creating change without shouting
There are ancient trees on the old field boundaries. Oaks with vastly extending branches that have nested birds for centuries. I love standing beneath their boughs and grieve each time a limb falls. Then there are much younger trees, including silver birches, ash, rowan and self-seeded willow. These have seen the more recent wilding of … Read more
When did you last think about what you were standing on? Apart from that occasion when you stood in a puddle by accident. Or you were suddenly aware that those steps might not be as secure as you thought. Yesterday, I walked around the valley with a heightened awareness of what lay beneath my feet. … Read more
As a woman of a certain age, I have a visceral reaction to the idea of being ‘in my place’. It suggests a box. And I don’t like boxes. However, Thomas Merton’s insights on the responsibilities of humans to their own time and place has stirred something from which I cannot excuse myself. Instead, it … Read more
CARRYING THE DUST We are formedby wherewe’ve been, Shaped bythe placeswe’ve inhabited. We carrythe dustin our souls, And bring itto this spacewe call now. ~ I’m reminded of the strawberry fields from my home farm in Kent when I taste these tiny wild strawberries growing through the cracks in the paving outside my study.
“Humans have a responsibility to their own time, not as if they could seem to stand outside it and donate various spiritual and material benefits to it from a position of compassionate distance. Humans have a responsibility to find themselves where they are, in their own proper time and place, in the history to which … Read more
Wandering around the valley yesterday in its not-quite-fully-spring-yet-hopeful state, I reflected on the stories we choose to tell ourselves about place. Especially the place that is our place, that is most closely associated with who we are. And perhaps who we think we are. I wonder if this is why we sometimes struggle to be … Read more