Small brown birds are so common in the UK (and perhaps beyond!) that many birdwatchers call them “LBJs” (“little brown jobs”!), but on a recent early walk around the Rea Brook in Shrewsbury, the sweetness of this drab dunnock caught my attention, and he was so busy singing he let me capture his plain beauty:
Everyone knows a blackbird, but their song can be so magical in the dawn stillness, empty of all human noise. This one was really pouring out his heart!
And finally, the humble woodpigeon. They look chubby, comical, and are easily dismissed as common-all-garden – and yet the rays of the sun highlighted the iridiscence on this bird’s neck as it sat beautifully framed in spring blossom:
What are your local beauties?
Or do you need to go looking and listening with fresh eyes and ears?
I took this photo earlier this year, at dawn,of The Wrekin, in Shropshire.
The colours of the morning were so fascinating, and perhaps all the more special as they were constantly changing, and I knew that soon they would change from sunrise to morning.
I draw strength from the beauty of the world I see around me.
Think about a seed growing into a plant. Or the journey of a human being from conception to birth to childhood to adulthood.
To live is to grow.
Meaning
Because meaning is related to valuing. Every person alive feels their meaning as they feel valued by others, or they feel valued by God.
Life also has meaning as we are affected emotionally.
To live is to discover more and more meaning. The meaning of my life. The meaning of the lives of others. The meaning of existence and the universe. The meaning of God.
Joy
Because to live is to experience happiness and joy as well as sadness and pain.
Joy is created by an infinite variety of causes. Other people, a pleasurable sensation, music, a moment of beauty. Joy brings growth and meaning to life.
To live is to experience joy.
Perspective
Because perspective is changeable. At one moment, the smallest thing is a mountain and a monster; later we laugh and realise how we had the wrong perspective.
Perspective is like faith. In who and what do we believe and trust, and how do these primordial commitments shape our understanding, our decisions, our existence?
Lif4Gd is to choose certain perspectives to return to in order to grow, experience joy and find meaning in life.
Life brings the craziest of juxtapositions. I was stunned by wonder recently – and it turned out I was just a stone’s throw away from a local supermarket! This post explores what we shop for – for daily groceries, or for daily wonder. And my inspiring writer is a different poem by William Wordsworth, called “Lines Written in Early Spring”:
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
.
The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
Sometimes we catch a glimpse of something so unusual it makes us stop in our tracks and becomes a truly memorable event. I think Wordsworth must have had this experience to make him write this poem. He felt linked with the natural world and it made him think what a mess we often make of the earth!
For me, I had the experience of spotting a very unusual wild bird on the Rae Brook in Shrewsbury – and it turned out to be just behind a local supermarket! It was the ever-excitable dipper (see my previous post Long Live the Wilderness with Gerard Manley Hopkins). And this encounter got me thinking about shopping, and what we shop for.
A dipper
A wiser man than me said “Man cannot live on bread alone”. But we often forget this, and food shopping,
and consuming food, can become a central purpose of life. But is this Lif4Gd?
Maybe we should be “shopping” for wonder?! On the look out every day to be mindful of
those special moments of beauty or meaning that give an extra purpose, perhaps
even transcendence, to life.
This morning, as I drove to work past a local hill called
The Wrekin, dawn was breaking and both Jupiter and Venus were clearly visible
brightly hanging in the sky. What could
be more wonderful?
Jupiter
And Venus
.
Lighting
The sky
.
As if
They knew
.
A brightness
Hidden
.
From human
Sight
.
And I drove
In the darkness
.
As if my road
Lay away
.
From heavenly
Beauty
.
As if I had
Forgotten
.
An ancient
Primaeval
.
Ancestral
duty…
.
Some Questions to Ponder
How much of your time do you spend shopping? Is this Lif4Gd?
Is it possible to “shop” for wonder and beauty, perhaps increasing our mindfulness of what is around us? Could that make Lif4Gd?
Do leave a comment if any of this has got you thinking! This blog is intended to be interactive, and I find it inspiring to follow up comments and suggestions from readers.
Are you ever drawn to natural, wild, wilderness places? This post was inspired by a line in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins – “Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet” – and also by a surprising natural encounter I had recently.
Hopkins’ poem celebrates wild natural beauty but is quite a challenging read because of the way he likes to use unusual words and unusual syntax. If you want to read it, I suggest you just let the bits you don’t follow just “wash over you” and just enjoy the general impression of the wonderful way he uses words…
THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
.
For me, Lif4Gdinvolves feeling connected with nature. In Shropshire, where I live, the wilderness is never far away, and is part of what makes life good:
The wild birds inhabit these hills
and I, a
walker,
glancing down the valley
dazzled by
gleaming lights
flung
across the fields like necklaces
I feel connected with the wind
the grass
under my feet
God’s sky above my head.
Yesterday as I was walking Rae Brook Nature Reserve in
Shrewsbury I spotted a dipper (these are usually mountain stream birds in the
UK) dancing around the edges of the Rae Brook.
“Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet” indeed. Nature is full of surprises and offers a deep
connection to humanity.
A dipper
Some Questions to
Ponder
Do you feel connected to, or separate from, nature? How could you get more connected?
What places of natural wildness and wilderness mean a lot to you? What have been some of your most surprising and memorable encounters of connection with nature?
By all means leave a comment if the post or the questions made you want to share your own thoughts.
Lif4Gd 