A Journal of Thoughts, Photographs and Sketches
An evening walk – on my way home
I listen to the wanderer within. Wise and ancient voice, known, yet unknown, always calling me beyond myself; I’m awakened to my sense of pilgrimage, yet also to my roots and belonging. Between these two I live and dance.
To live deliberately is a good thing. Goal-setting and to-do lists etc., certainly get things done. But to be overly deliberate in our living is limiting. It becomes exhausting. Everything has to be gruellingly willed into existence, and the inevitable price we pay is a form of tunnel vision and a loss in natural spontaneity and creativity.
A Thought:
I’m not one for certainties, though I’m sure they have their place. Now that may sound a bit wishy-washy and anaemic, but they do have this tendency to shut doors and close down thought and discussion. I lean more to the side of that gracious invitation to look beyond the prisons of certainty, into the wide-open spaces of mystery and endless possibility. So, when it comes to certainties in life, I prefer to hold them in an open hand and bid them goodbye when they need to go.
Absence lies at the heart of our seeing more clearly. It’s often in something’s absence that we suddenly begin to see it in a new light. It was Kahlil Gibran who said, “Let there be spaces in your togetherness.
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” Rumi
I’m discovering that this little phrase, “being drawn by” has a profound sense of freedom about it. It seems to me that as you practice it the exertion in life is eased and is slowly replaced by a natural kind of attraction and a “movement towards.” And so, the ethic I try to follow has much to do with, in Rumi’s words, feeling the strange pull of what I really love.
Perceptions – probably one of the key aspects to living well. To see and not to see, is the issue. To try and see things from a confined and dark room will always be problematic and in many cases dangerous. The world behind the window is small and cramped, but the one beyond it is wide, open and welcoming.
To ponder upon distance and spaciousness speaks into the freedom we all yearn for, which surely is the birthright of all humanity. I felt a sense of freedom and exhilaration here as I gazed out to the misty horizon and felt the expansiveness of the sky above me.
