‘Flow down & down in always
widening rings of being’
RUMI
It is that giddy time of year, when everything exists in varieties of abundance, the sun finally joining the ranks of everything else and pouring into my bedroom window like cordial from a jug. The air is thick, with dust and pollen and insects and birdsong; the wood pigeon who nests in the yew tree that grows beside our house this morning is in chorus with at least one chaffinch. But they won’t be alone for long. Soon their symphonies- as good as any composed- will be joined by a blackbird solo and the backdrop of chiffchaffs. And maybe, as the morning moves on, a dunnock and a wren too. Start listening in, and it becomes hard to pull away. And maybe I won’t.
I am already feeling the tide of too much to do rising in my chest, like a watermark, threatening as it does to steal what is already good in the moment. Future proofing, like worry, is the greatest thief of the present. So too is a life packed like an overstuffed suitcase, too many things crammed in to too little space, with no gaps between anything. Which is how so many of us live, intentionally or not. And yet, like the spaces left around the edges of a field for wildlife to flourish - rendering landscapes into framed patchworks when seen from on high- our flourishing depends too on the spaces we leave around the edges of things. In a statement that seems too reductive to be true until you examine it up closer, our well-being is almost entirely tethered to how spacious we are; in diary, in body, in heart and in mind. Living and ageing is so often a contraction that it doesn’t need to be. Spiritual living, though, is an expansion.
When we seek to light a fire, the gaps we leave between the logs are essential to their taking. Music is beautiful because of the space that is left between notes, as much as in the arrangement of the notes themselves. So much that is beautiful in relationships is dependent on what is left unsaid. Years ago I was waiting for a friend in a cafe, and bided my time by eavesdropping on the conversation of two elderly Americans. They had not met up for a long time it seemed, but their conversation meandered in the way that the conversations of old friends do, slipping easily from pleasantries to pondering and back again. ‘Everyone falls in love with other people’s puppies but only their own dogs’, I remember one of them offering up as consolation to the others’ struggles with a five month old labrador. And soon after, that ‘the key to a happy marriage was resisting saying at least one thing a day.’ Not saying, like not doing, is defining.
We tend to focus our attention on everything that is material, actual, concrete. The world seems overly concerned with measures and metrics, with milestones and mass production, with all that might be indicated or held up, posted about or ticked off. It is all too easy to get caught up in that same web; defining our days by what is done, lamenting when it isn’t ‘enough’, carried by the current of endless activity with no time to let any of it take up real residence. And yet without the gaps between what we do, all of it stays surface, becomes like run off across dry land, left behind in the passage of time before there has been the chance for it to seep in. I often wonder if this is why we never feel filled up, why desires - even when fulfilled- seem replaced by yet more desires, our life an endless cycle of wanting, like the hungry ghosts of the Buddhists hell realms, whose engorged bellies are never full. And yet there is so much to delight in, should we let it, should we give it the space, should we write about it, think about it, linger with it all.
A Monday rarely feels a spacious day. If it is still Monday when you read this, I get that it could fall on deaf ears. That your response could be a metaphorical throwing of your hands to the sky with an ‘if only’ as you stare down the barrel of a day of work, a busy week, the overflow from the weekend. But space is the backdrop to everything and always there for the taking. It is in the lingering by the window to listen to the birds, in the taking of your tupperware lunch to a park bench, phone left at your desk, so you can sit in the company of just strangers and your own thoughts. It can be found in the scratching of something from the diary so that you can have a solitary walk instead, or the saying no to the next thing because you are still busy processing the last. It is in the moments that you slow your thinking for just long enough to notice that there are always spaces between the thoughts. Or in the deep breaths that you take, just in and out, as you settle into bed at the end of a long day. When you close your eyes and notice the fact of the natural gap between the inhalation and the exhalation, that momentary pause, and how the mind, when we let it, has a tendency to expand into it. Often with something that feels a lot like relief.
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Absolutely stunning. This is beyond the newsletter form and belongs in a book of essays. You’re drawing from so deep in the earth here. A little piece of perfection.
Thank you for sharing; I loved reading this article. You have a really amazing way with words. Loved the simile of, "like the hungry ghosts of the Buddhists hell realms, whose engorged bellies are never full." Powerful imagery. I look forwards to your next post!