Youth and Age

This last week has been of experiencing the generations particularly youth and age and it brings into sharp focus for me how the onset of the latter years is fast approaching! A sobering thought. Life is a series of opening and closing doors - or gates - as we progress through life. We pass from our birth and infant years, to childhood, then the teenage years and into adulthood. 


We mature and hopefully reach a balanced and fulfilling time of life. Then we move into the autumn of our lives and as the years pass (if we are so blessed) we age be it gracefully or disgracefully, be it willingly or unwillingly until death comes to take us by the hand into that unknown land.


I was thrust into the complex and exhilarating word of four teenage boys during the holidays, with testosterone raging, loud music, mood swings, changing emotions, sibling rivalry, and energy to die for. Watching my two grandsons and their mates was a pure delight. My grandsons seemed to have grown over night from those laughing little toddlers to these teenagers obsessed with clothes, (how I wish they would wear a belt to keep those jeans up instead of having them barely hanging on their slender hips) carefully styled hairdo, girls  who are 'cool'  and the ever present  gadgets such as iphones glued to their ears and the ever present mobiles for constant txting!


Fortunately though,  'youth is a disease from which we all recover,' as Dorothy Fulheim said.


They really were invigorating, funny, infuriating and frustrating all at the same time but I love them to bits. They put up with Nan's hugs and kisses and my house rules and were a great help in the garden but most of all they were like a breathe of fresh air as the years slipped away for the time they were with me.



It seemed only yesterday that my three sons were that age now my daughter has four sons of her own. It was a time for my daughter and I to celebrate the joys of  being mothers.It was a time to share the love and importance of family and friends.

My grandsons, Codey & Rory - 'Oh the years of youth with
the future before you and where the world is your oyster!'

In complete contrast I took an older friend of mine to see an elderly friend of ours who had recently  suffered quite a severe stroke and was in a local rest-home. We knew that our friend had good mobility and could feed herself but that her speech was affected but to what degree we weren't sure. Our friend met us at the door having seen (and recognised) us from the lounge. We went to her room and it was there that we realised how badly her speech had been affected. It was as though all the speech 'wires' in her brain had been crossed and what came out was a confused jumble of words.

This was an intelligent, lively woman in her eighties who still ran the local line dancing, was still active in our local dramatic society, albeit now the queen of the kitchen as opposed to the stage and who took an active interest in local affairs. 

It was heart-breaking. It left us feeling so helpless and sad for our friend who was struggling to tell us what she needed to yet unable to have the words come out in an intelligible order for us to understand. Yet, miraculously we did intuitively have a sense, a feeling of what our friend was trying desperately to convey to us and we gave her our undivided attention for the time we were with her.

'You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.'  ~Douglas MacArthur


But when something like a stroke happens life can be overwhelming. For this 'young at heart' elderly woman life has dealt a cruel blow yet despite it all she still has the will to get better, to battle on and to get her message out. To go back home is her goal and only time will tell if she can achieve her dream.


This visit made me realise how precious each day is, and to make the most of every single one for unlike youth, old age is not something we can recover from but as Brigette Bardot said -"It's sad to grow old, but nice to ripen". 

Like the rose we are born, we blossom and we die
with each stage having the potential to hold
life in all it's glory, richness and beauty

Sharing Experiences

Celebrants sharing experiences
in Tauranga over lunch

When a group of celebrants get together we can talk for hours sharing our experiences so much so that we could easily write a really entertaining book about them. Today I met with some of my celebrant colleagues from around the Coromandel who are members of the Celebrants Association of New Zealand Inc. During a delightful lunch at the Tastebuds Cafe just south of Thames, we managed to exchange an amazing amount of stories, useful information and ideas.  


Three hours later we had certainly come to know each other a great deal better and learnt a great deal about one another and our work.


Networking such as this is such a valuable process especially when, as celebrants, we work on our own and living where we all do, are quite a distance from one another and the main centres. Today was a first for those of us living in the wide flung Coromandel/Hauraki area and it was really worthwhile, so much so that we are going to keep in touch from now on via email and meet every three months.


Personally, I have never had a problem sharing my resources, experience or how I have dealt with the various queries and challenges that celebrants are presented during their work with my fellow celebrants. My philosophy is that we are there to assist one another in whatever way we can and it is usually a two-way process for we learn from one another. My celebrant colleagues today shared my philosophy so the two-way process was very evident.


As I have said many times, Celebrancy is such a privilege. It is extremely personal, creative and interesting on so many levels. We meet people of diverse cultures, beliefs and professions. We come into our clients lives at particularly exciting or sensitive times and help them celebrate those important moments in their lives with empathy, integrity and professionalism. From these experiences we are blessed and enriched beyond measure.


Oscar Wilde said 'that experience is the name we give to our mistakes;' how true that is for it is through those mistakes that we learn what not to do and so improve our standard of work. By networking with colleagues we learn new ways of doing things, we learn to look at a situation from another point of view and we learn those vital little tricks of the trade. We also refresh our memories of things that worked well for us in a ceremony, are shown different ways of incorporating ritual and symbolism into ceremony and widen our knowledge of the many cultural aspects celebrants have to deal with today.


I totally agree with the 20th century French author and philosopher, Albert Camus, who  said - "You can't create experience. You must undergo it.'  We can listen to our colleague's experiences and take them on board but it is only by dealing with what is presented to us and creating our solutions, ideas and using our initiative that we truly learn - that is experience. 


Today my fellow celebrants and I shared our experiences and celebrated the many privilege and satisfaction our work brings us and in doing so enriched each other. We added to our knowledge and went home the better for it.


And as Albert Einstein said so succinctly  - "the only source of knowledge is experience.'

My 19 year old grandson experiences snow for
the first time. Now he knows what it really feels like!

Treasured Memories

Loving memories are with us forever

A trip to Wellington to stay with my lovely friends, Lois and Peter, this week was a time of sharing stories, renewing friendships and creating memories to treasure.


We create memories every day we live; some we treasure, some we want to forget but all make up the colourful, metaphorical tapestry  that we each weave on this journey called life.


Our memories are stored in our minds, like the files on our computers and because our brains can store so much information we can replay those treasured memories at will or when something triggers a particular memory, such as a piece of music, a scene, words or a particular scent.


As the American author, poet and naturalist, Diane Ackerman, states in her book 'A Natural History of the Senses'  'Nothing is more memorable than a smell.  One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town.  Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.  Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.  A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth. 


Being a Marriage Celebrant one of the things I really wanted to do in Wellington was visit the 'Unveiled Exhibition.' This exhibition comprises 200 years of gorgeous wedding fashion, featuring dresses from one of the world’s most superb collections - the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Each beautiful gown or accessory held treasured memories both personally, for their original owners and from the historical fashions point of view. 


They also evoked special childhood memories for me as, from an early age, I was taken to the Victoria and Albert Museum, along with all the other London Museums and Art Galleries by my father, my Papa. My love of history and art was conceived during those visits and blossomed and flourished into a an inquiring passion to know more. I would squirrel away each experience in my memory banks to be re-awakened at a later date.


'Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us,' wrote Oscar Wilde, in his wonderfully witty and memorable play 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' and how true that is. Particularly when someone we love dies, for nothing not even death can destroy the many  memories made across the years or the love enfolded in them.


Mind you, I do find I am getting a tad forgetful sometimes these days but when I came across these wise words by Friedrich Nietzsche I felt  much better - 'The existence of forgetting has never been proved:  We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.'  


When my husband died memories swirled around me, they took me on a roller coaster ride of grief ridden emotions and feelings. Each memory was bitter sweet - a bitter sweet comfort to wrap myself in. Music would and still does of course bring particular memories into sharp focus but the pain of loss is bearable now.

A roller coaster ride of grief ridden
emotions and feelings

Today I took a ceremony to honour and celebrate the life of the father of some close friends of mine and memories filled the funeral chapel with the warmth of love and light evoking much laughter as well as the tears. Each memory was filled with love and love over-arched every word that was spoken. 

Writer Thornton Wilder said it all when he wrote 'there is a land of the living and a land of the dead - and the bridge is love.' I think we could add 'memory' to that bridge for it's our ability to use our memory to remember and bring to life our loved ones who have died, that somehow makes grief more bearable over time. Like the audio-visual presentation that are shown in so many life celebrations today we are able to play a slide show of memories in our minds.

However I discovered in my grief journey that life goes on and there comes a time when we all have to move on too. However I was able to do this knowing that my store of memories was always there when evoked or when I chose to delve into them.

The 19th. century Christian writer Margaret Fairless Barber expresses it so well in her book  of meditations entitled, 'The Roadmender'  - 'To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.'

'To look back for a while
is to refresh the eye'

I enjoy looking back through the memory banks of my mind back but my focus is always on the future for that's where my journey of life is taking me and that's what makes my life so exciting.
  

Letting go . . .

Is something we all need to do at various stages in life  yet we often find the process of 'letting go' a real challenge. However, if we don't 'let go' of certain things in life we cannot move on; we become trapped like the fly caught in the spider's web; we allow co-dependency to control us so we never  discover that all we need in life is within us. We continue to blame life, the past, others, as well as what life presents us with instead of 'letting go' and being free to move on.


American author, motivational speaker and philanthropist, Steve Maraboli sums it up beautifully in his book "Life, the Truth and Being Free' when he states - “The greatest step towards a life of simplicity is to learn to let go.” Something I have been learning to do all my life.


From 'letting go' my dream of going to university when my father decided I must become a hairdresser because if I had a good trade I would never go without, to 'letting go' the fact that in my innocence when I married my ex-husband I would be able to change him - it took a while before I learnt that only we can change ourselves. One by one I had to learn to 'let go' of my children so that they could make their own journey in life. I had to learn that, as I had,  they had to make their own mistakes, fight their own battles and become who they wanted to be not what I wanted them to be.


As a loving parent I did the best I could with the 'tools' I had at the time but I couldn't always protect them from life, they had to learn to protect themselves and to grow and become the wonderful adults they now are. I also had to realise I couldn't hold on to them or live my life through my children or grandchildren. Avoiding the issue by constantly filling my life with 'doing' or looking every where other than myself meant I wasn't allowing myself to 'let go' and so depend on myself and my own inner strengths. 


Day by day I learn that when I do 'let go' I am free to move on and in doing so "All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well," as the mystic, Julian of Norwich wrote. This was my mantra when Chris died as I learnt to slowly 'let go' knowing deep down  that in time 'all would be well.'


Buddhists philosophy speaks of letting go of our desires - our craving or perceived need for something - for desire brings suffering. Letting go and desiring less brings a greater contentment to life and as I grow older I find this to be an essential truth. So I am working hard on the de-cluttering process in my home (to my kids delight!) even letting go of some of my precious books and the many 'things' I have collected or been given over the years. 


Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor  and philosopher, wrote - 'Men (or women-my addition) seek out retreats for them selves, cottages in the country, lonely seashores and mountains. Thou too art disposed to hanker greatly after such things: and yet all this is the very commonest stupidity; for it is in they power, whenever thou wilt, to retire into thyself: and nowhere is there any place whereto a man (or a woman) may retire quieter and more freely. . . than his (her) own soul.'

By 'letting go' we allow ourselves to move onward
and so fulfil our destiny on the journey of life

The process of 'letting go' can be extremely powerful and healing especially if incorporated in a ritual or ceremony. For example, writing down what you want to 'let go' of and then ritually burning the paper in a safe way, or verbalising it and casting your words into the wind, or silently saying the words and symbolising the 'letting go' by casting a flower or leaf upon the waters. Such a ritual had a powerful effect on my youngest son, Kent, and I some years ago and this has made a big difference to our ability to the ongoing process of 'letting go' whenever we still need to.

When I was going through a time of deep grief after my Chris died and learning to 'let go' in a major way I wrote this poem and it seems a positive note to end on today.

            Our Book of Life

Life is a book with it’s pages blank

on which we write our own special story.

What we write depends on us,

the way we live and how we react

to all the pain and the glory.

We can embrace life, live life to the full.

We can soak up it’s beauty, learn all we can.

We can challenge ourselves to grow and develop,

or we can stand still cocooned behind walls, brittle as glass.

We can live behind masks, decayed in the spirit,

with hearts bitter and heavy, entombed in our past,

Barren in love, shadowed in hate.

We each have a choice in the paths that we take,

in the chapters we write, in the way that we live.

We each have the answer inside deep within us,

if only we listen

if only we listen.

In silence comes the answer, so clear and so true

just unlock the light and let it shine through.

Let that still inner voice, so real and so true,

bring the peace you so desire

knowing that Love is always

there, deep in your heart forever

If only you let go.

Wanda Brittain ©

Water. . .

is essential for life
it is cleansing 
it is purifying.


Life first began in the oceans depths aeon's ago
just as a new life floats in the waters of the womb


Falling as rain, water nourishes the earth, the crops and plants and without it life dies.


Water is sacred. It is life-giving and blesses us every day. Water blesses a new life as the baby is cleansed after birth; as the baby is named and Christians are made new in the ritual of baptism. Many cultures have rituals and ceremonies centred on rivers that they hold sacred such as the river Ganges for Hindu in India. Despite the Ganges or 'Gangaji' or 'Ganga Maiya' (Mother Ganga) as it is called by Hindu, being extremely polluted, bathing in it's holy waters is considered cleansing and purify as well as bringing heavenly blessings to the bather. The river Jordan is likewise held as sacred because it is where Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist


Water is associated with healing in many cultures and beliefs. In pagan times sacred springs or wells were often associated with a God or Goddess and worshipped as sacred places for healing or where wishes or prayers were made by believers. Later they were often called wishing wells. Thousands of pilgrims flock to Lourdes in France, where the Virgin Mary appeared to a peasant girl, to be healed and across the centuries people visited spa towns such as Bath in England, Baden-Baden in Germany and even Te Aroha where I live, to bathe in the healing waters. 


I encourage you to come and 'take the waters' and enjoy the sheer luxury of soaking in the Te Aroha Spas - the perfect way to relax and ease those aching joints! Go to the spa website www.tearohapools.co.nz/ to find out more.

My Naming Bowl - made from clay from the earth,
with a crystal stone with paua shell from the ocean 

When I take a Naming ceremony (a secular christening) I use water from the sacred Mount Te Aroha and put it into a special bowl that I use into which I put the following herbs and flowers because of their meaning - sage for wisdom, lavender for healing, thyme for long life, rosemary for remembrance, heartease symbolising the sorrows of life and rose petals for joy.

I then dip my hand in the water and making a circle on the baby's/child's head saying these words -

Water is the source of life, it is cleansing and healing

as I make the circle of life on (Name) forehead 

I welcome her/him into her family circle

and into the Circle of Life, with Love and Blessings.

Little child of Love and Light, 

I hereby name you, (Given Names) with water that is 

as clear as your spirit and as pure as your heart. 

With this water of life I bless you 

and wish you a long, fulfilling and joyful life.

Easter-New Beginnings

Easter time is about hope and new beginnings in life and life cannot exist without water. May all the blessings of Easter be yours, now and always.

As I have mentioned before, I have a pretty large resource library of poetry and prose that I call on for my ceremony work and one of my favourite authors is the late philosopher-poet, John O'Donohue. John never fails to inspire and uplift me with his beautifully insightful words. 


His poem entitled 'In praise of water' from his book of blessings entitled 'Benedictus' seems the perfect way to bring today's blog to an end. Enjoy.

In Praise of Water (excerpt) -John O'Donohue from 'Benedictus' his Book of Blessings

Let us bless the grace of water:

The imagination of the primeval ocean
Where the first forms of life stirred
And emerged to dress the vacant earth
With warm quilts of color.

The courage of a river to continue belief
In the slow fall of ground,
Always falling farther
Toward the unseen ocean.

Let us bless the humility of water,
The buoyancy of water
The innocence of water,
Flowing forth, without thought
Of what awaits it.

Water: voice of grief,
Cry of love,
In the flowing tear.

Water: vehicle and idiom
Of all the inner voyaging
That keeps us alive.

Blessed by water,
Our first mother.

The Sacred waters Lake Taupo
Tthe "heart" of the North Island according to Māori legend