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Sunday 25 April 2010


Happy Birthday, Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse! One of the most spiritual and fascinating daughters of Queen Victoria, Alice, like her daughters, was a deeply sensitive person who combined her joie de vivre with a sense of imminent tragedy; a great spiritual seeker whose experiences seemed to turn her back to the 'safe' beliefs of her childhood and then to yield altogether and escape, at such an early age, from this life. Maybe she thought too much...Maybe, like her father, she felt too deeply. Alice was a great soul and a beautiful human being!

Friday 16 April 2010

Tragic Heroes...

Have you ever seen scientists dissecting 'finds' from archaeological digs? They probe and cut and dip things into test tubes and DNA testers and come out with all kinds of discoveries about diet and ways of life in bygone ages. In such circumstances, a scientist must be objective but it isn't always easy to be objective unless we are totally aware of ourselves and our motives. If, for example, a scientist had a toothache, s/he might well concentrate on the dental problems of people in the past.

On a psychological level, it seems much more of a free for all. Anyone can look at famous people of the past and project their own awareness (or lack of) onto that person and I am so anxiously trying not to do that in this post. All the same, don't you think that the more you think about life, the more clearly you see how people are authors of their own destiny? It might be unfortunate to have been famous, since you then become the projection of so many other personalities who wish to dissect you in order to make sense of their own lives, but there are many different ways and objective ways of looking at people and gratefully learning from them.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand remains, in some ways, a complete enigma. Angry with everyone, he saw anger everywhere. Seeing himself as a victim, he became a victim. Marrying 'beneath' (what a silly term!) him, he was murdered by a mere boy. Here was a man who was so unpopular within his own country and yet his voice, had it been heard, was the voice of reason....perhaps the voice which might have prevented WWI. A man who was seen as unfriendly and yet was so loving to his children and wife; a stickler for tradition but at the same time a rebel against that tradition What a bundle of brilliant contradictions...and, like a Shakespearean tragic hero, he had his 'fatal flaw' - he was so angry and, Hamlet-like, saw himself as the victim...and inevitably became that victim. Ah...so much to think about, so much to learn....

Sunday 4 April 2010

Happy Easter!


A Very Happy Easter and many thanks to everyone who visits this blog! May the Spring time and Easter bring you many lovely experiences and the re-awakening to fruition of all your dreams!

Friday 2 April 2010

Gethsemane

Poor Rudyard Kipling...such a man of his age, worked his way through the system to allow his son to be sent to the front line in the First World War. "My son Jack" was then killed and Kipling lived with that sorrow for the rest of his life.

Would the all-powerful. all-beautiful Source of Life - the Creator of planets and stars; of creatures and Nature and beauty - do the same to an innocent child? Surely not.

God, to my mind, is Life. On Good Friday, it makes no sense at all to think the Life would destroy one of the most beautiful examples of Life - Life Itself in its purest form - to placate Itself for the sins of children.

Perhaps, at risk of being a heretic, if we spent more time on the message of Life of which Jesus spoke, and less on the horror of a Roman crucifixion, the world would be more filled with light and less with the darkness of war and destruction.

Poor Rudyard's Gethsemane speaks so clearly of the repetition of Gethsemane. If we want it to end, don't we need to look higher and stop thinking that there is any merit in suffering? :

The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass - we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn't pass - it didn't pass -
It didn't pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane!