1. Beautiful.. but not pretty

That's me... with the ashen cross still on me for'ead!

It's Lent again. It does that. Comes around every year. And me and R were a bit late in the day, looking for some inspiration for a creative journey in our neighbourhood. But suddenly her fella is tweeting a link to the You Are Beautiful video project. And I smiled. And cried. And was off donating money and ordering stickers... Only that was on Monday. And they're sending them from Chicago. And Lent starts today. So I spent a good part of yesterday designing a stop-gap sticker so that we can start stickering our neighbourhood one Lenten day at a time. Look out Clapton here we come.

And I thought I wouldn't blog about it. I'm blogging here at the moment about something totally different and it's all getting a bit out of hand. But then, something prompted me to scribe... tonight, in a small family-sized Ash Wednesday moment I was reminded that the liturgy the Lovely Chris put together for kids included these words:

I am sorry for my mistakes.
I know you love me Jesus.
You made me.
I am beautiful.
Help me love and care for each person here.
Amen.

They are words said together as the ash cross is made on the forehead. They are an approximation (and small kid-friendly version) of the more commonly used "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return". I thought I would use my first sticker, then, on the mirror in our lounge. To remind me that I am beautiful. You can't think anyone else is beautiful until you own your own beauty, right? It will be seen regularly this Lent by all our family and each visitor to our house.

And then, by sheer luck and internet surfing, I came across this slam poet, ripping to shreds the concept of 'pretty', on the Avaaz website. I guess that's part of what the guys at http://you-are-beautiful.com/ are trying to say. There is beauty in us all. Pretty doesn't even come close.

easter trees

I know technically it's still Easter Saturday and all that. But we laid our lawn yesterday, with the help of the wonderful Olivia, and there's no where to put the seasonal bonfire... So, after about 2 weeks of beginning to make an easter tree and meaning to get around to making things to get on it, today finally it's ready. With the wonderful crosses the kids made at Rachel's and the Danish hearts we made at Sunday school and some titchy crocheted leaves I made in a nod to the new buds of spring. So, on day 40 (and if anyone wants to check and confirm my Lenten counting I'd be most grateful!) it's the end of the Lenten 'fast' and the look to the Easter morning. He is Risen indeed! (But also v much enjoying Ian's updates on the pagan beginnings of the festival and the goddess Ostra!). 

good friday gardens

Something very nice about the kids making the Easter Garden look so beautiful in the sun of the church garden while the adults meditated on the Good Friday stories. They wanted to decorate the tomb too which seemed fitting.

maundy moments

OK, so it's the best advert yet for my desperate need for an i-phone (or any phone actually with a half decent camera!) but it's a quick Lenten snap of a Lenten moment. We took the kids this year to the Maundy Thursday meal. They've been before in various guises, mostly as breastfeeding babes or toddlers with toilet training to distract them. But it was good to have them along this year. A bit of a different experience for us, but then it's change a lot in the last few years anyway. It's hard not to remember the meal we shared the day after Ali died. Feels like a lifetime ago. They loved the foot washing. Hardly anyone else got a look in. Oops. Then I came back a bit early with a flagging K. Straight to bed and then to sleep to whispered stories of when a man, a long time ago, in a faraway land, washed the feet of his friends.

happiness is...

... getting home from work and finding your children have made (with a little help from their dad and lovely friends!) home made pizza and Easter nests for tea. Yehay!

eggs eggs eggs

Today: a brief moment of disappointment when I realised that the Great Big Easter Egg hunt had finished just one day into the school hoildays and a whole week before Easter itself (great planning Faberge, thanks!). This was followed, I admit, to being rather grateful that the more than 200 three feet high eggs, which have been decorated by leading figures in the art and design world, had been gathered from their hiding places to be displayed together in Covent Garden. Means more eggs seen for less little leg fatigue! And they were simply marvellous! I mean Hockey's Bigger Picture at the RA last night was amazing, but these were just a little bit more 'community' somehow. I loved the fact that the kids dashed from here to there going 'Look, look at this one!' ticking them all off in their little books. And nice humour present in the egg decoration as well as inspiring art. Lots of nice takes on new life ("Birds don't have a placenta, so it's eggs through which this world they enter!") and hope and growth and renewal and, oh, lots of other lovely Easter related imagery. It's hard to pin point, but I think this is my favourite. Called Fragile. Selling for a few thousand quid at an auction near you!

family fun

Could have posted a couple of pics today. One had Milo on top of a chair, on top of our up-turned table, on top of the car roof. Got a few concerned looks as we trundled Great Grandma's table down the M25 to its next home, at big sister's brand new, purpose built, small mansion sized vicarage. It made a good noise with all the rigging in the wind and we said it was crying because it had never been out of London in its long life. 

Then nice afternoon in the sun at aged parents'. Lots of great kids and neices and nephews etc (not to mention the parentals!) Families always feel good in the sunshine!

This was the snap that made it. Nice to see my 2 lovely nephews jamming away. Even though there's a big age gap they seemed pretty happy with the team they made. The younger providing percussion when he didn't know the cords. And the lovely niece them later. Quite a family Von Trapp really!

But really the snap which should be on my lenten blog is the one I didn't take today. I didn't take it because somehow it didn't seem right. Kay Esther Styles, who my girl and first boy are named for, variously called Kathleen, mum, grandma, Nana, Nan and Great Grandma, is 99 and really hanging in limbo land between life and death. It's hard to see someone who was still doing country dancing in her early nineties such a shadow of her former self. Thin and papery she is totally blind now and lies and sleeps and is cleaned and fed and turned and washed. A bit of a flicker when I rubbed lavender for her to smell and when I sang 'Lavender's Blue, Dilly Dilly', but really it's hard to tell what's going on for her. She's the one I'm thinking about and laying before my God this Lenten time.