Month: December 2016

Christmas Light

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When everyone had gone
I sat in the library
With the small silent tree,
She and I alone.
How softly she shone!

And for the first time then
For the first time this year,
I felt reborn again,
I knew love’s presence near.

Love distant, love detached
And strangely without weight,
Was with me in the night
When everyone had gone
And the garland of pure light
Stayed on, stayed on.

May Sarton
Collected Poems 1930-1993
W W Norton, 1993

May Sarton died on the 16th July 1995 – but continues to speak to my soul, and sometimes for it, almost daily, though we never met. She could not have imagined this communication. I first encountered her writings around the time she died. But friendship thrives in many ways, and times, and inter-continental spaces – and the gift of shared experience by way of carefully penned words is, for me, among the greatest gifts of all.

At times I feel I can see May Sarton at work, gift and wisdom brought forth from both depth and shallows, from indulgence and sacrifice, from being understood and misunderstood, from great joys, and searing pain. And experience the lamplight, and the desktop flowers in her study, and share the experience of love known in the quiet, golden light of Christmas contemplation, in the company of a blessing-enriched pine tree.

Rumour

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Responding to tonight’s tragedy, Berlin Police requested via Twitter that streets be kept clear for emergency services and that people ‘do not spread rumours.’ Good counsel. For as though the incident is not tragic enough, some of the stories we rehearse in our heads are worse.

Tittle-tattle poisons. Abetted by constant media chatter, swept along by an inchoate racket, we struggle with disconnected stories we tell ourselves. Fearful, we know we are living under par and seek quick answers. For the umpteenth time, we imagine apocalypse come upon us.

We must learn to quiet our rumours. Enter the universal gift of meditation – stilling over-active ‘monkey’ minds. Mental chatter is often no more than unconscious shrieking – ungoverned swinging from one thought-branch to another. Conscious observation is required.

Meditation to the rescue! As we learn simply to observe the fantastic tales authored in our heads, we equip ourselves to deal with the actual stories of life. Quietly watching the ticker tape of thoughts that do not require reaction or response preserves energy for those that do.

Meditation trains us in the practice of discernment. Imagined stories teach our brains to live in life’s real stories – but it is only the actual ones we need to act upon, not the ticking ticker tape. We are not required to know, still less to act upon teacher’s passing thoughts on her way to class.

We need not waste energy with rumour. Meditation keeps mental streets clear so that we deal better with real life. Anyone, anywhere, here and now. Universal – neither guru nor joining fee required – meditation affords the gift of quiet consciousness, and befriends it.

Hollowed out

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Can even a little peace be breathed into human existence today?

Can a willed intention for light amid the darkness of the present world’s confusion and fear, grief, haplessness and hopelessness make the slightest difference? Do my prayer, contemplation and meditation heal or illuminate anything beyond my soul at all?

I don’t know.

Only that I must pray, contemplate and meditate. The not knowing facilitates kinship with the millions most desperately in need of peace-light (and food, drink, safety and shelter) tonight. And I have a pervading feeling that if hollowed-out humanity were ever able to surrender some of its ‘knowing’ to accepting and tolerant living, we might yet thrive and grow within the embrace of Wisdom – way deeper and beyond the confining walls of religious houses and capitols.

Wishful thinking? OK. But today I heard a seven-year-old girl bombed out of her home and frightened beyond any measure of decency, thanking those who have shown an interest in her story. Yes. I wish. I wish. I wish.

The know-all will make nothing great again, at all.

Little bins

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Every day, twelve little bins in which to order disorderly life, and even more disorderly thought

Mary Oliver
Upstream, page 25

Recycling in the UK has had a bad press this month. I read I’m not as good at it as I once was, and need to live in one of four counties to pass muster. Boxes and bags are out. Ubiquitous and ugly wheeled bins host the nation’s best-ordered recycling efforts.

Mary Oliver writes of the social self that might be cycling life through ‘twelve little bins’ – the hours of the clock – more concerned with keeping pace with the ‘regular’ governor of time than with whether or not it gathers ‘some branch of wisdom or delight’ along the way.

Containers play their part, like the hours. But both the regular and the irregular – coupled with an ability to reflect and to ask ‘what am I doing and why am I doing it?’ – are essential elements whatever we’re talking about, wherever we are, and whatever we do.

Everyday Art ii

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Just for joy – an occasional series entitled Everyday Art – a little record of some of the beauty I see in the world about me every day. Sometimes this is seen in the art and photography of others. At others the photos or drawings will be of beautiful sights I saw with my own eyes. Everyday Art enriches life daily. I’ll enjoy revisiting it from time to time.

Friends notice I have a bit of a thing about art studios and cabins, reading nooks and elegant workspaces. And Apple. The exquisite minimalist beauty of a MacBook ranks highly in my appreciation of ‘everyday art’.

I wonder how many of us have stories, or could write fiction, centred on particular architectural or other precisely designed detail?

Beams and echoes

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Happy round-table breakfast conversation between eight good friends this morning, followed by an atmospheric westward drive through North Yorkshire fog, aware of the occasional looming of the bones of ancient abbeys and long-lost husbandry in their granges.

RDT’s funeral at 1pm where his smile beamed over hundreds who loved and admired him as much as we did. And two of his eloquent grandchildren made everyone proud to know them.

Another hundred miles southwards. Another meal. Another friend – who’s the more special for putting up with us when we’re sleepy – a not uncommon state of affairs these days.

Another couple of hundred miles tomorrow. Long looked forward to visits with more friends, and on to my parents before, late in the day, I set a match again to our log stove at home. And there, all being well, I shall fall asleep in my chair, where dreams will thankfully re-echo a whirlwind few days.

Moors living

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We’ve been high up on the Yorkshire Moors this afternoon and admired the resilience of people who manage daily life in very isolated parts. Doubtless, life here is easier today, aided by transport logistics, machinery and fuels. Still, while the moors are spectacularly beautiful in their rugged way, they’re demanding, too. Long held knowledge, filled out by experience, on a grey late afternoon in December.

He’s got mail

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img_1127I understand children these days may now post a letter directly to Santa Claus by way of Royal Mail. The kindly gentleman must have increased confidence in his distribution systems. When I was a boy we assumed at least a 50% possibility of ‘Dear Santa’ notes being lost halfway up a chimney – and must, therefore, make allowances if Christmas morning brought something other than we’d politely requested. This development in communications is all the more impressive because it is apparently unnecessary to send such letters ‘tracked’.

RDT

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RDT.jpg
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One of our special and treasured friends has died.

You know who you are, and would not care at all for any fuss to be made. But we want to say thank you, dear friend, from deep within, for lighting up the world. We never saw you without your glorious smile, or a glad or encouraging word for or about someone. These gifts opened people and the flowers in your garden alike. Thank you for your gentleness, goodness, patience and love. We, in company with your beloved family, will celebrate your life in our every remembering of times shared. Thank you. With much love.

Waiting

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Solitude itself is a way of waiting for the inaudible and the invisible to make itself felt. And that is why solitude is never static and never hopeless

May Sarton

That’s why I felt an affinity with the lone man – looking out to a turbulent sea, perched on a rock, palms raised, quite still – who appeared to be at one with his surroundings.

Sometimes mental solitude suffices for me. But what May Sarton describes as ‘waiting for the inaudible and the invisible to make itself felt’ is every day as necessary to me as sleep and food and water – perhaps because, as departing Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi said as he conceded referendum defeat, ‘non siamo dei robot’ – ‘we are not robots.’

Poised

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westport-ireland
Westport Harbour | Photo Sjaak Kempe at Flickr

Before the beginning

Unknown to us, there are moments
When crevices we cannot see open
For time to come alive with beginning.

As in autumn a field of corn
Knows when enough green has been inhaled
From the clay and under the skill
Of an artist breeze becomes gold in a day,

When the ocean still as a mirror
Of a sudden takes a sinister turn
To rise in a mountain of wave
That would swallow a village.

How to a flock of starlings
Scattered, at work on grass,
From somewhere, a signal comes
And suddenly as one, they describe
A geometric shape in the air.

When the audience becomes still
And the soprano lets the silence deepen,
In that slowed holding, the whole aria
Hovers nearer, then alights
On the wings of breath
Poised to soar into song.

These inklings were first prescribed
The morning we met in Westport
And I was left with such sweet time
Wondering if between us something
Was deciding to begin or not.

John O’Donohue
Conamara Blues

This world is full of exquisite beauty. Some of it lived in the soul of the late poet John O’Donohue, and he embodied it. If I had to name one literary hero, this is my man. I repeatedly turn to a film of the gentle giant, seated in his armchair beside a peat hearth, notebook and pen in hand. His poetry is so exquisite it’s painful sometimes. Familiar, it catches me unawares.

My eyes open with new willingness to see the world afresh – open to ‘Before the Beginning’ and everything that comes after it. Some days I regret I can’t head down to The Burren and find him there, attentive, laughing, listening, warm and knowing. And then I chance again upon his work and find myself in his company here and now. Poised to soar into song.

Teddies and tango

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Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death

Albert Einstein

I observe children’s faces as they learn. Something new makes them smile or cry every day. Healthy children grow into a fuller experience of life by a menu of delight on the one hand and boundary setting pain on the other.

I see learning in adult faces too, in mirrors, in tango and computer coding classes, and in hospital appointments. The mix is the same for everyone. Something new makes us smile or cry – or somewhere in between – morning, noon and night.

And thus, from birth to death, we grow.

Sculpted

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waves-and-volcanic-rock-squashed

Huge waves, white-capped, teal in the
afternoon sunlight, crash onto
sculpted rock beneath me. Neither
rocks nor waves asked for their place or
role on this earth.

Both arrived, compelled by forces
beyond and greater than present
forms. Fashioned by persistence and
rendered lovely gradually
in time and space.

And albeit with our human
ability to contemplate
it, compelled, sculpted, beautified
in time describes you and me too,
shaped, ever new.

SRM