Happy Father's Day

June 17th is Father's Day in most parts of the Western world.  So may I wish all fathers - alive or dead - a very good Day with their sons and/or daughters wherever they may be.

To my Dad (who passed on some  24 years ago - seen here with me in this 1955 picture on right!) -
MISSING YOU DAD!  Often have these urges to phone to let you know how we're getting on but I guess you already know that, don't you?  Thanks for everything you did - and are still doing - for me,  for your love and your guidance. Rest in peace.

And since I just received this thought below through Facebook I thought I'd share it with you all here too... it's so relevant to our relationship.....

What about this God of ours....

Carlo Carretto, Italian Church leader of the Fifties who left all and joined a monastic order to live in the Saharan desert, says that the promise of Jesus speaks of his presence, an activity of his spirit and of a revelation. “I shall make myself known to you”. In his book “Letters from the Desert”, Carretto reasons that making themselves known to one another is the task of lovers; a task never finished, never complete. There always remains something mysterious to discover in the relationship, an element of the unknown.

He writes: “Think of God; in Him everything is to be discovered. But in the case of God one thing must be made very clear. God is unknowable to humans directly. We can know him only through figures, symbols and signs. But they themselves are not God. Only God knows himself and knowledge of him remains a mystery for us. But in his love, God has decided to make himself known to us, to reveal himself to us. And that happens in a supernatural manner, in a language untranslatable on earth. A person who grasps this realisation can say nothing. He cannot repeat it…..God is unknowable and only he can reveal himself to me through ways which are wholly his, unrepeatable in words and in concepts beyond our understanding”.

Angela of Foligno, one of the great Italian mystics, says: “Before God the soul…can say nothing because it has no words to express itself with. In fact, there is neither thought nor intelligence that can reach that far, so greatly does it surpass everything, the ways of God cannot be explained."

Carretto concludes that as it was for Angela of Foligno so it is for all of us. “We feel the knowledge of God becoming greater in us little by little, as our love for him becomes greater. And of this knowledge we are unable to say anything. We know that it is a rich, mysterious, dark, personal knowledge of him; but we are unable to utter a syllable about what we know, about how He manifests Himself to us individually."

When I'm 64....

I don't know how many of you remember the Beatles song from the mid Sixties "When I'm 64".  It was sung, I believe, by Ringo Starr and featured in their film "Yellow Submarine", a full length cartoon movie. It was a song that has been with me for too many years, and though it was not really one of my top favourites then it has, over the years, featured as a sort of target. A date in the future when I'd reach that age.

S0 yesterday I finally reached that target....I now am 64!!  Yipee!! I had a fabulous day with so many text, e-mail and FB friends wishing me all the very best, good luck and blessings for the coming year. It is somehow nice to realise you are appreciated after all.

BUT today is the day after.  And so what was the big deal all about?  I suppose you can say that birthdays come and birthdays go but the Beatles song stayed with me throughout the years. So I gave it it's run for what that's worth...and came up with some thoughts.

The song talks about that fateful day in the distant future when, having lost my hair, I'd turn 64. In a way it's a  modern love song where the singer asks his life's partner what would she be doing when he was 64..... "Will you still be sending me a valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine..." 

But I love the way he really takes the situation in hand and asks her "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?"   The thing I like about this song is it's really human approach to a relationship which we seem to have lost - or are losing at a very fast pace - today. The author obviously thinks that at 64 they'd be still together......   
I could be handy, mending a fuse when your lights have gone, 
You can knit a sweater by the fireside, 

Sunday mornings, go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?Will you still need me, will you still feed me 
when I'm sixty-four?

Ah, how things have changed in the intervening 45 or so years when his song was written.  Do we still believe that relationships/marriages last that long?  Do we still believe that marriage is there to last a lifetime?  "Use and discard" is way we live today; nothing is built to last more than a few years...why should it when another, better version, is bound to arrive to replace what we have?  The same goes, it seems with families which tend t change format with every growing whim....and the poor children having to make out who their real mum and/or dad is!

How different I find that we are now at "age 64" than the times the Beatles envisioned for today.....Ah, grandchildren on your knee, Vera, Chuck and Dave! 


Am I being too pessimistic?  Perhaps. But then perhaps the Beatles too had a feeling that not everything would be so fine and dandy.  So let me close with the song's ending...


Send me a postcard, drop me a line 

stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say, 

yours sincerely wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form,

 mine forever moreWill you still need me, will you still feed me
 when I'm sixty-four?  


NOW enjoy the music and vision of John, Paul, George and Ringo from their original cartoon film...... 


click here>>>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3chFhCP5mQ

Life is what we are alive to...

“Life is what we are alive to. It is not length but breadth....Be alive to...goodness, kindness, purity, love, history, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God, and eternal hope.”

This is a quote credited to Maltbie Davenport Babcock (photogaph) -1858 – 1901, a noted American clergyman and writer of the 19th century who authored the familiar hymn “This is My Father's World” among others. Originally this hymn was a poem which eventually was put to music, yet its wonderful words still ring true today and i am repropducing them below as they still have a wonderful ring to them today:

This is my Father's world:

     and to my listening ears all nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.

This is my Father's world:

     I rest me in the thought of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; his hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father's world:

     the birds their carols raise, the morning light, the lily white, declare their maker's praise.

This is my Father's world:

     he shines in all that's fair; in the rustling grass I hear him pass; he speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father's world.

     O let me ne'er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.

This is my Father's world:

     why should my heart be sad? The Lord is King; let the heavens ring! God reigns; let the earth be glad!