a return to writing.

Today was a good day.

It's the 22nd February:

* a day to gather with friends and whomever else is sharing the street with you at that very moment of 12.51, to hold hands, quieten one's heart and rest our thoughts and love on all the people who shared in those terrifying moments of the February earthquake one year ago today.

* a day to deeply embrace our children and those whom we love and quietly give thanks to all that we have.

* a good day to choose some flowers to keep.

* time to touch the ocean.

* and a good day to begin writing again. Oh how I have missed you.

her book of worries

Shifting has meant a bit of driving, which has meant quite a bit of listening to "Clarice Bean: Don't Look Now."

During one such ride over the weekend Sky declared she wanted to make a book of worries just like Clarice Bean and that she already knew what her number 1, 2 and 3 worries were!

It seemed like the obvious thing to get started on today.

We have made quite a few books and think this method is the nicest; tidy without too much fiddle and it includes a blast on the sewing machine.

Pretty paper for the cover; upcycled picture, magazine inspiration, previous artwork. Whatever works.

Cut to the size you want and fold in half. Then cut the same size paper for the inner pages and, here's the trick if you don't want any splaying of pages, fold the pages separately, one at a time.

Lay pages and cover together and line up sides.

Then blast down the spine with the sewing machine...beautiful finish, just like that.

If you like, you can make the base of the cover longer than the pages, fold up on the inside of cover and sew along seam - this way and you will make a small inside pocket.

Unsurprisingly, this year has been hard on Sky's sense of safety in the world.

There have been so many opportunities to face our fears, breath deep, watch where our mind grasps on, cuddle quicker and for longer. Her worry book is a great place for her to name her fears and draw what they look like.

She's got a lot of relevant life-long learning going on this girl.

"life happens....

...when you are making other plans."

Like earthquakes - a few big ones that brought down our city and town, and thousands of small ones.

Like good friends moving away.

Like stitching thousands of hearts on a street corner for weeks just for the sake of sharing a little kindness.

Like moving and then (in a couple of weeks) taking a deep breath and moving back again because there is nothing a family can do with their current home's owner returning, a tricky section and the "no-go-further-land-investigation-needed" white zone.

Last weekend was the first anniversary for the first earthquake.

I'm not big on anniversaries but a lot has happened in our lives here in the Canterbury area since last September and it sure is nice to stand alongside a community of people who have been through the same thing and mark it together.

We gathered in the Spring sun, ate shared food, played music and stitched medals.

The medals were a variation on the hearts and acknowledged in a fun way our bravery and sheer stickability.

And here's the thing; major earthquakes are, well, major.

They kill people, damage families, bring down homes and split people's hearts open.

They don't happen every day.

Thankfully, we have had the time to fully take part in this significant year in our lives.

We have had time to engage in many, many ways with each other, our neighbours and our wider community around us.

We have had the freedom to take and create our own meaning from it all.

I'm so very grateful for that.

** I think Bob Dylan originally said the quoted line, but don't quote me on that.

taking in the bigger picture

Just to let you know, life often feels hard right now.
That's just how it is.
For transparency sake I thought I'd let you know.
Clarity, perserverance and positive thoughts are called upon each day to make steps in decisions about our home, how we proceed and living well in the meantime.
You know how it goes, especially the Cantabrians among you.

I'm grateful for this little blog I began just over a year ago.
It has a presence in my life.
It reminds me that each day there are threads of happiness and beauty.

I mostly write about those threads.

Sometimes threads of struggle, worry and doubt weave right through the middle of the day.
Looking up too close, the darker threads can blur the vision.
Stepping back and taking in the whole fabric, the darker tones merge into a deeper, altogether richer array of colours.

The fabric as a whole is strong; the brighter tones are glorious.

I'll be remembering that today.

Sky was inspired to get up close to the dirt yesterday at the community gardens

so we took along the microscope.We watched Dirt: The Movie the night before

- a beautiful movie all about our complete connection to the dirt under our feet.

festival time

We had been waiting for a while for this festival.

Postponed back in June due to the earth shaking, the town still needed a chance to celebrate and the light returning still seemed like the most appropriate reason.

Apparently so did half of Christchurch; last Friday night the streets of Lyttelton heaved with frivolity and celebration.

And that's exactly as it should be.

The year has been a tough one for many in this shaky town.

Tough, and yet such deep veins of sweetness have been uncovered.

It felt good; the masked parade, the fireworks, the buskers and dancing in the rain to good, homegrown music.

It felt good too to have all the currently homeless businesses back out on the pavement, once again inhabiting the streets of our town .

Many thought of those people we have lost.

Many peered into the spaces where, not too long ago, our dearly loved historic buildings stood; gaps illuminated with light shows and sculpture.

And others asked after those who are still away or waiting to hear about their homes.

And yet the exuberance present at the festival reminded us that what is left, and in fact is thriving in the uncertainty, is the spirit of the people and the strength of the ties that hold us together as a community.

the masks made especially for the occasion each year.

• Thanks to a local photographer Gill Taylor for the photos. I was preoccupied managing the giant puppet fish head.

what holds us together

For many decades, an artificially induced hysteria about "basic skills"

has been the masquerade used to intimidate us into abandoning children

to a form of schooling that simply doesn't work. Behind this mask,valuable

lessons of service to a vibrant community of real human beings have been denied to the young - and all of us have been denied the reciprocities healthy adults need with children across the full spectrum of ages.....When schools consume the youth of the nation in confinement, and all the products of their labours become paper to be thrown away, there is no joy possible in the seeking of such goods. The pricing of time through grade points establishes an irrational currency by which something precious, time, is corrupted in the service of arbitrary and nonsensical urgencies."

-John Taylor Gatto, "A Different Kind of Teacher."

I've been wondering about what we lose, as communities and as human beings, by sending our children away for most of the day into schools for the majority of their childhoods. Apart from what the children gain from a life without school, I'm excited by the social implications of communities accepting children into their midst each day.

Service or gifting time to others is part of the ethos in this family. We see it as part of being part of a community, with or without natural disasters to deal with.

Cultivating generosity, love and interconnectedness just seem essential to living well with others and anyway it's usually fun and always feels good.

What better way to debunk greed and separation than to give of your time freely and where better to do it than in the exact same community as you live in. These relationships that are created in the act of gifting time can be maintained more easily and these in turn feed the rich web of community connectedness and the health and well-being of the community as a whole.

So when we can, we spend time doing things for others.

Ruby and Sky take their role seriously helping out where they can as well as spending a lot of time laughing, chatting and dancing, among other things.

A few days ago we had a load of visiting university students helping us out around Lyttelton; we collected rubble from people's access ways and used it to fill a retaining wall at the community garden. It was a thoroughly satisfying day for all involved. The lecturer and I chatted over lunch. The students were doing a day of "service education" and she informed me that this is what the girls were doing as well. Living outside of institutional definitions we see our work simply as taking responsibility for our part of our relationship with this community we live in.

love in a little town

One of the things I miss out on not being on Facebook are local films about our local community!

James was around a while back - warm, casual, pretty much one of us.

He's made a beautiful short film.

It captures the essentials about our town - the love, the creative solutions, the embracing of what is and getting on with it - and exactly why we couldn't think of anywhere else we would rather be.

Thanks James (you can read about him here), thanks to the Facebookers who let me know about it and if you like to film vote for it here (it only takes a moment).

Love in a Little Town from James Muir on Vimeo.

celebrating anyway

Just so you know.....

You won't be seeing many broken pictures here from the recent earthquakes.

After Monday I am really over broken.

We see 'broken' every day and this time it fills me with sadness and loss, more so than February.

I don't want it reflected back to me in this space.

You can see plenty of broken images here and here.

It is reassuring to see how quickly people begin to adapt to change.

Here we begin to try and imagine living with these quakes into the future and this will take us time but in the meantime we will celebrate anyway.

With Matariki and Winter Solstice upon us and the Festival of Lights postponed, a good local crowd decided to gather and celebrate what we have - an awesome community full of resilience, imagination and creativity.

Friends had already bought ingredients for a warming chai tea and had organised a yurt to put up on the old Ground site. Music folk from The Harbour Union played and everyone rejoiced to see a bunch of us stitching hearts and came and joined in.

The lovely Paige, local belly-dancing goddess brought delicious cakes to share with families. She confessed it had been a personal therapy to get through these shaky times; an ancient way for women dealing with crisis.

We all encouraged her to continue this particular therapy and share the results.

Community therapy through baking and eating.

This is Ruby's element. She is on fire in the midst of a party.

We left her there all afternoon and she headed back down in the evening with Gunt.

She made chai, offered food and chatted with lots of friends. I couldn't help thinking that school would just cramp her style.

And Sky also was in her element; singing and playing by herself, happy to be on the fringes -

a moment after this photo was taken a couple of men in high-viz vests asked her to come away from this mostly-collapsed wall. Um yes, with all the shaking, good thinking guys.

crafting with our hands.

We are nearing the end of The little House series.

This is Ma pregnant.

As with the big 6.3 quake in February this time around we continue to find comfort in crafting with our hands.

Lately it has been handcraft central here with Ruby falling in love with the immediacy of finger knitting and Sky the immediacy of needle felting.

We at last cracked the way to finger knit fast.

H..e..l..l..o. The secret is to stand on the long end of the wool and let it run under your foot as you knit. I know this may seem obvious to all you veteran finger knitters but not to us.

Since Ruby has discovered this she has been making bracelets, necklaces, pot stands and flowers, belts and handbag handles.

Sky on the other hand is deeply into making broaches and wands with her felting needle

Cut a star or oval out of a piece of felt or a blanket you have (a thicker one gives more strength to the form.) Needle felt wool onto this. Sky is still enjoying playing with the colours swirling into each other but it could also be a letter or a picture. You can add beads or buttons if you wish. Stitch a safety pin on the back for a broach or a stick on the back of a star for a wand.

Looking toward next week, Ruby is particularly keen to begin spinning with a drop spindle as in here and here.

We both like the idea of it being 30,000 years old.

Basically I've been putting her off and investigating spirals instead to connect with the form and movement of spinning.

Well that's what I tell myself; I think it has mostly just been putting her off.

We've had a lot on.

I'll keep you posted.

As for tomorrow we are heading down to London street to stitch hearts.

This is just what I need after little sleep last night and a day of wondering what is around the corner.

The Winter Street Festival was planned for tomorrow night, but because of the possibility of falling buildings (not that there are many left to fall) it has been postponed.

We thought the stitchers could be a presence anyway, stitching in public (during knitting in public week)and sharing the love again here among the brokenness.

it seems this is how it will be

After another big 6.3 earthquake on Monday this is what is taking up our days:

• Picking up, sweeping away and stabilising.
• Being amazed and thankful for the unusually warm and sunny June we are having. This has made a real difference.
• Helping friends shift friends out of their broken homes.
• Sharing food and love with friends and people unknown to us previously.
• Finding little bits of order in the chaos on my floor - this is where things will be until a better solution presents itself.

• Adding to my list on the fridge of people to check on.
• Making further emergency plans so as we all have back up plans (this is unusually precautious of me but with a 30% chance of another earthquake of the same or bigger magnitude it's probably time to be precautious.)
• Finding centredness by breathing deeply throughout the day whenever a shake comes. For those who don't live here when the big ones hit instinct takes over and you either flee or stand firm depending on where you are. Once the earth has stopped jumping then we remember to breath deeply.
• Rubbing Weleda Aurum/Lavendar/Rose cream onto warm chests at night to help restful sleep. Giving the girls "Quake Relief" drops to calm their nerves.
• Finding ways in which to still have beauty adorning high places. Handcraft projects on the piano? Soft landings are good.

• Holding onto a touch of rhythm to our days to bring steadiness: eating good food, finding clean water and drinking enough, getting some fresh air while walking each day, and working on the sleep ( see above). My morning yoga limps along.
• Loving those hardworking men and women who are working tirelessly to repair our city. With so much value laid upon the "knowledge economy" these days, earthquakes do well at reminding us that practical people; people working with their hands are the people who are really making the difference.
• Leaning into the back of the fear and uncertainty to find strength and perserverance.
• Feeling fragile and resilient.
• Feeling thankful.

hello may

It's Autumn here.

The days are noticeably closing in around us. We find ourselves retreating more often to the side of the fire, to the comfort of warm drinks and quiet stories in the middle of the day.

Stitching still continues. Now a steady companion to our read-alouds and often stuffed into pockets as we head out the door, the "heart list" is in constant motion.

After such busy street-living in the chaos of the late Summer, we now palpably feel our quieter rhythm and a turning inwards.

We continue to adjust to our scarred city and our recovering community.

The feelings reflect the realities; deeply shaken, revealing and complex.

It is a shocking but very special time.

Holding and honouring all of this is central to our lives right now.

This is what it means to be doing most of your living and learning in a community rather than being separated from it.

Inhabiting the streets, buildings and wild spaces of a place means that when this place is broken, healing ourselves also necessarily means taking part in healing our community; the land, the people and all the cement and metal and wood and brick in between.

And we are so very grateful for this sense of belonging and commitment.

We head down to the gaping wreckage of our main street regularly through the week.

We continue any number of our current projects in the public spaces of the temporary cafes -anything that is open can do with the business - or we just walk and look and stop and chat.

As we turn towards winter and enter into the shortest days it seems vital that we keep inhabiting our streets and gathering our ideas so that our sense of connectivity and collectivity continue to evolve our plans for the future of our town.

The girls want to be part of that: they are part of that future, and so, although our rhythm quietens and our energy turns inward, we find ourselves each day heading out the door.

********

We were excited to celebrate the Wunderbar reopening last weekend after many of us thought it was on the demo list. It was also the launch of a special charity CD making money for the town's rebuild. Make sure to check it out: The Harbour Union and here.

the rest of the weekend.

• Celebrating two weeks of holidays with Gunter in style: homemade doughnuts, a family piano concert and some favourite boardgames.

• Walking with our community to witness the beginnings of our main street being demolished. Standing, talking, stitching, remembering and contemplating this new "normal."

• having fun with eggs in the midst of Autumn.

• and launching a new blog tracking the rebuilding of Lyttelton: the projects, the grassroots leadership, skills and systems for building resilient communities and what a "culture of possibility" looks like. Check it out at www.lyttel-town.blogspot.com.

We are in Auckland for a few days staying at Earthsong and then heading to stay with family on the Coromandel Penninsula.

We are enjoying the stable ground.

5.3

Being under an elderly friend's house clambering around piles of wood and assorted machinery is not a good place to be when a hefty 5.3 aftershock hits.

When I get home the power is off and we have no idea where the candles, the torches or the matches are amongst the boxes.

These are exactly the times to have dinner in the car, singing and discussing different electricity sources.

We then head off for a drive in search of street lights and distraction.

Sky is pretty fragile.

We go over our "keep calm and carry on" strategy and practice our deep breathing. The girls give the Earth a good talking to and we give ourselves a good talking to about our emergency supplies.

We head home which has already had it's power restored.

We celebrate our resilience with ice-cream and hot chocolate sauce.

It's always good to all sleep close together on nights when the Earth is shaking and it's a relief to a Mama's heart to see her girls laughing and smiling as they snuggle down to sleep.

Phew.

community research

It seems that we have much to be grateful for looking back over the first phase of this year.
Our recent harvesting from the garden immediately confronts you with the abundance that is right before you.
Shifting into the perfect situation for right now also feels sweetly serendipidous.
And the girls regularly being thankful that "our house didn't fall on our head" and "that we are all together," underscores our fragility.

So figuring I could follow up on this thread of engagement, I suggested that we might want to make a "Gratitude Banner" to bless our new home.
Ruby had another idea. She suggested we take it down to the Community Garden and share it with people there.
Aha, I thought, another community project! This girl is onto something.
And so that is what we did.

We walked and collected leaves. We blissed out with watercolours. We made stencils from the leaves, cut out the shapes and found some wool.
Yesterday amongst the gardening, the meetings and birthday celebrations people contributed to the banner.
They wanted to.
Of course none of the comments mentioned material possessions. They mostly mentioned relationship.
Major earthquakes seem to do that to you: they sort the essentials from the fluff.

Ruby now has other ideas leading from this.
She has thoughts about using it as a way of collecting information about big questions she has.
Community research you might say.
Self-led, self- designed and arising out of an authentic context.
Intensely difficult to achieve in a classroom.
Naturally evolving when engaged with your own life and with time to explore the possibilities.

inside/outside

The cold snap last week had everyone lighting their first fire of the season.

It was a perfect reminder that Winter is just around the corner and to get outside as much as possible. We are living at the foot of one of the local cemeteries - a perfect place for an early morning walk and climb. We have been finding some magnificent mushrooms but need to find someone to show us the ins and outs of how to identify edible varieties.

What we do so miss at this time of the year is being at the beach. With sewerage infrastructure still being repaired from the earthquake damage, some of the local beaches are a horrible sight and all of the water isn't safe to swim in. So it is indoor swimming at this stage.
With many pools condemned, we are just thankful for some cool water to go wrinkly in and I'm especially happy to have a stretch of a couple of hours to catch up on a little project for our community blanket.

friday

This last week we have been with the children, visiting one of the local schools in the lunch hour and offering a bit of certainty in a simple project.

For some who are struggling with fear and/or lose, the stitching project has provided a safe place to retreat to. They may have visited regularly at the coffee corner and return to us in their lunch hour.
For some it is something a little special as they transition back into being at school. Possibly back to a school without their friends as families choose to move away.
For some it is a chance to love and heal a beloved "baby."



Focusing on the next stitch, their bodies relax just a bit and tension falls away. Bodies are tired from broken sleep and adrenal glands are depleted from the aftershocks.
Focusing on the next stitch, their mind is present with the task and can let go of the worry of what is to come.

Then I awoke this morning to Sky telling me that she planned to make a penguin today.
The original inspiration was a cut-out unicorn gifted to her earlier in the week which has been helping her to sleep.
She scoured the bookshelves for penguins, drew a penguin picture she was happy with and then copied it onto a plain woolen blanket. We had it cut out and half stitched before breakfast. She finished it off at the coffee corner where she could show off her handiwork. Puppets are on the list.

The meditation in stitching and the very act of creating something beautiful continues to heal our community, one stitch at a time.

Check out http://www.5inabed.blogspot.com/2011/03/craft-love.html to see the love and beauty that is coming to us from afar.

wednesday

Growing resilient young women has always been central to the choices we have made as parents.
Amongst the qualities that are essential to growing resilience is a sense of agency; agency to make positive change in your life and in the world around you.

As a family, our lives are sped up right now and we are hardly at home compared to our usual pace, but these are extraordinary times and we have found the small drop of positive change we can make at this particular point.
So that's where we are.

There is no better place to learn about agency in your own life than to be responding to the need before you in a way that sings to you.
Each day the girls stitch a bit, help a bit and give the hearts away.
Chatting, singing, drawing and scootering are threaded throughout.
As they are part of creating the change, they watch, listen and have agency in a community dismantling, repairing and revisioning itself.

monday

Another day to learn more about what an open heart looks like:

• the woman who dropped the container full of buttons at the stitching corner. Old vintage buttons, cute character buttons and iridescent glass buttons have kept everyone under their spell for days and kept the creative juice fresh. Apparently after picking them all up after two quakes, she was now done with them. Hundreds of dollars worth of buttons given away on stitched hearts.


• the endless food provided by many. People contributing how they can.





• Gus, a guy visiting from the North Island with 2 large boxes of freshly smoked fish to give away. Just because "he felt like it."
• All the blokes that are stepping up, picking up the needle and stitching a heart.

For the whole time that we have been holding vigil in the main street the girls have been taken care of by the village. They chat, help out, take off with someone for a while, sing, stitch, listen and watch. Their life and what they need to learn unfolds before them. They don't need to wait. They are present within their life and respond accordingly.

Their mama marvels a little that they are here infront of her, aware of the devastation in Japan and the possibility of loss in each day.

Japan, there are no words.

lyttel homecomings

It's been over 2 weeks now since the Earthquake.
At times it feels like time has stopped still since the 22nd February.
But some things are moving forward and the two local schools reopen on Monday.
Families are steadily arriving back in town after having taken a break away from the aftershocks and the chaos.
We have had a steady stream of homecomers today at the coffee corner.
Families finding a way to reconnect with the community, catch up on news and gently find there way back.

It's a way of us looking after each other.
Rather than returning home and facing the mess and chaos of the 22nd alone, people are seeing us gathered on the corner as they head up the hill and pull over to see what's going on.
What a warm homecoming.
A handmade heart to gentle the fragile heart inside.

Thanks to those individuals and groups that have offered to either send supplies or make hearts for us. We are here for as long as it takes and visiting schools next week for those children who need a wee stitching project. Big love to your support.

street schooling

Some things are slowly resembling something like "normal."
For instance, this morning we had our piano lesson.
After super inspiration last night and a bit of a stitch marathon, we busied ourselves with some loving on the way up the hill to our lovely piano teacher's home.



Yesterday, as we were stitching, the girls were asked by a passerby whether they were looking forward to going back to school.
A friend laughed.
"Can't you see? They street-school."
I like it.
Street schooling.
It's a bit like that right now.