I love the sense of an art gallery as a place of serene contemplation and recall Plotinus refusing to have his portrait created saying 'why create the image of an image?'
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Monday, January 4, 2016
The Art of Silence before the Mystery - a reflection for Epiphany
They fell down and worshiped -
A reflection I wrote for church but which I decided not to present.....
The art of silence before the mystery -
I want to suggest a creative art which you may discover
brings life into focus. Some of you here
may have uncovered this treasure and some of you may be connoisseurs having
tasted the flavours of this art. It can be sophisticated or simple and it requires
no equipment.
It's an art form that I teach. This year I was asked to
teach at a city centre for people experiencing homelessness and marginalisation and I have a group of older people who are
experiencing forms of homelessness. Many of them feel pain, stress, anxiety and
grief and while the art form that I teach is not a magic wand it does enable
some of them to find the way and to find a better nights sleep or to go to the
supermarket without having an anxiety attack.
What is this art form? It comes by many names but I will
simply call it the art of silence. I will call it the art of being present and
paying attention. It is an art because the world in which we live is training
us to be distracted and amused to death. I call it the art of silence before
mystery.
'They fell down and worshiped'. You know the story
perhaps too well to notice just how subversive it seeks to be. It's a story
that invites us to take part. There is no mention of three Magi, no mention of
camels no mention of a manger. The house in Bethlehem could be any house
including yours or mine.
I see these seekers who have looked up and seen the star
and asked 'where and why' as wise as Socrates. He wandered ancient Athens
asking supposedly knowledgeable people as well as artisans and army generals
where and why and came to the conclusion that wisdom consisting as knowing how
little he knew and that while a person could define the questions eventually
when it came to discussions of love, death or courage words would give out.
Then the art of silence in the mystery begins.
I teach my students simply to practice being present to
breathing, to their body, to their thoughts and to observe these as if they
were watching over a tiny new born baby. Distractions will arise along the path
but it's all about following the star of silence until the seeker arrives at a
sense of being at home with silence and learns to fine tune making choices that
serve them.
Notice in the story the three gifts of gold, frankincense
and myrrh. Gold needs no explanation, incense offered to the gods or Roman
Emperor, and myrrh to embalm the body of a ruler. I suggest to you that these
are to one extent or another the burdens we carry. The gold of possessions that
we can use to define us, the frankincense of status and what others think of
us, the desire to be 'on trend' and the myrrh which is the fear and avoidance
of our death and the knowledge that within a few years we will be all but
forgotten. The art of silence helps us to release our often tight grip on these
things, to become more detached and to discover the real treasure. All the best
things in life after all are not things but qualities. This is the real
subversion that the art of silence in the mystery brings.
I see the wise seekers simply being and sitting in the
presence of the child watching and waiting, paying attention conscious that
they are in the presence of great mystery. Earlier today I sat with a member of
this community in intensive care keeping them company, holding their hand. What
can be more precious than this silent a compliment. These fragile moments come
and go. Only a breath holds us this side of life.
Silence in the presence of the Mystery of it all can be a
single conscious breath, a sip of coffee, an hour on the meditation cushion,
worship in church anything that takes us deeper into the amazement and
appreciation that opens our heart wider.
The art of silence being in the presence of the mystery
is at the heart of all authentic philosophies and religions. Sadly often we
have given the impression to the wider world that you have to rush around busy
the whole time and feel endlessly guilty. To me the essence of faith is silent
contemplation and then doing a few things to try and make the world slightly
more bearable.
To my conclusion. You don't have to believe in God to
practice the art of silence, you don't have to know lots of things and you
don't need other people. Teachers only point the way and sometimes those you
think are wise are not wise at all.
The star is your question 'where' and 'why'. Try it,
simply be present to the mystery. The mystery of your aliveness, the mystery of
love, the mystery of the universe, the mystery of suffering, the weird strangeness of your conscious existence. Why
not make the most of this beautiful art of silence in the presence.
Our lives are like the blink of an eye compared to a
star. Why waste these precious moments. The art of silence, being still before
the mystery and strangeness calls to each of us. Find the space, lose your
busyness, notice the ways you distract yourself?
The mystery of our dream as we gaze on the Christ child
the symbol of beauty, truth and goodness - the Eternal Wisdom of the universe.
May we return home by another path and begin to live differently moment
by unfolding moment. The star now is within leading us further up and further
in beyond the words, beyond our Herod like desire to control, releasing us to
live moment by moment in the silent presence of mystery.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
In the midst
For many years I would stand at a lecturn and address the congregation with these words:
'In the midst of life we are in death' 'media vita in morte summus' written about 750 AD in France and sung as an antiphon and then taken into Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer. It resonates for every age as an invitation to faith and trust.
For me it's become 'in the midst of death we are in life'. You and I have a fleeting span of existence a momentary flash of consciousness and so this inversion focuses life in the here and now rather than colonizing life life as a brief interlude for the here after. Life now is enough and so for myself I have no desire for an afterlife. I cherish the experience that 'this is it' How wonderful and incredible this 'it'.
In the midst of Thanatos we are in 'Eros' and invited to live and love with open hands
'In the midst of life we are in death' 'media vita in morte summus' written about 750 AD in France and sung as an antiphon and then taken into Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer. It resonates for every age as an invitation to faith and trust.
For me it's become 'in the midst of death we are in life'. You and I have a fleeting span of existence a momentary flash of consciousness and so this inversion focuses life in the here and now rather than colonizing life life as a brief interlude for the here after. Life now is enough and so for myself I have no desire for an afterlife. I cherish the experience that 'this is it' How wonderful and incredible this 'it'.
In the midst of Thanatos we are in 'Eros' and invited to live and love with open hands
Monday, December 22, 2014
Beyond Interlaken Switzerland
Beyond Interlaken
Swirling clouds are prayers to the sublime. Water white from recent familiarity with glacial slopes plays with river rocks. Cows with discordant bells move at the speed of grass under mountains clothed with a chasuble of autumn ochres woven so finely. For a moment the tulle of clouds parts to reveal far peaks of brilliant white. The ultramarine lake is gently patterned stroked by the breeze. The church clock intones an invitation and we walk back to the train past wooden houses with finely carved Bible verse and brilliant displays of red geraniums.
There are dragon tracks here, between silver rails, the teeth of the rack railway and the scent of oil mixes with the piquant aroma of cow. Tiny trains climb improbable gradients. I look through the oil smeared rainbow of a window, into the cab of an old box square locomotive of riveted iron and wood to a shelf of brass and wood, dials and handles. A sleeping dragon with her pantograph wings folded, away from the fire, resting under the shingled roof of worn sheds roofline shaped by the winter snow roosting there each year. Heaped stone ballast and the sharp blade of the snow plough reminders that these rich green fields and town prepare for the blizzard of snow where the mountain reaches down to invite these pastures to dance the dance of silent snow.
On the street great balls of sculptured stone, overhead water falling vertically from a high crag crossed by the horizontal movement of the yellow Post Bus. Angles of buildings an essence of Swiss.
To me a visitor this scene is impossible. Its as if various old photographs and tea towels brought home from holidays by my grandparents had been stitched together and the tiny clock with its dangling weights and little roof had suddenly magically expanded into a house before my eyes, the church bell and mechanical clock alongside the sun driven clock adding verisimilitude. Then that moment passes and I am here now, not that wide eyed boy in shorts who thought that a clock that went to 17 might be possible since 17 was his special number. Twelve is so conventional and confining after all. That boy like this man scents a wild time that runs away joyously.
The train, at this distance a toy in a shop window, traversing the slope each carriage containing a satchel of stories moving between light and shadow inviting me to ride. As I turn, do I catch a glimpse of the mad philosopher's improbable mustache warning me that without the rack rail of a wider vision I may attempt too much. My inner wild dragon must rest as well as play. At this moment I feel for his solitary striving and yearning and once again am grateful for this family with whom I travel in experiences of travel.
Swirling clouds are prayers to the sublime. Water white from recent familiarity with glacial slopes plays with river rocks. Cows with discordant bells move at the speed of grass under mountains clothed with a chasuble of autumn ochres woven so finely. For a moment the tulle of clouds parts to reveal far peaks of brilliant white. The ultramarine lake is gently patterned stroked by the breeze. The church clock intones an invitation and we walk back to the train past wooden houses with finely carved Bible verse and brilliant displays of red geraniums.
There are dragon tracks here, between silver rails, the teeth of the rack railway and the scent of oil mixes with the piquant aroma of cow. Tiny trains climb improbable gradients. I look through the oil smeared rainbow of a window, into the cab of an old box square locomotive of riveted iron and wood to a shelf of brass and wood, dials and handles. A sleeping dragon with her pantograph wings folded, away from the fire, resting under the shingled roof of worn sheds roofline shaped by the winter snow roosting there each year. Heaped stone ballast and the sharp blade of the snow plough reminders that these rich green fields and town prepare for the blizzard of snow where the mountain reaches down to invite these pastures to dance the dance of silent snow.
On the street great balls of sculptured stone, overhead water falling vertically from a high crag crossed by the horizontal movement of the yellow Post Bus. Angles of buildings an essence of Swiss.
To me a visitor this scene is impossible. Its as if various old photographs and tea towels brought home from holidays by my grandparents had been stitched together and the tiny clock with its dangling weights and little roof had suddenly magically expanded into a house before my eyes, the church bell and mechanical clock alongside the sun driven clock adding verisimilitude. Then that moment passes and I am here now, not that wide eyed boy in shorts who thought that a clock that went to 17 might be possible since 17 was his special number. Twelve is so conventional and confining after all. That boy like this man scents a wild time that runs away joyously.
The train, at this distance a toy in a shop window, traversing the slope each carriage containing a satchel of stories moving between light and shadow inviting me to ride. As I turn, do I catch a glimpse of the mad philosopher's improbable mustache warning me that without the rack rail of a wider vision I may attempt too much. My inner wild dragon must rest as well as play. At this moment I feel for his solitary striving and yearning and once again am grateful for this family with whom I travel in experiences of travel.
Running the Cumbrian fells
Slipping on my dark blue running gear is like reacquainting myself with
old friends. I slip on socks and tightly lace my running shoes feeling
the tightness and the tug. It's been too long but somehow my mind and
body has ached for this movement, for the pull of the heart and the
rhythm of the breath.
After feeling the bolt of the farm gate release behind me I pull down my well fitting lightweight running hat and open my stride and after a few moments it's seems that brakes have begun to ease off and a new energy and looseness flowers through my body from the sway of my arms and the gentle cantilever of my backbone awake within me
I tell myself that it feels good and so it does, this getting out of my constantly turning mind and into nature, into my body. There is an intimacy with the air and earth, the senses sharpen and boundaries become porous. Running gear feels like running unclad and the lightness of a run lifts one into a series of temporary flights over the earth, a slight jump over a mountain beck much attenuated at the end of summer.
I close my mouth to avoid the clouds of midges and experience one in the eye which I blink away. I weave past a craftsman repairing a stone wall. As I run along the wall a slow measured retrieval of a jagged lump of Lakeland slate slotted into place now become woven into a regular pattern, embracing its neighbour it's very unsymmetrical shape an asset into binding together this structure to survive winters and summers and hold animals in their allotted place. Part of me wants to stop and exchange a few words but I am urged on.
It's like a kind of inner steam engine with the breath the energy that rings feet and legs into an oppositional harmony of motion and balance and pulls in more of me as I seek a relaxed run erect enough to provide an internal spring within.
This is wild and I am in wild, an ecstatic experience of flow in a body in motion but yet in time a temporary sojourner to these massive mountains overhead and to these young oak woodlands beginning to surrender summer leaves. I feel chipped slate underfoot, the softness of boggy mud, I slow to negotiate rocks since a twisted ankle is not an ambition and slow to walk down a steep rocky slope as I feel my heart loosen from a canter to a trot and to a walk.
The sun sparkles from the river running also between rocks it's path as twisty as mine, birdsong from the woodland, the flash of a magpie with long blue black tail tangents before my gaze. I'm hot and sticky yet feeling the surge of wildness even as the body tires. Up an incline and down the other side, joining a track, crossing the river by an arched bridge and moving into the next village passing walkers with a brief greeting. At the end of the day few walkers and they all seems to be birds flying to their over night roosts with their Ordinance Survey routes now turned into stories and images for discussion and recollection during winter evenings.
It's a beautiful sunny warm autumn day and here I am my body being possessed and possessing this run experience. Through the farm and white painted buildings and then I turn onto the road. I'm less familiar with this part of the journey and have to cross and recross the road to be careful of the traffic. There are more pauses for walking now and less of running as I begin to think ahead, keen to arrive back at the 17 th century Borrowdale farmhouse from which I began.
Then nearing my destination a moment of grace as I meet a red squirrel sunning herself on a branch before my eyes. She waves her tufty tail as if to rebuke those grey squirrels from America who have exiled the few of her kind to this narrow valley and runs vertically up the tree as if to tell me that my horizontal movement is too easy.
My body that began this run, the first for many many months although there have been fast and hard walks and short sprints, that felt light and young now seems to be a burden, a bumping bag of body, and I can trot slowly to the double bridges than span the river and lead me back to the village of Grange.
The body and mind are stilled in movement, the mind drawn away from its chatter this endless turning over of the soil in conversation. The rhythm of the breath and the focus on the journey brings the runner, since I'm not even conscious of myself as a self into the flow of moments the only decision to live within the constraints of heart rate breath and strength. This is a silence that refreshes as much as it tires.
This is 55 minutes of an experience I would not have missed for the world and about 5 miles and in a boast to myself I fire up the body and sprint for home pouring out my breath in pants and feeling my heart rate soar until I slow, warm down, enter the house and begin stretching out this run. Shedding this light skin of running gear I feel the warm water of the shower strip away the grime of this journey and later I feel my aching bones and body with a warm affection. I feel alive right now and feel released.
After feeling the bolt of the farm gate release behind me I pull down my well fitting lightweight running hat and open my stride and after a few moments it's seems that brakes have begun to ease off and a new energy and looseness flowers through my body from the sway of my arms and the gentle cantilever of my backbone awake within me
I tell myself that it feels good and so it does, this getting out of my constantly turning mind and into nature, into my body. There is an intimacy with the air and earth, the senses sharpen and boundaries become porous. Running gear feels like running unclad and the lightness of a run lifts one into a series of temporary flights over the earth, a slight jump over a mountain beck much attenuated at the end of summer.
I close my mouth to avoid the clouds of midges and experience one in the eye which I blink away. I weave past a craftsman repairing a stone wall. As I run along the wall a slow measured retrieval of a jagged lump of Lakeland slate slotted into place now become woven into a regular pattern, embracing its neighbour it's very unsymmetrical shape an asset into binding together this structure to survive winters and summers and hold animals in their allotted place. Part of me wants to stop and exchange a few words but I am urged on.
It's like a kind of inner steam engine with the breath the energy that rings feet and legs into an oppositional harmony of motion and balance and pulls in more of me as I seek a relaxed run erect enough to provide an internal spring within.
This is wild and I am in wild, an ecstatic experience of flow in a body in motion but yet in time a temporary sojourner to these massive mountains overhead and to these young oak woodlands beginning to surrender summer leaves. I feel chipped slate underfoot, the softness of boggy mud, I slow to negotiate rocks since a twisted ankle is not an ambition and slow to walk down a steep rocky slope as I feel my heart loosen from a canter to a trot and to a walk.
The sun sparkles from the river running also between rocks it's path as twisty as mine, birdsong from the woodland, the flash of a magpie with long blue black tail tangents before my gaze. I'm hot and sticky yet feeling the surge of wildness even as the body tires. Up an incline and down the other side, joining a track, crossing the river by an arched bridge and moving into the next village passing walkers with a brief greeting. At the end of the day few walkers and they all seems to be birds flying to their over night roosts with their Ordinance Survey routes now turned into stories and images for discussion and recollection during winter evenings.
It's a beautiful sunny warm autumn day and here I am my body being possessed and possessing this run experience. Through the farm and white painted buildings and then I turn onto the road. I'm less familiar with this part of the journey and have to cross and recross the road to be careful of the traffic. There are more pauses for walking now and less of running as I begin to think ahead, keen to arrive back at the 17 th century Borrowdale farmhouse from which I began.
Then nearing my destination a moment of grace as I meet a red squirrel sunning herself on a branch before my eyes. She waves her tufty tail as if to rebuke those grey squirrels from America who have exiled the few of her kind to this narrow valley and runs vertically up the tree as if to tell me that my horizontal movement is too easy.
My body that began this run, the first for many many months although there have been fast and hard walks and short sprints, that felt light and young now seems to be a burden, a bumping bag of body, and I can trot slowly to the double bridges than span the river and lead me back to the village of Grange.
The body and mind are stilled in movement, the mind drawn away from its chatter this endless turning over of the soil in conversation. The rhythm of the breath and the focus on the journey brings the runner, since I'm not even conscious of myself as a self into the flow of moments the only decision to live within the constraints of heart rate breath and strength. This is a silence that refreshes as much as it tires.
This is 55 minutes of an experience I would not have missed for the world and about 5 miles and in a boast to myself I fire up the body and sprint for home pouring out my breath in pants and feeling my heart rate soar until I slow, warm down, enter the house and begin stretching out this run. Shedding this light skin of running gear I feel the warm water of the shower strip away the grime of this journey and later I feel my aching bones and body with a warm affection. I feel alive right now and feel released.
fragments of a Mary Oliver poem
It
doesn’t have to be
the
blue iris, it could be
weeds
in a vacant lot, or a few
small
stones; just
pay
attention, then patch
a
few words together and don’t try
to make
them elaborate, this isn’t
a
contest but the doorway
into
thanks, and a silence in which
another
voice may speak.
Mary
Oliver
Ancient Stones in Cumbria
Ancient stones
There is no sign, no board to inform but only an ancient circle of stones. Easy to drive by, easy to shrug off as people so used to the machine and to buildings that make us feel small or lift us high in the sky.
These stones are silent now, the subject of scholarly conjecture but they serve us visitors as a marker for memory. Half in jest and half in wild desire I remove my shirt feeling the keen wind kiss me gently and eddy past as I move clockwise in respect since every human sacred site demands this direction, touching the pebble I carry in my pocket this holiday and which I have touched other stones, other churches, other shrines and my fathers grave, against these stones.
Leaving them they lean into the turning earth upright like a hand of love accepting me as a distant grandchild of a client people. This is a tribal place with room for me and I am grateful and half naked half born between worlds.
Thank you stones may you stand here another 5,000 years assembled in this place as silent witnesses to people who saw greater horizons.
There is no sign, no board to inform but only an ancient circle of stones. Easy to drive by, easy to shrug off as people so used to the machine and to buildings that make us feel small or lift us high in the sky.
These stones are silent now, the subject of scholarly conjecture but they serve us visitors as a marker for memory. Half in jest and half in wild desire I remove my shirt feeling the keen wind kiss me gently and eddy past as I move clockwise in respect since every human sacred site demands this direction, touching the pebble I carry in my pocket this holiday and which I have touched other stones, other churches, other shrines and my fathers grave, against these stones.
Leaving them they lean into the turning earth upright like a hand of love accepting me as a distant grandchild of a client people. This is a tribal place with room for me and I am grateful and half naked half born between worlds.
Thank you stones may you stand here another 5,000 years assembled in this place as silent witnesses to people who saw greater horizons.
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