Saturday, January 06, 2007

Saint and Sinner



Saturday Cuppa: Take your pick from the Juice Bar!

Passionfruit and orange juice
Carrot, ginger and celery
Pineapple
Apple and mint
Carrot and Apple

All freshly made. I’m juice fasting this week…I decided to take advantage of the mild British winter/Paul being home to make the meals ~ and start the new year off with a four day cleanse. Happy New Year!


We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential. ~ Ellen Goodman



This week my emotions have been touched by two lives who’ve walked the world stage in vastly different ways.

Last week in my blog I mentioned my lifelong desire to be a Fairy Godmother sprinkling angel dust over lives and how the ways in which I’d like to do so involve quite large amounts of money!!

Imagine my joy a few days later when reading what my heroine Oprah Winfrey is up to... I’ve admired her for more than half my lifetime. Not actually having seen her show now for about twenty years, my respect is about what she does off camera. She is a very giving, generous soul who blesses other people’s lives, staff, friends and strangers ~ and often anonymously. The cynical could say that she can afford to be generous. Yes, that’s true. But look around you at others who have millions and billions to their name. How many of them actually use their wealth to truly make a difference?

Tell me which talk show hosts in the UK are doing grand works of philanthropy? I’m not even talking about writing a blank cheque for charity. I mean actually getting hands dirty. Making decisions. I read the other day that British actress Emma Thompson had ‘quietly’ adopted a 16 year old Rwandan refugee a few years ago. Some people just get on and ‘do’ acts of kindness.

Oprah’s childhood was one of classic poverty. She has now set up a school in Africa for 11 and 12 year old girls whose families are living lives of poverty, yet despite such beginnings, the girls show the potential for achievement. When describing what she looked for in these girls, she talked about seeing a light within them which showed they’d always see hope, no matter what.

Oprah picked every item for the school including tiles and towels. She said that beauty was very important for helping people feel better about themselves. Her school will also pay for the girls’ university education.

Oprah was raped by an uncle as a teenager. She became pregnant. The baby died.

Last week she was asked about not having children of her own. She described the girls in her school as being the children she never had and now she understands why she didn’t have children of her own. I was moved to tears when I read how much she loved each and everyone of them (150 girls which she hand picked out of 5000 applications) and couldn’t imagine it was possible to love them any more had they been her own.

Oprah, you go girl!

Saddam Hussein was hanged this week. I felt so sick at the thought. Not for one nano-second do I condone the barbaric acts which he instigated whilst he walked upon our Earth.

The media replayed dramatic scenes of the violence and deaths he was responsible for, and yet nowhere did ANYONE bring up the information that might just help to heal humanity.

I don’t believe in original sin, but original blessing. We’re all soul-conceived by a Higher Force and therefore can not be anything but pure. So what led Saddam Hussein to becoming someone with an overwhelming desire to control and take life?

When he was four months old in utero, his father died. Saddam’s mother was struck with grief. Experiencing our mother’s trauma during gestation can affect us on all sorts of levels. For example, it can cause the milk teeth to come out black. One can only wonder at what on earth is happening for the foetus for something as damaging as this to happen to the teeth. So what about the things we don’t see? The things which occur beyond the physical body, in the mind and heart?

At the same time as his dad died, Saddam’s 12 year old brother was seriously ill in hospital and preparing for brain surgery. He died.

Is there anything in life that can come close to the pain of losing your child? I’ve not been there, but I don’t pretend for a second that anything could compete with such grief. Not one loss, but two for Saddam’s mother AND for Saddam. When we are in the womb we pick up EVERYTHING our mother is experiencing. There is no hiding, no escaping, no denying. Her feelings, her thoughts, her passions, her despair, her frustration, her hates, her grief...it is all ours.

Saddam’s mother was in emotional torment and threw herself under a bus to kill both herself and her baby. Clearly they both survived. She then tried to abort Saddam.

A Jewish family took them in and convinced her not to kill him. When Saddam was born, his mother gave him away to another family who raised him for the first three years of life. His mother remarried and Saddam then had a ‘home’ to come back to, except that his step-father was a bully who abused him throughout childhood.

As we grow up in life, we make choices. He could have made different choices. My point is though, who are any of us to judge him given his violent and unwanted arrival into life? How differently would we have reacted to ‘life’ given the same circumstances?

I’ve called this blog saint and sinner. Sin is an old archery term which means ‘to miss the mark’. That is, to miss the bull’s eye. Each and every one of us is capable of being a saint and a sinner. It’s easy to miss the mark…but it’s not impossible to keep our eyes focused on it and try our best to reach our goal of remembering Who We Really Are.

Some time, if you meditate, ask to be shown the vibrational field in which your parents conceived you…and move forward into your gestation and birth. Were you welcomed in love or indifference? Planned or tolerated?

One of the reasons I started The Mother magazine was because of my passion for conscious conception ~ to bring every baby into this world with nothing but unconditional love and welcome! To conceive, gestate and birth peacefully, non-violently and with love would truly change humanity. Nothing less will. Hanging people like Saddam Hussein doesn’t rid our world of poison. The elixir of life which will sustain, nourish and nurture every human being into their full potential is love. Nature or nurture? Regardless of the nature we come in with, nurture is fundamental. Never underestimate the impact of your parenting, and remember, it begins before conception.


happy new year everyone! ~ Veronika

5 comments:

Harmonious Living said...

awesome words. Yep Oprah is brill and resonated with all your sharing. Blessings
x ruth

Antje said...

Happy New Year Veronika!
I ordered a couple of sample TM's and loved them so much that I now subscribe. I love the magazine beyond any other. I love your life philosophy. I have managed to find one or two friends who are like-minded in my area and who don't mind that I still breastfeed my son who is 14 months. He enjoys it, I enjoy it and my husband is totally supportive. Sadly, some people are beginning to make me feel uncomfortable. They think it is wierd that I still feed him and moreover that I enjoy it. Many see me as a breastfeeding "Nazi". I am quite vocal about the subject and can't hide my sorrow when a mother stops and puts her baby on the bottle... why would you do that? Problem is they don't know what's in formula do they? More and more people seem to see bringing up children as a race. The first to sleep through, to be weaned, to walk blah blah. The one thing I hear from older people is make the most of your time with them... they grow up so fast. Why bother having kids if you just want to get them grown up and out the door?
A note about Christmas. I hate the commercialism. I took my children to the carol service at the local church and bought them one or two second hand toys from a charity shop. After all, a 3 year old and a 14 month old are hardly going to know and I don't want them to expect piles and piles of crappy plastic that makes wierd noises and then breaks. I hate the peer pressure that goes with it. I noticed the sideways looks I get when I say my children prefer to play with my pots and pans while I am in the kitchen. They NEVER watch television and can play together and on their own. One mother asked me how I got through the days without sticking the kids in front of the TV ... easy, I play with them, I let them play, I involve them in things around the house and we go out for walks or to the stables or whatever. TV is like a dummy, why start it??? One more thing, I like you saw a heavily pregnant woman smoking, and like you I kept my mouth shut, but I regret it now. I wish I could have made her see how irresponsible she is being. What chance has that baby got if she is too selfish to sacrifice her vice for the sake of its health?
I wonder, will you hold a gathering or camp or something this summer?
I can't wait for my next copy of TM and next saturday, I have learnt alot!
Love and blessings
Antje

Star Khechara said...

Hi V,

Yes I felt appalled at the hanging of saddam too. I thought he looked sad in the pictures and I wonder why he's been made scapegoat for the worlds probs. We'd be called all sorts of names if we suggested hanging other similar styled leaders like Dubya himself eh!
I don't believe in capital punishment, am not even sure if I believe in the prison system. let's see therapy and detox systems instead hey!

Good for you on the juice fast, me instigating the return of my daily juice and smoothie, just not brave enough for a fast just yet :-)

big love as always
xxx star

Tracy Oldfield said...

re Oprah... philanthropy... being 'worthy' ....

Maybe I'm wondering what kind of 'wannabe' education the girls will get. As an autonomous home-edder and a hater of charities 'meddling' in local situations which really don't need meddling with, this really bugs me. Needing surrogate children doesn't excuse it. It's meddling.

Unless the school's like Summerhill, lol.

Tracy Oldfield said...

PS for Antje, if you read it :)

You can't make people see how irresponsible they're being. You can give them information, and they'll decide for themselves if they're being irresponsible. That's all any of us can do.

Oh and television doesn't stop children being able to play with each other. Honest!