"Midwife to the birth of a Soul..."

This week a friend and fellow seeker after God passed away.  We seldom chatted at any great length during the 30 odd years we knew each other but he taught me to pay attention to my soul by giving my mind time to ponder and contemplate - to listen and gather the thoughts that meshed & clashed in my mind - to not be afraid of uncertainty - to face the questions and pursue them...knowing full well that this quest would continue until the day we die and we finally rest...body, soul and spirit.

As I read comments on Facebook and later heard comments read at the memorial service the one phrase which kept coming to mind was, "The greatest privilege of a human life is to become midwife to the birth of a soul."[John O'Donohue]  I was only one of many whom he helped birth... what a blessing to have those in our lives who coax our souls to life - who encourage us to find the "dreams that lie at the hearth of the soul."

In the days leading up to his passing I gave him the book, To Bless the Space Between Us, by John O'Donohue.  The last thing he said to me was, "I read the book."  As he agreed that he was now in that thin space between heaven and earth and held strongly to my hand as I sang over him a blessing... his soul was at peace, his mind at rest...

and so, Ken, as you enter heaven ...

"May your heart be speechless
At the sight of the truth
Of all belief had hoped,
Your heart breathless
In the light and lightness
Where each and everything
Is at last its true self
Within that serene belonging
That dwells beside us
On the other side
Of what we see."

Weathered into identity...

Wisdom through small steps and the ordinary...

a quote by Sue Bender,  Everyday Sacred, p.125

"What I am learning is not 'light-bulb joy,'" Helen said that same day. "Nothing really dramatic, but the experiences add up to the beginning of wisdom."  She thought again about the day of the fire. [in which they lost their home] "If I use the word 'searching,' someone might think I'm not content.  My searching is more like that of a monk.  I'm not driven in the search, but hope to keep learning things along the way."

"After my visits to the Amish," I told her, "I had expected to be transformed.  I expected to see big changes.  Instead. I found little changes, and a new appreciation of all the things I had taken for granted."

Helen smiled.  "Maybe that's the beginning of wisdom. There are no answers, there are just experiences."


Nora Gallagher in, Things Seen and Unseen, wrote, "The road to the sacred is paved with the ordinary." and quotes from Esther de Waal, an English historian who has written extensively about Celtic Christianity. "It was a practice in which ordinary people in their daily lives took the tasks that lay to hand but treated them sacramentally, as pointing to a greater reality which lay beyond them.  It is an approach to life which we have been in danger of losing, this sense of allowing the extraordinary to break in on the ordinary."

Further, Nora Gallagher writes... "This then, is a record of what it is like to live with the hand at my back, to live within a world that is mostly unknown outside its boundaries, to live in faith.  It's a long journey into experience and away from idealism.  One imagines religion as making one "good," and various ideal ways of behaving are often touted in pulpits.  But the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.  And none of it works without the weight of experience, knowing something as an experience rather than as an event that passes over the skin.  How this I experiences this event and folds it into flesh.  How a soul, as Margaret Drabble said, weathers into identity."

Kitchen complete...

Well, almost 3 months to the day we started, the kitchen is complete:)

Our freshly cleaned and cleaned out fridge was moved into place this morning and I keep wandering around with a rag in hand wiping off a speck here and a crumb there....  but to get to completion there were two major obstacles  we had to tackle this week - finish the tiles and one more coat of paint.  Doug did the painting, because that's what he mostly does and is fussy about it but never quite happy because of the minute imperfections:) I think it looks just fine.  Another thing - he say's the colour is green while I 'know' it is yellow with a green tinge to it.... interesting how we see things differently.

I finally decided I would tackle the tiles.  Laying them all out according to the two places they would go I found that I needed to cut 17 tiles!  How to do this was the question - did it really require at trip out of the city to use my sister's wet saw.  I decided to ask the stone mason working on the neighbour's fireplace.  He suggested I try scoring the cut line with an exacto knife and breaking it - if that didn't work he would come over later and cut them for me:)

Ingenuity and a strong hand conquered the tiles! I was thankful for the 'just do it' mantra I'd learned from my Yorkshire Granma and my 'anything can be done with a little ingenuity' attitude I inherited from my Scandinavian father.  Holding a putty knife along the cut line I scored it with the exacto knife - then with the putty knife held upright in the scored line I gave it a few gentle whacks with the hammer and then a harder whack and there you have it - a tile neatly cut into two pieces.

After cementing them in place and letting them set over night, yesterday, I stirred up the grout and messed with it for hours!!! but I think the tiles finally turned out okay.

While I finished wiping off the grit Doug painted and there you have it - after a good night's sleep we awoke this morning to a renovated kitchen!  It's not large but it is certainly adequate and pleasant - and so absolutely beautifully warm in colour, especially when the sun shines in, that I am loath to put up any type of window covering.

com·plete/kəmˈplēt/

Adjective:	Having all the necessary or appropriate parts.
Verb:	Finish making or doing.
Synonyms:	adjective.  perfect - entire - whole - total - absolute - full verb.  finish - end - terminate - conclude - accomplish