Well, in the last couple of weeks I’ve been lucky enough to receive the “I love your blog” award from not one but two of my favourite bloggers: Anita at Take Joy, who I suspect might just be the busiest person on the planet, and the always thought-provoking Green Witch (who is going through a difficult time just now and I know would value some kind thoughts and prayers).

It’s great to get this kind of appreciation – makes me feel all warm and glowy!

So the rules are:

1. The winner can put the logo on their blog
2. Link to the person you received the award from
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4. Put links of those blogs on yours
5. Leave a message on the blogs nominated

Now it’s very hard indeed to pick out seven blogs. I have lots of favourites – many more than the blogroll in my sidebar (which I must update…). So I’m collecting here seven blogs that I haven’t passed awards on to before, some of which are fairly new to me. With apologies for not mentioning all my old favourites – you know who you are – here’s my list:

Abdur Rahman’s Corner

For his thoughtfulness, openness and beautiful poetry, both his own and that of others. Joyful wishes as you begin your Ramadan journey, Abdur.

Barnabas Quotidianus

For the hard work and joy with which he celebrates and shares the beauty of his Bah’ai faith, and publicises the many areas of the world where Bah’ais are persecuted.

Elderwoman Blog

Marian doesn’t update her blog as often as some but when she does, her writing is always worth the wait: thoughtful and insightful, often funny as well, just like her books.

Frugal Wench

A great combination of commentary and practical tips on living simply and frugally. Although based in the US, Frugal Wench’s ideas are adaptable anywhere.

Mind Sieve

Actually, this award should equally with the enchanting Riley. Both Riley and his person at Mind Sieve tell us about adventures and friendships and share their lives with us most generously.

Suzie’s Sacred Space

I first found Suzie when her monthly dreamboards were featured by Magpie Girl. I stayed for the warmth, humanity, spirituality, good writing and good photos.

thru my lens lightly

Kate’s blog is a treasure trove of images and words. I particularly love the digital media pieces she creates, like this one.

So thanks to all of you for what you do creating blogs I love to read and look at.

And finally, a special mention to my friend at Hudson’s Notebook, who announced yesterday that he will not be continuing to write there. Perhaps we’ll see you in another space if it feels right. He closes with these beautiful words from Wendell Berry:

Breath with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.

As the new moon rises, have a blessed week, everyone.

Writing about Granny D earlier this week, I was reminded how scared society tends to be of age and old people. There’s such pressure on the externals, a need to look young as long as possible.

With that fear can come paralysis, and a buying into the notion that there are certain ways an old person should behave. (Clue: the word should is one to watch out for, whatever your age. If you find yourself saying it a lot, stop and figure out what’s going on.)

So this Sunday’s collection spotlights some writing by members of the Elderwomanspace online network I belong to.

It’s only right to start with MarianVan Eyk McCain, because Marian started Elderwomanspace. She recently celebrated her 72nd birthday on a coastal path walk, which she describes beautifully in this post. Here’s an excerpt:

Another thing I love about it is being surrounded by beauty in all directions. So much beauty, at times, that I almost explode with sheer joy at being there. There is something totally wonderful about being able to see things that can only be seen by those who are prepared to walk for miles along the path. It feels like being one of only a handful of privileged people at a special, private banquet.

If you enjoy Marian’s blog, you would almost certainly love her book Elderwoman, which I experienced as a blueprint for ageing in an open, spiritually rich way.

June Calendar, who lives in New York, started a new blog earlier this month, exploring life in the wake of her recent 70th birthday. Her very first entry celebrated the discovery that $10 would buy her a lifetime pass to the American National Parks. Since then she’s written several thoughtful posts around her continuing adventure of life.

I really enjoy Anne O’Dell’s blog about her life in Canada, where, as you do when you’re 60ish(!), she is building a kayak. This post shows the hump-back whale portrait she’s burning into the rear bulkhead. The kayak will be finished soon, and I’m kind of hoping Anne will have a proper launch ceremony for it! Anne has some beautiful photography on her blog as well; I particularly enjoyed this collection of chickens, dogs, turtles and scenery.

Virginia DeBolt has a number of blogs, including Web Teacher, which is packed with useful information. She’s also a contributing editor at BlogHer, and she’s just written a post called The Value of Slow, which is right up my street. She asks:

Would it improve your life to slow down a bit? Reflect on quality instead of responding with quantity? There’s a community of people, appropriately calling themselves ‘Slow Community,’ who think it might be valuable to take some things slowly.

Well I know how it has improved my own life, and you may be interested in following up some of the links in her article.

There are so many good blogs in the Elderwoman community, including:

• The Best is Yet to Come – read about a wonderful trip to the Galapagos Islands
• Costa de la Luz Gardening – living in Andalucia, Spain
• Mary Contrary – self-described news junkie and commenter
• And of course perhaps the best known blogging resource for people growing older: Ronni Bennett’s Time Goes By. One of my favourite parts of her site is the Elder Storytelling Place, where you can find some really interesting articles. (I first found Ronni because I wanted to start a blog called As Time Goes By. She got there first, c’est la vie.)

Now you’ll probably notice two things about this choice of links:

1. Few of them are specifically, or only, about age. Mostly they’re good writing by women who happen to be mid-fifties and above.
2. They’re all by women. I’m sorry, guys, I really am, but these blogs are by members of the Elderwomenspace network. I chose you the biker photo above to compensate though!

For more powerful imagery, go check out the Flickr group Gusto: Ageing with Power, Wisdom and Irreverence.

And here’s a video of one of my favourite old geezers, Willie Nelson, with the (getting on a bit now) legendary Eric Clapton:

Have a blessed week, everyone.

Image above by hialoakapua

This week has seen some interesting items arising from American celebrations of 4th July.

I’m pleased that my own post suggesting an international Interdependence Day struck a chord, both in people’s comments and in other posts.

Mata H, writing at BlogHer, has some really good things to say about changing experiences of the 4th (and I’m not saying that just because she linked to me!). She says:

In today’s world the idea of independence should combine with the spiritual reality of interdependence. Just as so many were not free here when the original Independence Day was established, there are still those here who thirst for justice and long to be treated as full Americans. One does not even have to look beyond our borders to see the injustice of unequal access because of race, religion, national origin, sexual preference or identity, gender, income/class.

Our spirits have not always kept pace with our sincerely treasured ideals.

Mata also links to a great video at Conflict Zen – the Declaration of Interdependence. Here it is:

I was thinking earlier about the concept of interdependence as it relates to faith and spirituality. Then while I was preparing this post, today’s meditation from Richard Rohr popped into my gmail in-box:

Question of the Day: What is our primary illusion?

Contemplation is the only way to come back to unitive consciousness, to experience the primal, in-depth oneness, to help you overcome the illusion that you are separate and to see the enchanted universe.

God is not out there!

For me, that is the enchanted universe that we have to see. The pattern of the universe is that we are one and that it is radically okay. God is on our side. So we can be at rest. We realize that life is a school. And I want to give myself to that school so that my soul can be formed.

This was one of those aha moments for me. Of course there is strife and dissent between different faith groups if we continue to see God as ‘out there’. If, conceptually, God is separate from us, then it’s so easy to project our own fears and prejudices outwards onto God and our religious practices. But if God is somehow both apart and part of our common humanity – our enchanted universe – then how much easier to understand that our hearts all beat out the same rhythm.

And where does patriotism fit in? My friend Hudson has an excellent post called I am not a patriot (subtitled an Independence Day rant).  He says:

It is my opinion – unpopular, I know – that on this 4th of July, the “Independence Day” of my country, my country – or at the very least its government (but then, we elect them, don’t we?) – would do well to spend some time in national shame rather than national pride. Some time in ruthless soul searching and repentance rather than hoopla, parades, and fireworks. Of course it won’t happen. In an individual here or there yes, but not on any sort of scale….

Some of us joined in the ranting in the comments, and Barefoot Barbara with her usual incisive clarity pointed out that we were probably confusing patriotism with chauvinism and jingoism.

So what is genuine patriotism, and where does it fit with interdependence?

I think it’s to do with ancient feelings for the heart of the land. Not ownership, not flag-waving. Love of our part of the land and by extension for the whole Earth.

I’ve recently discovered the work of a wonderful artist and musician called Carolyn Hillyer, who lives in Dartmoor, South-West England. Her paintings are life-size interpretations of archetypal women, and her music uses chant, flute and drum. You can explore her work (along with that of partner Nigel Shaw) here. She is deeply attuned to the mythic qualities of the land, and to me, that love is true patriotism.

So I’ll end with the last three verses of her Hearthstone Song:

Now the clans are gathered, the first prayer sung
The first hearth set on the ground
Our promise made, our union spun
To the spirit of this place we are bound
To the spirit of this place we are bound.

The buzzard is risen, the deer is at bay
The wolf is returned to her lair
We embrace you close on the cold of the earth
We touch you soft in the air
We touch you soft in the air.

We will dance many days to the rhythm of your heart
Like an echo of drum on stone
Our voices are woven with the threads of your song
To the spirit of this land we are bound
To the spirit of this land we are bound.

Have a blessed week, everyone.

This (above) is so cool! Hat tip to Barney for the introduction to a site called Wordle. You paste in whatever text you want and create word cloud patterns in seconds. Quite apart from the fun of it, I think this site could be a lovely way to focus visually in a new way on words of prayer and poetry.

So, the words in the image above are a quote Elaine used in her post yesterday, First rose of summer. She treats us to a beautiful photograph and links to the Summer Solstice Garden that won a prize at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. Here is the quote that has been word-clouded above:

I conceived this garden as a living illustration of our philosophy that farming, and growing plants, leads to a richer, more fulfilling life. Cultivation of the soil puts us in touch with nature, and through nature, I think we achieve a sense of spiritual connection, too. A gardener who grows what he eats has a feeling of belonging, which is precious and irreplaceable. Being in harmony with the seasons, and respecting the soil itself, brings meaning to our alienating modern world. I hope our garden will inspire people – and especially children – to discover the feel of pushing a seed into the soil; the excitement of that first tiny green shoot; the wonderful taste of something just picked from the earth. It’s our chance to re-establish our connection with the rhythms of nature; to grow, and give thanks for, our daily bread.

 Carole Bamford, founder Daylesford Organic

I can only just nod in agreement with these beautiful words.

The Green Witch sends Midsummer Blessings, and surely no matter how we think of God, we can pray these words of hers:

We give thanks, for the cool waters, for the waters from the sky and the waters under the Earth. Thanks for the fires of the Sun and the fires we kindle on the ground. Thanks for the cool air, that lofts the birds and the scents of Summer. Thanks for the warm and fertile Earth, that bears our weight and the life we depend upon.

Mel Rimmer at Beansprouts gives us a great summer solstice analogy:

It feels like the high point of the year, like being on a Ferris wheel when you reach the very top.

And she says:

I’m not planning any sort of celebration myself. But it’s important that I know today is the solstice. It’s important it doesn’t just go past without being remarked. It is one of the landmarks of the year.

Well in the UK it’s been raining solidly for the last few days so it doesn’t feel very midsummer-ish, but I agree with Mel, no matter what the weather, we know that the wheel has swung to the solstice.

And take a look at Kate Iredale’s solstice night sky photo here, along with a sweet verse by Robert Louis Stevenson that I hadn’t seen before.

I was reading what Jan Richardson has to say on the subject of the solstice in her book In Wisdom’s Path, and there’s a verse in her poem Brother Sun that really struck me, partly because it seems to resonate with recent blog conversations:

I offer you
my shadows.
I turn my face to you
like every greening thing.

I offer you my shadows…

Have a blessed week, everyone. Now go have a play with Wordle. You know you want to!

It used to be poor etiquette to discuss any of these things in polite society:

• Money
• Religion
• Politics

Well the world of blogdom wouldn’t exist if it lived by those rules, and this week in my occasional Sunday Collection series I’m focusing on the last of the forbidden three, politics, in both the broad and the narrow sense.

Over at Hudson’s Notebook, there’s been a great discussion on the planetary effect of our political and personal addiction to oil in HM’s post Like a Needle in a Vein. His post and the discussion thread that follows raise vital issues for us.

It’s essential for us to reduce drastically our dependence on oil, and that has hugely far-reaching effects on our entire lifestyle. We can each play a small part, but we have to change, that’s for sure. We cannot expect developing countries not to look at us and say “Hey, we want what they’ve got”. We have to voluntarily live in a much simpler way if we have any expectation of them doing the same. It’s a real challenge.

A narrower definition of ‘political’ is to be found at Towanda’s Window, where she links to this article detailing a proposal for 35 Articles of Impeachment against Bush. It makes chilling reading to see them all in one place. There are many of us on this side of the pond who are ashamed of the behaviour of our former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, for his part in Bush’s Iraqi disaster. (By the way, Bush is visiting the UK today. Lucky us!)

I know a lot of you who read this also read Jen Lemen, and have been following her recent trip to Rwanda. Political corruption in the West pales into insignificance compared to many African countries. Although the Rwandan government seems to be making a concerted effort to rebuild the country following the genocide of the 1990s, there are concerns that voices of dissent risk being silenced.

There is still terrible poverty, and Jen, whose heart is as big as Africa, had the opportunity to visit herself to do what she could. While she was trying to decide whether to go, she had this conversation with her Rwandan friend in the US, Odette:

And then Odette–the one whose stories made me fall in love with Rwanda all year long–looked at me with those amazing eyes and said, “Jen. I have not seen my girls for two years, and I do not know when they are coming here. Can you leave yours for nine days? I promise I will be taking care of your kids while you look after mine. Please go.”

Jen wrote about her dream, loads of us contributed financially and in other ways, and she went. And then she came back, with a waterfall of stories. I’ve been trying to pick some out for you, but they are all moving and wonderful. Please go read them. Perhaps if there’s one story that stands out for me it is this one: The Things Goreth Holds. At the bottom of it there’s a small Paypal button, asking for contributions of just $5. That’s £2.50. Why not make this a real Sunday Collection and click the button for Rwanda.

There are so many things that are important in the world, and politics are as often a hindrance as a help. Sometimes it seems we can’t make a difference. But as we used to say in the Women’s Movement, the personal is political. It works the other way round as well.

Image by dbking

I made this collage to remember a moment of magic this week.

I was on the tube* when a young woman got on the carriage and stood with her back to my row of seats. She was strikingly beautiful, her cloud of long curly hair sprayed with golden glitter.

As she swayed there with the movement of the train, she put her hand to the back of her neck, lifted her hair and shook it. As she did, the air came alive with shining fragments of gold which settled gently on my boring black raincoat and the pinstriped suits of the two gentlemen next to me. They didn’t notice, but I bet they have by now!

What a gift she unknowingly gave us, that sprinkling of stardust on a grey Friday morning.

* Transatlantic translation: London underground trains/subway

And stardust of all kinds has been sprinkled around the blogosphere this week.

Leo of Zen Habits has a post called 25 Ways to Help a Fellow Human Being Today. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone reading this picked one of the 25 ways and did it next week. My favourite is the last one:

• Love. Simply finding ways to express your love to others, whether it be your partner, child, other family member, friend, co-worker, or a complete stranger … just express your love. A hug, a kind word, spending time, showing little kindnesses, being friendly … it all matters more than you know.

Leo himself says in the comments that he worried his post would be laughed at because it’s corny. Maybe it is, a little, but it’s also true.

Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, sprinkles lots of stardust (organic) with his shining example of how to live lightly in the middle of New York City. This week he’s made an appeal for our help to lobby for radical environmental change. This is what he says:

As one of his constituents, I intend to ask Representative Nadler to support an effective global warming mitigation policy that is based not on what is politically possible but on what is scientifically necessary.

(Just imagine the havoc of peace we could cause if we didn’t have to consider what is ‘politically possible’.)

All you need to do is a cut and paste job on text in Colin’s post, then email it to him with your personal details. He will collect all the emails and forward them. You can even do it if, like me, you’re not a US citizen; just put the line ‘From a world citizen to whom American policy makes a huge difference‘ in the email subject line.

Go on, it won’t take you long.

Thanks to Hudson’s Notebook by the way both for pointing out the ‘world citizen’ addendum to Colin’s appeal, and for sprinkling us with some wild and precious Mary Oliver this week.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been pouring out his particular brand of magic in London this week. Barney Leith writes of joining representatives from many faiths at a reception hosted by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to hear a meditation/homily by the Dalai Lama. I know you’ll find Barney’s account of this event and what the Dalai Lama said both interesting and moving.

And at Tongue in Cheek, it was dandelion seeds drifting down, not stardust. (Are you getting fed up with the stardust theme yet? Well tough, live with it!) Corey had the happy idea of asking her readers to find a dandelion-themed link, post it in the comments, and make a wish. It’s not too late, why not join in?

And now nothing to do with blogging, but my dear friend Betty Stardust had her 70th birthday this week, with a surprise party today which was fabulous, and which I was so happy to attend. I should say Stardust is just a nickname, but it should be her real name because she showers magical warmth wherever she goes. Lots of love, Betty.

And to end with, never forget: we are stardust, we are golden.

Have a blessed week, everyone.

Photograph by Kiwanja

There’s an Incredible Hulk in all of us. Our anger bursts out and transforms us. Sometimes it’s directed outwards, and we leave a trail of destruction in our wake as we storm along (turning green is optional!). Or it can be directed inwards, choking us on its ash.

For some personalities, anger lies behind much of who they are, for others it is less of a ruling force; but it affects all of us, along with its close cousins hatred, fear and contempt.

Sometimes anger comes with the word ‘righteous’ in front of it, and then we can move mountains and correct terrible injustices. But it can still tip over into destruction and blindness very easily.

I was put in mind of all this by two posts I read this week.

The first is by Towanda, who tells us of a frightening experience of being the object of sheer rage. Head over and read the entire post, but basically, Towanda was screamed and sworn at repeatedly by a woman wanting her to move her car. All this in front of a four-year-old child.

At the time, I made a slightly light-hearted comment, but I’ve been thinking since how often I’ve contained similar vitriol within me, without letting it spew out. There’s something about the unnaturalness of the lives we lead, and the pressures on us, that can make waiting more than a few seconds for a parking space seem unendurable.

So then I got to wondering how we can express anger without letting it destroy us or those about us. After all, as Emily Dickinson says:

Anger as soon as fed is dead;
’T is starving makes it fat.

And look, there on the horizon is Magpie Girl, flying to the rescue!

Her regular readers already know that la Magpie is an intelligent and magnificent Mama. Check out this post, for example. In this week’s A Shrine for Hard Feelings, she describes her daughter’s difficulties in coping with their recent move from the USA to Denmark, and the child’s helpless anger. Again, read the whole post, but meanwhile let me share a little of Magpie’s dialogue with her daughter:

“Did you know anger is a cover-up emotion? It covers up some other emotion. Something else is hiding under there.”

“It is?” (now backing down to mere sniffles)

“Yes. And I need you to think about it and tell me what it is that’s hiding under there.”

Now this is a question we could all ask ourselves when rage threatens to overcome us. What is it hiding?

Magpie gets her daughter to create a physical shrine in which she can write down and store the hard feelings. So the feelings are not denied, they are held and honoured, but their effect is not destructive.

I have to say, this idea, and her other link to the Anger Altar have given me some ideas for working with my own anger (oh dear, that phrase does sound like pop psychology, doesn’t it!).

So thanks to both Towanda and Magpie for making me think, and I’d like to share another poem which has something to tell us about anger:

I saw you once, Medusa; we were alone.
I looked you straight in the cold eye, cold.
I was not punished, was not turned to stone.
How to believe the legends I am told?…
I turned your face around! It is my face.
That frozen rage is what I must explore -
Oh secret, self-enclosed and ravaged place!
That is the gift I thank Medusa for.

May Sarton

And to end on a more light-hearted note (because laughter can also often help us release anger), here is a clip from Anger Management, starring the incomparable Jack Nicholson and the not-too-bad Adam Sandler:

Have a great week everyone, and a Happy Mother’s Day to all my American Mama friends. (We have our Mother’s Day earlier in the year in the UK.)

This week saw the annual Earth Day, during which we reflected on the earth and what we are doing to her. I was especially heartened to see from the religious outreach programme that 12,000 faith initiatives related to the environment took place in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities.

Mel at Beansprouts gave us some other links to what went on.

Here are a few of the posts that caught my eye this week. Some relate explicitly to Earth Day, some do not, but all seem to me to have a connection.

I could do a lot worse than start by quoting from one of Abdur Rahman’s beautiful poems, which you can read in full at his blog.

Cultivate the gentleness of a gardener,
who each day caresses what she has planted
with clean water
and open sunlight.

Abdur Rahman

The earth is finally putting on her Spring party clothes here in the Northern hemisphere, after a winter that has seemed never-ending where many of you live. Chasing Grace, Let It Shine and Of dreams and visions show us the evidence. Life is bursting out at Hecate, and enjoying the Spring weather are Bob and Gertie – duck over to Jules’s site to take a look.

There’s a great Earth Day post by Anita, who lives an earthy life all the time (I mean that in a good way…), and Gayla at You Grow Girl wonders why every day can’t be Earth Day (thanks to Elaine for the nudge).

I don’t know why every day can’t be Earth Day. Well actually I do; it’s because we’re consumers and hoarders and those tendencies are carefully nurtured by the society in which we live.

On my trip to the British Museum this week, I found some lines from a poem I have since come to love, by Marina Tsvetaeva:

I know the truth – give up all other truths!
No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.
Look – it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.

Is it true that there is no need to struggle? I wish it was so, but I fear it is not.

Photograph by Babasteve

Because yesterday was International Women’s Day, it was easy for me to decide on the theme of today’s collection.

Those of you around my vintage will remember the second-wave feminist movement that began in the 1960s. We read classic polemics such as Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Greer’s The Female Eunuch, we attended consciousness-raising groups, discovering sometimes for the first time that women were natural allies. We were not alone, and we were not enemies.

But International Women’s Day is much older than that. In 1908 15,000 American women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. In 1909 the first National Women’s Day was observed in the United States. In 1910, an International Women’s Day was proposed and agreed at a Socialist International meeting in Copenhagen, and the following year, the first ever IWD was held on 19 March 1911, observed initially in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.

You can read much more about the history at the official IWD site here, and watch some webcasts.

In blogging land, I very much enjoyed Kate Iredale’s Potpourri for IWD. Take a look and follow the interesting links she has posted. I was especially delighted to see that one of my favourite writers, Karen Armstrong, has won a TED award. The award recipient is allowed a wish. This is Karen’s:

I wish that you would help with the creation, launch and propagation of a Charter for Compassion, crafted by a group of leading inspirational thinkers from the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and based on the fundamental principles of universal justice and respect

If you, too, believe this is a worthy wish, you can take part here, by nominating candidates to help make it happen.

And one of my own favourite bloggers, Melanie at Bean Sprouts, has been chosen by Amnesty as one of their favourite female bloggers. I’m pleased to see they share my good taste – well done Mel! Check out some of the other blogs written by women that Amnesty have chosen.

In 2008, women (and men) all over the world still face poverty, violence and hunger. The Catholic church still refuses even to discuss the question of women priests. Working women still earn less for the same roles. Career equality seems to mean selling ourselves to the corporate world and working longer and longer hours at jobs that have little meaning. We still have a long way to go.

To end, here is an interesting contemporary video featuring the voices of women answering the simple question “What is liberation for women today?”

Have a blessed week, everyone.

Well it seems entirely appropriate, in the week of Valentine’s Day, that this collection is about love.

My first link is to a reel life marridj propsl in I Can Has Cheezburger.

Those of you who are not enchanted with Lolcats will have no idea what I’m talking about, but Cheezburger is one of my guilty blog-reading pleasures.

Heer’s teh mane pic on teh rite. An she sed yes!

Some of my favourite bloggers expressed their love for their sweeties very beautifully. One was Lucy, in creative mode, with a beautiful card. Sunrise Sister told of beauty in Maui. Anita gave us e. e. cummings:

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Milton posted his own poem, part of which I quote here:

whether Saint Valentine is
a window or a greeting card
is of no consequence to me.
With restaurant tables as our
bookends to the day, we began
over coffee and pancakes and
finished with late night snacks.
Because I’m in love I won’t write
a thousand words tonight

But of course St Valentine’s Day is not all about hearts and flowers. Sue made me laugh and cry in the same day with her incredibly honest writing.

And I recently discovered a site that is new to me, Women and Spirituality. Donna Read’s beautiful post about love, betrayal and the ongoing discovery of a wider, deeper love really moved me.

Jen describes their family Valentine’s Day, and their tradition of the day as being about love for friends and family, not just cosy romantic stuff:

My mother decorated the table with hearts and streamers and all the love and joy she carried in her heart. The idea that Valentine’s Day was meant for couples-only never had a chance to cross my mind. Even after I grew up and moved out of the house to have my own adventures, I couldn’t shake the communal nature of the day. We made big group dinners with friends and sat around long square coffee tables, making valentines for one another. I still can’t imagine the holiday any other way.

So finally, put on your dancing shoes and listen up to the beautiful Bob Marley with his classic Is This Love.

Have a blessed week, everyone.

PS: I don’t know how I missed this one from my reading this week, but have only just spotted it. Anne shares The Sunrise Ruby, by Rumi. As she says: exquisite.