admit I’ve never thought about forests in the ocean, but scientists have discovered that kelp forests play a large role in uptake of greenhouse gases, making a more significant contribution to our climate than we’d ever thought. In fact they take up 3-4 times more CO2 than land forests.

And their slimy coating, that’s to protect the seaweed from sun damage at low tide. Wide research is presently underway to see how this gel can be used as a natural sunscreen for human use to eliminate the need for chemical sun protection.

It makes me ponder on how many oceans of discoveries are still to be made of all that is hidden in the genius of the natural world.

With the innumerable uses for seaweed I wonder why they are called weeds? I guess there was a time when people saw them as valueless rather than priceless. I think that’s what I do when I go out with set expectations, unwittingly deciding what’s valuable and missing what is priceless.

Children don’t do that. They are masters at distraction. They live 100% in the moment with all their senses on high alert, taking in everything around them. They will chase a butterfly, collect acorns and chat to passers by all on their way to wherever they’re going. They have no agenda; life is a constant journey of discovery and to them everything is priceless.

It reminds me of the story of Etienne Soulange-Bodin; an army officer who fought throughout Europe with Napoleon's forces and who for his bravery received the Legion d’honneur.

Etienne was childlike in his ability to drinking in all that was around him. Wherever the battles took him he was captivated by the magnificent gardens of Europe. The flowers, trees and landscaping were unlike anything he’d ever seen before. When he returned to France after the war he is said to have beaten his swords into gardening implements and begun setting out what was to become one of the most famous French gardens of his era. He went on to become an acclaimed horticulturist and founded the Royal Institute of Horticulture at Fromont.

Trees were his first love and he planted an arboretum of exotic trees including two magnolias, cultivars from China and Japan. Through cross-pollination he birthed what would become the much loved Magnolia Soulangiana, with its spectacular pink-blushed white flowers now treasured throughout the world.

One stands outside my bedroom window and for 3-4 weeks each August I get to enjoy the depth of its beauty and haunting fragrance. It reminds me of a man who saw beauty beyond the horrors of life. He chose to invest his life in creating more beauty, with little realisation of the enormity of his legacy. At the end of winter each year when my heart is longing for Spring, Magnolia Soulangiana bursts out in gardens all around Sydney and I know Spring is not far away.

How often I miss the best because I'm expecting something else. I want to become as unblinkered as a child, as opened to beauty as that fine French officer and to always be able to see the priceless things that surround me even amidst the hard things of life.

1 Comment

Empty cups

3/19/2019

4 Comments

Meeting my Welsh family for the first time was both exciting and somewhat daunting. All my life these people had been mere images in our family album, characters in stories I heard from my grandfather’s lips. Suddenly here I was being ushered into their homes.

I’m sure they were as nervous as I was, meeting this stranger from the antipodes, but once they’d welcomed me into the parlour and said, “I’ll put the kettle on and make us a cup of tea”, I breathed a sigh of relief.

It was an icebreaker, that cup of tea.
An everyday commonality that bridged the strangeness of sitting opposite someone I knew all about, but had never met.

I visited six homes in the ensuing days, in those beautiful lush green valleys in South Wales, but one stands out in my memory, the home of my grandmother’s youngest sister, Florrie. She was in her eighties by then and she greeted me with tears. She’d never imagined she would get to meet me and found the moment overwhelming. I’d heard many stories about her and was often told I was like her, but for me she was the lady who sent a Christmas parcel to me every year all through my childhood.

Without fail it would arrive a week or two before Christmas. Once there was a Welsh doll in traditional dress with a high top black hat and red cloak that seemed so special to a little girl. And always there were chocolate English shillings wrapped in gold paper that sometimes suffered as they navigated the December heat and the Australian postal service. It always came with a card attached, “With much love from Auntie Florrie”.

My Welsh grandmother's tea service which she brought with her from Wales

A gift from my daughter and her family - she knows well my love of all things blue.

Handmade by my favourite potter, a gift of art

Not wanting to waste a moment of this precious time with her I followed her into the kitchen as she put the black cast iron kettle on the coal-fuelled stove that dwarfed her tiny kitchen. I smiled as she carved thick slices of Bara brith, the traditional current bread my grandmother always made whenever we came to visit. I relished the time we had together as we sat and chatted over sweet tea in her very best china. I found in her a kindred spirit. We parted with hugs and kisses and that was the last time I got to enjoy a cup of tea with her. I returned the year she turned 92 but she died just three weeks before I arrived.

There’s an indescribably quality about a cup of tea. It has a power to comfort, calm, relax and cheer that makes me think it’s less about the tea and more about the experience. Somehow it provides a safe place to share my heart, to connect me to you, to say, “I care”. It opens the door to listening and being heard. In some strange way it touches us emotionally.

We comfort one another over tea after a funeral, network over tea at conferences and build relationships over tea after church. There’s morning tea, afternoon tea, tea parties and High Tea. It weaves its way seamlessly through our lives and maybe it's become so commonplace that we’ve forgotten its power.

Two of my mother's tea cups, well used and much loved

My mother grew up a mid-Victorian family where tea was not only a vital part of everyday living, but an extremely elegant affair, especially if they had company. Out would come the best china, highly polished silver teapot and starched and ironed linen. The table would be set beautifully with fresh flowers and linen napkins. My grandmother would pour tea through a silver tea strainer and add milk from a matching milk jug. Sugar came in small cubes and was removed from the sugar bowl with small silver tongs, embossed with elegant designs.

It’s no surprise then that my mother followed her family traditions and whenever folk came for afternoon tea she set a table that would have made her mother proud. She made tea time an elegant and memorable affair.

As she got older and folk didn’t call much, she would ring her next-door neighbour and say, “June, come and have a cup of tea”. June tells me she couldn’t decline my mother’s ‘royal decree’ so the two of them would while away an hour sharing stories over the best china and warm milky tea.

At some stage my mother acquired two small wooden tea trays, painted in a shade of clotted cream, to which she added embroidered linen doilies. These took the place of the more formal table and fitted neatly into someone’s lap, with just enough room for a cup, saucer and plate. Right to the end of her life she was a lady who relished well-served tea.

June was at the nursing home with me the afternoon my mother died. When the end came, the nurse offered to make us a cup of tea. I was too upset to make a decision but June said, “Oh yes, a last cuppa with Edna”. Somehow it seemed right, this parting memory of a lady who had made teatime a living memory for us all.

A gift from my son and his family. One of the beautiful things about teacups is the memories they evoke.

My dear friend knew my love of whimsey and beautiful artwork and she wrapped it up in a teacup

My Welsh Toby mug, I was given as a child

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Muriel Barbery

Its such a small thing, isn’t it, to make someone a cup of tea. But when the cups sit empty, the hearts have been shared, the tears wept, the dreams dreamt or the conflict resolved, maybe this simple offering is the greatest ministry of all, and the memories can last forever.

It reminds me that hospitality doesn't have to be elaborate, expensive or time consuming but can be as simple as inviting someone for a warming cup of tea and giving them the gift of your time and yourself ... and therein lies its power.

4 Comments

Creative Minds

3/12/2019

1 Comment

I could easily have missed it amidst the many large, bold artworks on display. It was hung on a small central wall in an art gallery near my home but it caught my eye as I wandered from one side of the gallery to the other. Its detail, colour, and the imagination, which brought it into being, stopped me in my tracks.

In a series of exquisite watercolours, a wordless journey unfolded, inviting me to imagine the story for myself. Each painting flowed seamlessly down ladders, across bridges, through tree roots and down flower stems. It was whimsical, fanciful and took me back to childhood and some of the beautifully illustrated books I’d loved as a little girl. And maybe it was that same sense of delight and wonder that transported me in the moment.

The artwork was Rebecca Shim’s final work for her Visual Arts Examination for the Higher School Certificate and was chosen for inclusion in ARTEXPRESS, a statewide exhibition of student’s work. Its size was deceptive and proved that often the best things come in small packages. She is a young woman with considerable talent. Maybe one day we will be reading children's books illustrated by Rebecca.

The exhibition itself was an inspiration. I was impressed by the thought that had gone into each artwork, using it to express strongly held beliefs or values, or issues which were important to the student. As artists have done for generations, they allowed their images to speak for them.

Rebecca said, “The rediscovery of my own childhood imagination brought about a reverie on a previously imaginative world”. Why is it that one of the greatest gifts we are each empowered with at birth, so often vanishes somewhere along the path to adulthood? Albert Einstein famously said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”, while knowledge acknowledges what is, imagination births what has never been. It is the foundation of originality, the core of invention and the stimulus for innovation.

In fact, imagination has and will continue to change the world. I love a story I heard this week about Norm McGillivray. His father died alone and homeless on the streets of London and Norm has always dreamt of finding a way to change the lives of homeless people. One night as he got out of his car in a secure car park, he imagined it turned into a shelter for homeless people.

In what seemed like a moment of madness, he emailed the CEO of Secure Parking, never expecting to get a reply. But that Friday night as Peter Anson checked his emails, he was captured by Norm’s idea. He said, "Straight away it just resonated with me". Peter contacted Norm and they began to imagine together.

Across Australia over 8,000 people will sleep rough each night and approximately 200,000 car spaces will stand empty. Peter pointed out that most car parks have amenities and could provide a safe, secure place for people to sleep.

Together they are trialling an undertaking they have called, Beddown, with inflatable mattresses and blankets provided. Maybe Norm’s imagination has helped him fulfil his dream to change the world for the homeless.

We are all born with an imagination and its limitless. Like a muscle, the more we use it the stronger it gets. Maybe like Rebecca we can use it to bring delight and joy to others or as JK Rowling said, “Imagination is arguably the most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared"
... and your imagine just might change a little piece of the world.

1 Comment

Hummable

3/5/2019

2 Comments

When my brother was a very little boy, his favourite song was How Much is that Doggie in the Window. He would sing it on cue when my grandparents visited or aunts and uncles came for dinner. It was always appreciated with much applause and "Well Done".

It's a cute song and you can just imagine a little boy, face pressed against the window of a pet shop, longing to take home the dog with the waggly tail and hoping it’s for sale.

Bob Merrill wrote the song. He’s the man who wrote the iconic song, People, sung by Barbra Streisand in the movie Funny Girl. Unlike most composers, he couldn’t play any musical instrument so fingered out his music using a toy xylophone he’d picked up at a dollar store. It’s said when he made $250,000 he went out and bought a new xylophone for $6:95.

How refreshingly simple. So often we put off doing things until we have the right equipment, the right time, the perfect opportunity, enough knowledge or adequate money, and sometimes we never actually start. Bob had a passion and didn’t let his inability to play an instrument hinder him; he found a way to share the music inside him.

Life has become so immediate and commercial. Everything we want or need is there at hand but when we have all we need, we don’t have to be innovative or inventive and we are rapidly losing our creative edge and so are our children. They are so grounded in things; they’ve lost the wonder of the wind beneath their wings.

Perhaps we need more xylophone moments in our lives.

Bob wrote many other songs including, If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Mambo Italiano and My Truly, Truly Fair as well as music for the movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Interestingly, Bob had just one rule for his music; all his songs had to be hummable. I love it! I guess he knew if a song were hummable, it would be memorable. We all know those songs that stick in your mind long after you’ve heard them.

Sounds like a good motto for life … make life hummable. After you've spent time with someone, what will linger in their minds … a moment of kindness, a word of encouragement, a generous spirit, lighthearted laughter and fun or maybe that wonderful experience of feeling heard or cherished?

And the great thing is, humming doesn’t require me to be musical, anyone can hum and to my great surprise, I’ve discovered that humming comes with a long list of health benefits. The research is compelling. Things like:

Increases oxygen in the cells - I've been practising and its amazing how many deep breaths you take when you are humming!
Lowers blood pressure and heart rate
Increases lymphatic circulation
Helps to keep the sinuses healthy and free from infection
Reduces levels of stress related hormones
Releases endorphins.

Maybe that release of endorphins is why humming, like whistling, is such a happy sound. I hear someone humming or whistling as they work and not only do they sound happy, they make me feel happy too. It’s almost impossible to be angry, stressed or resentful and not easy to be depressed when you're humming. I wonder how different our homes would be if humming filled the rooms and transformed dreary jobs into positive experiences.

Its free, its happy, its healthy and can be contagious. Make this week, hummable.

2 Comments

Great Expectations

Empty cups

Creative Minds

Hummable

Author

Archives

Categories