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? Is this light enough to fire their green cells and start to work for the day? They’re probably lingering over breakfast.

The spicyness of the leaves that have started to gather at my feet gives the air a warm edge - hawthorn and oak in a tossed salad of browns and yellows and fading greens. Still dry, it has been dry for a few days now. Beyond where I sit, beyond the rose trellis and the swings, the pampas grass is extraordinary. New fronds feather the air, white candyfloss on sticks, an American Indian headdress of fur and feathers. Watch out for the leaves though, they cut as you touch.

Here I am, me and God and the dog, sitting on all my yesterdays, waiting for the new day, holding it huge and empty like a ball, a ball that will get filled so quickly, so easily. Let us make our mark, let us find our place, let us choose the better way. Let us smile, let us enjoy this feast of being alive, this rare, brief gift.

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. As they open I open, or perhaps the other way around.

They offer so much more than a back drop to my walking, they are the pattern of my thinking, they are beauty in my soul. They all know each other and I am part of the knowing, we are strung together like stitches in a garment, like waves finding shore. And the ocean, the secret smile that filters through, is an essence of joy, of completeness, of God. Each of us is an echo of glory, each of us traces the love lines of God.

As we live we create, making portraits of God, for God. We take our little part of the Universe and wrap it in words or gesture, in paint or clay, in steel or brick or paper, and unfold God in the picture of our days. God shining through light and shadow, through shape and colour, through leaf and face. The world is open and God is within.

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.  I can share air with the ivy, the grass, the birds.  There is so much of it, fresh and sweet, charging our lungs and our lives.

What a peace there is here, the peace of growing things at rest, not absence or stagnancy; the peace of muted birdsong; the peace of blue sky beyond the glowing edge of cloud; the peace that the sun brings on a late February day, coming closer at last, reminding us of summer; the peace of green as the grass carpets the garden and the dew carpets the grass, all shining in the sun.

The crocuses will open soon as the shade shifts around so they can catch the sun in their full cups.  But you won’t hear or see them.  They will open as slowly as the moon, as surely as the lure of love targets our errant hearts.  The sun comes, love comes, on the green and the brown, the new and the old whether dead or alive, lovely or unlovely.  Here is God ready for us all.

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.  See the few drops of yesterday’s rain glistening on the hawthorn branches and the fine blades of green grass, unkempt after a winter of straggly growth and no cutting.  There are still pockets of brown leaves, wet and darkening.  And bare branches.  But new life is beginning, greens are showing on the lavatera, on the flowering currant.  What a privilege to be down here, whatever stage or state it’s in, I can come in my garden and share in that.  I can see it in its nakedness, its drabness, as well as its bright summer dress.  

I love watching Jenny’s nose twitching as she samples the garden smells, not continuously, but turning her head one way, smell, then another way, smell.  I love the birds, filling the air with song.  And how strange that it is several minutes before I notice them, I am so accustomed to their backdrop.  What else do I miss through taking for granted, by not noticing?

I love the purple of the crocuses’ fat blooms scattered through the green lawn beneath the fruit trees, dark and pale, with a few that are yellow and white.  I love my garden, my space to share with the air, with the growing green, with the seasons, with the weather.  I love the green moss that covers the stones edging my little gravel area with a spongy soft carpet.  I love the laurel and ivy behind me, always green, always there, and the buds on the laurel waiting to shower me with perfume as I sit.

I love the movement in the sky.  At first glance it looks the same grey all over but there are patches of bright white that are sailing in the opposite direction from yesterday.  I love the space here, space to explore and be in different parts, in different moods, but held in this safe place.  I love the peace.  There are no demands, the garden gets on with itself, the leaves and birds and insects have their own timetable and I can sit here for as long as I want, revelling in the peace.

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. Even if I hold my hand there I can’t feel movement, just the slight difference in temperature between my palm and the back of my hand.  Such a little difference that our bodies of clay are inured to, but that feathers feel and catch, moving to a hidden rhythm.  Leaves are like this, twinkling in a breath of breeze when all around is still.

What are the things that move me?  Music, sunshine, poetry, beauty.  But love is the great mover, unzipping my tight suits so that the delicate feathers of feeling can flicker and respond in its warm breath.