But that we could behold our fellow human thus. To appreciate. To admire. Whatever the shape or condition. To not intrude. Obviously. But to allow the depths of us to meet. And to meet and to meet. With no gaps.
How jolly! These trees get my vote out here in Lancashire where just down the road at St. Michaels the community suffered a major flooding. All here promises a fine day with sun showing. Shyly. What ever age holiday lights can’t fail to bring uplift. Can they?
Two children ran playing on the path as I stepped out into the brisk air to snap this photograph. Adding bounce and vitality. But as with the smile so too with the ‘bounce’. One does not need to skip and hop to convey a sense of liveliness. Not at all. Not preoccupied by what has been or what is yet to come let loose your eyes to let light in. Through each and every pore.
Let’s have a thought for all those impacted by the heavy rain over the past days in Scotland and Northern UK. The local river broke its banks and rushing water flowed over the playing fields just beside where I am staying. No danger of being inundated although the houses in the picture have been. Having fast flowing, uncontrolled, water close by brings the danger of flooding close to home. Thankfully the rain has stopped falling and the sun has come out!
And a thought for the thousands of homes without electricity in Lancaster where the promise is that normal services will be resumed…on Tuesday.
The marvelous envelops
and saturates us
like the atmosphere;
but we fail to see it.
Baudelaire
The following quote is from the Parisian Gentleman a site I stumbled upon when searching on-line for instructions on how to do invisible mending. Their Journal post yesterday titled The Theory of How to Wear a Suit caught my attention. At first it was the writing style dry wit, and fastidious attention to detail, that had me transfixed. And somewhat bemused at entering into a totally alien realm of smart clothing, for men. Rev. Master Jiyu encouraged natural pride (in one’s appearance) and I do believe she would have given thumbs up to what is written here.
When we give the art of dressing well the attention it deserves, we move into the midst of an inner transformation, and this inner shift is a delicate transformation to manage.
It’s great to find a way to present ourselves well with clothing and finally (sartorially speaking) experience the feeling of self-approval. Yet, achieving self-approval poses a risk, as too much self-approval can convert into an ego explosion which annihilates the goal of ‘looking good’ as haughty and proud behavior can turn a person into a human atrocity.
Perhaps it’s better to say that understanding the art of dressing well opens the door to a more profound emotion created by beauty itself, and when we dress and leave our homes and feel surrounded within the vapor of beauty (created from somewhere within ourselves), we get a fleeting glimpse of the eternal.
As Baudelaire said, “all forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, have something eternal and something transitory — an absolute and a particular element”. But perhaps even more striking is Baudelaire’s epiphany, “The marvelous envelops and saturates us like the atmosphere; but we fail to see it.”
And with all this time to recover from the cold I caught in Latvia I’ve been able to mend my treasured monastic, 100% wool coat, which had been attacked by a moth while my back was turned. Always good to be turned out sans moth holes! Thank you Rev. Master for your teaching.
See my comment attached to this post for further details.