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?
As I thought more about this, it became clear why this deep transformation we seek remains beyond our reach despite our best efforts. We wait for it to come from outside of us. We want others to give it to us. Unfortunately, real self-transformation defies teaching. It makes all teachers ultimately irrelevant. For its nature is to be grown, like a plant. It wants to arise spontaneously. Only then is it real.
Amit Pagedar Finding Awareness: The Journey of Self-discovery
What a wide firmament of experiences, images and words live in the depths of us! I’d want to suggest to Amit Pagedar that teachers contribute to our inner lives and are not therefore ‘ultimately irrelevant,’ whilst understanding the thesis that self-development absolutely arises from and is processed within – and deeply appreciating the ‘like a plant’ imagery.
Almost every outward encounter I have invites me to contemplate the rooted plant that is perpetually growing within me – fed and watered by everything I’ve ever known – by ‘both sides now.’ And the silence heard in such watchfulness counters – or balances – external cacophany and generates hope, for me, for humankind, and for the world.
It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.
Far to the north, or indeed in any direction,
strange mountains and creatures have always lurked –
elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders: – we
encounter them in dread and wonder,
But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold,
found some limit beyond the waterfall,
a season changes, and we come back, changed
but safe, quiet, grateful.
Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills
while strange beliefs whine at the traveler’s ears,
we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
where we are, sturdy for common things.
William Stafford The Way It Is – New & Selected Poems
A few key dates in William Stafford’s life: born in Kansas in 1914. A conscientious objector in World War II. A man whose habit was to write something daily, who would rise at 4.30am to ‘sit and wait’ for what he knew lay within to be written. His volume West of Your City published by Talisman Press in 1960; Allegiances published by Harper in New York in 1970; the author of over fifty books, he died at his home in Oregon in 1993.
William Stafford thoroughly understood that once we have tasted far streams … / found some limit beyond the waterfall, / a season changes, and we come back, changed …
And therein lies our hope for this old world in our own time and season.
Dreadful elves, goblins, trolls and spiders have always existed. Some of them, some of us too, have sought to be ‘heroes’ – fenced around by their and our own ignorance. It is time for all the heroes to go home.
How then may I and we locate ourselves by the real things / we live by – ?
Perhaps – having tasted – it has always to start with me, with what I now clearly see: that instead of kidding myself it’s my job to change the entire world (whoever I am, whatever my place of birth, gender, skin colour, creed or lack thereof, and wherever on earth I think myself called to be the hero, the unsolicited ‘saviour of the world’) my best contribution to that same world will be to allow seasons and experience to change me.
While strange beliefs whine at the traveler’s ears,
we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
where we are, sturdy for common things.
Note sturdy. Not wimps without cogniscence of – or willingness sometimes to act upon – right or wrong. Not people who turn blind eyes to goblins and trolls. Not people who do not grieve, or hope, or offer healing or hospitality, or pray, or live and die. But sturdy. Believing in the possibility of being positively changed. Experienced in the quiet and slow methods and the poetry of seasons.
