In no particular order…
Life… everywhere… I am surrounded. I glance to my left and there, a metre from the jetty floats a type of fly that hasn’t been looking so lively for the last couple of minutes. No movement, and on top of that, the mini-flies keep checking him out, maybe even taking mini bites in the split seconds they spend in contact with it. A tadpole has moved in for a taste too.
Beyond the position on the lake where the fly is at rest, I hear what I can only imagine to be a wood pigeon attempting to precariously land and balance whilst eating berries, or making sweet love to what I assume is a wood pigeon of the opposite sex. Who knows? she or he is right amongst the foliage.
As soon as the fly touched down on the water with it’s wings, I wonder if it had known it was only a matter of time before the other life forms moved in for snacks?
A carp spooks three of four metres from me in the margins amongst the reeds. I’ve not seen one here in the flesh yet, but I’m moved to think that we are sharing in this space.
I hear that goldfish have a memory of two seconds. A lot can happen in two seconds, no? How can anyone ever know for sure if that’s how it works. And if carp are of the same mindset, what do they get up to in their two second slots that make up a lifetime?? Carpe Diem… I wonder if their journeys are all about seizing the day? It’s got me thinking about how many times I could seize the day in one day?
A moorhen makes it’s call from the shallow wetlands of this wonderful wild water. A dry brown leaf, curled up almost in half, looking like it is held on for dear life until the bitter end, finally lets go and drops from a nearby branch. I watch it land, as if in slow motion and there begins a dance… life itself. The leaf, having accepted the breeze’s invitation with open arms, allows itself to be waltzed ever so elegantly across the surface of this pond. I’m a one man audience for an out of the blue, never before seen performance of just a few of nature’s finest attributes and characteristics.
I count eight tadpoles on my right foot and feel at least one more. I count four on my left, but feel many more. My legs are crossed so many of them are tucked up and out of sight. I’m reckoning they be loving a bit a dry skin. I receive what I recognise as a heartfelt kiss to the crown of my head as I write. Thank you – you know who you are 🙂
The tadpoles are tickling. Excuse me guys, I must have a scratch before you move back in for round two. Who are these dudes anyway? Every time I come down here they’re that little bit more brazen and always that little bit further from the banks. Man, it really is a beautiful world that we live in. Twelve tadpoles and a water boatman on the left foot – surely an Embercombe record?
To be silent – what a treat! I mindfully take the longer, more difficult route – not only to expand my mind mapping of the area, but to know that whatever I fully commit myself to, I will finish and be nothing less than a whole lot stronger for it.
I witness feeding bubbles from the carp out on the lake and I’m blown clean away that what I’m experiencing can be happening alongside the atrocities, that God willing, are not taking place in this very moment on other parts of the Earth.
What to say and to whom when I decide to break this silence?
I begin no day where I have ended another, and no sunrise finds me where it left me. What about me? What About Me? But I AM…
When you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart, you live in your lips and sound is a diversion and a pastime. In much of your talking, thinking is murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold it’s wings but cannot fly.
My attention is drawn to the water as I drop a hair onto it. It lands and forms a shape of the letter ‘S’. Sausage, solstice, slovenly…
I hear a pheasant flap it’s wings not so far from me. I feel the vibrations first of all. I do love a pheasant – their movements, colours, mannerisms.
I stick my walking boots on, not only to justify paying for them, but also to kid myself into the possibility that they won’t blister my feet right up within the hour.
I walk, one foot in front of the other as I have been doing for 31 years, more of less. My senses are firing on all cylinders and I feel that to move is to give thanks, to not take everything that I posses for granted. For all I know the world could be flat!?!
A songbird chuckles above me to the right, a stunning concoction of various melodies. To see the world with the eyes of a child… To know that one sunbeam is enough to drive the shadows away.
Pressure… Pressure??? What is this illusive, illusiveness of illusivity? Nobody can make me feel this – only I. Whatever it might be titled as, I thank it from the bottom of my heart for bringing me here.
I look at the trees for inspiration. Stillness speaks.
The blackbird continues to work as we move ever closer towards the evening chorus. The cows are making a right old racket at the nearby farm. Maybe they’re having a ‘cow-oir’ practice 🙂
My willingness to forgive can move another to seek forgiveness. Forgiveness is so much easier when I accept that we all need it. I will not refuse to forgive because I feel that someone’s offences are greater than my own. To extend grace to others. To forgive others, just as I am forgiven. I think not that I can direct the course of Love. For Love, if it finds me worthy, directs my course. Give not to receive, only to give from the very essence of my being, being here, right now – always – all ways.
Time waits for no man. I’ll only be truly free when I make my mind up to be happy about being the person that God intends me to be. The one he’s working on every single moment of every single day.
The cows continue to blow their out of tune trumpet horns in the distance.
Be good to yourself.
Make wise choices.
We are only down here visiting for a while.
Let your light shine and shine it brightly so that all can see.