I'm back

Sorry I've been away for quite a while.

Those who need to have my email: please leave yours written in the comments.
I won't publish yours unless you're spamming me.

As most of my readers know I have been caring for a large family with 4 kids with special needs for a long time without any vacation.
I didn't mind, as I considered it to be my task in life.
I cared for my grandmother until she went in a home at a very old age, a few years before I married and got children. So it was a kind of ongoing theme in my life.

Apart from that I had to deal with quite some bad karma of others or a life I don't know, as I have started to call it.
I have a clean conscience, but one way or another got dragged in the mistakes of other people and caught up in the whirlwind it all caused.
The stress proved too much.

Without realising I was developing a serious heartproblem I went on putting the wellbeing of others first, ascribing symptoms to my asthma.
My health was deteriorating so bad that I started to arrange matters for my death.

A bad pneumonia made me go to our family physician. He asked a longspecialist for advice and she called me in. It turned out I have some strange things going on in my lungs.
She send me off to a cardiologist after she found something seriously wrong on an ECG.
Well, at the moment I was at the cardiology department for an echo, straight during the echo, my heartfunction was almost nothing. I was admitted to hospital straightaway, put on a monitor and went through a whole lot of diagnostic procedures. The cardiologist couldn't do anything else but give me lots of medication.

Now he states that he doesn't understand how I survived, as all others who arrive in hospital in the same condition have died.

I quickly regained most of my health, but recently it took a turn worse. My bloodpressure went far too high even though I was taking all the right meds.

So now I'm having the last pills available for the problem.
I've lost more than 30 kg in weight.
Eat and act healthy.
There's not much more we can do.

I feel the moment has arrived that I have to balance wellbeing, health and medication carefully.
It's like being sliding on a slope with a weight that helps to feel better but which also pulls you down to the edge of the rocks above a deep valley.

What a blessing I've already been living mindful before the whole concept even was (re-)invented in modern times.
So I try not to worry, but prepare.

Will you be walking this last part of my path with me?

Blaming someone

We're living in a time where people always seemt o be looking for someone to blame.

Recession? Due to the banks and the governments.
A row? He's to blame?
Cold? It's the weather.

I really had to train my children to losen themselves from the automatic behaviour to look outside themselves first.

When there's a problem, why start blaming someone?
There is almost never a clear cause to a problem. As we buddhists say: there's always a cause for the cause of the cause.

It's far more important to observe how we react and to change the way we react into a constructive way of dealing with the situation.

So instead of trying to find out who's guilty and who's to blame, I want my children to react with dignity and find a proper solution to the problem.
To me it's a kind of self respect.

Do you have a moment of peace in the weekend?

When I grew up we were called out of bed early on sundays because we had to go to church.
I was raised in a roman catholic family in a part of town that resembled a village and where the priests were more important that the mayor who lived there too.

I was a member of the church choir because I could sing. As simple as that.
And because I had a nice voice and kept key and could remember the melodies well I also sang solo.

My songs were always planned before the incense filled the church with smoke, as I felt unwell as soon as I breathed it in.
Some chaplains refrained from using incense completely. That meant a lot to me as the most beautiful songs were sung in the second one of the service.

One of them, who worked in china and india and was too old to travel any more burned his own incense after he carefully tried it out. He was a kind guy and told me the incense was used to cure asthmatic people. None believed him but I did.

Sunday mass was supposed to be the most peacefull time in the weekend.
In a way it was that for me, as I forgot everything around me when I was singing.

But I doubt it was for others.
The women on their way home always had a lot to talk about others: "Have you seen..., she has a new coat." etc etc.

When I went to university I visited the university church a couple of times and then gradually moved to buddhism.

Each sunday a group of roman catholic and buddhistic students would meet to share a meal and meditate.
I felt at home there.
None was focussed on outward behaviour and clothes.
None was trying to be better than someone else.

I was accepted as the person I was and took the ways of the buddhists upon me in such an easy way that they seemed to have slumbered inside me for a long time.

When I had my own family and wasn't able to keep in contact with church or buddhistic friends I kept the ways of creating a peaceful weekend with a silent hour for all of us in the afternoon or early evening.

It was very special to us and we've kept it until now.
The hour is still silent, but I wonder if anyone of my family realises where it came from and I think some even don't realise it's there every week.

Now we've chosen to be officially buddhists children respect my silence consciously, whereas before they did it unconsciously.

Do you have a moment of peace in the weekend?