There wasn’t time enough for all the wonderful things I could think of to do
in a single day. Patience comes to the bones before it takes root in the heart
as another good idea. I say this as I stand in the woods
and study the patterns of the moon shadows, or stroll down into the waters
that now, late summer, have also caught the fever, and hardly move from one eternity to another.
Mary Oliver From ‘Patience’ New and Selected Poems Volume Two
Happy September! I’m having a quiet evening and feeling peaceful and mellow.
I’ve been thinking, too, about my automatically generated ‘tag cloud’ here, and of how it gives a pretty good account of some of my chief interests … inner life, contemplation, Edinburgh, poetry …
Autumn and winter will be warmed by an array of interests and occupations like these.
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
Some joys that come to our doorsteps, inevitably, outshine others. Perhaps because some such joys carry a particular measure of comfort. Something along the lines of – no matter how awful things may appear at times, this life is full of so much richness and goodness that we cannot help but tumble into the kind of response that is the very name of this treasury of awe and wonder. Devotions.
There was once an old man lived on Martyrs Bay who, pipe in hand, told of a foot tall soul whose hair was green, and – many a long year since – skittering about the Old Nunnery garden, he had seen
quiet as a mouse and quite inoffensive, she whispered in human ears: ‘I’m come from a schlemaig just West of the highest mountain on Mars by way of light years, aeons, suns and moons and stars
and I whisper a missive from Mother who sent me: though legend and myth may sometimes purport otherwise, nothing in the Universe is ever wholly ruined – for every atom retains
potential, giftedness and grace, ever cheered anew by Wisdom’s breeze across its face: so on this rock though your roof be blown off and you’ve neither window pane nor door, allow the little one from a Martian schlemaig a paean to more –
for you came here to learn that not only is She our family name, but Wisdom, dear taller siblings, is eternally ours, and Her Source, the Same.’
And I honour the old man on Martyrs Bay sand, who content with tobacco and pipe in his hand, speaks gently even now of a skittering he had seen, and of whispers shared with a delightful pint-sized sprite with hair of Iona green
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that travelled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.
The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.
Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.
So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.
John O’Donohue The Inner History of a Day
To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
I’ve been enjoying photos of the Eclipse as seen in the US; and good and brave souls embracing and ‘getting back to normal’ on Las Ramblas in beautiful Barcelona; and hundreds of other snapshot fragments of life around the world on the 21st August 2017.
And I’m so grateful for John O’Donohue’s calling our attention to the ‘eucharist of the ordinary’ – that quiet inner life, the dawn ‘born quietly from deepest night,’ where all humankind and natural phenomena together are joined in the ‘work through which the mind of the day / and wisdom of the soul become one.’
Recycling in the UK has had a bad press this month. I read I’m not as good at it as I once was, and need to live in one of four counties to pass muster. Boxes and bags are out. Ubiquitous and ugly wheeled bins host the nation’s best-ordered recycling efforts.
Mary Oliver writes of the social self that might be cycling life through ‘twelve little bins’ – the hours of the clock – more concerned with keeping pace with the ‘regular’ governor of time than with whether or not it gathers ‘some branch of wisdom or delight’ along the way.
Containers play their part, like the hours. But both the regular and the irregular – coupled with an ability to reflect and to ask ‘what am I doing and why am I doing it?’ – are essential elements whatever we’re talking about, wherever we are, and whatever we do.
