A message from the garden

For some 50 years  I lived in an attic flat in  Belsize Park Gardens, high above the tree tops. It had a balcony and often in the summer I would sleep out. At night I would  lie gazing up at the brilliance of stars, the moving pageant of clouds and the changing shapes of the moon. Sometimes very early in the morning I would be woken to hear and see a flight of birds crossing the sky like some calligraphy. .

In the West our relationship with Nature barely exists ,which is why the National Trust has launched a major scheme to encourage people to explore the countryside.  How few children today get to climb trees, kick up autumn leaves , or watch hares boxing. And while lockdown has encouraged more people to take long walks, how many actually stop to sit on a bench for say fifteen minutes, keeping very still,  being aware of the life around them.

Trees alone have so much to teach us as our forefathers and mothers knew in these maxims :

What is well rooted survives.

As the twig bends so the tree will grow.

Severed branches grow again. (to all who have been  wounded, emotionally or physical, such words bring reassurance.)

Every tree is known by its fruit.

A rotten tree bears rotten fruitful.

Trees are full of secrets.

It is as St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, ‘ What I know of the divine sciences and holy writ I learnt in the woods and fields. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks. You will learn more in the woods than in books.  Trees,  stones  will teach you more than you can acquire from the mouth of a teacher.’

In Frances Hodgson Burnet’s The Secret Garden little Mary, the orphan, asks her guardian if she may have a piece of earth. ‘A piece of earth?’ kh repeats. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘to plant things in, to  make things grow.’ He replies ‘Child, when you see a piece of earth, take it and make it come alive!’

Which is exactly what Mary, aided by Dickon and Colin,  does when they discover the secret garden. They weed it, they plant it -and then what do they do?   They sit cross-legged and meditate!

And this reminds me of some words of Rumi ‘When we nurture the seeds of meditation in our inner garden we begin to come alive at a deeper level than that of mere happiness. Happiness is  elusive, it comes and goes. What grows and becomes evergreen in our innermost garden is contentment.’  

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A special message from James

I know that quite a few who have a regular practice of meditation, including myself, are finding it difficult to concentrate in these testing times. It all becomes a struggle. The virus has brought a hidden fear that is bound to affect us and also affect our bodies in one form or another: perhaps an all-over itching, or an increasing difficulty in sleeping. It is not surprising since we are all living in a time of rare global crisis.

And so it may help to practice the open-eyed meditation (which I describe in Finding Silence), to sit with open eyes, focused on whatever lies ahead of us: plants, trees, birds, and simply rest in the knowledge that we are not alone.

We may like to take as our mantra at such a time the words:

Thou, o Lord, art in the midst of us.

With love, James