Category: inspiration

Recipe for a meaningful life

Be humble

Recognise that whilst we walk similar paths we all stumble

Be kind

Recognise that in moments of despair it is the hand that we hold

that makes us blind

To the pain.

Be giving

Recognise that it is our contribution to living

That ultimately counts.

Be brave

Have courage to stand tall and speak truths

and lift up the spirit and soul

of  young and old

Leave silent footprints

That others may follow

In their own time and at their own pace

Be mindful

Recognise and respect each moment for what it is

It is your live to be lived

Make it meaningful and worthwhile.

© Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’verse  Poetics recipes

Poetics ~ Recipe Poems

Alison Jean Hankinson

Mother’s Love

13411939_10209544645598467_2234712537344072344_oMy tiny treasures

Look at the scar that you created

I wear it for you with love and pride.

I wear it with stoicism

Disfigured permanently for motherhood

We call it an apron

It hangs loose and saggy like an old washed out jumper.

© Alison Jean Hankinson

This was written for the quadrille at d’Verse. Hope it is okay.

Quadrille#22

 

Elders and their sacred knowledge.

Sometimes you have to lose a battle to win a war

When God closes a window somewhere he opens a door.

I can kill two birds with one stone but if I am too bitter and too full of hate

I will cut off my nose to spite my face.

Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,

But if I take myself too seriously pride is bound to come before a fall

These pearls of wisdom, this sacred prose

Demonstrates and shows

How the old folk prepared the new

Passing their sacred knowledge on to me and you.

Alison Jean Hankinson

Daily Post Prompt
Sacred
japanese-women-by-flickr-user-mrhicks46-creative-commons

Christmas Voices continued

alison H 103

This is a continuation from Christmas Voices that I began for d’Verse last week

 

Dec 6 and 7. The rector and his wife

In the beginning

Was the word and the word was

Pray for us sinners…..

 

We gave all we had

There was nothing left to give

God took it all

 

Dec 8th. The Teacher

Christingle service

Carol singing in the snow

Childrens faces glow

 

Dec 9th and 10th The homeless man and the girl from the store.

There was no room at the hostel

His predicament was momentarily magnified

by the similarities of their story on this cold winter night.

 

She offered him her last note

Crisp and clean in the crystal clear light of the moon

He received the yuletide offering with gladness for she had given with love.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

 

Migratory Musings

Under the vista of a starstruck night my heart bleeds for the inner peace I had known before we travelled to these rugged shores.

Your name melted in my mind’s eye as I recall the moment of our last goodbye,  the hurt and anger and pain and the baring of souls  amidst a calm and serene landscape and virtually cloudless sky.

But neither you nor I able to appreciate the lull before the storm or the gentle lines of familiar people and places.

We travelled on silently through tumultous skies to crash upon the rocks of beauty.

What should have been paradise found was lovelorn and lacklustre and the colours of real beauty comes from a richer palette.

 

From family loved and lost and left behind.

 

alison H 030

This is for D’verse Meeting the Bar – Caravaggio and Chiaroscuro.

Again it is my first effort at this- I am a novice. Love to all

Beauty in the eyes of the beholder

Tutukaka and Wellington’s Bay from the Lookout point.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder but I suspect you would find it hard to find someone to fault the beautiful day and the beautiful vistas. We took a trip out to what have been some of our favourite local haunts over the years. Tutukaka for lunch and to take in the Marina and the sound and smell of the boats, and then on to Wellington’s Bay which has always been our safe beach when the children were smaller and our family favourite. Today I wanted to visit the lookout point as I had never ventured there before. It was  a little windy to say the least but it was worth the effort and the views from the top were stunning. A good day to live. A good day to be out and about.

Treasure of the week. Soju shots- an enchanted kingdom.

Ellen tells me that soju is actually a Japanese drink. How she knows this is beyond me- she is 17 going on old soul. Anyway last week I passed a poster in a window telling me of the work of Soju shots in an upstairs room on Rathbone St. The picture immediately grabbed by imagination- it reminded me of the Henkies and I knew that Ellen and Emily would love to see the pictures, but the staircase looked a little uninviting and I was a little too scared to tackle it on my own. Instead I took a snapshot of the poster to remind myself that next time we were all in town together we might tackle the staircase. That day was Friday, my last day of freedom before returning to work on Monday, we had lunch together at Mokaba and then walked around town. Ellen and I both spotted the poster simultaneously and we instinctively knew it was time to investigate further.

The journey upstairs was reminiscent of ascending into some long forgotten flat that no-one really owned and the smell of fried food from somewhere nearby was overpowering but we continued on our journey, up the stairs along the uninviting corridor and then there it was, like the old curiosity shop of my dreams. I had anticipated a little wisened old lady standing at a till saying “yes dear” through dislodged spectacles and a few pictures to adorn the walls, but what I was met with was a far greater treasure trove. The images were fabulous, creative, imaginative, each touched with some kind of kindness and magic, even the monsters were friendly and inviting. There were tote bags, Christmas cards, mugs, cushions, and of course pictures and prints in frames. The back part of the shop was a workspace and there sat in the window was the artist himself and he was absorbed in what I assume is a new piece. He was as magical and enigmatic as his work. It was a very heart-warming experience.

We could have bought the whole shop, we loved it all, the images, their stories, the magic. We had walked into a cavern of childhood stories and memories. There they all were Hansel and Gretel, the kittens who lost their mittens the three little piggies, a huffin and a puffin and some wonderful creative ventures through new and old dreams- fears mingling with plays on words of wisdom. I purchased a few cards and Ellen a couple of Mugs. We were limited in our purchases by what we had in our wallets at the time, but we will go back. If you are looking for something a little different for a loved one this Christmas to make it special it is well worth a visit. I suspect therein is just a small sprinkling of fairydust. Peace be with you.

http://sojushots.blogspot.co.nz/

https://www.facebook.com/konbae/?fref=ts

Henkies- trolls/goblins who danced with a limp.

Portrait of a Princess- Our Diana- The People’s Princess.

Series Handmaidens of the Lord. 2. The People’s Princess. Princess Diana.

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She had innocence and beauty and to an entire generation of women who were teens in the 1980’s, she was our princess the People’s princess. We talked about her in our backyards, we searched for the latest photos in our newspapers and she was in our living rooms on our TV screens almost every day. We even had the Princess Diana haircut. Everyone got a day off to watch her fairy tale marriage on 29 July 1991. She was an ordinary girl come good, it was a Cinderella story. I think we all idolised her, even in those later years when it had all turned to custard and the cracks appeared in the marriage and she had that last summer of love in Greece in 1997. We didn’t mind that she wasn’t perfect, we didn’t mind that she was like the skin horse and some of her hair had been loved off, she was real. She had fragility but she didn’t break and she always had time for those who needed her most.

We all cried the day she died. We cried for days and more, we watched and cried at her funeral and the date of her death is forever marked in my memory as my mother died on the same day 11 years later.

She touched the people that no-one else would touch.

In those days we had something called section 28 in the British Law. It forbade teachers to promote or teach about homosexuality, it was an era where the GLBT agenda was just becoming less marginalised and it was still taboo especially with the ravages of HIV and AIDS. I taught in a rural idyll where farmers and wellington boots were the norm and had to turn down a proposed visit by the local GLBT health promotion specialist for fear that someone might slash his tyres.

In order to best serve my community, we had “that article 28 lesson” where I wasn’t allowed to teach or promote anything to do with the GLBT agenda but could attempt to answer questions with a degree of restraint. Those were the days of non-exam RS, and contemporary moral issues where we explored the burgeoning issues of HIV awareness and protocols associated with it and this is where Princess Diana really stole my heart.

She showed compassion and kindness to people that no-one else would touch. She didn’t just talk to them, she held their hands when no-one else dared and demonstrated openly that HIV couldn’t wouldn’t be passed by normal social discourse and normal social action. She gave forbearance to the weak and marginalised. She had kindness. She touched their hands “without gloves” and she touched our hearts and our souls with her insistence on doing what she believed was the right thing to do. She became the patron of the National AIDS trust and worked tirelessly with the Terence Higgins Trust. She was a fine mother to her two lovely sons and they too have continued to work with the causes their mother supported so dearly.

Speech by Princess Diana in 1991

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vijH40aUuAo

Princess Diana opened the AIDS ward at the Middlesex Hospital in 1987. There was much speculation about if she would be wearing gloves. She didn’t God bless her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rTDm5lTwHs

Section 28 stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.

Portrait of a Photographer-Stephanie Sinclair.

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Series-Handmaidens of the Lord – 1. Portrait of a Photographer- Stephanie Sinclair.

(The photo is of Auntie Shirley’s wedding BTW.)

This is a first for me, but as next week is our “Say no to violence” week I wanted to celebrate some of the women whom I have been inspired by over the years and reflect on their compassion, resilience and advocacy for women across the globe and to give acknowledgement to the amazing lengths they have gone to, to empower, strengthen and rebuild the lives of others – hence the title- Handmaidens of the Lord.

My first is Stephanie Sinclair. She is an amazing and award-winning photo-journalist who has captured the stories closest to many women’s hearts across the world. In 2012 I first came across her work on “Too Young to wed” It was based on a series of photographs she had captured over a long period of time for the National Geographic telling the stories of marriages and marriage celebrations across the globe. I came across it trying to find something different and of substance to inspire my teenage students who were looking at sexuality marriage and rites of passage.

2012 had been a humbling year for me, and whilst teaching High School students can be complex I have always regarded it as a privilege especially when I have senior classes full of bright and empowered young women. I wanted to share with our young women the stories of women around the world. I wanted them to be empowered and recognise their place, privileges and opportunities in a world where more than 700 million women were married before the age of 18. I wanted them to embrace their lives and value the education and opportunities offered to them by living in a culture and society that generally supports and recognises the value of women, where my students are unlikely to die before the age of 15 in childbirth unlike their peers in countries like Afghanistan.

I found Stephanie, and I found Nujood Ali and I found a beautiful colourful but corrupt world. It was the beauty of the imagery and the short succinct nature of the film that made it perfect to use in class and my students accepted it in stunned silence. Some even went to the library and borrowed the book by Nujood Ali. It was the first year I took my students globe-trotting in an attempt to get them to value their own roots and I will never regret it.

Stephanie Sinclair demonstrated compassion integrity and tenacity in her endeavours to get the issue noticed in the Western world. Her advocacy and its continued impact for women has continued to send ripples through society. We faced further horror as the years went by when we recognised the other darker sides of the treatment of women and recognised that for many our experiences here in New Zealand would seem beyond the stuff of dreams.

Stephanie set up a global initiative based on “Too young to wed” aimed at creating positive experiences and rehabilitation for women who have suffered from the abuse of child marriage. The links to the video clips and the websites are at the end of the blog. Stephanie Sinclair continues to work to support and advocate and help women to heal in other projects she is involved in. One of the latest projects is called “Story half told” and it documents in portraits the struggles and journeys of women and their families living with, dying with and surviving Breast Cancer. Again the link is at the end of the blog.

So my first portrait in my series of acknowledgments to women who have made a difference to the lives of other women is of Stephanie Sinclair. Thank you for all that you are, all that you have done and all that you continue to do. I believe my life has been richer from appreciating your work and I believe that I, in turn, have passed some of that beauty and richness on. Much love. XXX

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c_zppPutQw

http://tooyoungtowed.org/

http://www.storyhalftold.com/meet-stephanie-sinclair

 

A very blustery day….

As I am sure Pooh bear would have commented it was a very blustery day. A day to blow away the cobwebs, with some salty sea air and a brisk walk along the waterfront in the City of Sails. A change is as good as a rest.

It was a great day for a road trip and although I had hoped for a little more festive decor at Sylvia Park, the carousel was pretty and the company pleasant. I even bumped into former students Jade and the beautiful Jessica Byrne and had a quick catch-up on their lives. Then we witnessed the vista of the waterfront with its showcase of Naval hardware ncluding something I am not accustomed to seeing-armed personnel.

I am no expert on shipping, and the wind made it exceptionally difficult to get a decent shot but the size, range and variety was fascinating. It would appear to be some kind of Naval convention and there were naval ships (they probably have real names like frigate….and such) from Japan, Sumatra, Singapore and beyond.

I think what fascinated us the most was the concept that 50 years ago many of these ships would have been extremely unwelcome and yet today here they all were working together and celebrating NZ’s maritime and naval heritage. I believe the ships are there as part of the Naval revue from November 12-21st,and if you can weather the sea-breeze it is well worth a stroll abroad and perhaps even aboard to see these magnificent beasts in our harbour.