Winter walks reveal all kinds of delights in the absence of the lush summer foliage. Like lichen and dormant seed heads. These seasonal ornaments invite us to remember the sweetness of life right here, right now. In our quest for peace or deeper understanding we can miss what’s right in front of us.

Doing the housework, paying bills, preparing for tomorrow’s activities. Folding clothes, creating slides, feeding animals, printing papers, checking news-feeds, reading reports, listening to the radio, cleaning work surfaces, running errands, recycling, posting parcels, chopping, hauling loads, cooking, writing, reading, listening, walking, running, beach combing, taking photos, driving, swimming, sitting, resting, napping, calculating, forecasting, estimating, drawing, painting, knitting, singing, chatting, debating, gaming, sharing laughter, music, TV, film, jokes, watching nature, weather, clouds, faces of those you love and complete strangers, breathing in and out.

There are a million ways to experience each moment and each remains only a possibility until it happens. A figment of the imagination until it is brought into form. And once passed it resides only in the shadowland of memory.

There is no storehouse of experience. That too is illusory.

We can not make deposits and withdrawals in some vast memory bank that will create a better now. For now is unattached to past and future. It exists independent of all else and yet intimately connected with everything else that ever has or will come into form. A paradox we do not need to understand.

And that is the joy of it. Each moment contains infinite possibility. No matter what the experience of the moment before; the next one could be anything. How can we possibly know what is coming next? How can we make sense of any of it?

We simply don’t seem to be equipped to fully grasp the miraculous, mysteriousness of this thing called Life.

So call off the search.

And rest, as far as you can, in the extraordinary miracle of being alive to each ordinary moment and see how those moments begin to transform into something rich and sweet.

Something that has nothing to do with the activity we are engaged in and everything to do with the awareness we rest in while experiencing those activities.

…

Lichen:
Photo © Juliet Fay
Penamaen Woods, Gower Peninsular, Wales, UK
9 February 2018

I’d love to hear your reflections on this piece.