This week, the Wrekin – that beautiful distinctive hill of Shropshire photographed here – was crowned by cloud and mist. It was something beautiful but indistinct.
Just as life sometimes is so confusing, so disorientating, such a muddle.
The end of the day can be an opportunity to discover the meaning of the day. Was it in a beautiful sight? Was it in a precious relationship? Was it in a powerful moment of experience? Was it a day without anything special, just the usual, wonderful gift of life?
Isn’t life good when we have had a meaningful day?
Colemere is small, tranquil lake in North Shropshire, which I have posted about before, and this beautiful mute swan lingered near the banks on a recent visit.
Reflection seems to be as natural for us as humans as it is to the surface of water, and it is something that is distinctively human.
Colemere
I saw beauty in these simple, but complex, reflections of light and dark on the surface of the water, just as I did in the simple white beauty of the swan.
And I agreed with Thomas Traherne: “Sure Man was born to meditate on things“.
His lines are from a beautiful, thoughtful poem called “Dumbness” (in the sense of not being able to speak), and you can read the full poem here.
When the world speaks to us in such beautiful, reflective ways, it is good, very good.
I hope these reflections, and Traherne’s poetry, have spoken to you.
“Sure Man was born to meditate on things,
And to contemplate the eternal springs
Of God and Nature, glory, bliss, and pleasure;
That life and love might be his Heavenly treasure;
And therefore speechless made at first, that He
Might in himself profoundly busied be:”
Reflection is as natural to being human as it is to the surface of water. The image above is of Colemere, a tranquil “mere” (small lake) in North Shropshire, dating back to the Ice Age. As Thomas Traherne says: “Sure Man was born to meditate on things“.
He continues:
This, my dear friends, this was my blessed case;
For nothing spoke to me but the fair face
Of Heaven and Earth, before myself could speak...
Then did I dwell within a world of light,
Distinct and separate from all men’s sight,
Where I did feel strange thoughts, and such things see
That were, or seemed, only revealed to me...
“D’ye ask me what? It was with clearer eyes
To see all creatures full of Deities;
Especially one’s self: And to admire
The satisfaction of all true desire:
Twas to be pleased with all that God hath done;
Twas to enjoy even all beneath the sun:
Twas with a steady and immediate sense
To feel and measure all the excellence
Of things... every stone, and every star a tongue,
And every gale of wind a curious song..."
These lines are from his beautiful poem called “Dumbness” (in the sense of not being able to speak), and you can read the full poem here.
Ironically, Traherne is anything but “dumb” when he writes about his pre-language childhood world. It seems a heavenly state, where the whole world “spoke to me”.
When the world speaks to us in such beautiful ways, it is good, very good.
These reflections on Colemere did just that.
I hope that they, and Traherne’s poetry, speak to you.
Wordsworth was born on April 7th, the right time of year for someone who wrote so beautifully about daffodils!
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance...
Just down the road from Shrewsbury, where I live, is a tiny but beautiful village called Atcham, where I took a shot of these lovely, cheerful flowers that are still shouting their yellow hoorays everywhere in the UK at the moment…
Wordsworth also wrote about a less well-known wild flower, that is one of the first to bloom – the lesser celandine:
There is a Flower, the Lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself, ’tis out again!
Here are some beautiful bright celandines, from a walk near Hanwood, Shropshire:
There is such a beautiful world around us, and there is something amazingly cheerful in these bright yellows – I don’t know why!
Perhaps it reminds me of the brightness and yellowness of the sun, our source of light and heat, without which neither daffodils, celandines nor humans could live?
The wild flowers seem to shout out, with Wordsworth – “Life Is For Good!”
Whoever decided to time Easter with springtime in the UK was a genius!
Easter is about new life, and all around us in Shropshire in Staffordshire new lambs are tottering, frisking, staying close to mum, or basking in the sun (or the snow!).
I’ve had some delightful encounters with new families like this…
…this…
…and this…
What brings us new life?
The sight of new life seems to move us instinctively with a warm heart-connection with the fragile, vulnerable young life we see before us – whether animal or human. After all, we were all there once!
Perhaps it is also the heart movement of hope. We see a new life with opportunities ahead of him or her. We are reminded that life is open, about potential, about what is good.
In the spring in the UK in rural Shropshire this is so easy. We are blessed with beautiful countryside all around.
But perhaps the seeds of new life are everywhere potentially if we look closely enough?
Blossom is everywhere in Shropshire at the moment.
I have been reading a book called Wayfaring by Margaret Silf, and some of her words got me thinking about how human life is a kind of blossoming:
“Each human life reflects the same pattern as the universe itself – beginning from a single point, infinitesimally small, and expanding outwards, constantly revealing more and more of its immeasurable potential”
Wayfaring, p.1
There has been the deadness of winter, and now life starts again in the world of trees, bushes and wild flowers. The warmth and light of our distant star, the sun, miraculously calls forth a response from life here on earth.
And we also come from nothing. We depend on the love of others, not a distant star, and yet we also long for “light” of a different kind – the light of hope, the light of relationships, the light of love.
As a teenager I used to cycle home from school. Gazing up at the sky, I would notice the vivid oranges, purples and reds of a beautiful sunset, and one evening I vividly remember being in awe at an enormous rising harvest moon.
I also noticed how many other people walking on the streets did not seem to be aware of these amazing sights, and I was saddened that they did not look beyond themselves at the beauty that was all around them in the sky.
About this time I discovered the poetry of William Wordsworth, and I vividly remember reading these lines from his poem about Tintern Abbey:
“These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration…
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”
Here was someone who did look beyond!
Wordsworth saw “those beauteous forms” and he writes about what in his experience was hard to put into words:
“that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened”
For me, that captured my own experience – the experience of the transcendent I would now call it. An authentic, and quite common, experience, it seems. A spiritual experience.
Lif4Gd 