Savoring the good even if it is as humble as a beautifully knitted pair of socks
ODE TO MY SOCKS by Pablo Neruda
‘Maru Mori brought me a pair of socks which she knitted with her own sheepherder hands, two socks as soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as if they were two cases knitted with threads of twilight and the pelt of sheep…..’
Read the whole poem at: http://www.kariberit.net/files/Ode-to-my-socks.pdf
Spring cleaning
Over the weekend I allotted a little time to do some spring cleaning, and also tried to fit in other activities, and so I did not have time to create the audio I had intended to make. I even got round to doing a little weeding in the garden, some throwing out of old articles, recycling of a few books, and I also went to the cinema because I like stories. Actually, I think I am a sucker for a good story. We watched an interesting multi themed film, The Professor and the Madman starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn, with some powerful acting and scenes.
I also took some time to reflect on politics and spirituality because…..
Even though I have distanced myself from party politics over the years, I still think that politics are important because from one perspective everything, including the private is political. Our personal experience and larger socio-political structures are interconnected and interdependent more than we are usually aware of. Local and national elections are approaching, and so I reflected on both the necessity to vote and what a ‘good enough’ vote decision for the better good both locally and nationally could look like. If power is also diffuse, embodied, discursive and enacted rather than just concentrated and possessed by some, the act of voting allows for some level of exercising power and shaping the ways of things.
Early spiritual wounding and cultural conditioning and my awakening process required I explore this field, a processing, healing and expanding through exposure experience, but I sort of went down a rabbit hole, as I over indulged in acquiring information, while neglecting other things. The lesson learnt is that I still tend to ignore the dash board of my body., often brushing aside bodily knowledge and intuitive knowing, which are always available.
Each time someone speaks out another is protected and spared
‘Speaking out is about vulnerability and risk and fostering disentanglement from others’ agendas, and it is about empowerment and survival and maybe a different level of justice from the ‘powerless’, and it is about silenced freedoms and about claiming more of our human nature. And it has to do with the potential and possibility to bring about small shifts in long held fear dynamics that could potentially deter, protect others or even slightly decrease the practices of grabbing and robbing and defining what gets to be written, read, created and said and who gets to write, read, work, create and be heard. Speaking out also validates the truth of human pain and suffering for as much as we are spirit we are also embodied and mammals, with common neurobiological wiring and identical physiological responses to that which hurts and wounds us. Our physicality is also a part of our human story and ignoring or bypassing that realm does not serve the whole of humanity and certainly not the underdogs. It is only through integration and respect of all that we are that a more humane world for all can become a possibility’. (Tonya Alexandri, 2019)