Here’s the best way to demonstrate why climbing on a dry stone wall can be hazardous to your health. This wall in my garden had been showing an alarming bulge for the last few months and yesterday, this was the outcome.
Rhosyn
So, when you realise that you have to walk the length of a field to get to a gate because of a dry stone wall, DON’T be tempted to climb over!
We all know that the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. However, I’ve tried to start that journey with a huge seven-league step without the necessary magic boots.
What I’m seeking to do is to create on online presence using a variety of different ways, all seeking to do a slightly different task. Here’s what I’m working on…
Foolishly, I’m working on all these things simultaneously. I basically don’t work well unless there’s some pressure, so publishing this is committing me to work on all these things and maintain them!
I’d be pleased to include your contributions to www.hiraeth.org.uk They can be about anything Welsh: history, mountains, castles, railways, mining, beaches, language, politics, people, religious history. Send me copy and photographs (for which you own the copyright which I’ll acknowledge).
The Welsh word for journey is taith. However, it means more than the English word of getting between point A and point B. It is about all that happens along the way, an adventure, a trek, a quest, a venture, a voyage, a mission. My journey to write all those items is certainly going to be a taith.
I attended a course today on ‘Communicating through Touch’ with Christine to help us in our work with autistic kids. There were two young facilitators, skilled and proficient from a charity called Touch Trust. However, in the scene setting DVD that was shown, the narrator quickly started talking about ‘our aura’ and ‘energy stroking’. The New Age content was very strong and I tuned out much of the subsequent exercises we were asked to perform as a result.
At lunchtime I had to slip home and walk the dog but I confess I took the opportunity to miss the next session which was more of the same practical stuff with the New Age approach. The day was redeemed for me by a remarkable DVD shown later which portrayed how music therapy could release children locked in autism. The Trust is fortunate to be located in the Wales Millennium Centre and is helped by the Welsh National Opera. I was in tears watching WNO baritone Owen Webb singing with the kids.
We came home emotionally and spiritually exhausted and I did what I often do when I’m unsettled – I surf You Tube listening to the music that helps me to do what the Quakers beautifully put as, “centre down”. Usually, I start with some Welsh language music which I find very relaxing. Coincidentally, last weekend at our church, a friend who was addressing the church described the Welsh nation as having “a connection with the land”. I almost cheered – she had put in five words what I was frustratingly unable to express about what I felt about coming home to Wales, the first time I’d ever experienced a sense of place.
I started as I often do with Cerys Matthews singing Arglwydd Dyma Fi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Axw_i0WxMk (I Hear thy Welcome Voice), surfed to a version of the wonderful Welsh revival hymn, Dyma Gariad Fel Y Moroedd (Here is Love Vast as the Ocean) with Katherine Jenkins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liWYLxitHkU Unfortunately Nikki Rose’s wonderful version isn’t on You Tube but I clicked on a link titled Revival Hymn http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwbps9k5Dj0 and was profoundly moved by a 35minute presentation on Revival. At the end of it my perspective was restored and I caught again that cool breeze those wonderful Celtic saints experienced when the breath of God blew and touched the land of Wales. Do try and find some time to watch it.
