Border Crossings

Yesterday I was invited by a friend to the Royal National Park south of Sydney for a bird watching outing.   Although I have observed birds in various places over my life, I have never “gone bird watching” before.   Yet, I was drawn to participate.   These past months I have been enraptured by birds in new ways.   In Bristol the bird nests were starkly visible among the bare branches of the trees.   In Llandudno there was an amazing presence of birds, some flying in large flocks, others soaring high in the sky, seagulls waiting on every morsel that drops from my sandwich.   On returning home the galahs are causing a racquet in the trees around the park, ibis are scavenging among the rubbish bins and the amazing rainbow lorikeets busying themselves in the Eucalypts by our balcony.   As I wake in the morning, I can almost tell the hour of the day by the dominant bird calls out the window.   And again, seagulls and also kookaburras and s...

As I walked around the corner in Cambridge, last November, I came across this fiddler, not only playing beautiful music but doing so as he danced and swayed in rhythm along the rope strung above the pavement.   Memory of this scene has been evoked on several occasions this week.     This morning I attended my first yoga class in over 5 months.   It was a class held at The Coast Centre, a local leisure and learning centre for those over 55s and not engaged in full time work.   What I became aware of was how out of practice I am and how important a solid foundation is to my stability even in simple poses.     Stability had also been on my mind since reading Week 5 “Obedience, stability, conversion: Commitment to the creative life” in The Artists Rule by Christine Valters Painter.     A commitment to stability is one of the vows taken by a Benedictine.   Christine draws attention to three facets of stability: stability of plac...

For those of us in the southern hemisphere life is beginning to return to “normal” what ever that may mean.   The Christmas tree of 2018, along with its decorations, has been packed away, people are returning from summer vacations and back-to-school specials are appearing in the shops.   Yes, the festive season is over, and we are moving into ordinary time.   Routines are being re-established, regular rosters are being followed and peak hour travel times are building.   It is now a month since I returned to life in Little Bay in the south east of Sydney, following a wonderfully grace-filled 14 week sabbatical and, in one sense, I too am returning to ordinary time.   But I am also wondering what ordinary time might mean for me, now that I am not working full time and structuring my Sunday to Thursday working week around the world of work and then my Friday and Saturday weekend focusing on my life out of work- maintaining connections with family and friends...

It is fascinating what images remain vivid as the day I encountered them, even as the weeks and months roll by.  I was walking along one of the canals in Bristol and happened upon an apple tree.  It was almost bare, only a few apples remaining on the otherwise seemingly lifeless branches.  But at the base lay hundreds of apples, many rotting and returning to the earth over the coming weeks, some may be collected by the homeless men camped on the canal edge not far away and others providing food of various reptiles, birds, small mammals and a host of invertebrates which are part of this urban habitat.  I have been pondering this apple tree for weeks now, wondering what it has to teach me.  Then, yesterday I was reading the daily reflection from Richard Rohr in which he quotes Parker Palmer:  I no longer ask, “What do I want to let go of, and what do I want to  hang on to ?” Instead I ask, “What do I want to let go of, and what do I want t...

Many who saw my sabbatical program before I left home said they could see where the renewal and reorientation was happening but they could not see much rest.   I want to assure them that there were many, many spaces for rest, in part because many of the routines and concerns of everyday life at home dropped away and restful spaces appeared in their place.   In addition many of the tasks of life- shopping, washing up, laundry, travelling from A to B were accomplished in unhurried ways such that they themselves became moments of rest as I waited in a queue at a check out or in the transit lounge at an airport, as I hung the washing on my travel clothes line, or lingered in bed with the early morning cuppa not needing to rush to catch a bus or beat the morning rush hour.   At Ammerdown, where I took 4 courses over a total of 13 nights, breakfast was not til 8am and the programs started at 9:30am.   Plenty of time for lingering.   Most nights I went to sleep w...