Month: December 2023

Colors your eye cannot see

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JUST BEFORE SPRING

There in the freezing morning
hangs a sound that soon will thaw.
The quiet is almost ripe,
opening like a seed.

In this air there are colors
your eye cannot see.
They wait like depths in the expanse
over the blind snow.

Quiet. Don’t speak yet.
Don’t start anything.
One more drop of silence
and the air will be full of song.

LIGE FOR FORÅR

Der står i den frysende morgen
en tone der snart vil to.
Om lidt er stilheden moden
og åbner sig som et frø.

I denne lift er der farver
dot øje ikke kan se.
De venter som dybder i rummet
over den blinde sne.

Stille. Vent med at tale.
Sæt ikke noget i gang.
En dråbe stilhed mere
og luften er fuld af sang.

Benny Andersen
from
Something To Live Up To
Selected Poems
translated from Danish by
Michael Goldman

New Year’s Eve. At 4pm the streets of Edinburgh are already thronged with tens of thousands come to bid goodbye to an old year, and welcome to the new. For many, tonight will be a poignant celebration of hope, of longing, and yes, of myriad forms of prayer.

Can we dare to hope for something new?

To my great joy I’ve been introduced, towards the end of 2023, to the writings of the late and much revered Danish poet, Benny Andersen. I hope to walk with him awhile in 2024 – and in his Just Before Spring lies an apposite message for an upcoming new year …

I denne lift er der farver
dot øje ikke kan se.

In this air there are colors
your eye cannot see.

In the chill night air of this and other cities around the world, amid ‘Auld lang syne’ and fireworks, hugs and hopes, kisses and wishes, the poet suggests that we have not yet seen all the beauty that remains to be seen. Something glorious and hope-filled, something reconciling and restorative, something just the other side of snowy silence, something even now ‘opening like a seed,’ lies before us – and we may play a quiet part in bringing a new flowering, a new singing, into the night, and into the light. ‘One more drop of silence and the air will be full of song.’

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Out of darkness

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I am not alone. Many of us encounter a touch of melancholy towards the close of another year. We feel ourselves getting older. We wonder whether we’re any wiser. We try to take stock of what good we hope we, personally, have brought into the world, and of all we’d really rather not have brought. We begin to shape ‘new’ resolutions. We try – and sometimes fail – to voice our hopes and aspirations.

Beyond the taking stock, though, there’s a degree of melancholy, of sadness, that we can’t exactly explain. And then there are the more obvious causes for sadness, even despair for many. These don’t need explaining – words only ever seem to perpetuate them. We simply long, in every atom of our being, for them to end, for restoration of peace, for healing – though we cannot begin to imagine how healing can be brought to some of the shattered, bereaved and broken lives in our thoughts at the end of 2023.

So where do we turn when words fail as we look towards 2024? Upon what may we rest our gaze? What might we hear of comfort, of promise, when – disorientated and distressed – we cannot bear to look upon ‘The News’ (and feel profoundly uneasy about that), and are deeply concerned that almost anything we might contribute to the universal human conversation is fraught with the danger of being too glib, too ignorant, too ill-advised, too trite, too utterly unnecessary, too plain wrong?

Well, not for the first time, I cannot answer my own questions – but am aware, nonetheless, of a promise that lies buried in dark earth at this year’s end. Delicate snowdrops will find strength to push on upwards towards the light. Daffodils will grace gardens, fields, roadsides and windowsills when Spring comes. Courage in brave children, women and men will inspire us to restart and start again. And again. And again.

All of us – snowdrops, daffodils and humankind – must learn how to live, and to communicate, and to thrive, in the new, ever-changing and – for some – alien and unwanted environments in which we find ourselves. We will do well to speak with tenderness, out of thoughtful consideration and reflection, and to listen more carefully, to the voices of the severely oppressed, of refugees, and of the young – many of them crying and pleading from the heart.

We will be mindful of the hidden strength in much that we have thought delicate. And we must hope with all our best might and main that every effort at perseverance, at bravely pushing up through darkness towards tomorrow’s light, will make for a better world – for happier, wiser, new years.

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Nearing year’s end

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are the clouds, the coastline,
companionship, freshness,
sand, sea buckthorns, seascape,
sunset and wind direct
and personal gifts to
my life, or is that thought
a glad product of my
imagination and
deep thankfulness – or are
they, always perhaps, both?

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Others’ shoes

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And at a time of increasingly tragic conflict around the world, I pray that we can also do all in our power to protect each other. The words of Jesus seem more than ever relevant: ‘do to others as you would have them do to you.’ Such values are universal, drawing together our Abrahamic family of religions, and other belief systems, across the Commonwealth and wider world. They remind us to imagine ourselves in the shoes of our neighbours, and to seek their good as we would our own.

King Charles III
from his Christmas Broadcast, 2023

There’s something delightful, universal, and importantly on point about a ‘Call The Midwife Christmas Special’ – my heart fills to overflowing with a rush of goodwill upon every infant’s miraculous arrival, every skilled medical or nursing angel’s intervention and assistance, every listening ear, word of comfort, or compassionate, empathetic presence. 

All of this helps me understand, in this beautiful but tragically also war-torn and broken world, that we must learn to move beyond ‘call the midwife’ to being the midwife. It’s vital that we humans learn to bring to birth a new kind of living – one that has no tolerance whatsoever for anything less than it takes to welcome and to cradle and to sustain an infant, ANY and EVERY infant, as though she or he were the very presence of God on earth, from their advent here until their last farewell – because that’s who she, and he, and we, are. 

There’s a mighty sea-change to be undergone, by all of us, of course. I doubt there’ll be one of us that doesn’t need to make some seismic changes in their lives. But we can begin quietly advocating right now. When we come anywhere near beginning to set aside divisive rhetoric and start to feel what it is to stand in another’s shoes we begin, in that instant, beneath a starlit firmament, to be drawn towards a different – perhaps an original – kind of hope, a different kind of promise, an eternally guiding light … something less to do with religion, politics and power, and much more to do with cradling humanity. All humanity.

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More a way of life

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Edinburgh isn’t so much a city, more a way of life … I doubt I’ll ever tire of exploring Edinburgh, on foot or in print

Ian Rankin

A beautiful, crisp blue day, a few days before Christmas. There’s music in the air, and a bit of a bite in the tousling wind. Sun’s rays in mist over the Pentland Hills. Conversations in multiple languages. Laughter in the universal language of laughter. Architecture, sky and sunlight in the very particular language of Edinburgh. WhatsApp with friends glad to be away for holidays, but whose presence here is felt ‘in spirit’ until they return. Not so much a city, more a way of life …

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The ones who circle

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We shall be known by the
company we keep
By the ones who circle
Round to tend these fires
we shall be known by the
ones who sow and reap
the seeds of change, alive
from deep within the earth

It is time now, it is time now
that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves
into the well
It is time now, and what a
time to be alive
In this great turning we
shall learn to lead in love
In this great turning we
shall learn to lead in love

Karisha Longaker Mamuse

During the course of the pandemic, in early 2021, I was sequestered in a dear little flat beneath Arthur’s Seat here in snowy Edinburgh, hugely grateful to meet up for a walk with my lovely downstairs neighbour every 10 to 14 days or so, but otherwise learning the enormous value of ‘virtual, distance friendships.’

I’ve been thinking a lot about Liz, a gifted artist, musician and much else besides; a giving person who was utterly full of life and hope for the future of our world who, nonetheless, was diagnosed with a return of cancer a few months into our conversations, and with whom, virtually, via Instagram and WhatsApp, I went on to have the privilege of sharing her journey from it.

Liz kept on drawing, knitting socks, painting, playing and singing until her last ounce of strength. We became valued friends and would exchange songs and poetry and daydreaming about future post-pandemic freedoms – what a joy it would be to not need to wear a mask in supermarkets …

Today I’ve been thumbing through my journal and I came across a song that Liz had been singing with her ‘virtual choir.’ The remembrance has made my eyes water – with both sadness, great gladness, and profound gratitude. I have missed you, Liz. I have missed you. But, yes, ‘here, there and everywhere’ we shall be known ‘by the ones who circle / Round to tend these fires …’

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Sketch from a photograph | Liz Thompson
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Here in the low-light hours

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Here in the low-lit hours of the night I sit quietly – to ponder, and to wonder, and to try to be quieter still. I expect that many millions of us know what it is to want to say something, to plead for something, whilst fearing our ignorance more than we fear our silence. How many years would it take for me to begin to understand the sources from which this world’s conflicts arise? How many years to be able to comprehend anything of justice in half-baked notions of ‘difference,’ ‘vanquished,’ or ‘victors?’

But just a matter of hours ago I was spellbound by the deep gaze of a peaceful infant in the arms of her mother – and in whose beautiful eyes the Wisdom and compassion of the Ages appeared to be contained. I am still gazing back at her – though the moment of face to face encounter passed and now I am alone, reflecting – low-lit and yet illuminated. Of course we see something Divine in a child, and ought to in any child, anywhere. We almost invariably see the unalloyed peace in the ‘windows of their soul’ long before we hear words from their cherubic mouths. And their eyes – often shining, sometimes tear-filled, at others smiling – speak wordlessly to us, inviting us to stay and to keep vigil for a while. To breathe and keep vigil in a hoping, pondering, wondering, ‘silent night.’

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A simpler peace

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photo/michaelheld at unsplash

peace is usually something simpler

Michael Held and his Hasselblad captured this image of misty early-morning peace.

photo/dominikhofbauer at unsplash

Dominik Hofbauer captured this one – in which the peace of stillness is striking.

bing ai image creator

AI – artificial intelligence, given the words ‘bright, reflective colours, peace,’ built this one.

And we have a work by a Dutch Master hereunder. I’ve brought the four together for this brief post following a conversation with a friend in which she and I posited, and jointly agreed, that ‘peace is usually something simpler.’

Is the AI image too complex, too bright, too noisy? Is the stillness of the boat on a misty morning a nearer vision of peace? Or the rolling morning mist at the top of this post?

Is peace best represented by a ‘quieter’ – maybe more ‘natural’ palette?

Is there peace to be found in this study by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn? Can peace and light be found in the context of disputation?

Peter and Paul Disputing – Rembrandt

If, instead of speaking of peace in terms of images, we found ourselves speaking of peace present and observable in the humans on earth, and if ‘peace is usually something simpler,’ what would need to change in us, or be developed in us – all of us – to bring it into being in and for everyone, everywhere? And are we able to reach into any kind of experience of peace as we seek – each in our own way – uninterrupted, to answer that question?

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Perhaps …

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Photo by Google DeepMind on Pexels.com

We say yes when we mean I would rather not. We say no when we mean I would say yes except for all the times yes has proven to be a terrible idea. We say no thank you when every fiber in our bodies is moaning oh yes please. We say you cannot when what we mean is actually you can but you sure by God ought not to. We say no by staring directly at the questioner and not saying anything whatsoever. We ask questions that way also.

I am fascinated by how language is a verb and not a noun. I am riveted by how language is a process and not a preserve. I am absorbed by the way that we all speak one language but use different tones and shades and volumes and timbres and pronunciations and emphases in order to bend the language in as many ways as there are speakers of the language. Perhaps every one of us speaks a slightly different language even as we seem to be using the same words to one another …

Perhaps languages use us in ways that we are not especially aware of; perhaps languages are aware that they need us to speak them, or else they go flailing into the dark to be forgotten except by stones and the oldest of trees.

Brian Doyle
One Long River of Song

Perhaps. Yes, perhaps languages do fear going ‘flailing into the dark to be forgotten.’ Perhaps that’s true of humans, too. We have a drive, a need to communicate (our need!) from the moment we enter life in this world and feel the power of our lungs! One friend of mine told me – a bit sheepishly – that he wasn’t especially interested in football but liked to go to a game on Saturdays so that he could shout his head off. I actually understand that – at least I think I do! But it is all a rather precarious business, this saying things, isn’t it? Pretty complex, this talking? A bit fraught, the exasperated ‘you know what I mean!’? – when, patently, we often don’t. How well I remember the apparent frustration in school teachers who were quite sure that their students were ‘just being perverse.’ Ah, and that word ‘just’ – I just wanted. You just said. They’re just awful. Just isn’t always very just. If only we could just …

Each of us is a deep mind. A bottomless well. Deep. Literally unfathomable, even to our most patient, reflective selves. Perhaps, over time, this teaches us some self-compassion. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, we learn to have compassion for others – who, battling to comprehend themselves, are at an early loss as to how they’re ever going to get to the bottom of us!

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Transformed by an energy

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Peter and Paul Disputing

… it is his [Rembrandt’s] light shining in darkness that convinces me even more powerfully of a mind and sensibility that dwelt long and longingly on the mystery of divine presence – and absence. Figures like the two apostles in his “Peter and Paul Disputing,” for instance, deeply occupied with their own urgent questions, seem oddly unaware of the radiance that surrounds them, turning their books to gold and burnishing their skin. Yet the room where they sit is transformed by an energy not entirely accounted for by a high window and the afternoon sun. The light that singles them out in a darkened chamber where winter cold closes in just beyond its touch works like dramatic irony: we see something they don’t.

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
Drawn to the Light

‘We see something they don’t’ – the ‘we’ in this case being people viewing a Rembrandt masterpiece. Being outside looking in ‘we’ are privileged to see something ‘beyond’ the moment and the persons within it. Sometimes, indeed, a light surprises!

In our being able to gaze upon ‘an energy not entirely accounted for’ we, like Peter and Paul, can find hope – and something much ‘bigger’ than us – illuminated, spotlit even, in the darkened chambers of life and death, our human experience. Our very own lives are caught up in the stuff of dramatic irony – others seeing plainly what we ourselves do not, perhaps can not – our disputing how to enter or attain the light while failing to notice our books being turned to gold and the burnishing of our own skin.

Yesterday I was thinking about the gift of being able to laugh at ourselves (gently, and with affectionate understanding) so that we don’t take ourselves, our ‘certainties’ and our preoccupations too seriously – the intended implication being that we might thereby create a less disputatious and dangerous world. The great ‘Masters,’ drawing us to the light, show us how to do this – to recognise, sometimes at least, our own ‘failing to see’ and chuckling about it. Open to being shown, again and again, that ‘the light’ is not absent because we fail to see it.

There’s always ‘an energy not entirely accounted for by a high window and the afternoon sun.’

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Delighted

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photo/olibekh at unsplash

This little one looks both a tad surprised and delighted! I wonder what they’ve seen? And I’ve spent a few moments this evening bringing back to mind some of the many things I’ve seen and been delighted by in the past few days. Mindful of the innumerable people around the world who will have seen little or nothing of delight today, I resolve all the more to try to be a better steward of all that has delighted me. How? Well, first, by remembering with thankfulness that a great many people and experiences have; and second, by doing whatever I can each day to contribute something to the measure of delight and of happy surprise in our potentially so much more marvellous and extraordinary world.

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Christmas Markets

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Lovely to have my brother and sister-in-law to stay for a couple of days. We’ve walked, it seems, a thousand miles and eaten Bratwurst in the Christmas Market. And rain has manifestly failed to extinguish festive cheer in us, and in I don’t know quite how many thousands of others 🎉🤶

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Startled by Peace

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photo/dominikhofbauer at unsplash

Consciousness is the way the world appears and feels to me

Christof Koch
The Feeling Of Life Itself

I’m still a bit startled by the contemplation to which I was led by yesterday’s AI image (link), created at my request, using the words ‘bright reflective colours, peace.’ Tonight’s post hosts a peaceful photograph made (by Dominik Hofbauer) with somewhat older image-making means.

Startled, because I immediately felt calmer in the presence of softer edges, of rich, diverse and colourful invitation, of my friend Lori’s response, of Christof Koch’s clearly stated belief that ‘Consciousness is the way the world appears to me’ – to me – implying that it’s possible, likely even, that my consciousness, the way things appear to me, will, of necessity and ‘wiring,’ be different to the ways in which ‘things’ or ‘experience’ feel to you.

Albeit that I can believe that you and I may have similar experiences, may be ‘attracted’ to similar things, may – in a broad sense – ‘love’ life, each other, and ourselves, in similar ways, still I want to ask the question: can I ever adequately describe what I feel to another? Could any other ever hope to understand such a description? Can another feel what I feel, precisely? Can I feel what they feel?

And so it seems to me that the pursuit of peace – good relationships with other humans, and with our earthly home, and all the other living things herein – requires that we respect the lived experience of every other person around us, for they can no more help their being different to me than I can help being different to them.

This is fundamental to any present or future cessation of hostilities between people – individuals or nations. If we could only grasp that another’s different experience of the world does not and should not automatically make of them an enemy, a foe, we might simultaneously come to understand that the ‘paths of peace,’ of living with, of not making enemies of, ultimately of celebrating difference, rich colour and diversity, are the best ‘way forward’ for us all.

Who can count how much has been lost by humankind’s warring with one another, by gender inequality, by misguided and unjust persecution of so called ‘minorities,’ and of refugees – even unto death? There’s something of the minority, something of the refugee, in every single, conscious, experiencing one of us – in you, and in me. Who can count how many would, in their heart of hearts, really want this travesty, this gross mistreatment and waste, to continue?

I wonder what others think? Would an acceptance of others being different because they were made to be different, perhaps specifically intended to be different, lead us, call us, invite us into the rich, diverse, multi-coloured, multi-layered ‘more excellent way’ of a much longed-for future, of a much longed-for, agonised-over, prayed-for, consciously dreamed of, better way, today?

Can we hope to be startled by peace?

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