I lay down in the yard and prepared to let go and then came a call
I was recently much moved by an account of ‘Myrrh,’ an old working horse, exhausted, lying down, surrendering, one might say, to dying. And then came the tender voice of the rescuer, followed quickly by the safety and joy of green pasture, in company with other horses, who appeared to have regained lost youth. And I am moved by innumerable other exhaustions, and by the deaths of beloved sons and daughters, young people, drafted to work and to fight wars they had no part in causing. And now the sun rises over Easter morning, and I am mindful of another exhaustion, another surrender, another dying, another rising – and hear the call – as clearly as did Easter’s first loving witness – to be another voice …
and so I will rise wheresoever I am to speak a Word of love
What we need is here Wendell Berry – from The Wild Geese
A meditation on presence, play, and the scent of red leather
A wonderfully pale blue sky has framed Dumfries and Galloway in the last couple of days. Warm sunshine, together with the provision of a lovely ‘mindfulness bench,’ just big enough for two people, and overlooking the pond and Dalbeattie Burn at Colliston Park, made it an absolute pleasure to spend a couple of happy hours in this 9.5 acre park playing with my younger daughter and grandchildren. Yes, we shared some mindfulness, and – as is quite often the case after a time of stillness – the light scent of my daughter’s red leather jacket lingers with me now. My teenage grandson spoke of being willing enough, but needing practice at writing 1000 word essays, and of enjoyment in working with his hands. His younger sister ‘took us’ all – by way of an imaginary tractor, to Kirkcudbright – 42 miles away, ‘for fish and chips,’ returning just in time for (actual) donuts from Dalbeattie bakery before we went our separate ways. Flowers, sunshine, sky, running burn, meditation, conversation, warm scent, dreamscape and donuts …
.
It is a serious thing / just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in the broken world Mary Oliver – from Invitation
Look at the sky. That’s enough – Rainer Maria Rilke
we write in dusk what morning might understand …
… he’d penned thus far. The sky now very pale blue, and crossed by pink floss, he’d wondered – ‘is that a satellite, or a star?’
And in the way of such things, stillness descended as it often does when the answer doesn’t really matter, nor whether satellite-or-star is near or far.
And from time to time, amid the gentle reverie, he became aware of illuminated windows, some with orange glow, one a string of white fairy light, to the right a flickering quadrant, and several with the kind of log-fire-warmth one sees mid-winter through the steamed-up panes of an Edinburgh bar.
Fleetingly he wondered whether any behind those windows were ever aware of his being at his window – from over there, from just beyond entirely clear focus, afar.
And then, on Thursday morning, aware of windows having featured in his deeply restful dreams, he found a small sage green envelope had been pushed under his door. There was a thoughtfulness about the sort of chosen stationery, with the slightest trace of scent about it, for special sorts of notes – he’d seen once or twice before. And – with quiet delight – he’s contemplated the content of that note now, for a week or two, or more:
To the one over there who watched the sky when I did, thank you for being a quiet lantern in the dusk. We never spoke, but your stillness reached me – and towards the end of a frenetic day it mattered, and quietened me, more than I can say
Sometimes he was mildly aware of an angel at his shoulder. Tonight, in a quiet light, he heard her whisper
You looked at the sky like it was enough
It was
..
Sometimes we meet ourselves in the gaze of another, across silence
There are moments when the soul touches the world, and the world gently touches back
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes – Marcel Proust
I am glad to have been described
as ‘always enthusiastic’
by an energetic nine year
old who observes and then reflects
with her keen and critical care –
perhaps she has noticed that I enthusiastically find
life-enhancing gifts in cupboards
drawers and nooks and crannies and
answers and more questions to my
frequent asking ‘why?’ – and in the
wondering I’m encouraged to
journey into heart and mind where
reminded of countless graces
I touch core spirit and soul in
all of us – infinite and kind
Down the dusty slope to the long sweep of gold sand and the beach café’s garlic gambas and Pablo’s distinctively rich dark brown coffee where the chief scent of the morning
is of suncream and warmed skin and quiet conversation is accompanied by out-of-control symphonies of wind-blown wires thrashing the masts of a rainbow of
sailboards – and yes – we come here every year to tell again of the turquoise and the turtles and shyly aware faithfulness to-a-fault to these times and to these hot
prawns and coffee like this and even to the same sun oil and quieting stilling soothing murmur of the ocean of love and abiding in hearts and souls that know
one another so well that the shoreline paddling and the holding hands and the light and the deep and the sad and the funny conversation and affectionate and
glad recollection will carry us both – after our falling into the deepest of deep sleeps – unto shoreline and sunshine of our universal eternity
