Ruth's Poem

Let love find you

Let love find you, for it seeks you now.

Stand in the open doorway and welcome it in.

This is your home -

this body, that today is heavy and sad,

another day will dance.

Listen – even the small birds

who tease wool fluff from the gravel

bring messages of hope.

See – even the magpies and the crows

are beautiful.

You will laugh again -

first learn to laugh at yourself.

Listen to your own prayer -

answer your own question.

Let life find you, for it seeks you now.

Stand in the open doorway and welcome it in.

Ruth Marshall, 20 April 2012

Sue's Visit with reading April 2012

We started the May 22nd club again during Sues's visit to Castlenel. We sat in the LA every evening overlooking Carrer Mig and we drank some local wine and read passages from books and poems to each other.  These below are John's readings.  1 Sailing to Byzantium   THAT is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations - at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. WB Yeates 1927 2 THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE THE trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty swans. The nineteenth autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count; I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings Upon their clamorous wings. I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore. All's changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread. Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. But now they drift on the still water, Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build, By what lake's edge or pool Delight men's eyes when I awake some day To find they have flown away? 3 COOLE PARK AND BALLYLEE, 1931 UNDER my window-ledge the waters race, Otters below and moor-hens on the top, Run for a mile undimmed in Heaven's face Then darkening through 'dark' Raftery's 'cellar' drop, Run underground, rise in a rocky place In Coole demesne, and there to finish up Spread to a lake and drop into a hole. What's water but the generated soul? Upon the border of that lake's a wood Now all dry sticks under a wintry sun, And in a copse of beeches there I stood, For Nature's pulled her tragic buskin on And all the rant's a mirror of my mood: At sudden thunder of the mounting swan I turned about and looked where branches break The glittering reaches of the flooded lake. Another emblem there! That stormy white But seems a concentration of the sky; And, like the soul, it sails into the sight And in the morning's gone, no man knows why; And is so lovely that it sets to right What knowledge or its lack had set awry, So arrogantly pure, a child might think It can be murdered with a spot of ink. Sound of a stick upon the floor, a sound From somebody that toils from chair to chair; Beloved books that famous hands have bound, Old marble heads, old pictures everywhere; Great rooms where travelled men and children found Content or joy; a last inheritor Where none has reigned that lacked a name and fame Or out of folly into folly came. A spot whereon the founders lived and died Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees, Or gardens rich in memory glorified Marriages, alliances and families, And every bride's ambition satisfied. Where fashion or mere fantasy decrees We shift about -- all that great glory spent -- Like some poor Arab tribesman and his tent. We were the last romantics -- chose for theme Traditional sanctity and loveliness; Whatever's written in what poets name The book of the people; whatever most can bless The mind of man or elevate a rhyme; But all is changed, that high horse riderless, Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood. The lunatic, the lover and the poet 4 Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, That if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear! John Lightbody Recent photos Show details

htbody

May 26 May 22nd Club

The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul
Douglas Adams

Chap1

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression 'As pretty as an airport'.

Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly.Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk. (Murmansk is the only known exception in this otherwise infallible rule) and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.

They have tried to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky,and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional and conceal the position of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not.

Caught in the middle of a sea of hazy light and a sea of hazy noise, Kate Schechter stood and doubted.

All the way out of London to Heathrow she had suffered from doubt. She was not a suprstitious person or even a religious person, she was simply a person who was not at all sure she should be flying to Norway. She was finding it increasingly easy to believe that God,if there was a God, and if it was remotely possible that any Godlike being who could order the disposition of particles at the creation of the universe would also be interested in directing traffic on the M4, did not want her to fly to Norway either. All the trouble with the tickets, finding a next door neighbour to look after the cat, then finding the cat so that it could be looked after by the next door neighbour, the sudden leak in the roof, the missing wallet, the weather, the unexpected death of the next door neighbour, the pregnancy of the cat – it all had the semblance of an orchestrated campaign of obstruction which had begun to assume Godlike proportions.

Even the taxi driver- when eventually she had found a taxi driver- had said,'Norway? What do you want to go there for?' And when she had instantly said 'the Aurora Borealis' or 'Fiords!' but had looked doubtful for a moment and bitten her lip, he had said, 'I know. I bet its some bloke dragging you out there. Tell you what. Tell him to stuff it. Go to Teneriffe.'

:-)


When troubles come they come not in single spies but in battallions

Shakespeare?

Short story

"Helen Collins " I hear my name being called by a quiet calm nurse wearing a dark blue uniform.

I lay down my little ring back pad,the one I had been writing my affirmations in.

" I am safe"

"all is well"

"everything that is happening is happening for my highest good"

"my healing powers are operating on maximum power"

I walk down the corridor past other waiting people. Some are reading ,some are listening to I players,some are drinking coffee out of brown cardboard cups.

The nurse says "I want to test your eyes;"

I have to cover my eye with one hand and read the letters on the lit up test board with the other eye.

I realise I am wearing the wrong glasses.I feel a flicker of panic.

I take a slow deep breath and go ahead covering first my right eye then my left.

I do OK right down to the last two lines then I just take a guess.

The calm nurse gives nothing away,she says that is fine and asks me for my post code.

She asks me go go back down the corridor and wait with the others till the doctor calls my name.

I start writting more calming affirmations in my little blue ringback pad.

The pad has small blue squares ,like the ones in the maths books we had at primary school , to do our sums in.

Nurses come back and forth bringing patients to the laser clinic;showing them where to sit and telling them what to expect.

Helen Collins? my name is called again this time by a young male doctor.

Apprehension grips me when I see the paraphernalia in his little consulting room.

He tells me he is going to treat both eyes today.The treatment will help reduce the pressure behind my eyes,he is confident about this,because in his experience the results were always good..I feel a small sense of hope.

"Is this your speciality " I ask

"you mean eyes" ?

"yes"

he smiles "yes "he reassures me"

Has Dr Chourday told you I am a bad parient? I can't stand anyone or anything near my eyes I tell him.

You are not the first and you will not be the last,he laughs gently, and I feel myself relaxing a bit.

He put drops in my eys and talks me through the procedure.

He has to put a lense on my eye in order to use the laser.

I feel scared ,but, he is gentle and patient with me and soon the lense is in my eye and my head is in place in the chin rest.

It is turing out to be quite painless ,just a little uncomfortable keeping my eye opened,looking at him looking up ,looking down:

all the time his voice is quite and encouraging."that's good" "won't be long " "last thing now"

The right eye is done and I am feeling quite proud of myself now.

I realise I have been scaring myself with thoughts of moving at the wrong time, doing someting to make matters worse,maybe even running away.

The left eye is so much easier I am feeling quite relaxed now.

He tells me, that in an hour the nurse will test the pressure of my eyes.

Occasionally the pressure behind the eyes jumps up after the treatment.

I ask him if have to wait in the corridor.he says no I can go for a cup of tea.

I hear my voice in my head "I have had the treatment and I can STILL see"

I find John eating a sausage roll and reading the Guardian. He gives me a hug and asks if I would likea cup of tea. I want a coffee but have an irrational idea I must have tea because the doctor said " go for a cup of tea."

I sit for a while simply enjoying seeing the abulances coming and going in the car park.

I return to the laser treatment center and I just sit gazing into space letting the relief flood over me.

The calm nurse calls my name ,she checks the pressure of both eyes with her little blue instrument.She says " the pressure in both eyes is normal."

The doctor pops his head round the door and asks how I am. "I feel fine and thank you so much for your work" he smiles "my pleasure"

I skip out of the hospital into a grey rainy day but in my heart the sun is shinning.

Poem on Grief John O'Donohue

Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or might or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.

The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul's gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.