TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY

I remember my granny waiting for the tinker to arrive to mend the hole in her kettle. In those days the kettle was always on the trivet that was a cast iron bracket siting the kettle on the edge of the sitting room fire. So a brew of tea was never far away. But the one side of the kettle always next to the flames was prone to damage.

The tinker was different to the knife grinder who had a grinding wheel mounted on the front of his bicycle that he would raise onto a stand so that the power went to the grind stone and not the wheels. He could sharpen anything from carving knives through scissors to garden shears.

But the tinker was a craftsman and with a large aluminium washer either side and a nut and bolt to hold them together either side of the hole in the kettle it was soon whistling away again to make the next pot of granny’s famous healing tea.

In quiet moments I tinker away in my garage making, mending and meditating. It is a peaceful process where intuition and many gifts allow the creative urge to take shape and manifest in many forms.

Saint Germain asks us:
What does it mean to you to ‘tinker’?
It is a mender of small metal household objects. It might mean it is an activity of working at something to make adjustments. Go ahead and tinker with your Peace alignment. Breathe deeply and feel yourself adjusting your inner being to open all parts of yourself wide to receive the flow of Peace. Good. Next time we will address your ‘tailor’ aspect. (ha!)

Oh yes, I tried my hand at tailoring too having designed a ball gown for my mother who was a supreme seamstress and made the gown from oyster satin. Then, when my future wife was elected Miss Gatwick I designed a backless gown in printed jersey silk, spilt to the waist with trousers under in emerald green and purple. Well, we were in our twenties in the sixties. What did you expect?

It is the process of tailoring your life to suite you, not anyone else, and allowing your creative gifts to shape your life on the understanding that every act is in service to God and hence your fellow beings on earth. Tinkering all the time to ensure that peace is brought through as the essential ingredient in all the things that you cook up or produce.

I missed my National Service as it was discontinued just before I left school, so I never got to enjoy a barking sergeant major. But my dad, who I never knew, was in the Royal Air Force and my stepfather in the Royal Navy, both of whom came through World War II with just a few scratches. At least on the outside.

My service was more of a Christian Soldier serving my time in two church choirs and then as secretary, organist, healer and vice president of various churches.

I joined the spy service later in life, when I came to the conclusion that it was most essential to pay attention to the thoughts that precede every word and act.
You can watch what you say or write because you have time to think, but it is the thinking that is the most difficult think to control and I constantly have to spy on what and how I think to make sure I do not slip back into the old ways.
How about you? Are you a tinker, tailor, soldier or spy?
With Love, not from Russia but sunny Spain, David

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