Wow it has been the best part of 2 years since I've written anything for this blog...
This is partly due to balancing a full time job and doing a part time MA course, not having the brain space or capacity to do much else - discovering my limitations.
Anyway, a friend of mine dared me to write some poetry over lent, a challenge that I singularly failed to accomplish... but it did get me thinking and yearning to return to these places of reflection and expression that I'd left behind somewhere in my soul.
Amy and I were on holiday last week in West Wales - a stunningly beautiful and under appreciated part of the world. On one day, we took a trip across to Caldy Island.
Caldy feels different from other places, there's an invasive peace that meets you as you step off the boat. There's a lightness, a sense of 'wellness of soul' and connection with nature that is hard to come by these days.
I think this is largely to do with the monastic presence that has been there for centuries and is very much alive today. There has been constant prayer there for hundreds of years, and it shows. When a place is bathed in prayer for that long it sort of becomes palpable.
It's also because of the unspoilt rugged honesty of the land, it was so quiet, all our manmade mess melted away and I was inspired to write this reflection...
Rock and earth
Grass and sea
This is what we're made of.
The wind swept cliffs with dishevelled grassy tops bowing before the elements,
The untraceable sparkle flitting here and there amongst the gently undulating ocean as it greets the sun.
This is what we're made of.
The quiet scuttle of a beetle,
The steady silence of a tree having stood all the tests time has thrown its way,
And the joy, the ceaseless activity of the most delicate bird that finds a home in the safety of its branches.
This is what we're made of.
And yet it is so alien.
So delightful, but so alien.
It surprises and stirs some distant, primordial memory.
A childhood dream?
A deeper knowing?
... That this is what we're made of.
It is where life begins and where it finds that rhythm, that song to sing that reconnects itself with the source.
Here is peace
Here is balance and freedom,
That which we seek ever so fleetingly and so often in vain in the concrete and the lights and the noise and the grime.
Here is the long view
An Island where things can be seen as they are, apart from our man-made insistence on impatience and 'results'.
Reluctantly I tear myself away and sail back to our tarnished interpretation of the real.
But may I take back with me, just a piece, a resounding echo of what it is where are made of.
Below are just a few pictures of Caldy.
This is partly due to balancing a full time job and doing a part time MA course, not having the brain space or capacity to do much else - discovering my limitations.
Anyway, a friend of mine dared me to write some poetry over lent, a challenge that I singularly failed to accomplish... but it did get me thinking and yearning to return to these places of reflection and expression that I'd left behind somewhere in my soul.
Amy and I were on holiday last week in West Wales - a stunningly beautiful and under appreciated part of the world. On one day, we took a trip across to Caldy Island.
Caldy feels different from other places, there's an invasive peace that meets you as you step off the boat. There's a lightness, a sense of 'wellness of soul' and connection with nature that is hard to come by these days.
I think this is largely to do with the monastic presence that has been there for centuries and is very much alive today. There has been constant prayer there for hundreds of years, and it shows. When a place is bathed in prayer for that long it sort of becomes palpable.
It's also because of the unspoilt rugged honesty of the land, it was so quiet, all our manmade mess melted away and I was inspired to write this reflection...
Rock and earth
Grass and sea
This is what we're made of.
The wind swept cliffs with dishevelled grassy tops bowing before the elements,
The untraceable sparkle flitting here and there amongst the gently undulating ocean as it greets the sun.
This is what we're made of.
The quiet scuttle of a beetle,
The steady silence of a tree having stood all the tests time has thrown its way,
And the joy, the ceaseless activity of the most delicate bird that finds a home in the safety of its branches.
This is what we're made of.
And yet it is so alien.
So delightful, but so alien.
It surprises and stirs some distant, primordial memory.
A childhood dream?
A deeper knowing?
... That this is what we're made of.
It is where life begins and where it finds that rhythm, that song to sing that reconnects itself with the source.
Here is peace
Here is balance and freedom,
That which we seek ever so fleetingly and so often in vain in the concrete and the lights and the noise and the grime.
Here is the long view
An Island where things can be seen as they are, apart from our man-made insistence on impatience and 'results'.
Reluctantly I tear myself away and sail back to our tarnished interpretation of the real.
But may I take back with me, just a piece, a resounding echo of what it is where are made of.
Below are just a few pictures of Caldy.
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| I did bring just a piece back with me, to make a cross out of Caldy Island drift wood |
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