Live Like A River Flows

Reposted from May 07, 2009

Unfolding

"I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding." *

Chatting today with a new friend, we mused about different seasons in life, mourning the loss of those past while grasping the purpose in those current. He asked me what season I was in now, and without too much hesitation I answered, "Spring". I was trying to remember this quote and got the words all mixed up, so regret stumbling my way through a potentially eloquent moment!

Hopeful spring, it's impossible to detail precisely how the plants will grow or what shape the flowers or fruit will be. And so it is that we are–like the river–surprised by the unfolding, captivated and compelled to keep moving forward. It's the nature of growth.

...I hope the arrival of Spring will cause some fresh unfolding.

* Words from John O'Donohue's Conomara Blues


{Today's Soundtrack: A student's seranade}

Another Lightness

First posted October 28, 2008

Light : 03

The 'stinky back alley' I referred to in last post. I thought this photograph was lost in the robbery (almost two years ago now*) but holding my nose and diving in to a cluttered inbox for some long overdue filing under 'b', there it was, thank goodness, as if to prove a point that in the midst of rubbish out shines beauty.

In tandem to this post, the extraordinary–yet–humble story which occurred as I knelt in a flowerbed surrounded by empty bottles of Lambrini is now up on news. With thorny plants catching my jeans, it struck me what a very strange throne this was as I observed such a momentous occasion as the Angels landing. But it is fitting, as this whole story has been one of good things coming out of darkness. The first phonecall I received to come on board with the project came 2 days after that robbery, which cleaned me out in more ways than can be imagined.

* PS> Actually now 4 years ago. Come such a long way down that alley and out the other end, but the characteristics of the journey have not changed. 

{Today's soundtrack: The Shins}

Pondering Light Again

Today's re-post is about light.

Last night a friend of mine, aged 40, suffered a stroke and he was rushed to hospital, where he is in the care of the best neuro-surgeons in the country. He is 40. Lots of us are 40, or nearly, and this is not when we have strokes. He is well enough to be making jokes about this, but still very, very ill.

Amazingly, there is a fantastic community around him and his family, and in times like this it totally kicks in. Our love and prayers are with him, and our hope.

Here are ponderings on light as a metaphor for that hope.

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Re-posted from October 02, 2008

Light : 02

When was the last time a beam of light caught your eye? No, I mean really stopped you mid-track, so that for a second you forgot what else you were doing.

I remember ages ago walking down a stinky back alley on the way home, tired and miserable. The sunset bounced off windows at the end of the street and made golden pools all along the alley and it has been my little street of reminder ever since – a reminder that gorgeous things come out of rubbish.

Taking photographs, (as I discussed a while ago in my first post about light) it is difficult to avoid the 'exquisite light' moments that happen upon us occasionally, and even for the most quiet, humble soul it is very hard to resist the poetic temptation to make them mean something other than just basic physics at play.

Whether these moments are meaningful in themselves depends on who you are and what's going on for you at that time, don't you think? Whether you need a 'Damascus' moment or just some help picking out the shape of things in a shadow, we are nowhere without light. It doesn't need to be earth shattering, as these photographs from today show – humble, regular, straight in front of you. But I fear we ignore light and take it for granted, some even pretending it doesn't matter.

It's often after or during a storm that the best light moments happen, beams bouncing around off wet surfaces in the most brilliant ways. Don't tell me this is mere physics and without metaphor. Silver linings, and all that. Consider this, that maybe the best light beams are saved for when you need them the most.

Go outside! Get out from your lightless places!


{Today's soundtrack: Band of Horses - Cease To Begin}

Taking Some Time

Friends, as things are really rather stacked at the moment I shall take this chance to revisit some of my favourite posts from over the last four years to share with you. Those of you who have been with me for a while do feel free to suggest your favourites too - it would be interesting to know which you particularly loved!

To begin, this one about faith, the essence of which I was chatting with friends about last night.

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FAITH

I've been reading some interesting thoughts from Desmond Tutu on how much faith it takes to walk on a pavement, whether or not you believe in God. The point was that–even if you are an atheist–life cannot be lived without faith. It takes faith to drive your car and believe that everyone else is going to drive sensibly. It takes faith to put food in your mouth and trust it will not poison you, and faith to step onto the street believing that the ground will remain firm beneath you.

If you do not believe in God, you are still a person of faith.

With this in mind, can anyone tell me why the word 'faith' has become such a dirty word? Sometimes it's all we've got. It's not weakness to admit this, it's beyond strength and takes courage. It turns you into a child again, which isn't wrong, but it does go against the grain when you've spent your adult life working out the sense in, say, evolution, only to discover it forces you to make an off-putting case for oppressors, the sort that suck away all the world's resources for themselves, or systematically murder off people living on land they want. What stops people doing those things? Faith, that this rubbish is not the final word.

Faith tempers the arrogance of the fool.

Say a prayer, go on, don't be shy.

{Today's soundtrack: Pete Seeger - Oh, had I a golden thread}

A Cove Called Hope

My friend Jackie posted yesterday, 'a small change can make a big difference'. I am here testifying to this being true.

For the last few months I have made a number of small changes - first actionable steps on the way to a chosen goal. Trouble is, I forgot, or maybe didn't believe, that actions have consequences. The point of committing to the first step is that the journey begins whether you are ready or not. Suppose I expected the map to be clear, but if you do a thing, the next thing that occurs may likely not be what you imagined, so you discover the map is useless.

I was very grateful of Don Miller's post on Friday entitled 'Is Your Life Confusing?' Yes, it is!

Choosing to make some changes in your life is good, but not a done deal when you decide to go for it. It turns out that putting the plough down and ceasing intense focus on the furrows, I may have forgotten slightly what I want the field to look like. All the better for taking some time to be still through lent.

It was an absolute joy this weekend to spend time with family on the coast. Blue sky all the way, ocean doing the 'crushed diamonds' thing that Clive James talks about. Some breathing space, and a true sense that winter is closing up shop. At last! Family are always good for reminding you what it was like before you had these crazy ideas. We are such different characters, multi-coloured shingle, but they always want to know what's happening in the story. They remember what I wanted my field to look like in the first place, and wonder how it's shaping up. As we walked in aptly named Hope Cove we chatted back and forth about all our journeys.

A little re-visioning in spring sunshine.

{Today's Soundtrack: Otis Redding - Dock of the Bay}

Focus To Defocus

So, I know lots of you who read these posts look at the world through a certain 'faith' lens, like me, and lots of you don't. Either way, I have a simple question which struck me after leaving the patience and stillness thoughts last week quite vague. My question is this:

What exactly are you looking at?

In relation to prayerful stillness, I think this is about naming your principle, but then holding it lightly. Focus your lens, then defocus so light (in this case, insight) may appear in new ways you don't normally see. It is about not strapping your human control over spiritual matters, simply agreeing to be available for whatever would like to make itself known. It is about admitting that you only see 'through a glass, darkly' and have limited perspective in this life, and allowing that a little room is required amongst all the doings of our lives to make way for the being.

But because we are, of course, human, it helps us to have a focal point, so we use the cross, or chants or whatever. My mum used to pray quietly at church when she became really sick. On the busy stained glass window in front of her she found a small white circle, and focused on this as a visual symbol to help her back to spiritual peace, an access point to everything away from hideous days of hospital and radiotherapy. In quiet days of the summer holiday weeks, she would take me, aged twelve, to sit next to her in that church while Father David, the beautiful, wise and softly spoken old priest held daily eucharist. I let her teach me about simple, devoted contemplation like this. These were the rare times she found peace and wisdom through all her troubles, so of course it had huge influence on my own journey, especially after she died just a few months later.

When it comes down to it, we can try to understand, but there will always be things we cannot explain.

•

What are you looking at?

Find something. Focus in order to defocus.


{Today's Soundtrack: Secret Sisters - Tennessee Me}

For The Record

Right then. So to begin the week, I am not showering you with any fancy type of photography. And neither must you expect great insights from me. No, this is just to prove that:

a/ what I said about my dead containers in the smallest-garden-known-to-man is true. See? They really are not an advert for fruitfulness, are they?

b/ this is actually the state of things. It is important to mark because once things start growing I will - full of springtime bliss and skipping through daisies with flowers in my hair - forget where I've come from this winter time (actually and metaphorically). That would be foolish.

and

c/ especially for fans of #frogwatch on Twitter, this theatre clearly needs some prep. Last summer my yard was a jungle of busy lizzies under which many frog antics occurred. This year I'm switching to sweetpeas, violas and pansies, and herbs instead of tomatoes. I'll get to work on the set-building, then let's see what effect those sweet, heady scents have on the little hoppers!

But really, I just think it is always good to remember where you have come from, to register or acknowledge the work it will take to move on from enduring a situation you thought would be your landscape forever. This is telling it just the way it is, for the record, full of anticipatation.


{Today's Soundtrack: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Deja Vu}

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Jesus Face Down in the Dust

Getting to the core of what lent is really about, some more thoughts.

There's another reason we strip away, pare back and refine leading up to Easter, something about the humble in spirit inheriting the earth. 

When Jesus was in the desert for forty days and nights, there were temptations coming at him from all angles that would appeal to the striving, insecure soul - command respect in this, prove your authority that way, gain approval and status on earth. He chose not to agree with those things and instead took the low place. He shuffled around in the wilderness with his face in the dust, putting aside food, riches and temptations of power. He chose not to wield power. He was truly sold out for another way.

So we echo this attitude in whatever we choose to give up/pick up for lent, because we agree with making a point about breaking through bad hang ups on status, power, consumerism and self-interest. How many of the choices we make purely in our own interest mean someone else has to suffer or slog for them to be realised?

Jesus in wilderness resisted the temptation to put his needs and desires first. He chose humility and faith so a love-filled life had space to breeze through for everyone else he ever met. Taking that perspective too, the things we thought mattered pail away, and instead a blade of grass seems to be as beautiful a thing as we will ever want or need in order to be delighted, to inherit the whole earth.


{Today's Soundtrack: Elbow - Build a Rocket Boys}

Patience

There is so much I could say about patience. Sometimes I talk about patience to fill in exactly the space that requires it, perversely to help me be patient! As these are just serious distraction tactics because faffing doing something is easier than contemplatively doing nothing, burn out may well occur. In fact, it occasionally has done. Have you ever had to be really, really patient for something, nearly gone out of your mind over it, then realised afterwards that some amazing character building occurred as a result of your not being in control? If yes, can you name it? (That's pretty much how my singing and guitar came to life again.)

Choosing to 'put something down' is a big fat 'yes' to being still, and being still is an important principle in life happening well.

If you were to sit still in silence, how long do you think you'd last before going stir crazy? If you've not done this before, how about trying a minute, then build on it for the rest of lent, just to see what happens?

For a passionate person, have you found the tricky peak/trough of experience is stabilised over a helpless season of patience? Patience is a great leveller. Throughout the highs and lows, learning to accept you are not right about everything can be helpful, that your experience is subjective, that others' subjectivity matters too. Patience definitely affords that little gem of perspective.

Patience is about learning to stop fighting and be still.

Being still is receive as well as transmit. It is tide's ebb as well as flow. Breathe in, breathe out. Let patience have its way with you, just for a little while.


{Today's Soundtrack: Tom Williams & the Boat - Slow Thing}

Put Something Down, Pick Something Up

What is a time of giving things up really all about? Purging, losing a few guilty pleasures? Do we look at this as forty days of self-imposed punishment for gluttony, or do we look at this as forty days to be purified and made stronger, more whole? Do you inhibit yourself and your choices for true health, or does it turn out to be rather a false virtue?

In a new year flourish the last couple of months have been pretty busy, but I find a habit of striving has kicked in. Striving is not beautiful. It can come across as being clingy and fearfully intense, in one-way transmit mode, no fruit-bearing, just a desperate noise like a 'clanging cymbal'. Of course, there are times for intense productivity, but there are also times to put the plough down so you can carefully pick up the fruits as they appear.

This next forty days I'm hoping to simplify efforts – look for more quietness, focus on the things that matter, review, make good what I have and give meaning to what is, rather than be hung up on what isn't. Actually, I'm finding it more helpful to think of the next forty days we call Lent as a time of refinement. I'm going to stand in faith that in forty days I will—with hands free—have been able to pick up some beautiful fruit.

Put something down, pick something up. 

{Today's Soundtrack: Damien Jurado - Saint Bartlett}

Okay This Is Getting Weird Now

{This morning's foley edit: Native birdsong, soft footsteps; sharp intake of breath, then a scuffle.}

Gleaming and Glorifying

'It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realise for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.'

So says C.S.Lewis writing in The Four Loves. Among forests of thought about our loves, he describes here a selfless love that has to come from beyond us, he argues, because our own needs are so bound up in our behaviour as 'creatures' and therefore to love entirely selflessly is not within our human capability. Where we come across this unconditional, selfless, 'gift' love, it has to be divinely inspired.

He goes on to suggest that if we were just 'creatures' it does not follow that we would have any 'native luminosity' – meaning, we have no divine light (gift love) inherent in us as animals, just our biological matter and a love born out of need. We are not capable of shining with a selfless, unconditional love unless we are letting the source of that love (God) shine on us.

On the radio this morning the lovely Professor Brian Cox was being interviewed. The introduction was so overblown and he was clearly embarrassed by it and I thought it must be hard to be him, an atheist who does not believe in God yet gets treated as if he is one. His theories on quantum physics and universal phenomena are bonded to his guitar weilding, attractive pop persona, and he becomes a new pin up for the anti-religious.

Even if we fiercely argue the atheist's line that God does not exist and we are just matter, we still get caught up in the business of gleaming and glorifying, whether of our own doing or someone else's.

I think I side with Lewis, that we gleam as much as we are gleamed upon. Depending on the thing we face to find our gleam, we eventually adopt a kind of transparency so that thing starts to shine through us. It can happen for good, and it can happen for bad.

If you find it, it is very hard to resist the inspiration of exquisite love gleaming on us from beyond our basic creatureliness.

{Today's Soundtrack: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Hysteric}

Hey! Who Put That There?

Someone appears to have snuck into to my home while I was out and left this on the chair!

Did you see anyone?


{Today's Soundtrack: Henry Mancini - Pink Panther theme}