I have a love for detective stories. My favourite tv programs tend to involve mysteries and detection. As I child I was not a great reader of fiction and yet I loved Agatha Christie. Now don’t get me wrong I did read, just not fiction. I rarely read do even today. Why I am not wholly sure, I know I would benefit from doing so. That said when relaxing I do like to watch detective series, new and old. I’m just as happy watching “Murder She Wrote” as I am watching any of the high tech modern series. I’m just as happy watching Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes as I would be watching “The Code” Last year I fell in love with “The Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries”, which is a modern historical Australian series, set in the inter-war years, a kind of attractive and daring cross between Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher. I also recently discovered a wonderful board game “Baker Street” based on Sherlock Holmes, myself and Sue had a lot of funny playing this a little while back. There is something in the searching for clues and answers and coming to conclusions that I suspect I love in these books, films and activities. I know I am not alone.
Now the thing I love about all these detective characters is that they pay attention. Yes they look for clues but the key is that they pay attention to the people around them. The classic example of this is of course Miss Marple. The key to her detecting was in her paying of attention and her simple down to earth understanding of people, which she had developed during her time growing up the village of St. Mary Mead. Her gift was to see things in seemingly unique ways and her ability to connect the details and stories together and relate them to people she had known during her long life. She would hear the details of a murder and say something like, “That reminds me of poor Mr or Mrs so and so …” And how this little problem that they had faced or had caused would be related to the murder. Miss Marple paid attention to people. She also paid attention to the world around her, connecting it all together. To me this is the key to spiritual living, to pay attention, to make connections and then to put them into practical application. To not merely ask questions of life but to see the connections. The key was not to merely ask questions and search for answers but to piece it together and live them as a conclusion in life. The key is to do as Rilke suggested “To live the questions” and in so doing you might just live your way into the answers. This is done in our very human and real lives; it is done by paying attention to one another and by paying attention to life.
One of the groups I host is “Living the Questions”. Each month we explore and attempt to bring to life the questions of truly living. It has been a joy and blessing to be part of this these last few years, it has certainly transformed me and I have witnessed this in others too. The inspiration for the group’s title come from a favourite passage from “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke. In it the poet Rilke writes a letter to his protégé the 19 year old cadet and budding poet Franz Xaver Kappus making a beautiful case for the importance of not merely asking questions, but living them, while embracing uncertainty and allowing for the development of intuition.
Rilke wrote:
“I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing, live your way into the answer.”
To me this is what it’s about, to seek and struggle and to live the questions themselves. We need to do more than just ask the questions. You have to live the questions themselves you have to experience them and then somewhere in that struggle an answer may well be revealed, or maybe not. Either way I am convinced that by doing so we will live purposeful lives for the good of all.
If we can learn to not just ask, but live the questions now we might just perhaps one day in the future, almost without noticing it live our way into the answers. This though will only come in and through life itself, through paying attention to all around us, for all life is animated by the same spirit.
Now the one thing we don’t get to choose is what is going on around us. We can’t filter this, however much we try. To live the questions faithfully means paying attention to everything. This means facing not just the beauty of life but its ugliness too and wrestling with all the challenges this brings and then acting in appropriate ways. This is not easy, sometimes it can be deeply painful to face the whole truth of any given situation. You have to do it though if you wish to one day live your way into the answers. As the great twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich wrote “Being religious means asking passionately the questions of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.”
Now living the questions, in the hope of one day you may live your way into the answers is not merely about logic, its not just about thinking your way into life. Actually if you live purely by your mind, your logic. you can miss so much. To live the question is a form of artful living, it is deeply creative in fact. My favourite detectives, usually the female ones all use intuition and emotion as an element of their questioning. Another favourite of mine is Leroy Jethro Gibbs from NCIS, who always uses his gut. To truly live the questions requires us to live fully in our bodies as much as our logical minds.
We Unitarians can sometimes be accused of being too logical and to disregard our intuition. I do not see this as a fair criticism. Yes we are encouraged to doubt and ask questions, but we are also encouraged to use our whole human experience and not to merely worship the mind as if it were God.
To truly live the questions and thus therefore one day hopefully live our way into the answers requires us to pay attention, to pay attention to everyone and then relate it our own experiences, like Miss Marple did. To find the answers she paid attention to life, to other people and to her own intuition. She lived her way into the answers by merely paying attention.
The problem is that paying attention is not always easy. It is easy to be distracted and sometimes it hurts too much to pay attention. It certainly does for me at times.
I noticed the other morning that I was paying attention. I noticed while sitting in meditation and then listening to others that life was touching me deeply and as a result my mind became clearer. I heard the language of the heart touch me deeply as people spoke and yet at the same time I could hear, clearly hear, all the sounds of life outside. I could hear the traffic, I could hear the dogs barking, I could hear the birds singing and I could hear the rain falling, as I did the words shared penetrated me more deeply. I listened to their questions and as I did I began to live my own and in doing so I knew I was on my way to live my way into the answers. And what is the answer you might ask? Well the answer is to pay attention, pay attention to everything. In so doing you will begin to live your way into the answers.
Whenever we find ourselves at another threshold of life, at one of those transitional moments when we must make a decision, I wonder if we find ourselves desperately searching weighing up all the choices with pure reason, discerning every possibility or do we “feel” our way through it, do we instead allow our gut to discover a sense of rightness. By what are we guided? Do we imagine that the universe, or a divine presence, has guidance to offer us, that we are being called down one path that we are the part of destiny in an ever unfolding universe? Or do we instead believe that we are all quite on our own in an indifferent universe, and that all things in this life unfold by some combination of human action and random chance?
I wonder what we believe. I wonder what you who read this "blogspot" believe...
Do we simply make our own meaning as we journey along making our own self sufficient and self-reliant choices with the consequences that accompany them? Or do we feel led or at least lured on in some way? Not passively of course, but as a part of the unfolding. An understanding that recognises a purpose in our lives within the larger unfolding and with a sense of communication with the Divine reality.
I wonder how we see this? Do we feel alone pushed and pulled by the randomness, just reacting or responding, while accepting responsibility; or do we feel a part of a greater un-folding and guided along.
Personally I have experienced both feelings in my life. I have felt utterly alone and blown about by randomness at stages of my life. Passages when I have longed for, prayed for, begged for guidance from God or from my own deeper wisdom, and was met by deafening silence and a deep sense of being alone with impossible decisions to make. At others I have experienced synchronicities and compelling intuitions that have led to me to believe in an intelligent, responsive and mysterious reality. Times when I have felt drawn along by a seeming great energy in a direction that felt right in every way, an undeniable lure or intuition calling me to do a particular thing. Moments of no doubt when life just opened up in front of me. This did not lead to an abdication of responsibility by the way, quite the opposite in reality. If truth be told it gave me a greater sense of responsibility and of course belonging
Today I see myself, and all creative life, as part the great co-creation. Today I feel at ease with the responsibility for the part I play in life. For me everything matters. Every thought, every feeling, every word and every deed. Everything we do and everything we do not do, matters.
I have felt this powerfully during my ministry amongst the good folk of Altrincham and Urmston. I remember my good friend Derek turning to me, almost randomly just weeks before my ministry training began as we were attending an AA meeting in the school room at the chapel in Altrincham just saying to me, without explanation, that I would be minister here. He then just carried on going on with himself about something else. we spoke about this a couple of years ago and he simply said that the feeling just came to him that day as we walked and talked together.
Now some folk call these moments of intuition synchronicity. Something that I and the congregations I serve have a growing awareness of. So many meaningful coincidences have come to pass these last six or more years.
I have had some powerful personal experiences of synchronicity in recent weeks. I will recount a couple of recent meaningful encounters to illustrate.
I recently began receiving massage therapy. It is benefiting me greatly and I have developed a deeps sense of intuitive connection with my therapist. This is something we have both acknowledge.
Now a few weeks ago I was walking to the supermarket when I had a strong sense of her come into my being. I visualised seeing her but with someone, her boyfriend, in the supermarket and as I approached this sense grew stronger. Well guess what as I waked around the supermarket there she was and with her boyfriend. We said hello and chatted for a few moments. I though felt a little uncomfortable and kind of wanted to get away quickly. What made me feel this way was that I knew him; I knew him from my past many years ago. What was just as peculiar was that in recent weeks I had passed him several times in the street. He has lived in Altrincham for many years and yet I had only begun to notice him in recent weeks. Now when I went for the next massage therapy session we talked about the encounter. I explained that I had sensed I would see her and that she would be with someone and told her that I knew her boyfriend many years ago. I called him by his full name, which apparently no one else does. Now the reason that I knew him was that he used to go out with an very old friend of mine, someone who was an important part of my recovery journey many years ago. Now I didn’t mention my old friend by name, just that we had mutual friends. Well the next time that we met guess what had happened. Both my therapist and her boyfriend bumped into my old friend for the first time in years as they were out and about and they then realised how I knew him and what I had been talking about.
Now there was no more mention of this for a few weeks. As the weeks went by this old friend was floating about in my consciousness. Well last week I took a member of the congregation to visit his mother in St Ann’s hospice and as I was driving there I felt powerfully this sense of my old friend who I had not seen for many years. We went to the hospice and as we were leaving, walking toward the entrance, from the other wing walked a figure I recognised and who looked at me and then came rushing forward. She said “I nearly didn’t recognise you as you look so different, you look so well”. We spoke for a few moments. She told me that she was looking to get married and had been to a wedding at the Unitarian chapel in Macclesfield where I had been student minister. I told her I had this strong sense I would see her that day and she said “oh well it must be fate.” We exchanged details and agreed to meet up to discuss plans for a wedding, as she would love me to conduct the ceremony.
Now what does this all mean? Was it merely coincidence? Was something greater at play? Was it fate? Was it meant to be? For me it was a beautiful example of synchronicity. We will see what grows from it.
According to Phil Cousineau "Synchronicity is an inexplicable and profoundly meaningful coincidence that stirs the soul and offers a glimpse of one's destiny."
Most folk talk of experiencing moments of synchronicity. The anticipation of a phone call from a person just seconds before it rings; the chance meeting with someone from the past who has the answer we have been looking for; that feeling of deep connection with someone when something happens to them although they are physically miles apart, we feel their pain and or joy deeply. It is these feelings, if we pay attention to them, that will call us to engage with life in deeper more meaningful ways. If we do more meaning and intuitive connection emerges.
Mothers often talk about a connection with their children of feeling their pain, even when they are not physically in their company. I’ve heard similar experiences recounted by siblings especially twins. Can these occurrences be rationally explained, it would appear not and yet so many of us recount them.
I have felt this too. It happened to me the moment that Ethan, my friend Claire’s son died. I was sat on the bus travelling to work when suddenly I felt violently sick in my stomach. I had never felt a sensation like it before or since. I discovered sometime later this was the exact moment that the breathing apparatus in the hospital was turned off and Ethan was declared dead. Now you could just say that this was coincidence, but I believe it was due to the connection between us. It is not something I thought much about at the time, but as I have reflected upon it since it has made more sense. Of course many would say I was just feeling ill. My answer to that would be, this was not merely travel sickness it was far more violent. I had a very special connection with Ethan, throughout the few years that he lived. He taught me how to experience the Love I know as God.
The psychologist Carl Jung coined the phrase synchronicity in an attempt to explain what he called "meaningful coincidences ", that occur due to seemingly unrelated events. His concept of synchronicity came about through the many baffling coincidences his patients shared with him in his practice, especially as he began to realize that the occurrences went beyond what could be attributed to mere chance. His interest has also been attributed to a series conversations, over many years, that he had with Albert Einstein.
One example of synchronicity that really intrigued Carl Jung occurred with a patient recounting her dream of a golden scarab beetle. A young woman who Jung had been treating told him of a dream in which she had been given a golden scarab. He was sitting with his back to a closed window while she told him about the dream. Suddenly he heard a gentle tapping and turned to see a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. Jung opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. The insect closely resembled a golden scarab. It was the one closest related to such a creature in their part of the world. Normally, such insects would not come into a dark room, but at the same moment the patient mentioned the beetle she had been given in her dream, this beetle appeared at Jung’s window. He was quite astonished at the coincidental timing and admitted that nothing like it ever happened to him before or since. This was also a breakthrough moment for the patient who had become bogged down in his attempts to treat her.
Synchronicity suggests that events we experience as human beings are more than mere chance, that there is more going on; that we humans and all of life are connected and at a deeper level than would outwardly appear. Suggesting that who we are, what we think, feel, imagine, react to, are interrelated with the things going on around us in our environment; that at times who and what we are, how we appear to be to others and how, who, and what they are and how they appear to us converge together.
Could this be true?
Well maybe, maybe not...It is for each of us to decide...
All this brought to mind a poem I have recently come across, which to my mind ponders these very questions...The poem is "Love at First Sight" by Wislawa Szymborska
"Love at First Sight" by Wislawa Szymborska
They're both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
Since they'd never met before, they're sure
that there'd been nothing between them.
But what's the word from the streets,
staircases, hallways —
perhaps they've passed by each other a
million times?
I want to ask them
if they don't remember —
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a "sorry" muttered in a crowd?
a curt "wrong number" caught in the receiver? —
but I know the answer.
No, they don't remember.
They'd be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.
Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.
There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn't read them yet.
Perhaps, three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood's thicket?
There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases, checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning.
Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.
“Love at first sight” describes two lovers engaged in a display of public affection. I get the impression that the author is convinced that some guiding force is at work in their interaction. What begins as “Chance”, then becomes “Destiny” which “pushed them close, drove them apart”. The poems suggests that these lives were scripted long ago in a “book of events”, which cannot be altered, try as we might. The poem suggests that the lovers have passed by one another many times before. That there were signs along the way and that one day this encounter would happen, but it was more than mere chance, something else was at work offering itself to both of them. It just took this moment for it to happen.
In many ways this is how I see life these days. So many possibilities are going on all around us. Some good, others not so good. So many joys, tragedies, triumphs, failures, frustrations, crises, endless possibilities good and bad. Life offers itself to us, but so often we close ourselves off from it. One thing I have noticed is that as I have allowed life itself to guide me I have become more open, and the more open I have become to life itself, the more connected I felt, the more aware I have become of experiencing meaning and making meaning filled decisions. As I have done so I experienced a greater sense of belonging to myself, those people I share my life with and this world in which we all live and breathe and share our being.
But that’s just me and that’s just where I stand today. I have not always felt this way.
What about you? You who read this "blogspot" What is true to you? Maybe that’s something to ponder...
Think about your own experience of coincidence and ask yourself has this helped you find meaning in life?
Perhaps ask yourselves where do you find meaning in life? And what can you do with this meaning, what can it lead you to do in order to give yourselves more fully to life.
I’m going to end this little chip of a "blogspot" with the following meditation “We are called” by Natalie Fenimore
We are called.
Called by the wind, the rushing water, the fireflies, the summer sun.
Called by the sidewalk, the playground, the laughing children, the streetlights.
Called by our appetites and gifts – our needs and challenges.
Called by the bottle, the needle, the powder, the pill, the game, the bet, the need, the want, the pain, the cure, the love, the hope, the dream.
Called by the Spirit of Love and Hope, and visions of God’s purpose for our lives.
We are called.
From “The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship” by David Whyte pp 42-43
“This falling in love can occur in a multiplicity of ways. We have the remarkable ability as human beings to fall in love with a person, a work, or even an idea of ourselves. That is, we create a relationship that has a perfected image of what we first encounter, a sense of longing for the perfect person, the ideal work, the full potential of our own character. We fall in love through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, intuiting and longing. These senses are constantly mediating the frontier between what we think is a self and what we think is other than our selves.
First we have eyes, taken mostly for granted, with which we see a new moon or a tiny memo. We have ears, not fully appreciated, with which to entertain a grand opera or a humble opinion, and we have these tireless hands used every day to pull others towards us or push them away; most especially we have a tongue with which to taste, to give voice to desires or to lash others with our pent-up disapproval. We also have the intellect to contrast and compare, to measure carefully and weigh things in the balance. Then beneath them all, untiring but seldom listened to, we have the sixth sense acknowledge in almost all traditions a swirling internal formation called the intuition, the imagination, the heart, the almost prophetic part of a person that at its best somehow seems to know what is good and what is bad for us, but also what pattern is just about to precipitate, what out of a hundred possibilities is just about to happen, in a sense, an unspoken faculty for knowing what season we are in. What is about to die and what is about to come into being.”
...The writing of David Whyte is one of those something news that I have fallen in love with these last few months...
I have recently embarked on a new healthy living regime. As well as altering my diet, quite dramatically actually, I am also going on walks in and around the area I live. Each morning after my time in prayer and silent meditation I set of out into the day. Each day the walks are getting a little bit longer and I’m up to about two hours, before coming home showering and then reading for about half an hour. This is followed by a healthy breakfast and then I get on with my busy working day. I have to say I’m feeling fantastic for it.
As well as the obvious physical benefits my senses are feeling enriched too as I soak in the beauty of nature all around and all the other people I see up an about at that hour, whether going to work or out and about walking, jogging, cycling and of course all the lovely dog walkers. People seem even more friendly at this hour of the day. I sometimes go for another early evening walk too and it’s great to see all the life in the local parks on these lovely summer evenings. My senses feel as though they have been reawakened once again.
One thing I am loving about this time alone in virtual silence, except for the noise of all that is around me, is that as I walk and my senses connect to the life around me I feel that deeper self, the soul as some have called it, also awakening too. It seems that by moving silently through the life all around me my senses are being awakened and that at some deep level there is another awakening going on right down in the marrow of the soul of me. This is how beauty works of course, it creates this sense of aliveness within us and it is this energy, I have come to believe, that enables us to act in a more loving and compassionate way. I am experiencing a deeper sense of connection to the soul of me, whist also feeling more of a part of the world around and to that something more, that is at the core of everything.
I feel like I’ve fallen in love with life once again and as that song I so love to sing goes “There’s always something new to fall in love with.”
I offer thanks and praise.
Now I’ve also been enjoying a book these last few days, which has really tied in with my current experiences. Each morning after my walk and shower and before I eat I read a little from it. The book is “The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship”, by David Whyte. It is catching that place deep in the heart of me. At the beginning of the "blogspot" is an extract from the book. Here David talks about falling in love either with someone or something, an idea, an opportunity a calling or some new aspect of oneself. He says “We fall in love through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, intuiting and longing. These senses are constantly mediating the frontier between what we think is a self and what we think is other than our selves.”
He is suggesting that we take our sensory agents for granted. Like our eyes with which we experiences the most vast and amazing things as well as tiny minutiae of detail and or a written messages that we need to make sense of. Oh if only we could always have eyes that could see. He moves on to our ears in which we can appreciate the most complex and moving musical number as well as the thoughts and feelings of another person. Oh if only we could learn to “listen with the ears of our hearts” He then talks of our hands that can be used in such creative and destructive ways and with which we can draw another person close to our heart or push them away in rejection. How often do we use our hands carelessly? He lays the greatest emphasis on our tongues with which I am currently delighting in as I get used to a new diet and also talks of how through our tongues we “give voice to desires or…lash others with our pent up disapproval.” Finally he describes the intellect, our rational reasoning mind with which we discern all that our senses take in and can thus respond, hopefully appropriately. Sadly so often we do not, reason does not always prevail.
Whyte then describes that which is beneath it all, that which sadly we do not listen to enough, probably because of all the noise going on all around us, but also more especially the noise going on within us. He calls this the sixth sense. That voice that is less than silence and yet somehow more than a whisper, that intuitive part of humanity that if we listen to it tells us what is right and good and what is not. What he himself describes as “a swirling internal formation called the intuition, the imagination, the heart, the almost prophetic part of a person that at its best somehow seems to know what is good and what is bad for us, but also what pattern is just about to precipitate, what out of a hundred possibilities is just about to happen, in a sense, an unspoken faculty for knowing what season we are in. What is about to die and what is about to come into being.”
As I have been walking around these last couple of weeks I have felt this intuitive part of me awakening further. I feel more connected, more open, more a part of everything and through this experience life does seem to be calling to me. I have noticed I need less distraction. As I walk I am not listening to music, just to the life around me, I am letting my senses soak this up without any distractions. It’s the same at home I am less inclined to put the radio and or television on, unless it’s to listen to the cricket, either the Ashes or my beloved Yorkshire. I have noticed that as a result I am hearing more clearly that voice that is less than a whisper and yet somehow more than silence. That voice that animates all life, that breathes out everything.
Now this brings me to the following passage from the book of Kings (1 Kings ch 19 vv 11-13).
"He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’"
Earlier in this chapter, from the book of Kings, Elijah is threatened by Queen Jezebel and flees to a cave on mount Horeb where he is told that God will pass by and speak directly to him. A great wind comes, followed by an earthquake and then a fire, but we are told that God is in none of them. Following the fire comes the still small voice – a voice, a sound like silence – this voice that is less than a whisper and yet not quite silence signals the presence of God. The text then tells us that Elijah covers his head and goes out to talk with God.
Elijah had been commissioned that day to set right the problems of Israel and to call a new King for Syria and a new King for Israel and a new prophet who would lead the next generation.
Now no doubt this all sounds a little strange and fanciful and beyond all reason but I hear a deep universal truth in the story. This is "Mythos". Throughout the ages we hear accounts of people being called out by this still small voice; the voice of comfort, of hope, of challenge, of support and also at times the voice of rebuke...This same voice spoke to Jesus, Muhammed, The Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mary Wolstencroft, Nelson Mandella, but perhaps it is not a voice as we understand it....less than a whisper and yet more than silence...
The still small voice of calm…The intuition that speaks to us when our own minds are silent enough…
What is this still small voice of calm?
What is this something, this almost nothing that is more than silence and yet less than a whisper? What is this emptiness that can fill us with awe? It is so gently powerful and seems to emerge, nay burst, from nothingness into life. It is a nagging thought or presence that is their floating around in our consciousness or perhaps unconsciousness. It never seems to easily be revealed it requires us to go into our own depths and at the same time to truly open ourselves up to connect to the life all around us and then somehow in the stillness and silence meaning is revealed. Maybe it is something more than a mere thought or feeling, that appears from nowhere or perhaps beyond nowhere. This feeling that comforts, that accepts, that connects, even pardons just when we need it the most. Perhaps it’s the voice of conscience that lives in that space between what we say and what we do, between the talk and the walk.
We can never be truly certain what this is. Some, myself included, call it God, others prefer a myriad of names. But what does it matter what we call it, this is just belief or unbelief. It is truly beyond us to know what is behind this voice, this thought, this feeling, this experience but I feel sure that we have all known it from time to time. We have all known this indescribable presence at some point in our lives. This sense of being addressed by something, this powerful irresistible urge, is the source of art and poetry and not just religion and theology.
Experience has taught me that there is something in the corner of all our lives that gently, quietly, nudges us and desires our attention. I do not believe that I or any of us will ever fully understand or even comprehend what this still small voice is, but we ought not to ignore it.
To truly connect to it requires a stillness and a silence, a bit like those deer I see when I wander around Dunham Park. I also feel that it also requires a deeper sense of connection and awakening through all our senses, filtered through our reasoning mind. For if we do we will awaken to the beauty that is life, to the joy of living in all its mystery and we will be inspired to do the good that we can do.
I'm going to this little chip of a blog with some beautiful words on silence by Mark Belletini
“Ode To Silence” by Mark Belletini
You, silence, are the ground
On which we build the fragile sandcastles of our every spoken word.
You, silence,
Are quicksand where curses and cockiness and
And arrogance find their end.
You, silence, are the strand of beach we stroll where loneliness
Turns into solitude,
And our small heartbeats join the much vaster
Heartbeat of tide and wave.
You, silence,
Are the hand in which the pearl of the universe,
Grown around the painful grain of human suffering,
Rests in heartbreaking beauty.
You, silence,
Are the wide, bright delta into which
The river of this prayer fans out,
Before it flows into the indigo Deep,
Quiet, dark and lovely.
Come, Silence, fill this moment.
