A Few Things I Should Know.

Poppy Abstract.

I am always in a great rush. I have been all of my life a person who burns energy like it was going out of fashion. I was giving this some thought this morning as I began to prepare myself for a week of running in the mountains. I love these days but I am also conscious of the fact of the raised level of danger from the normal daily running I do here at home.

I run in the mornings and walk in the afternoon/early evening then fall into bed exhausted to be ready for the next day.  I became very aware of this after reading the blog of Sherry, Conservatively Bohemian.  So I sat down and gave thought, here is the bones of my time of thinking, of what stops me being all I want to be and the artist I dream of being.

I think the first thing is this rushing and trying to fit things into something else I am doing. I plan a walk and set out. During the course of the walk I take out my watercolour box and do a painting, but all the time my mind is on the clock and the time I have yet to walk. The end result is a bad walk and a bad painting. I need to learn that when walking I am walking and when painting I am painting. I need to schedule if I want to do both.

Next. If we continue to repeat a story in our head, we eventually believe that story and embrace it – whether it empowers us or not.  So the question is: Does my story empower me?  Do I place my mistakes in my mind; where their weight may crush my current potential.  Instead, I must place them under my feet and use them as a platform to view the horizon.  I must remember, all things are difficult before they are easy.  What matters the most is what I am starting to do now.

I also need to stop  being  s hard on myself.  There are plenty of people willing to do that for me. I need to do my  best and surrender the rest.  Tell my self, “I am doing the best I can with what I have in this moment.  And that is all I can expect of anyone, including me.”  I need to be proud of everything that I do, even the  mistakes.  Because even mistakes mean I am trying.

Lastly; stop waiting for tomorrow; I will never get today back.  It doesn’t matter what I’ve done in the past.  It doesn’t matter how low or unworthy I feel right now.  The simple fact is that I am alive and that makes me worthy.  Life is too short for excuses.   I have to; Stop settling.  Stop procrastinating.  Start today by taking one courageous step forward.  If I am not sure exactly which way to go, it is always wise to follow my heart.

This blog is linked to my blog  Poppy Abstract

A Drop of Water.

Floral Abstract.

We have just taken delivery of a further two bins in our armoury of rubbish (garbage) disposal system. What used to the  bin we used for paper and cardboard has now become the landfill bin, half the size of the original landfill bin. We have been given a new bin for plastic and metal cans. The bin we had for garden refuse now takes food waste from the kitchen and we have a little kitchen waste bin in which to collect it.

If nothing else this new regime has caused much discussion. “What are we gonna dae wi ah thae bins.” I do not have time to sort out all that stuff before putting it in separate bins.” “When that landfill bin is full I will just take the rest down the road and dump it.” These are some of the negative responses. I have tried to embrace the new regime

 and do as best I can to keep the waste going to landfill sites to a minimum.

Sometimes the debating gets to a wider level. Which country per person produces the most waste? If every country created as much how long could we survive?

As part of my teaching material and examination papers I prepared for Scottish schools, the environment was one of my topics, so I am loving the raised interest in the whole subject.

Here is an interesting thought for all those who say they do not care, or have given it little thought. Those who say the planet will survive. I am 100% sure the planet will survive, it always has. But it has evolved in its survival and if we continue to act as we do in our concern for it, it may survive but by leaving humanity out of the process.

A Zen master named Gisan asked a young student to bring him a pail of water to cool his bath.

The student brought the water and, after cooling the bath, threw on to the ground the little that was left over.

“You dunce!” the master scolded him. “Why didn’t you give the rest of the water to the plants? What right have you to waste even a drop of water in this temple?”

The young student attained Zen in that instant. He changed his name to Tekisui, which means a drop of water.

We who paint because we are inspired by the beauty of nature should hold our concern for the planet like a feather in the palm of our hands.

This is the way of Tao.

This blog is linked to my other. Floral Abstract.

Who Is My Neighbour?

The Sound Of A Distant Drum

On Saturday evening as I returned from my walk I noticed one of my neighbours struggling to turn over the soil in a new made border of her front garden. To make life easier they had changed the design of the front garden and had a raised border installed. The people who had built the wall had left without digging the compacted soil and she was finding it very difficult. Knowing her husband is unable to dig due to arthritis, I decided to get up very early on Easter morning and pop round and turn it over for her. By the time she rose and came out to walk her little dog it was finished. Happy Easter. 

But that is what being a neighbour is about, is it not?  It seems not. This morning on the news I heard the results of a survey taken in the UK. 35% of the people in the uk it seems to do not know who their neighbours are. Of the other 65% more than half hardly, if ever talk to their neighbours.

So I thought I would share this list of friendship. I know it is a bit contrived and could do with improving so please feel free to change it.

A Friend (Neighbour)

Is

Accepts you as you are


Believes in "you"


Calls you just to say "HI"


Doesn't give up on you


Envisions the whole of you (even the unfinished parts)


Forgives your mistakes


Gives unconditionally


Helps you


Invites you over


Just "be" with you


Keeps you close at heart


Loves you for who you are


Makes a difference in your life


Never Judges


Offers support


Picks you up


Quiets your fears


Raises your spirits


Says nice things about you


Tells you the truth when you need to hear it


Understands you


Values you


Walks beside you


X-plains thing you don't understand


Yells when you won't listen and


Zaps you back to reality

I suppose it comes back to the age old question. Who is my neighbour?

This blog is linked to my other.The Sound Of A Distant Drum

Being Aware of What We Have.

Love On the Rocks

How easy it is to get complacent about life and the good things that we have.  Yesterday I went to visit the home of a man who has asked me to do a painting for one of the walls in his new house. He has just moved into a little flat in the village. Slowly but surely he is getting it just the way he wants it.

I keep promising myself that I will take no more commissions for art. They certainly put a lot of extra pressure on the artist to produce. When I saw the pride my friend had in his little flat and the excitement of having a painting that he had some input made it impossible for me not to say that I would give it a try. I now know that he will ask me every time he sees me when it will be done. I did say to him, “everything in it time.” I would have been just as well talking to the carpet on the floor.

As I left and walked down to meet my old friend Archie for what we call here is Scotland, “a wee blether.” I was reminded of the story of the man who went to the Taoist calligraphy writer with his request.

He went to the man and asked him to write something for the continued prosperity of his family so that it might be treasured from generation to generation.

On his return he obtained a large sheet of paper on which was written:

“Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.”

The man became angry. “I asked you to write something for the happiness of my family! Why do you make such a joke as this?”

“No joke is intended,” explained the wise man. “If before you yourself die you son should die, this would grieve you greatly. If your grandson should pass away before your son, both of you would be broken-hearted. If your family, generation after generation, passes away in the order I have named, it will be the natural course of life. I call this real prosperity.”

Rejoice in the things we have and the natural order of life as it moves from day to day. Let the unexpected be a joy to you. 

The artwork above is mentioned on my other blog: Love On The Rocks

What Are You Waiting For?

I have had over a week in the mountains, enjoying walking and running. There is something exciting about running over rocky surfaces and hilly paths. It is a bit like playing chess; you have to always be one or two steps ahead of yourself. Watching ahead, and preparing for where you are next going to plant your foot. By comparison running on the road is just a case of making sure you do not bump into another person or get chased by a dog.

How wise it is to be prepared and ready. My son joined me for my last day, and we ran together.  As we ran I became aware of my age. I was running with somebody almost half my age. I said to him that I was aware that age was making me a bit slower. He laughed, and commented, “I have two things to say. One you will notice you are in front of me, and two, we have not passed anybody else your age out doing this.’ Point made and point taken.

Then I saw that my years had not been totally wasted. We came to a small river. I had ran this path so often before, I knew where I could, without losing stride, step over two large boulders to the other side. At this point my son said, “Come on dad just go for it.” He proceeded to make the jump , only to land flat on his face his shoes full of water. It is all about the right things at the right time.

There is a tale of another old man and his wife. They were a lovely old couple in there 80s. They had been married for 60 years and were still looking fit and well. In spite of their health they met an untimely end one day in a traffic accident.

They found themselves at the pearly gates. The angel showed them round. They were shown where they would live it was beautiful. The husband asked what the rent would be? They were told it was free. He then noticed just behind his house a beautiful golf course. He enquired what the green fees were and the membership rates. Again he was told it was all free. In the clubhouse he saw all the wonderful food. He asked where all the healthy fat free food was. He was told there was no such thing. He could not get ill so he could enjoy whatever he wanted.

He looked at all this and considered it. He turned to his loving wife and asked her, “What was all that about those awful bran flakes, we could have been here ten years ago.”

The road is in fact just what we make it. Rough or smooth hard or easy. The better road is always the one that leads to a feeling of achievement and wellbeing.

It is good to be back have a good day.

This blog is linked to my other.  A Good Feeling.

We Are All In Our Own Way Roses.

My thoughts are turning to gardens today. Last night I attended the annual meeting of the Allotment Society, the meeting of those of us who have garden plots in the same place.  I officially took ownership of my newer and larger plot. The plot, I am taking over, has been tended by an old man called Sandy. He has had it for the last 30 years, so there is a sense of nostalgia at his moving on.

So often, when we take over from another, we go in like the new broom and change everything. This was in fact my initial reaction. Sandy grew along the top of the plot a row of flowers. They were not the most beautiful of blooms and they were taking up enough space to grow a row of edible vegetables. Last night as I lay in bed I decided that the row of flowers would stay and I would tend them. When they bloom I will take a bunch of them to Sandy and his wife. Maybe even more than one bunch, a bunch during the flowering season, every week if I can.

While thinking of flowers I thought of the story of the man who was growing a rose.

A certain man planted a rose and watered it faithfully and before it blossomed, he examined it.

He saw the bud that would soon blossom, but noticed thorns upon the stem and he thought, "How can any beautiful flower come from a plant burdened with so many sharp thorns? Saddened by this thought, he neglected to water the rose, and just before it was ready to bloom... it died.

So it is with many people. Within the inner being of every person there is a rose. The good qualities planted and nurtured in us by parents and teachers. They grow amid the thorns of our faults. Many of us look at ourselves and see only the thorns, the defects.

We despair, thinking that nothing good can possibly come from us. We neglect to water the good within us, and eventually it dies. We never realize our potential.

Some people do not see the rose within themselves; someone else must show it to them. One of the greatest gifts a person can possess is to be able to reach past the thorns of another, and find the rose within them.

This is one of the characteristics of love, to look at a person, know their true faults and accepting that person into your life, all the while recognizing the nobility of the inner them.

We each can help others to realize they can overcome their faults. If we show them the "rose" within themselves, they will conquer their thorns. Only then will they blossom many times over.

But one little thing we must always remember, that we cannot nurture a person by only looking at the rose within for a person to really grow they need to also acknowledge the thorns that have also taken root in their lives.

My goodness here I am again almost at the preaching. Thank you Celeste for the words of encouragement on that front.

This blog is linked to my other.  Cornflowers

A Kindness Repaid

 My morning run does so much more for me that get me fit and help to lose the excess weight. It also allows me to recover the steps of my youth. As I tread the lanes and paths I remember the times I tread them as a youth and more importantly the people who were with me. Now I am not one to dwell in the past but I do find it rewarding to remember some of the events and the lessons learned.

Regular readers of this blog are aware that I spent a lot of my youth walking with my father. It seemed we walked for miles, in reality it was not so far. I can now cover what I thought was a long walk in a very short time once the trainers are on and the legs are moving.

Today I remembered an incident that has travelled with me for the rest of my life. A friend and I one day decided to go on a walk our two selves. We set off flowing in the footsteps of one of the walks done with my father. It seemed to take so much longer without him. Maybe because we stopped to do things he might not have allowed us to do. Soon we were out in the country. We came across a row of farm cottages. By this time we were feeling tired and thirsty so we knocked on the door and asked for a drink. The old lady invited us in and gave us a glass of fruit juice and a biscuit, a real treat. She also gently lectured us about being so far away from home without having told our parents. We promised her in future we would do just that, and we did as during the course of that summer we visited her often. We learned many things from her and how I wish I had been wise enough to tell her how good it was to have her as a friend.

This reminded me of another true but similar story.

One day, a poor boy who was selling goods from door to door to pay his way through school, found he had only one thin dime left, and he was hungry. He decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door.

Instead of a meal, he asked for a drink of water. She thought he looked hungry and so she brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it slowly, and then asked, "How much do I owe you?"

"You don't owe me anything," she replied. "Mother has taught us never to accept pay for a kindness." He said, "Then I thank you from my heart." As Howard Kelly left that house, he not only felt stronger physically, but his faith in God and man was strengthened also. He had been ready to give up and quit.

Years later, that young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled. They finally sent her to the big city, where they called in specialists to study her rare disease.

Dr. Howard Kelly was called in for the consultation. When he heard the name of the town she came from, he went down the hall of the hospital to her room. Dressed in his doctor's gown, he went in to see her. He recognized her at once. He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to save her life. From that day, he gave special attention to the case.

After a long struggle, the battle was won. Dr. Kelly requested from the business office to pass the final billing to him for approval. He looked at it, then wrote something on the edge, and the bill was sent to her room. She feared to open it, for she was sure it would take the rest of her life to pay for it all. Finally she looked, and something caught her attention on the side of the bill. She read these words:

"PAID IN FULL WITH ONE GLASS OF MILK....

(Signed)

Dr. Howard Kelly."

It is amazing how small little acts of kindness can imprint on the lives of people. I hope some day someone will remember me doing something that helped form good intentions in their lives. I would feel that my life had not been meaningless.

So day by day I look to see if I can do such small acts of kindness. Will you join me?

Such is the way of Tao.

This blog is linked to my other. Dog 4

Tell Them You Care.

I am going back in memories today, sorry. Was something that happened yesterday made me remember this true story. I have thought about it before but never mentioned it on here.

I had moved from being a minister to becoming a teacher of world religions and philosophy. Like all other trainee teachers I had to do a year in teaching practice working with a principal who had committed to take on probationers and help them. I remember one particular class that had a number of pupils in it with behaviour problems. I was so unused to having problems with students, so many of them seemed to find their ways to my room at lunch hour and before the day began, I thought I was good with them. yet here was a difficult group. The principal, when I asked for a strategy shrugged and told me I seemed to be doing ok with them, better than most. I felt ok but unhappy I was going to leave that school feeling I had not done the best I could.

One day I thought I would try something I had learned as a minister. Something I had picked up somewhere, I do not know, and used in the training of church elders.

I gave each student in the class a sheet of blank paper. On it I asked them to list the names of all the other students. I then asked them to write one sentence about each of their classmates. The comment they were asked to write was to be a positive comment, stating a good quality the student possessed.

This task took them the whole of the teaching lesson, and it sure did keep them quiet.

At the end of the session I gathered them all in. That night I made each student a sheet with the comments made about them by their classmates. I did not identify who said what, just gave them the list.

It had an amazing effect on that class. For the rest of my year with them I actually looked forward to last period Tuesday afternoon class 2C.

Some seven or eight years later I was contacted by a parent of one of the more troublesome of that class. The son had been involved in a motorcycle accident and had been killed. When they were cleaning out his room they had found the sheet. They had asked his friend about it and he had explained. It seems he had kept his sheet also and so had some of the others in the class.

It seems that for some of them that lesson had been a turning point. That exercise became a standard lesson each year with all my new class groups.

It is amazing the change it can make to a person to be told what it is about them that others like. To know that they do not need to be a bully or the class clown that people care about them as they are.

It is never too late to tell somebody you love them or care for them or respect them. As I have said I do not claim to have been the originator of this idea and you may have heard of it before but it worked well for me.

I no longer give out sheets of paper but I do try to find out little things that people like about each other. If anybody ever says anything to me about a person, good or bad I always then am able to say. “Strange that because they think this about you. They told me this once.” Works every time. I call it my little notebook of good things people say about others.

It is a bit like blogging really is it not? I realised that yesterday when somebody commented on my blog about somebody else, and somebody else said something about me on theirs.

We are a great group here I think.

This blog is linked to my other. The Conspirators

The Extra Five Minutes

I was walking along the coastal path and decided to cut off and head up through the woods taking the high route back home rather than the low one. I had a miserable start to my day. Determined to paint I had got ready a new canvas and set out some paints. I should not have bothered I knew I had nothing in mind and was merely going through the motions. So here I was walking. I had tried a sketch of a grandfather playing at the edge of the water with his very young grandchild. The two looked so happy. Another disaster. So here I was just walking.


Having left the coastal path I had to cut through the children’s play area. Just a few swings, a level area for cycling and a grass area for playing and running. The park was almost empty and yet it was a beautiful afternoon. The bench at the top of the park looks down and out over the river forth with its famous bridge. There was one man sitting on it so before heading up into the woods to the top path I joined him to enjoy a moment.

His daughter was running up and down the hill and tumbling with another lad. The father shouted to tell her it was time to go. “Can I have another few minutes?” she asked. “Well just five,” said the father. Five minutes later the same thing. Another five minutes. BY this time I was chatting away to the father he was so proud of her. Again it was agreed a last five minutes. I commented to him on his wonderful patience.

It was then he told me about his son. he had been killed on the road a short distance from where we were by a speeding driver. He said he had not given his son enough of his time and how he wished he could just have another five minutes with him. The same thing was not going to happen again. he was going to give his daughter all the five minutes he could.

“Anyway, I will tell you a secret,” he said. I have made allowances for the extra five minute slots up to four times he laughed.

I left them and took the high road through the woods. I have run this route often and walked it also. I has never looked as good before as it did yesterday. If I see that father again, I will thank him for the five minute slots he gave me also.

I wonder who I could give five minutes to this day. I know for sure no matter what happens, good or bad, I will find a slot to give somebody a smile.

 
Oh and I came home and did the sketch attached to this blog, first steps in painting again the lavender fields for my wife.
 
I will share it on the other blog: Lavender Fields Sketch