Betwixt Lakeland & Edinburgh
when you go home tell them
of us and say ‘for your
tomorrows we gave our today’i
perhaps you did not
see one hundred years ahead
yet Sir you graced eachii
thank you for singing
love and hope and memory
as you gave your alliii
you did not know me
but sacrificed anyway and now
live in Love in allSRM – MM Haiku 51 Day 81
I have learned from long experience that there is nothing that is not marvellous and that the saying of Aristotle is true – that in every natural phenomenon there is something wonderful, nay, in truth, many wonders. We are born and placed among wonders and surrounded by them, so that to whatever object the eye first turns, the same is wonderful and full of wonders, if only we would examine it for a while.
John de Dondis, 14th century
quoted in J S Collis
The Worm Forgives The Plough, 1973, p170
Plenty of reason to have a good English moan about continuing rainfall today – or to sit down to a meditation session, having first noticed the magnificent, soaring canvas of clouds in every shade and hue of grey on high, and the all-the-more-glorious advent of sunlight from time to time, so that the potatoes in our kitchen garden are both moistened and warmed, beneath the chunter and fuss of thirty or so disgruntled sparrows who don’t appear to like rain much. Or meditation.
Open your eyes gently and focus upon just one wonder for a while, breathed the guide – in the fourteenth century. And I did – on this wet July day in the twenty-first. And as it turned out there was no moaning about the rain. Or anything else.
Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort. As long as I have questions and no answers I’ll keep on writing.
Clarice Lispector
Hour of the Star
There’s no music without depth of silence upon which to paint notes. Often I have shared my love of ‘silent music’ – the spaces in between. Absence of answers, the unfinished, the infinite, the eternal, the questions – are as important to me as expressed chords and symphonies, every bit as important to me as the words I yearn to read, and shape upon my tongue, and set down upon a page, and have engraved upon my heart, occupying my days and nights, my soul-work, my love, my leisure.
It’s not arriving, or the making of judgments, proclamations, speeches or songs that draws me towards the eternal. It’s living with questions that have no trite answers. Writing, reading, making poetry and prayer, long-savouring notes and words, meditating before the great backdrop of silence. Effort. Gratitude. Occasionally glimpsing an Eden of simplicity.
It’s not just photographs that can inspire and encourage. Graphic designers are engaged in the art of encouragement too. I love the reminder that this illustration offers. When I’d finished reading – thankful for that which awakens … informs … unites … challenges etc. – I found myself naturally moving on to enumerate a host of other areas in my life for which I have cause to be profoundly grateful. It’s a life-enhancing exercise. Reflection on causes for thanksgiving evokes further reasons for gratitude!