Thursday, April 30, 2020

the tree


The tree rises from the  dark.

It circles around the "heart of darkness" from which it reaches towards the light.

A tree is a perfect presence.

It is somehow able to engage and integrate its own dissolution.

The tree is wise in knowing how to foster its own loss.

It does not become haunted by the loss nor addicted to it.

The tree shelters and minds the loss.

Out of this comes the quiet dignity and poise of a tree's presence.

Trees stand beautifully on the clay.

They stand with dignity.

A  life that wishes to honour its own possibility
has to learn too how to integrate the suffering
 of dark and bleak times
into a dignity of presence.

Letting go of old forms of life, a tree practices
hospitality towards new forms of life.

It balances the perennial energies of winter and spring
within its own living bark.

The tree is wise in the art of belonging.

...

The tree can reach towards the light,
endure wind, rain, and storm,
precisely because it is rooted.

Each of its branches is ultimately anchored in a reliable depth of clay.

The wisdom of the tree balances the path inwards with the pathway outwards.





John O'Donohue
Eternal Echoes
Photo:  Peter Bowers






Sunday, April 5, 2020

dance


At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards;
At the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.
Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
And there is only the dance.


T. S. Eliot
Photo:  Peter Bowers




...we clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us;
we enter the little circle of each other's arms,
and the larger circle of lovers whose hands are joined in a dance,
and the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments.


Wendell Berry
excerpt: Healing