Archive - Words of Keeping

My, it is dim down here, the days darkening towards winter, the sky hugging its grey close, infiltrating the air. The grey is a colour, is a sound – the sound of birds, this one and that one trilling, and further off a cawing. It is still, it feels womblike, I feel womblike wrapped in my scarf and coat. New songs from other birds complete the eggshell around. Are the plants awake?  read more »

There are times when it seems the whole world lies open like an oyster’s shell, its surfaces shining instead of dull, revealing instead of hiding. Each face and leaf and shape and colour is charged like an ocean of spirit, like a thumbprint of God. All are painted with the same brush, the same loveliness, and I can feel the same life rising up in me to meet them.  read more »

I am welcomed back into the womb of my garden as if I had never been away.  It is an arbour, a harbour, a safe place.  It is where I too can grow slowly through my seasons.  I am allowed sunny and gloomy days, I am allowed to be me, to be unique and yet the same, all family under the sun, all held together by the steady shelf of land under our feet and the soaring sky.   read more »

Here I am in my gravel garden again after three months.  I have been staying away from the cold, dark, dank, bare outdoors.  February has felt particularly long and grey although the crocuses are out and the daffodils are shooting.  But hey, look at the pearly glaze in the Eastern sky where wisps of cloud are trailing the sailing sun.  Listen to the birds.  Breathe the air.   read more »

Sitting still is an art, but if achieved with a sense of adventure then you can notice.  The air around me seems still too, but at the top of the window, above the radiator, the feathers of the dream catcher are gently shaking and dancing in the rising sir.  If it’s rising there then it must be slowly, inexorably moving through the room.  read more »

Yesterday was the solstice, the shortest day of the year.  It hid behind the tatters of snow and the fear of more.  It hid behind the focus on Christmas and the bustle to be ready.  Silently, mysteriously, we have now moved back from the brink and are inexorably heading into the light, although it still feels the same, although the cold still hugs us like a friend.
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The snow has come.  It is thick and bright, clothing the garden, trees and roads in quietness.  A gift of white, of pure essence, poured in whirling skies of wet kisses.  It transforms everything, makes the world its own, even gathering on thin twigs and coating the sides of trees.  Each bush has its own arrangement, its own sculpture.   read more »

It is cold and still, the air is damp and chilled.  It is dark in the garden, the sky a deep blue backdrop to the black branches.  The sun when it rises has found a different spot to bless with its favours, a new edge of earth to slowly stroke then climb from its shoulders. 
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There is such love abroad this morning.  We are soaking in silver, silver wisps of cloud, silver moon that has strayed into the day on a pale-blue, ice-blue sky.  The frost has charged every surface with moon dust so it sparkles silver back to the sky like a mirror.  But the sun that seems silver as it tastes the edge of the day shines a rosy gold everywhere it looks.   read more »

All is hushed.  The still air has turned to pearl, wrapping the distant roofs and trees in its haze.  The fog gives everything an ethereal quality, filling vistas with a fuzziness that looks warm like a cashmere blanket but that pecks at my cheeks with a damp chill.  We are living in thin cloud, muffled from urgency, a fairy land of muted light that shines with a pale intensity.   read more »