Feeding into a small project I’ve been part of recently, I’ve been thinking of the ‘largest of all garden plants’ and ‘the birds of the sky* are able to nest in its shade…’

“When planted, it grows and becomes…”

Perhaps we might recognise or even realise a place we can all share.  Where we can find shelter, sanctuary, shade, harbour, rest and relief.  From the throat and heart to the stretching vascular meristems… it can become a life supporting structure.  A place we can share stories, support, nutrition and relief, as well as a place to design, create, educate and grow…

If heaven is like this, we can perhaps sneak a glimpse of it.  It’s not just a wonderful world, it’s a mighty world… the world around us can have great strength and value.  If we think of the resources around us, perhaps they are in-deed mightier than we can comprehend.

As people, we are a vibrant mix of characters and cultures, colours, voices, insights and dreams.  Some live in the north some in the south, some will sing together and some will never meet, eye to eye.  We all sing different notes in different styles but are perhaps part of the same throng, capable of marvellous murmuration, rejuvenating ritual and intimate ingenuity.  

The energy that can bind us is bigger and mightier than we can comprehend. Perhaps it should be valued, shared and celebrated. 

If your interest is piqued, there’s more here… BBC’s Something Understood, Mark Tully asks why trees are so important to us.

And, from the BBC’s @BBCideas The girl who changed the world with an acorn  An urban fairy tale which challenges us to think about the way we interact…

So that was an interesting half-term break. We were instructed to self-isolate. “The NHS informed us, it is now your legal duty to self-isolate”. We all did so. I could share the details of this, but it’s exhausting and it would not be helpful. So…

Back to life, back to reality… however do you want me…

A month or so ago I went through an exercise to visualise some reasons for my being… What we came up with at that moment was something like this:

“I get up in the morning… to discover and experience commonality and connections so that I can interact with people and the wider world, to help us all feel different…” #workinprogress

As you may know I tend to share stuff I see. I very often find the vibrancy and intensity of the world around me so strong I have to stop and acknowledge it. What a wonderful world…

So after a few weeks of going without, here’s to more of the simple stuff around us!

Below is a random compilation of captures from my Instagram this year – minus the inevitable shots of pets, food & drink of course.

Enjoy…

If you need any imagery or artwork for print – give me a shout.

Print – from large format A1, A0 posters, roller display banners and vinyl banners or signage for outside use, through to A5 flyers, bookmarks and mini booklets we can find a way. PRINT

We also can help you design and optimise your graphics for use online, on social media profiles and posts… such as the below:

Cindy Woolley – Dietitian

George Himan – Massage and Recovery

LARGE or small – let me know if I can help with graphic design for print.

I am here. We are here. Balance and grounding…

Many of us have recently been forced to re-evaluate things. The pandemic has forced many to stop, pause, quarantine…  find our home. Recently my wife, kids and I were forced to literally ‘go home’ – after one day on the other side of the country on holiday, we returned to the ‘shire and spent the rest of our holy-day at home. Self isolating for 14 days. (hence this crazy post)

‘if one could only suspend disbelief forever’.

Once again we break routines and re-evaluate things we take for granted, and find ourselves disbelieving the things we believe in. A few years ago, after seeing a play at Leicester’s Curve, I wrote ‘if one could only suspend disbelief forever’.  We usually do this daily, we believe the stories that swirl around us. It’s when the competing stories begin to confuse our assumptions that things might start to wobble… but what are these beliefs, the everyday things we trust in?

I have written before how as a student of Art and Performance, we were taught to deconstruct. To help discover the links between the ‘object’, the ‘subject’, and its ‘meanings’. But deconstruction still leaves us with the deconstructed building blocks, the stories, the images, and assumptions.

We are not these things!

I have always held on to the concept of I AM. Images, which breed assumptions, which create motives. We are these things, but today I had a sudden self-epiphany… In the meta-modern world yes, we are made up of these things, but at heart, at root, at our core, we are not these things!

In a novel recently, I read a passage describing individuals living before our culture took hold…

“It was the huge elemental forces – the open sky, one day azure blue, the next grey, lowering and savage, the ridges that swept endlessly to the horizon like a sea, the whistling breezes and the great silences – it was these things which both frightened him and comforted him as well…”

Sarum, Edward Rutherfurd

To truly deconstruct, perhaps we need to clear the ‘stuff’ off the table, wipe the slate clean and then re-embrace things. Isolation has caused many to go without the things we hold (or that seemed) important.

At our core (or heart) we are so much more than our IAM.

It’s easily said, but not so easily done.  However, it can be easily done, and it’s not so easy to say!

While ‘doing’ some Yoga with Adriene today I realised that I AM ‘here’. All I AM is here. The fact that ‘we are here’ is a big deal! Isn’t it!? 

Adriene’s yoga has many levels, but for me at the moment, it’s about an awareness of breath, posture, stance, etc – ‘personal presence’ before ego and assumptions cloud the mind. It requires constant attention to ‘notice’. In her Youtube series ‘Home’ ’30 days of yoga’, Adrienne Mishler has a clever casual personal way of repeating words and phrases around the essential principles involved in yoga asanas. 

For example, today the simple Anjali Mudra (or prayer hands). It’s a posture of composure, of returning to one’s core/heart.  As you bring your hands together at your center line, you can help activate a recognition of re-balance. It leads to a lot more than that, but it’s a good start.

Many of our personal wobbles relate to physical, mental, emotional imbalance, dis-ease, di-stress, instability …

If we can deconstruct and free ourselves from the power of our culture’s images we might notice our presence, seek to rebalance ourselves, and accept the powerful simplicity of life’s energies… then compassionately rebuild.

Personally the theorising and deconstruction only goes so far, the real life changer is to stop,  ‘show up’, and breathe…  

• Slow down… Breathe… Trust… Balance… 
• Take time for yourself… embrace the moment…
• Breathe in through the nose – inhale gratitude, compassion…
• Breathe in through the nose – inhale gratitude, compassion…
• Exhale out through the mouth… gratitude, compassion…
• Stretch, press, draw in the energy…
• Head over heart…

Adriene says “Take good care of yourself so you can take good care of others”… Thanks Adriene.

Marcel Proust wrote “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

Here’s to knowing ourselves better,
so we might take care of others,
and garden a few souls if we get the chance.

Oh, yes… tea and muffins from friends help too!

In a similar vein to my Sign Language project: Sign Language, today our walk by the river (although it was a trial, trailing reluctant attitude-ridden teenagers) the reflections made the river an otherworldly place. The light and reflections caused you to look twice.

It’s good to look twice. Or even thrice perhaps…

On the back of this, I’m reminded of Martyn Joseph’s song…  ‘god’s aspirin to my soul’.

When we find ourselves blinded by electric light, or in my case looking up out of a deep dark well, a heavy cloud, a rage of fear or loss… where do we look for assurance? (‘Let it out’ Christ Wells)

What might we hold onto, where can we find a hand hold, a rock to stand on, to grasp out of our unknowing…

Words, give shape to ideas…

For an interview, I recently found myself needing to justify my existence with someone. What could I say? In preparation, I found it hard to find real genuine moments of worth, without using imagined exaggeration and hyperbole.

So, before the meeting, I turned to speaking to the void…

Might we all say a little prayer, when faced by an oncoming struggle… strapped to a boat in the strengthening waves, with rain pounding and squall lashing the rigging… many of us might say… god help me through this… please…

Do we revert back to a petition, to that thing beyond of us, that intangible strength inside of us? That thing that’s deeper than our understanding, higher than our constructed self, wiser than our cleverness, bigger than what we comprehend…

Without choice words, seeing beyond our ‘self’ can be hard to do.

Our cultures have constructed rituals and mantras, but unless we really need and genuinely mean them, words can become a meaningless dirge or perhaps a disenchantment.

As mentioned, I recently found myself needing to justify my existence. I came up with a few reasons but in retrospect found then desperately faulty and wanting. I found myself appealing to the void… please help me be genuine, true, and to see what’s real, right and helpful… 

But how to appeal outside of our faulty self illusion…

I’ve got a lot recently for hatha yoga and meditation, linked with this is the idea of mantra and chant to verbalise that which is outside of our self comprehension.

In this moment of need, I fell back to what I was repetitively taught as a child. The Lord’s Prayer

I guess the familiar words might mean…

To those learned elders who’ve been before us,
now at peace over the world, appeal to you..
You know what’s right and just, and I ask that your insight and strength be present and peacefully here and now.
Help us realise what we need and be thankful.
Forgive us for our wrongdoing, and help us to understand the similar failings of others.
Help us to recognise unhealthy ways and to choose more wholesome routes forward.
The world is and will always be greater than I can comprehend, I am thankful to be part of this magnificent creation.
Forever and ever…
So be it.

Perhaps just the enchantment of ritual words outside of our whirling tangled self illusion might help us get through and grow…

Perhaps Christ taught his disciples a prayer not to teach them to be pious and obedient but to help people everywhere to live well and flourish.

Traditionally…

Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.
Amen

Of course words alone can be disenchanting… Yazoo, In My Room: