The Restory Retreat Centre

  Existential Health Wonder, Self-Acceptance, Purposeful Living The Conversation Elements From The Conversation Creative Piece As a visual expression of this transition to our "second life," an existence stripped of demands and masks, American artist David Best breaks through the usual boundaries of art. His layered, intricate wooden temples are not built to serve as lasting monuments, but to stand as temporary spaces where people can write their deepest losses, guilt, and obsolete roles on the walls. As Best himself notes, it is not about the technical craftsmanship of the structure, but about the space it creates for the human soul to free itself. And even when an installation like this one in the Renwick Gallery is not allowed to be burned on site, the structure is stripped by hand afterward and the written messages taken to the desert to be burned there in silence. Thus the flames and the spaces strip away all the noise of everyday life, leaving us with only the pure wond...

  Wonder "Wonder is the quiet knowing that the world is so much more than what we can see or touch. It is the practice of beholding—not just looking, but letting the beauty before us change us. Wonder is the antidote to the lie that everything is ordinary, that the sacred has abandoned us. Even in the midst of grief, even in the unraveling, wonder reminds us that we are held by something vast and tender." Cole Arthur Riley                 The Conversation Elements From The Conversation Molly down below Music The original is much longer, but Louis Armstrong would have said that this rendition encapsulates beautifully what he wanted to convey.  A Jewish blessing at moments of celebration or wonder:  Blessed are You, Eternal God, Who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this moment of wonder. With love. George & Matilda

I am currently reading the autobiography Walking Tall by Simon Weston. Weston was a British soldier who got badly injured during the Falklands War in 1982. The ship he was on at the time, the Sir Galahad , was struck by a 2000 pound Argentinian bomb and he received terrible burns on forty six percent of his body. What followed were years of rehabilitation, countless operations and many adjustments. Simon at a parade shortly after the Falklands War Although the bomb exploded about 20 feet from where he was and his face was burnt beyond recognition, there was astonishingly enough no scarring of his eyeballs. As a military surgeon told him before one of the operations to his eyelids: “The blink reflex is a remarkable thing and it can usually outpace any foreign body flying towards the eye, or any flash, so it is very rare that the front surface of the eye is directly burned.” Since reading that line I’ve been blinking a lot, once again reminded of and fascinated by the h...

The photo, taken by photographer Jack Bradley, shows the moment that Harold Whittles hears for the first time after being fitted with a hearing aid. Date unknown. Source: Able magazine, 2 June 2010

So, here I am, back in Pretoria, while George stays on and manages the farm in White River until the weekend. To get my head back to basics, I had a personal planning session this morning. It nearly floored me! So many things to fit into each day, so much month left at the end of my money. I browsed through the  photos I had taken this past week in the Lowveld and remembered something that I had read in one of Sarah Ban Breathnach's books, Simple Abundance, A daybook of comfort and joy. Spirit knows that the rate of exchange used here on earth is cash, not clamshells or sheep. But the rate of exchange in Heaven is wonder. Doing what you love is not about the money, it's about wonder. As soon as you understand you're supposed to be asking for wonder instead of money, you'll start experiencing abundance. I keep forgetting, but every now and then I ask for wonder, and I have many pictures to show how I am showered with it! Matilda