The door of the office is rattling. The window beside me whooshes and all around the sounds of the rising wind, rising to a gale. On the hillside fledgling trees are waving and wafting in the greyblue of approaching night. It’s like a dance. It is a dance! A crazed dance of the trees before they turn in for the night. And that’s just what I’m about to do.
Getting adequate rest. Taking a break. Taking time to smelling the roses. Listening to the wind on the window. Sitting quietly doing nothing. All good things to ‘do’.
Dances of trees, of grasses and leaves; the shimmering dance of a pond in the breeze…or as the musician Bob Dylan once sang, “to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free….”
Do I recall or did I dream that lines from one of the Morning Service scriptures could have been translated, “Light goes with darkness as the sequence does of steps in a dance….” ?? It sometimes comes up that way.
Ah, I know that feeling well…the hermit inside of me needs these moments…while my parents were visiting for a month and we were on the road in Rome or throughtout Germany, I always took the time to go down to the dining room of the hotels we were staying before my partner and parents and sit for 15 mintues, on my own, with my steaming cup of coffee and something sweet to eat…just sitting, being quiet, doing nothing…it made some of the stressful days much easier.
By the way, I love wind…growing up in the Rockies with our house on a mountainside, the wind would blow and seem to tug and try to lift the roof of the house…as if the wind wanted a dance with the roof.
All the best…Jack
I think the biggest challenge (not the right word, but I can’t think of a better one) to my own practice is a deep-down reluctance to stop and let go of distractions and activity for a time.
It feels quite beneficial to cease ‘doing’ for a bit when I can manage it, but my mind seems to be superb at finding excuses or tasks I absolutely have to do right NOW, or just seamlessly slipping to a totally different chain of thought, before I can take some time-out.
It’s quite interesting, I wonder what this avoidance is about. Does anyone else have similar experiences? I somehow doubt that I’m unique in this.
Regards, Hobson.
When I was a teenager I would take time that ‘should’ have been spent at school and go and watch the trees in a local green space. I had no idea of spirit I just ‘knew’ it was ‘right’ and felt people should acknowledge such things more.
Now that I have a more ‘formal’ understanding of spirit and spend time exploring Zen Buddhism I see I was closer than I realised to that which I now consider to be of value.
Of course now as an adult with all sorts of distractions I know only too well the situation Hobson describes. What I wonder would zazen have given me had I known of such matters in my youth. It might be better to think about taking time ‘in’- into what is always here.
Thanks for the post Rev. Mugo
Margaret, I too heard ‘steps in a dance.
Jack, I’ll have to remember your story of the wind when we are in the middle of our winter hurricanes!
Hobson and Dave, I hope my post this evening speaks to you. And you have raised points that it would be good to write more on. Sometime.