Behind the red door.

Welcome!

May this be a safe place full of understanding and acceptance, where you can be as you are, without the need of any mask of pretence or image. 
- John O'Donohue

Hello from our new home in the city. Actually it isn't strictly new to us. We bought this house around 17 years ago, and left it 8 years ago when we moved to the country. I grew up in the country. I like it there. In the city I can feel like I have fallen out of a space ship. So much is alien to me. I can't help but wonder if I actually look like a Martian - all green and out of place. Perhaps I will share more of this later on.

Can you see the painting? I painted this just before we left Narrogin. I'm not sure what it is all about I just painted what was in my heart as a way to hold onto 'the peace' in a time of sudden change. In her hands she carries a plant in full bloom, in a round bowl. Is it an offering? Is she receiving the new? Any ideas?

Notice the colour of the door. Something I promised myself was that one of the very first things I would do would be to paint the door red as a sign of hospitality. In our new/ old home family, friends and the stranger will always be welcome. May this home once again be a soft place to land. A spacious place of peace. Somewhere you can just be yourself, seen and accepted.

 A friend signs his emails with this saying - 'porta patet cor magis... the door is open, the heart even more'. That is our new (and old) motto. When we lived here before I  painted a large mural, on the wall that you can see behind the door, on the right. It was of a Mexican street and the message I wrote there was 'mi casa - su casa'. Translated that means 'my house - your house'.  I was so sad when we had to paint over it to rent the house (so were the kids), and I have a feeling that that beautiful blank white wall will be a canvas for me again very soon. I guess it is symbolic of this fresh new canvas we have as we start life anew in our old, not-as-ugly-as-I-thought, much loved home. What excites me about returning is that I have remembered this...

This house is not about the style of it, its age, nor the location of it... it is what happens behind the red door  that matters most, and that is what makes it one special home!

Asta xoxox

'May you have the eyes to see that no visitor arrives without a gift and no guest leaves without a blessing' - from John O'Donohue's blessing for a new home. Prayed over us by my friend and priest Rev Lynda.

Are we fools?

Flowers in second hand bottles and animals decorate Asta's home.

'See us go the fool's way
gathering all about us
for a covering, a surety,
a pleasure;
Opiates to fill time's hollow;
piles of things which rot away
or linger near our ankles
to stop us dancing.'
(from 'Simplicity' by Mark A Burch)

I rarely go to the city, which was obvious by my reaction to the city on the weekend.

I felt like an alien or a newborn when I walked through the shopping centres. It was like seeing things for the first time. Everything screamed for my attention; noises, smells, people rushing about, bright colours and flashing lights... there were no windows to anchor me to the real world. It was all plastic and fantastic... the latest this and that, the 'must buys'. If shopping really did fulfil us, as the advertising promises, then there would be no reason to go back to the shops, and there would be little need for them.

I hear that people are sleeping out tonight, at the Apple stores, so that they can be the first to buy the latest iPhone, which incidentally will have obsolescence built into it and so we can be certain there will be more overnight stays in the future!

My recent experience made me realise, more than ever, what I have known deep down for a long time - we who want to live simply must find a tribe to support us. We can not do this alone. We are like salmon swimming against the tide and that is hard work. The more we join together, the more we can stand firm in peace and love, and others will see that there truly is a life giving alternative (for us and the world) - and just maybe the tide will turn. Idealistic? Yes I am!!! Nothing has the right to 'linger near our ankles and stop us dancing', and we have no right to shop with abandon with no thought of the bigger picture.

Live simply so that others might simply live,

Asta x

NB - I am moving back to the city. I will need my tribe!!