You are…

On rainy days like this, and when it’s dark, when it’s light.. Whenever really..

you are the spark of every dawn
_________

And perhaps a new project..

Lonesome

There are these times when you just feel Abit off. Not sick or anything.. Just off. And well things around you just got better but just still well, off in different aspects..

Not complaining, just think it’d be great if they could just be all fine and dandy..
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I’ve spent a long time trying to stage it so there’s nothing wrong or noticeably sick and it’s worked just fine.

Sure, sometimes I slip up and at those times I will wallow in myself, ride and keep going.
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When I hit something that reminds me of something else, I’ll rake through it while looking over my shoulder just to please you and hopefully you will be satisfied. Goes for everything.
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PS don’t make me stand on the saddle again.. :))

And so EQUAL is

read more about horse therapy both physical and emotional here. featuring the benefits of riding at the RDA and EQUAL-ARK(equine assisted learning for at risk kids) at the NEC. find an article in the TODAY paper today and a video of EQUAL-ARK here.

i am proud of how far we have come and this journey we’re on. thank you jessie for all your help and guidance. thank you to the EQUAL11 and all those who have been around for EQUAL on the ground all this time: roy, titien, harpreet, jade, melanie and monique. interns: brunne, rachel, wiebke, judith, molly. key players: delia, aaron, mel, diane, steph n, nat, dikie, yana, idris, wawan.

_________

and so life is.

_________

sulkywulk.

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i didn’t like mass today at all. like i like going for mass in general. it’s just the things people say sometimes. ick, makes me sick. no wonder people are ignorant and ill-exposed. because the people who are influential in the community say things like that.

The Great Crossover

I think 2011 has been an eventful one. Some bits leaving me feeling empty and some full. Some like I’ve made the biggest improvements and some like I’ve still got a mountain to climb.

Riding and the change in workplace is one example. Alot to learn but I feel like I’ve come a long way since.

I suppose all the medical stuff stopped by the middle of this year and I feel a pleasant sort of relief actually. Yes I still have alot to deal with just not so min to think about. Alot of it has been a struggle of acceptance because goin to the doctors means you’re still trying to explain it. Now it’s about well accepting that I have these things going on and keeping the effort up to keep dealing.

The company I keep has changed in focus a little bit and don’t know if it’s all excellent and dandy like it seems. It just is I suppose due to the circumstances and I will go with it.. 🙂

In terms of family, I think there has been love and loss, conflict and peace this whole year, but I’m glad kor’s home and we are working things out with a family effort.

2012 holds quite alot to do and I don’t think I have resolutions this new year. Im just going to take it as it comes..

So, here’s me saying.. Hello 2012, bring it.

Today a Saviour has been Born

Adeste Fideles 
Laeti triumphantes 
Venite, venite in Bethlehem 
Natum videte 
Regem angelorum 
Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus, 
Venite adoremus, Dominum 

Cantet nunc io 
Chorus angelorum 
Cantet nunc aula caelestium 
Gloria, gloria 
In excelsis Deo 
Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus, 
Venite adoremus, Dominum 

Ergo qui natus 
Die hodierna 
Jesu, tibi sit gloria 
Patris aeterni 
Verbum caro factus 
Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus, 
Venite adoremus, Dominum

What’s December without Christmas Eve?

Veni, veni Emmanuel! 
Captivum solve Israel! 
Qui gemit in exilio, 
Privatus Dei Filio, 

Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel 
Nascetur pro te, Israel. 

Veni, veni o oriens! 
Solare nos adveniens, 
Noctis depelle nebulas, 
Dirasque noctis tenebras. 

Gaude, gaude Emmanuel 
Nascetur pro te, Israel. 

Veni, veni Adonai! 
Qui populo in Sinai 
Legem dedisti vertice, 
In Maiestate gloriae. 

Gaude, gaude Emmanuel 
Nascetur pro te Israel.

Devotion

I suppose my cousin said something I didn’t see coming from him. He said something along the lines of losing the focus of the event and how we might be squabbling about details like catering menus and porta-loos- minor details that make is lose sight of what a wake or a passing of someone might be- the mourning of the loss and the celebration of a life well lived.

There’s a lot that grandad did as a cushion for the somewhat endless seeming conflict between the grandmother and mom. And frankly, I think my brother spent more time with him than I did. But I suppose there were times of water guns and the guinea pig Deepa that I refused to touch but shove carrot chips in his cage.

More of what I remember was the conflict and fighting, all the bickering and family squabbles unrelated to my generation. And in later years his somewhat long winded almost needlessly specific prayers prior to Christmas or Chinese new year meals-All of them about peace and health- Meals that I liked attending for the food more than anything else. Also, how he wouldn’t be able to spell my brother’s or my name on the Ang pows.

He just sat quietly otherwise and said nothing, just watching what was going on really.

One of his constant prayers that recurred at every opportunity was his yearning that Bentley would be kept safe.

Mama found this stack of notebooks that he wrote in faithfully every day from ’98 til ’07 and I don’t think that was the last book. And I suppose his prayers were answered when the boy came for a visit in ’08. All of them for the life of the long lost grandson and his safety. That he would grow up ‘strong and smart so that he can take care of himself and his mother’, that the ‘Lord Jesus would allow me to meet Bentley and his mother and that we will be civil when we meet’ and that ‘the Lord Jesus will bring him home and allow us to love him as our own kin’ and all these ‘Lord, in your time- yes, Lord, in your own time’.

I think we all have much to learn about it and this is the part that’s affected me more than anything through this whole episode, even more so than his actual death. That he lived with such devotion and faith and such devastation after the passing of his youngest son. That at the end of almost each book, the same 2 prayers recurred and these for Lyndon and how his passing ‘left a void’ never to be filled.

If he prayed with such fervour, I wonder what elation and thanks he must have felt when the boy came home.

I think I look up to him more now.

_________

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

Death and all it Asks of You

In times of need and strife some people say things they don’t necessarily mean.

I suppose I was highly aware of my discomfort at being at hospitals. I will probably say for the record that I know I have frequented the hospital and yes they have been a source of help and comfort for me many times.

However, I hate them.
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When you can see the light fade and Death come, you just realize how much you cannot control things no matter how hard you try.

And it doesn’t matter the time or place, creature or race, and you may not like it or think it’s right but nature has its way and you are but a minute fraction of a circle so much bigger, so much wider and so much more than you could ever know.

So along with other things, I always say don’t fight or resist it, your only choice is to follow, go with it.

And so it is…
________

Angel of God, my Guardian dear, to whom His love commits me here, ever this day (or night) be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.

Faith

for all the wrong that you made right.

__________

Áve María, grátia pléna, Dóminus técum. Benedícta tu in muliéribus, et benedíctus frúctus véntris túi, Iésus.

Sáncta María, Máter Déi, óra pro nóbis peccatóribus, nunc et in hóra mórtis nóstrae. Ámen.

Wild Honey

there are some weekends that you just enjoy. and then it welcomes a relaxing morning at work with a fair balance of work in the afternoon. and then an evening that’s enjoyable and consists of a good conversation but ends in plenty of tension and a general WTF feel. it then gets better with ice cream with good friends. =)

______

and then a public holiday comes and it ends. enjoyable but still. back to work it is.

______

it’s Northlight’s graduation ceremony tomorrow at their school. I’m quite looking forward to it.

actually, i think i’ve learnt so much running the program with jessie. i know I’m no therapist, I’m not the best rider, or the best teacher. but i think just running this program has enriched me-not just in terms of job and job function but being more human about things in general.

there are some things that just happen, maybe it was someone else’s fault, maybe it was your own fault, maybe it was your parents. maybe it was your job, whatever. or maybe it just simply, is. whatever it is God’s flung it on your plate and you’re dealing. and you may not like it but the stuff on people’s plates are different. and like it or not, we all have to deal.

some times these 16 sessions i’ve come to learn that for the age these kids are and the amount or variety on their plates are a TAD extreme. but they’re doing it every day in their own little way. and sure they’ve the most ANNOYING or sad, or almost pathetic ways or coping, but they’re coping and that’s what matters. some of them have been an inspiration.

horses, I’ve learnt, you cannot lie to. no matter how annoying it is that you can’t or how bad you feel like you need to, you can’t. and that’s not wrong, sometimes, its a good thing. if you’d only be sensitive, it makes you face everything you try to hide. and sometimes this will catch you, and even me, by surprise. it happens every day in the littlest ways about the littlest, most insignificant things.

seeing some of these growing, sometimes struggling, individuals come to terms to whatever it is together with, in the face of or alongside a horse has been touching. no, i may not have known all these things they’ve needed to face, perhaps i know what it is but the effect of which i don’t and are not mine to know. what i do know is that some issues with some children have been acknowledged, addressed and are in the process of or in some cases resolved.

how some children are completely different than what they came is beyond some of us. some of them looking back have proven to not recognize themselves.

all these and more are things i didn’t see coming.

when jessie first spoke to me about this program EQUAL-ARK, and me running the riding section. i just thought okay, i will form a general plan to get kids who have zero knowledge to where they need to be (agreed on by the school, perhaps in a written proposal) in 16 sessions, en mass, and then execute it. and i did. no, i didn’t start out the most human or personable. sometimes, when i teach, i just don’t. because it’s taxing.

but then i saw all this i didn’t see coming and it changed. i changed.

so this is to Northlight, the NEC EQUAL team (staff, volunteers and horses) and especially to the horses that have made the riding section possible- Joondooree Farms Damiro, Roxy Girl, Lando, Alarich, Nanno, Ipala, National Hero, Angels’ Ditch Tomba La Bomba, BoomBoom, Impero, Karina and Wallaby Joe.