Here is a contribution from Adrienne Hodges in the series on creative expression in the midst of our historic Pandemic. This quilt bears witness into the future. For all those who struggle and are afraid.
Detail of a quilt.
I’ve recently taken up needle and thread to embroider a quilt that I made many years ago. It started as an evening pastime and a bit of an exploration in simple stitchery. Over the past three weeks, this practice has taken on a significance that I hadn’t envisaged at the start. Aside from being an effective calmer of the mind, I have begun to choose imagery of a rather topical nature – the representation of the virus we constantly see on our TV screens should we decide to switch it on and watch the news.
There are over twenty of these little roundels scattered across the whole. There have been several stages to each one and it has taken quite a few hours. I told my daughter about my latest addition and her take on it was that I had slightly lost hold of my senses. That isn’t how I see it. I feel helped by absorbing these little bugs into my work. The slow and gentle process of forming them has eased some of my fears and anxieties. The instinctual reaction of turning away has dissipated as I have stitched. I feel glad about that.
If my quilt survives as these items do, years into the future, it will bear witness to these extraordinary and difficult times. Oh, and just to balance things out I have scattered ribbon rainbows throughout the design too. There’s always hope……..
Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.
This is an extract from a post on Dew on the Grass, a blog written by a handful of Buddhists practicing within this tradition (Serene Reflection Meditation Tradition, Soto Zen). It’s a hidden gem which deserves a wider audience. This post is from Anna and kicks off a series on creative responses to the Pandemic. This one just fell into my lap this evening. Many thanks, good friends in the Dharma.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In essence, this is about the power to create”.
As I went to buy groceries today and I was looking around, I had to acknowledge that everything I saw, the streets, the pavement, the buildings, the supermarket, the aisles with food, with products, money, the clothes I was wearing, my house, the tap I use to wash my hands, everything, started as a concept, a word in the mind. The world as we know it started as a concept, started as a word; our world is the result of our innate power to create. We can use this power for self-serving goals or use it to create a world that is inclusive and beneficial to all. Now that we are collectively forced to a halt and forced to reassess our unsustainable way of life, enormous creative energy rises to find alternatives, to consider choices that take into account our interconnectedness.
In recent years I have spent much of my time in solitude and would like to offer some thoughts on loneliness, especially now when many of us are having to live in isolation. Most of the advice going around at the moment addresses loneliness through keeping up contact with family, friends and neighbours on various media and so on. This is good advice but what can be forgotten is the value there can be in allowing ourselves some space to explore the actual feeling of being lonely.
Written by Rev. Master Daishin Morgan, former Abbot of Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey
Find the entire article on the Throssel website.
If this video works to help re-anchor to the basic practice of generosity, kindness and the offering of one’s whole life to the ‘good’, all’s well. And good.
Words and appearances
can be deceptive
what’s behind them
isn’t.
Practice Within The Order of Buddhist Contemplatives
