Journeys, sparkling humanity & a recipe

THIS POST COMES a day late because I was up early yesterday after a day of Buddhist teachings, and went to a Q&A with Lama Jampa Thaye, then caught a coach to London.

The journey was sparkling as the coach travelled along the motorway, trees on both sides and fields gleaming in the warm summer sun, with blue skies overhead and the rhythmic sound of the coach engine. I saw sheep with their lambs in a field, a farmer with his tractor, 4 kestrels holding still in the sky, low enough for me to be drawn in by their strength and beauty.

As we got nearer to London there were trees so large, tall and dense I felt as though I was soaring through a tree house. And then we arrived. City noises, traffic, people out and about, bright colours, a duck on the pavement as the coach glided along past the Thames.

At Victoria coach station I swam through an electrifying bustle of humanity. Exciting, alive, full of noises and traffic and people rushing this way and that, and shops, and lights and music. And I found myself, moving through this firework display of human intentions, creativity and mixed up ideas, wrapped up in a warm bubble of contentment, with a heartfelt appreciation towards every moment of this spectacular display of human confusion.

Outside Victoria station on the other side of the road is a theatre that used to be a cinema from the Art Deco era of design. Family history has it that my great grandad, Horace Taylor, designed the interior. Once I went there and told them the story and asked if I could come in and have a look. Understandably they said no. Google also was unaware about this piece of my family history. The stories we tell ourselves conjure magic and, perhaps it doesn’t matter whether they are true.

This morning I woke in a home I have been coming to for over 30 years, memories entwined with the present moment. I remembered a quote from the Diamond Sutra that Lama Jampa shared yesterday – life is like a dew drop, or a bubble floating in a stream – and I thought how very lucky we are to be alive, with the stories of our choosing, to have that potential.

I looked around the room I’d slept in. There was a picture on the wall that my mum had painted, she liked to write too. When we cleared her flat, her stories – hand-typed — stood about 4 foot high. I remembered her passing last year and a treasure she passed to me through that. I thought I’d share a few words I wrote at the time, in case anyone reading this finds themselves in a similar situation. In case it is helpful.

Sometimes it’s an act of love not to scrub the coffee table

Today would have been my mums birthday, and I was thinking about what is important in life. My mum had a coffee table, and a few other things that needed a good scrub, but…

My mum was someone who never bothered about housework she just didn’t care, it irritated her when people fussed with cleaning and she thought they were daft, that was just her. She liked to paint and write stories, and be in nature, she lived in her imagination and just wasn’t interested in her home surroundings. When she was diagnosed with dementia she decided to end things quickly by not eating, but it took a while and the journey turned out to be a treasure. One during which she wanted every well meaning person to leave her alone, so that she could decay in her own way along with her home – she experienced it as an extension of herself.

When we tried to clean and sort things out, she felt as though we were cleaning and sorting her out and it upset her. She wanted to be allowed to decay along with her familiar surroundings. She wanted to stare out of the window and watch the clouds and trees.

I learnt to just sit with her, because then she was at peace. She liked me to stare out of the window with her.

This was her chosen way and once I ‘got’ that, once I was able to just ‘be’ with things exactly as they were, rather than trying to ‘brighten and clean’ things up so that people wouldn’t think I didn’t care, there grew an unspoken peace between us, which remains to this day. There was a lifelong healing in that, but I don’t think anyone would have known.

Sometimes it’s an act of love not to scrub the coffee table.

If you are in this position, don’t worry what anyone thinks of you, don’t pass judgement on yourself for not doing enough, know that sitting with a persons heart is the only thing that you both take with you.

Joy dots

The safety of familiar places

Hush of darkened room

Light shining at the edges of a blind

Friendship

Family and shared memories

Warm tea

Silent out back

Kestrels in the sky

Dazzling humanity

Trees, trees and more trees

Recipe

Date and beetroot chutney

I used to make this simple chutney to sell on my stall at the local farmers market, while I was training in Ayurveda. I gave free samples in little paper cones with lots of different toppings for the different Ayurvedic constitutions, on cold winter mornings. The market would fill up as the morning aged, and people browsed the different stalls. There were artisan bread stalls, cheese stalls, an apple cake stall, wild meat, fresh fish, dips and sauerkrauts. And my little kitchari table, with lots of toppings.

If you know your Ayurvedic constitution this recipe is good for Vata and Pitta types.

Ingredients

• 2 beetroot cooked or grated raw

• 3 soft dates

• 2 tsp black mustard seeds

• 1/4 tsp hing (asafoetida)

• A little ghee

• Rock salt

Method

Temper the spices in a little ghee then blitz in a food processor with the other ingredients, and season with rock salt.

My Wednesday post will be coming from Spain where I will visit my sister. I’ve travelled so little this is very exciting for me!

Till Wednesday, wishing you the warmest of weeks,

Lucy x