Tag: peace

A simpler peace

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photo/michaelheld at unsplash

peace is usually something simpler

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?

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Peace

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Consciousness is experience

Christof Koch
The Feeling Of Life Itself

Today I asked AI to create an image of peace, using the words ‘bright reflective colours, peace.’ I’m interested in what artificial intelligence can contribute to our conscious human capacity for creativity, experience and reflection.

Now I shall spend a few days considering the (I think beautiful) image I’ve been presented with. What can I see of peace here? I wonder, too, what you might see? Will several responses differ widely, or will we each see similar attributes of peace?

First response in me sees multi-layered, multi-coloured richness, depth and diversity with an immediately obvious lack of sharp edges. No grazed knees or broken bones here. I recall something similar from my childhood imaginings about ‘Heaven.’

What would a more fluid human consciousness look like? How would our experience of life change? Is the sharp-edged, the hard and fast, the ‘absolute,’ helpful? I see inviting pathways in this image – cohesion, unity in diversity, no walls, no weapons – and I feel something of peace.

We’re all too familiar with the experience of what it feels like when we encounter deliberate fomenting of anger, anxiety, lack, loss, and warfare in its various tragic guises. I dare to hope that our humankind may become more familiar with the sort of intelligence – ‘artificial’ and ‘human’ – that presents, holds out to us all, new visions of peace.

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Warmth in my soul

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… you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine

Mary Oliver
from
When I am among the trees
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I have a deep-seated need for times of stillness and silence – always have – but the need increases amid the cacophony of contemporary life. And death.

A lover of poetry, I nonetheless recognise that there are times when compassionate, listening silence has an equally important role in my own life, and in the life of society, and of nations.

I know of several friends who have distinct and affectionate relationships with particular trees. An Acer in my Lakeland garden has long been one of my friends in Nature, and today I have watched and watched some more, stunned at times by sunlight’s appearing as flames of fire amid her limbs. Soul warming. Peace-filled.

May we, that’s to say ALL humankind, learn to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.

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On the lovely East Coast

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Dunbar Castle

iPhone 14 Pro Max | Nikon D850 and 135mm f2 DC

Then suddenly the Mole felt a great awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror – indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy – but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august presence was very, very near.

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Spring coupled with coastal beauty stirs heart, mind, body and soul. Here on Scotland’s East Coast – no matter how long and grey the preceding winter – Spring reacquaints a person with what it means to stand in awe and wonder.

Dunbar Harbour
Dunbar
Dunbar
Seacliff and Bass Rock
Seacliff
Tantallon Castle
Tantallon Castle Sunset

i Only in so far

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Dark only in so far as a little international company were close-gathered beneath the firmament – huddled – half way up a volcano that last erupted here 350 million years ago.

Dark only in so far as midnight arrived before any of us expected her to, amid the silent music of the sun’s solstice-reluctance to leave us through the hours of our night.

Dark only in so far as we needed to scrunch our eyes a bit to focus in the twilight, taking care not to spill hot herbal tea or sit on a plate of grapes or another of fresh mango.

All else was light. Is light. Will be light. The light that – come what may – is irrepressibly present within, and in life-dancing … sometimes silent, sometimes heard (link), as though on a slight breeze …

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Arthur’s Seat, Holyrood, Edinburgh. Wednesday 22 June 2022

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Oasis in the city

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Dunbar’s Close Garden, off Edinburgh’s Canongate, was designed ‘to give an idea of what gardens in this area might have been like in the seventeenth century. The garden is divided into 8 distinct areas or garden rooms, see A-H on map’ (and further information) here (pdf). In 1978, the Mushroom Trust donated the garden to the City of Edinburgh Council. The City’s Parks Department look after the space today.

Many enjoy the gardens in all four seasons. Some sit on the benches in quiet conversation, some bring their workday lunch, others read, while others, like me, contemplate the processions of people who have come here down the centuries: their dress, their work, their conversations and their leisure. And I celebrate the visionary provision of such a place of beauty and of peace.

Speaking of benches: Edinburgh is aware of its place in the annals of greatness. It’s a city that knows there are aeons of history, together with a rich present to be encountered here – and a slowing down to take stock is encouraged and welcomed. Featuring in almost all lists of fine places in the UK that are offering ‘best quality of life’ the unspoken invitation, all around the city, to ‘sit and stay awhile’ is something – among so many things – that I appreciate here deeply.

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Songs of Springtime

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My lovely friend and poet Julie Carter came for supper tonight. We’ve laughed a lot, been thankful for a lot, and cried too. Most of all we’ve talked about our human need to hang on to hope whilst noticing the indomitable insistence on peace and the fundamental goodness of life in some of the most unlikely, hurting places. May I commend this video, and Julie’s ‘Songs of Springtime’ (link) … ?

🌱🇺🇦🌱

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Mothering Sunday

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… in love with a place
which doesn’t care how I look,
or if I’m happy,

happy is how I look
and that is all …

Fleur Adcock
Weathering

Dozens of lambs cheerfully cavorting like mini jump jets – many of them calling ‘mmmaaaaaam’ – have added to the sunshiny beauty of this Mothering Sunday. I’ve been chatting on the phone with my 86 year old mum while out walking this afternoon. Were I still to have her energy, enthusiasm and zest for life at that age I shall be a happy man! Meanwhile ‘happy is how I look / and that is all …’ – be it in Lakeland, in Edinburgh, or in dozens of other wonderful places, all around the world. And happier? – yes, when I think of the peace that must come for Ukraine and other war-torn nations – sooner, rather than later.

🙏🌱🇺🇦☀️

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Values, beliefs, thoughts

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First lawn mowing and raised-bed weeding of the season today. Satisfaction paradoxically coupled with prayer for peace in Ukraine – with every weed pulled and every blade of grass trimmed.

Every glass of water, cup of coffee, conversation, good book, meal, news bulletin, sleep or walk brings Kyiv to mind. Yaroslava wrote in her Twitter war diary yesterday

I dream come back home. Drink my delicious coffee. Read my books.

And today

Break for #warcoffee. I write this diary for 20 days. Sometimes it feels like 20 years. During these ‘years’ I’ve been changing. Values, beliefs, thoughts. So the diary is not only about ordinary woman living through the war. It’s about new me being born.

Digging my garden, mowing my lawn, thinking of you and of all your fellow Ukranians, Yaroslava, my prayer is for a new and peace-loving inter-national ‘we’ being born.

🙏🇺🇦🙏

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We walked, still

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DSCF5989.jpg
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We walked, still, even
after her energy had
waned far, unreplenished
by the ordinary grace of
food once consumed easily
and by most simply taken
for granted

And in the walking saw
and felt again and again
that nourishment may
be drawn for the soul
though the physical frame
tires and slows and evening
firelight glows

illuminating kaleidoscopic
memories and warming
hopes long held and yet
aspired to. Yes, we walked
still. And as though they had
been aware of a greater than
usual urgency

on Christmas Day in rain
around mid-afternoon and
a five mile tramp from our
beloved fireside she stooped
to feel snowdrops newly
raised from earth between
her fingers

Not too late this arrival –
not too late – it was a
timely coming
and is now a photograph
developed upon the backdrop
of my mind. Souvenir
We have come. We remember

And we walk, still
again and again