natural beauty – Page 2 – Passage To Joy

January 24, 2018January 25, 2018

What does nature mean to me? Why is it important?

I was ever a child of nature, integrally connected with the rhythm of the seasons and with a strong link between external and internal realities.

Nature’s place in my life is as a sweet familiar melody running through my living,
it speaks the language of my soul;

it connects my roots to the beating heart of Mother earth
and it centers me in ‘now’ and ‘am’;

it lifts me out of the mire of day to day concerns;
gifting me moments of deep knowing and insight;

even in my darkest days, it anchors me to wonder and joy,
lighting my way back home to my best self;

it roots me in awareness of the constancy of change, unafraid,
and threads the cycles of dying and rebirth within my being;

it enfolds me in a living silence, rich in mystery,
opens the door to realms of myth and magic;

it inspires me to watch, to note, to listen,
sating my senses;

it draws from me a life-affirming reverence,
a deep resounding ‘yes’!

I’m very excited to be embarking on an exploration into Nature’s Poetry. Even this afternoon’s first foray into the preparatory work for Session 1, beginning to look at my personal connection with nature, has been richly nourishing.

I have, over the last couple of years, felt the pull back to my writing roots, which started with poems before I could even put pen to paper (I was three years old). So this online course speaks both to my deep sense of return and re-connection to nature in living rurally and to rediscovering a mode of expression that faltered as I focused on career and family.

What a delicious luxury it is to be invited down a path along which poetry, both in the reading and the writing, can illuminate one’s inner landscape!

I intend to do my best to follow Mary Oliver‘s instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

August 22, 2012April 23, 2013

Flying Free

A dear friend gifted me with the wonder of a Monarch butterfly chrysalis – exquisite in its own right; blue green, studded with gold. But the gist of his gift was the opportunity to witness the process of transformation.

We hung the ribbon to which the pupa was attached above our dining table, watched it through breakfast and checked back regularly over the course of the day. Needless to say, we missed the moment of transformation, which must have taken place between 6 and 8pm!

It struck me that this suited the metaphor of our own transformations extraordinarily well. We are rarely fully aware of a single moment of transition from one stage to another. Only in hindsight is the shift apparent.

Of course, the truth is that transformation is not a single moment – for a Monarch Butterfly or a human being. It is a continuous, lifelong process, punctuated by periods of struggling to break free of what we have been and those wondrous, joyous times when we find new wings!

Thank you, Real, for a beautiful gift.

March 1, 2012March 1, 2012

A story of snow . . .

Words and storytelling give us tools to amplify wonder and joy in the everyday.

I walk across the park on my way to work through falling snow. Momentarily, I lower my eyelids and open my inner eyes. I am surrounded by myriad crystals, each unlike any other, that in moments will cease to be.

Later, amid the forced exodus of a fire alarm, I am blessed by a single, perfect flower-crystal that rests on my coat’s puffy black sleeve. I wonder, without that amplified perception that I chose to tap into earlier, would I have overlooked this gift?

Once again, I seem to have used a combination of knowledge and internal storytelling to fuel my sense of joy.

January 16, 2012January 16, 2012

Can knowledge amplify joy?

Walking in snow-like-sand, entranced by each grain’s iridescent glitter. Does the knowledge of the unseen, the microscopic beauty of the crystal structures, increase my sense of wonder, of joy?

I have always perceived joy as being fed by wisdom rather than knowledge, yet I can see the possibility that humankind’s amazing curiosity and creativity open up ways of knowing, of seeing or otherwise experiencing that amplify perception even when that mode of perception is not available.

Or is this merely an intellectualization?

March 19, 2011March 19, 2011

The place of passion (2)

Passion, meaning, engagement, flow, now . . .

These were some of the themes I highlighted in my last post. I wonder if all or any of these are part of the essential stuff of joy?

Passion – I think there must be a kind of passion inherent in joy; that sense of intensity, what else can we call it? But I also sense that, with age, perhaps we develop an awareness of different shadings of passion.

In the context of loving partnerships we draw a distinction between the initial fire of romantic love and the deeper rootedness of enduring love. Some class only the first as ‘passion’. It seems to me limiting to see only ‘fire’ as passion. There is just as much intensity in the depths of a still pool. Joy is inherent in both.

If I define passion in this way, then I believe it is indeed an ingredient in the experience of joy. However, I am not at this point clear whether the relationship is as cause or effect.

Meaning – It seems to me that those experiences that people cite as bringing them joy invariably carry a deep personal significance. These include the great ‘human’ events, such as falling in love, marriage, birth. They include specific relationships – with partners, with children, with friends, with pets. Then there is the response to nature and natural beauty, to the arts, or to religious experience

We respond to those things we find ‘meaning-full’ in some way. However, when I look at all of these, what strikes me is that what underlies our joyful response is a sense of connection beyond ourselves to another being – human, animal or divine – or to nature and/or the universe.

So my question her is, is what is important connection and does our perception of meaning first require a sense of connection? In a world that is, superficially, increasingly connected yet in which at a deeper level there is anomie and rootlessness, this would explain the lack of a clear sense of and capacity for joy.

Engagement, flow and ‘nowness’ – I think it is almost impossible to experience joy unless you are fully present. Therefore it this trio seem increasingly to be pre-conditions for cultivating a capacity for joy.