We met for our day retreat in the Friends Meeting House building which is very close to Manchester Town Hall. As each hour arrived the booming out of the Town Hall clock left us in no doubt to the passing of time. So loud, so very loud that at first we all thought something bad was happening out there in the streets of good old Manchester. Window rattling chimes.

Then today news of a tornado, or many mini tornadoes in England. One of our monks reported her experience of being in a house when one passed by. One moment calm the next car alarms going off, glass breaking, curtains sucked out through an open window. Moments later a return to calm and the wreckage strewn on the street. The house will need to be re roofed. Window rattling weather, and then some!

Richard said…
I used to walk to Battersea Park twenty years ago from Earls Court in the evenings and hop over the fence to walk to see the stupa by the river. One winters evening there was a gale blowing. As I climbed on the monument, there was no wind but the wind could be heard howling with the trees creaking and rustling away. I walked round looking at the four events in the Buddhas life in this zone of tranquility and stillness. Then I walked off the Stupa back into the gale…

Above is a comment left on the posting Wind and Rain. Copied here because of the connection with this posting, and the connection to practice. That’s the fast changing ‘weather’ of practice, which one can become so very easily shaken by. Or rattled!

Take care out there.

There has been a lot of buz about supermarket plastic bags where I’m staying to-night in Preston, Lancashire.

If you’re interested you might want to try searching on ‘Banish the plastic bag’ to find an article at www.guardian.co.uk on the growing campaign to stop the use of plastic shopping bags. The whole business was inspired by a young wildlife camerawoman whose outrage at the pollution of the Pacific ocean marine life by plastic bags led to shops in Modbury Devon stopping using them.

Manchester tomorrow. It will be good to spend a day in ‘my city’.

This morning a small band of us, monks and guests, trudged up the windswept hill side carrying all the necessary to plant a tree. People ask to plant trees in memory of a relative or friend, it’s a great way to establish a lasting and meaningful memorial, and at the same time help forest the land. We have quite a few memorial trees scattered around the property now.

When I first came here the priory, as it was then, was surrounded by fields and moor. We had a neighbours cows grazing in the area which is now the cemetery; we had cows in the fields above the main buildings. Now there are just rabbits grazing, thousands of them, and literally thousands of trees too. Over the years we’ve planted them, the majority surviving the wind and the rabbits. All the same each tree needs a tree guard and every one is staked for support against the gales. We work hard to keep the trees upright and alive.

Our guests favoured a more sheltered spot on the edge of the old hay field, now cropped close by the avaricious rabbits. There are wide views both up and across the valley from there. The rain held off. The hole was dug and the Rowan was eased in. Grown near Aberdeen they said, hardy tree stock from Scotland. Yes, hardy trees and hardy people too from up there. In no time that Rowan will become part of our developing windswept forest protected, while it establishes itself, by its larger and stronger neighbours.

All this mention of wind reminds me I had a major shift in attitude towards wind early this morning. Walking to the mediation hall in the early morning I realized the wind was actually going around and not through me. Seems such a simple thought however up to then I’d hunched myself mentally and physically, braced myself against the assault. The wind was in effect going through me. Now it is definitely going around me. No hunching or bracing, mentally or physically, from now on.

As I write the rain is at the window. I’ll be taking another look at my attitude towards that too.

I’d wanted to link to this touching obituary for a well loved dog a couple of days ago. Better late, than never all.

Darcey. Darcey-Dog. ‘Dee-Dee’ to her many friends. A dog-lover’s dog. Big black amiable giant with a heart of gold. You could roll around on the floor with her for hours. Her sense of fun was just amazing. Cheeky, obsessed with food, she could hear a sweetie paper at two hundred metres in a hurricane.