Writing/walking/writhing

I dip back into city life every once in a while, friends, over-priced coffees and craft beer do have their pull on me still. I did a little experiment during my usual solitary street wandering in London last month: take note of all the commercial messaging, fragments of conversations and impressions I encounter in the city and write a quick poem out of them. The amount of vacuous commercial violence that invaded my inner peace was something that I had grown unaccustomed to. Living in a small seaside town and working in an ecovillage thankfully has eliminated much of these consumerist pressures but I still at times crave the vibrancy, diversity and energy of large cities. Whenever I do however reengage with that longing, I end up feeling just as empty and vacuous as the messages I come across. A line from a recent sustainability forum I went to echoed in my head as I tried to maintain calm: Happy people do not shop.

Mind that child, stuffed with ice-cream and unattainable dreams.
What part of this world is left to share,
A coffee attendant's sipping coke at 6 in the morning blank stare.

Showboats, sidewalks, served all day dancers,
averted gazes, Benugo delivers, please give a dime/damn charity fundraisers.
Tremoring morning hangovers, anxiety-fuelled leftovers,
which outfit will make today less bitter, £13 sock bargains, dirty rivers,
up to 50% less, this inner space quivers,

A year of surrendering to stillness

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

~ Rachel Carson

Separation comes from the mind, love and connection comes from the heart. So many lessons have come into my first year of living in Findhorn. This time exactly one year ago, I packed what was over 3 and a half years of London shrapnel to start a new life in a small, but renowned spiritual community in the north of Scotland. But I did not know much about where I was moving to, having lived in London's first eco-village, moving/running/relocating to a new job which was based in another ecovillage seemed a natural fit, and a way to clear old hurt and start anew.

I was always always running from one place to another in London, feeding my distractions with so many things/events/workshops/gatherings/pubs/museums/galleries/openings/meetups/yougettheidea, so scared to stop, to consider, to embrace the pain, to accept rejection, to face the unknown, to be still.

And so the healing began, a painful process of unfolding, of sitting with inactivity and letting go of my busyness. To stop moving, to still the mind. To be present, to be grateful. To start to notice the symbolic beauty in the movement of birds, the ebb and flow of tides. To learn from nature's cycles, that told me each day to let go of old things like old leaves, that a bare and cold Winter would always bring new buds of Spring. I have met such kind, tender and open-hearted souls along this new and wonderful journey, each day brings the chance to meet and learn from them each day. A recent highlight was Satish Kumar, an Indian peace activist who dedicated a peace pilgrimage from India to the four capitals of the nuclear world: Moscow, Paris, London and Washington D.C. and decided to carry no money on the trip. His presence was inspiring, and since working for a tree charity, most of my learning has come from the tall quiet forest this last year. As Satish says: How much I can learn from a tree! The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer.

Along with my daily dose of vitamin sea at Findhorn beach, within each ocean curl echoes Hoʻoponopono, an ancient Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. There are four simple steps to this prayer, and the order is not that important. Repentance, Forgiveness, Gratitude and Love are the only forces at work as I say I'm sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you, I love you with each wave I see. The power is in the feeling and in the willingness of the Universe to forgive and love.

Forest Woman

~ by Mary Reynolds Thompson

She is sunlight and shadow, rooted in dark earth
and reaching for sky.
She is the breath of inspiration, the vividness of dreams.
The clear-cut path is nothing to her.
She spins and spirals, loses herself in the labyrinth,
in a thousand colors of green.
Through eons and extinctions she has thrived.
To enter her world, is to brave the creative fire
that brings forth seed-bursts of new life.
She is magic, a whirl of wonder in a world
made plain by literalness.
From her dark folds things grow and green.
Her skirts are bushes, her hair a tangle branches.
Her hollowed limbs, home to winged and furred ones,
teeming insects.
She speaks in myriad tongues.
Inside her, circle upon circle reveals an ancient way of being.
She will never walk the straight path
nor embrace too-bright light of modern consciousness.
She knows everything is birthed from darkness.

What to make of a diminished thing

Ruining streams where eternity lies,
No flowers, no bees, but here eat some fries.
We weep for all that can no longer grow,
soft trees still recite what we scarcely know.

Glazed telly vigils while sipping Bordeaux,
not noticing then the slow rising flow.
No place to escape from this poisoned sky,
if only we questioned it sooner, why?

Carpeted, concreted, depleted soul,
forgetting we too are ocean and snow.
Part water, part air and magic unknown,
now just packaged skin and picked apart bone.

No longer do winds blush warm with birdsong,
hollowed out by progress hums, vain, cold, strong.
Greed, give back to us what we have now lost,
as if we knew what true wilderness cost.

Shopping aisles lit, all lined up in a row,
like that's the apex of success to show.
Stillness won't be found in consumption shrines,
but rather in spaces nature defines.

Watching in silence, we voiceless ones weep,
how Sir, can you find in dreamless fields sleep?
When hell spreads hot, don't say you didn't know,
from black shores we told you, we told you so.

An ocean of regret

Soft waves break,
delicate heart ache.
Salty foam, my tears,
on wasted years.

In soft sea sounds,
grace resounds.
Anchor me down,
before I drown.
An ocean of regret,
your leaving has left.

Not seeing the mountain

Sometimes the mountain

is hidden from me in veils

of cloud, sometimes 

I am hidden from the mountain

in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue

when I forget or refuse to go 

down to the shore or a few yards 

up the road, on a clear day…

Denise Levertov

Sadness is

Sadness is a cold still bed. Folds of your breathing now only in my head.
That single white hair, Once I was nestled, there.
In the cave of your arm, that's where you would find me, if I could only.
But you preferred strangers' beds. Your fire's desire left my soul in cindered shreds.