The other day I was with some friends in a well-known garden here in Perth Hills in the middle of the bush, Araluen. It’s in a steep valley and is an old, loose, blowsy, meandering, slightly unkempt garden with lots of old “English” type plants. It’s nearly winter so the roses were tired and straggly with a few forlorn glimpses of their summer glory. But some of the early huge camellias were starting to put on a show. And it’s the time of year when you tidy up and prune and start getting ready for spring.  There’s a babbling creek gurgling over the stones and wending its way through tree ferns. A big man-made waterfall splashes down through a grove of pine trees as a memorial to the fallen soldiers of the past.  Beyond the far edges of the garden, hundreds of blue-green gum trees climb the steep hills and reach high into the sky.

As we strolled around the garden, scuffling through a few fallen yellow and scarlet leaves on the path that had fallen from the high maple trees, a visitor from another country stopped us to ask “Where’s the garden?”

“Where’s the garden?”  It’s all around you.  Maybe it’s different to your expectations. Maybe you assumed Australian gardens looked differently to what you were looking at.  Maybe they’re done differently in your cultre.

We tried to explain to him, but he didn’t understand what we were trying to say. We waved our hands around gesturing at the shrubs, the trees, the colour, trying to help him see the garden that was right in front of him. But he looked puzzled and said he’d keep looking further down the path.

“Where’s the garden?”  I am just like that. So busy with my expectations and assumptions, that I don’t notice what’s really going on all around me – the colour and the grandeur – and sometimes the fadedness – the wealth of Life that surrounds me.

Life all around me

“Where’s the garden?” Lord, open my eyes to see your Life and Breath happening all around me all the time.

This is NOT how I want my haircuts!

Hairdressers = dentists.   At least, they do in my head. And it takes me the same amount of time between when I know I need a haircut and when I realise I need to have a tooth filled.

It’s not that I hate hairdressers personally. It’s just that they want to know what I want in a haircut and I haven’t got a clue– I just want a “comfortable” hairstyle that is no-fuss in the mornings and where I don’t look like a freak

So I nearly always walk out of the salon after the haircut – and it doesn’t seem to make any difference what price I’d just paid – and I feel very uncomfortable and I don’t like the haircut or how it “sits” on my head.

To save some money I started getting my hair cut as a model at a hairdressing Academy. My hair is cut by hairdressing students, but supervised by an experienced “Hair Master”.  My eyes have been opened to how good it feels to have a great haircut – and colour – and what a difference to makes to how I am feeling! This man is Amazing!

Yesterday, I turned up for my usual haircut at the academy.  As the young apprentice started, the Hair Master recognised my hair – he told her “This is not curls, but irregular movement”!  And he told her how to cut it well.  And that it would be a challenge for her.

She started snipping away.  He told her “chip deeper”.  So she did. “No, deeper than that,” he said. So she did – all the way to her finger!  Now she needed a bandaid. So she downed her tools and was gone for a while.  Bandaids seemed hard to find.  Finally, the Hair Master couldn’t stand is, and he jumped up and said, ‘Would you mind if I cut your hair?”  As if…!!

He gave me the Best Haircut Ever! And then he picked up the docket and I followed him to the front reception for me to make my payment. Where he laid it down on the desk and put a big X through my $25 bill. Then I realised my debt was going to probably be much higher than I’d anticipated for this Haircut. “Oh well,” I thought. “It will be worth it.” But I’m also wondering how I’m going to explain the much bigger pricetag to my Personal Accountant waiting for me at home!

He then circled a big dark zero over the top of it. “You don’t pay anything today,” he said. I gawped unbelievingly, and gratefully stammered my thanks. I owed a big debt.  And through no effort on my part, it was completely wiped out. What a wonderful Picture of Grace.

A poem by William Martin that almost seems “counter-cultural” these days:

Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable, but it is a way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples, and pears.

Show them how to cry when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself.

I thought being no longer in the paid work force meant I would have oodles of time to do lots of “extra” things. But now that I don’t have the pressure of time, I am far more easily distracted and end up down side-alleys because I now have “plenty of time”.

A case in point from this morning.  I went to Ikea to buy a sink to put in our new kitchen when it finally gets renovated. I budgeted an hour for this – enough time to drive to the big shop, get the sink and drive home again.  Instead of which, I remembered that my adult son’s birthday is this Saturday.  And I have no idea what on earth to get him.

So I end up wandering around Ikea – instead of going straight to the targeted “sinks” section – looking and hoping for inspiration to strike me. And I end up finding a couple of silly things for him.

Then when I do finally end up in the sink section of Ikea, I can no longer make up my mind which sink I would like.  Because a sink is such a “final” purchase. You can’t easily change your mind with your selection once it’s installed. So I leave Ikea with two silly birthday presents and no sink!  Philip has a day off tomorrow so I think I’ll ask him to help me make the sink selection. But it all took more than double the time I’d allocated! Just as well it doesn’t really matter in the long run!

I need to continually remember that all of life is a journey – lots of little “mini-journeys” and an over-arching Longer Journey.

The Journey

How will it feel if I get to the end of my Long Journey and there’s no-one else there and nothing but a brick wall?

We forget often what a weird world we live in.

90% of the matter in the universe is completely unknown.

The boffin scientists – as well as us – don’t know what it is!

Figuring out HER world!

I’m not long back from an excursion to the beach with Lisa and Miri. A cloudy day – high, pearl-grey light clouds and no wind. The ocean was calm, apart from the waves crashing and breaking right near the shoreline – limpid, pale, green-grey silky rippling water reflecting the light grey skies above. So bravely with gritted and clenched teeth I crept into the cold water. (The reality is that the water is the same temperature as in the hot days of summer!)

After the initial shock of it, and then swimming madly about to warm myself up, I was able to relax and enjoy it – it was wonderful. There was hardly anyone there – maybe a dozen people along the whole length of the beach, and barely half a dozen of us in the water.

And the exciting thing was that we were joined by several dolphins! Miri who was sitting up on the beach had the best view – they were swimming only about 20 metres from the shoreline, just lazily moving along, slowly gliding up and down through the water.

I didn’t see them at first – I had swum over to the south end of the beach, to the big rock breakwater wall, so that by the time they passed by me, they were 80 metres away and I could only just see their fins gliding up and down out of the water. But so exciting! Miri said the middle-aged adults on the beach squealed with the joy and delight.

Moments filled with wonder and joy!