Elder Rocks & Youngling Trees in the Woods Out Back
As far away light yields its harvest of colours when it passes through a prism, beauty opens out its radiance when it shines thorough the human heart. The heart is the place where beauty arrives; here is where it can be felt, recognized and shared. If there was no heart, beauty could never reach us. Through the heart beauty can pervade every cell of the body and fill us. … Compassion and attention keep the prism clear so that beauty may illuminate our life. John O’Donohue (The Heart: Prism for Beauty in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)
Whether darkness is visiting us personally through difficult events or we are witnessing the darkness and horror of world events touching vast numbers of our fellow humans, we are challenged to hold the light and attend to beauty. Our heart may harden having received some erroneous message from our rational mind that such hardening is protection. ‘Only the rational mind is safe,’ mind may claim.
But a hardened heart dulls and clouds the prism, limiting its capacity, our capacity to witness and experience the beauty that is Life.
This Wednesday musing comes in the wake of hearing from two friends each with a family member in the dark dance of a serious medical diagnosis as well last night’s reading of the beautiful O’Donohue essay quoted above. It comes after investing in an early morning meander through the woods out back. Inviting the elders, tree beings and rock beings, and the youngsters, new blades of verdant grasses and other life bursting forth from underground, to share their wisdom. They are teaching me to listen, not with ears, but with my BEing.
How is it that they live, and some even thrive, without the accoutrements we humans have become addicted to? They need no email or text notification to communicate. To know when to emerge, when to be dormant. They share with one another. Tree to tree. Elder to youngster. Grasses to trees. Trees to grasses. Rock beings holding surface soil in place as one of their many purposes. The vast unseen mycelial network. Nature’s internet. Beauty.
How might life be if we logged into this as our Source? What beauty might we behold? What beauty might we call forth in co-creation with All that IS?
Perhaps this is the compassion and attention that will keep our prisms clear. Step by step. One by one. Until clear prisms illuminate our individual beauty and the beauty of all Life around the globe and beyond into the Cosmos.
Early Morning Softness and Beauty from the Woods