I did nothing useful today. Just sat in silence on my sofa, looking out at the garden through a glass door well smudged by the dog's nose and sometimes, my own.
I watched blackbirds hopping through the grass and winging their way to the scrubland beyond. Great tits on the saturated fence, flicking feathered heads. Shimmering spires of miscanthus grass, shivered by the wind.
I see a world full up with water. Soil drowned by recent rain.
A thousand voices in my mind tell me I am wasting time. How dare I sit still in a world which is suffering?
How dare I be quiet and ill and alone?
The need of the world is a black hole. Pulling at all of us.
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Yet the one voice of heart speaks, and says nothing at all. It gifts me more silence.
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It shows me Blackbird, alive on the grass.
One small life, as precious as mine.
And I think, what if all of us were to stop for a day? All the world, all at once. Lay to rest our hoarding and our conspiring and just sit and watch Blackbird, alive on the grass.
What might change, in the silence?
Would we get up and make miracles, reshape the whole flow of the dance? Could we bear to leave anyone behind, if every being were suddenly alive to the aching frailty of everyone, everything?
Awake to that one voice of heart. Gifting us stillness that’s contagious; we want to share it with everyone.
Could we fail to see it, in the heartbeat breath of a love-laden world?
Every life as precious as Blackbird’s, alive on the grass.
A little gift
I use this five minute meditative prayer as an entry point to silence. It’s my little act of surrender into the flow, a willing ‘yes’ to transformation. Here it is for subscribers below - or you can find it here on the Insight Timer app. The peaceful background music is ‘Open Heart’ by Chris Collins, indie music box
‘Awakening Prayer’, Miranda Ruth Gill
In other words, you did EVERYTHING useful today! So lovely!!! Thank you for sharing this. XO
This brings me so much peace.