by Wendell Berry

Now in midlife I notice that I’m looking for role models and images of the maturity that I can feel myself moving towards. If as younger people we have the sensation of climbing a hill anticipating the ascent, perhaps here in midlife, we’ve reached the top and a new scene comes into view. This poem speaks to me of this new scene and it provides me with what I see to be a truthful, real and deep-hearted perception of the fields of the second half of life.

A mix of tender, reverent and bittersweet feelings emerge in my heart on reading this poem. When we look at what is beautiful and singular about the sycamore, we soon find the tragedy. And when we see the tragedy, we find more beauty shining out from right there. The beautiful and tragic merge into something ineffable and mystical. Wendell Berry (who is an American farmer and poet) celebrates the tree in its maturity, sees it has powers of self-healing and survival, gathering ‘all accidents into its purpose’. He also knows this tree-being of grandeur is wounded and dying but in that dying it is generous and noble, giving itself back to the earth.

What is the principle that Wendell Berry recognises in it, that he too would be ruled by? I’m sensing it could be a mature isness, a perfect imperfection in just being what and how it is. ‘It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.’ I happily absorb the wisdom of Wendell Berry’s sycamore and want to let it teach me how to be.

Ps. If you would like to receive more life wisdom through poetry you might life to come along to our next Mystical Poetry meets Mindfulness course which begins online in September.

Photo by Gilly Stewart on Unsplash

my insignificance thrills me
and the largest of my sadnesses
dwindle smaller than the space

between grains of sand
and in that moment,
knowing my place,

comes a love so enormous
I can love anyone, anyone,
even myself.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I love and completely recognise the experience Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer describes here – how the perspective between the greatness of nature and the smallness of me can be both healing and freeing.

But I think there is something to watch out for when making that shift away from my habitual focus on Me and My trouble to what Mary Oliver pointed to when she said ‘Meanwhile, the world goes on‘. There can be a sense of disconnecting or abandoning ourselves in that shift, a kind of detaching to make the difficult stuff more manageable. A very human impulse of course, and actually an attempt at compassion (alleviating suffering) in itself, but if there’s a disconnecting involved, it’s a move away from wholeness and healing and so it will at best be a temporary assuaging.

So instead, can there be a reconnecting with the truth of that greater perspective, that lovingly includes our own stuff? It’s not about denying of our humanness or ‘the largest of my sadnesses’, but seeing what else is true? And there’s a subtle but important difference in the two…

Of course it may not always be easy to access a ‘lake or a sea or a mountainside’ when you need one. Luckily, our imagination can be a powerful ally and we may access that greatness through the porthole of our memory. And the sky is a powerful greatness in itself, even if we can only see a small piece of it in between big buildings…

Let’s practice accessing that love so enormous that we can love anyone, even ourselves!

PS one of the contexts for practising a change of perspective and loving anyone, even ourselves, is in the standalone weekend of Compassionate Imagery For Resilience…

Photo by Khatam Tadayon on Unsplash

by Edith Södergran, translated from Swedish by Stina Katchadourian

I hadn’t come across the Swedish speaking Finnish poet Edith Södergran who was born at the end of the 19th century, before finding some of her poems in the beautiful anthology Women in Praise of the Sacred edited by Jane Hirshfield. I enjoyed reading a bit more about her interesting life on wiki (see link above) and marveled at how she was able to savour the sweetness of summer – and life itself? – in the midst of what sounds like challenging circumstances.

And isn’t that the art of life, allowing the heart to be open to receive the magic that is present all around us, if only we open to it? In the book Wanderful that I was recently reading, it suggests imagining at random times (and especially when you’re not particularly enjoying yourself) that you’ve died a while ago, and that you are given the opportunity to come back to life for 1 minute: this minute. How do you experience this minute? What happens to your boredom, irritation, sense of lack? What can be relished?

May there be much ripe sweetness dripping into your heart!

PS Receiving this sweetness may require showing up, being present. And while we all have moments of being present, with practice we can have many more of them! If you’re ready to train in the practice of mindfulness, why not start with a free online introduction course?

Photo by Amanda Flavell on Unsplash

by Clare Dubois

This poem came to me through Fay in one of her Mystical Poetry sessions, and whether or not I literally believe each word, there was something powerful for me in opening to the sense of belonging and being welcomed for who I am that speaks through the poem. Clare Dubois, the founder of TreeSisters, often points in the direction of our deep relatedness with the natural world around us, and the healing that opening to this can bring. So let’s invite the analytical, rational brain to take a little holiday for a moment, if it hasn’t already, and lean into the love that Clare senses in the world around us. What would it be like, to walk through your day today as if it was so?

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls. 

by Charles Simic

I find this an intriguing poem by Serbian-American poet Charles Simic. Stones are so hard, physical and intractable. We think of them as unchanging, solid, constant and inanimate – and certainly not dynamic. Yet in this poem Simic plays with reimagining this absoluteness, finding a magical, light-bringing mystery in there instead. What might this be a metaphor for?

My son Sylvan is fascinated by stones because he knows they may contain treasure – fossils and crystals. He loves to crack them open to see what’s inside and is constantly on the look out for special ones. What surprise may there be inside? What possibility? I remember walking with bare-feet on the sun-warmed rocks on the northern beaches of the Holy Isle where I used to live, receiving a massage from them. There is something wonderful about stones to be appreciated over and over again!

But coming back to the question of what is the metaphor here, I’m reminded of moments when I feel intractably stuck, like my situation and accompanying feelings are solid as a weight, like a sack of stones. I can’t see the room for manoeuvre – it feels like ‘this is how it is and always will be’. But then with the help of mindfulness and compassion practice, I realise something. Although it may be subtle, it changes my seeing and feeling and I find ‘it is not dark inside after all’. Continuing to follow this lead I may discover messages, codes, clues, like the ‘strange writings and star charts on the inner walls’ of what had seemed like a rock of stubbornness, loss, anger, criticism, impossibility… The pearl of wisdom here is: Look inside these feelings, feel them, and find the hidden door in them.

What stone-like feelings might you look inside of?

Ps. If you like the beauty and metaphor in poetry and would like to find out how mindfulness can bring this alive in your own inner world come along to our Mindfulness and Mystical Poetry weekend in London in May.

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash