Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Miraculous Otherness


The winds and rains that unfurled across campus last month seem a distant whisper, the fading verbose exhale of autumn's grand entrance. I still sense the trembling hardy curtains of wet as they fell in torrential acts on the play of a new school year. Now as fall nips towards its quiet end, the days are painted with gilded scenes of impassioned sun and patient ice. With each cloud soliloquy, each tucked reminder of the sun waiting in the wings of grey, I behold a chance to witness a moment in awareness, in mindful noting of its birth, its shift, its exit from the present that promises the eternal constance of change.


As the lengthening dark of winter's night tugs at the fraying fringe of day, we are asked to turn inward, and outward. To see the dusk as a metaphor for life, to cherish the song of a wee wren on a snow tipped branch as well as the grand aria of laughter rejoicing in the belly of family and those we hold dear. To behold the miraculous otherness of a creaking pine rocked in the arms of the wind and the tender gratitude of time tipped and held so lightly. Remembering, as poet David Whyte reminds us, "...all those years forgetting how easily you can belong to everything simply by listening."

Join artist and naturalist, Robert Bateman, for an afternoon of quiet listening and immense remembering, Friday, December 13, 1-3:30pm. Click here for more information.

To you and your family, wishing you all gentle peace and deep silence.

Tess Wixted
Learning Associate

Visit us at cstudies.royalroads.ca.