SILENT NIGHT

Hello...

Well, it's another midnight hello...

Makes me remember a dear friend from Japan who told me that sleep is like a train, if you miss it, you have to wait for the next one.

Well, this night something strange is happening with the schedule because I haven't seen any trains yet. So will you wait with me? ;-)

It's quiet and dark, outside I mean. I hear my tapping on the keyboard as the only sound. Strange. At daytime that would not really happen. Hearing that. There are so many other sounds and noise...
we are no longer accustomed to quiet are we...

At the same we need that. I need that.

When I was somewhat 19 years of age, my mom took me with her to a silence retreat for three days.
YES,  I CAN SAY I'VE BEEN SILENT FOR THREE DAYS and I can assure you, I try to impress people with that because for some reason they have a hard time believing that...

The three days was good and amazing. It was not like being alone and quiet but in a group with a bunch of strangers and quiet... We would eat together around a big table and no one would speak, we would listen to classical music during the meal and in  a way it was  a relief to not have to make some kind of small talk with people but share the silence. And smiles.

When it is silent, your senses awake more, you start seeing things you would not normally pay attention to, you hear the small sounds that usually get buried in other noise... You become more aware of your breathing, your own presence ... and your own ability or disability to be present.

I will always remember those three days and what silence taught me. It actually became a part of me, something I need to find at times, regularly...to quiet myself and be still.

What amazed me at the end of the retreat is how close I would start feeling with the group despite the fact that I knew nothing about them, not even their names. Later on I found out that one in the group was a director of a bank... and I thought again, how different it is meeting with people when we don't make preassumptions of each other or start categorizing in our heads because of some information we have on them.

It seems in todays society it's never enough to be simply human. It is like we have to have credit of this and that and then we have some status based on our education or level of work or other experience.

At the same, at the end, none of that matters. At the end what really matters is what kind of fellow human beings we are to each other. What we can share and build together. What we can trust eachother with.

If there is silence, let us not be afraid to pause in it.
If there is love, let it be pure love, in which humans of all age can cuddle to find themselves. For it is only in love we can find the truth of ourselves.

<3 <3 <3

With no sleep in my eye I shall however move myself towards the station.

Love,
Rina

To you

A midnight hello.

Yes, I should be going to sleep but sleep is not yet here.

Many thoughts are here and a desire to just be still in quetness with a travelling mind. I've started a creative writing course a week ago and feel like I'm taken by a intresting breeze of discovery.

I have a desire to come to conclusions.

I realize that in my life much has been about weighing things and wondering. Now I want to move forward, find the motor in myself to take me where I want to be. And rid myself of things that don't move me.

I'm someone who has always had difficulty in making decisions. Maybe still but go figure, I'm off the harbour, wanting to set out my sails and explore to new dimensions. At least I think I am...

Where are you?

There where you are, I wish you well.
I wish you sweet dreams and a life of your own.

<3 Rina

To live as we are

Hello... after a long time!

Sometimes it is hard to return to something after having a pause... as I have from this blog and writing.

It is so necessary for us though to have times at a distance from what we are used to doing or we never gain new perpectives.

At the same I think I have not even got used to doing this blog, that I want to keep up...and really, writing. Why is it hard sometimes? It's not really hard to say hello on a keyboard is it... this is not the first time I'm thinking about this -- a blank paper, be it a paper or a canvas or a space in your heart or in a room... SOOOO many times before entering a blank paper by writing I have this quick whisper in my heart as WHAT WILL IT BE!!?? And if you're having a bad day or lacking confidence in what you're about to do or don't have any idea of a starting point... well, it may well be that you just quit right there because the uncertainty of the outcome burns you down. But we're not supposed to know everything in order to experience, are we!?!

We are all born to LIVE. We don't ask ourselves how do I breathe in and out (unless taking voice lessons), it just happens! And of course there needs to be plans and structures when we do things but SO OFTEN I feel we get merely handicapped by all those structures and our creativity loses its colors.

Hmph. What do you say to all of this? 

Last time I wrote there was a column of mine published in a finnish magazine called Kotivinkki. I was encouraged and discouraged. Encouraged because it got published, discouraged the moment I read it in the magazine because they had taken parts of my text out and to me it didn't feel the same, as if something was missing, as if it was not fully mine even it was. Of course I quickly understood (after some tears, storm and calming down ;-D)  that this is how it goes, certainly I already sent them a text that was tooo long and they did what is supposed to be done - cut it in form that the content and message still remains. My message remained, so I didn't really lose anything. Really, I didn't.

I even got a lesson.. Even a couple of them... so this is the way it goes so I better be prepared and well, I have to own my writing, not to ask myself WHAT WILL IT BE? Am I going to be a writer or not?!?  It is no guestion of such sort. I AM already just like you are.  It is in being that we become, learn, mature, grow... towards our dreams.

Does that sound complicated? Of course I feel almost forced to say now that I don't mean I could really be a writer as  I kind of battle with that at times.... But that's the thing! In order to be something, we need to own it! It's like we are given a gift and we refuse to own it. Because in using anything we are given we become responsible, we become more vulnerable.

I don't know if what I write is really interesting but I know I love to do it.

Only I make the doing for myself harder as I start thinking - I'm not concentrated! I lack direction in my text! I'm going here and there and how is anyone supposed to follow me? And so instead of just going ahead I'm blaming that there's something wrong with this inner machine of mine, because I can't admit that well, being me is enough, and good enough. I say all the possible accusations towards myself before anyone else does and on the journey start believing some of them.

There is another text that I sent to some other magazines that we're intrested of my writing but that it didn't fit in their magazine unless I cut it smaller and take out some of the topics...because as being me, well, I am able to put this and that and that and that together. And often I think it is fine.

So it seems I need to learn. Keep learning. And sometimes I lack patience for that. It's like I have so many things I'd like to say and write but I don't know how to make the beginning meet the end in a way that it would also cross the hearts of people I wish give some thinking.

So here it is and here I am. And for sure, I'll keep writing be there someone who hears or not. I know after all I am my most important reader.

Who want's to dance, let them dance. Who wants to paint, paint! Who wants to sing, I will sing with them! There are so many things within us that we don't turn to... because all the obstacles we make ourselves. Often I am my biggest obstacle.

A few days ago I read this text on Pinterest (and oh, have I also become pinterested, I have!) :

THE GRASS IS GREENER WHERE YOU WATER IT

So let's all water our own gardens and let us grow to the things that hum in our hearts the tune we are supposed to sing and live in our lives.

BE THERE- in your moments and the one life you have.

I promise to be in mine. To remain true to myself. To be, because it is in being that I become who I want to be. Me.


<3 Rina




Here's a few pictures I took this summer in Paris... different ways of being along the river Seine

KUKKUU!

Hei,

Tämä alla oleva tekstinpätkä pulpahti jostain esiin, aikaa sitten kirjoitettu. Jännästi mietin kuinka sitä ihminen kypsyy kuitenkin hiljaa ja hitaasti. Se mikä on minussa tänään oli jo kauan aikaa sitten. Toukokuun Kotivinkki-lehdessä ilmestyy lukijakolumnina yksi kirjoitukseni... Mietin, olisiko tässä siemen, joka itäisi niin kuin auringonkukkani ikkunalaudalla...

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Minussa palaa kirjoitus, halu kirjoittaa sydäntäni, purkaa sen osia paperille, tutkia ja yhdistää sitä mitä koen, mitä näen, mitä tunnen. 

Taustalla soi nyt Enya, jokin talvilevy. Ulkona on kyllä syksy. Kaunis aurinkoinen päivä. Sytytin kynttilän joka hohtaa kauniisti paikallaan siitä huolimatta että auringonvalo levittää helmansa sisään. On tyyni hetki jos tyyneys on minussa. Se taitaa nyt olla, hetki sitten olin kyllä levoton kun heräsin niin myöhään ja ajattelin voi, puoli päivää jo mennyt ja perhe jossakin ja miten ehdin sitä ja tätä…. Sitten rauhotuin,voin olla tässä, minä ihminen, ihan rauhassa, olen vapaa olemaan. Mies on vienyt lapset ulos ja minä voin ja saan nyt olla tilanteen sanelemana yksin ja vaikka nyt näin kirjoittaa…

Koen, että minä olen puskemassa maastani ulos todellisemmin. Tuntuu kuin ennen olisin kurkkinut, kuin kysynyt lupaa, että onko tässä nyt sopiva paikka kukkia ja puhjeta minuksi, voinko tulla ulos mullan alta, uskallanko? Ketkä näkevät minut, näkeekö kukaan?

Hiljaisuus ja rakkaus kasvattaa meille siivet.  Läsnäolo kasvattaa meille juuret.

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Siivin ja juurin,

elämän mullasta

Rina