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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.
Traditio

nally…

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:

The Coronavirus restrictions and the media storms that have accompanied them have coerced us to all become more like islands, but ‘we are involved in humanity’…

Like many I guess, my mind has found itself not in a great place recently (relatively).

Struggles with our responsibilities, worries for our kids, relationship insecurities, finance struggles… The disruption in life’s comforting routines…

Everything feels very fragile at the moment.

If you have life sorted then I am happy for you, but I still seek a few answers.
When Bono wrote that he hadn’t found what he was looking for, did he know what he was looking for?  I am not sure what we all need? If anything. Or, what we-all might benefit from?

After John Donne’s No person is an island…”, in her Gift From the Sea Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote, “I feel we are all islands – in a common sea.”

I think some form of commune-ity is a big essential requirement. 

Why gather together? Why seek a form of communal-hope (church)?

Is it important to have, people dedicated to a greater good (ekklēsia)?

Is it important to have a hope-filled (worshiping) community…

Why is it important to have a common hope (faith) at the route of an endeavour, why not just genuine, good, disciplined, intention? It’s been suggested that hope or faith is what fuels good intentions. Where does ‘love’ come in? 

Then again, what is it we want to achieve with our ‘love’ and our hope-filled good intentions?

“What’s more important,” asked Big Panda, “the journey or the destination?”
“The company,” said Tiny Dragon.

Wallace Stevens discussed the idea that the interaction between things is what makes them live. Indeed!

What might we achieve through; arts (worship), interaction (outreach) & soulfulness (spirituality)?

Our state of mind defines every relationship in our life. Some Good News is, we can change our state of mind.

Perhaps we can start with a regular ’practice’, of being present to the now, present to our surroundings, our community, and being genuine with ourselves and others.

I have found recently that through routine practicing intentional stillness, guided movement, and contemplation we might find an opportunity to notice and grow… …simply ‘showing up’ to connect and recognize what ‘being here’ feels like each day.  Waking up to your own experience, daily.  If we can realise how it truly feels to breathe and be alive, perhaps we can start to notice how to be genuine.

A lot can rest, a lot can be created from noticing ourselves in the present moment. When this is practiced regularly, it might be easier to be genuinely present with yourself… for others.

Despite good intentions – without community and the fuel to mend stuff, I regularly fail.

We are involved in humanity.

Forgive me I know utterly not what I do!

Where am I?

Where are we, when the longest queue in the small-town-village is the queue for the bookies, and the popular entertainment of choice is escapist superhero mystery & myth action movies?

I am thankful – I sit here in my garden, what I have right now are memories of a good holiday, a good cup of coffee in my hand, and intermittent blue skies.
Reading stuff recently made me think (surprise surprise you mutter!)…

‘Most people don’t want the truth, just constant reassurance that what they believe is true’. This struck me.

‘Ultimately the nature of mind is limitless.’ Nature has been very pervasive over the lockdown period,

‘A lot of what runs through you is fiction’ Christa Wells

The words ’fear ferments’ also resonated… (I’ve been reading Joanne Harris)

Just as an exercise during lockdownishness, I created a study I’ve called Sign Language below

Language and our cultural behaviour controls our consumption, what we eat and drink, when we work and create, or relax and holiday, it chooses what and how we love. It takes our wealth and builds monuments to its glory. Our culture is there at birth, death, & every important time between. It consumes all it can, and our culture discards what’s not needed.
Our cultural ‘Images’ breed ‘Assumptions’, which in turn create ‘Motivations’… I AM…

Over the lockdown period, I’ve been trying to practice awareness of breath, posture, stance, etc – ‘personal presence’ before ego and assumptions cloud the mind. It’s not easy and 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 principals involved in yoga asanas. I found the practice went far beyond the words… 🙂

If you know me you’ll know I’m a miserable bugger! As a student of Art and Performance, with a view to creating and ‘discovering more’, I was taught to deconstruct. Deconstruction is useful, it helps us to discover the links between the ‘object’, the ‘subject’, and it’s ‘meanings’. But deconstruction can leave us with piles… piles of stuff that mean little. Stuff without value.

But we need some form of meaning, we need purpose…

In the media and our cultures at the moment, reassuring truths are not that obvious, but I sincerely hope you can find things to hold onto and cherish. There’s a lot to be thankful for despite the stormy skies.

Back again to my favourite quotes, from Wallace Stevens: ‘the interaction between things is what makes them fecund’.

‘They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth…’ Psalm 19