Imprints

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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