Tag: Growth

Lanterns and stiles

~ windinmywheels ~ 1 Comment
.

The years did not close the gates.
They opened side paths,
small stiles through old stone walls,
where astonishment still waits,
lantern in hand,
for those willing to walk on.

Lately I’ve been reflecting on the curious possibility that age and youth are not always opposites. We speak so easily of growing older as a narrowing — fewer horizons, familiar routines, settled conclusions. Yet I’m increasingly persuaded that another movement is possible: not contraction, but widening.

.

I recently came across a study suggesting that centenarians (like Sir David Attenborough) often score highly on one trait in particular: openness — a flexibility of mind, a receptivity to new ideas, a continuing willingness to be surprised. I find myself delightfully encouraged by that.

Part of my own curiosity and gladness in and with the advent of new technology arises here. Not from novelty alone, but from creative possibility: fresh rooms opening within old houses; new conversations entering landscapes already rich with memory and meaning.

The years bring their own graces — love given and received, losses endured, books read, dawns witnessed, paths walked. So perhaps age need not close the gates. Perhaps it quietly reveals side paths we had never noticed before.

And there, somewhere ahead, lantern in hand, astonishment and the ‘widening gyre’ still waits. And the beauty and wisdom seen in the smiling face of Brother David Steindl-Rast describes the arc of life’s fullness in him, from child to man.

.

An Abiding Hum

~ windinmywheels ~ 2 Comments
Royal Dutch Gazelle Grenoble

For years my bikes have brought me such comfort. I’ve been reflecting on why. The first – not a bi – but a tricycle. Three of them gifts. Two tandem bikes. Some of them e-bikes. All with bells. One with a hooter, too. All lie behind this blog’s name: ‘wind in my wheels’ (link) – a comforting and rejuvenating sound I hear, awake and asleep.

And here lies answer in part to my musings. The sound of the wind in my wheels, no matter the particular machine, equates to An Abiding Hum, something like the Universal ‘Om,’ something like the ‘cantus firmus’ Michael Mayne wrote of in his ‘The Enduring Melody’ (link). Something governing, something steadying, at the heart of spinning planets, spinning earth, and the spinning consciousness and conversation of our always-thus-far fractious humankind. It’s a quiet hum, yet it can be heard above and beneath the louder, demanding noises of our ego-fuelled obsessions, our wants and ever-talkative monkey-minds – our human existence.

At many times and in many places the wind in my wheels has led, and still leads me into the Psalmist’s ‘pastures green’ and to the ‘quiet waters by.’ The hum recalls me to the spaces of gratitude and acceptance, to the reckoning with failures and successes – and to some appreciation of the purpose in our lives of both; to the places of quiet growth, the places where one can think upon the miracles of life on earth. The places where one gains perspective. I learned today that Mount Everest grows in height by millimetres every year due to tectonic plate disturbances. Mountains and humans – perhaps all things – ‘grow’ because the ground is forever shifting beneath our feet!

And the thing about being out alone on a bike, about the unselfconscious ‘good morning’ to birds and cows, horses and sheep, about the hum, about the ‘Om,’ about the ‘wind in my wheels’ – is the comforting reminder that something ‘Other’ than us ensures the balancing, the Abiding Hum, a sustaining, in joy and sadness, in sickness and in health, in life and death, in every sense, in this world and in all worlds. And for those who don’t ride bikes: no problem. All you need is to deliberately sit or stand or lie down somewhere quiet for a while. Soon you may hear the ‘cantus firmus’ and – should you be hearing it for the first time, no worries. After the first hearing this is a sound, this is a prayer, this is a steadying, this is a song you may come to hear again and again.

Wind in my wheels. An abiding – a persistent – Hum …

Brompton
.

.

archive – a list of all earlier posts

HOME

Like a plant

~ windinmywheels ~ Leave a comment
.

more @gardenstudiogram | click photos to enlarge

.

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.

.

archive – a list of all earlier posts

HOME

Reflection and histories

~ windinmywheels ~ 1 Comment
branch-3242148__480.jpg
.

We who are water know
familial communion with
pond and river
lake and ocean
and we abide and communicate
by way of ripple and reflection
warmed by amniotic held
flotation – raised from
which our primal gasp and
cry signalled alpha and omega
of incarnate gradation – and
sight of mothered Wisdom
and taste of liquid nutrition
alongside growth spurt’s
sensation

Yes: our infancy born from
someone else’s depths never
leaves us – we are forever
embraced by it and so return
to reflection and histories
and promise as though to the
breast – and in gazing into
layered depths see at the
same time the light of height
yes: we who are water know
familial communion with
pond and river
lake and ocean
and we abide through all
eternity

Inner light

~ windinmywheels ~ 4 Comments

the walk

A walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance —

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on,
answering our own wave …
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly

With an entire ocean separating us, I watched a traumatised woman, already suffering the effects of advanced Alzheimer’s, being rescued from chest high water in Houston this morning. The pathos well nigh overwhelmed me. And that was only the first of the day’s news that seemed to suggest, again, that the world has gone mad. There was so much more to follow. One simply doesn’t know what to think or say.

And yet inner light, even from a distance persuades me, even when unable to find words, to stay positive. To hear that it’s not true that everything’s gone to pot. To notice the tenacity and the goodness that resides deep in the heart of humanity and comes to the fore when needed. By grace at work in somebody the elderly lady was rescued and that ought to be held close to our hearts as encouragement for everybody.

May the people of Texas – and the afflicted and the fearful of the world wheresoever they may be – speedily find again a sunny hill.

SaveSave

SaveSave

Teddies and tango

~ windinmywheels ~ Leave a comment

img_0284
Photo at Pixabay

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death

Albert Einstein

I observe children’s faces as they learn. Something new makes them smile or cry every day. Healthy children grow into a fuller experience of life by a menu of delight on the one hand and boundary setting pain on the other.

I see learning in adult faces too, in mirrors, in tango and computer coding classes, and in hospital appointments. The mix is the same for everyone. Something new makes us smile or cry – or somewhere in between – morning, noon and night.

And thus, from birth to death, we grow.