Betwixt Lakeland & Edinburgh
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‘Small things amuse small minds’ as the saying goes. But who doesn’t love a good laundry drying day? Further amusement lies in Eckhart Tolle’s ‘work of art’ today though: I’m keeping fit just by leaping up and down to check that a sky-full of artworks hasn’t opened its floodgates again …
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… take out your ‘phone, turn on the camera, point it at the sky, and there it is – another work of art
Eckhart Tolle – in an Instagram post
I so value Eckhart Tolle’s quiet ways and gentle encouragements. Brought to stillness by an intense migraine today (of a kind I’ve not known for years) – ‘the plus side of events’ has involved my noticing felled poppies and aquilegia having recovered from intense rainfall and now standing tall again. And yes, the thought-provoking and magisterial art, always available to us and our imaginations, and to which the teacher drew my attention again today. So, still somewhat dazed, I’m nonetheless grateful …
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For years my bikes have brought me such comfort. I’ve been reflecting on why. The first – not a bi – but a tricycle. Three of them gifts. Two tandem bikes. Some of them e-bikes. All with bells. One with a hooter, too. All lie behind this blog’s name: ‘wind in my wheels’ (link) – a comforting and rejuvenating sound I hear, awake and asleep.
And here lies answer in part to my musings. The sound of the wind in my wheels, no matter the particular machine, equates to An Abiding Hum, something like the Universal ‘Om,’ something like the ‘cantus firmus’ Michael Mayne wrote of in his ‘The Enduring Melody’ (link). Something governing, something steadying, at the heart of spinning planets, spinning earth, and the spinning consciousness and conversation of our always-thus-far fractious humankind. It’s a quiet hum, yet it can be heard above and beneath the louder, demanding noises of our ego-fuelled obsessions, our wants and ever-talkative monkey-minds – our human existence.
At many times and in many places the wind in my wheels has led, and still leads me into the Psalmist’s ‘pastures green’ and to the ‘quiet waters by.’ The hum recalls me to the spaces of gratitude and acceptance, to the reckoning with failures and successes – and to some appreciation of the purpose in our lives of both; to the places of quiet growth, the places where one can think upon the miracles of life on earth. The places where one gains perspective. I learned today that Mount Everest grows in height by millimetres every year due to tectonic plate disturbances. Mountains and humans – perhaps all things – ‘grow’ because the ground is forever shifting beneath our feet!
And the thing about being out alone on a bike, about the unselfconscious ‘good morning’ to birds and cows, horses and sheep, about the hum, about the ‘Om,’ about the ‘wind in my wheels’ – is the comforting reminder that something ‘Other’ than us ensures the balancing, the Abiding Hum, a sustaining, in joy and sadness, in sickness and in health, in life and death, in every sense, in this world and in all worlds. And for those who don’t ride bikes: no problem. All you need is to deliberately sit or stand or lie down somewhere quiet for a while. Soon you may hear the ‘cantus firmus’ and – should you be hearing it for the first time, no worries. After the first hearing this is a sound, this is a prayer, this is a steadying, this is a song you may come to hear again and again.
Wind in my wheels. An abiding – a persistent – Hum …
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simply by closing our eyes, attuning our ears, and settling to wait
There are times in our lives so imprinted on our minds that we can see them, be in them, feel the touch of them, simply by closing our eyes, attuning our ears, and settling to wait.
– ‘Imprints’ – audio mp4 –
I’m just back from another fabulous bothy weekend at Stanhope, and in the quietness of ‘home alone’ I see again the wood smoke curling into the night sky, can feel the warmth from the stove, and from quiet conversations. I am touched by smiles. I hear the night-footsteps, the wind-induced creaking, the laughter, the kettle boiling, tummies gurgling, and the curlew’s cry. I see candlelight, bread and cheese, hot dishes with love chief among their ingredients, and the heron in the morning.
I rest in soft murmurings. I feel the touch of love and the wisdom in experience and experiences – deep, deep in profound depth, and here on the alive and sensitive surface of the present, too. Here, listening to the wind at the bothy window and watching candles flicker, we grow. And all of us know.
And our sky expands, time slows, thirst is quenched, hunger satiated, doubt dissipated – or are at least changed. We are opened – wider and wider – and our Stanhope burn flows on, like the river in each of us. Sunlight chases shadows and sometimes the other way around. We rest and thrive – in and among the basics. It comes to us, as it were a surprise: ‘I’m alive!’
I will come again to these reflections. I will be present in them. We will, no doubt – to celebration of the beauty, the sadnesses, the joys, the tears, and the myriad gladnesses; to the vivifying music, and to the soft-power in images as colourful, as clear, and as reflective as were his to Van Gogh. And to the shelter and embrace. Some elements quietly die in us. Other elements arise in us. The curlew cries. Every day we rise to surprise. And we fly.
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