To the one who watched the sky

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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

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Sometimes we meet ourselves in the gaze of another, across silence

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes – Marcel Proust

Revisiting: Illumination

woman sitting while reading a book
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often when reading
one wonders where precisely
light is coming from

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the above first published here on 19th February 2019

A conversation about New Year Resolutions yesterday set off a chain of thoughts about resolving. I’m amused by the thought that for as long as I can remember I’ve made, at some point in every year, a resolution to read more, to ‘make time’ to read more. This is because, I think, reading almost anything helps me to re-solve, to re-configure, to re-work almost anything! It’s like contemplation and meditation – reading brings with it a ‘sitting with,’ a lighting up of neurons, a degree of illumination.

I’m all too easily sidetracked, but some resolutions never quite let us off the hook. I’m grateful that ‘to read more’ persists in reappearing.

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Photo by Dayan Rodio on Pexels.com

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Voyaging (still)

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Strange how one thing leads to another, isn’t it? The exquisitely written ‘The Offing’ I’m currently reading by Benjamin Myers has ‘the occasional horse too, tethered in lacklustre paddocks, ribs showing like the hulls of beached old boats’ … and my mind immediately flew to Brittany:

Voyaging – first posted on 5th October 2016

Le cimetière de bâteaux du Bono

For years we’ve
come remembering
your voyaging here
long before us and
we hear the gulls
laughing and admire
the industry of
oystercatchers and
the youth of shiny
new acorns as we
note that the comings
and goings of the
tides across your
venerable oak boughs
are quietly returning
you to the ground of
your origins just as
year by year they are
returning us too and
the serenity here
though poignant
holds us in peace

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Observed

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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