I’ve been thinking about how to mark celebrations recently as balloons, party poppers, confetti and glitter seem to be becoming things of the past as plastic becomes increasingly taboo.
This is a range of gum leaf confetti: pink, green, rainbow, gold… native, natural and bright.
Let plastic be taboo… but not joy. Not the part of you that is whimsical, playful and seeks to celebrate life. Find new ways to do the same old things #celebrate #whakahari
Our friends Marita and Andrew got married today, a beautiful celebration of love and embracing difference. As a small token we gave them sustainable gift labels I had made… they will have many moments beyond today to celebrate together and consciously choose ways to love each other, and to give and receive love back and forth between them. A covenant of family, friends and community… a covenant of love that connects us all, one to another.
In the middle of our porridge plates
There was a blue butterfly painted
And each morning we tried who should reach the
butterfly first.
Then the Grandmother said: “Do not eat the poor
butterfly.”
That made us laugh.
Always she said it and always it started us laughing.
It seemed such a sweet little joke.
I was certain that one fine morning
The butterfly would fly out of our plates,
Laughing the teeniest laugh in the world,
And perch on the Grandmother’s lap.
Katherine Mansfield
Wellington #NZWOMANPOETS
If you love me
Bring me flowers
Wild daisies
Clutched in your fist
Like a torch
No orchids or roses
Or carnations
No florist’s bow
Just daisies
Steal them
Risk your life for them
Up the sharp hills
In the teeth of the wind
If you love me
Bring me daisies
Wild daisies
That I will cram
In a bright vase
And marvel at
Bub Bridger
Napier #NZWOMANPOETS
we weep tears
joy and relief together
sweet and salty
the longed for has come
and, for just a moment,
there is nowhere to be
and nothing to do
but be here with You
There is a time of not knowing
and then there is a time to Know
there is a time to doubt
and pure moments of utter Surety
You are as real in my hearts bitterest poverty
as in the Sweetest Joy it has tasted.
You in all things.
All things in You.
Talitha Fraser
A man struts
the ramp to the platform
pausing here and there
to strike glamour-pose
between gyrating dance moves
and smooth hip-swinging
and off-key singing.
I smile, everyone smiles.
What a Monday morning.
What a beautiful morning.
Talitha Fraser
I am changed, am I not?
All glory be to You Life-Changer
I am not who I was
I am made new
All of who I am, in You
Ruined for anything else
And grateful, bone-deep, for that
If I am rendered fit for Your purpose
Let me not lament what is lost
But give voice to joy what has been found
You are the belonging
My heart has hungered for
Fill and spill from me
And I will know a life well-spent
I will know a life lived
I will know life
Not death, never death
But life with You
Talitha Fraser
I woke at 5am today, I am trying not to fight that but listen in my body or for You.
I rise and go out to the garden and read Seven Sacred Pauses by the light of my phone.
I will keep vigil with You. Quiet and still. Peaceful… and still a blue-beat of JOY from the soccer pitch…
I come back in passing Hawo – she has washed in purifying preparation for her own morning prayers on the mat in the lounge facing Mecca. It occurs to me that, perhaps by the time Hawo has prayed, Maria and her son will rise to say their morning Catholic prayers together before the icons on her dressing table… Bron working, a vigil of her own through the night, healing and helping.
We are a prayerful house. Not together, but prayerful seeking to talk with You and to listen.
Let us listen, and speak and keep watch, all the hours of the day.
Amen
[p.28-29]
COMMUNION
If the Fire has come down into the heart of the world it is, in the last resort, to lay hold on me and to absorb me. Henceforth I cannot be content simply to contemplate it or, by my steadfast faith, to intensify its ardency more and more in the world around me. What I must do, when I have taken part with all my energies in the consecration which causes its flames to leap forth, is to consent to the communion which will enable it to find in me the food it has come in the last resort to seek.
So, my God, I prostrate myself before your presence in the universe which has now become living flame: beneath the lineaments of all that I shall encounter this day, all that happens to me, all that I achieve, it is you I desire, you I await.
It is a terrifying thing to have been born: I mean, to find oneself, without having willed it, swept irrevocably along on a torrent of fearful energy which seems as though it wished to destroy everything it carries with it.
What I want, my God, is that by a reversal of forces which you alone can bring about, my terror in the face of the nameless changes destined to renew my being may be turned into an overflowing joy at being transformed into you.
First of all I shall stretch out my hand unhesitatingly towards the fiery bread which you set before me. This bread, in which you have planted the seed of all that is to develop in the future,I recognise as containing the source and the secret of the destiny you have chosen for me. To take is, I know, to surrender myself to forces which will tear me painfully away from myself in order to drive me into danger, into laborious undertakings, into a constant renewal of idea, into an austere detachment where my affections are concerned. To eat is to acquire a taste and an affinity for that which in everything is above everything – a taste and an affinity which will henceforth make possible for me all the joys by which my life has been warmed. Lord Jesus, I am willing to be possessed by you, to be bound to your body and led by its inexpressible power towards those solitary heights which by myself I should never dare to climb. Instinctively, like all mankind, I would rather set up my tent here below on some hill-top of my own choosing. I am afraid, too, like my fellow-men, of the future too heavy with mystery and too wholly new, towards which time is driving me. Then like these men I wonder anxiously where life is leading me… May this communion bread with the Christ clothed in powers dilate the world free me from my timidities and heedlessness! In the whirlpool of conflicts and energies out of which must develop my power to apprehend and experience your holy presence, I throw myself, my God, on your word. The man who is filled with an impassioned love of Jesus hidden in the forces which bring increase to the earth, him the earth will lift up, like a mother, in the immensity of her arms, and will enable him to contemplate the face of God.
itellyouarise 