Britain is flooded
huge swathes
under water.The water
is rising
and rising.The news
full of
water-disaster.So much
too much
to cope with.
I bumped into this post A Flood Story Older Than Noah. The post links to Flood Stories From Around the World. That’s it.
For those caught up in the drama and misery of flooding.
What is the goal
ofgoalessness?the answer given:put one foot
in front of the other
and know you’re
already there!
Trying to live that.
Hat tip to my correspondent who passed on this question and the given answer.
There is a post on Field of Merit site called The Non-Ferocious Way which I wrote yesterday.
We set great store by being sharp, being focused, being brightly alive. In short being THERE or better, HERE. In Zen practice and any other kind of practice for that matter being one who trains hard is better than being known as a slacker! But what does it mean to train hard, in practice. Are there particular times or circumstances when training hard is what’s asked of us or is the instruction itself a bit of a red herring? Did the intended meaning get lost in translation?
I’ve not got too much more to say on this for the moment so hope you get something out of what I wrote.
May the merit of this post be offered to all those who find the colour has gone out of their life and faith is fragile.
I wake at dawn. Sometimes to worry but most often to simply be awake. It is a special time of peace before rising up to greet the day with all the activities that follow thick and fast and one after the other. The word Uhtcear came to my notice this evening via a couple of websites and the idea caught my fancy. UHTCEARE (n.) Pronounced- oot-key-are-a. It’s an Old English word meaning ‘lying awake before dawn and worrying’. I hope you are not one to suffer thus.
The fact that there is a specific word for predawn worrying sessions is fascinating but the predicament is no joke of course. As a child my first thought on waking, and this is really sad, was What have I got to dread today? It was usually a visit to the dentist, Five more days until the dentist…. Early days of monastic training had me jumping out of bed at the sound of the wake-up bell without a second thought. Rarely did I wake before the bell so my early morning thought dissolved, never to return. Not in that form anyway.
If you are one who appreciates verse try – An ode to uhtceare! With a hat tip to Mark Forsyth’s book – The Horologicon
I loved that the eggs advertised were (I mistakenly thought) from care-free hens. In my minds eye I saw them relaxed and singing away as they do after laying. I grew up on a free range chicken farm. Ah, care-free days!
But quickly I realised I’d made a simple comprehension mistake and care-free hens had to change to cage-free hens. However the sound and sight of those happy hens, my early friends and companions, remain in my imaginings as I write.