Dear friend,
There’s a lovely light breeze coming in through the kitchen door. The clock ticks away the seconds, I can hear a young child’s wail echoing in a neighbours house. Their two Pomeranians taking up with some needle pitched call and response barking. One starts and the other answers, left to their own devices they’ll continue for hours at a time.
It’s not as bad as it was since I called round and explained how loud it is for us. Their owners have made more of an effort not to leave the dogs to bark for so long, but it’s still a feature of the summer to hear them yapping incessantly.
A mystery number calls me on my mobile. I pick it up but don’t speak. The line crackles for a few seconds and then the line goes dead. I guess it’s an automated call from someone either selling or scamming.
All of this every day stuff has the potential to wind you up. Like the ever growing list of things to do we all live with. Today is an ordinary day at home. That means my to do list can take a back seat, priority items only.
It’s taken most of the morning to book my flights to Italy to spend a few days with Chiara at the opera. Various apps and timetables were consulted and then the airlines booking app took me all the way to payment and then crashed. It did it about four or five times before I got on the phone to book that way. The app decided to work just as the airline agent picked up my call. He advised I stay on the call with him while I gave the app once last try and the flights went through.
It makes me wonder how an older generation cope with all of the two factor security checks and login codes, not to mention the battery of confusing options you’re offered as you book your tickets.
No wonder we get caught up in our heads with all of this head candy vying for our attention. Zara’s not bothered by any of it. She’s alternating between lying full stretch in the sun and cooling off on the tiles near the fridge freezer. She’s had a mild eye infection, I’ll be giving her eye drops once I’ve written to you.
I’ll be meditating and pottering around the house, looking after the plants, just being. Images of Cologne Cathedral keep returning to me. The grandness of it is compelling but it can be misleading to look for the divine in only in the grandeur and splendour of stone monuments.
When you meet the indwelling spirit it’s like sitting down with an old friend. More like an afternoon with your Gran, than the whizzbang of the creation of the universe. Ordinary, in other words. What could be more familiar than being yourself?
Yesterday I went with Patrick and Silvia and two of their friends to see Alex and Allyson Grey’s art exhibition “Illusionaries |Entheon”. I really enjoyed being there looking at the images and meditating with the other visitors. There will come a day when realising our connectedness to the created universe and the creative force through which it takes form, will be so obvious we may even feel it hardly worth mentioning. Just the fact that two artists could build an art temple to the divine in Canary Wharf is worth celebrating. We had an immersive spiritual experience hosted within the immersive corporate experience so typical of city real estate developments. Shops, travel hubs and as little free public space as possible.
You’re encouraged to make a purchase to participate.
The neighbours are now shouting at each other over the yapping of the dogs.
I’m going to make a salad and then have a go at fixing my Mam and Dad’s sun shade. This winter it took off into the air during a surprise wind storm, cracking some of its wooden struts as it came thudding down onto the shingle. I felt bad about it. It’s a family heirloom.
Behind all of this ordinary stuff, the mystery of the divine.
Made of it by it.
Us, one with it, if we but knew it.
Easier to feel it contemplating a tree or a cathedral than a shopping centre, but it’s there all the same.
Ordinary and divine, a wonderful paradox.
Human.
We are a mystery.
It’s good to keep that in mind.
Just in case we get too certain we know what’s going on.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey