Archive - Jun 9, 2006
Remembering Moments
Over in Japan Iain in a posting titled Foot prints in the Snow, remembers an event in early childhood. He says, an intuitive sense of 'the transient' really touched me.
I must have been, Oh about 16, out walking high on the South Downs in Sussex. Photography was just starting to be a hobby, black and white film in those days. On the chalky white path I came upon a pair of discarded cheap black patent leather women's shoes. They so struck me that I took a number of pictures, one with the shoes arranged as if 'walking' up the path. This was one of the first times I attempted to capture something I felt on film, and never felt satisfied I'd caught it. I still can't say what it was however I'll always remember coming upon those shoes. Perhaps that too was about transience, after all 'Where was the person'?
House Keeping Note: You may notice a change in the way I am linking to other blogs and web sites. This comes through reading about the original 'weblogs' which were link rich. Their aim being to encourage people to follow links through the means of informative 'link text', that's the underlined and highlighted text. Early web sites worked hard to keep people on their site, weblogs worked hard to get people to leave!
It is great that people, on average about 50 a day, visit here and I hope you will leave your mark through the comments and then leave again, and again and again.
Senescence and Solitude
"The organic process of growing older
and showing the effects of increasing age".

Maybe because I will be on my way to a week-end retreat in BC in three weeks, or maybe because I'm just ready to spend some down time, what ever the reason this site devoted to Hermitary struck a cord this evening. And while there, following a link I found an article, Wabi and Sabi: The Aesthetics of Solitude that took me right back to memories of my original spiritual longings, which drew me towards the contemplative life.
Back then I had a romantic notion of what ‘the contemplative life’ would be like. Yes, perhaps living alone in an isolated place away from hustle and bustle. However, in our tradition at least, we are encouraged to be content to sit in our ‘cave’ whereever we are, alone or in a crowd. And sometimes we do retreat to a remote hermitage.


