Green Patches

Sustainable Smellies - the return

Update on the hair situation over on my Musings blog. Mr GP demonstrates commendable tact, given that it's Valentine's Day and all.

Blog of The Week - Lucy Mills on Life

Lucy ponders the inclusivity and exclusivity of social media, and suggests we pray for discernment to know when to use it and when to use our own hands and feet.

Do we save our comfort and companionship just for those who are easily reached on our devices? Do we neglect those who are not part of this happy digital ‘community’? So we never get round to – dare I say it – writing a letter or a card to someone who would deeply, desperately appreciate it in a world of 140 characters or less?

 - check out the rest of Lucy's post here.

 

I've touched on this topic myself  in the past.  Thanks  Lucy for reminding me of it.

 

Sustainable Smellies - the sequel

I'm not too sure about this smellie business, you know.  Gory details over on my Musings blog.

Sustainable Smellies - Make Your Place

Just been leafing through another Christmas pressie, Raleigh Brigg's charmingly illustrated and handwritten guide to making your own all -natural  lotions and potions. Everything from household cleaners, bug busters, face cleansers to gardening basics is there.  Ms GP bought it for me; we're both trying to phase out sundry 'nasties' like parabens and petrochemicals in the  bathing and cosmetic areas as much as possible - with varying success. We're pleased to have found a few brands worth giving a look in the High Street as well as the health stores. Though to be honest, it still is a bit of a lottery, labour intensive: entailing much peering short-sightedly (for me at least)  at labels and to-in and fro-ing to different stores. And don't talk about expense...ouch!  For us unscientific types, figuring out these ingredients lists can be like struggling to crack a code. Not all items with long, complicated names are necessarily harmful, conversely it seems as if every five minutes somebody somewhere is putting about scare stories about something which up to now we'd thought innocuous enough. 

Not easy to judge Creatvity is needed, hence my categorisation of this post. Simplicity? Hmm, not sure about that one. 

The biggie for me at least just now is hair colouring. It's only over the last couple of years that I've been using safer  - note not 'safe' dyes; they're something I've always been wary of, but vanity will out plus Mr GP is not happy with a greying Greenpatch. However,  as these days even my health store safer veg coluring irritates my scalp, I'm wondering if the dread day has come when I'll need to go grey gracefully. Strand tests with Henna have worked out okish though horror stories about hair falling out after treatment when it comes into contact with chemicals (I've my hair waved a couple of times a year) are putting me off. And it's so fiddly! Simplicity it ain't. Plus I don't fancy  spending my   evenings with my head  wrapped in clingfilm with what smells like a decomposing compost heap on my hair.

Ah, 'vanity, all is vanity.' Now please excuse me whilst I go off and dunk my crowning glory in a gallon of strong tea..

Recycled Greenpatches - 'Enough'

From the Greenpatch archive, 6 February 2008: Mr GP reviews John Naish's "Enough":

From Mr Greenpatch's cycle blog:

Have been catching up on some reading. Particuluarly impressed by "Enough" by John Naish.

The central tenet of this book is that we would be happier if we could realise when we have enough of something and having more won't make us any happier, indeed could make us feel worse.Interview here gives a feel of the ideas. 

This simple proposition is one of the pieces of wisdom I have come to realise as I get older. An e.g. of how I applied a couple of years back was in taking the policy decision to break the ages old habit of listening to the Today program from the moment of waking to arriving at work. I felt I had reached to point of news saturation. This doesn't mean I have cut myself of from the real world, I will listen to news headlines/peruse the BBC online news/watch the occasional newsnight and avidly listen to podcasts on subjects of special interest or quality ("From our own correspondent" being an e.g. of latter). 

What I don't want to do is fill every idle moment with news updates which seems to be the desire of 24 hour news channels (and apparently society in general if the evidence of our dentist waiting room is anything to go by. A giant plasma screen has been installed there showing BBC News 24 as if somehow hearing about a stock market crash here or the latest news of the diana inquest there is going to take patients minds off the upcoming visit to the dentist's chair...)

Back to the book, the crucial world is in the title. One of the pre-requisites to knowing when you have enough is having sufficent of something in the first place. So really its a new experience for us, as recently as my parent's generation scarcity was the norm. Also having enough means having more than nothing. So its OK for me to want (any buy) a high tech gadget that I can attach to my bike to help me navigate my rides without constant stops/recourse to maps.

 

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday...

Now, I"ve not caved in under the pressure of the pre-Christmas razmatazz.  It's simply that I just had one of those pround 'thunks,' (as one does) as I came out from under a heavy duty card writing session just now with burgeoning RSI and that ambivalent sense of weariness and (mild) guilt: (Why can't I be better organised and write them sufficiently early enough that I've time to give some proper news instead of the falsely cheery "Must write/email in the New Year?!"). 

Much as I love the dulcet tones of Wizzard (Hey, I"m a teenager of the Seventies, after all), the thought of it being Christmas Everyday is, to be frank, my idea of hell. However, in an odd way, the Hairy One has a point, (albeit maybe not exactly the point he'd intended to make). If we were to try and live each day as if it were Christmas, that is, with our focus away from all the tinsel, turkey and stuffing and focussed outwards on true peace and love of neighbour, we'd not be forced into cranking it all up artificially - and cramming it into the space of a month or less.

Advent Blog of The Week - The Mercy Blog and Weeble's Wonderings

 

Advent Prayer

 

Lord, still us this today and in this Advent Season – keep us wide awake in these days of waiting. Take from us our anxieties and our preoccupations, our distractions and our despair. Let us be empty in this time before, awaiting your coming with empty hands, and open hearts…

 

Lord, prepare us for your coming. Fill us with the hope of your judgement, and a longing for your justice. Let our hope and our prayer be always for this broken creation of which we are part. Have mercy on all who suffer, human or animal. Help us to bring the good news of your coming, the comfort of hope, the joy of this new kind of waiting…

 

Amen

 - with thanks to Mike F of The Mercy Blog

One evening last week, I was  in  our contemplative prayer group at church, when, towards the end of the session, I was suddenly, as I've described it to myself 'hi-jacked' by a memory  of an item which I'd read in the paper earlier in the day: a particularly horrible example of  pure, gratuitous violence towards a poor, helpless animal, the which defies all belief and about which I simply can't bring myself to give any more details here.  There followed  a  fraught few minutes whilst I  tried alternately to a) push the distraction aside, or b) give  it to God, which last unfortunately and again without giving any details (shudders) seemed unavoidably to involve 're-living it.'  All clever theological explanations seemed pretty irrelevant  just then, and to be honest, pretty feeble, too. We're back to that evergreen topic of theodicy 'How could you, God?'

I've since re-commbobulated myself, so to speak...just, and can see, I think, that this struggle was likely the latest in a series of 'answers,' to a prayer I made leading on from what I brought out of retreat. Why I should be surprised, I don't know. I do think prayer should come with a health warning, though.  Do Not Be Surprised If You Get What You Ask For. 

So the petitions in the prayer "Have mercy on all who suffer, human or animal..." resonates with me as we begin Advent.

 

 

Over on A Weeble's Wonderings Avila reflects on the ever-present struggle with life-work balance and the need to know when and to press those 'recharge' buttons. I chose it for personal reasons; thanks be to God their situation is not my own although some of the issues mentioned do touch several loved ones close to home. It was the final paragraph that spoke to  me however. The 'Who Am I? What Am I?' question and my tendency to define myself solely in relation to the role (I perceive) other people see me in and to whether I shape up to that perception,  has been around now as long as I can remember. We Are Improving slowly....which is good...yet still very much a Work In Progress...

I started with the title 'Who am I? What am I?' - when we can no longer answer these about ourselves, rather than just in relation to other people or roles, then it is a sign we need to find respite, and to find ourselves again.

 - A Weeble's Wonderings - Who Am I? What Am I?

 

  

 

 

'Busy' Fauve and Contemplative Gannets - 2

 

"So beware of behaving wildly like some animal and learn to love God with quiet, eager joy, at rest in body as in soul. Remember your manners, and wait humbly upon our Lord's will. Do not snatch at it, like some greedy greyhound, however much you long for it."

 - The Cloud of Unknowing cp 46 

Cabbages and Kings - frugal living

Image by Dan at freegdigitalPhotos.net.

Newly launched ; if you like savoy cabbages, and even if the very smell of them reminds you of old school dinners, you'll love Fran's new blog: The Year of Living Frugally.

Deck the halls...

Tra-la-lala-la...not!

The Greenpatch attempt to slip into something festive has taken up most of the evening.  Displacement activity? Nothing like it!