So now it’s Sunday and we finished our Urban Retreat yesterday, the five of us. We meditated together, discussed our week, explored making precepts and carried out a final ritual together when we made offerings of our intentions going forward from the retreat.

There were a couple more readings I wanted to add to this blog but they’ll have to wait til after Wednesday as my books are at Kamalamani’s.

Meanwhile, another nice synchronicity has happened. I’m just starting an Alexander Technique course for a few weeks on a Monday night and am reading the course book (“Whatever you’re doing now you can do it better!” by Anthony J Taylor). I hadn’t read very far into it when another wonderful “thread” story appeared (well, it’s string, but you know what I mean!)….

“I had often walked across the Clifton Suspension Bridge, spanning as it does the deep Avon Gorge, and wondered how they ever managed to build it. For the bulk of the bridge seems to hang in mid air; there appears to be no way that during its construction if could have been supported from below. ‘How did they do that?’ I wondered.

The answer, I discovered, was with a kite and a piece of string. So legend has it, the cunning Brunel attached a thin piece of string to a kite and flew the kite high in the air. The kite was eventually caught by someone standing on the other side. And from that single piece of string spanning the gorge, Brunel was able to thread across another, and another, and another, till he could finally send across a rope. And from a single rope came two ropes then three ropes, till finally they had to so may ropes going from one side to the other, he could tie them together and hang them from mighty brick towers built on either side. These ropes were so strong that he could attach to these ropes heavy steel ropes, and from these heavier metal ropes suspend the first girders. In this way, from a single piece of string, he began to construct a might bridge of stone and steel.”

I loved this story – especially because it connects the bridge, which is very dear to me and the “thread” theme….