Sue Vincent's Blog: Echoes of Life, page 1052
February 15, 2014
Spreading wings
The hill was a verdant emerald rising into a sapphire sky that sparkled with motes of light… so high and clear. My companion walked behind, following at a far more sedate pace as I ran headlong to the summit, an uncompromising, absolute joy within that seemed to inundate every fibre of being. The white path led me higher and higher until I could see the curvature or the earth and felt I could reach out my arms and embrace the whole world and gather it to my breast…
My dreams have been vivid of late. They always are… but even more so than usual, with the clarity and reality I knew as a child. I recall the flying dreams with the rollercoaster feeling in the stomach… I cannot have been more than eight years old and every night I would soar. Far too young to have any knowledge or interest in aerodynamics, lift or thrust, I can yet remember the minute adjustments needed to stay in the air and direct my flight. I seem to remember them in my flesh… even though it was just a dream. I can feel even now the memory of physical sensation as my body swooped and banked through the air, learning to ride the wind, seeking the air-currents and updraughts, like a small fish playing in water, darting and diving through sunbeams. It was sheer joy. Every night as I closed my eyes I would wait for that first moment of flight with happy anticipation.
It felt utterly real… the sensation of rise and fall in the gut, the air on my face, the wind in my hair. So real that my waking self would stand on my bed beneath the window, certain I would not fall but would fly if I launched myself from there… yet knowing also that it was supposed to be impossible. Wasn’t it? There was always that doubt in the mind, even though the body felt it knew just what to do.
So real was the experience for that young mind that it was, in those moments by the window, impossible to distinguish dream from reality. It was as if I was perfectly poised between two realities, each equally valid by their own rules and in their own world… which I believe they are. Yet I was in neither… I was apart from both, a third reality, if you will, where I was subject to neither of the others but could see and judge with yet another part of me what fragment of experience should fit where.
I had always been aware of the existence of that higher part of being that we call the soul, the essence… and many other names. It was simply something I grew up with, that awareness, especially in my family! Yet this was the first time I remember feeling conscious of its reality. Not because I could see or feel it specifically, but the observation of the two realities by the third… and the fact that on yet another level I was somehow ‘seeing’ that observer… So what was seeing it? And was anything watching that? And where did ‘I’ end and Something Else begin? This seemed to ‘click’ and I understood somehow in a way for which I am still not sure I have words.
To the eight year old mind that was something of a revelation. To us now, as adults, it is an illustration of infinite regress, a concept we spoke of at the first of the Silent Eye’s Glastonbury talks. Yet it wasn’t until I woke from dreaming this morning that I made that connection. One of the inner ‘observers’ finds that highly amusing, that the conscious mind should take the best part of half a century to really realise a gift given so young.
However that is often the way of things and we are adept at accepting what we know and believe, filing them in the cabinet of facts by which we live and not revisiting them with the added experience and understanding of years. As we grow and learn our store of facts expands, but we seldom take out the old ones and update them. We can, indeed, get very protective of them and refuse to even consider we may have misunderstood or been plainly wrong through lack of a salient piece of information.
Over the past few years as I have examined more and more the entrenched beliefs I have clung to, I have found myself being obliged to discard and update many of them. I have also revisited many ideas I discarded as facile when I was much younger, realising that with the knowledge and experience I can now bring to them, they are richer by far that I imagined when I first dismissed them. The past 11 months’ adventures with Stuart and the books have made me re-evaluate many things, while the School has seen me set aside the framework of over forty years and begin to look at the essence of those beliefs from a different angle.
Yet when two years ago, a friend who had walked a similar path told me he had spent half a life building the inner Tree and the rest steadily dismantling it, I was surprised and recoiled from the very idea… now I know what he meant.
The ideas we cling to limit us. We do not seek beyond their bounds… why would we if they satisfy us? They are our beliefs and they ‘work’ for us. Yet once we step across those self-imposed boundaries, prepared to risk seeing what might lie beyond, a whole world of possibility seems to open before us. It is worth a thought. Who knows… some part of us may even learn to fly.
My dreams have been vivid of late. They always are… but even more so than usual, with the clarity and reality I knew as a child. I recall the flying dreams with the rollercoaster feeling in the stomach… I cannot have been more than eight years old and every night I would soar. Far too young to have any knowledge or interest in aerodynamics, lift or thrust, I can yet remember the minute adjustments needed to stay in the air and direct my flight. I seem to remember them in my flesh… even though it was just a dream. I can feel even now the memory of physical sensation as my body swooped and banked through the air, learning to ride the wind, seeking the air-currents and updraughts, like a small fish playing in water, darting and diving through sunbeams. It was sheer joy. Every night as I closed my eyes I would wait for that first moment of flight with happy anticipation.
It felt utterly real… the sensation of rise and fall in the gut, the air on my face, the wind in my hair. So real that my waking self would stand on my bed beneath the window, certain I would not fall but would fly if I launched myself from there… yet knowing also that it was supposed to be impossible. Wasn’t it? There was always that doubt in the mind, even though the body felt it knew just what to do.
So real was the experience for that young mind that it was, in those moments by the window, impossible to distinguish dream from reality. It was as if I was perfectly poised between two realities, each equally valid by their own rules and in their own world… which I believe they are. Yet I was in neither… I was apart from both, a third reality, if you will, where I was subject to neither of the others but could see and judge with yet another part of me what fragment of experience should fit where.
I had always been aware of the existence of that higher part of being that we call the soul, the essence… and many other names. It was simply something I grew up with, that awareness, especially in my family! Yet this was the first time I remember feeling conscious of its reality. Not because I could see or feel it specifically, but the observation of the two realities by the third… and the fact that on yet another level I was somehow ‘seeing’ that observer… So what was seeing it? And was anything watching that? And where did ‘I’ end and Something Else begin? This seemed to ‘click’ and I understood somehow in a way for which I am still not sure I have words.
To the eight year old mind that was something of a revelation. To us now, as adults, it is an illustration of infinite regress, a concept we spoke of at the first of the Silent Eye’s Glastonbury talks. Yet it wasn’t until I woke from dreaming this morning that I made that connection. One of the inner ‘observers’ finds that highly amusing, that the conscious mind should take the best part of half a century to really realise a gift given so young.
However that is often the way of things and we are adept at accepting what we know and believe, filing them in the cabinet of facts by which we live and not revisiting them with the added experience and understanding of years. As we grow and learn our store of facts expands, but we seldom take out the old ones and update them. We can, indeed, get very protective of them and refuse to even consider we may have misunderstood or been plainly wrong through lack of a salient piece of information.
Over the past few years as I have examined more and more the entrenched beliefs I have clung to, I have found myself being obliged to discard and update many of them. I have also revisited many ideas I discarded as facile when I was much younger, realising that with the knowledge and experience I can now bring to them, they are richer by far that I imagined when I first dismissed them. The past 11 months’ adventures with Stuart and the books have made me re-evaluate many things, while the School has seen me set aside the framework of over forty years and begin to look at the essence of those beliefs from a different angle.
Yet when two years ago, a friend who had walked a similar path told me he had spent half a life building the inner Tree and the rest steadily dismantling it, I was surprised and recoiled from the very idea… now I know what he meant.
The ideas we cling to limit us. We do not seek beyond their bounds… why would we if they satisfy us? They are our beliefs and they ‘work’ for us. Yet once we step across those self-imposed boundaries, prepared to risk seeing what might lie beyond, a whole world of possibility seems to open before us. It is worth a thought. Who knows… some part of us may even learn to fly.
January 16, 2014
Waking to Love
I have had my fair share of love letters in my time. Possibly more than my fair share, not that I would complain. There is something timeless and special about the written word. The first, very first, a scribbled note on the back of a photo from a young man named Neil… he was away on a long holiday with his parents… we were children, no more than that. The first real love letter I ever received was waaay back. His name was Malcolm. He was blonde and gorgeous, looking rather like a very young Michael York. Malcolm was a couple of years older than me, very intelligent and we had met and fallen head over heels the way young things do.
It was the first time a boy had ever looked beyond the surface to a mind. Back then, a time of legs gypsy blouses and hot pants, few looked beyond, shall we say, the salient points of anatomy. To be able to actually talk with a young man about literature, go to art galleries together, the theatre… it was, for me, a joyous awakening. I could allow myself to be me.
It was also, for a teenager, a hugely romantic affair as we were apart much of the time while he was away at boarding school. Hence the letter. We had spent the summer together, but when September came he was riven from my arms… yes, I’m sorry, it felt that melodramatic at the time. We were very young. Starcrossed lovers….
It wasn’t, of course, as bad as it seemed. I lived in Leeds, a city with a brilliant transport network. His school was in the little village of Drax, near Selby… so half an hour into town, twenty minutes by train, ten minutes by bus… then two and a half miles on foot, generally in very high heels… and we could meet. It wasn’t allowed, of course… which, looking back, made it far more exciting!… and I was smuggled into the stately house on more than one occasion by Malcolm and his friends. Or we met in the village and wandered the woods hand in hand. Terribly romantic.
That couldn’t happen every week and in between there were letters. Almost daily. I will never forget the first. It had come through the door as I left for school, I had been itching to read it, but there were other girls with me until break time and I wanted to curl up ‘with’ him alone. In a corner of the form room when everyone had left for break I opened the envelope and began to read.
No-one had ever sent me Shakespeare before! Imagine trembling fingers and maidenly heart all aflutter! I can feel the echo of it now…. even now…after all these years.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
It didn’t last, of course, in spite of a first ring offered, in true romantic fashion on one knee. We grew up. But it had left me with many things learned from our time together, including a love of Shakespeare and the huge tracts of things to ponder that I can still quote by heart. Everything leaves a legacy with us, and it is up to us to ensure whether they are scars or gifts. Malcolm allowed a young girl to see beyond her own unconfident and fragile exterior and begin to explore the possibilities of mind and of simply becoming herself. It was a wakeup call.
They come in many forms, these moments of realisation. Some are relatively minor and mundane, others hold a deeper meaning, eliciting a choice made with heart, mind and soul. Some we respond to, others we choose to ignore. We always have a choice. To be… or not to be perhaps.
We were discussing this matter of choice, a beloved friend and I, over coffee and several thousand miles this morning. She has a rare gift for finding the words to encapsulate wisdom. We were speaking of those wake up calls that come from the most profound levels of being; hers came forty years ago and she has served the Light with every atom of her being ever since , wearing the radiant mantle of joy born from that service that, I think, none can fail to see.
When that call comes there is still a choice. We can choose to accept, and in doing so be ready to release everything we have thought we are, the things by which we attempt to define ourselves…or we can turn away, retaining the security of our self-image.
“Well,” she wrote, “it will be according to the will of the human spirit. Until that human will has made the choice to join in fullness with the Will, the Divine extends the blessing and the curse of freedom.”
That expresses for me such beauty, that we have the gift of choice, the freedom to choose. Though when that call comes to a heart truly ready to hear, there may seem no other choice but to follow where it leads, no cost to consider, no question but to answer wordlessly. It is a moment of surrender to Love and in that moment, Silence is the perfectest herald of joy.
It was the first time a boy had ever looked beyond the surface to a mind. Back then, a time of legs gypsy blouses and hot pants, few looked beyond, shall we say, the salient points of anatomy. To be able to actually talk with a young man about literature, go to art galleries together, the theatre… it was, for me, a joyous awakening. I could allow myself to be me.
It was also, for a teenager, a hugely romantic affair as we were apart much of the time while he was away at boarding school. Hence the letter. We had spent the summer together, but when September came he was riven from my arms… yes, I’m sorry, it felt that melodramatic at the time. We were very young. Starcrossed lovers….
It wasn’t, of course, as bad as it seemed. I lived in Leeds, a city with a brilliant transport network. His school was in the little village of Drax, near Selby… so half an hour into town, twenty minutes by train, ten minutes by bus… then two and a half miles on foot, generally in very high heels… and we could meet. It wasn’t allowed, of course… which, looking back, made it far more exciting!… and I was smuggled into the stately house on more than one occasion by Malcolm and his friends. Or we met in the village and wandered the woods hand in hand. Terribly romantic.
That couldn’t happen every week and in between there were letters. Almost daily. I will never forget the first. It had come through the door as I left for school, I had been itching to read it, but there were other girls with me until break time and I wanted to curl up ‘with’ him alone. In a corner of the form room when everyone had left for break I opened the envelope and began to read.
No-one had ever sent me Shakespeare before! Imagine trembling fingers and maidenly heart all aflutter! I can feel the echo of it now…. even now…after all these years.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
It didn’t last, of course, in spite of a first ring offered, in true romantic fashion on one knee. We grew up. But it had left me with many things learned from our time together, including a love of Shakespeare and the huge tracts of things to ponder that I can still quote by heart. Everything leaves a legacy with us, and it is up to us to ensure whether they are scars or gifts. Malcolm allowed a young girl to see beyond her own unconfident and fragile exterior and begin to explore the possibilities of mind and of simply becoming herself. It was a wakeup call.
They come in many forms, these moments of realisation. Some are relatively minor and mundane, others hold a deeper meaning, eliciting a choice made with heart, mind and soul. Some we respond to, others we choose to ignore. We always have a choice. To be… or not to be perhaps.
We were discussing this matter of choice, a beloved friend and I, over coffee and several thousand miles this morning. She has a rare gift for finding the words to encapsulate wisdom. We were speaking of those wake up calls that come from the most profound levels of being; hers came forty years ago and she has served the Light with every atom of her being ever since , wearing the radiant mantle of joy born from that service that, I think, none can fail to see.
When that call comes there is still a choice. We can choose to accept, and in doing so be ready to release everything we have thought we are, the things by which we attempt to define ourselves…or we can turn away, retaining the security of our self-image.
“Well,” she wrote, “it will be according to the will of the human spirit. Until that human will has made the choice to join in fullness with the Will, the Divine extends the blessing and the curse of freedom.”
That expresses for me such beauty, that we have the gift of choice, the freedom to choose. Though when that call comes to a heart truly ready to hear, there may seem no other choice but to follow where it leads, no cost to consider, no question but to answer wordlessly. It is a moment of surrender to Love and in that moment, Silence is the perfectest herald of joy.
January 12, 2014
To greet the dawn
After a couple of hours snoozing while I work on the guided journeys for the School, a soggy tennis ball begins to appear on my lap with alarming regularity. This inevitably signals the approach of dawn and time for a walk. Ani has her methods and this one is particularly effective. She eats while I dress and as the first hint of light creeps into the cold, starlit sky we leave the house.
Breathing like dragons, twin plumes of steam in the frosty air we hit the grass running… she is always eager to be out and those first few minutes she has the horsepower of a Jaguar. The grass seems to snap and crunch beneath my feet, though Ani runs light as the wind across the icy green.
As we reach the entrance to the first field it is apparent there will be no mud today…everything is frozen solid. The ground, for so long a morass, feels unfamiliar underfoot and the air is crisp and white. I unleash the whirlwind and any hopes I might have of a decent photograph of Ani in her element are dashed as she disappears into the edge of vision, black against the shadows.
She keeps an eye on me, just to make sure I am there… but she will roam as far as sight allows, chasing mistwraiths and rousing sleepy pheasants. I try to keep moving, it is bitterly cold this morning, yet incredibly beautiful. The clarity of the star-filled night has given way to a lucent morning. Beauty stops me in my tracks, frozen fingers forgotten in the silent, silvery world.
I have the camera today, as it isn’t raining. It is impossible to capture the shifting luminescence, the sky, vivid as the black opals I love, cycling through every conceivable shade, changing moment by moment. It is times like this when I wish I was a photographer, understanding more of the technical side… yet would I want to waste this moment fiddling with settings? No…probably not… it is a moment to live in, not look at.
We walk on, through the woods and farm, climbing the hill I forget is a hill… tamed fields and hedgerows seem to chain its wild heart, domesticated earth, in bondage to need, something of its essence buried deep beneath the imposed furrows of its surface. I feel a kinship with this place as the sun kisses the horizon… Our surface chained to the needs of the world, yet the veneer is thin and the true heart is alive, beating with the cadence of a passionate freedom bound by necessity to a form not its own.
The clouds glide across the silken sky, taking the form of a boat… the Sun Boat of Ra, called Millions of Years. Some fragment of me sits there and sails the dawn with the gods. A flash of dark speed dives into the undergrowth and startles a hawk from its place in the trees. The heavy beat of its wings sounds loud in the stillness, then it is in flight, its keening call filling the silence, marrying heaven and earth somehow, as the flame of morning is reflected in the heart of the ice. It is entirely appropriate this morning.
There is a nameless yearning within me, poised on the cusp of grief and joy in the perfection of the morning. A gladness that I am alive, now, able to live this moment, savour it, feel it in every fibre of my being. Sadness that this, as all moments, must pass into memory. I do not want to go back to the cold, empty house and the daily struggle for survival… the gypsy in my soul craves a couch beneath the stars, yet life and responsibility do not permit all dreams to come into being in the way we choose and the passing of every moment is part of living. The yearning will remain, twin poles of emotion that hold me poised at their heart. There will be another dawn.
Breathing like dragons, twin plumes of steam in the frosty air we hit the grass running… she is always eager to be out and those first few minutes she has the horsepower of a Jaguar. The grass seems to snap and crunch beneath my feet, though Ani runs light as the wind across the icy green.
As we reach the entrance to the first field it is apparent there will be no mud today…everything is frozen solid. The ground, for so long a morass, feels unfamiliar underfoot and the air is crisp and white. I unleash the whirlwind and any hopes I might have of a decent photograph of Ani in her element are dashed as she disappears into the edge of vision, black against the shadows.
She keeps an eye on me, just to make sure I am there… but she will roam as far as sight allows, chasing mistwraiths and rousing sleepy pheasants. I try to keep moving, it is bitterly cold this morning, yet incredibly beautiful. The clarity of the star-filled night has given way to a lucent morning. Beauty stops me in my tracks, frozen fingers forgotten in the silent, silvery world.
I have the camera today, as it isn’t raining. It is impossible to capture the shifting luminescence, the sky, vivid as the black opals I love, cycling through every conceivable shade, changing moment by moment. It is times like this when I wish I was a photographer, understanding more of the technical side… yet would I want to waste this moment fiddling with settings? No…probably not… it is a moment to live in, not look at.
We walk on, through the woods and farm, climbing the hill I forget is a hill… tamed fields and hedgerows seem to chain its wild heart, domesticated earth, in bondage to need, something of its essence buried deep beneath the imposed furrows of its surface. I feel a kinship with this place as the sun kisses the horizon… Our surface chained to the needs of the world, yet the veneer is thin and the true heart is alive, beating with the cadence of a passionate freedom bound by necessity to a form not its own.
The clouds glide across the silken sky, taking the form of a boat… the Sun Boat of Ra, called Millions of Years. Some fragment of me sits there and sails the dawn with the gods. A flash of dark speed dives into the undergrowth and startles a hawk from its place in the trees. The heavy beat of its wings sounds loud in the stillness, then it is in flight, its keening call filling the silence, marrying heaven and earth somehow, as the flame of morning is reflected in the heart of the ice. It is entirely appropriate this morning.
There is a nameless yearning within me, poised on the cusp of grief and joy in the perfection of the morning. A gladness that I am alive, now, able to live this moment, savour it, feel it in every fibre of my being. Sadness that this, as all moments, must pass into memory. I do not want to go back to the cold, empty house and the daily struggle for survival… the gypsy in my soul craves a couch beneath the stars, yet life and responsibility do not permit all dreams to come into being in the way we choose and the passing of every moment is part of living. The yearning will remain, twin poles of emotion that hold me poised at their heart. There will be another dawn.
December 26, 2013
A simple gift
“…But what would you like for Christmas?”
It is always a difficult thing to decide what to give sons who are grown with lives they have filled with things you no longer know, especially on a tight budget. As children you are aware of their needs as well as their changing tastes, as men they have huge chunks of life you are no longer intimately acquainted with. You may know the ‘bigger’ needs and dreams, but that doesn’t mean you can still provide them in the way you did when they were small. Or can you?
“A home-cooked Christmas dinner. It’s all I want.” Well… that one was easy to provide… and a joy, as it meant I got Christmas with my eldest son. It was one of those invisible gifts for me too… I love cooking, love feeding people…and it was good to set a pretty table with glass and candles and a shared meal. There is something magical in that.
His gift to me was also magical… a moment of adventure earlier in the month, his awe at the landscape I was able to share with him in the northern hills that I love. Then Christmas morning out together taking photographs in a sunny world.
My younger son has been adopted into his partner’s delightful family … he was made for the big, close family we do not have and he has blossomed in that warmth. He was made for the kind of celebration that spans the generations in laughter and it is a joy for me to see that. Yet he and his Laura are always on my doorstep on Christmas Day and that is a gift in itself.
They came, as always, bearing gifts… the cosiest slippers and something special they had made themselves… a miniature bottle of their ‘Christmas pudding vodka’ and handmade chocolates, beautifully done with ribbons and a gift tag Laura had embroidered herself.
I remember vividly the years of making hand dipped chocolates, decorating boxes and painting cards as a young wife. I often wondered back then if people were just being polite in their thanks. To have someone do that for me now tells me they were not… for what you are being given here is time, love and care and that is priceless.
The other gifts I was given show the same loving thought… and it is that intangible gift that truly matters. The warm fleece that shows a very practical care that arrives with the little luxuries a friend knows you would not buy for yourself… a sparkling bit of beauty… the gifted words of books specially chosen… messages that are gifts of time and thought; the knowledge that you are held in the heart and mind of those far away.
These are symbols of a deeper gift. Warmth and friendship, care and kindness cannot be wrapped and tagged. They are the true gifts behind the presents, and all are faces of a simple gift that cannot be bought, cannot be held and which can wear many faces … and one. What is truly given is a priceless gift we can all afford … the gift of Love.
And today I am a rich woman.
It is always a difficult thing to decide what to give sons who are grown with lives they have filled with things you no longer know, especially on a tight budget. As children you are aware of their needs as well as their changing tastes, as men they have huge chunks of life you are no longer intimately acquainted with. You may know the ‘bigger’ needs and dreams, but that doesn’t mean you can still provide them in the way you did when they were small. Or can you?
“A home-cooked Christmas dinner. It’s all I want.” Well… that one was easy to provide… and a joy, as it meant I got Christmas with my eldest son. It was one of those invisible gifts for me too… I love cooking, love feeding people…and it was good to set a pretty table with glass and candles and a shared meal. There is something magical in that.
His gift to me was also magical… a moment of adventure earlier in the month, his awe at the landscape I was able to share with him in the northern hills that I love. Then Christmas morning out together taking photographs in a sunny world.
My younger son has been adopted into his partner’s delightful family … he was made for the big, close family we do not have and he has blossomed in that warmth. He was made for the kind of celebration that spans the generations in laughter and it is a joy for me to see that. Yet he and his Laura are always on my doorstep on Christmas Day and that is a gift in itself.
They came, as always, bearing gifts… the cosiest slippers and something special they had made themselves… a miniature bottle of their ‘Christmas pudding vodka’ and handmade chocolates, beautifully done with ribbons and a gift tag Laura had embroidered herself.
I remember vividly the years of making hand dipped chocolates, decorating boxes and painting cards as a young wife. I often wondered back then if people were just being polite in their thanks. To have someone do that for me now tells me they were not… for what you are being given here is time, love and care and that is priceless.
The other gifts I was given show the same loving thought… and it is that intangible gift that truly matters. The warm fleece that shows a very practical care that arrives with the little luxuries a friend knows you would not buy for yourself… a sparkling bit of beauty… the gifted words of books specially chosen… messages that are gifts of time and thought; the knowledge that you are held in the heart and mind of those far away.
These are symbols of a deeper gift. Warmth and friendship, care and kindness cannot be wrapped and tagged. They are the true gifts behind the presents, and all are faces of a simple gift that cannot be bought, cannot be held and which can wear many faces … and one. What is truly given is a priceless gift we can all afford … the gift of Love.
And today I am a rich woman.
Inside story
It is Christmas morning. For those of the Christian faith it is the moment that celebrates the birth of Jesus, a fragile babe who grew to change the world. Whether or not we accept that story as literal truth, it is symbolic of one that has wound itself through our human lives, casting its light into our hearts.
Many cultures have told of the birth of a Child: Horus, Krishna, Mithras, Mabon, Zoroaster…. There are these and many other threads to this tapestry. Their stories differ in detail, but a common strand runs through them and it is golden. These are the Divine Sons, the Children of Light who illuminate a path we might tread.
Many are now consigned to mythology by the modern mind that dismisses the miraculous or magical. Few now would accept the story of a Child who sprang fully formed from the rock on this day, whose worshippers came together in a communion of bread and wine. Yet Mithraism was widespread in the world of Rome, and the symbol of the unconquered Sun still persists.
Zoroaster was born laughing, a glow about him… Horus was the Hawk of the Sun… the theme of Light pervades the faith of the races of Man. Religions have risen and faded over millennia, but faith remains ever fresh and constant in the heart of those who seek the Light, regardless of the Name it bears in our tongue, the symbols we use or the stories we have woven.
We have, throughout our history, followed with love and faith the path of the Lightbringers of our age and our belief has changed our lives. Religions, those organised bodies of doctrine, have not always changed the world for the better, but the quiet, personal faith that carries us through the days and nights of our lives, upholding us and comforting us through the dark times, giving joy in the brighter days.. this is a different thing… a personal, intimate thing, a relationship between the heart of man and the Divine. Religious institutions, like any other, may be rife with politics and intolerance, in spite of their message of love. But the flame that burns in each individual heart owes allegiance only to the Source of that Light.
Whatever path we choose to tread, whichever way our hearts are called, it is belief… faith… that shapes us. Even those who profess no faith in the One, by any Name, are shaped by whatever belief their heart holds in Its place. For myself it is simple; all life, all creation is part of the great and multifaceted jewel that is the One. And I believe that we can find the Light of the One within the world, within ourselves and in each other.
The familiar Christmas story is a beautiful one, of a carpenter and his wife far from home, a babe born in a stable and cradled in a manger while a Star lights the way. There are many ways we can understand the tale, from simple acceptance to the deeply symbolic. Imagine that stable… animals and the warm smell of hay, a very earthy, humble place, very much of this world. Yet from this simple beginning a story unfolded… a Light was born… that guides millions of lives still today.
Within our ordinary lives we too many feel far from Home, the humble things of earth occupy our hands and minds while the heart seeks a star to guide it. Yet within the frames of our lives we are carrying that star… that spark of Divine Light… and this is what shines for us in those silent moments of turning within. Seeing it we find our own bright birth in the earthy place we live. We do not have to seek far and wide, like the Magi, nor wait for angelic hosts to point the way.
“….And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”
Luke 17:20-21 (King James Version)
Many cultures have told of the birth of a Child: Horus, Krishna, Mithras, Mabon, Zoroaster…. There are these and many other threads to this tapestry. Their stories differ in detail, but a common strand runs through them and it is golden. These are the Divine Sons, the Children of Light who illuminate a path we might tread.
Many are now consigned to mythology by the modern mind that dismisses the miraculous or magical. Few now would accept the story of a Child who sprang fully formed from the rock on this day, whose worshippers came together in a communion of bread and wine. Yet Mithraism was widespread in the world of Rome, and the symbol of the unconquered Sun still persists.
Zoroaster was born laughing, a glow about him… Horus was the Hawk of the Sun… the theme of Light pervades the faith of the races of Man. Religions have risen and faded over millennia, but faith remains ever fresh and constant in the heart of those who seek the Light, regardless of the Name it bears in our tongue, the symbols we use or the stories we have woven.
We have, throughout our history, followed with love and faith the path of the Lightbringers of our age and our belief has changed our lives. Religions, those organised bodies of doctrine, have not always changed the world for the better, but the quiet, personal faith that carries us through the days and nights of our lives, upholding us and comforting us through the dark times, giving joy in the brighter days.. this is a different thing… a personal, intimate thing, a relationship between the heart of man and the Divine. Religious institutions, like any other, may be rife with politics and intolerance, in spite of their message of love. But the flame that burns in each individual heart owes allegiance only to the Source of that Light.
Whatever path we choose to tread, whichever way our hearts are called, it is belief… faith… that shapes us. Even those who profess no faith in the One, by any Name, are shaped by whatever belief their heart holds in Its place. For myself it is simple; all life, all creation is part of the great and multifaceted jewel that is the One. And I believe that we can find the Light of the One within the world, within ourselves and in each other.
The familiar Christmas story is a beautiful one, of a carpenter and his wife far from home, a babe born in a stable and cradled in a manger while a Star lights the way. There are many ways we can understand the tale, from simple acceptance to the deeply symbolic. Imagine that stable… animals and the warm smell of hay, a very earthy, humble place, very much of this world. Yet from this simple beginning a story unfolded… a Light was born… that guides millions of lives still today.
Within our ordinary lives we too many feel far from Home, the humble things of earth occupy our hands and minds while the heart seeks a star to guide it. Yet within the frames of our lives we are carrying that star… that spark of Divine Light… and this is what shines for us in those silent moments of turning within. Seeing it we find our own bright birth in the earthy place we live. We do not have to seek far and wide, like the Magi, nor wait for angelic hosts to point the way.
“….And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”
Luke 17:20-21 (King James Version)
December 19, 2013
The present of Christmas past
The early morning assault on the supermarket is the second in two days. Not my first choice for marking the Solstice, I might add. Yesterday I braved the manic portals in search of the traditional ‘lad’s night’ Christmas dinner for my sons and their friend, and prepared it ready for finishing in the oven. Let’s not forget cake decorating, wrapping, cards, Christmas trees and tinsel… and all the attendant mayhem we indulge in at this time of year.
Okay, it is a lot gentler these days, with the boys grown and in homes of their own, yet still the family traditions must be respected, even though on a much reduced scale.
The best Christmas ever was amongst the most frugal. My late partner had been fighting cancer for some time and the finances were none existent. With a lot of florist’s ribbon, some old computer components and a huge amount of laughter, we spent the whole of December making decorations as a family… most I still have, some I still get carefully out every year. The little Christmas tree and the wreath were amongst the most impressive considering they were made entirely from ribbons, a tad crushed and faded these days… the small toys knitted by my grandmother a little battered, the boxes wrapped for my son’s very first Christmas tree a bit shabby these days…. but the memories are bright.
Christmas morning with my sons was always a delight… that moment when their faces lit up, walking into the room where carols played softly… it never mattered that the parcels contained small, silly things. There were only the four of us, seldom any gifts from others, so it was a small pile each and one to share… usually something we, as a family, could play together. That year ingenuity took the place of funds… they didn’t notice. It was the laughter of the moment that mattered… and we made them laugh with their gifts. The family gift was a small snooker table… and yes, I wrapped the darned thing… it took up most of the floor.
My partner and the boys set it up in my younger son’s huge bedroom while I cooked Christmas lunch, an apron over the black lace cocktail frock and ‘sparklies’ which, according to my sons, I had to wear for Christmas… even though I was utterly overdressed!… a huge departure from the usual practical jeans.
Lunch over, we played snooker, teaching the boys the rules and laughing. I left them to it late afternoon, to fill the table with carved vegetables, pretty salads and all the usual treats that go with Christmas. One thing I will not do is make the mince pies in advance. I love fresh pastry… light and crisp from the oven. I make a mean mince pie…
Then the second round of fun started. Teatime at mine was always open house on Christmas Day, we never knew if we would have guests or not so each arrival was a gift. Friends arrived with their children, my sons’ pals turned up on the doorstep, lured, no doubt, by the smell of fresh pastry… I was used to that, ever since the day years earlier when a group of the local children had knocked on the door. I assumed they had come to call for my sons, but no, “Are you baking again today?” They had come to call for the pastries.
But I digress. That year we had a houseful. Memory and the pictures tell me that we had at least ten children and their attendant adults call for tea… which spilled over into supper. The house was crowded and laughter filled every room. It was entirely unplanned and informal… and definitely the best Christmas ever.
It wasn’t the money we had spent… for we had none. It wasn’t anything you could show or label… it was the time together, the laughter, the smiles of friends and the sense of ‘family’ gathered, not through duty or habit, but because they wanted to be there… together.
In contrast the other ‘best Christmas’, there were just two of us, kir royale and a table glowing with candles…but that is another story….
I admit to a certain wistfulness wandering round the supermarket, watching folks get ready for a busy few days. Mine will be very quiet affairs… yes, plural. I’m having two. Christmas day I shall share with my eldest son the home-cooked traditional meal… and watch Ani have her own Christmas jumping all over him and my younger son when he arrives later.
But first I have a weekend, and by Friday evening there will be only one word for it. Leisurely. That is the plan, a leisurely pre-Christmas weekend with a friend. Although Ani won’t see it that way and will think Christmas has come early when we get back from the station.
“The watchword of leisurely…nothing to do and all day to do it…”
Sounds rather like heaven at this point of the year, doesn’t it? Very like heaven… and while the rest of the town hustles and bustles in a hive of activity… I get to go there this weekend. The only reason for venturing near the town at all will be the cinema to see The Hobbit … all other activity is entirely optional.
I may be gone some time…
Okay, it is a lot gentler these days, with the boys grown and in homes of their own, yet still the family traditions must be respected, even though on a much reduced scale.
The best Christmas ever was amongst the most frugal. My late partner had been fighting cancer for some time and the finances were none existent. With a lot of florist’s ribbon, some old computer components and a huge amount of laughter, we spent the whole of December making decorations as a family… most I still have, some I still get carefully out every year. The little Christmas tree and the wreath were amongst the most impressive considering they were made entirely from ribbons, a tad crushed and faded these days… the small toys knitted by my grandmother a little battered, the boxes wrapped for my son’s very first Christmas tree a bit shabby these days…. but the memories are bright.
Christmas morning with my sons was always a delight… that moment when their faces lit up, walking into the room where carols played softly… it never mattered that the parcels contained small, silly things. There were only the four of us, seldom any gifts from others, so it was a small pile each and one to share… usually something we, as a family, could play together. That year ingenuity took the place of funds… they didn’t notice. It was the laughter of the moment that mattered… and we made them laugh with their gifts. The family gift was a small snooker table… and yes, I wrapped the darned thing… it took up most of the floor.
My partner and the boys set it up in my younger son’s huge bedroom while I cooked Christmas lunch, an apron over the black lace cocktail frock and ‘sparklies’ which, according to my sons, I had to wear for Christmas… even though I was utterly overdressed!… a huge departure from the usual practical jeans.
Lunch over, we played snooker, teaching the boys the rules and laughing. I left them to it late afternoon, to fill the table with carved vegetables, pretty salads and all the usual treats that go with Christmas. One thing I will not do is make the mince pies in advance. I love fresh pastry… light and crisp from the oven. I make a mean mince pie…
Then the second round of fun started. Teatime at mine was always open house on Christmas Day, we never knew if we would have guests or not so each arrival was a gift. Friends arrived with their children, my sons’ pals turned up on the doorstep, lured, no doubt, by the smell of fresh pastry… I was used to that, ever since the day years earlier when a group of the local children had knocked on the door. I assumed they had come to call for my sons, but no, “Are you baking again today?” They had come to call for the pastries.
But I digress. That year we had a houseful. Memory and the pictures tell me that we had at least ten children and their attendant adults call for tea… which spilled over into supper. The house was crowded and laughter filled every room. It was entirely unplanned and informal… and definitely the best Christmas ever.
It wasn’t the money we had spent… for we had none. It wasn’t anything you could show or label… it was the time together, the laughter, the smiles of friends and the sense of ‘family’ gathered, not through duty or habit, but because they wanted to be there… together.
In contrast the other ‘best Christmas’, there were just two of us, kir royale and a table glowing with candles…but that is another story….
I admit to a certain wistfulness wandering round the supermarket, watching folks get ready for a busy few days. Mine will be very quiet affairs… yes, plural. I’m having two. Christmas day I shall share with my eldest son the home-cooked traditional meal… and watch Ani have her own Christmas jumping all over him and my younger son when he arrives later.
But first I have a weekend, and by Friday evening there will be only one word for it. Leisurely. That is the plan, a leisurely pre-Christmas weekend with a friend. Although Ani won’t see it that way and will think Christmas has come early when we get back from the station.
“The watchword of leisurely…nothing to do and all day to do it…”
Sounds rather like heaven at this point of the year, doesn’t it? Very like heaven… and while the rest of the town hustles and bustles in a hive of activity… I get to go there this weekend. The only reason for venturing near the town at all will be the cinema to see The Hobbit … all other activity is entirely optional.
I may be gone some time…
The long night
The sky is beautiful this morning after the winds of the night, a clear, deep blue graced with the lights of heaven. The world is still and silent, even the birds are hushed as dawn creeps over the horizon of a rain-washed world.
It was dark when the doglet and I went out, dark still when we returned, for it is Solstice tomorrow, the longest night. But the moon lit the village and touched the rooftops with silver. Branches are down in the lane and few are the leaves that still cling tenaciously to the trees, most stripped away by the vicious fingers of a winter gale.
There is such strength in the grasp of leaf to twig, both so fragile they can be plucked and broken by a child, yet the bond of life so strong it can withstand the most inclement weather. Until it is time for them to fall.
Even when the leaves fall it is part of a greater renewal, the confetti of the marriage of the seasons, nourishing the earth and the tree from whence they fell. The tree sleeps through the winter, seemingly lifeless, husbanding its resources against the coming of spring. Beneath the skeletal surface of this dying time the life within shapes new leaves and blossoms, waiting in pregnant patience for the warm kiss of the sun.
Leaves fall, branches break… the old and sere stripped away by the turning wheel of the year, clearing the way for a green birth.
There is so much laid out before us, even in the avenues of our city streets. The life of nature is so strong and so beautifully balanced. So easy to damage when, with careless hands her children grasp at her skirts, taking anything that claims their attention and desire… yet strong enough to recover when we are no more.
In the little wood where we walk, the small dog and I, man has left his traces. From the earliest times track and road have passed this way, from the air the circled mark of ancient homes can be seen in the fields, the line of a roman road, lost now to plough and furrow. Still we carve this little patch of green to serve our needs. Yet as soon as we turn our back the wild things cover our tracks, reclaiming the earth for themselves, our little lives more fragile than their delicate blooms.
In towns and cities sites that were once hives of industry fall silent as technology moves on and we are proud of our advances, not noticing the quiet crown of plant and sapling our forgotten edifices wear, the gentle but inexorable hand of nature taking back her own as soon as we depart.
The seasons of the earth are echoed too within our own lives… we are part of the cycle, our bodies dance to the same natal song of the seasons. Life springs from death, death from life in an endless round.
The cadence is echoed within us as we laugh for joy beneath the sun of summer and weep in grief when winter touches our hearts. In the dark days we too may feel as if leaf and branch are being stripped from us, battered by the winds of change and the storms of emotion. Yet like the trees only the damaged and broken falls from us… the green heart is strong and holds the pattern of renewal within itself.
As the wheel turns it is easy to become lost in the dark days, feeling a verdant spring to be too far to reach, fearing in the shadows that it will not come. Perhaps, like the trees, we too are then husbanding our strength, withdrawing within where growth and renewal can work their magic unseen, ready to blossom at the first touch of the sun.
Tomorrow is Solstice and the world, still with the worst of winter yet to come, turns, almost unseen, towards summer. We know this, yet the winter is still to be endured. The days will lengthen, the light will be bright on days covered in snow, ice is yet to break open the cracked stones this year, and we will huddle by our hearths as if there is no warmth in the world, forgetting that we have passed the nadir and the eternal dance of the seasons carries us onwards towards a brighter dawn.
When we are lost in grief, gripped by the cold of fear, it is hard to see that light at the end of the tunnel, hard to believe that we have passed the worst point when we see a dark road still looming ahead. Yet this is the rhythm of life itself, as if the earth holds us in the reassuring and loving embrace of a mother and shows us that not all is lost in winter, it merely endures the frost while within, nourished by the fallen leaves that were stripped away by the storms and the turning year, the green life springs anew.
It was dark when the doglet and I went out, dark still when we returned, for it is Solstice tomorrow, the longest night. But the moon lit the village and touched the rooftops with silver. Branches are down in the lane and few are the leaves that still cling tenaciously to the trees, most stripped away by the vicious fingers of a winter gale.
There is such strength in the grasp of leaf to twig, both so fragile they can be plucked and broken by a child, yet the bond of life so strong it can withstand the most inclement weather. Until it is time for them to fall.
Even when the leaves fall it is part of a greater renewal, the confetti of the marriage of the seasons, nourishing the earth and the tree from whence they fell. The tree sleeps through the winter, seemingly lifeless, husbanding its resources against the coming of spring. Beneath the skeletal surface of this dying time the life within shapes new leaves and blossoms, waiting in pregnant patience for the warm kiss of the sun.
Leaves fall, branches break… the old and sere stripped away by the turning wheel of the year, clearing the way for a green birth.
There is so much laid out before us, even in the avenues of our city streets. The life of nature is so strong and so beautifully balanced. So easy to damage when, with careless hands her children grasp at her skirts, taking anything that claims their attention and desire… yet strong enough to recover when we are no more.
In the little wood where we walk, the small dog and I, man has left his traces. From the earliest times track and road have passed this way, from the air the circled mark of ancient homes can be seen in the fields, the line of a roman road, lost now to plough and furrow. Still we carve this little patch of green to serve our needs. Yet as soon as we turn our back the wild things cover our tracks, reclaiming the earth for themselves, our little lives more fragile than their delicate blooms.
In towns and cities sites that were once hives of industry fall silent as technology moves on and we are proud of our advances, not noticing the quiet crown of plant and sapling our forgotten edifices wear, the gentle but inexorable hand of nature taking back her own as soon as we depart.
The seasons of the earth are echoed too within our own lives… we are part of the cycle, our bodies dance to the same natal song of the seasons. Life springs from death, death from life in an endless round.
The cadence is echoed within us as we laugh for joy beneath the sun of summer and weep in grief when winter touches our hearts. In the dark days we too may feel as if leaf and branch are being stripped from us, battered by the winds of change and the storms of emotion. Yet like the trees only the damaged and broken falls from us… the green heart is strong and holds the pattern of renewal within itself.
As the wheel turns it is easy to become lost in the dark days, feeling a verdant spring to be too far to reach, fearing in the shadows that it will not come. Perhaps, like the trees, we too are then husbanding our strength, withdrawing within where growth and renewal can work their magic unseen, ready to blossom at the first touch of the sun.
Tomorrow is Solstice and the world, still with the worst of winter yet to come, turns, almost unseen, towards summer. We know this, yet the winter is still to be endured. The days will lengthen, the light will be bright on days covered in snow, ice is yet to break open the cracked stones this year, and we will huddle by our hearths as if there is no warmth in the world, forgetting that we have passed the nadir and the eternal dance of the seasons carries us onwards towards a brighter dawn.
When we are lost in grief, gripped by the cold of fear, it is hard to see that light at the end of the tunnel, hard to believe that we have passed the worst point when we see a dark road still looming ahead. Yet this is the rhythm of life itself, as if the earth holds us in the reassuring and loving embrace of a mother and shows us that not all is lost in winter, it merely endures the frost while within, nourished by the fallen leaves that were stripped away by the storms and the turning year, the green life springs anew.
December 15, 2013
Down the snow stairs
Writing one of the meditations for the School a couple of weeks ago I was stuck for where to begin. I knew the direction I wanted to take, but needed that visual starting point for the imagination that allows these journeys to take on a life of their own.
I needed something, a strong image of childhood, and delved back in memory to my own. There, in the very first book I can remember being read, I found it.
Curled up against my mother, probably way too young for the horrors of the story, I listened entranced as Kitty took the journey from Good-night to Good-morning on Christmas Eve. The book was ‘Down the Snow Stairs’ by Alice Corkran, and it was the image of the staircase of snow that I was looking for.
The book left an indelible imprint on my mind. So many years since my mother had first read the words of an earlier century to me! I hadn’t seen the faded blue-green cover with its evocative, gilded picture since my childhood, yet so well did I remember it that a chance find a couple of years ago had me pouncing on the copy, exactly the same edition as the one I remembered.
It was published in 1887 and is the kind of Victorian moral tale that can give a child nightmares. Goblins and strange creatures personify all the ‘crimes’ of childhood as Kitty, having thoughtlessly caused her little brother’s illness, journeys through a landscape where she sees all her faults brought to life in the Land of Naughty Children. She sees the great spiders weave the Webs of Lies that entrap children, watches those who are lost in the Maze of Disobedience, and weeps for the frozen children who chant a litany of ‘Me-me-me,’ grasping with icy fingers at anything they can, taking it only so that no-one else may do so, yet finding no pleasure in aught they touch.
It is near the end of her journey that she meets Love, she who can give the Kiss of Forgiveness and set them free. Love shows Kitty the beautiful guardian child and the playful sprite of temptation that accompany all children and shows her the star that will guide her home. Kitty, however, plays with the sprite and listens to its promptings, meeting many more strange creatures… like I and Myself, a child and the image of himself that he has created and which occupies all his attention. At last she listens once too often to the sprite, obeying the whispers of temptation and her guardian child fades and withdraws. It is only when Kitty realises her error and gives the child her absolute trust that the guardian can return, called back by Love.
Though the tale might well be dated and seems to heap the guilt of sin upon the head of Kitty and the other children who disobey the strict Victorian code, there is loving forgiveness too and the chance to try again. Persistence and perseverance, courage and wonder are the lingering taste of the story for me. The illustrations by Gordon Browne stayed with me, the pictures as familiar now as they were so many years ago. Yet beyond the dated pictures are other images, even stronger, imprinted on the pages of the imagination that carried a deeper message. The book addresses aspects of childhood behaviour, and misbehaviour, yet the analogy to the way we can lose sight of our innermost self in the distractions of the world is a strong one.
What remained with me above all was the idea of that beautiful guardian child… the inner child of the universe… a voice of clarity born of Love that always knows the way Home.
I needed something, a strong image of childhood, and delved back in memory to my own. There, in the very first book I can remember being read, I found it.
Curled up against my mother, probably way too young for the horrors of the story, I listened entranced as Kitty took the journey from Good-night to Good-morning on Christmas Eve. The book was ‘Down the Snow Stairs’ by Alice Corkran, and it was the image of the staircase of snow that I was looking for.
The book left an indelible imprint on my mind. So many years since my mother had first read the words of an earlier century to me! I hadn’t seen the faded blue-green cover with its evocative, gilded picture since my childhood, yet so well did I remember it that a chance find a couple of years ago had me pouncing on the copy, exactly the same edition as the one I remembered.
It was published in 1887 and is the kind of Victorian moral tale that can give a child nightmares. Goblins and strange creatures personify all the ‘crimes’ of childhood as Kitty, having thoughtlessly caused her little brother’s illness, journeys through a landscape where she sees all her faults brought to life in the Land of Naughty Children. She sees the great spiders weave the Webs of Lies that entrap children, watches those who are lost in the Maze of Disobedience, and weeps for the frozen children who chant a litany of ‘Me-me-me,’ grasping with icy fingers at anything they can, taking it only so that no-one else may do so, yet finding no pleasure in aught they touch.
It is near the end of her journey that she meets Love, she who can give the Kiss of Forgiveness and set them free. Love shows Kitty the beautiful guardian child and the playful sprite of temptation that accompany all children and shows her the star that will guide her home. Kitty, however, plays with the sprite and listens to its promptings, meeting many more strange creatures… like I and Myself, a child and the image of himself that he has created and which occupies all his attention. At last she listens once too often to the sprite, obeying the whispers of temptation and her guardian child fades and withdraws. It is only when Kitty realises her error and gives the child her absolute trust that the guardian can return, called back by Love.
Though the tale might well be dated and seems to heap the guilt of sin upon the head of Kitty and the other children who disobey the strict Victorian code, there is loving forgiveness too and the chance to try again. Persistence and perseverance, courage and wonder are the lingering taste of the story for me. The illustrations by Gordon Browne stayed with me, the pictures as familiar now as they were so many years ago. Yet beyond the dated pictures are other images, even stronger, imprinted on the pages of the imagination that carried a deeper message. The book addresses aspects of childhood behaviour, and misbehaviour, yet the analogy to the way we can lose sight of our innermost self in the distractions of the world is a strong one.
What remained with me above all was the idea of that beautiful guardian child… the inner child of the universe… a voice of clarity born of Love that always knows the way Home.
December 11, 2013
An ordinary life
It has been a long night. I woke at half past one and could not sleep but lay smiling as the shadows painted an illusive profile on the empty pillow beside me, watching images flit across the inner screen... memories and faces, people and places, disjoined scenes from an ordinary life. It would, I think, have made a good movie. It seems as if the chapters of life have a definite rhythm…. Marked by the decades perhaps.
I saw the childhood with its laughter and dreams, scenes of moorlands and woods, museums and books, all set to the music of dance. There were the small joys, the fears and nervousness that growing things all face… like a kitten stalking life only to be startled and run away to hide before trying again. There was the wonder of discovering the world, a wonder I still feel… as though every day could be Christmas morning. There were the deeper fears and tragedies , uncommon circumstances perhaps, yet a common theme to many childhoods.
An ordinary life. Would it seem so to others? Perhaps... perhaps not… ‘ordinary’ is a moveable frame, but as we live our lives day by day they are what we know . We take it for granted that our lives are ordinary because we are living them, yet every moment of each of our stories is unique. No one else lives them for us, no one else can feel them as we do. Each of us leaves our mark on history, even if it passes unnoticed and fades unremarked.
I watched the girl move into her teens and stand on the threshold of womanhood. I saw her first job… 12 years old in a butcher’s shop every day after school… and her first proper job as a window dresser. Saw her leave home to marry, make a home. Watched the marriage end in violence and a ruined face. It wasn’t ruined, of course, though it seemed so at the time, so much damage done by a drunk driver… it was only changed, and all faces change with the years. The second decade.
I saw her finally begin to grow up as she moved to France to work, exploring a wider world she loved. Exploring herself. Learning who she might be… could be. Then later there was music and love and babies. A time of fierce joy, laughter and sunlight. The reluctant return to England that crushed the marriage and long years raising her sons alone, the growing realisation of her strengths and weaknesses, the joys and tears of motherhood. Another decade.
An old, old friendship rediscovered that slowly blossomed into love over the years…Finally a move away… a new life together...two months of joy before the steady decline of cancer changed the flavour of life. Joys more intense, grief a deep shadow following each footstep, a time where life was lived in high relief and the knowledge of impermanence. My sons grew as a life waned. The fourth decade.
A lost time... a time of mistakes, a swimmer drowning and grasping for any light that might mean a return to the world. A gasp of clean air, time to clean up the mess... a chance to break free. Grief does strange things. New career, new beginnings… then a plunge back into the sticky mire. A decade of mistakes? Or a decade of learning the hard way to look into the mirror of the soul and see true?
Tragedy turned the page of a new decade, changing the world, turning it inside out. And because of that tragedy there is access to profound joy. Only in the depths of that apparent blackness were the seeds of Life able to finally germinate and spring into being, reaching for the sun. New threads twine through the rich tapestry of experience. A decade that is, perhaps, defined by passion… it is vivid and alive... acute. The contrasts clear and sharp. Possibilities, magical and unexpected, strew the way into a future whose seeds were sown in decades past.
At each step along the way the choices and reactions of a single life… our own… define the journey. Whether we take the ‘right’ path or a wrong turning does not, perhaps, matter as long as we garner the fruits of experience, their seeds scattered around us and waiting for our seasons of growth and harvest.
An ordinary life? Yes, of course it is. That’s what makes it beautiful.
I saw the childhood with its laughter and dreams, scenes of moorlands and woods, museums and books, all set to the music of dance. There were the small joys, the fears and nervousness that growing things all face… like a kitten stalking life only to be startled and run away to hide before trying again. There was the wonder of discovering the world, a wonder I still feel… as though every day could be Christmas morning. There were the deeper fears and tragedies , uncommon circumstances perhaps, yet a common theme to many childhoods.
An ordinary life. Would it seem so to others? Perhaps... perhaps not… ‘ordinary’ is a moveable frame, but as we live our lives day by day they are what we know . We take it for granted that our lives are ordinary because we are living them, yet every moment of each of our stories is unique. No one else lives them for us, no one else can feel them as we do. Each of us leaves our mark on history, even if it passes unnoticed and fades unremarked.
I watched the girl move into her teens and stand on the threshold of womanhood. I saw her first job… 12 years old in a butcher’s shop every day after school… and her first proper job as a window dresser. Saw her leave home to marry, make a home. Watched the marriage end in violence and a ruined face. It wasn’t ruined, of course, though it seemed so at the time, so much damage done by a drunk driver… it was only changed, and all faces change with the years. The second decade.
I saw her finally begin to grow up as she moved to France to work, exploring a wider world she loved. Exploring herself. Learning who she might be… could be. Then later there was music and love and babies. A time of fierce joy, laughter and sunlight. The reluctant return to England that crushed the marriage and long years raising her sons alone, the growing realisation of her strengths and weaknesses, the joys and tears of motherhood. Another decade.
An old, old friendship rediscovered that slowly blossomed into love over the years…Finally a move away… a new life together...two months of joy before the steady decline of cancer changed the flavour of life. Joys more intense, grief a deep shadow following each footstep, a time where life was lived in high relief and the knowledge of impermanence. My sons grew as a life waned. The fourth decade.
A lost time... a time of mistakes, a swimmer drowning and grasping for any light that might mean a return to the world. A gasp of clean air, time to clean up the mess... a chance to break free. Grief does strange things. New career, new beginnings… then a plunge back into the sticky mire. A decade of mistakes? Or a decade of learning the hard way to look into the mirror of the soul and see true?
Tragedy turned the page of a new decade, changing the world, turning it inside out. And because of that tragedy there is access to profound joy. Only in the depths of that apparent blackness were the seeds of Life able to finally germinate and spring into being, reaching for the sun. New threads twine through the rich tapestry of experience. A decade that is, perhaps, defined by passion… it is vivid and alive... acute. The contrasts clear and sharp. Possibilities, magical and unexpected, strew the way into a future whose seeds were sown in decades past.
At each step along the way the choices and reactions of a single life… our own… define the journey. Whether we take the ‘right’ path or a wrong turning does not, perhaps, matter as long as we garner the fruits of experience, their seeds scattered around us and waiting for our seasons of growth and harvest.
An ordinary life? Yes, of course it is. That’s what makes it beautiful.
November 29, 2013
Love lies sleeping
In my village there is a fairytale palace. It would not look out of place in the Loire valley… but it is a little unexpected in rural Buckinghamshire. At one corner of the building is a round tower that houses a series of seven paintings by the Russian born artist Leon Bakst, telling the story of the Sleeping Beauty.
We all know the story. Both gifted and cursed at birth the princess grows within the safety of the castle. Reaching adulthood, she is cast into sleep in the most inaccessible tower of the castle, surrounded by walls of stone and a hedge of thorns…waiting for the brave prince to cut his way through the briars and awaken her with the kiss of true love…
Of course, there is a lot more to fairytales than the wide eyed child understands, but we seldom question them as we grow up and tell them to our own children. We are so very familiar with them that they simply ‘are’.
Take the Sleeping Beauty story, for example, and substitute the princess with the idea of the soul…
The tale takes on a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?
We are born into a magical world, where our childhood is peopled with fairies and wonders… we are given gifts and talents…yet our soul is held within the body, like the princess in the castle… this is the place we inhabit and come to know as home. As we grow to adulthood the magic fades…or more precisely, our awareness of it fades, clouded by the small doings of everyday, by logic and necessity. Like the princess, we fall asleep, lost to the song of the soul as the ‘curse’ takes hold… alive still but slumbering, waiting….
Around us the thick, thorny wall of ego grows and separates us from the world, holding us prisoner within its bounds. It may bear roses… it may bear fruit… it may sustain a whole ecology of other lives…yet the thorns are there making any passage through them... from the inside or from afar… fraught with difficulty and pain.
The princess’ sleep continues until the prince becomes aware of her and braves the thorns, cutting his way through the briars. Her plight touches his heart and calls to him… and in turn he searches until he finds her. It is a quest of love. He has only rumours to guide him… yet he is called to the task.
There is a turning within that calls us too at odd moments, like the whispered rumour of a sleeping princess heard by the hearthfire. We sleep, yet there is something that pulls us, knowing we can wake. Our dreams reach out across our inner landscape and call the kiss of awakening to us… in turn the hero within us journeys through the maze of thorns in search of the truth that lies sleeping.
We cannot see what waits beyond the thorns…there may be dragons and ogres… there may be nothing more than a fairytale… or beauty may lie sleeping there in truth. But it is Love that calls us to the quest and we are both Prince and Princess in our own stories and through the reaching out from within, find that something reaches out to us in equal measure, waiting to awaken us with the kiss of Love.
Then, like the phoenix in the painting, we can be reborn from our own ashes…
But that is another story….
“Without realizing it each day each one of us is visited by beauty, so quietly woven through out ordinary days that we hardly notice it… Beauty is made to seem naïve and romantic (but) much of the stress and emptiness that haunts us can be traced back to our lack of attention to beauty. The Beautiful offers us an invitation to order, coherence and unity…we feel most alive in it’s presence for it meets the needs of our soul.”John O’Donohue
We all know the story. Both gifted and cursed at birth the princess grows within the safety of the castle. Reaching adulthood, she is cast into sleep in the most inaccessible tower of the castle, surrounded by walls of stone and a hedge of thorns…waiting for the brave prince to cut his way through the briars and awaken her with the kiss of true love…
Of course, there is a lot more to fairytales than the wide eyed child understands, but we seldom question them as we grow up and tell them to our own children. We are so very familiar with them that they simply ‘are’.
Take the Sleeping Beauty story, for example, and substitute the princess with the idea of the soul…
The tale takes on a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?
We are born into a magical world, where our childhood is peopled with fairies and wonders… we are given gifts and talents…yet our soul is held within the body, like the princess in the castle… this is the place we inhabit and come to know as home. As we grow to adulthood the magic fades…or more precisely, our awareness of it fades, clouded by the small doings of everyday, by logic and necessity. Like the princess, we fall asleep, lost to the song of the soul as the ‘curse’ takes hold… alive still but slumbering, waiting….
Around us the thick, thorny wall of ego grows and separates us from the world, holding us prisoner within its bounds. It may bear roses… it may bear fruit… it may sustain a whole ecology of other lives…yet the thorns are there making any passage through them... from the inside or from afar… fraught with difficulty and pain.
The princess’ sleep continues until the prince becomes aware of her and braves the thorns, cutting his way through the briars. Her plight touches his heart and calls to him… and in turn he searches until he finds her. It is a quest of love. He has only rumours to guide him… yet he is called to the task.
There is a turning within that calls us too at odd moments, like the whispered rumour of a sleeping princess heard by the hearthfire. We sleep, yet there is something that pulls us, knowing we can wake. Our dreams reach out across our inner landscape and call the kiss of awakening to us… in turn the hero within us journeys through the maze of thorns in search of the truth that lies sleeping.
We cannot see what waits beyond the thorns…there may be dragons and ogres… there may be nothing more than a fairytale… or beauty may lie sleeping there in truth. But it is Love that calls us to the quest and we are both Prince and Princess in our own stories and through the reaching out from within, find that something reaches out to us in equal measure, waiting to awaken us with the kiss of Love.
Then, like the phoenix in the painting, we can be reborn from our own ashes…
But that is another story….
“Without realizing it each day each one of us is visited by beauty, so quietly woven through out ordinary days that we hardly notice it… Beauty is made to seem naïve and romantic (but) much of the stress and emptiness that haunts us can be traced back to our lack of attention to beauty. The Beautiful offers us an invitation to order, coherence and unity…we feel most alive in it’s presence for it meets the needs of our soul.”John O’Donohue
