The weather has changed these days. Not as settled or as consistently warm as it has been in the previous weeks. However, the wind brings a different texture. Why do we prefer one thing to another? Things are different, but equally beautiful.
The dance of the flower in the wind, in the sun, in the rain,
cannot be understood by the head;
the heart has to be open for it.
Osho
After the warmth of the past weeks we have had one or two days of welcome rain showers. This morning one can see the meadows and hedgerows filled with an abundance of wild flowers, their movement and colour contrasting with the formality of the fields of wheat and barley. Butterflies are also moving everywhere, flitting from flower to flower, or keeping ahead on the path as you walk. Nature has a deep-down energy at this time – as Manley Hopkins says – and is not confined to straight lines. We too have this capacity within, we adapt and move on, continually seeking out the light and new places to grow. Mary Oliver sees this life in the small hummingbird, and she too realizes how rich we are when we take time to notice the little moments of each day and be moved by such sights.
When the hummingbird sinks its face
into the trumpet vine,
into the funnels
of the blossoms and the tongue leaps out
and throbs,
I am scorched to realize once again
how many small, available things
are in this world
that aren’t pieces of gold or power –
that nobody owns
or could but even for a hillside of money
that just float in the world, or drift over the fields,
or into the gardens,
and into the tents of the vines,
and now here I am
spending my time, as the saying goes,
watching until the watching turns into feeling,
so that I feel I am myself
a small bird with a terrible hunger,
with a thin beak probing and dipping
and a heart that races so fast
it is only a heart beat ahead of breaking –
and I am the hunger and the assuagement,
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking.
Summer Story
The warmth of the Spring weather this year means that plants and fruits are in bloom ahead of time and any memories of winter is far behind. We can look at the weather and nature today and be reminded of a number of lessons, which help us live our life mindfully:
Spring is a metaphor for transitions. It moves from lifelessness to life and we move from lifelessness to life in each cycle of breathing. If we know change is going to occur we are in a better place to accept it. If we expect things to stay constant we are vulnerable to frustration, disappointment, and resistance.
Spring is also a metaphor for forgiveness. Whatever happened in the last season, life begins anew with no carryover resentment from the past. Spring reminds us, as Pema Chodron says, to start where we are.
Spring shows us the cycle of living and dying on a bigger scale do. Everything comes into being and goes out of being — changing its form. Spring invites us not to become attached to things, even the most precious things in our life. The invitation is to love things wholeheartedly with the awareness that they will not be with us forever. And, indeed, we, ourselves, will not be here forever. The invitation is to not be afraid to grieve when that grief becomes necessary. Grief is, at times, the admission price to the present moment.
The renewal of spring is the healing from grief, from the inexorable impermanence of things. Spring also demonstrates the tenacity of life and encourages us to persist in whatever we are doing.
So welcome spring and your multifaceted metaphors for mindful living!
Mary Oliver, The Sun
You often say “I would give, but only to the deserving” . The trees in the orchard say not so, nor the flocks in the pastures. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
Kahlil Gibran
Things change so quickly. On Friday the news was dominated by weddings and dresses, by pomp and circumstance. Yesterday we awoke to news of death and differences, and to the insecurity it provokes. Such changes can make the ground we stand on feel quite uncertain. However, it is not just change on a world level but how we deal with the smaller changes in our lives that determines our ongoing sense of inner peace and calm. We expend quite a lot of energy each day in trying to hold on to what is familiar and in attempting to make the world conform to how we would like it to be. The problem with this – other than the futile waste of energy – is that we limit our ability to experience joy in the present moment as it actually is. If we approach moments with fear, rather than opening to how they are, we cannot see the richness in them.
A contrary strategy works best: Stop trying to grasp, to control the world around you or the day ahead of you. In doing so you loosen the grip of fear and give each experience the possibility to bring its richness. Letting go of control lets go of suffering.
It is not because of impermanence that we suffer
But because of our ideas about permanence.
Thich Nhat Hahn
Mindfulbalance 