At the edges of the world

Another image of an edge, this time of the edge of a sheer and very tall cliffs near the Tomb of Eagles on South Ronaldsay. I clamboured all over the rocks (not something I would try on a day of high winds!), and sat for a long time being bombarded by worried sea gulls that nested in the cliffs.
I love the freedom of this gull's flight, defying gravity, playing on the updraughts, touching the  heavens with its wings.
















 When you see the gulls' 'home', you can imagine the temptation to leap out into the ether (where else is there to go?)




















And it reminds me of the poem High Flight, by Pilot Gillespie Magee

O, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
and danced the sky on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of  - and wheeled and soared and swung
High in sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew -
And while with silent mind I've trod
The untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Heaven at the top of the world

This is where I spent a few days of heaven.  North Ronaldsay, the northernmost island of Orkney was shrouded in mist when I arrived. We'd been held up for over four hours at Kirkwall Airport, waiting for the fog to lift there. The little six-seater plane uses those old things called eyes and compasses to navigate, and on North Ron, landing can present a problem if the pilot can't find the airport! As it is it seems to barely skim the road and dry-stone walls that thread everywhere throughout the Scottish countryside, a testament to a gruelling life on the land.

The Bird Observatory guesthouse sits atop a cliff but following an easy path to the beach I saw the world stretching out before me into the vast nothingness of the ocean. I stood for ages gulping in the salt-saturated air, drinking in the muted wash of sand-ocean-sky -  seemingly  indistinguishable but actually showing water-colour clarity to eyes attuned to subtlety -  after weeks in a land of such delicacy of shades  your whole view of nature softens and melts.

I walked for miles and miles along the beach, surprising red-legged water birds that feasted on the bounty of sea creatures in the sand and seaweed, and seals bobbing curiously along a safe distance from the strange two legged animal on their territory. 

The mist increased at one stage to make the way even more obscure and the colours even more mute, and at times there was no break between sky and sea, between heaven and earth.  The two were one, and I was there!

There is some place in my inner landscape that responds to such solitude, such oneness of land, sea and sky. It's to do with seeing edges dissolve, categories melt, and with seeing myself so clearly as a part of everything. Not the major, integral, important part that my ego tells me I am, more the place where I know my ego can disappear and I can enter into the all-ness of the moment.

Mystical Response

I have been reading so much about the mystical 'way' of responding to God or encountering God through beauty, that this little formula for a mystical 'limbering up' or practice came to me yesterday.

Gaze at the stars and marvel at their beauty;
Ask the darkness to enfold you, and feel its velvet embrace;
Let your heart dance to the flames and sparks of a fire:
know that the warmth you feel is from the dance and from the fire.
Do these steps again and again, until you are the dance and the fire;
Do them again and again until you are the stars and the embrace
And the beauty.

St Augustine said something a little bit along these lines, but in more length and greater detail and much more gloriously:
Question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air amply spread around everywhere; question the beauty of the sky, question the serried ranks of the stars, question the sun making the day glorious with its bright beams; question the moon tempering the darkness of the following night with its shining rays;
question the animals that move in the waters, that amble about on land, that fly about in the air; their souls hidden, their bodies evident; the visible bodies needing to be controlled, the invisible souls controlling them. Question these things. 
They all answer you, 'Here we are, look; we are beautiful.'  Their beauty is their confession.

That's a wonderful confession!

The image is of water patterns in the sand on a beach on North Ronaldsay, Orkney April 2010.

Parallel Universes

On Good Friday at the service to mark the Hour of Jesus' death - a very sombre service - we noticed that a little mouse was coming out from underneath the black cloth draped over the cross and nibbling on the bread that had been left, with the wine, at the foot of the cross for the vigil.  The bread consisted of pieces of big flatbreads. At one point the mouse was pulling on a half circle about five times its size, at other times nibbling smaller morsels.

When we were invited to bring to the cross those things which we wanted to die to, I could imagine the mouse cowering in the black cloth, listening to the thunderous treads on the wooden floor and feeling it shake.

It didn't take away from the solemnity and meaning of the moment;  (as George Bernard Shaw said: 'Life  does not  cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.)

At the Maundy Thursday vigil, the mouse was also present, watched closely and with great interest by the rector's cat. This cat is pleasantly plump, being supplied with dry food by at least one parishioner, so she didn't pursue the hunt on this occasion.

Altogether a frightening time in the mouse universe and I heard the mouse praying after the service and record its prayer of petition and thanks herewith.

O Invisible Source of all Life,
You spread a table for me in the presence of my enemies,
and though the ground shook and the thunder roared,
I thank you now for this time of peace when I may feast on your goodness.
I thank you too for deliverance from the snare of the hunter - the fish-breathing she-lion;
I thank you for the woman who fills the lion with good things
That she may not have need of me.
I ask that your bounty be made freely to me all the days of my life,
Not just for three days in April.
I ask that the cup be filled to the top, that I may also drink of that.
I give you thanks for thy feast that fills the hungry with good things;
I thank you too for fullness of wife (and young). Amen

The attached image, called "Fullness of Wife", is of a bandicoot with a very large pouch, (feasting on pieces of bread and a chicken bone so that I could get up close to her with the camera). Regular visitors to my garden here in Perth, these bandicoots eat almost anything - dry cat food is a particular favourite. The baby in her pouch would be almost ready to emerge and fend for itself (if it doesn't fall victim to cats)

Becoming

Emerging from the darkness - the protection of a womb, a cocoon, a pouch, a pod - into the light. We make the journey, not just once but every day if we're lucky and we're open to newness. There's something about the emerging of each flower on a grevillea spike that speaks to me of the journey of becoming - starting first from a little furry bud, then arching out those audacious stigmas.

This is a little poem I wrote a few years ago, if something this tiny can be called a poem:

Open to joy
I come each day
to a landscape full of wonder.
(July 2007)