Little Boat on the Ocean

I heard this song a month ago.  It is by Beverley Elliot from her CD Sunday Morning.

It has helped me immensely and I want to share it with all of you.

Little Boat on the Ocean (the 2nd song on her website gives you a taste of the first verses and the chorus.(

Little boat on the ocean rowing along
Little boat on the ocean be strong
There's a light in the harbour
Beckons you in
Little boat on the ocean be strong

Little shell on the seashore
Washed in the sand
Little shell on the seashore be strong
Theres a wave that is coming
to help you along
Little shell on the seashore be strong

Let love take you by the hand
Give you courage to stand
In the holiest place
In the presence of grace
In the quiet and calm
It is clear
In the dark of the night
You will hear Love
calling you,  calling you
Hear Love
calling you, calling you
Hear Love
calling you, calling you
home.

Little bird in the treetop
singing so true
Little bird in the treetop
be strong
There are 10000 people
they're singing with you
Little bird in the treetop
be strong

Let Love take you by the hand
give you courage to stand
In the holiest place
In the presence of Grace
In the quiet and calm
It is clear
In the dark of the night
You will

Hear Love
calling you,  calling you
Hear Love
calling you, calling you
Hear Love
calling you, calling you
Hear love
Calling you, calling you
Hear Love
Calling you, calling you
Hear Love
Calling you, calling you
Home

Little boat on the ocean rowing along
Little boat on the ocean rowing along
Little boat on the ocean
Be strong.





I am planning to post daily through  Advent starting tomorrow. Please join me.

Peace to you all this Advent season.

Waking up from a dream

It was one of those awful early morning dreams: conflict, misunderstanding, loss, sadness.....

and then a knock on our camper door.

Two little girls, four and seven, scampered in, chattering away, shaking off winter boots, crawling up onto the bed with me.

My eyes opened to their smiling faces, their questions, their simplicity, their innocence.

The dream tried to linger with me.

The seven year old said I had tears in my eyes.

"Just morning tears", I assured her as I tussled her hair.

The dream tried once more.

But there, on that bed, that morning, there was only love, and happiness, and innocence, and questions.

Lots of questions.

And playing with the fan and the lights.

And coffee (for me).

And cookies (for them).

It is my favourite way to be woken up.

I look forward to more mornings just like them.

The Christmas Story

I gave my mother this creche piece by piece over many Christmases.

The camel still bears the price tag - $.79 from Woolworths. The creche came to me after my mother's passing. I am so happy to have it.

I am often reminded of two sayings from two of my favourite Christmas television shows. From the Grinch - "Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store. Maybe, just maybe it means something more." And from A Charlie Brown's Christmas " And lo there were shepherds abiding in the fields, watching their flocks by night..."

I avoid the stores and shoppers and madness of this holy day that has become so commercialised. For me it truly is about the magic of Christmas and about that story that began 2011 years ago. For me it is simply about family, and being with those I love.

I watched the Nativity Story last night. It was so beautiful. So simple. So true. There are people in our midst that need our love, and support. Sometimes these people are family. Often they are strangers.

There are people in my life who are lost, and who feel unappreciated. There are people in my life who are experiencing their first Christmas without a loved one. There are people in my life that are lonely despite being surrounded by others. There are people in my life who are at odds with the world, or with themselves, or with others.

For all of these people, for all of us, I believe there is a stable. There is a stable that keeps us safe and warm, and although it is not a mansion it is filled with love. Sometimes we all have to experience many doors being shut in our face, many hearts turning away before we realize the warmth, the stable, the shelter, the forgiveness, the love, is simply within us.

The Christmas story is a simple story. Mary and Joseph were simple people. The shepherds were simple people. Even the wise men were simple people. And because of this simplicity they were able to take part in a simple story. All the nonsense that now surrounds them, and the birth of that child, cannot take away from the simplicity of it all.

A child was born to bring love, peace and forgiveness into the world. If we let it, this story can bring love, peace and forgiveness into our hearts.

So to all of the people in my life, and all of the people in this world I wish you Peace and Love and Forgiveness.

Blocking the Hell out of It

I have finally finished a shawl I have been working on since last July.  It was fiddly and I would put it down for long periods of time while other projects caught my attention. 

While away for the Christmas Holidays I brought it along, and picked it up, and kept at it until it was finished early this morning. 

It is a very complicated lace pattern, but what with the yarn I used and the needles I used the lace pattern is not really showing up. 

I also ran out of yarn so it is much shorter than what I envisioned. 

However, I believe if I 'Block the Hell Out of It' it will be beautiful and functional and lovable.

I wonder if one can block the hell out of my life?

Blocking requires soaking the finished object until it is wet through and through. 

I can do that - what with my swimming and all.  I can soak myself through and through.

Then the soaked garment is placed on a blocking mat and stretched and pulled and pinned into place with wires and pins and measuring tape and a few good curse words thrown in.

Usually when I block a shawl I get almost to the end of the pinning and then realize it isn't quite working out and I have to unpin and start again. 

This endeavour usually involves taking up all the floor space in my 'crafting' room, or taking over the kitchen table for a day or two.

Once you start blocking something you often notice the mistakes you have made.  There they are, staring up at you, and you know there is no way to hide them.  You also know that some well meaning fellow knitter will likely see the mistake and point it out to you when you pass it around as a show and tell at your next knitting group evening. 

So ya, like life.

You work on your life, sometimes more, sometimes less, and then some phase of it is finished and you look at what you have produced and sometimes the intricate work is hard to see.  Sometimes the mistakes are hidden, and sometimes glaringly obvious.  Sometimes it seems too small for all the effort you have put in, and sometimes?  Sometimes it is just not what you expected it to end up like and then you have a few options. 

Rip the whole thing out and make something else.  This doesn't translate so well into life.

Block the hell out of it and hope it transforms.  Hmmm.  This might translate.

Put it away and just forget it ever happened.  Tempting, but not really a good option.

Gift it. 

Or maybe in life it is just to look at it as a gift.  What have I learned from this experience?  Will there be a time I look back on it and am grateful for what it has taught me? 

If it is a gift, shall I just wear it and talk about it and share it with the world?

So, first things first.  I am going to block the hell out of this shawl and see where that takes me.

And while I do so I will ponder the current project that is my life and see if I can soak it, and wire it and pin it into something I can live with. 

And if not?

If not, I will just have to continue one stitch, one step, one breath, one day at a time and welcome what is coming towards me and be grateful for those moments that are filled with grace and hope and love. 

And faith. 

Faith that nothing is unsalvageable. 

Nothing.

Christmas 2015

This is a Christmas I would like to forget, but will forever remember.

Here I sit, drinking tea, eating a mandarin orange, reading messages from friends on facebook.

Christmas came this year.  It always does.

The stockings were hung last night, and by some miracle they were filled by the Spirit of Christmas.

There have been many tears, but also by the Grace of God some laughter, some respite.

The sun shone today.  The days are getting longer.  Tonight is the full moon.

That all means something.

It all means something, but in this mysterious journey called life we cannot always know the answers or the outcomes.

This is the time for grief during a season of celebrating a birth.

These twelve holy nights will teach me something I need to learn.

Today?  Today I am learning what grief feels like, deep in my heart, deep in the marrow of my bones.

Tomorrow?

Tomorrow I will be open to what the day chooses to show me.

And I will probably go for a long, long swim.

Tu me manques.

Tinking back

When you make a mistake in knitting and have to knit backwards to undo the work before the mistake it is called tinking. Knit. Tink. Get it? Tink is the word knit backwards.

Sometimes in knitting you put in a life-line on a difficult pattern so that if you make a mistake you can just rip out the knitting until you get to the life-line and then you can pick up the stitches and start over. This is called frogging, because that is the sound frogs make - rip-it, rip-it, rip-it.

Yesterday I frogged and tinked a lot. And it got me to thinking about the things in my life that I have frogged or tinked, or wish I had. Now I am not talking about knitting anymore.

There are times I wished I could have tinked back to a moment and had a do over. Golfers call these mulligans. Those opportunities to try again - to communicate better, or be more generous of spirit, or to apologize and move forward.

There are times I have frogged, or completely ripped up a situation, and wish now that I had been more careful. I frogged when I should have tinked.

You see, the thing about tinking is that you are unknitting each and every stitch. As I tink I have to analyze each stitch, and then do it backwards to undo it. I have to ask myself - "Is this where the mistake was?" "Is this the place where I can start again?" Is this the moment where it all went so horribly wrong?" It is like looking back over your day - the Ruchschau.

When we were first married we often would stop fighting and ask each other to start again. To have a do-over. To grant a do-over is to offer a moment of Grace. It is allowing that there was a moment, a stitch if you will, where it all went wrong and acknowledging that we could do better. We could fix this.

And yet, there are times in all lives when frogging is the only answer. We have to unravel it, and roll it back up into a ball, and either throw it away, give it away, or make it into something else.

I know married couples, who after divorcing have re-knit their relationship into a strong friendship. I know close friendships that once ended have never seen the light of day.

So yes, knitting is sometimes rewarding and easy, and the stitches just seem to flow off the needles.

Sometimes there is a lot of tinking until it is right.

Sometimes frogging is absolutely the correct, and only thing one can do.

Sometimes we leave a mistake in as an example of our humanity, our fraility, our willingness to let the world see we are not perfect.

And sometimes mistakes turn out to be wonderful design features.

Just like Life.

5KCBWDAY5 - Poetic reflections of a Spring Morning

The challenge today was to write in a different way than I usually blog. I have written poetry before, but never rhyming poetry. This poem is a reflection the day after attending a Death Cafe.

Reflections on a Spring Morning

I look across the yard of green
hearing the songs of birds unseen.
The city begins to thrum to life
A myriad of stories, loss and strife.

The morning quiet gives me pause
To reflect on life and social laws.
To wish with hope as I draw a breath
for healing, and time before my death.

Time for laughter, peace and tears,
Time for comforting and allaying fears,
Time for birdsongs and campfires bright,
Time for moonrises and stars in the night.

Morning surrounded by towering trees
Feeling blessed by a god that sees.
For all my failings that haunt my sleep
Stillness and grace in my soul will creep.

Kwadugu Manu - one of the 276 kidnapped Nigerian girls

Kwadugu Manu

I am praying for you.
For your safety.
For you to have strength that I cannot even imagine.
For you to survive to tell your stories, and to live free and laugh once again.
I can't begin to understand why this has happened to you and all those other women.
I can't understand.
But, I want you to know I am praying.
I will keep you in my thoughts and pray you are being held
sheltered in the wings of god.
You, and the others, are being prayed for.
It doesn't seem like enough, but it is what I can do.
It is what we can do.

Kwadugu Manu
I am praying for you.
And your sisters.
And for all that are missing you tonight.