Clarity Of Mind
Dear friend,
It’s so incredibly quiet right now. Zara is home with Katie, I’ve been on calls most of the day, and spent a few hours tidying and vacuuming the house. There’s been builder’s visiting to clean out and fix up the house’s guttering ready for the heavy rains and snow that’s forecasted for the next few days.
It reminds me of a boat getting ready for sea.
I’m counting something like nine hours of daylight each day and the daylight hours are becoming ever shorter.
Perhaps because I’m writing now I’m more aware of the gradual changes as Autumn deepens towards winter.
I’m visited by an old sensation. Shy like a robin.
The feeling of my infant school’s nativity scene, with the animals and the straw and golden lights and a baby in a manger and a star shining high up in the cold clear night sky.
Putting up the chairs for the cleaners at the end of the day, saying a little prayer before walking or running home as the sun sets over the solway firth. Great streaks of indigo blue and grey and the blood orange sun blazing on the horizon.
A child watched over by a donkey and lambs.
There was something so comforting in the story of a kid being born into such humble surroundings. I could relate to that. We’d walk past big houses that towered over three floors in the older parts of town. Those were not our streets. We were tourists there.
You need celebrations as the dark closes in, bright lights, good food.
An internal light.
An ember in the heart.
Zara found some kind of animal burrow this morning which she unsuccessfully tried to dig into a dog sized passage. She did succeed in getting her face covered in soft wet loose sod. Here she is looking enigmatically off into the distance.
Once the digging frenzy was done, as we turned towards the river; my mind suddenly cleared.
You realise how much mental baggage you carry around with you when it’s no longer there. Like we’re swimming through layers of mental activity, trying to make sense of a world that is overlain with abstraction.
Putting one foot in the front of the other, watching the dirt streaked dew sodden creature do her thing, connecting my attention to the breath, feeling the warm glow under the surface of my wind chilled hands; in a moment of clarity I see an internal blue sky.
This one is cloudless; in marked contrast to the low dirty grey clouds relayed to my eyes.
Peace of mind descends sometimes by grace.
Is greatly helped by even the shortest meditative practice.
Watching the mind.
Or reading someone profound.
Listening deeply to someone without a thought about what will come next.
Or feeling the cold, or approaching the dark; finding reasons to love.
If you’re home now and it’s quite like it is here.
Taking a moment to love you.
However you’re showing up.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey